The Future of Firebird's Finery, Monk Leaderboard S6 Weekly Recap
May 26th Hotfix Notes, Medivh Skills & Talents Recap
Legion Beta - Build 21796
Notice: Blizzard has opened up a job opening for a Hearthstone Associate Game Designer.
Old Gods Expansion Could Have Included Titans
The Golden Wisp podcast had Peter Whalen, Hearthstone Game Designer, on to discuss the design of the Old Gods expansion. There were a few interesting bits of information he had to share about the design around the expansion and card nerfs.
Hopefully Titans will one day be a thing in Hearthstone!
Quote from Peter Whalen
- The team wanted to do an expansion featuring Old Gods vs The Titans but couldn't find room to flesh both out within 130 cards.
- C'Thun and his buffing minions had used a keyword called Ritual / Ritualists.
- They don't want to add too many new mechanics to the game - it can make it more difficult for new players to understand the game.
Card Nerfs
- Ice Block, Alexstrasza, and Sylvanas Windrunner were all nerf candidates.
- Keeper of the Grove was going to be increased to 5 mana, but they instead made it a 2/2.
- Blade Flurry was considered to be changed to a single target ability.
- Ancient of Lore was a tough nerf, but they want Druid to feel different every year.
Deck Spotlight: C'Thun N'Zoth Control Priest
Poor Anduin hasn't seen much play on the pro-scene, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with him! Shock191919 brings us a Rank 5 Priest Control deck tonight which makes use of the Old Gods C'Thun and N'Zoth, with N'Zoth being more of a back-up plan.
- Build up your C'Thun, get some cool stuff from Museum Curator.
- Soak up damage you've taken via Twilight Darkmenders or protect via Twin Emperor Vek'lor.
- If they aren't dead, build your board again via N'Zoth, the Corruptor.
The deck costs 5520 dust, and you can find the contents of it below. Check out the writeup to learn more about the deck.
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Ability (10)
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The Angry Chicken #152: "Format Wars"
This week on The Angry Chicken, the crew discussed the americas spring prelims, the various competitive formats and what pros have to say about them, the usual crazy game stories, and your emails.
Watch episode #152 of The Angry Chicken below! You can find previous episodes over on their YouTube channel and you can give the cast a follow over on @TACPodcast on Twitter.
Don't forget Garrett, Jocelyn, and Dills will all be doing a live recording of The Angry Chicken at CreateCon in Orlando, Florida on July 30th. For tickets and information check out CreateConvention.net.
Yo Guys Hahahahah Check this shit out OMG These card designs are awesome im betting that they are going to be in July's Season haha best skillz omg xD check this : http://adf.ly/1aqf2L
Titans next time please ;)
This would have made it literally worse than Savagery.
Thanks God they didn't nerfed Sylvannas
I consider WOG to be quite a disappointing expansion. At least TGT, for all its faults, TRIED to do some new things with Inspire and Joust. Hell, Inspire could even have been good if they'd developed it more (other than just a handful of stupid OP ones like Murloc Knight), but nope, after half-assing it in the expansion they dropped it like a hot potato and we're never going to see it again (and since the concept of "buffing" is completely alien to the balance team, even the existing cards will never be fixed). Meanwhile, here comes WOG and number of new mechanics? Zero. Oh there's the C'Thun stuff, but that's not a new mechanic as such, it's just a whole new deck that you can either play or not. It's really poorly done too, as the C'Thun support cards are simultaneously boring (they're almost all either "give C'Thun a flat stat buff" or "if CThun is 10/10 get this Battlecry") and overpowered (they're all perfectly on-curve, meaning they pay NOTHING for their C'Thun synergy- several of them, like Disciple and Chosen, would be good enough to play just as they are even WITHOUT C'Thun). Yeah, the expansion had its share of interesting and useful cards and it was good to see the meta shaken up by the nerfs and GvG and Naxx rotating out, but overall I'd rate it a C, or maybe a C+ at best. It was uninspired.
Insulting him just cause you disagree with his opinion doesn't make your opinion any more valid. In fact it usually detracts from your position and undermines the point you are trying to make.
