i think for final push hunter is too unreliable, it is the best class right now but 80% of the decks ahd tecked cards in order to beat them, i think decks like shaman, druid miracle or handlock can bring better results specially because the meta is less prepared against them. you got one week your choice but using the deck of the flavor of the month does not look to me a wise way. 

Ps: also mastering hunter  is something more difficult that people think , because thanks to having less decision (max 0-4 a game) make the wrong one is more decisive ( for a controlw arior of his 15+ decisions he makes a games he can be wrong easily 3-4 times and still win) if you think you have mastered it continue hunter.... but if you are stuck in a rank maybe you have not

Quote from Lexpany »

A Savannah Highmane for 2 mana is great. A Tundra Rhino for 1 mana could be interesting too.

and a fire elemental for 3 and an azure drake for 2 and an alakir for 5!!! but yep far sight as you see is in all the shaman competitive decks! 

i would buy 120-160 packs + i got gold for 25 more +i have 11k dust sitting and waiting... so i hope to get all the cards i need if not i would craft the golden legendaries /epic i think are needed (got too much used to only play golden decks...)

Quote from Xedriell »

Gorehowl would definitely not match the meta around ranks 5-7, so doesn't faceless, hehe. Since I do not own the Baron, I will try to choose between 2nd senjin, cleave, slam, WW and ghoul(s). How would you rank those cards, which would you prefer?

this season i have been quite out of ranked (only rank 6 with very few games played) but i used this seasons and other gorewhol and is amazing against unusual matches but that are counters to control warior, like shaman or paladin control. or even against the more common priest and druid. i know against the aggro deck (specially hunter) is a dead card, but like that a lot of other tech cards, (the usfullness of armosmith against control priest!!! xd)

see savjz game in the finallas of seatstory cup 2, he nearly loss the match, wining by uqite litle becqause he used prep for drawing instead of keeping for malygos damage.

personally i tend to keep one prep for malygos even if i have auctionner ( unless i need a critical card or see sooner lethal). in most of the games i saved it.

why it is good : great amount of burst , can clean board if helped by a prep.

but malygos is not like leeroy in miracle before, where you neeeded it in order to kill your oponent, malygos is just a plan b. what by turn 9-10 you still did not draw enough to kill your oponent with spells and minions? ok here we have a dragon to take you back in the game or otk your oponent.

also if you played cautiousely your oponent does not know what rogue variant you are  playing so in more than one case auctioneer, azure drake,  van cleef , and sometimes smaller minons have baited a lot of hard removals, because my oponent fear cold blod burst.

So far from more than a year experience playng hearstone arena, i wanted to check if others feal like me : getting a leggendary in an arena run is a liability. 

why i think so?

- normally most elgendaries are high costed  so they disturb our curb.

-most of them are very situational, a black night or harrison jones could be uselless sometimesor win you games.

-theyre value si quite slime, in a lot of cases i would prefer an ogre over illidan, cairne and sometimes even sylvanas.

- you rely on them too much to take you back making underperforming plays sometimes.

So far my runs with legendaries had been quite mediocre (6-9) ( except a 12-0 hunter i had with rag... but i think the 4 animal companios made most of the work)  for most of them compared to 0 legendaries decks, that normally where more consistent.(5-12)

When i even get 2 legendaries the arena goes very bad (4-7).

if it is real it is quite strange... so i ¨kill¨ one of my own minions (without procing deathrattle), in order to be able to resummon  him later with the risk of a random silence to just kill it being the slience alone a 1 for 2.

hoping for two.... and hope people are not so dumb voting like last time.... come on shaman spell!!!

Quote from FFSCOMEON »

So it took them a major update and an expansion to add a spectate feature how long do you think it will take them to add a replay option aswell? For me personally there have been many games in both arena and constructed in which I have had a situation with 2 or more plays and have big pros and big cons. I would love to be able to rewatch those games and see which one might have been better considering what he played or hell even make a statistic of which gamble is less risky on average etc.
I recently found out that SC2 actually has an option of joining a game trough a replay so why would it be so difficult to add basic replay capability to hs? It's not like it's an incredible programming feat which would require huge teams and resources. Hell even shooters have replay.

Hs is majorly lacking in simple quality of life improvements it almost feels like a korean MMO in that aspect.

you can use frapps to record your games and then see them.  i do it for myself, with the trial version you got enough time for most games.

