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Hearthstone | Posted by | 6 years, 7 months ago
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Interesting video: Just how expensive in dust is the meta compared to previous?

 

Eye-catching how much dust it costs compared to say The Witchwood era. He should have gone back to a League of Explorers-era meta though, as highlander decks have been reintroduced into standard and effective singletons tend not to use the cheap stuff. But ... were the original Reno Jackson decks cheaper than today's Reno-using Mage?

Also, take note that the argument of "make aggro decks because they're cheap" is falling flat, according to the numbers.

Old Guardian is a decent HS streamer on YouTube to check out for those learning the game, looking for deck ideas or how-tos on using popular decks. (Also has a unique voice, he should be cast as a magicka-using Nord quest giver in The Elder Scrolls games.)

Bloke says he's going to promote budget decks soon, btw. Good on him.

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    Eye-catching how much dust it costs compared to say The Witchwood era. He should have gone back to a League of Explorers-era meta though, as highlander decks have been reintroduced into standard and effective singletons tend not to use the cheap stuff. But ... were the original Reno Jackson decks cheaper than today's Reno-using Mage?

    Also, take note that the argument of "make aggro decks because they're cheap" is falling flat, according to the numbers.

    Old Guardian is a decent HS streamer on YouTube to check out for those learning the game, looking for deck ideas or how-tos on using popular decks. (Also has a unique voice, he should be cast as a magicka-using Nord quest giver in The Elder Scrolls games.)

    Bloke says he's going to promote budget decks soon, btw. Good on him.

  • It definitely feels more expensive. I play more and more wild as I can usually freshen up decks there with some new cards as opposed to needing add 3 or 4 new legendaries.

  • It's not that easy to make an apples-to-apples comparison. For example, for a player who plays only one deck, it matters how expensive the cheapest competitive deck is. For players playing multiple decks, you'd have to deduct the cost of cards that are used in multiple decks. For example Zilliax is in many decks, but you only have to craft him once. Control Warrior and Bomb Warrior have a lot of overlap, so if you have all the cards for one, crafting the other is a lot cheaper compared to starting from nothing. For the Witchwood, Genn and Baku were in several top-tier decks, so you could craft those once and play them in multiple decks.

    I do see an upward trend in the dust cost for decks. There are more legendaries and epics that are either archetype-defining or just so good that you want to run them. A significant number of the old legendaries were either useless or over-costed; while that felt bad when you drew one from a pack, if you didn't unpack one, you didn't have to craft it. The old epics were often situational, while the new sets have more archetype-specific epics that cannot be omitted or replaced without significantly weakening the deck.

    Another factor is that there are now two legendaries per class per set, while it used to be one until Un'Goro.

    In the days of the original Reno, adventures were relatively cheap, since you'd get the full set when you bought them. So their dust cost didn't really matter, since I don't think many people crafted those cards at the time they were released.

    With the nerfs and hall-of-fame rotations, a larger percentage of decks consists of rotating cards. While this is a good thing for producing fresh metas, it does mean that keeping up with Standard requires more new cards.

    I think it would be interesting to have a video or article that looks a bit deeper into the costs of decks. What percentage is due to legendaries and what percentage due to epics? What percentage is neutral cards vs class-specific cards? How many of the expensive cards are essential vs how many could be replaced by cheaper alternatives without breaking the deck?

    As for Blizzard addressing the cost issue, what I'd really like to see is a no-triplicate rule for epics, like the no-duplicate rule for legendaries. I always feel really bad when I open the third copy of an epic, since it's worth only 100 dust while crafting an epic that I didn't get will cost 400. It also means I'm very reluctant to craft epics early on, since I might get them from a pack later.

    • Quote From Zelgadis

      As for Blizzard addressing the cost issue, what I'd really like to see is a no-triplicate rule for epics, like the no-duplicate rule for legendaries. I always feel really bad when I open the third copy of an epic, since it's worth only 100 dust while crafting an epic that I didn't get will cost 400. It also means I'm very reluctant to craft epics early on, since I might get them from a pack later.

