Hearthpwn

There isn't a "game" if they allow these things to exist.  Right now the design essentially means there's 2 people playing their own deck trying to win first. Interaction with the opponent is pretty minimal.   I'm sure some people must find it fun, but personally I dont, and I can't understand the logic behind these design decisions.

I'm all for spectacular turns (to a point) but these should be at 10 mana (or require a bit of set up).  Take the priest Hero.  In theory her battle cry could be extremely powerful, but it requires multiple turns of setting things up before it does anything good.  That's the type of big turns the game should be looking to encourage, not some high-roll turn 2 nonsense.  We've endured a year of bullshit with the latest sets.  Denathrius, Astalor, Guff, DH OTK, Big Spell Mage, Brann, Theif Rogue, Deathrattle rogue - all contributed to an extremely un-fun game (imo).  Now they've printed more and we can expect more shit for the next year.

It's almost like Blizz decides which class will be OP for the next cycle and prints hugely synergistic cards for that class.  Look at imp-lock.  A deck which was already doing OK and can do some stupidly powerful stuff early doors to end games fast.  It can already build massive boards quickly, draw cards cheaply, buff single minions, curse the opponent (if you go down that line), mini bloodlust effect/buff.  Now it can have a sticky board for 2 mana.  "But there are drawbacks to these cards - they limit you to imps!"  I hear you say.  Such a drawback in a deck built around imp synergy.

Quote from Anarchy1 >>

Quote from lv426a11 >>

I have zero hope for the game now.  They keep printing mana cheating cards which result in stupidly early, game winning plays.  This expac. has created an OTK deck using Thadius that can kill on turn 6 and shaman decks that can reliably get a good 10 mana minion on turn 2 - 4.  Even a relatively "fair" paladin deck can dump a colossal amount of stats on turn 6/7 then follow up with (you guessed it) more mana cheat to steal games in the late game.

We're back to an OTK-aggro counter meta which is just shit and basically represents the battle of "who drew the best".  So much fun!

I firmly believe the devs have zero idea what they're doing at this stage (or are cynically just milking the player base for every last cent before it dies).

I think there's a reason why content creators are moving away from HS to other games - they're just not having fun, and if you're playing 5 days a week there has to be some enjoyment.

p.s. "Discover" as a key-word needs to die.  It's an over used, un-fun mechanic which, like other keywords, should have stayed with the expac it was created in.

 

 

 I for once like mana cheat if it’s not too early, and random / discover cards are the prime reason why hs is still fun, and the big difference to real life card games

Mana cheat and discover can be fun and do add variance to most games - I agree.  

The problem is that right now mana cheat is so aggressive and is happening on early game turns when there's very little you can do about it.

OTK's just shouldn't be able to pop off on turn 6.  You shouldnt be able to get 10 mana minions down on turn 2.  These plays are often game winning on their own.  No skill, no thought, just flat out luck and/or overpowered and badly designed cards.

The designers love affair with discounting mana has taken this game in a terrible direction imo.  Pretty much every problem interaction/combo can be traced back to mana discounts in some way (or having > 10 mana).  Often these are completely broken, other times they're just really unfun and unfair to play against if you're playing one of the negelcted classes which cant cheat.  I don't want to watch my opponent destroy my board, play a bunch of minions, draw some cards and still have mana left over at the end.   I also don't want to watch the 4th Rune of the Archmage being played before the mage is even at 9 mana.

As for discover - I loved it as a mechanic when it first came out.  Now it's been overused, particularly in Death Knight where it's become another tiresome mechanic.  "Oh look - I need to play around a 7 mana "The Scourge" against a blood DK.  Look how I was outplayed".  Great - he got a Brann -> School Teacher - > Antimagic shell (x2) for a mini bloodlust board buff. Should have played around that too.  Wow - 3 Mograines...

You get the picture.

I've said it before in other threads, but Blizz needs to go back to basics about how cards games are meant to work.  There are "rules" that need to be followed otherwise things break.

Mana = power.  Things should cost mana.  Similar mana cost cards should have similar power.

Card draw = cost.  Cards are resources - they should cost mana and tempo.  You give up tempo now for more options later.

Resources are finite = you shouldn't be able to just dump your hand over and over and created endless boards of stuff.  Aggro should run out of resources eventualy.

There are lots of issues with the game right now.  You just don't get to see them now because Thadius has killed you on turn 2....

I have zero hope for the game now.  They keep printing mana cheating cards which result in stupidly early, game winning plays.  This expac. has created an OTK deck using Thadius that can kill on turn 6 and shaman decks that can reliably get a good 10 mana minion on turn 2 - 4.  Even a relatively "fair" paladin deck can dump a colossal amount of stats on turn 6/7 then follow up with (you guessed it) more mana cheat to steal games in the late game.

We're back to an OTK-aggro counter meta which is just shit and basically represents the battle of "who drew the best".  So much fun!

I firmly believe the devs have zero idea what they're doing at this stage (or are cynically just milking the player base for every last cent before it dies).