His point is that transitive mechanics that can survive an expansion are usually better then flat mechanics that cannot. C'Thun synergy is a flat mechanic that will never have any auxiliary synergy with future expansions. It's a one trick pony that is for this expansion only. N'zoth just capitalizes on an already existing mechanic, Deathrattle cards, which part of the reason it's so good. It is a transitive mechanic that in standard format becomes stronger with any new deathrattle cards that may get released in future expansions/adventures for the rest of this "year of the kraken". Even Yogg will be better with any new spells released in the future. But C'thun will not. Hell. Y'Sharrj becomes stronger with any fat minions that get released as well.
A good example of a mechanic that is transitive and survived a single expansion is discover. As we all discovered (no pun intended) the Discover mechanic was INSANELY good and everyone enjoyed it. As such, even though it was introduced in LoE, it's been included in a few cards in WOG. Inspire mechanics, which I think was well developed, has not been included since TGT. For reasons that actually elude me, because I think if they had tweaked some of the inspire cards and didn't make the cost quite so much, a lot of the inspire cards could have been fantastic.
In Kaspski defence the first poster seems to have missed the information about blizzard not wanting to add new mechanics into the game, as it makes it difficult for new players to grasp the game. Im also pretty disappointed that nothing new was introduced, but I can understand that for the longevity of the game constantly increasing the knowledge gap between new players and old is a problem.
Am I the only one who wonders why Doomhammer wasn't at least considered for a nerf?
No. No you are not.
Doomhammer isn't really the problem, but Rockbiter Weapon is. You shouldn't be able to give it to your hero. Without it, Doomhammer would be just 2/8, and I don't see a need for nerf to that.
I agree with that, but Rockbiter Weapon just can't be nerfed properly... Making it only target minions would also require it to be +4 attack, since Paladin has that thing that permanently gives +3 attack for 1 mana.
But +4 attack would be broken since it would allow for crazy trades and combos with for example Al'Akir. Just imagine Al'Akir + 2 Rockbiter finish. (4+4+4) x 2 = 24 damage from an empty board? No thanks haha.
A good point indeed. But I also think Doomhammer is one of those hard-to-nerf cards which will very easily become unplayable if any changes are made. Not that I would miss it though.
Doomhammer could simply be changed to 2/6, or raise it's mana cost to 6 (overload 2). I'm pretty sure it would still be good that way.
Ok, honestly Blizzard, you seriously are continuing the "new players will be confused" thing? Please, don't do this to Hearthstone. I played Hearthstone a lot for a long time, but I'm getting sick of you ignoring anyone with an IQ over 60. Recently I started playing Duelyst, and guess what? I now play Duelyst about 4x more than Hearthstone. The main reason, they respect the intelligence of their players. They have frequent nerfs of OP cards, and they don't even kill them! They recognize that players will reevaluate cards without getting "confused". Another thing they do is make the game FAR more strategic. There is far less stupid RNG cards. They actually encourage players to win by skill. This means that they attract players who wish to win most of the time as better players, and not beat better players because of lucky draws. That is how they run their game, and I expect it to grow into a far less cancerous game than Hearthstone over time.
Sometimes I think the reason the Hearthstone design team assume all their players are stupid is because they're stupid themselves.
I'm currently trying out Duelist as well. I really like Hearthstone, but if I have to be honest... I think the major reason why it's currently one of the top online games is the connection to Warcraft. And besides that the fact that it's so simple and easy to get in to.
But now that I've been playing it for over 2 years and start to look past those 2 factors, It's becoming more and more clear that there is just such a small amount of skill and strategy involved when compared to other games. It's just all based on RNG cards, RNG draws, and mostly just googling what the most OP deck of this moment is.
Even in normal games you can't try out anything new. Just look at streamers like Kripparian who try out innovative decks with fun mechanics: It's pretty fun when you see it work that 1 time on a youtube video, but before it works that 1 time they lose 10 times because they only get to play against those few OP decks that everyone's using.
It was mentioned briefly in the podcast, but the interviewee, Peter Whalen, created a Rogue-like deckbuilding game called Dream Quest on iOS. It's one of the best games I've ever played. The artwork is bad, mostly stick figures and other stock photos, but the gameplay is innovative and brilliant. If you can get past the artwork, you're in for a real treat.
I'm waiting for The Burning Legion expantion (or Adventure). Maby after releasing Legion DLC to WoW...