Hearthpwn

I'm not sure you understand what viability is.

If a deck cannot succeed on the ladder, then it is not viable.  Viability is not a description of whether or not a deck can work; it's a measure of how consistently it works and how powerful it becomes when it does work.  This is why we have tiers in the first place.  While purify priest is fun to play and can work to a degree, it's very inconsistent and isn't nearly as powerful as most other decks.  Therefore you cannot consider it a viable deck that can do well on the ladder.

It depends on how narrowly you wan to define "succeed on the ladder".  I would call purify priest "viable" but barely.  You can play it on the ladder in a competitive environment and win games with it and climb.  Will it be an easy climb? No.  Will it take you to legend? Probably not.  But you can still take it to ladder and do reasonably well with it, probably topping out somewhere between ranks 5-10.  Maybe a bit better maybe a bit worse.

stop and think of future applications?

Quote from The_Progenitor >>

I'm not sure you understand what viability is.

If a deck cannot succeed on the ladder, then it is not viable.  Viability is not a description of whether or not a deck can work; it's a measure of how consistently it works and how powerful it becomes when it does work.  This is why we have tiers in the first place.  While purify priest is fun to play and can work to a degree, it's very inconsistent and isn't nearly as powerful as most other decks.  Therefore you cannot consider it a viable deck that can do well on the ladder.

What's all this nonsense talk about magma rager being the worst card? Millhouse is a million times worse..why Ben keeps delivering the lies in interviews?

magma rager is the secound best 3 drop vs warloc, priest or warrior if they have no cards left. kappa

What he actually says doesn't make any sense. Like he said there is a unicorn priest or that Lock and Load is a meta defining card. It actually was until people understood that cancer is still better. I am certainly sure that there is nothing like a worse card than "Magma Rager" whitch is actually better than wisp lol. Other things I am considering are Anima golem who dies for sure. This might actually be worse than Magma Rager as for Anima Golem you spend 6 mana to basically do nothing lol

How are you people still this retarded? He never said there was a unicorn priest, he said there was probably a priest deck out there nobody has built before that could be very viable.

Quote from TheHiddenNinja >>

If anyone wants to make a guess of what is the new worst card, reply to this comment and give this one a like so that more people will see it.

My guess, that I also haven't seen so far on page 1: Astral Communion

I would guess alarm-o-bot 

Quote from Avery_W >>

Quote from TheHiddenNinja >>

If anyone wants to make a guess of what is the new worst card, reply to this comment and give this one a like so that more people will see it.

My guess, that I also haven't seen so far on page 1: Astral Communion

 ...It's obviously Purify.

Quote from nocontrol1111 >>

Quote from Avery_W >>

Quote from TheHiddenNinja >>

If anyone wants to make a guess of what is the new worst card, reply to this comment and give this one a like so that more people will see it.

My guess, that I also haven't seen so far on page 1: Astral Communion

 ...It's obviously Purify.

 If you had watched the interview you would have heard him say it was released a couple years ago. You're so dense.

• Randomness is important for Hearthstone.

If you want a shittier game experience that people will rage at, yeah sure.  Spraying random points of damage is not fun. Killing random minions is not fun. Turning a random minion into a chicken or a dinosaur is not fun. The list goes on. 

Card games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! (despite it's flaws), and Pokemon do not hinge on such novelty. Most of the cards are streamlined and do as they say, eliminating a bunch of nonsense variables. 

The only instance I personally had fun in a card game that involved randomness (although not all the time was) Duel Masters/Kaijudo (via their shield system).

Just my thoughts. 

overspark is THE MOST FUN legendary IMO xD it's a polymorph card for classes like warrior and THE BEST neutral card against C'thun .

Overall really powerful and fun

Quote from GhostEmpire >>

• Randomness is important for Hearthstone.

If you want a shittier game experience that people will rage at, yeah sure.  Spraying random points of damage is not fun. Killing random minions is not fun. Turning a random minion into a chicken or a dinosaur is not fun. The list goes on. 

Card games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! (despite it's flaws), and Pokemon do not hinge on such novelty. Most of the cards are streamlined and do as they say, eliminating a bunch of nonsense variables. 

 

@nemo the problem with hearthstone is that they know what random effect is balanced and what the comunity wants and they just print other cards. everybody would be happy if 50% of the cards created in contests here would be used instead of a damn 3/2 taunt or 5/2 ice rager.

many people complaned about cards like knifejuggler and what did they do? they printed flamejuggler, fiery bat and huge toad. AND YOGG. yogg was fun.... for around 2 weeks than people refiened the decks and he become a gamechanger as dr 7, chrismas tree and undertaker.

