Hearthpwn

Quote from Leaga »

I just wanna throw out one critique on that last item but I will first say that I do appreciate the idea of the post and like the way that you wrote most of it.

 

Here is my problem. The devs of Hearthstone have said a few times that perfect wording is not as important in an online card game since the rules are handled by the computer behind the scenes. Furthermore they've said that they would rather having learning moments where you discover exactly how cards work than walls of text that clearly spell it out. The point that I'm, very poorly, trying to make is that A) your assertion that this is a mistake that should be fixed is offbase since the devs have essentially said otherwise and more importantly B) It stops sounding informative and starts sounding like personal grievances when you start calling the game out for what you perceive as flaws.  I would think that this could be written much more objectively and informatively if you focused on the effects of Sword of Justice or Knife Juggler and how it applies to any minion summoned on your board regardless of origin rather than focusing on Leeroy or The Beast's texts.

Thanks for the input!

I didn't mean it to sound as a rant, I will edit this one then. You're right, Ben Brode actually reached out to me on Twitter regarding that issue, but I don't really agree with him in that matter. Computer handling or not - wording should be clear, because if you play the card for the first time ever, you'd rather like to know what exactly will happen. Otherwise, it may spoil your grand plan.

That being said, I should not mention that, if it's officially approved. Kudos to you!

Quote from Rabidwhale »

we are looking into the card link issue.

"Hey, Mom... I just broke Hearthpwn, but I didn't want to!"
"You did WHAT!? No internet for a month!"

EDIT: Thanks for the fix!

Quote from LovelyMagickUnicorn »

This is all very nice but Bloodlust does not benefit the hero. It only buffs minions.

Right-o, embarrassing. Corrected.

Quote from Pilleri »

Quote from jimmyfrantic »

NOTE: Because of unknown reasons, card links do not work. Research in progress.

Try 

Edit-> HTML mode

Remove all unnecessary HTML tags.

Might fix it.

Actually, it doesn't work for me at all, even in a different browser and different topic. It used to, earlier today.

Clearing up HTML didn't work. I have stripped all the formatting by copying the content to Sublime Text, cleared the HTML and pasted it back - to no avail. 

Hello, everyone!

Recently, I've seen plenty of topics regarding abilities and their characteristics in general. Players are often confused about the wording or a specific combos/gimmicks which are not always immediately clear. Since there is no sticky topic explaining all the stuff, I've decided to give it a shot. The list will be updated regularly, based on suggestions and my own observations.

For specific abilities' rundown, please refer to Abilities Hearthstone Gamepedia entry.

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1. Character/Enemy

Character is either a minion or a hero, Enemy is just an enemy character.

Examples:
Holy Nova, will it damage an enemy hero? Yup.
Flamestrike, will it damage an enemy hero? Nah.
Savage Roar benefits a hero in addition to minions.

2. "is attacked" vs "is damaged"

In Hearthstone, an attack is a direct offensive action of a character, e.g. when you draw a red arrow from your Azure Drake to enemy hero. This means that a Soulfire spell won't trigger an Ice Barrier, because the damage is not dealt in a result of an attack, but rather a spell action. Yet, if you Soulfire an Acolyte of Pain instead, it will draw a card for his caster, because he does not care about an origin of damage.

Another thing worth noting is that an attack does not need to inflict damage, it's just an action expressing the intention to deal said damage. For example, if a Hunter with Explosive Trap active is targeted by a Bluegill Warrior, it will count as an attack, thus Explosive Trap will trigger. However, the damage will not be inflicted because the Bluegill Warrior will die in a process, before actually reaching and gnawing on the target.

Examples:
Fireball -> Paladin with Noble Sacrifice, will the secret trigger? Nope.
Holy Smite -> Gurubashi Berserker, will the effect trigger? Yes.

3. Damage vs Destroy

Destroy is an effect which triggers either by directly calling it (The Black Knight, Naturalize, Assassinate) or by reducing a minion's HP value to 0. However, destruction does not need to involve damage, which means that targets protected by Immune ability (immune to damage) are vulnerable to it. For example, if Hunter plays Bestial Wrath at his Oasis Snapjaw and then commands it to attack a Mage with Vaporize, Oasis Snapjaw will be destroyed. Immune won't save it, because no damage was involved, as well as the Mage won't be harmed (as explained in 2.) Furthermore, reducing a minion's HP to 0 using Crazed Alchemist does not count as damage as well, but there's currently no Immune effect castable on minion that would last for more than one turn, which makes that specific scenario very unlikely (unless a player desires to destroy its own minion in this particular, fabulous, way).

