Hearthpwn

I guess I understand what Blizzard says it was trying to do: reward harder-core players who (like me) tend to finish their weekly quests early in the week. But, wow, did they botch this. Even the fix is horrible: win 10 Tavern Brawls? For the good ones? No problem. But some of those brawls (like the brain dead one this week) are so bad, I feel like I need a shower after winning one.

What they should have done is create a fourth weekly quest that unlocks only when you finish the other 3. Casual players get to keep doing their thing, while more dedicated players get rewarded for their commitment.

Quote from InfinityRocketPlastics >>

Quote from Jd1975 >>

Sad to see people still compare a collectible card game to a regular video game title sold on a console, they aren’t the same and never will be. I guess you can compare a 5 star restaurant to a  McDonald’s restaurant then and say McDonalds only charges $3 bucks for a burger so why should I spend $30 for a burger? Rationalization is one of the strongest human psychological  emotions to exist. We all like to interpret  things and base our choices off of are interpretations. I never understood why I should care about something someone else has that  I do not or the ability of someone else to do things I cannot.  The community that surrounds this game as a whole uses the term “ whale” as a pejorative and the term “f2p” as a meliorative. 

If you buy the bundle,  great if you don’t buy it, great. To suggest buying it is stupid because you can buy a “aaa” title for that much says a lot about the person making the comment. Secretly we all wish we could buy the bundle but everyone cant do that. So really wish the people in this community could get over their psychological issues with people who have something they don’t or choose to do something that they cannot.

I bought the mega-bundle. 

 

It's totally fine with everyone that you bought the big bundle.

We all make decisions about what we're going to buy based on personal, subjective criteria. If you can easily afford it, if the relevant comparison to you isn't other video games in general but specifically Magic the Gathering, and if to you triple A games are like McDonald's burgers and Hearthstone's a gourmet meal, of course you should buy the Mega Bundles. It'd be dumb not to. 

All those things are reversed for me so I don't usually buy bundles. There's nothing stupid or malicious and no rationalization needed to account for buying or not buying a preorder. 

Good luck with your pack openings. 

But, in some people' mind, it's not okay. And that what I think he's complaining about (rightly, in my view). Just read some of the threads on this topic (this one is pretty tame, actually but others are much worse), and you can see this snarky, pretty nasty attack on anyone who actually spends money on the game. The very term "whales" (as he points out) is used to criticize and insult. No one says, "Wow, congrats on being a whale! Ugly form of class warfare, TBH.

As someone who typically buys the smaller bundle every other expansion (this one happens to be an "off" expansion), I guess I qualify as a "mini-whale." I'd probably be insulted if I actually cared what some of these clowns think. Anyway, I think anyone who's foolish enough to spend $6/ day on Starbucks is nuts. I scratch my head when I see people buying skins, heroes, and other cosmetics on Hearthstone. But it's not my money, so I have no right to complain or criticize. Just wish others would do the same.

I've said it in other threads and I'll say it again here: I miss the old days of Dragon Priest. Minion-based. Powerful, but beatable. Didn't turn the game into a 45 minute snoozefest. People complained about it, but it was nowhere near as annoying as the current idiocy.

Few comments:

1. 100% agree that getting upset over this game is strange. While I'll typically hit D5, there have been many months that I don't bother. I play what I enjoy and let the cards fall where they may. The ladder rewards just aren't worth the stress.

2.Complaining about Reno Control Warrior is odd. Standard Control Warrior is a much better deck and more dominant at higher levels of the ladder. I play it periodically, when the mood hits. But going against a standard control deck is usually a loss.

3. Harth is a meme deck. Sure, maybe you get some awesome, killer deck that perfectly counters your opponent. But you may also get a complete dog. Can't see how anyone can say this card is OP.

That might actually make for a fun quest, sort of like the Nozdormu the Eternal one.

The very last thing warrior needs is more armor. Control warrior is right up there with Priest in terms of "painfully boring to play against."

Yeah, priest is in a bad place and has been for a while now. Shadow Priest worked for a while, but it died off. Now, even when I'm laddering, I pretty much always quit when I get matched with a priest. They're boring to play against and, even if I win, the game takes 20 minutes. (And, for the record, I PREFER control decks.) I'd rather take the loss and move on.

I miss the old days of Dragon Priest, when cards like Drakonid Operative was considered OP. Priest really lost its way when the devs started pushing stupid crap like Resurrect Priest, which just led the community to hate the class. I don't think it's ever recovered.

Quote from Suikiele >>

Quote from Vibahh >>

Wild is just fun mode anyways, Thats Why devs dont balance it. Its for casuals ;)

 Stated after cards were changed barely 2 weeks ago purely for Wild. Look, I get if you want to stick witch Standard and BGs, but a lot of folks play Wild 50%+ of the time. Any changes being requested from this community has zero overlap with what you apparently like, so I've never understood people making statements like this.

