Hello folks,
Yesterday on the 25th of may I've grinded my way from rank 50 to legend in 15:12 hours on a brand new account without spending a single penny. Here's my story:
Gif of the legend hitmark: https://gph.is/g/aXpjpxO
Tutorial - Rank 50
Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I thought I'll just setup the stream, do the tutorial and go straight to ranked.
So I set the timer on at 16 hours and started. The stream recorded at 128p. My computer dropped frame-rates dramaticaly and I've had disconnects during the tutorial phase which made me do it again. Basically the first hour of the timer was me switch to another computer with better specs and getting the stream right. Once that was over with, I thought that the ranking could begin. Apperantly the starter quests don't begin unless you've cleared 5 games in solo adventure. I found this out after I played 2 games on rank 50 and lost both matches. Another 30 minutes gone. This was the only real set-back I had. From this way on things went pretty smoothly.
Rank 49 - 5
I couldn't have wished for a better result. During these ranks I've only had 4 loses. The timer went from 1:30 to 8:30 during these ranks. Still 7:30 hours left for the last phase.
Rank 5 - Legend
This is were the real grind started. My win-streak was over and the loses started to happen left and right. For the first 3 hours I was busy between rank 5 and rank 4 - 3 stars. I thought to myself "with this speed I'll never make it". Luckely after playing pretty 50-50 it went at a slow and steady phase, and it took another 3 hours and 45 minutes to get from rank 4 - 3 stars to legend.
Final word
I'm overwelmed with joy after reaching this. But also confused. Eventho the poor preperation I've had it still took 3:14 hours less than the previous "record". So can this record be broken? Absolutely! With the right preperation and slightly quicker turns is very posible.
I did this challenge for several reasons. Besides my love for competitive gameplay it was also something I did for the community. The amount of negetivity I see on the forums is sad. Seeing all the complaints about how the game is "Pay2Win" - "Only about luck" - "Highrolling" - ect. I get it, people want quick validation and quick rewards. Whenever there's something new, like a expansion, there are so many topics of how people hate the changes and what not. I know that one person can't make a change to that, but I hope that doing this challenge will shed some light on the people that see this game as a joke. A the end of this all I still had 21 packs unopened. Which could be enough to make another high-rank, perhaps legend worthy deck. All I can say is: Practice makes perfect. Learn from your mistakes and enjoy the game.
Special thanks to the friends that came over to keep me company (some traveled as long as 2:30 hours for this). And to Maurice040684 and Kingofjaga on twitch that kept me company pretty much the entire grind.
5
Imagine if you rented out a home that you host parties in. People love coming to your parties so all is well.
But then you find out the old landlord sold the house to a new landlord who is now making changes that make it more annoying for you, like not fix things that are broken or require you to park your car down the street for no reason.
Then they decide to move you out of the home in a few months. So you decide to go build your own home and just host the parties there.
THAT is what hearthpwn is going through. It's less about money and more that the folks of Curse, who own the underlying site, don't really care much.
The folks ofoutof.cards are the folks who have been maintainiing hearthpwn and keeping it going who are about to get kicked out. They have been working on a new site for a while now in preparation and decided to officially mark that this is where the new party is. It'll be owned by themselves and not by folks who don't give a care and, thus, will be easier for them to manage properly.
So it's not so much two hearthpwns as it is one heathpwn that's shutting down and a new better place coming up in its stead.
As far as wher to go.. just go there and call it a day basically.
3
Basically this.
We can mock and joke about it all we want but I'm pretty sure a lot of us have been looking at how the video game industry has been using microtransactions lately. The Star Wars BF2 issue was meant to be a wake up call: find a way to manage your excess or have the whole thing shut down.
And all they've done is get even worse with it. Now you get games that go without any shops on release then introduce them later, games that flat out gut the experience post-release to make it more appealing to buy from the shop than play the game as is, and so on. And honestly, you are lucky to have dodged even nastier stuff like gacha sets (which only stopped because they were outlawed in certain key countries).
Harping about personal responsibility makes sense but just because you were fool enough to leave a car door open with the keys inside doesn't give me a pass to go take your car. Neither is it ok to run a ponzi scheme just because people are being warned about them.
More so because a lot of the folks who get into microtransactions are new players just becoming heavy gamers. That's WHY these games stay popular despite the constant flood of "I'll never play a game like that again." posts. For every person who's realized how nasty they get a new youngin who only knows of the game through their friends gets into Black Ops 4 and Clash Royale and thinks nothing of it.