      I don't know about that. I got a lot of epic extras on opening day for Saviors and it gave me enough dust to almost have the Highlander Mage deck (I don't have SIamat; I traded in the golden Hunter Quest for Zephrys).

      I'm surprised Siamat is getting a lot of play. I've subbed in a number of cards for it (getting some play for the golden High Inquisitor Whitemane I opened for Quest Control Priest and Highlander Warrior; I use the Ragnaros summoning card for mage).

      But at this stage I've already spent the dust I got from my packs. Can't check out Quest Paladin. It was two months or so that I spent the dust I earned from the last expansion's opening day.

      • Quote From ShotgunSoul
        Quote From Zelgadis

        As for Blizzard addressing the cost issue, what I'd really like to see is a no-triplicate rule for epics, like the no-duplicate rule for legendaries. I always feel really bad when I open the third copy of an epic, since it's worth only 100 dust while crafting an epic that I didn't get will cost 400. It also means I'm very reluctant to craft epics early on, since I might get them from a pack later.

        I don't know about that. I got a lot of epic extras on opening day for Saviors and it gave me enough dust to almost have the Highlander Mage deck (I don't have SIamat; I traded in the golden Hunter Quest for Zephrys).

        You'd still have the option to disenchant epics you don't want to use: it's never worse to get a new epic over an extra copy.

        Quote From ShotgunSoul

        I'm surprised Siamat is getting a lot of play. I've subbed in a number of cards for it (getting some play for the golden High Inquisitor Whitemane I opened for Quest Control Priest and Highlander Warrior; I use the Ragnaros summoning card for mage).

        Siamat is a decent card in many decks, but he's not essential to any archetype. He's also not so strong that you'd want him in decks even when there is no significant synergy, unlike Zilliax. I did craft Siamat, not for any particular deck but because it's a good neutral filler for the 7-mana slot and likely useful for elemental synergy in Wild.

        Quote From ShotgunSoul

        But at this stage I've already spent the dust I got from my packs. Can't check out Quest Paladin. It was two months or so that I spent the dust I earned from the last expansion's opening day.

        I still have quite a bit of dust left, but my wish list is longer than the number of cards I can afford to craft. One of the reasons is that there are a lot of playable cards in Uldum, which is actually a good thing. But it does make it more difficult to decide what is worth crafting and what is not.

        While Quest Paladin looks like fun, since it's specific to reborn minions, a significant part of the deck is effectively fixed. I don't expect we'll see the reborn keyword used for new cards any time soon, so it might not age as well as the other quests.

  • Yeah this makes it hard for us relatively new players to stay interested. All the Meta decks are way out of my league still.

    It is very hard to climb the ladder now, and even in casual I am getting my butt kicked most of the time.

  • I have five legendaries, necessary for Highlander mage, it's not enough. I'm missing 3 legendaries plus 2 epics. You have to be a big baller to afford that deck.

  • I haven't watched the video yet but I still am doubtful over the whole premise of new metas being more expensive than old metas debate. The amount of epics & legendaries do not really increase and there is no guarantee that any legendary or epic is going to actually stick for long in a given 'top tier deck'. 

    Although, in a slightly digressing tone, I will say that again this goes to show why standard is much more expensive and flawed in this aspect than wild will ever be. If you bite the initial short term bullet and craft more cards for only a few decks in wild (or just kept your cards & never mass dusted them in the first place) then new expansions are less likely to completely overhaul/overthrow the decks you already have that are viable in wild. This means that new expansions do not pressure you into that whole proverbial carrot-on-a-stick situation that is always present in standard. Standard players 'have to' dust their entire collections AND spend more money just to stay competitive every 3-6ish months while in wild the costs of new metas is often times able to be ignored because you don't have to chase new shinies every single expansion.

    • Quote From LyraSilvertongue

      I haven't watched the video yet but I still am doubtful over the whole premise of new metas being more expensive than old metas debate. The amount of epics & legendaries do not really increase and there is no guarantee that any legendary or epic is going to actually stick for long in a given 'top tier deck'. 