 Amen.

Quote from SavageMind >>

The blood spec is dumb and boring. Plz kill it

 Thaddius/ Flesh Behemoth/ Dar'Khan/ Rivendare Warlock is dumb and boring. Plz kill it. (And, yes, I chose this example because you posted exactly that deck yesterday.)

Quote from 3nnu1 >>

Tall stranger is a notorious blizzard shill and douchebag. Don't bother talking with him, you'll only get the company line. 

 You're still around? I swear you keep saying you've quit the game, but you hang around here spewing your typical conspiracy theory nonsense. And, dude, I'll take my reputation around here over yours every time. You're the equivalent of everyone's drunk uncle at Thanksgiving: he stumbles around talking nonsense, while everyone else ignores him and laugh at him behind his back.

My entire point to that dude (who claims to have ignored me but everyone knows is still reading this) is that expecting each class to have multiple, viable archetypes to reach legend is absurd. And I explained why. Not once in that explanation did I say something nice about Blizzard. The only time it came up was when I said that, if you want Blizzard to create enough cards to make all these archetypes, you better be ready to pay for it (and accept that FTP's will get screwed by this change). Again, just a fact: Blizzard's not going to put all that work in without charging us more. I didn't judge whether or not that was "good" or "fair."

You'll notice I never once said I liked the current meta: I don't have an opinion of it, because it hasn't settled yet. There are some decks that look interesting, some that look stupid, and some that I haven't played or played against enough to form an opinion. So, basically, I haven't said anything nice about Blizzard nor defended it in any way. Guess I'm not much of a shill.

He can say whatever he wants: everyone knows he read the whole damn thing...

Wow, you totally burned me there. I must still be reeling from that terrifying warning you gave me. Based on the tone of your recent posts, I guess you've decided to be presumptuous and unpleasant now.

Fine, let's use your whining about Warlock. You object to Curselock and Implock being the only two common warlock archetypes. What you still aren't getting is that: a) there are not enough class cards in standard to support any additional archetypes (another point you chose to ignore); and b) MORE IMPORTANTLY, there isn't any meaningful demand for additional ones. Here's why:

The bulk of serious, laddering HS players are either "class mains" ("I'm a warlock main" or "I'm a mage main") or a "deck type main" (I'm an aggro main" or "I'm a control main.") If you're a class main, you're going to play that class, pretty much regardless of whether it's aggro, midrange, or control. (This obviously won't capture everyone, but is true at the macro level.) Since people want to, you know, win games, warlock mains looked at the available archetypes and saw these two as best warlock decks and chose to play them. (In actuality, Curselock fell off very quickly, as it's actually a really crappy deck.) If you're an aggro deck main, you've gotten exactly what you want, a viable aggro deck. You don't care about another because one of them will be inferior. Do you want to play the aggro deck with the 54% winrate or the 58%? Not even a question at the macro level. Again, read vicious syndicate's meta analyses. They do a very good job at explaining how good decks squeeze out competing class or deck type competitors and how the meta adjusts to compensate for a deck becoming "too good."

If all you want are "fun and refreshing" decks to play against, go to Casual. (Still lots of meta decks there, but not as many.) But expecting people on ladder (where winning and losing count) to choose these decks over decks with good winrates is asinine. The other player doesn't exist to give you a fun time.

"There could/should be more daring decisions made to increase variety." Do tell. You've obviously given this so much thought, please enlighten us. And, BTW, Renathal doesn't qualify. First off, it became very common, removing most 30 card decks from the meta, thus doing nothing to create variety. Second, Renathal did not create new deck types so much as it swung the aggro-midrange-control balance in control's favor. Also, your solution can't be "Blizzard needs to print more cards in each expansion" unless you're also willing to a) pay more for the pre-release bundles; and b) tell FTP players "sucks to be you." Blizzard ain't a charity: you want more from it, you gotta pay for it.

As for netdecking, it's obviously NOT just my opinion, but the opinion of most players. The fact that "netdecks" are so common is proof that most people DON'T want to build their own decks. So those who imagine that they're master deck builders (when most just tweak an existing archetype and then pat themselves on the back) are very much in the minority. But hey, if you're good at deckbuilding AND good at the game itself, you'll have no problem hitting legend.

At the end of the day, your approach is rainbows and unicorns, while mine is rooted in actually understanding how the meta works and how most players actually think.

Quote from Zizka >>

@Tallstranger: if you don’t intend to be snarky, avoid using words like ‘whine’ when people criticises something you disagree with, it comes across as being snarky and condescending (might also do without ‘smoking something’). It’s always puzzling to me when someone starts a message with: « I don’t mean to be x… » and the proceed to do exactly what they mention they don’t intend to do. I don’t normally reply to obnoxious replies but I find the topic interesting so I will. You’ve been warned.