Lol "everybody would be happy if 50% of the cards created in contests here would be used". Are u serious brah? 90% of the cards created here are downright retarded

People just don't seem to realise how many factors go into creating a card. Off the top of my head, Every card has to:

1. Be flavourful and fit the theme of the expansion. This includes flavour text, artwork, creating new names, creatures and effects

2. Be balanced in arena, whether it be strong, weak or neutral it has to keep arena fairly balanced

3. Be original. Obviously they can't just print a carbon copy and if you reaaally think about it that's quite a hard thing to do considering every year they'll release 200 or so cards

4. Not every card will be ladder viable but that is kind of a necessity. If every card was competitively powerful arena would be straight up broken

5. Keep the classes balanced between each other. This goes for neutral cards just as much as class cards. If, for example, silithid swarmer had been a 4/6, maybe that would have completely broken rogue, who knows? 

6. Be commercially viable. Yes this is a legitimate concern and goal, if they didn't make money we wouldn't be able to play. This includes wider concepts such as meta balancing and keeping cheap decks' viability without breaking them. And finally..

7. Do all those while satisfying the needs of every different type of player, from the most competitive legend tournament player tonthe guy who started yesterday

And every step along the way they have to watch out for cards and trends and metas that can upset these things, while mantaining a happy player base, while making money, while not scaring away newbies... only to get constantly pummeled for making some mistakes

And you think that "everybody would be happy if 50% of the cards created in contests here would be used"

Please

ok my bad i meant use the ideas of the competition winners.

1. Be flavourful and fit the theme of the expansion. This includes flavour text, artwork, creating new names, creatures and effects

1. flavour is nice to have but they should creat the card itself before they theme them and limit the designspace. and not every theme has to be wow based, but maybe wow cards sell better so they sacrefice gameplay for theme? :/

2. Be balanced in arena, whether it be strong, weak or neutral it has to keep arena fairly balanced

2. they started to ban some cards for arena (good idea) but arena has still the imense card pool (bad idea). there should be a wild mode for arena.

3. Be original. Obviously they can't just print a carbon copy and if you reaaally think about it that's quite a hard thing to do considering every year they'll release 200 or so cards

3. they give a damn about being origianal. they reprint cards over and over again just to full some open slots. this could be no problem, but they print cards like summon a x-cost minion and it can decide a game by giving you the better version of the card. there is no reason to have a vanilla 5/1 AND a 5/2 for 3 mana. so just printing 150 instead of 200 cards would be better for the game.

4. Not every card will be ladder viable but that is kind of a necessity. If every card was competitively powerful arena would be straight up broken

4. im fine with that but if they would care about arena cards like mad scientist, minibot or muster wouldnt be a thing. maybe they they will handle things like that with banning card and creating more designspace. also they tried to make a reset with banning old cards for classic but they f*cked it up by letting some broken unnerfed and the spiral of powercreep started again.

5. Keep the classes balanced between each other. This goes for neutral cards just as much as class cards. If, for example, silithid swarmer had been a 4/6, maybe that would have completely broken rogue, who knows? 

5.priest has the worst classic/basic set so priest is always the biggest looser after a new season. another point is there should be a cycle in the meta with at least 5 classes imo but there isnt. there are 3 decks played for more then 50% of the games and even more higher up the ranks. aggro shaman, token yogg druid and dragon warrior. and the first 3 turns aka draw is more important than counter the meta.

6. Be commercially viable. Yes this is a legitimate concern and goal, if they didn't make money we wouldn't be able to play. This includes wider concepts such as meta balancing and keeping cheap decks' viability without breaking them. And finally..

6. ofc but the playerbase will shrink if the game isnt fun anymore. most people i know just go on play the daily and play another game. the shop is just to expensive for a new guy to get into the game and as an beta player you can just play it for free. hearthstone would be perfect as an subscription based game (or with WAY cheaper shop or 30€ for the whole classic set?) but they went the f2p route and now they are boned because the cant change the system.

7. Do all those while satisfying the needs of every different type of player, from the most competitive legend tournament player tonthe guy who started yesterday

and they try is so hard but without changing another big part of the game or even the buisness model i cant see a way to keep hearthstone balanced and fun at the same time.

and even pros are complaining about rng in hearthstone. some rng is fine but every new expantion some other HUGE rng related feature gets released and competetiv hearthstone gets even more boring. *coughtshredder'n'boomnowyoggcouth*

ok my bad i meant use the ideas of the competition winners.

Even those are often very unbalanced or just not what the game needs in its given state

1. flavour is nice to have but they should create the card itself before they theme them and limit the design space. and not every theme has to be wow based, but maybe wow cards sell better so they sacrifice gameplay for theme? :/

Actually flavour, artwork and the general look and feel of the game are of utmost importance. I would gander that a large proportion of hearthstones success can be directly attributed to it's sleek and simplistic design that still manages to inject a boatload of character and fun into the imagery

2. they started to ban some cards for arena (good idea) but arena has still the immense card pool (bad idea). there should be a wild mode for arena.

