Hearthstone

only rank 12 atm but 5-0 with DW, Dragonlord N'zoth paladin. It was just a joke deck but some of these decks are worse lol.

Currently 6-0 with genj's Hunter. Tundra Rhino variant.

Lost to a Cthun Warrior.

Despite the fact that it's not really good right now, i cracked and made a Malygos-Miracle rogue. I'm just so sick of the current aggro meta that i don't give a fuck anymore if i win or lose. It's like 90% of the matches on the ladder these days are either aggro shaman or dragon warrior - especially at the low end. So, for me, it's either make something that will counter these two decks specifically or join the ranks. I didn't want to play Zoo and i wasn't feeling hunter so my options were limited.

Anyways, the rogue definitely needs help. I lose 10-15 life by turn 5 against practically every deck - even more against aggro decks. And there's no legitimate comeback mechanism. It's basically pray you can live up to turn 6, then pray that you have an auctioneer in hand and a prep, then pray that you get something useful from your mini-miracle and then pray you can get a 30 damage combo... lol... Against most control decks tho, it can be a lot of fun to GG people with a 40 damage turn.

only halfway through that video, but pretty sure his end point is exactly what pissed me off tonight playing.

Blizz seems to be balancing the game around the '50% winrate' but the problem is they are doing it with huge, ginormous swings of RNG. So, you tend to go on long streaks of wins and long streaks of losses, but that's tilting as fuck. Winning 10 games in a row does not feel nearly as good as losing 10 games in a row feels bad.
Going 1 win, 1 loss, 1 win, 1 loss, etc.. or 2 wins, 2 losses, etc.. feels much more enjoyable. I know, because I am literally at the end of a 8 game in a row losing streak tonight, after being like 9-2 yesterday. I'm certainly tilted as fuck now, and I wasn't super happy yesterday.

By giving more rewards for small 'technical' plays, a better player eeks out a few extra wins here and there. But, in hearthstone, it's very hard to know when you made the right play 'on average' because you got so completely blown out that it didn't matter. In MTG, I won because I'd take my 40/60 matchups and turn them into 50/50s or even 60/40s against bad players. In hearthstone, the bad player isn't punished very much for playing badly, so if his deck is favored over yours, there isn't much you can do about it. Just have to hope they don't draw the most relevant cards, and you do.

I get that blizz wants to cater to casuals, they are the majority of the playerbase, but the constant memes about RNG show that even the casual players get fed up with it. I don't know who the fuck at blizz thinks we just want more and more and more and more RNG. We enjoy certain amounts of fun RNG and controlled RNG (i.e. Yogg, or resurrect effects) not ALL RNG effects. We do NOT like when we get a 3/3 faceless manipulator off our firelands portal and lose a game we were otherwise winning. Or, our opponents get a lightwarden off our hungry dragon, with a resto totem out and 3 damaged minions so they swing lethal for 20 damage. Being on the good side of it isnt conversely enjoyable either. Overall, it just creates a shitty experience for one player and an 'ok' experience for the other.

slippery said:

I really like this video

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Excellent video. I'm part of the casuals that agrees with this logic. I love the game of Hearthstone. I used to have a buddy who played MTG and was very good at it. I always enjoyed his experience of MTG and how he seemed to excel at the game through superior play. Hearthstone obviously has an element of skill, where the skilled players do generally perform better than the average, but still core design (at the very moment) is very much lopsided - without talking about how huge the RNG factor is. And i understand the need to cater to casuals. The casuals are what makes them money, so having classes/decks, and specific archetypes, that allow brainless casuals to win - reach whatever rank - and feel good about their play is very important. But it would feel better if skilled players could play archetypes that are competitive against the brainless OP decks.

For me, while i have nothing against losing to superior players, i do see the plague that is the current game design of hearthstone (as Reynad said): Play the most powerful minions, play on curve. If you look at most of the ladder right now, the two classes that are dominating have the most overpowered abilities/minions per cost, and don't have any particularly intricate play (the two being aggro shaman and dragon warrior). As i said in a previous post, i made rank 7 last season, being almost completely oblivious, and playing aggro/totem shaman. All i was doing was playing on curve and trading.

Enzee said:

only halfway through that video, but pretty sure his end point is exactly what pissed me off tonight playing.

Blizz seems to be balancing the game around the '50% winrate' but the problem is they are doing it with huge, ginormous swings of RNG. So, you tend to go on long streaks of wins and long streaks of losses, but that's tilting as fuck. Winning 10 games in a row does not feel nearly as good as losing 10 games in a row feels bad.
Going 1 win, 1 loss, 1 win, 1 loss, etc.. or 2 wins, 2 losses, etc.. feels much more enjoyable. I know, because I am literally at the end of a 8 game in a row losing streak tonight, after being like 9-2 yesterday. I'm certainly tilted as fuck now, and I wasn't super happy yesterday.

