Hearthpwn

15-10 is often chancy in the first week or two of a season. Sometimes you hit a pocket where your deck is a good counter-pick to the local meta, and you shoot up. Usually there's some point in there, though, when you flail around even when switching decks, and it feels like all you face are hard counters and god draws.

Not sure if it's so strong that it needs nerf, but it is definitely a sick, sick card. I can't imagine why you would put together a Standard Mage deck without 2 copies of it.

Team 5 has said they want to shift the balance of evergreen versus expansion cards in constructed decks, though, and with Mage that means either (1) printing amazing cards in expansions or (2) nerfing a good amount of the core set, which they've shown little inclination to do.

What they have done, and will probably continue to do, is layer in some real dud Mage spells to meter the power level of cards like this, Tome, and Book. I'd expect a couple more like Shatter or Freezing Potion that are situational and hard to use over the next few expansions.

Honestly at this point, I'm happy to queue into a Quest Rogue on ladder. It only ever does one thing, you know how to beat it, and even if you're playing a deck that's unfavored against it, you play the best line you can and just move on if it doesn't work out. 24-12 this season against all Rogues, across 4 different classes played with quest representing the majority of those games, so it's not feeling oppressive to me.

Figured I'd share some output from my simulator since the topic has garnered some interest. This simulation uses a win likelihood that's dependent upon rank; here are the settings I used for the results this time:

Basically it's 60% at rank 25, 50% at rank 1, decaying exponentially--although as you can see the function is nearly linear-looking.

Simulation starts the player at Rank 20 and assumes the player stops either after 450 games or when hitting legend (rank 0). With waypoints set at ranks 15, 10, 5, and 0, the distribution of wait times looks like this (100k samples):

Some descriptive statistics:

Observed overall winrate was 52.8%. As you can see, under those win likelihood assumptions just over 20% of trials resulted in getting to legend by 450 games.

I've done sims with and without the floors, and while the floors definitely do matter, the differences aren't really that dramatic--a percent or two maybe in terms of the likelihood of making legend. Obviously, though, for an individual that doesn't have much impact, but given the size of the player pool, it's not an incosequential-seeming number, either.

My personal best so far is R1+3 stars (so close!) 2 seasons ago. Spent too much time screwing around last month, but with the meta more settled now, will try to climb with a rejiggered control pally and see how far I can get.

Have played more Quest Warrior than anything else in this meta.... It is far from overpowered. Aside from being vulnerable to getting run over (decks fast enough to beat Quest Rogue consistently are definitely a threat to kill you before you get on your feet), there is now also another control deck in the meta geared specifically to beat it (discover/burn), and two other classes with control decks (pally, priest) that are capable of outvaluing it.

The deck is fun, and it's good, but it certainly has vulnerabilities. Also, I like that this rendition of CW doesn't run away with games the way they once did with Tank Up. This version has a lot more board interaction and seldom leaves you feeling that you have no chance 47 turns before it actually kills you.

 This meta is so diverse...you have to decide what you're targeting and what you enjoy playing. With strong decks at basically every point on the control/aggro spectrum, you're never going to be able to beat all of it consistently.

One thing I've never seen in the game before now is the sheer difficulty of mulliganing against several classes. Warrior, Paladin, and Rogue at the very least are all classes where you have to know several matchups well in order to make even that basic decision. It's fun!

On a related note, I wish Team 5 would release final rank distributions given a minimum # of games played, across a range of such values. That's really a better benchmark for your own performance against the field than the current (outdated?) numbers.

Less than I would have spent in strip clubs if I weren't grinding ladder instead.

Quote from OverholtNA >>

Quote from 304889 >>

They hit the rag heropower or they dont, if they do you lose.

 What does that even mean? If "they hit" what?

The majority of taunt warrior games I've played don't even come down to it, anyways. I could just easily hold onto Sulfuras, build a taunt wall, armor up and just play the fatigue game.

My pick one is:

 > Play Hearthstone (or other blizzard games), have wife mad at you

> Not play Hearthstone, wife still made at you

At least our baby is cute. =P

Quote from hillandder >>

Quote from JPaynerVideo >>

Neutral card: inspire: destroy a random enemy totem might be more reasonable

 But with vanilla status right? Like 4/5 for 4 manas?

Quote from Meteorite12 >>

Quote from Remster101 >>

Yah I hate how even this game is I wish it was more odd.

 Nah, I'd rather it be zero, that way it's neither.

i'm pretty sure they go into wild expecting easy wins. Most of the fuckers don't know what hit them when sludge belcher comes out.

This is why I dont friend people after a game

I will sometimes leave the friend request and then add them later, that way if they were going to be a dick, they have probably forgotten which game we played

Holy fuck, what the hell is a face shaman with Windspeaker? And why did I had to find it out by being smashed by a 4 mana 7/7?

Barnes into Majordomo.  That was fun! Thank you Malchezaar!

I'm so sorry to the priest i faced yesterday.

On turn four i playedBarnes, who created a 1/1Sylvanas Windrunner.

I then played Unearthed Raptor on the Sylvanas. He killed Barnes and i stole his Deathlord with my baby Sylvannas.

Turn 6 i played my Shadowcaster on the Raptor and copied the Sylvanas deathrattle from the one on the board. Killed the one on the board and stole a 5/4 Micro Machine.

Turn 7 hits, He plays his Sylvanas. My turn comes around, i topdeck my Sylvanas, and steal his with the 1/1 raptor.

so thats 6 of her effects in one game, by turn 7. He conceded

I'm going to play a lot of Beast Druid after this expansion comes out.

For Priest, if going second, this card + coin + Power Word: Shield is a Turn One 2/5.

Turn 2, no coin, it's a 2/4.  This is the Priest 2 mana 2/4.