Hearthpwn

Interestingly enough after playing against zoo for a long time and thinking wow that card is sort of unfair.  I decided to play the deck myself just to get a feel for what is happening there. 

And what I realized is that the card itself, along with doomguard, is the drawback of discarding a card should not be seen as a penalty for playing it.  But as a reward for skillful play, in such a way that you you have an empty hand and do not discard a card or two.  Many many times, the cards do take a card or two simply because the opponent plays well and forces them to have to use it early.  Also it is almost impossible to drop a doomguard on turn five without losing one card.  And if you draw into either at the same time, you always will lose one. 

So really the best way for an opponent to play against them, is to force the player to make a premature play and use one forcing the card loss.

I actually wish tournaments were on a larger scale *if possible*  And anyone that wanted to compete would be able to.  *I hate the invite model* Some players don't have the time to invest to play for as many hours as it takes to get to legend+, but might be extremely good.  But to show up for a few hours on a weekend is much more do able.  And if you aren't good, you burn out in the beginning very fast, no big deal. 

Might not be realistic now, but If they ever come out with a spectator mode, or something where people can watch.  Then everyone's home computers can be used, no travel needed, *if they even do that at the moment* all at the same time.  And such larger scale tournaments might become a reality.   

Hearthstone games are fast too, more so than any other tcg I've ever played.  So even best three deck elimination each match, large scale wouldn't take that long.  If they had a way to reduce player time per turn to say, 30-45 seconds that would make it very good.  *leaning heavily toward 30*  Pro players should be able to think and make good decisions very fast, and I actually believe that speed decision making is a piece of skill this game should always have.  The past tournaments I've seen where they let the players have as long as they want to play a turn are horridly bad in my opinion.  They waste time, and totally throw that piece of skill out. 

For the moment though, I can understand them inviting whoever will get the most people to come watch, till they can go a much larger scale.

The toughest part for me to get past is the resource management.  In magic part of the skill was making and crafting a refined deck that almost never had those land problems people keep mentioning.  And I personally really, really miss that, It was a key skill to the game. 

In hearthstone the resource is given to you every turn, thus making us simply look at the value of each card, and comparing it in strength to the other available ones.   That's fine I guess, but I feel it will hinder them making new cards.  If one is superior, you just stop running the other completely.

I also feel hindered by the fact the starting hand is so small *allowing few early game choices of plays*, and that there still is few to zero* cards that allow me to cycle through my deck to look for answers.  Tracking so far is the closest.  But I mean, really refreshing your whole hand in some way.  I feel that is where a lot of the "luck" feel comes from.  You either did draw the answer to your opponent's play, or you didn't.  And right now you have no way to search for it, even if you included it in your deck.  *for most classes*

I do enjoy both games.  Hearthstone is definitely faster as well.  But I just have such a hard time seeing hearthstone on a professional gaming level.  And worse I can't even quite figure out why.  It's confusing even to me.  But something is nagging me, that it's missing some piece of skill factor that is usually there.  Hopefully it will change over time.

I think it's hilarious.  it really should apply to all heroic battles and not just loatheb.  I still think the bosses extra health should be armor and not health too.  Alex makes them far too easy. 

Well I can only assume this comes mostly from very fresh new players, since we have known about naxx coming out for quite some time.  And also this game has always been about time vs money.  The money simply speeding up the process of obtaining parts of the game a little bit quicker.

If you look at it in a different view, which is what I did weeks before it came out, it's a bit different.  It's actually very easy to make 700 gold every two weeks, with almost minimal effort.   As already stated you can make 280 a week just from bad quests.  I myself for about a month, would just log in, check the quests, try to get it so they overlapped a bit better, then log off.   On the third day I would do whatever quests overlapped the best, sometimes all three at once.   Easily getting 140+ gold over the three days, since you got some just for winning games, in about 40-ish minutes worth of time.   So I was easily making 350 gold a week or more in about 2 hours total.   So it's totally possible to make 700 gold in about 4 hours-ish or less total split up over the whole two week time span. 

If people really want to grind and grind and grind gold, by winning games, I suppose that is their choice.  It's just not very efficient.  I really suppose it just depends on how prepared a person was for it, and how early they started saving.  *shrug*

I thought it was pretty fun, and honestly since they are the easiest mechanics on the first week, I was not surprised that the heroic was easy to a point you could easily match their gimmick and win.  I tend not to think of naxx being bosses with an intelligent AI, but instead just a pre-set game boss just like WoW with moves you can anticipate and use to win.  After all if Maexxna had attacked our minions smartly first, then webbed later, I doubt any of us would have beaten her yet.  But that wasn't her preset gimmick.   Take patchwerk for example, all he is going to do is go for your face with his weapon, and use his hero power to insta kill any taunt first or any important minion really if you don't have one.  Later he will have a windfury weapon, for 8 to the face a turn.  He won't smartly kill your minions with his weapon or anything like that.  I'm honestly not sure what people expect from these bosses. *laughs*  But so far, I think they have done a very good job.

The health thing however confuses me greatly.  I was almost sure they would be smart enough to make any extra health the bosses got be armor.  Since it is effectively exactly the same.  It's far too easy for alex to just reduce even a huge hp number down to 15.  If I fight a 99 hp boss, they better have 30 hp and 69 armor or it feels like a really bad dev oversight.