By giving more rewards for small 'technical' plays, a better player eeks out a few extra wins here and there. But, in hearthstone, it's very hard to know when you made the right play 'on average' because you got so completely blown out that it didn't matter. In MTG, I won because I'd take my 40/60 matchups and turn them into 50/50s or even 60/40s against bad players. In hearthstone, the bad player isn't punished very much for playing badly, so if his deck is favored over yours, there isn't much you can do about it. Just have to hope they don't draw the most relevant cards, and you do.

I get that blizz wants to cater to casuals, they are the majority of the playerbase, but the constant memes about RNG show that even the casual players get fed up with it. I don't know who the fuck at blizz thinks we just want more and more and more and more RNG. We enjoy certain amounts of fun RNG and controlled RNG (i.e. Yogg, or resurrect effects) not ALL RNG effects. We do NOT like when we get a 3/3 faceless manipulator off our firelands portal and lose a game we were otherwise winning. Or, our opponents get a lightwarden off our hungry dragon, with a resto totem out and 3 damaged minions so they swing lethal for 20 damage. Being on the good side of it isnt conversely enjoyable either. Overall, it just creates a shitty experience for one player and an 'ok' experience for the other.

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Fully agreed. I had a run the other day on a tempo mage where i went 15:5 (low teens ladder). Then the next couple of days, i must have gone something like 5:15. The 15:5 felt really good, but as you said, the 5:15 felt way worse than the 15:5 felt good. Also, i just didn't see what i was doing differently, or incorrectly, in order to better my play. I was just getting obliterated by higher value spells/minions.

On the issue of RNG, every time i get bailed out by Yogg via crazy RNG, i can't help but feel bad. I've won a bunch of games that i had no business winning through "PRAISE YOGG", and i've lost a bunch that i should have won in the same way. Pyroblast to your own face? NP! Wipe your board? NP! Give his minions +atk and windfury? NP! heh...

I got a 5 priest win quest so I am trying out the res deck. I absolutely cannot beat hunter...ever.

Origin said:

Excellent video. I'm part of the casuals that agrees with this logic. I love the game of Hearthstone.

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I had a similar rant about arena the other day, but turns out the issues are related, it just is effecting arena more imo, due to the card dilution. RNG effects all aspects of arena, starting from pick 1, whereas in constructed you can at least make your deck and reduce RNG on that end if you choose. You often have to pick high variance cards in arena, as the other options are so bad.

I won't rehash the entire argument here, but if anyone is interested.

I see no reason they can't effectively copy MTG's format for draft, take the 2 most recent sets combined with vanilla. Balance the offering bonuses so that decks are made up of around 25% vanilla, 50% recent 'big' set, 25% recent adventure, on average. This lets them design new sets with archetypes/mechanics in mind for arena as well.

edit: spoilered reddit post, didn't realize it would copy/paste it if I just put the link.

Seriously though... When can we expect a nerf to Fiery War Axe? That shit is stupid how OP it is. Especially given the hero power and the supporting spells/minions. Holy fuck lol.

I don't think they'll ever really change any core set cards at this point. They did that for awhile until new expansions started coming out. I can't remember the last time they changed a core set card now.
On it's own, it's not that bad. It's one of warrior's best core cards, for sure, but it's the combination of all the other support they have right now that's making them so good.

Honestly, I'd love to see them give some kind of weapons to EVERY class, so then anti-weapon cards are reasonable to run in most lists. They are so niche right now, great against some people and pretty worthless against others.
The atiesh you get from from Medivh is a great design idea, imo, but they could expand on that idea a lot more.
examples:
Druid: Beast claws, 3 mana, 2/2, battlecry: If you control a beast, gain 3 armor.
Mage: Wand of power, 1 mana, 0/2, every time you cast a spell lose 1 durability. +1 spellpower.
Priest: Staff of shielding, 3 mana, 1/4, whenever a friendly minion takes damage, reduce it by 1 and lose 1 durability.
Warlock: Burning skull, 2 mana, 1/2, whenever you kill a minion with this weapon, draw a card.

Those were all just off the top of my head, so might be bad or broken, dunno, just illustrating the concepts

Enzee said:

I can't remember the last time they changed a core set card now.

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Been watching Kolento play tempo Onyx priest all day, looks fun. If any priest quest shows up this week then I'm going to try Volazj and Chrome for lulz.

First world problems: Stuck playing aggro shaman in casual to clear dailies because my internet has been terrible lately and I don't want to randomly lose stars.

Twilight Sparkle said:

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Yea, I was serious. I didnt play for over a year, I figured the changes that happened in april, when they introduced standard, were older then that. Kinda surprised they did that big of a change to the core set that recently.