I think there's a reason why content creators are moving away from HS to other games - they're just not having fun, and if you're playing 5 days a week there has to be some enjoyment.

p.s. "Discover" as a key-word needs to die.  It's an over used, un-fun mechanic which, like other keywords, should have stayed with the expac it was created in.

Is it though?  That deck doesn't really run that many undead minions which makes the chance of connecting with the dredge fairly unlikely (and you also mulligan for those minions).  Now it's just a 4 mana 5/4 which messes up your res pool for the other undead minions you really want to resummon with Bonecaller or High Cultist Basaleph

I don't see this card making it into that type of deck.

I know they've attempted to try and bring classes which arent seeing play into the meta by buffing stuff, but the problem isn't always the classes that arent seeing play.  It's the two classes that did see play.

Nerfing those two classes AND buffing the other classes is such a stupid way to make a balance patch and just results in more OP decks.

To be honest I'm kinda thinking that maybe the problem is the game itself.  It just doesn't have the complexity to allow interesting new ideas, so for new cards to be played they basically have to be broken.

I know that I am certainly not really enjoying the way Hearthstone games end up now.  Cards like Astalor that give every deck a win condition.  High-roll stuff like shaman which functionally ends games on turn 2/3 with a bit of luck.  Aggro decks that just keep on going with endless draw - board after board.

It's just not that much fun to me any more, but hey - no one is making me play...

I think it is - now you can draw and play a big taunty boy in the late game and its more flexible in the early game for tutoring

Caveat - I don't know what the nerfs or buffs will be!

So - I think this looks a bit disappointing to be honest.  The nerf targets are all well and good (and quite obvious), but the bigger problem with both rogue and DH is the ability to generate/draw cheap and free cards, and that probably isn't going to change a great deal unless they gut the DH quest and some of the rogue staples.  The problem with frost DK is the fact that it never runs out of resources, and how powerful discover effects are in that class.  Sure you can tweak the burst damage from glacial advance, but in my experience frost DK is more attrition based that OTK (although objectively it is a busted card - functionally often 1 mana 4 damge).  As for shockspitter - I hope they change it to something like "increase damage for each minion killed by your hero".  Keeps the theme and gives it a drawback and a means to play around it and slows it down substantially (and reduces the "me go face" reward).

Also sad not to see Brann, but maybe he will get HoF'd instead of nerfed, and he just doesn't fit in the graphic...I can dream...

As for the buffs, I think a lot of these cards are actually fine as they are, but they have no viable decks to fit into.  A buffed Battlefield Necromancer has potential to be really anoying and very strong. The game doesn't need another snowbally 2 mana card that if you cant deal with it straight away you're in trouble.  As it stands he is currently (and often) a 2 mana 3/5 with taunt.  My concern is that these cards, if buffed, change the meta in a a entirely unhleathy way.

Cards which I think do merit a buff Haunting Nightmare, Asvendon, Last Stand. I've literally never seen anyone play them (unless discovered). A card like Energy Shaper should always be a meme.  If you make it viable it's probably going to end up broken, just like Luna's Pocket Galaxy was when it got buffed.  Maybe make it a 4/5 but keep its effect the same?

The bigger question to me though is where is the buff to fiery war axe?  Doesn't the weapon and armor class deserve a 3 mana 3/2 weapon with a tempo effect like everyone else (or just a plain 2 mana 3/2 like it used to be)?   Why does To the Front! have "not less than 1" when virtually no other mana reduction cards do (I know it would allow broken stuff - lots of classes can already do broken stuff!)?  The balance is completely shot and "class identify" doesn't cut it anymore as none of the classes have any identity except overpowered or dead in the water.

Quote from Stupidusername >>

N zoth was pretty unfair against lots of decks .... you say fair but only becouse you played it that much.

 

mr. Smite made me delete the game. Devs are a joke. „Charge and leeroy are problematic, we wont ever again make such a card“ .1 week later and mr. Smite announced xDDDDDDDDD

A card like N'Zoth is never really too unfair though.  It took ages to get going and could only be played on turn 10 (and arguably it would often not be played on turn 10 as you needed to have been fairly lucky with your minions played on the way there).  You had a good idea which things were going to be resurrected so you could (in theory) hold removal for it.  It was the latest of late game cards and it always gave you a turn to respond.  The player running him had to design the deck in such a way as to maximise his effect and then actually play those cards as the game progressed.  The perfect 10 mana type card imo.  I don't even recall there being any meaningful mana cheat back then either.

Don't get me wrong - it was often the nail in the coffin for aggro decks (seeing a board of deathrattle taunts getting resummoned), but I still think it was a fairly well designed card in the big scheme of things and not always a game winning play.

Mr Smite and Astalor are terrible designs for cards (imo) and they're almost ironic in their design, because they both mimic cards which the designers have previously said weren't fun and then nerfed (Leeroy and Denathrius) only to then reprint the same effect in a slightly different form (which is arguably buffed from the previous version).  Of the two I think Mr Smite is almost a reasonable card (pirates do tend to be weak stat wise), but his interaction and high-roll potential with the warrior quest and colossal (before nerf) made it massively overpowered (on top of a quest which was also overpowered).  He is still quite strong in paladin as well.

