Hearthstone

40 drafts exactly in the past 6 days or so (all of them from infinite arena after the starting quests). I think I have a problem. 4 Legendaries, 4 Epics, 38 rares. 3 Golden Commons. 1 Golden Rare. I've been pretty lucky and have already made my Druid deck again, and in the ideal form, it's only a mere 6600 dust lol. I love it, so much card advantage, it's not uncommon to have 13-15 cards on your opponent.

I'm terrible at Arena. My best was 8 / 3 but I normally average about 3 / 3. I keep doing it hoping to get that perfect draft but hasn't happened yet.

Not too happy with the Mage nerfs. I don't think they were thought through at all and are simply knee jerk reaction to all the whiners who haven't realized that the meta is VERY fluid right now and has changed about 3 or 4 times in the last week alone. With that said, the only freeze spells I run in my normal Mage deck are Blizzard and Frostbolt. So I'm not hit as hard as others but it still annoys me. The only upside is that when the nerf hits, I'll get 400 dust from the golden Cone of Cold I have stashed away.

So anyway, looking at Paladin as my new class. They're fucking strong right now and seem pretty well balanced overall. The problem is that the best Paladin decks are VERY expensive with 3+ Legendary cards so I'm trying to decide my first craft. I'm between Sylvanas and Ragnaros. I know Tirion is VERY strong but I don't want to craft him too quickly since I think I can get more mileage out of the neutral ones. My current Legendary cards are Archmage Antonidas, Grommash Hellscream as class specifics and Ysera and King Mukla as neutrals. I'll probably have to burn the King and Grommash.

Ishad_sl said:

Golden Baron Geddon- keep or DE and make either bloodmage thalnos/Ragnaros?

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there are some warrior decks that use him as a board clear/trigger for Frothing Berserker madness

Angelwatch_sl said:

I'm terrible at Arena. My best was 8 / 3 but I normally average about 3 / 3. I keep doing it hoping to get that perfect draft but hasn't happened yet.

Not too happy with the Mage nerfs. I don't think they were thought through at all and are simply knee jerk reaction to all the whiners who haven't realized that the meta is VERY fluid right now and has changed about 3 or 4 times in the last week alone. With that said, the only freeze spells I run in my normal Mage deck are Blizzard and Frostbolt. So I'm not hit as hard as others but it still annoys me. The only upside is that when the nerf hits, I'll get 400 dust from the golden Cone of Cold I have stashed away.

So anyway, looking at Paladin as my new class. They're fucking strong right now and seem pretty well balanced overall. The problem is that the best Paladin decks are VERY expensive with 3+ Legendary cards so I'm trying to decide my first craft. I'm between Sylvanas and Ragnaros. I know Tirion is VERY strong but I don't want to craft him too quickly since I think I can get more mileage out of the neutral ones. My current Legendary cards are Archmage Antonidas, Grommash Hellscream as class specifics and Ysera and King Mukla as neutrals. I'll probably have to burn the King and Grommash.

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Grom is incredibly strong so I wouldn't do it, the amount of surprise damage you can get out of him if you can trigger his enrage on the same turn is better than what you could achieve with a Leeroy in his place

Just died turn 4 to what must have been a perfect draw for the Warlock/Murloc rush deck. I healed for 7, so he did 37 damage. Ouch.

Freeze nerfs are pretty stupid. The spells were fine individually, but they were stupidly boring when you stacked them all + Ice Block to negate all damage for 3+ turns while using Giants and Pyros to end the game.

After the nerfs, the spells are really bad individually (possible exception for Blizzard), and won't be used by any "normal" decks. They are still stupidly boring when you stack them all, and the only deck that will still use these spells in constructed will be the freeze decks, the very decks they were trying to nerf. Those decks will be weaker, but will probably be viable if a "slow aggro" meta returns.

The much better nerf would have been to completely change Ice Block, leaving the freeze deck vulnerable to charge, silence and weapons. Possibly also make Pyro 9 mana, to deny the Frost Nova + Pyro turn.

@The Master, I just won turn 4 as a Warlock as well. Void Terror, Power Overwhelming and Blood Imp make me happy.

The problem with the Freeze nerfs is that they were actually pretty balanced for their cost prior to the nerf.

Let's look at the 2 damage AOE spells:
Blizzard: 5 Mana, 2 Damage to only minions, freeze
Holy Nova: 5 Mana, 2 damage to all enemies (includes the opposing hero) and 2 healing to all friendly characters (again, includes the priest hero)
Consecrate: 4 Mana, 2 damage to all enemies (includes the opposing hero)

In that regard, Blizzard was actually pretty well balanced. It didn't hit the enemy hero but it had the 2 damage +effect which justified the extra mana cost over consecrate. Going to 6 mana completely kills the card. Especially against aggro rush.

Same thing with Cone of Cold:
Cone of Cold: 3 mana, 1 damage to target minion and adjacent minions.
Swipe: 4 mana, 4 damage to target minion and 1 damage to ALL other enemies
Fan of Knives: 3 mana, 1 damage to all minions and draw a card

Again, if not for the freeze effect, cone of cold is the worst of these because of how easy it is to play around (i.e. drop a stealth minion or a faerie dragon in the middle of your minions and the effect is limited).

