Hearthpwn

Watch some streamers on twitch, like Rarran or Martim per example. They usually think out loud, which helps you understand why they make certain choices. Martim is a very good player (perhaps the better of the two) that uses to take his time planning his turns while explaining it a bit, while Rarran (the more creative of the two) experiments with different comps more often so you get to see more different mercs and strategies.

I got one free Drek'Thar with 0 packs. INFINITE VALUE

I think I located what the Valeera speed bug is about.

When a mercenary reached a lower hp value than its base value it is seen as 'dead' according to the buff so wont receive it anymore. The +9 health from Cookie counts for this, so if a merc with that buff is left with less than 9 health, it is counted as dead.
Healing works like this too. So yeah... it's very, very, very badly coded. Easily fixable, but yet the smart coders didn't realise this was probably the worst way to code this... It's registering damage taken, instead of current health. So per example an Anduin will just stop getting the speed buff after a while, because he gained health during combat...

Pfff.. It's so incredibly sloppy coding

Quote from MrBobb >>

When you fight Nef you get told it will be the hardest fight you had so far... just used the nature comp and did it first time (had that new snake bite thing when you cast nature).... sort of amusing he was easier than Rend

 I know talking about Nef is kinda offtopic. But the first time I did Nef I had Valeera in my comp with the bonus that kills a random neutral at the start of the fight... fyi - Nef in human form = neutral. I literally defeated Nef in only 2 turns without losing a single merc.

Quote from YourPersonalGuru >>

The worst bug i found was in the 2nd felwood boss. The game sometimes lose track of the ability commands and if you make the mistake of restarting the game you'll be stuck in an infinite loop of "resuming game" until you manage to completely crash the process by switching your wifi on/off at the right moment. Happened 3 days ago and you can't find any solutions online. Only threads of frustrated players being stuck for days. 

 Well, honestly that looks like a different kind of technical bug that might be a lot harder to locate and fix. But come on. All those typo's and simple ingame bugs I mentioned are so slacky by Blizz...

Alright, I'm starting to get a bit annoyed here with all the bugs and/or inclompete content we keep getting. I honestly don't understand why Blizzard as a company can't seem to do this right.

Valeera came out and I've been very hyped about her so completed her 18 tasks asap. But now that I play with here I'm getting very frustrated because she is bugged and the bugs occur at 80% of the pvp matches I do.
I'm talking about the (4) speed bonus when she's stealthed.
1) Sometimes it doesn't get added to a friendly mercenary (or herself). So even while she's stealthed, and nothing caused a slow (like Varden, Cairne or w.e.) on my own mercs, one or a few of them still don't seem to get her +speed. This seriously ruins any kind of planning of turns you've been doing from the turn before.
2) Sometimes she randomly loses stealth at the end of the turn. I often see this happen when she's been using Sinister Strike (with combo) like 3 turns in a row. For some reason the game seems to register you re-applying stealth a couple of times as a reason to just plainly remove it at the end of a turn. There's no explaination other than that. It looks alot like the taunt duration bug as if stealth has a hidden duration of 2 turns max.

Taunt duration bug: If you use a skill that gives you a 2 turn taunt (2nd skill from Cornelius) twice in a row, your taunt will go away at the end of the second turn. The taunt is registred to go away after 2 turns, so if you cast this taunt skill on the second turn again (refreshing the taunt) it doesn't register as a refresh and the initial taunt duration will expire; therefor removing the taunt at the end of the turn.

And I mean.. Blinkfox... Why does nobody find it INSANE that he STILL isn't fixed yet while meanwhile we've gotten 2 new merc patches (pirates / valeera). Blinkfox is a great merc, but he can't be used like he's supposed to be used right now. Why is there nobody sitting at Blizzard saying; we can't just keep this guy fckd up. What's going on at the Blizzard department of Mercenaries man? Why does nobody take its responsibility and fix this guy after months of having the bug there wide in the open?

I just don't get it how they can implement such broken mechanics in the game. It's so obvious what's wrong here, and any basic codewriter could easily tackle the issue with the taunt duration per example. I'm a codewriting noob but still done some as a hobby when I was younger and this is so incredibly easy!! Come on!! Why is it still there?

Next to that I was super annoyed at our earlier patch with the pirate mercs. Why? When you leveled one to level 30 you could go to your achievements and find blizzard didn't even have anyone replace those names of the achievements with the proper ones. I remember when I leveled Sneed to 30 the achievement said Garrosh reached 30, and same for Edwin being called Samuro (if I remember right). I mean, come on! Does Blizzard even care about how they present their stuff? Why are the earlier bugs (like taunt bug, or blinkfox) not fixed before you release new (bugged) content like Valeera? How can a self-respecting company not put some guy on these 5min fixes before putting out more content? It's such an incredibly messy way of managing content... Horrible!