Now that’s out of way: from what I understand from Scorpion’s reply, there are quote ‘plenty’ of viable decks. Whether or not they’re all slight variations of the same unique archetype I don’t know. From what I can tell on HS Replay, there are currently five different top paladin decks. 

Why has it never been the case and will ever be the case? You need to develop your arguments if you want to convey some sort of idea, otherwise it’s futile. 

You’ve aso misread: we’re not talking about decks *at* the legend level but rather decks being used to *reach* legend level. I think most people can likely reach legend if they stick to the top decks going around. This is speculation however. 


Regarding your last point, it’s up to the developer to find a way to encourage deck variety, otherwise everyone would just play pure paladin (or whatever 5 decks are the top right now) and the game would die off. That’s not an opinion, people don’t enjoy facing the same deck multiple times, fatigue steps in. It’s also probably why they decided to include mini sets to shake up the meta as 4 months facing the same decks gets gruelling and HS has been eroding over the years.  

 I'm going to full-on ignore your first para, including your "warning." You can either have a conversation about this or you can walk away. But don't make the mistake of thinking you're doing me a favor by responding.

I go back to the question I asked in my first post that you failed to answer: what do you expect/ want? Put another way, what are you complaining about? Is it that (as seems most likely) you are facing the same archetypes over and over (Blood DK, Non-Neutral Pally, etc.) OR is it that you're seeing the exact same DECKS over and over? (The latter is very unlikely, given that you are unlikely to see every card in your opponent's deck and thus have no way of knowing that every card is the same as the one from the previous game.)  Based on this analysis, I'm assuming your complaint is the lack of each class having at least 2 deck archetypes capable of reaching legend. NB: by math, that means we need AT LEAST 20 viable archetypes.

I've been playing HS for 8 years or so: NOT ONCE during that time did every class have a good archetype (much less multiple good ones) for laddering/ reaching legend. Typically, a new expansion will favor a couple of classes, leave most mediocre, and cripple a couple others. That's why it "has never been the case." As for why it will never BE the case, it's a reasonable assumption based on the past. But there's also at least a partial answer is: there simply aren't enough cards released in a given expansion to support 20 or more different deck archetypes. The most recent expansion was 145 cards. When you factor in the usual filler card garbage AND the need to provide some support to previous archetypes AND introduce new archetypes AND lay the groundwork for future archetypes, you start running out of cards real fast. Remember: each class only gets 10 class cards. That's likely the biggest reason that it "never will be the case."

I did, indeed, misread your discussion of getting to legend vice playing at legend. Thank you for correcting me. That said, I don't think Blizzard should be seeking to balance these decks even at the D5-1 level. I don't know what level the game designers focus on when looking at balance changes (to my knowledge, they've never stated this explicitly), but I doubt it's that high.

As for my last point, I was merely stating the obvious: people are going to gravitate towards archetypes that are optimized and have high winrates. Complaining about people using "netdecks" is silly and pointless. Most people don't WANT to build their own decks: they want to take advantage of the play experience of thousands of other players who are using the same archetype. The meta will, as it always does, settle down into a number of high-performing decks, each with a viable counter. Go back and read vicious syndicate's meta reports. They go into detail about counter decks, nerf impacts, etc. Every meta deck from the previous expansion had a solid counter. So will this one, even if it hasn't emerged yet.

Quote from Zizka >>

How would you determine which deck consistently hit legend and how varied they are on HS Replay? 
Back when Brann was still around, how often were you matched up which wasn’t Astalor OTK Druid combo? 10% of the time when you’d get the occasional aggro druid? How often were you matched with Warlock which wasn’t imp/curse warlock? 5% of the time? 

Again, I might be wrong, maybe there really is ‘plenty’ of deck variety but I just happen to be matched with the same decks over and over and over and over again. I mean that’s fine for those who enjoy it, I’m just eagerly waiting for a competitor to HS which will manage not to end up with a stale meta within 24 hours. The player base majorly stick to deck recipes so that’s all there is to it really. 

 And? Not trying to be snarky here, but what is it you actually expect? I raised this question in a discussion thread I started several months ago, but I think people have an odd definition of a balanced meta. If you expect every single class to have at least two viable deck archtypes, I'm sorry but you're smoking something. That has never been the case, nor will it ever be the case.

Second, focusing on deck viability at the Legend level is a mistake. The vast, vast majority of HS players cannot reach (or do not wish to reach) legend. The legend meta is different from that at lower levels. It would, quite frankly, be a huge mistake for Blizzard to target its balance efforts on the highest level.

Third, I do not get this whining about "netdecks." What you call netdecking is really nothing more than the process of refining a given deck archetype to maximize its winrate. Believe it or not, most people would rather WIN a game than play some wacky deck that goes off once in a while but has a 40% winrate. Especially when you're trying to ladder.

They do: just click on the link to the deck and it'll say in the card listing "sideboard." Those are the cards in etc.