Maybe wild arena could be cool but there's no way they would suddenly start cutting vast swathes of cards from arena just to keep it simple. There's no need to either, as long as they keep balance and card complexity vs rarity in check. Plenty of cards have fairly complicated interactions but thankfully they are limited mostly to epic and legendary status. The vast majority of cards that appear are pretty straight forward and shouldn't be confusing any new players too much. Having said that the removing some cards from arena was a good idea, as that particular pool was obviously problematic

3. they give a damn about being origianal. they reprint cards over and over again just to full some open slots. this could be no problem, but they print cards like summon a x-cost minion and it can decide a game by giving you the better version of the card. there is no reason to have a vanilla 5/1 AND a 5/2 for 3 mana. so just printing 150 instead of 200 cards would be better for the game.

When I was talking about originality, i meant it less thematically and more practically, as in they can't just print another sen'jin shieldmasta or argent squire and give it a different name/artwork. As far as printing Ice Rager goes well, it's their right. It didn't ruin the game, neither did it usurp a previously viable card. I can't say I exactly understand what you're trying to say with your x-cost example, is that related to possibly getting ice over magma rager from faceless summoner or something?

4. I'm fine with that but if they would care about arena cards like mad scientist, minibot or muster wouldn't be a thing. maybe they they will handle things like that with banning card and creating more designspace. also they tried to make a reset with banning old cards for classic but they f*cked it up by letting some broken unnerfed and the spiral of powercreep started again.

Can you possibly see why retroactively changing things can just complicate things further? I mean, yeah the game is probably gonna need more n more of this ban style stuff as the card pool grows bigger. And yes, there will probably eventually be formats for arena too in the future. But surely you must agree that, not unlike nerfs, they should be done with utmost discretion and as rarely as possible? One of the highest goals for the hearthstone development teams is accessibility, for both new players and old returning ones. Too many changes to the core of the game might be pushing a tether that may, one day, snap.

5.priest has the worst classic/basic set so priest is always the biggest looser after a new season. another point is there should be a cycle in the meta with at least 5 classes imo but there isn't. there are 3 decks played for more then 50% of the games and even more higher up the ranks. aggro shaman, token yogg druid and dragon warrior. and the first 3 turns aka draw is more important than counter the meta.

I think people don't realise how momentous a task like this can be. As much testing as blizz can do, certain things will take them by surprise, there's just too much unpredictability. And, as stated before, retroactive balancing can be just as harmful as it is good. The kind of statistics that you talk about are definitely higher than the rank I gravitate but it's only natural that the higher the rank the narrower the meta becomes. If that's a fundamental problem of yours with this game then you might wanna reconsider playing competitive card games.

6. ofc but the playerbase will shrink if the game isnt fun anymore. most people i know just go on play the daily and play another game. the shop is just to expensive for a new guy to get into the game and as an beta player you can just play it for free. hearthstone would be perfect as an subscription based game (or with WAY cheaper shop or 30€ for the whole classic set?) but they went the f2p route and now they are boned because the cant change the system.

First of all, compared to some other ccg's out there, hearthstone is an absolute gem price wise. The only other one's that are on par gameplay wise, that have cheaper models (ES comes to mind), are companies trying to squeeze in on a market that blizzard virtually created. As for suggesting other models you're going to have to suggest something waaaay better than subscriptions, which even huge MMO's have almost entirely abandoned

and they try is so hard but without changing another big part of the game or even the business model i cant see a way to keep hearthstone balanced and fun at the same time.

and even pros are complaining about rng in hearthstone. some rng is fine but every new expansion some other HUGE rng related feature gets released and competetive hearthstone gets even more boring. *coughtshredder'n'boomnowyoggcouth*

Well that's easy cause balanced is  fun.

On rng..... *pinches nose* .... look if you want to play rng-less hearthstone go take your basic set and play at rank 25. Fact of the matter is rng is what makes hearthstone competitive.  The only skills involved in the game are deck building, decision making and risk assessment. Of these, being able to weigh probabilities is the most valuable. Deck making may as well be a moot point with all the net decking going about and decision making is the bare minimum as regards to skill (e.g. should I equip fireaxe and kill that trogg or just armour?). The most powerful cards and plays in hearthstone should be, and mostly are, high risk/reward.

As for pros, well.... fuck 'em, dey don't kno shiiii

So, i guess its time to say goodbye to Hearthstone for me. I kept playing till Karazhan because I had the (stupid) hope they would change their stance on randomness - i dont see it happen, especially with the highlighting of cards such as Barnes as a positive influence for the game.

I had fun these last 2.5 yrs, especially when there was a wider range of control and combo decks viable, sadly not anymore since classes get neglected for years while other remained Tier 2or higher for the whole existence of HS..

cya