      Comparing the end of a meta would be more representative than the start. But I remember a time when expensive decks were 10k dust, while currently half the meta decks are over 10k dust, with Highlander Mage even close to 20k.

      Quote From LyraSilvertongue

      Although, in a slightly digressing tone, I will say that again this goes to show why standard is much more expensive and flawed in this aspect than wild will ever be. If you bite the initial short term bullet and craft more cards for only a few decks in wild (or just kept your cards & never mass dusted them in the first place) then new expansions are less likely to completely overhaul/overthrow the decks you already have that are viable in wild. This means that new expansions do not pressure you into that whole proverbial carrot-on-a-stick situation that is always present in standard. Standard players 'have to' dust their entire collections AND spend more money just to stay competitive every 3-6ish months while in wild the costs of new metas is often times able to be ignored because you don't have to chase new shinies every single expansion.

      I think the root cause is the 1:4 disenchant/craft dust ratio. Dusting rotating cards only gives players a 25% discount on new crafts, so it doesn't do much to make Standard more affordable. Giving up Wild for such a small return doesn't look like a good deal to me.

  • I did begin to suspect that something was up with the meta when I posted a Highlander deck only to discover that its crafting cost was 20,660 dust. Most of the non-SOU legendaries weren’t a product of crafts, but just the fact that the first legendary I opened was Antonidas, the first free dragon was Alexstrasza, and I’ve weirdly rolled into the Mage legendaries in each of the last expansions. (And here I’d been hoping to play Deathrattle Rogue.) So yes, while the costs have clearly crept up, I do think that it’s slightly fitting that in a “reboot” of an old expansion the reintroduction of singleton mechanics have created a reward structure for people who have older unplayed cards sitting around collecting dust. (Pun originally not intended...

  • Yes, it's way more expensive than it used to be. Obviously the large number of class legendaries is a significant issue but I don't think epics get enough criticism.  If you get unlucky with pack openings, you can basically end up paying for the equivalent of 2 or 3 legendaries in epics just to complete a deck. But hey, who needs a useful epic when you can have soooooo much fun playing cards like Desert Obelisk lolololol.

  • Well at first i thought that this expansion would be expensive for me because i liked a lot of cards and i always want the cards i like :) - but i almost got everything i wanted out of my packs so it wasn't that expensive for me.

    Of course if you're F2P or simply just want to craft the best ladder decks it could be expensive - at least Highlander Mage ;) 

  • I think blizzard should for a while now make the economy much more user friendly, either increase the rewards, or increase the quality of the rewards by that I mean:

    1. Make epics more common playing for 5 years, I did pre-order some expansions I have all commons and rare in some, but not even close to half the epics in any expansion except classic in which ai still miss 7 this is insane, I barely missed any daily quest since I started I would expect to have at least all classic by now.. But nope. 

    2. Make the rare or better card a discover, gwent did that's it's awesome makes you more likely to get what you want, feel less rng in packs, less bad about bad legendaries, avoid dupe epics. 

    3. Common disenchant gain 10 instead of 5 or/and rare disenchant gain 25, all other rarities have a 1/4 ratio, it would greatly help players craft what they want and make the collection more sane (hs is hell for f2p right now) 

    4. Use the class levels like in overwatch have them drop loot and scale endlessly, I currently have 9 classes at 60 yep..  Why not just use a system that is already in place, seems like a forgotten reward system. 

    5. 3 wins=20 gold nuff said.

     

  • This expansion everything seems to be prepared so that it makes the game more expansive. Most of the neutral legendaries and epics are crap. There's only ONE neutral epic that sees play. So you have to craft different class legendaries and epics for each different deck you want to play. Only zephrys and siamat go into multiple decks, other than that everything has its specific place. The costs are obviously high and this way of printing epics&legendaries makes it even worse.

  • And here' s Hearthstone Mathematics on the same topic, along with plenty of other interesting stats.

    Interesting bit: Some F2P players might have been burned by obtaining the single player package for Rise of Shadows, instead of saving up for Saviors.