Quote from unrealdustin »

Quote from Mordred1108 »

Quote from unrealdustin »

Personally I would rather see new cards come out before older ones get nerfed. Hunter has already seen a ton of nerfs in its short life span (buzzards is on its second nerf, amongst others). It's just sad to see my main and favorite class constantly nerfed when all we've gotten are Naxx cards and haven't seen any large expansions.

it had to be done, the way the cards were before was insane, and its still currently OP, to think its not is just unfathomable honestly...

One in every 10 think this and i still laugh every time, cards need balanced and coming out with new ones won't change the fact that 5 mana draw 2+ and get a board presence isn't OP...

Miracle rogue can do the same thing , but with a 4/4 body and a possible 5+ dmg. How is that anymore OP than hunter? Just because a class is budget efficient and popular does not make it OP, it's the opponents fault for not knowing how to play around widely known combos. And thinking that adding new cards won't effect previous decks is ridiculous. Look at how well sludge belcher and loatheb stops huntard in its tracks. Unstable ghoul is amazing in control decks vs. low rush aggro.

But that's besides the point. HT is still in its baby phase of design, with only one major expansion and many possible changes to come in the future. Instead of balancing the game through buffs and nerfs they should be focusing on releasing a more diverse meta through cards and new mechanics (more secrets for classes + neutral counters). Targeting certain classes is going to make a good player base upset (usually cheaper decks like zoo geared for new players).

We can sit here and debate the reasons why the hunter as a class is fundamentally flawed. the number 1 issue as pointed out by certain pros and which ive been saying all along is the hunter's hero power. classes that no ability to efficiently heal are helpless to hunter once they drop below a threshold life range. you can play around combos, and try to "control" the board all you want but it doesnt matter if youre getting punished for 2 life a turn no matter what. basically as a player you're forced into putting pressure on hunters which you immediately get punished by the combo.

None of the cards you listed really STOP a hunter in its tracks. decks that run those cards that are literally designed solely to beat hunter still only have a 50% win rate... That's not balance. Imagine paper rock scissors, where paper beats scissors 50% of the time.

This isn't blizzard abusing their right to nerf cards at will, this blizzard acknowledging a wrong in the checks and balances of the meta and this a correction that needs to be made. This is a perfect example of why digital card games will always have a leg up over their paper cousin. If this continues to frequently happen then yes it is a problem but like you said they are still in the infancy of design, these are necessary changes.

The power level of hunters really suffocated certain classes into obscurity. Most people are that hunter apologist really come off selfish because they dont want to change even if it comes at the expense of other people not being able to competitively play their favorite classes.

I created an account just to post my two cents because of how passionate I am about this topic, but i'll try and keep it short and to the point.

First of all, anyone that says Hearthstone uses way more RNG than Magic is using that as an excuse for sucking at the game, period. Even when random elements are involved, there are SO many ways to manipulate the board in a way in which the random events happen in your favor. Also, last time I checked, Magic revolves around playing land, what's more RNG than topdecking 4 consecutive lands for the auto-loss? So yeah, that's a bad argument. Besides, random elements are a part of ANY card game, so just learn to accept it. As a matter of fact, I take the stance that Hearthstone has significantly LESS RNG than Magic, and I stand by that statement simply from not requiring land and the hero power ability coming into effect. Brilliant implementations I might add. I've never had a game of Hearthstone that I didn't enjoy because of how amazing hero powers and mana crystals are, and it's a huge problem for Magic. It's just like poker in that it's a game of incomplete information and even with randomness (luck) involved, you can still push big edges and crush the competition.

Secondly, simplicity is SORELY underrated. I played magic for over ten years and loved it, but after a certain period of time, having 10 billion different cards to choose from and 200 different abilities is incredibly overwhelming. To say that more options is better is true for the most part, but come on, at some point it's way too much. Pretty much the only way to keep the game reasonable is to stick to playing the standard format or block constructed formats, leaving old cards far behind. Hearthstone, when my friends turned me on to it right before launch was so incredibly refreshing. Hearthstone being simple is EXACTLY why I love it, yet it still remains extremely deep at the same time. One tiny mistake can cost you a game, I see it time and time again. In essence this idea that complexity + more cards = less luck + better game is complete horseshit.

Hearthstone is phenomenal for a million different reasons and I continue to find more each and every day. The UI is super sexy and non-resource hungry *cough* MTGO *cough*, the crafting ability is pure genius, the fact that I can play the game for free FOREVER is pretty dope considering MTG card prices are outrageous, the fact that you can take cards as slowly as you want in arena and not wait for a round to finish like in draft on Magic and play at your own pace, the list is endless. I mean really, Hearthstone's arena variant is a BETTER implementation of Magic's drafting format, and it's free instead of costing $15 for a draft (when you aren't going infinite on MTGO.) Why in the world would I ever play Magic again? Often times Hearthstone is so well put together I'm starting to think Ben Brode sat down and asked himself "how can I take magic, improve on ALL of its shortcomings and blow it out of the water?" because that's pretty much what he's done.

