Hearthpwn

Quote from kitox_me >>

New hs currency

Byebye arcane dust, you wont be missed

 No. This is the currency used on the Chinese platform, due to China's anti-gambling legislation. It has absolutely zero connection to the battle pass discussions that have been floated and debated here (and everywhere else).

Sadly, I think you're right that Mountseller will be the new primary druid deck. So Blizzard nerfs GA so that we can now face an even more absurd, boring, non-interactive, high roll deck. I hope the whiners out there are happy. I give it a week before you start complaining, "Druid got 3 Zixor, Apex Predator off of Exotic Mountseller! Nerf it now!" (And, for the record, I don't play the standard GA druid. I do use it in a Highlander Druid deck I play, but it's hardly my most valuable card.)

I always enjoy playing the poor guy who's got the "equip 10 weapons" quest. You can tell immediately that's what he's doing, and he usually doesn't even try to win. He equips, goes face, ends turn, and repeats. One of the easiest wins you'll ever get.

But, back to OP, I agree it would be nice to get some new ones, but that's pretty far down the list of changes I'd like to see.

I would be surprised if they DIDN'T monitor what people were saying online about their game. They've invested huge amounts of money into it, and would be well-advised to see what the public reaction to their product is. I would also add that Blizzard's competitors would equally have a vested interest in monitoring what was being said about HS, to help them design competing products or anticipate future changes to HS.

At the same time, no company is going to take what's said at Hearthpwn or any other gaming site TOO seriously. The information Blizzard gets from these sites is just one small piece of the information it gathers to plan out where it takes HS next.

The more sinister implication of your question is, "Are Blizzard employees posting stuff to defend HS or prevent people from being too critical of it?" The only answer that can logically be given is "maybe." Similarly, one can ask "Are the people posting complaint threads secretly employees of Blizzard's competitors trying to undermine the game?" Again, the only logical answer one can give is "maybe." But making either accusation against a poster here makes zero sense. Rather than trying to guess someone's identity, you're better off focusing on the logic of their argument.

Quote from rogerdodger >>

.. basically this game is not about winning as much as about mitigating mistakes .

 

 OP, in Hearthstone, mitigating mistakes (or, better yet, not making them) is a huge component of skill. Another important part is capitalizing on a mistake your opponent makes. Give a pro player the same deck as me and have us play 100 games. I guarantee you his win rate is higher than the 57% listed in your notional deck.

As reassuring as it may be to believe that you just lost because you got unlucky, the fact is that much of the time, you lose because you made a mistake, and your opponent made you pay for it. Recognizing that is the first step to boosting that rate.

Quote from SinAscendant >>

Quote from TallStranger >>

Quote from Acolyte_36 >>

Probably confirmation bias, but ye, I feel like it's been happening more than it would with Arcane Missiles as well - Probably it is much more memorable because the effect is "bigger" and more visual than just doing a single point of damage. 

However, to the arguments against this being "Why would blizzard do this", I would counter that argument with "by accident" - bugs happen after all, and it's not like we haven't seen oddball stuff before. It is perfectly reasonable to think that there could be a bug in the system, e.g. that after the first transformation, the minion being hit first would be considered by the calculation as 2 different minions, and thus the chance to hit it again would be 66% (2/3) instead of 50% (1/2).

 

 Okay, I guess in theory that could happen. My counter would be that (and, again I'm not a coder) this has to be a remarkably easy code to write. I'd be stunned if Blizzard managed to screw that up.

The good news is that such an effect should be incredibly easy to test: the difference between a 50% chance and a 66% chance is significant enough that a reasonably-sized test would detect it very quickly. So to those who are convinced this is happening, get a friend to agree to help you. Create a junk deck and do some testing. Always make sure that you have only two minions on the board when your friend plays DM, and track the results. You could probably get a sizable number of tests done in an hour. Post the results. Anything's better than the haphazard, anecdotal stuff we're getting right now.

 Hey, I got bored and decided to do this on lunch.

I only got up to 56 casts, which is not really a big enough sample size to be fully accurate, but I got pretty close to what you'd expect. 