It would be awesome if the industry could regulate themselves similar to what they did with the ESRB. But they are addicted to it as well to the point where they can't make a game without microtransactions for fear of investors tearing them apart. Honestly there's technically still time. The industry can still offer an alternative to calm congress, again like they did with game age ratings.
If they literally can't even go that far then so be it. I like hearthstone and epic seven but I won't accept the path gaming is going just to keep them around.
1
They did. Dean Ayala, aka Iksar, was one of the upper end of players during the Beta when he started working with Team 5 on card design, then was later hired about a year later.
The patches situation was a matter of not looking at the correct data. They were focused on win rates and "OPness" at the time and, despite what many like to cry out about it, pirate warrior did NOT win most of its matches. In fact, from a pure data perspective, the meta was very balanced and diverse with a lot of different decks being used.
Those people who look at that last sentence and going "BULL@#$()#(!".. yeah. that's the problem. The actual data showed one thing but the game FELT like something else. It took them several months to realize that perception matters A LOT and that while someone crying "it sucks" may not have the reason correct, they are correct that SOMETHING is making it feel sucky.
Since then they've become sensitive towards elements that will make the game feel horrible, which is why a lot of the current nerfs have been less about 'OPness" and more about things like polarization, or general 'feels bad to play against'.
I'm guessing the current Snip Snap is similar: their data shows that the decks made out of it won't be OP but that we're already screaming about it means no one is going to like actually losing to the thing.
1
Very. So much hoping there's a VOd or preferably youtube vid of this.
It's been a long time since I've seen a "F2P-legendary" run. Trump's old ones were what got me to start enjoying heathstone. It's awesome to see it started up again and grats on doing it.
Oh.. and I had such a hard time finding a druid deck to run so *shameless theft*
2
You were being hyperbolic and during a time when we spent the last YEAR with the meta being a late game control/combo fest. It wasn't a request for discussion, didn't ask any questions and didn't seem interested in counter opinions.
Even if it did, all of that goes out of the window when this gets said:
If you are done playing then..well, you're done playing. If you uninstalled then you are definitely done playing. So what sort of discussion are you after? A mass of folks joining in to declare that they are done with the game? Those people are busy playing games they like and posting in forums about THAT game to talk about something they like.
If you had meant to spark a discussion about the meta the tone needs to be brought down to a more reasonable level. Saying "it's all aggro aggro aggro" might be more in touch with your feelings but it doesn't invite those who might feel differently. Knowing what highly annoys the community helps too. This community is rather sick of the "I'm quiting, goodbye!" posts so plopping that in is going to highly annoy your readers. So if you wanted a discussion from us, overdoing the emotions to make it hard to debate and the annoying the community isn't going to help you.
If you werent' interested in folks who disagree with you or get annoyed by how you present things then.well.. what's the point? If you just wanted to post about how you felt about the meta then we have a thread for that. Yes we go "rant thread" like it's a trash bin but one of the big purposes of it is to let you post how you feel and how you like without folks like me writing 10 page essays about how wrong your opinion is, your writing style is, and your general concept of anything is.
Though again if you are sick of the game and uninstalled it, why ARE you here, beyond simply wanting to find enjoyment bashing things you dislike. Which puts the question of "why are you HERE which is mostly of people who generally still want to play the game and aren't that interested bashing games they don't play."
1
Another thing to consider is that everyone keeps thinking of trying to rush down the combo. "you can't get it by turn 5". But WHY is that a problem?
Innerfire/Divine priest stopped being a meme and started being a threat once the deck stopped thinking it had to get ONE SPECIFIC minion hyper buffed and instead became a tempo deck. Suddenly it turned into a deck with normal removals and fights for the board, but it gave the opponent the fear of dying the SECOND ANYTHING stuck on the board.
A deck that tries to 100% all in on the wombo combo is fine. It'll fail most of the time, work a few times, and become a nice meme deck. But what about a priest that just runs a normal mech deck? You don't have ot win by turn 5. You just need to survive until you get T1ck and a Experimenter. After that, just have 1 mech to survive. Then just spam.
will there be a deck like this? We'll see. But I'm worried.
2
They aren't going to buff basic cards since the idea is to make Classic NOT be the basis of our decks. That's what keeps decks cycling every year.
Of course I would've said "we arne't going to be buffing cards" 2 hours ago. So #($)#( IT I don't know what's going on.