TL;DR - Hearthstone CRUSHES Magic in my opinion and it isn't even close for me. Hearthstone is the game I ALWAYS wanted Magic Online to be, but it never became or was. Oh, I must point out again that Hearthstone's interface and level of polish/quality takes a huge steaming dump on Magic Online. Yes, this stuff is very important, for the amount of money Wizards has made over the years, their software is absolute garbage and inexcusable; it should have the same level of polish as Hearthstone in the least. I played MTGO for 5 years if not more and god that software is garbage. When they updated to the new 2.0 a several years back it started going downhill and has been ever since. Not to mention bots make trading a life-less and depressing experience.

For the record, I play poker for a living and was a high level competitive magic player for almost 10 years. I have left Magic for Hearthstone, and I'll never look back. It blows my mind that anyone would want to play Magic if they've given Hearthstone a fair shot. Wizards would have to make some monumental changes to even gain my attention again.

- Sorry I got off-topic a bit haha, but my first paragraph pretty much sums up how I feel on the skill vs luck factor.

Author's note - I'm still proofreading for errors and redundancies since this is a long opinion post covering several points (and no draft option). I'm aware of the controversial point this tries to drive, so please feel free to point out missed observations or logic gaps. I could've easily expanded this further, so I'm trying to condense the important points as much as possible. And I am more than glad to argue these points in the comments.

I'm mostly writing this article due to some of the "popular" opinions I hear regarding Hearthstone vs Magic in terms of skill/luck (I am referring to Standard Format in MTG). I'm a huge fan of both games and have played numerous online tournaments of MTG for several years in the past, but came to many of these observations well before Hearthstone. Bare with me...but controversially, I actually feel Hearthstone requires much more player skill and less luck factors in the actual play of the game and that MTG has much more depth in terms of meta analysis and deck construction. I'm aware this creates a kneejerk reaction to a lot of players who instantly think of Magic's long history and Hearthstone's many RNG cards...but allow me to explain.

Valid Play Options

I'm going to start with the biggest argument first (mainly to avoid the "stop-read 'wtf are you talking about?' " prattling over the small stuff). In a game of MTG there are only so many plays with the nature of the cards and top deck draws, while Hearthstone offers many mixes of plays due to the more general role of cards, Hero Power, and how resources are handled.

Resources Thin Options - MTG uses a system of land to pay for spells. Drawing lands means you are not drawing options, so over time, you draw less options with each land pull. You then are required to pull enough lands and of the right variety to enable those options as well. This issue alone often leads to only a few options actually being available per turn and making top deck very crucial the longer the game continues. Too many/few lands at the wrong point can completely invalidate all plays and make games unwinnable to no fault of the player or deck design.

Hearthstone uses a mana per turn system, freeing up your entire deck to almost always be playable options. Every draw is a new thing you can do. Overtime players will maintain equal numbers of options in hand if they are trading equally. You also don't have to fear mana color limitations that can lead to a classic case of "if only this was a an island and not a swamp". When you draw a card, you know you'll get a chance to play it in time. In MTG you must rely on top deck to give you the proper mix of resources and options to make something happen.

The Hero Power - Along with drawing nothing but options, Hearthstone gives each player a Hero Power for 2 mana. This is a free option that adds tons of depth. You can use it to maintain cards in hand rather than expend all resources to over extend from your hand. Even when top decking, you always have this option.

Card Roles - MTG boasts huge variety of card types, which leads to a double edge sword on this argument. On one hand, having all these options means players have to account for many things to come at them. On the flip side, all these types of cards tend to cater to a vary specific purposes. Key examples are things like type removal, land, counters, conditional cards, etc... Some cards are only valid plays during certain moments and can fill your hand with options that aren't actually options. Your opponent is doing the same as well, possibly drawing big threats while you are drawing the wrong removal and early utility cards, leaving you with no play. This all makes you dependent on drawing many types of cards at the right moments, leaving you at the mercy of top decking the right mix.