So basically, our theory is that it should be 25%, based on normal probability.  Acolyte's theory is that it could be counting it as a new minion, giving it a 66% chance to be hit. That would make the total chance 43.5% if he's correct.

So I chose only 2-drop or higher minions so that they could devolve twice, giving them the maximum chance to be hit using his theory both times.

Out of the 56 casts:

4 had to be discarded because they devolved into a Dormant minion on the first roll, meaning it was impossible to hit it twice.

37 casts hit both minions.

15 casts hit only 1 minion.

So, that comes out to 15/52, or 28.8%. That makes it slightly higher than the expected average, but since I only did 50 casts, I'd say a range of 3-4% points either way falls within acceptable variance.

What doesn't fall within that variance is the other theory which would be 15.5% higher than the tested result.

Conclusion: Devolving Missiles is not bugged, if there are two minions it has a 25% chance to hit one of them 3x and the rest of the thread doesn't understand how RNG works.

If someone wants to see my replays I have them uploaded. I'm just not going to spam up my post with a bunch of links.

 Great job. Nice to see people do actual theory testing, rather than mindless conspiracy-theorizing!

Not seeing the point of Ras Frostwhisper. You don't really have very many spell damage minions, nor much in the way of spells that would benefit from spell damage. But then, I don't have the card and haven't seen it much on ladder, so I don't have much insight into it. Can you explain your thinking?

Quote from DickDraggin >>

Personally I don't see any promises of absolute randomness from Blizzard.  I mean they have to report odds with regards to pack purchases by law and do so.  But I don't see any reason for them to be bound to absolute randomness.  When cards don't quite work for a meta or game I could see them doing small tweaks to how the card plays without disclosing rather then remove the card or nurf it.

I am not saying that this is occurring here. But blind trust is a corporation is arguably drinking more koolaid then questioning and checking occasionally. 

Obsessive questioning is a waste of time but obsessive trust and mocking of questioning is meh.

 

First off, I'm not mocking anyone.

Second, It's got nothing to do with "trusting a corporation" (though any expert in corporate behavior will tell you that the vast majority of them are extraordinarily cautious). It's got to do with basic incentive: there simply isn't one. Making the missiles non-random necessarily favors one player (the target) over another (the caster). Why? Again, Blizzard has exactly zero interest in who wins your game.

Third, the card DOES say "random enemy minions." Blizzard is, in fact, stating the effect is random. Any "tweak" you describe would make it, BY DEFINITION, non-random. So why would Blizzard risk discovery that they were lying about this, especially when they have other, more above-board ways of addressing any problem? If it were too powerful, they could change mana cost and/or number of missiles to balance it. Doing so is 1000x better than lying to the fanbase.

Fourth, there's no way to call this alleged behavior a "small tweak." If the examples given here are any indication (and again, they don't even come close to a statistically-meaningful sample), it is a massive (and easily detectable) one.

Quote from Acolyte_36 >>

Probably confirmation bias, but ye, I feel like it's been happening more than it would with Arcane Missiles as well - Probably it is much more memorable because the effect is "bigger" and more visual than just doing a single point of damage. 

However, to the arguments against this being "Why would blizzard do this", I would counter that argument with "by accident" - bugs happen after all, and it's not like we haven't seen oddball stuff before. It is perfectly reasonable to think that there could be a bug in the system, e.g. that after the first transformation, the minion being hit first would be considered by the calculation as 2 different minions, and thus the chance to hit it again would be 66% (2/3) instead of 50% (1/2).

 

 Okay, I guess in theory that could happen. My counter would be that (and, again I'm not a coder) this has to be a remarkably easy code to write. I'd be stunned if Blizzard managed to screw that up.

The good news is that such an effect should be incredibly easy to test: the difference between a 50% chance and a 66% chance is significant enough that a reasonably-sized test would detect it very quickly. So to those who are convinced this is happening, get a friend to agree to help you. Create a junk deck and do some testing. Always make sure that you have only two minions on the board when your friend plays DM, and track the results. You could probably get a sizable number of tests done in an hour. Post the results. Anything's better than the haphazard, anecdotal stuff we're getting right now.