I also found the class challenges to be likely the most interesting.  Simply because I really had no idea what was in the deck, and it was kinda fun winning with what seemed to be almost an arena-like deck.  You couldn't really beat the gimmick, there wasn't one, you just had to be good.   Can you imagine heroic class challenges?  That would be pretty tough and fun, maybe they will make a patch and include some later just for fun.

Some of the next bosses do at least sound in theory tougher, but I guess we will see.

Well before it earned you the right to craft the cards as golden.  They moved that to where anyone can do it and added the card back as a reward.  But who knows, maybe they will add something else. And likely there will be some other incentives to keep playing it.   Guess we will find out pretty soon!

There is only one other card with this ability in the game, so I think they will keep a close eye on it.  I like it though, but blizzard can easily alter or change it with near no drawbacks since it's a card everyone earns and you can't disenchant.  *I noticed they seem to choose those the most often as they have in the past*  They can do this with all naxx cards, so I really hope people don't get too upset when they change some.  Something to keep in mind before going to make it a gold version! Then again you probably can disenchant golds and get full dust back so might not matter.

I'm actually not completely sure it's that great.  In arena absolutely amazing no doubt, super massive value.  But in constructed people might just go, oh ok you played a 4/6 on your turn 5, it has no spell power so it has no increase in aoe or spell damage threat, it's not a taunt, and it didn't draw you a card.  Choosing instead to let you make trades slowly against their minions *most likely deathrattle ones*  and just continue to go for the face until you taunt it.  In which case they deal with it exactly the same way they would have had to before.  Usually a mass aoe followed with a trade. All the while enjoying other new deathrattle speed and synergy.  After all, it's almost impossible for the player to actually buff it much either to where it's dangerous beyond taunting it that I can see so far.

It would/will be amazing against current meta decks though with a taunt.  But I foresee a lot of new, not current meta decks happening instead. 

I guess only time will tell. 

Well you obtained the drake by doing achievements.

Which makes me almost wonder if they might add something like that to this, since it is in almost all of their other games.  And added a lot of replay value trying to earn them. 

An achievement system for doing likely unusual things, most likely during adventure mode would certainly be interesting!  Though since each boss fight is sort of unique, and you have to build in certain ways anyway just to beat them, it might be silly.  Or people might just complain since some might be really tough to get. *shrug*

Certainly a pretty cool find though!

It's fine for a small game update, enough to craft a fair amount of new decks too.

Actually hearthstone is a game where I just cannot see them making big huge patches of cards.  The cards do not rotate off, and there is just only so much you can do with each mana cost before you devalue another out of play.  Such as you cannot make a 4/5 *with an anything* for four mana, as it would completely remove yeti. Of course they can add new mechanics, and new card types *such as murlock*  but that might bog things down.  Like would you want your arena draft to be the 2/1 murloc, the 2/1 pirate, or the 2/1 beast.... if you see what I mean.

It has no resources either, so that cuts down on a lot of extra cards too.  *compared to unique lands and such*

Not complaining, I just don't think we will see really huge updates, without it causing problems.  *mostly for arena*

I think it just depends on how much gold you have, and how efficiently you make it.  *Good at arena and such*  And to some players that have most of the cards and are sitting on 5k+ gold, might as well just buy it with gold. 

I think they did a great job, and it's very reasonable on both the gold and money value.   So whichever works best for the player.  

Huh, does this work anytime it seems your turn is frozen?  I actually lost tonight in arena went 10-3 *mrf* due to the game stalling out and doing that huge wait where I can only emote, then suddenly catching up with them going 3 times in a row with super fast cards flying out. *There was no combo played though so it wasn't the bug*  I always thought if you alt-f4 you would just lose the game.   Would have been nice to quickly do that to reset when I realized their turn was taking far too long.

I think they would keep mass silence to priest, since it is that classes gimmick.  Other classes will just have to deal with the fact that deathrattle minions will always get some value on them if they play a lot of them, regardless if they put in many silences. 

Personally, I would love to see some priest or pally cards that actually increase the maximum lifetotal available to said classes.   Like deathrattle or battlecry, increase your hero's max hp by 2-5.  Most likely however it would not actually heal that hp, it just makes it available.

Don't priests or pallys have things like bubble in the other game?  Those would make sense for those classes.  It would be neat to see some cards that just make you immune to damage during your opponents turn.  Or something with a negate damage, your hero takes up to 10 less damage next turn.  etc.

Notice the mage fight vs. image?  It says we have to use a special deck made by them.  I'm sort of wondering how many of the fights will be like that.  If not all of them.  I doubt we will have the ability to use things like ooze on patch or silence-bounce on the four horseman, or any of that.  Hopefully we do get to build a deck to use in some of them.

That said sounds like it will take lots of skill then and that's awesome!

I sort of remember the spider fight in naxx, and she would eat the little spiders to regain health.  I wonder if the fight with her might be similar with you playing spiders, her eating only spiders *regain large health* since that's the only thing you can draw, and then you being able to attack with normal minions.  Something like that. 

I so want to know what the four horseman hero power is!  For 5 it must be extremely good.  Maybe resurrect all the guys again? Give them a huge buff?  I dunno!