Hearthpwn

I'm straight up bummed about Duels ending.  I thought it was a fun break away from constructed or Arena that didn't impact your standings in the ladder.  

I've long been a fan of this site.  I took a little break from HS a while ago, and this site along with it, but I came back with a fury.  One thing that I noticed that is different, I'm not seeing many decks being made to help the community get through the new achievement cycles.  I used to love playing the decks (FTP and more) that people came up with to try and kill off the achievements.

Does anyone still do this, or are we all trying to be competitive 100%?  I know that some content creators like FunkiMonkey do all types of off meta decks that incorporate some of the achievements, but nothing really focused on them.  Am I up in the night about this, or are those decks hidden from view now?

PS, I totally would do this myself, but I am HORRIBLE about making decks.  The last deck I created did really well, and then key cards were nerfed within a few days... so I stick to seeing what other people can do.  I'm a player, not a creator :(

Lor'themar Theron just got a new friend

I gotta say, I've been playing since August the year that Hearthstone started... I even played the original TCG that was the foundation of Heathstone that Blizz put out years and years ago.  I have to say that I am actually appreciating the direction it is going.  I played MTG for decades and I lost interest because of the changes it was continually going through.  I was a competitive player and a DCI judge.  I didn't like the direction because it felt like it was straying away from the basic level of the game.

After leaving the game and growing the hell up, I realized you cannot stay rooted in the basics of what the game was started.  If you do that, the game WILL get boring and no one will want to play.  The new/FTP players will avoid it because the old players have all the "power cards" that they don't have yet.  Then more and more people will leave the game.  In order to keep it interesting, you HAVE to come up with new concepts.  

So with all that in mind, I'm liking the RNG of things.  I can actually appreciate the fun of the game and how it is continually stretching the bounds that it has while still trying to keep things true to the cannon of where the game started.  Yeah, there are going to be multiple versions of Legendary minions... there always have been in WoW, which is where this game got it's roots in case many new players didn't know that.  So the fact that R&D is trying to do new things, good for them.  The fact that they are making a number of things fun, GOOD FOR THEM. 

I have used Steamcleaner as an auto include at the lower tiers of laddering for Warlock and Death Knight.  When you get to the higher levels though, the need for this minion becomes less and less necessary as Aggro Paladin, Rainbow Mage, and Arcane Hunter are WAAAY more dominant.  But honestly, Warlock requires a lot of time.  The decks that utilize Sargeras, the Destroyer CAN combo off quickly if they get Symphony of Sins off early.  But if you work Aggro at the lower tiers, you will blast past them really easily

Faithful Companions is only busted because Hunter waits until the manathirst ability can be triggered to pull two buffed King Krush for lethal or two buffed Hollow Hound and beat up the board and gain life back.  Increasing the cost wouldn't make sense.  However, if they made it so that it will summon an unbuffed version of the card, that would help to balance it a bit.  

As for Halduron Brightwing , the issue with him is that for 3 mana he buffs your hand and deck and has a 3/4 body.  I wouldn't be surprised if they beat him up a little on the health side or increased the cost by (1).

The wild seeds couldn't have been more disruptive honestly.  A card that bring minions to the board that have additional effects can be rough to deal with.  Even with the 1-3 turn dormancy.  The taunt went down in health and it was needed.  I wouldn't be shocked if they made the rush seed a 2/1 instead of 3/1 and the stag give a smaller weapon.

Quote from DatMageDoe >>

Hot take: Hollow Hound will dodge the next nerf. The main reason for this is because it's also a Death Knight card, where the Hound is substantially more fair, and it doesn't make sense for the DK decks struggling to maintain relevance get nerfed for the sins of Hunter.

I've got a hotter take: hunter is fine.  Yes, it's strong relative to the current meta -- I get frustrated when I lose to it, too -- but nothing it does seems unfair.  Hound gets most of the complaints, and my guess is that it's the card that'll get nerfed, but hunter also has Gargon, which is 2 mana cheaper... so learn to play around cleave (yes, it can be done).  As for the Krush finisher: that's turn 10, and gets stopped by a 2 mana taunt; compared to mage and shaman killing you over the top, from hand, on turn 7... that's very reasonable.

Hunter is fine.  Hunter gameplay is what hearthstone should be.  Buff the under-performing classes.