In Hearthstone the simple nature of the cards (and two other mechanics we'll point out later) actually makes it so their roles are less defined and can be used in more ways than MTG offers. Almost all cards will have a way of interacting with something on the board. Creatures act as removal, potential defensive obstacles, and threats all in one. Removal in hand often has a use at any given moment since the only permanent types are creatures and weapons, many come with legs, or are usable as damage to the hero. The take away here is a sense of "what do I use this for?" versus "When do I use this...if I can". You rarely have no use for a card in hand and many cards can be used in many different ways. The potential of the card falls in the creativity of use.

Top Deck Consistency - MTG normally supports a 60 card deck, with about to 18-24 lands and 4 copies of non-basic land cards max. You get nice control of weighting the deck, but you also need a lot of 'fixer' utility cards to improve consistency. Dual lands, deck thinners, tutors, draw engines, etc... These lead to a lot of skill in deck design to solve problems, but in actual play the reality is that your deck is thinned of options to make room for more non-options just to play your options. It also can lead to unfortunate tempo loss simply be being drawn at the wrong time. Tap lands are a good case of essential fixers that can arrive at the wrong time.

In Hearthstone you run 30 cards, 2 copies max besides legends. You're also consistently drawing options since you are not being bogged down by resources and fixers, so your odds of drawing game impacting cards goes up drastically. More options drawn equals more decisions and player influence.

Multiple Solutions to threats - Going back to card roles, I mentioned how cards have more flexibility in Hearthstone. The mechanics of targeting creatures and permanent damage give you more ways to remove cards. An 8/8 can be mobbed by many small threats over time, brought in range of removal, you can play another fatty, buff a guy to trade, you can use hard removal like Hex, or tie it up with taunters, bounces, and freezes. You never see a card and realize you must draw your only answer no matter what point in the game it is.

MTG's many card types and case specific answers can often leave you with no option till your draw it. An unopposed enchantment or creature with protective properties can literally win the entire game just for being on the field. You may have tons of answers to many scenarios, but some cards require very specific ones and not having them immediately can be the whole game. MTG can fall into a "you have it or you don't" and may make playing around it your only solution if even an option.

Determining Optimal Play and Frequency of Tough Decisions - Here's my biggest point in the skill factor of Hearthstone vs MTG; relating to the things we just covered. Since you're drawing less options, cards have specific uses, and resources are limited, there's only a finite amount of practical plays. Many cards won't have context to the game state, you can't play with current resources, or are an autoplay such as a land (in most cases). It usually comes down to "can answers be played to key threats and do you have and can play counter answers". There's skill in weighing those decisions, but rarely does every move become a deeply layered decision of consequences. You either provide a solid answer or you don't. A deck only has a limited number of answers to things and must be drawn. So it's very easy to make a judgement on worth to cast something, because there are only a small variance of outcomes.

In Hearthstone, nearly every card has a context that interacts with the game state. Beyond a few spells, you aren't limited by case specifics. You can play things to help later or forego a battlecry for a body on the field. You also have constant targets for most spells because they are  less situational. Since everything has decaying health, the game state advances with every move. You can't counter spell or keep blocking with the same body forever to keep maintaining the same board state till you win; threats are vulnerable and will be answered eventually, so planning on how you use cards becomes more important. Every decisions is small wins with a limited timeframe of dominance in that board state. If you win the board with a trade, you don't have a full health creatures to keep driving the win, you have a weakened ones that can still be taken out by subpar top deck options. Last but not least is the Hero Power once again preserving card uses and always being available. You never have a dead play in Hearthstone, you will have many in MTG.

All in all you have VASTLY more play options in Hearthstone and many more outcomes. This makes optimal decisions making harder. You can easily misplay with so many choices and you have more solutions from your opponent to account for. You're not looking for one answer to counter you, you're looking at all the different answers they may have and what the board state will be on your next turn. You also have a MUCH higher frequency of tough decision making since nearly every turn is like this. Something happens EVERY turn, even if it's just your Hero Power. In MTG you can be at a stalemate playing lands and having no options in hand, both at the mercy of your top deck...and it happens a LOT.

RNG

A lot of discussion bases around RNG (basically random chance). Right out...every TCG has RNG. Top decks, coin flips, dice rolls, etc... Generally the consensus is RNG, while essential and unavoidable, is bad for competitive play. TCGs need some variance, which justifies it and makes the game interesting, but there's a balance of how volatile the RNG is to the outcome of the game. Hearthstone indeed has some cards that have some very volatile RNG theme, but I would still argue that it has less RNG than magic, which tends to leave RNG cards to "Johnny" cards that aren't competitive. But why would I say such a silly thing you ask?