1
*points to much of the leadership changing out since then*
*points to how their entire system of how they do things has been changing since that time*
new management. New rules. Sometimes the new boss isn't the same as the old boss.
As to the OP.
Well well well.. .looks like Blizzard took everything I know about history and how buffs work and gave me the good old finger.
I'm VERY worried about many of these changes. On the other hand, I also was VERY worried about the game going to rotation when it did and I ate crow then, so if this works out then I'll be ready to eat some more tasty bird this time around as well.
But a lot of those nerf...err buffs (yes I DID mistype it originally) don't seem that useful (pocket galaxy, Mulch) while others look VERY scary (Extra Arms, Pogo, Crystology).
MOTHER OF #()#* Security Rover and Beryllium Nullifier getting buffed!?
I'll gladly eat crow if these buffs turn out well, but if this turns into trouble I'm NEVER **EVER** going to let you guys live this down. .NEVER
#()$# Nullifier and Rover, and Paladin getting back their card draw for cheap stuff!? And Rogue getting MORE 1 mana cards that they can hyperbounce?
4
You're defending Goblins vs Gnomes as a good expansion. The expansion that literally only had 2 good legendaries and a tier 3 legendary. The expansion that had abominations like Unstable Portal [/card] and [card]Piloted Shredder. The expansion that further pushed the meta into pure face and set the seeds for Secret paladin later on. You're praising that over metas such as the Old Gods meta.
I REMEMBER watching tournaments back then. I REMEMBER games that were ended because of doomspeakers coming out of shredders, and Dr. Boom's bombs going 8 damage to the face, and F#($)#(*$ Imp-losion.
We cheered for GvG because it was the first time we ever had an expansion. And because we were still new as crap at the game.
That is on top of what others have already brought up: that 'planned obsolescence' is a feature, not a bug. We plan standard specifically BECAUSE we want to be constantly swapping out old cards for new ones. One of the biggest reasons why we hated TGT, Boomsday, and Rumble is because of how little of that very thing occurred. We WANT them to put out new stuff, and for us to buy that stuff every expansion. Otherwise there's many other genres we would be playing instead. Wild players MAY be able to argue about the issue, but if you're in Standard and you're bothered by having to 'keep up with the trend' then you've picked the wrong mode.
Sidenote, the 'Blizzard is nerfing my good deck' outcry is a rather silly argument for a big reason: you visit the forums. Every other #$*)#*( (#)$#)( thread has been about the problems with Rogue since almost as soon as the expansion started. We've been having regular nerf bats after just about every single expansion. How in the world can a person who reads the forums enough to feel bold enough to write here can claim to be blindsided by a nerf to most played and most raged on class, especially given that the very cards they targetted are the most raged on and most proposed for nerfs.
This isn't a surprise. This isn't new. This wasn't out from left field. No one tricked you. The warnings came early and often that this was going to happen. Don't pretend otherwise.
The same goes for the Classic set as a whole. Blizzard flat out said from the beginning of rotations, that their goal is to make the classic set take up a much smaller role in the meta. Everything they've been doing has been putting their money where their mouth is at this point. There's even a rather vocal part of the community screaming to go faster or just flat out gut the whole thing all-together.
Where the @()$#( have you been for the past 5 years?
3
I'm not sure it's time to nerf it quite yet, but it's definately something to watch.
The issue is that Conjure mage is fully relying on a VERY slow meta thanks to warriors that can't even think of winning before fatigue. That creates a very powerful reasoning for being able to do nothing for so many turns on a deck with almost no spells. And warrior is all over the meta because of Rogue.
So without Rogue, faster decks that beat warrior become more common, which makes running a deck with almost no removal that relies on hoarding cards for a late game blast of minions a doomed idea. Anyone who've experienced handlock during an aggro meta knows that mountain giant is NOT a good card to keep during those situations.
So faster decks mean conjure will have to stop dedicating itself fully to abusing that gameplan in order to either be more aggressive or protect against aggression, which means they will be easier to fight even as a slower deck and less common.
Which is why 'control metas' are NOT healthy for a card game. A LOT of deck balance is in stopping greedy or abusive strategies by forcing you to soften your deck in order to fight against different types of attacks. In other words, aggro keeps control decks honest.
Blizzard has already proven willing to revisit a meta if there's further issues. So we don't HAVE to panic and go after mage right away. If they prove to be too much of a mess then we can get to dealing with them too. For now, let's let things actually sink in and see what happens.