 You’re missing the point of what makes Hollow Hound an issue in hunter. It can’t be compared to Gargon first of all - Gargon doesn’t have lifesteal for one, and it needs to be infused to gain cleave. But on top of that the main problem isn’t even that Hollow Hound has cleave, it’s that it regenerates massive amounts of health and can be copied, discovered, pulled out of nowhere, etc. That is where the issue lies because as far as I can remember, Hunter has never had access to that sheer amount of instant lifesteal before. The current hunter deck - which is topping every tier list by the way - places a ton of early pressure while also having a one card answer to recover almost all damage that the opponent inflicts. And that’s before King Krush even hits the board. If it wasn’t overtuned it wouldn’t be the most successful deck in the game.

 This is perfectly stated.  I've been playing Hunter, quite a lot actually, recently and I've let my life drop down to a staggeringly scary amount... only to pull the Hound, buff it with bananas or Always a Bigger Jormungar, and watch it clear board, go face, and restore my health insanely quick and allow me to re-establish control. 

I'm going to give your warrior a try.  That looks fun to say the least

I feel for you.  I thought that the Titans roll out happened at the same time as the monthly start and I cashed in a couple of my achievements I've done with Titans in Duels... man was I bent

Thank the gods that this costs so much.  This is something that any control warrior deck would probably use.  

I'll miss it greatly.  So, kindly speak for yourself.  Casual Duels was a blast.  IMHO the most fun mode HS ever had.  It's a shame folks are more about griding levels than having fun.   

Time to change from beta status if there is only week left in the product life cycle...

As someone who's been playing since Goblins and Gnomes, I am consistently surprised (in a good way) by how Hearthstone comes up with new ways to bend the rules. While Duels is leaving us, this expansion could be the wildest yet.

Miniaturize immediately made me think of that weird Rogue value card released ages ago: Gurubashi Hypemon. I guess Rogue has sort of been able to this in the past too with Shadowcaster and Sonya Shadowdancer.

Probably the most boring card here but Nesting Golem looks incredibly strong. 4/3 -> 3/2 -> 2/1, it's so sticky that it might see real play. Piloted shredder but consistently great.

It transforms ALL your minions - battlefield, hand, and deck.

Duels was really fun, this sucks. Yeah there are some massive balance issues (early run aggression is just too vicious, you die on turn 3-4 against some decks so that a lot of interesting deck building is pointless, some passives like mummy magic/black ice are too good), but it was refreshing to play something different. The fact that your runs were never quite the same made the game not an endlessly repeating grindfest.

The biggest mistake they ever made with duels was the bucket system changes "because they were too lazy". It made it too easy to manipulate your passives and bucket offerings by creating your initial deck from a small expansion size. The ability to heavily weight the buckets you get offered is bullshit. Not only that, tons of deck strategies just got eliminated because they used cards from too many expansions. Examples: you can't play murloc decks because there is no murloc bucket, can't play pirate decks because there is no pirate bucket, and so on.

I legitimately think that if they put some effort into the previous bucket system duels would be far more popular than it is. I also don't get how bucket maintenance was time-consuming or took a lot of developer time, you literally just take existing buckets and add the new cards of expansions to them, sounds like a one-day job. But I'm not an indie developer I suppose.

too bad, it was a good end-of-season option for constructed when you were bored with the ladder.

Whats going to get cut next I wonder, Brawl?

I am an achievement hunter as well since March of the Lich King, at least for the cards I actually pulled from packs. If you need help with one, feel free to drop a message or open a thread on it, though most of the Badlands achievements are boiling down to "play card X two hundred times".

One tip I would want to give immediately: Blindeye Sharpshooter and the Warlock Excavation cards, including Tram Conductor Gerry currently have a full refund bonus. So, you could do their achievements (trigger Sharpshooter 90 times, attack 120 times with tram cars), and disenchant them again. Sharpshooter should take about 2-3 hours, tram cars took me more like 4, but I also didn't have any Trolley Problems.

Zeddy does a guide for this every expansion, including tips, tricks and decklists. He just released his version for Showdown in the Badlands:

It's a good resource. Unfortunately, it's Zeddy. ._.

Here is also a written version of his guide, which I personally find a whole lot more tolerable.