Nightmare meta is basically the one we have right now, where most games are decided by which class you get drawn against and/or by turn 6.  Control is dead (due to OTK), damage from hand is high (with never ending resources) and high-roll potential is off the charts.

I think the biggest issue with all the surprise "from-hand" damage is less about the lack of interactivity between the opposing player and your own stuff, and more about the lack of your ability to interact with the oponents game plan (even though you know exacltly what it is).

The bog standard response is "play aggro", but you can't do that after you've started a game.  It's pretty disappointing to know you're going to lose because the deck your playing is basically hard countered by the opposing deck, and imo that is a massive design flaw for any game.  Sure, there will be better & worse match ups, but it absolutely shouldn't be paper, scissor, stone (even though that's the analogy everyone uses).

I hope the nerfs will target some or all of:

1) Mana cheat.  Things should only very rarely cost 0 mana imo, and 10 mana things should generally be 10 mana (and not 0 or 5).  

2) The early high-rolls (e.g. non-games because your opponent got 2 Gnolls or a Denathrius on turn 2).  I'm fine with this sort of thing later in the game when you have a chance to respond.

3) Discover.  There's far too much in general, but against DK in particular it's really frustraing as the discover pools are so small.  The whole point of runes (if I understood it correctly) was to limit powerful 3-run cards to a single rune.  The discover mechanic avoids this limitation and with so many "discover" cards it gets frustrating.  Often these are 1 for 1 "removal - discover removal", which means that resources are essentially endless.  Also - it would be nice if people were limited to 1 or 2 copies of each card in line with deck building constrainsts...Being hit with Frostwyrm's Fury for the 5th time isn't fun.  Playing around and baiting out a card used to be a thing in Hearthstone...

4) Cheap card draw.  Card draw is far too cheap imo.  I makes decks far too consistent, too quickly.  The game was better when people didn't always have the answer and didn't always have resources. 

Multi-Shot cannot hit the same minion.  Text is the same.

I kind of agree, mostly because it makes balancing certain effects on neutral cards (like inspire) pretty much impossible, limiting design space.

Other than that I don't mind it being 1 mana. In fact I'm quite happy to see a vanilla hero power that's actually useful and gameplay-defining in modern Hearthstone, rather than just something you use when you have mana to spare and have no impact on how you build your deck or play the game (Priest, Druid, Paladin, etc).

Fun design card which unfortunately leads to very polarising meta. Meta is now Kazakusan druid beating all slower decks, agro decks trying to rush druid and control decks farming these aggressive archetypes.

In the last VS report was said that it is probably the most polarised meta since quest rogue Ungoro meta. The matches are like you either win or lose (30/70,70/30).  Stormwind questlines were even less polarised.

I like Kazakusan, but I don't think the current form of this card or druid, in general, will keep fun for me for a long time. Hoping for some changes in a week or two.

Quote from parishbishop >

I dont know what you can be referencing? Miss what? I played the card, buddy played missiles, and the minions I drew after Vanndar were not discounted. Its pretty str8 forward.

You played Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, Vanesh wasn't the lowest cost card in your deck when you played it so the battlecry never activated. And only two of the missiles hit Vanesh, you had Fleethoof Pearltusk on the board.

A few things first:

There are three somewhat overlapping modes: Classic, Wild and Standard.

Classic is the game from 2014. Cards are frozen with their stats and abilities at that point in time. Unlikely to ever be touched again in terms of balancing or updates. Cards you have from that period of time will be available to use. Crafting and dusting will affect other modes.

Standard is the current format that features the last two years of expansions plus the Core set. The Core set is a free set of cards containing Basic and Classic cards as well as some selected cards from other expansions. This set rotates once per year, giving Blizzard some way of balancing what is available for everyone in addition to the expansions. Expansions rotate to Wild as a set all cards released per year (all three expansions and all three mini sets) after the two year period. Expect periodic balance changes with full dust values for changed cards (exceptions apply). Mini sets are additional cards released roughly at expansion mid point to shake up the meta.

Wild is where all cards end up in and where all (except one) cards are available for use. Less frequent balance changes. Cards in Wild share a slot with Classic and for their golden forms also with the Core set. If you dust something here from the Classic set, you will lose it in the Classic mode. Although the Core set is free, it's only limited for the duration of the year. If you dust something that is also available in the Core set, you will still be able to use it for that duration of time, but it will be gone with the rotation.

Another change is that we don't get gold from quests any more and the introduction of the reward track. Completing quests and playing yield experience that let you advance through the track with different rewards per level until 100. From then on you will just receive gold until the cap at level 400. You can buy the Tavern Pass for some additional cosmetics and an experience boost.

I assume you got the free deck promotion? Which deck did you pick? Also watching the currently running Grandmaster tournament might help you understand how some of the decks work.

I think giving support to odd/even decks a mistake. The payoff for handicapping yourself already exists: upgrading your hero power. Creating cards that increases this payoff tends to create a situation in that odd/even decks are way stronger that it's vanilla counterparts.

 But don't take my opinion too seriously: I think the introduction of the odd/even mechanic a stupid move for the game.