Again, people fail to get that Blizzard has no reason to rig this. If they're "sticking it to you," they're also benefiting your opponent. For no logical reason. Please understand a very simple fact: Blizzard could not care less who wins the game you're playing. You are not special (at least not to them). All they care about is that you ARE playing (and hopefully spending money).

Also understand that the posters on this site are not a random sample of all players: they are players who are more likely to discuss (and complain about) the game. So seeing a sizable number of "yeah, that happened to me, too" offers no real data about the randomness of the card.

If you really want to test this, start collecting REAL data, as in several hundred observations, tracking how many enemy minions were on the board and which ones got hit. Do that and I guarantee you the data will show that the targeting is random.

Quote from Dunscot >>

Quote from Scorpyon >>

 Even Priests and Mage have access to weapons (or at least, weapon singular) right now; though obviously it is usually only Mage that runs it in a deck, but Priest can too. In fact, I reckon there's a good combo priest deck waiting to happen right now. :-)

 I tried multiple times to make Dragon Soul work. But the combo to fill you board with 5/5s every turn is just too demanding, and even if combined with Awaken the Makers, it's far from gamewinning. I did win a few games with it, but it's more like 1 out of 10 games where everything works out perfectly. Maybe someday, there's a neutral weapon tutor or a more efficient way for Priest to draw cards. Both seem unlikely for the time being.

 He is, I believe, referring to Sphere of Sapience, not Dragon Soul. And I could absolutely see someone coming up with a priest combo deck using it.

Quote from Ummie >>

Quote from sQuba >>

i crafted two kobold stickyfingers.. for a rogue/warrior meta, it feels safe and good to play them in all my decks nowadays

 The moment you put 2x kobold in your deck %60 of your opponent will be priest and %20 mage in matchmaking, the moment you remove them you will get a bomb warrior as your first match :-)

 That's funny, because after I added it to my deck, I stole a Spectral Cutlass, a Wrenchcalibur and (man, did this feel good) a heavily-buffed Kingsbane in a single evening of playing. Blizzard must like me more than you.

Or, just a crazy idea here, maybe it really IS random and you're just a victim of the relentless conspiracy-mongering that this place is overrun with.

I'm calling it now: within the next two weeks, someone else is going to start a thread saying, "OMG. I had a killer board, my opponent cast DM and hit ALL THREE of my huge minions, turning them into trash!!! RIGGED!" Then someone else is going to respond saying, "Yup, happened to me, too. Bli$$ard needs to make money," while a third talks about ZTG and Blizzard's microtransaction patent and how that proves the whole game is a scam. It'll end with another person declaring "Blizzard's trying to keep everyone at a 50% winrate," while bragging about how they have created a deck with a 65% winrate.

This forum is catnip for lunatics.

Quote from DickDraggin >>

 I guess I should have winked or something.  I was just being a smart ass turning the default argument on itself.

 Oh, sorry dude. Soooo many people ACTUALLY make that argument that I wrongly assumed you were doing so as well.

Quote from DickDraggin >>

Quote from EnderBSG >>

Nothing to see here, just full blown confirmation bias party.

 Unless you have collected sufficient statistical data to disprove this your opinion is just as unfounded.

 But reason IS on his side. There is no logical reason for Blizzard to deliberately make DM non-random. It makes them no money, nor does it make any difference to them who wins or loses a given game. So the only way this could happen is if there's a bug in the code causing this problem. Unfortunately for this theory:

1. I don't write code, but this has to be trivially easy to write; and

2. Blizzard is almost certainly using exactly the same code it uses for Arcane Missiles, just making it hit only minions and changing the effect of a hit.

But your response is too common:

Poster #1: "The game is rigged."

Poster #2: "Where's your data proving it's rigged?"

Poster #1: "I don't have to prove it. YOU have to prove it's not."

Poster #2: "......" [Smacks his head on the desk, begins weeping at the utter failure of the educational system.]