What We Just Talked About - The limited plays and dependance on key cards presents a HUGE RNG issue. Top deck is everything in Magic. If you don't draw key cards, you won't win. Players lose to land screw/flood all the time at the highest level of play and not drawing certain cards at the right time can lead you to lose a whole game to a single card. A close game of magic is one where the board control is back and forth, but most games result in break away plays that control the board state and requires an answer drawn. You also have combos, hard to evasive/protective spells, and etc that can make the game rather opportunistic off a single play...disregarding many of the plays earlier. If you look up the deck Dragonstorm from Guildpact/Timespiral era, you have a major example of a deck that would win tun 3-6 and was extremely hard to counter. It held it's own RNG issues, but would easily eliminate opponents simply because no answer was drawn or Dragonstorm drew Gigadrowse to counter pretty much any counter to it. Yes it could be beat, but it was more about RNG and matchup than player decisions. No single card in Hearthstone is going to win you the whole game because you played it and require a need a specific card to stop you. There's many events that can neutralize it or stop it.

Mulligan - Each use a different mulligan system. Magic allows a full hand swap -1 card, per mulligan. Hearthstone allows you one mulligan but the chance to select individual cards. In short, MTG's is pretty brutal. 90% of mulligans are over land in relation to card casting costs. It's very easy to get the wrong mix and forced to take 1 less card in a game where you already have limited plays and top deck dependence. Hearthstone's version would'nt work to well in MTG due to how powerful "perfect hands" can be, but it offers a much more consistent game. You will rarely play a game of Hearthstone and feel you have an unplayable start.

So What About RNG cards? - This is totally valid. Hearthstone has some YOLO factor cards, however they're not as bad as people think. There is a risk to them and often the best case is a small victory. You also have the multiple plays per turn and often can assess when the time to take the risk is. Depending on RNG cards can be a players downfall, so it takes skill to determine when is the time to roll the dice. In Magic, limited options makes it too risky to depend on RNG. Even so, I think Hearthstone could do with a little less RNG embedded in the cards.

Overall the RNG in Hearthstone cards is not as overpowering as the top deck nature of MTG. You will lose less games to a Ragnaros than a competitive combo deck in magic doing unwinnable top decks.

Card Pool

This is where Magic is king. Tons of types of cards and a vast library of cards leads to some awesome complexity in decks. It's easy to say this is where MTG dominates Hearthstone in terms of deck building skill. You're required to have a much broader knowledge of possible encounters and meta shifts and variants. You simply have way more you can do and must face. This is where most of the game winning decisions are made. But in all fairness Hearthstone is brand new. They're still learning the nature of their work and keeping mechanics simple. We even get the added bonus of balance updates (so we don't have to ban cards like MTG's "Skullclamp").

Sideboarding - A really cool thing Magic does is the sideboard. This gives decks extra room to counter bad matchups or further an advantage (as well as make games a fairer 2/3...unless you're playing control mirrors with an hour limit -_-). Hearthstone tournaments have their own system, but the sideboard offers more layers of thinking. You don't just pick a counter deck, you have to make assumptions on what you saw and make small edits. This can separate good and bad players in both decision making and understanding of the meta.

Conclusion

Despite what I've said here, I have genuine love for both games. I'm never gonna say one's better than the other (unless you bring up the price of cardboard...seriously wtf), but I feel people have a vast misunderstanding of these games at higher levels and what truly attributes a win over a loss. People look at Hearthstone's RNG cards and limited card pool, then focus on MTG's diversity of cards and assume Hearthstone is the casual kid's game in comparison to the behemoth that is MTG.

I by no means am a pro of either, but have a long history of competitive Magic and high level play and do fairly decently in Hearthstone. I genuinely feel MTG has a cap on skill in terms of how you play the deck once you understand the meta. A lot of people feel that's not the case, but when you really analyze the possible decisions a player can make, many choices are obvious and often times, play error doesn't factor into the loss. You can play a perfect game and simply not win and it happens a lot.

People feel that MTG winners hold a higher tier of understanding for how they play during the actual game, but the true nature of success is in meta deck analysis, design decisions, and sideboarding. You will run into game scenarios with tough decisions what will divide better players from great ones, but it's not the dominating factor between win averages of high level play. Those moments occur on some games, they don't occur every game. Expenses and resources to keep ahead of meta shifts are also another major factor. You can study the meta trends and have a great theory to beat it, but it might mean you have to drop your current build for a new one for $100+...just to see if it works. Many potentially great players simply can't afford the game for high level play, much less the money and time off needed to travel to compete on top of it all.

More valid play options per turn + more flexible use of cards = more player influence