Examples:
Nightmare will disregard all Immune, Divine Shield and won't trigger any special card effects, like Armorsmith or Frothing Berserker.
Emperor Cobra won't destroy a target protected by Immune or Divine Shield, because it needs to deal damage first.

4. Summoning a minion for your opponent

This particular matter is very confusing, because of its unclear and illogical wording. Logically, if YOU summon a minion for your opponent, YOU would be a summoner. Unfortunately, it's not true. Hearthstone understands a summoner as a hero on whose side of the board the minion is summoned, e.g. Sword of Justice will buff the 2 Whelps summoned by opponent playing Leeroy Jenkins. Even though, technically, Leeroy's owner is summoning them for Paladin, Sword of Justice triggers because minions are on Paladin's side.

It is actually wrong and either the mechanic or its wording needs to be changed. Card games like Hearthstone or MtG rely heavily on card text and there shouldn't be any disparities between the logical outcome and an actual effect.
Hearthstone creators actually reached out to the community regarding this "issue" and it turns out to work as intended.

Examples:
If you kill enemy's The Beast, it will trigger its Deathrattle and summon Finkle Einhorn for you. If you happen to have Knife Juggler on the board, his effect will trigger and 1 damage will be dealt to a random enemy. However, if your opponent controls Knife Juggler instead, nothing will happen, even though he should be the one considered as a summoner.

5. "Hidden" Poison ability

While most other abilities have their own keywords (Taunt, Stealth, Battlecry), Poison ability isn't even mentioned by its name. The only sign that a minion has Poison is the green vial icon in place of usual lightning icon. Right now, the only minions which utilize this ability are Emperor Cobra and Patient Assassin, which is the main reason behind the lack of dedicated keyword and art, as confirmed in ChanmanV's Value Town #27.

Poison can be combined with certain cards for quite impressive combos, e.g.:
Tundra Rhino + Emperor Cobra = instant removal.
Emperor Cobra/Patient Assassin + Betrayal = destruction of adjacent minions. This one is particularly interesting, because its wording does not explicitly imply the outcome. Betrayal deals damage not in the sense of dealing the same amount of damage as the minion's Attack value, but actually deals damage using this exact minion, thus utilizing all its abilities.

6. Discard

Discard is a mechanic which immediately destroys a card and does not trigger Deathrattle. Discard automatically happens when a player's hand is already full (10 cards) and another card "attempts" to go to the said hand, either by drawing (both turn-based and forced by Coldlight Oracle/Naturalize/etc) or returning (Sap/Freezing Trap/Vanish).

Additionally, Hunter's Tracking and Warlock tempo cards - Soulfire, Succubus and Doomguard also feature Discard. While Warlock ones explicitly show that the cards are indeed destroyed, Tracking doesn't show any animation whatsoever, which can leave player confused about what exactly happened. The sad truth is - the 2 remaining cards are effectively and irreversibly destroyed, so it's usually not the best idea to play Tracking early.

Discard order (Vanish-specific) - by Thechiv

If you use a Vanish against your opponent and he doesn't have enough space in his hand, there is an order to which cards are kept and which are destroyed. First played gets saved, as in example:
Turn 3: Harvest Golem
Turn 4: Druid of the Claw
Turn 5: Cairne Bloodhoof
Then Vanish goes off - if a player has only 2 free slots (8 cards in a hand) Harvest Golem has priority of not being thrown away, followed by Druid of the Claw, leaving good old Cairne Bloodhoof on the chopping block, which since he did not die in combat does not activate his Deathrattle.

(When the next turn comes, another card is discarded while being drawn. Yeah, it sucks. - Jim)

7. Spell Targeting

Any effects and prerequisites of a spell are resolved when you successfully target a minion/hero, which means you can get unexpected, confusing and seemingly wrong outcome when playing against a Mage with Spellbender active.

Example:
You play a Whirlwind which does not trigger Spellbender, since it's not a targeted spell. Enemy Mountain Giant is now damaged, hence it is a valid target for Execute. However, right after you play it, Spellbender activates. Since Mountain Giant was already recognized as a proper target, Execute is going to succeed and destroy Spellbender (custom link, since both a Secret and a minion share the same name), even though it is not damaged.

