Hearthpwn

Just play Shaman and have infinite board wipes. Problem solved!

When rotation happens in the Spring each year the card pool will be at its smallest. It makes sense that there will be less variation in what your opponents will be playing at this time as most classes only have one, maybe two viable decks. Personally I just play whatever and have fun with it. I used to try-hard and get worked up over every loss, but once I just decided to play for fun and worry less about what my opponents play or do I started enjoying the game a lot more. Sure, I don't win as much but it's a wonderful feeling to be free of the stress and anxiety of the ladder grind. I suggest you take a few months off or just focus on playing for fun and not competitively to let your batteries recharge.

Quote from Greator >>

can we all agree

This is the internet. And by the supreme rules of the internet, no, we cannot all agree.

Blizzard markets the pre-orders the way it does because they have market research and promotional teams which know the best way to present this stuff to maximize profit. Yes, it is calculated, but I would expect no less from a company like them to have their shit together when it comes to this. They know exactly what way to offer things to maximize their profit. But so does every other business worth its salt. So why do they need to be painted as some kind of villains here?

I don't think these bundle options are a bad deal by any stretch, especially compared to previous pre-order bundles. To me, the Boomsday Project bundle is the most rewarding one yet in terms of what you get for your money. Yes, the Witchwood one had 20 more packs for the same $50, but the Boomsday bundle instead includes a guaranteed golden legendary that is 1,600 dust in your pouch at worst. With 50 packs you definitely won't have all the cards yet, so the dust value from cards of which you open more than 2 copies in those 20 additional packs would surely be less than 1,600 dust, unless you literally dusted every card in those 20 packs. At least this way you know you can be guaranteed 1,600 dust along with any dust you get from extras in your 50 packs to craft the cards YOU want, rather than get a random assortment of cards you may or may not use. That seems more valuable to players, especially those on limited budgets. On the plus side, maybe the golden legendary you get is one of the legendaries you were most excited to open. In that case it's even better! Of course that's just my opinion, but that's how I look at the situation as a player in my circumstance. This set is the most happy I've been to spend money on a pre-order as I feel it is worth the investment. Full disclosure: I pre-order basically every time, regardless of how many cards are previewed or how good they look. Be cynical and call me a shill or a moron or whatever you want, but I know that every set has good cards and stuff I want to play with, even if I don't exactly know what those cards are a month, weeks before, or even a week after the set releases.

The issue here is that a lot of all of this is subjective and opinion based. To say that pre-ordering is terrible, $80 is a ton of money, or that the bundle is a bad deal, etc., etc. is just an opinion. There is no authority that says who is right or wrong. One person feels that these bundles are completely reasonable and another thinks it is highway robbery. The truth is that these are only opinions and each person's feelings on them will be different depending on their circumstances. I personally don't mind that they offer extra content for those willing to pre-order a special bundle. How is this any different from "Collector Edition" versions of other games available for pre-order? That is a practice that has been around for two decades now.

At no point did Blizzard ever promise anyone the ability to get everything in Hearthstone via a free method. Blizzard never said definitively one way or another how alternate heroes would be introduced into the game. Some are paid, some are free via achievements, and some are acquired via a charity. Blizzard is not betraying anyone or acting in bad faith here because there was never any kind of officially established method they were going to introduce them. They are free to decide how to introduce new content into the game. If you don't like it, that's fair and you can choose to react accordingly with your wallet/time, etc., but to come at it from the opinion that Blizzard owes you something (in this case the ability to get an alternate hero skin) is pure entitlement. The game may be free to play, but that doesn't mean all content is free.

The expansion was good, but not amazing. A solid 7 out of 10 as OP said seems about right. Unfortunately we live in a world with Frozen Throne and Kobols & Catabombs as well. Those expansions were much more powerful across the board than Witchwood was and as such they totally dominated the meta once rotation hit. We all had to suffer for awhile for the sins of those two expansions, dealing with metas that were top-heavy with only a few real top decks or just flat out un-fun. After the recent round of bannings things are much better and I am sort of reminded of this time last year when the Un'Goro meta really shined after the first nerf to Caverns Below

My only real worry with Witchwood is that I think Shudderwock is an absolute mistake and Blizzard will be kicking themselves down the line. I expect it to be nerfed at some point in the next year.