Now I'm not writing this to tell people to stop playing this game or anything. I like Mercenaries and I want to continue playing it, but I'm here posting this because a) I'm surprised Blizzard seems to pull off these incredibly amaturistic mistakes and b) I really, really, really hope Blizzard cuts the crap, hires some better (or more) people and improves in the future. It's very demotivating and frustrating to get enthousiastic about a new mercenary like Valeera and fail to use her properly nearly every game since you have to coope with bugs all the time. I mean, I spent money on the Valeera pack so why is it a broken product? In the real world you'd get a refund if your product doesn't work... Now I don't want that. I just want Blizzard to start doing their jobs in a professional way and deliver quality rather than barely tested and badly coded content.

Quote from Cagey75 >>

Boring AF 2,2,2 players every other game, get original ffs

 

Also, ropers ... wtf?? you have THREE cards, even shoe size IQ players can handle this within seconds - is your plan to bore your opponents to death? nice strat

 lul. I come across comps with 3 of any colour regulary at 8500+.
Nature with cookie (3x blue), Beasts with diablo (3x green), Malfurion with Mukla and Cairne (3x red).

And the complaint about ropes... lul. If you play against good opponents your choices matter and there's a lot of mind-games involved. Usually the players that rope tend to come up with the better plays in my experience. I'm too impatient myself too, and often press ready too fast, hence I'm stuck at 8500, but the players above me are usually taking their time to come up with the best plays.

I got all the Gul'dan skins (including diamond) in the last 10 packs... I also got like all skins of half the mercenaries while the other half I've got nothing at all... I wish there was a way to craft or aim for specific skins... Man, I'd love a Malfurion or Cairne skin...

Bug you say?xD

That's strange. I assume it's bugged then. Entire game is in a very bugged state ever since last night's patch. :-(

Heya,

Does anyone know if packs you're not opening now will have a chance to get new stuff when its released? Or is the inside of a pack already determed the moment you acquire it?

Quote from ChosenOne >>

And no you cannot control tasks, because you have 6 in your party so its not guaranteed to get the one you want. Yes its a grind as it should be but some ppl have advantage has nothing to do with being lazy.

 Wrong. You can even do tasks with only 1 merc if you want. You don't have to have 6. If I want to get specific tasks I bring 3 mercs that already did all of them and 3 mercs that have tasks left. Then that way I always get to choose one out of the same 3.

Technically, if you want to get 1 specific task you could just do the bounty with a team of 3 (so not finish the party!) and you'll always have the option to choose out of those 3.

And about this 'advantage' you talk about. I barely farmed tasks on elemental. I've done most of my farming on felwood lvl 28 bounty. This advantage will soon be gone, since people are starting to max out all their mercs soon enough. It's some kind of a headstart, but since there's a pretty managable cealing it'll soon even out.

Stop complaining about money. If you don't have task 7 equipment the only thing it means is that you didn't take the time to farm it. It's totally free equipment, you just gotta invest time in it. And saying 'tasks you cannot control' is just stupid. If you want a specific task then bring a smaller party to the bounty to guarantee the mysterious stranger gives you the option you want.

Since the mysterious stranger nerf I've farmed like  40+ tasks in Felwood 6 and I've nearly got every merc maxed by now. I enjoy the slow farm while watching tv. That felwood bounty gives you a stranger like 50% of times, but let's say you are unlucky and get 33% it's still not that much of a time investment. Reset the bounty if you gotta do more than 2 fights to reach it, and that way you will get a stranger every ~4-6 fights, which means a stranger every 4-6min or something.
Then if you have a good clearing combo (Velen+Anduin, Anto+Geddon or anything with beasts) it's only a littlebit slower than it used to be, but with the upside of giving better random coin rewards. (epic+legendary too!)

If you are either lazy or lack the time and therefor don't own task 7equipment you can't expect the matchmaking to put you against the same kind of people at 6k+ rating. I think at a certain rating you should let go of your excuses and just match those that maxed out their equipment like i.m.o. every competitive pvp player should. Don't say pay2win on maxing out equipment, it's literally only a time investment after you've gotten the actual merc itself.

Quote from kwikill >>

What is the worst, most mind-numbing task requirement you've come across?

 

I hereby nominate Sylvannas' 9th: Destroy 30 enemies using For the Queen

 Wait till you reach (I believe it was...) task 13 for Sylvanas.
Destroy 15 enemies using her deathrattle (equipment). the For the Queen task wasn't as annoying as this one.
How I did it? I luckily already got that equipment upgraded to rank 2, but it still only killed 2 random enemies. So I used Sylvanas+Cariel+Mrgl on lvl 28 Felwood. (Where they keep summoning extra adds) I kept buffing sylvanas' attack with cariel, and mrgl+sylvanas kept shooting sylvanas. Mrgl was there cus the npc's tend to hit a blue (low hp) target all the time and he doesn't hit back for much. You gotta find tricks to complete most later tasks cus normal team runs won't always go fast enough.

Altough Jaina's task 'Destroy X enemies with Water Elemental' sucked too.