 

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This list is far from complete, hence I will update it regularly. If you have any suggestions or corrections, PM me and I will add it to the list.

Quote from Banquetto »

Quote from jimmyfrantic »

Quote from Yeran »

I'm not sure what would happen but iceblock does not block everything. You can die to fatigue damage with iceblock active for example.

That's because secrets won't trigger on your turn, mate.

 What happens if you have Ice Block ready and are forced to take fatal fatigue damage during your opponent's turn, by them forcing you to draw e.g. with Coldlight Oracle?

Damage should be fully absorbed, since your secret is active during your opponent's turn.

However, Ice Barrier, for example, won't activate on fatigue damage or Hunter's Hero Power, because it reacts to an attack.

Hearthstone relies heavily on card text, most of the rules are coherent except a few gimmicks. If a wording slightly differs between two cards, you should generally expect different outcome.

However, there are some discrepancies between logical and actual outcome of several actions in Hearthstone, mainly due to poor wording. What I mean by that is that Hearthstone is not as strict as, say, MtG, which is absolutely unforgiving when it comes to rules. I actually encourage anyone having the required cards to test it, servers shouldn't blow up. I hope.

Quote from Yeran »

I'm not sure what would happen but iceblock does not block everything. You can die to fatigue damage with iceblock active for example.

That's because secrets won't trigger on your turn, mate.

EDIT:

Quote from Dr_Smash »

my experience with immunity is that it is not just damage, but all sorts of targeted effects    For example, I don't think you can buff a beast if it has beastial wrath triggered. (admittedly, its been a long time since i used that spell) 

http://www.hearthhead.com/mechanic=19/immune

There is nothing about not being able to target it, however, as I said - Hearthstone is not perfectly consistent in wording. One of the best examples is Leeroy + Knife Juggler.

Quote from Hazem »

I'm not sure if Vaporize will trigger or not, but what I'm sure of is that if triggers; Bestial Wrath will of course prevent the damage. So for sure the minion is going to live.

Except there is no damage, therefore that's not true.

Immunity mechanic prevents damage only, i.e. direct attacks from hero/minions or cards that deal X damage - Fireball, Explosive Trap, Shadow Bolt, etc.

Cards and effects that destroy a target do not deal damage. In this case Bestial Wrath has no effect against Vaporize, Deadly Shot or The Black Knight, same as Divine Shield. You can target a Sunwalker or Tirion Fordring with The Black Knight and the shield does not trigger, because there is no damage to absorb.

Quote from Mokthol »

Quote from jimmyfrantic »

Quote from jimmyfrantic »

Fits great imho, I'm not sure about the cost though.

It can't be lower due to the ability of soulstoning an enemy minion/Leeroy Jenkins, but higher? Given the fact that if put on enemy minion, then said minion still needs to be killed for the card to take effect.

Any ideas?

 

(Its a really big card, I might recommend reducing the size a bit)

Shamans have a card almost identical to this one. Ancestral Spirit. The only difference is you're brings it to your hand which reminds me of Shadowstep. I would say, if you want, you could possibly add a "this minion will cost (X) less". The reason why I say that, is because the minion could be played on a different turn.

I can't think of a reason to put this on an enemy minion. It would only benefit them. This card is saying "I know this minion will die, so I'll make sure it returns to my hand on my terms".

 

The only difference between this and Ancestral Spirit is that Ancestral Spirit ignores any Battlecries the minion might have. By returning it to a hand you can use the card again with no restrictions. This could be incredibly useful with any Charge/Battlecry minions.

Also, yes, it does encourage to Shadowstep/Panda it which I guess is an interesting twist. It actually requires an additional interaction, thought and/or despair, which is basically the same as playing against Sylvanas/Ragnaros/Flamestrike.

(and thanks for the size tip, kudos!)

Quote from jimmyfrantic »

Fits great imho, I'm not sure about the cost though.

It can't be lower due to the ability of soulstoning an enemy minion/Leeroy Jenkins, but higher? Given the fact that if put on enemy minion, then said minion still needs to be killed for the card to take effect.

Any ideas?

 

Fits great imho, I'm not sure about the cost though.

It can't be lower due to the ability of soulstoning an enemy minion/Leeroy Jenkins, but higher? Given the fact that if put on enemy minion, then said minion still needs to be killed for the card to take effect.

Any ideas?