Hearthpwn

Boring to watch, that was my first impression from watching streamers' previews.

I feared it would become a grind fest. It's more than a grind fest than I had feared. It's so boring and will take thousands of runs to complete all achievements.

I never claimed it to be intentional. I said: or. It starts with "Clearly they did not test". Instead of referring to that,  you simply choose to say I claimed one other of the three options.

They clearly do not test. Or if they do, they do not care to release a product broken at its core. Or if they do, it is intentional timegating.

Clearly they do not test. That or they do not care for releasing a product that is broken at its very core.

EDIT: or it is intentional to hinder too fast of progress day 1 (ye typical timegating, artificially done)

First 2 games already lost vs freeze mage with counterspells and massive hero power. It's just too slow.
EDIT: same for third and fourth game, vs murloc shaman (dead turn 5...) and shudderwock shaman with ton of healing

There are mages, having access to Polymorph, Counterspell, and more of their anti-fun anti-play bogus. So yeah, it sucks. Besides, it's even slower gameplay than ladder, plus you get no gold for it, unless (once heroic is available) you pay for it.

The worst thing is that Blizzard chooses to spend their time on new features instead of finally fixing existing broken ones. 

Since the recent patch (18.4.2) I dropped from 11.2k rating all the way down to 9.2k rating.

IMHO this patch sucks big time. While I'm not a big fan of Kripp, I have to fully agree with what he said about way too much damage and high-rolling. As it currently stands, you either get lucky right away or you're just wasting your time. I think I'll take a break from playing for a month or so, as I don't want to see my rating fall even further.

off-topic rant:
I'm not sure what Blizzard is trying to do. Not only do they keep introducing more unbalance, they refuse to fix the immense lag issue so many are experiencing, they also refuse to fix game breaking bugs like Nomi sometimes not buffing. Instead of fixing it they introduce more 'bugs', like genie highrolling above-tier minions.

I'm out for now until this nonsense is fixed and balanced.

Quote from Saber_L >>

Tbh the game won't introduce anything new in the nearest future. I think the game's lifespan is coming to an end. Firebat probably knows this as he retires from competitive play. 

Hearthstone will still be going strong 10 years from  now.
Name me one Blizzard game, released post 1998, that isn't being played anymore.

EDIT: There will always be new players coming in, albeit youngsters or late-comers. Those that are already playing often feel too invested to give up on it. And then there's the grannies who REK you on ladder.

Quote from 1xbenx1 >>

This is quite literally a "git gud" situation.

You've hit your ceiling. Keep practicing and get better.

 Again, it makes no sense. If there would be some 'invisible rating' that would match up with players of equal skill level, the win rate would be around 50%. It has been at 0% for the past 40 gams or so now. Why "git gud"? If 'invisible rating' would dictate matchup, bad players still get matched to bad players, and good to good. So there would be no reason to improve. (not that I don't want to). As it is now, it's like ever since reaching rank floor 5500 I alllll of the sudden HAVE TO improve in order to win anything? Getting better should come naturally as you play, not something to be required in order to get "a" win. Clearly "rank" sets the difficulty, not 'invisible rating'.

Quote from 5EMMA >>

You are matched with your invisible rating. 

What's the point of rank if difficulty is based on some invisible rating instead of rank?
Seeing that I haven't won a single game anymore, higher rank sure makes for higher difficulty.

Also, and I quote "I had a bunch of lucky runs". That bunch, that amount, stands in no contrast to the large amount of losses ever since. I take it that if I'd be losing a lot my 'invisible rating' would be dropping. Clearly it does not.

While I suck at battlegrounds, during the past 2 days I had a bunch of lucky runs. Those lucky runs brought my rating past the 5500 floor. Ever since I haven't been able to score higher than 5th place. I now usually end up dead pre turn 10. I understand that at higher rating the players are better, but if I'm that bad I shouldn't be stuck forever with them. It's not possible to earn gold when always losing, it's not fun either - all in all just a waste of time. This is no different than in the past, but at least then you could go on a concede streak back down to 1500 rating orso, to at least have matches of your level again, which DOES make for being able to earn gold and have fun. Unlike now.

The imbalance between different heroes is just too big. Pretty often it's just an insta-concede fest. See Ragnaros vs one of the many bad heroes.

As for elementals, I like them, but it's annoying that they have to be in every lobby instead of being sometimes excluded like all the other tribes.

Quote from user-31021151 >>

New player? It's the same exact menu background we see every year for Halloween.
I guess OP hasn't seen it before.

You guessed wrong. OP is playing daily since 2013, and has near full collection.
OP just never payed so much attention to it. Or perhaps the attention for art/design has changed - who knows.

As the title says:
Kudos @ Blizzard for the beautiful autumn/Halloween main menu.
It's stunning with the cobwebs, acorns and moving fire-flies, fog and all.

I guess I just wanted to show appreciation.

Quote from Alexandru_91 >>

It is wild just use Embiggen + Patches + 1 mana pirate and enjoy 5/5s on turn 1 KEKW

 This. Often enough board full of 1 pirate and 6x 7/7 Patches. What's the opponent going to do about it lol. Fastest gold farming ever.

 EDIT: Lightning Bloom, Naturalize and Coldlight Oracle just nearly won. They only have turn 1 to win, or else bust.

Playing my warlock deck I don't have any issues with Druid; be it token, mountseller or guardian-beast.
They're pretty much breakfast, as are duel paladin, libram paladin, pirate warrior, big warrior and lol dh.

As far as nerfs concerned, the only card I feel to be OP is Secret Passage.
Glide should be removed altogether. It singlehandly disables control + OTK in wild; anti-fun retarded card.
Kael'thas Sunstrider should be reworded so that it can only trigger once per turn.

As for why they are waiting so long? To give people time to spend their money on the new expansion. This unbalanced stuff is on purpose; you don't really think a multi-billion dollar company with a dedicated design team has no clue on what they're releasing, right?