As far as the single player content goes, I thought it was more flavorful than Dungeon Run, but also had less replay value due to being limited to just four heroes. Hagatha was a let down, but the final bosses for each of the heroes were very cool. It will be interesting to see how long they plan to keep the single player content in Dungeon Run format, or if they will go back to the original adventure style or come up with something totally new.

I feel like Witchwood and Un'Goro are examples of the appropriate general power level for Hearthstone. Frozen Throne and Kobolds are clearly over the top. I know there is definitely pressure on the designers to make the sets later in the year more powerful so that they see play and shake up the meta, so mistakes will happen. I'm on the side of at least making powerful cards and if they need to be nerfed then so be it. A few mistakes a year is better than them just always making safe and underwhelming cards and us getting bored.

The number of people not spending even like 30 seconds to think about how this interacts with Odd Paladin before posting "OMG Odd Paladin now OP eff you Blizz" is baffling.

All of the nerfs seem good. I sort of wish they left Crystal Core buffing to 5/5, but made it so when you played Crystal Core it worked like Mistcaller or Keleseth where it grants the buff to hand and/or deck at the time you play it. Meaning bouncing guys back to your hard reverts them to original stat line. Would prevent all the burst potential with the charge minions.

Odd Paladin won't run Call to Arms. Getting three 1 cost minions for 5 mana is not a great deal. Also, 1 cost minions are much worse than 2 cost in terms of what cards are available in Standard right now.

Since they can't play 2 cost minions I doubt they run Call to Arms. Getting three 1 cost minions for 5 is not great.

While I don't dispute that there should be ways to punish classes that gain loads of armor, I think making super focused hate cards is not the best way to go about it. Armor gain is prevalent enough that a card similar to Spellbreaker or Acidic Swamp Ooze would be a great template for an armor gain punisher card (speaking in terms of stats, not saying it should have a battlecry of "remove all the armor"). For example, Spellbreaker is really good when it has expensive targets to silence, but otherwise it is a 4 mana 4/3 that does nothing else. So while it is not a great play if you have no good silence targets, it's still a passable card on rate. Not amazing, but not totally embarrassing to play. So if they can make cards which aren't totally useless when you have no target, then I think a lot of decks could go to that to shore up a weakness, while conceding that they have to run an OK, but unimpressive minion when matched up against other decks when they could probably use that slot on a better minion otherwise.

I think there are plenty of ways to make cards that don't just say "remove all your opponent's armor". A card that just flat out did that would be too powerful. However, cards that got buffs if your opponent has any armor is probably the best way to do it. Something like a 5 cost 4/6 minion that gets +4 attack if your opponent has armor. They could make minions or spells that are lightning/electricity themed that do extra damage if the defender or target has armor. There could be armor ignoring minions, like vampires or something, that when they deal damage they only deal it to health and not armor.

So there's a lot of creative ways they could make armor punishing cards that are fair and would be effective, rather than just having cards that say "remove all the armor". Because there's no fun or interactivity in that. ;)

I net deck sometimes, but usually when I do it is a function of saving myself time. I don’t have a ton of time to play Hearthstone, so when I do play, I’ll look at decks on the internet and find one that looks like I will enjoy it. I very rarely will choose the most top tier decks, but I just don’t have time to build decks from scratch then play them enough to tune it successfully. A lot of the time I decide I want to play a certain class or a certain theme. I’ll then search for decks online that meet those criteria and choose one to play. So while yes, I do net deck, I don’t do it out of a sense of needing to play the absolute best deck to crush everyone and win all the time. I think it is important to understand players net deck for different reasons, not all of which are negative.

Most fun I had was post-Caverns Below nerf during Un'Goro meta. There was a crazy number of different truly viable decks you could play. Yeah, Jade Druid was around, but it wasn't oppressive at all like it was after Frozen Throne came out.

Our current meta is meh overall historically. It's not the worst I've seen (I've been playing since Goblins vs Gnomes and I felt the year of unending Shaman was the worst), but it's not in the upper level either.