So, in my opinion, they went about these nerfs completely the wrong way. Raising the mana cost just killed the cards without actually addressing the problem. It was a knee jerk reaction to forum whiners with no real thought behind it.

And like I have said numerous times here, the meta had shifted anyway. Frozen Giants and Stall Mage were being countered by Paladin and Druid decks. For giggles I threw together an anti-mage deck and played a few games with it in "casual" mode to get a feel for things and make adjustments. After that I played a game of ranked and my very first opponent was a stall mage (the very type of opponent the deck was designed against). It was a fantastic game and I really felt bad for the Mage because I survived 2 pyroblasts, 2 fireballs, Alexstraza and numerous other things only to kill my opponent off with fatigue while I sat at 22 health.

Changing all of them at once would be overkill even if increasing the mana cost is the way to go. They need to change 1 or 2 cards at most, see how that influences the situation and adjust from there, not sweep across all of them at once. Like you said the worst result of a balancing nerf is killing the individual cards for "normal" decks while the nerfs only have a marginal effect on the targeted deck.

Cone of cold is the last I would change, because it takes out 3 minions max. The idea of killing Pyro + frost nova on the same turn is good, and already accomplished by just increasing frost nova to 3 mana.

I think coc deserves to be in the first nerf round. It is basically arcane explosion + frost nova in one card and costs one less mana. Now it is the same thing, arcane explosion + frost nova in one card and costs 1 less.

mures_sl said:

I think coc deserves to be in the first nerf round. It is basically arcane explosion + frost nova in one card and costs one less mana. Now it is the same thing, arcane explosion + frost nova in one card and costs 1 less.

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Arcane Explosion + Frost Nova + a LOT of restrictions and limitations. Let's not forget that last part of the equation. The max it can ever hit is 3 targets and that limitation can be exploited with stealth minions or Faerie Dragon style minions (yeah the only other one is a random from Ysera but it's safe to assume more will be added as time goes on). Against a, typical, warlock rush deck we see a lot of the following by the time Cone of Cold can be played: Blood Imp, Flame Imp, random 2 drop. That Blood Imp is key because it does 2 things. First it buffs the health of all other minions by 1 so that Cone of Cold can't kill them in the first place and he has stealth which means that something is going to be safe from CoC as not everything can get hit.

I just don't think increasing the mana cost of aoe freeze spells was the way to go. It renders them unplayable without addressing the frustrating part of the problem.

Angelwatch_sl said:

The problem with the Freeze nerfs is that they were actually pretty balanced for their cost prior to the nerf.

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Bullshit. Mages are too strong and one of there tools needed a nerf. Freeze could be the way to go.

I wouldn't consider blood imp and faerie dragons or even 3 target limit a lot of restrictions considering all of those things do not occur often, certainly not often enough to make you want to run arcane explosion over coc. And it is the 2 in 1 card part that makes it so powerful, there is a reason why no one was running arcane explosion and everyone was running coc.

Freeze is just way too strong paired with their Hero Ability.

The Ancient_sl said:

Bullshit. Mages are too strong and one of there tools needed a nerf. Freeze could be the way to go.

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And my counter is that they went about nerfing freeze in the worst and laziest way possible. The frustrating mechanics of freeze remain in place but the individual cards got nerfed. I guess it's a lot easier for Blizzard to knee jerk react to forum whiners than sit down and actually address the problem.

It's a CCG, you want a high skill ceiling. CoC has a much higher skill ceiling for both sides of the board compared to lolfreezeeverything spells. The restrictions come into play, and will come into play even more in higher levels of competition. That's a good thing and not something you want to nerf prematurely. Note I'm not saying "dont nerf mages", just that CoC is a well-designed card with pros and cons and they better take the nerf bat to other cards first.

I'm not a fan of the mage hero ability, too versatile and no downside. But I generally think they painted themselves into a corner with hero abilities and will have to rework them eventually.

Mr Creed_sl said:

It's a CCG, you want a high skill ceiling. CoC has a much higher skill ceiling for both sides of the board compared to lolfreezeeverything spells. The restrictions come into play, and will come into play even more in higher levels of competition. That's a good thing and not something you want to nerf prematurely. Note I'm not saying "dont nerf mages", just that CoC is a well-designed card with pros and cons and they better take the nerf bat to other cards first.

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Completely agree. You said it much better than I did.

Mr Creed_sl said:

It's a CCG, you want a high skill ceiling. CoC has a much higher skill ceiling for both sides of the board compared to lolfreezeeverything spells. The restrictions come into play, and will come into play even more in higher levels of competition. That's a good thing and not something you want to nerf prematurely. Note I'm not saying "dont nerf mages", just that CoC is a well-designed card with pros and cons and they better take the nerf bat to other cards first.

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I just don't agree saying its restrictions makes its value accurate. Coc is a lolfreezeeverything spell 95% of the time as rarely would you go over 3 minions against a mage even if you had the opportunity because lolblizzard and lolflamestrike. The spell being limited by your opponent's play is a good thing, but even in the rare circumstances you have a blood imp/worgen/fairie dragon to break up the spell it will still kill the blood imp or worgen + deal a damage and freeze the one minion or both if it is a dragon still making it at least cost efficient. Shouldn't a good play from the opponent make the spell cost inefficient?