Galakrond's Awakening heroic first impressions

I just finished the first chapter of heroic for both sides, and I have to say I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the bosses so far. In terms of difficulty, they're a step up from most of the kharazan and Frozen Throne bosses, but still a bit too easy for my tastes. The other thing that bugged me a little is that in the EVIL wing, the last fight felt significantly easier than the other two.

I expect they'll do a bit of balance tweaking in the upcoming days; personally I hope the next chapters are a bit spicier. Also, does anyone know whether we're going to need 700 or 1400 gold each week, IE whether you have to unlock both halves of a chapter individually?

The EVIL half felt a lot easier than the League half (I still have yet to beat that last bird boss who gives minions reborn) I feel like for the most part you just have to play a "good deck" and you have a fair chance.

Some of the bosses were pretty interesting though. That one freeze boss with 150 provided an interesting deck building challenge, and the other boss with the 1 mana 4/4 hero power was also a bit of a challenge.

I was just to start a similar thread ; glad I checked before I duplicate the discussion.
It did felt a tad too easy, even by heroic 1st Act standards ... I mean, the very first chapter(s) are always a tad easier than their grand finally, so I'm not too surprised here. What surprised me tho, was that when switching to Heroic, all of a sudden, its just up to you and your decks. They got us used to have exclusive cards for the adventure mode, cards that were different from your usual ladder experience, and now just your usual collection manager. That part got me underwhelmed. I guess I was expecting some sort of dungeon run kind of format/draft, but oh well, lets play some Galakrond's list ..!

I liked the adventures so far throughout the year, as far as story telling goes, and now appreciated the double feature E.V.I.L./Explorers. I'm still looking forward for the next chapter, but do hope they will spice it up. I want that card back to symbolize something else than that day when I walked in the park.

So far unimpressed.

I just waltzed through the evil side with just Quest Hunter. Didn't even put any techs in.

The decks you face are basically just average ladder decks with a slightly more unfair hero power, which is made up for by them running terrible cards and just making bad decisions overall.

Chenvaala is literally just elementals and once you got rid of both Living Dragonflames their entire gameplan sort of crashes.

Honestly, as long as you run some sort of recovery pretty much any deck can beat them

Maybe the Explorer side is more difficult, but so far I'm not sure if there'S even any boss that can't just be cheesed with Exodia/Mecha'thun....or just ye olde Jade Idol spam

So far all of the bosses can be cheesed out with the usual suspects, heck I beat more than half of them with Shirvallah paladin. The reborn guy was a bit tricky though, he's pretty good against most board clears, but he gets absolutely demolished by Psychic Scream, so reanimator priest with Velen, Maly and good stuff did the trick for me. 

But a decent draw with Exodia mage should work as well; even with one mana advantage that guy is still pretty slow for a final boss. I suppose budget players could probably beat him with Divine Spirit/[Hearthstone Card (Inner Fir) Not Found]e  priest and a lucky draw with Wild Pyromancer. Silence is also obviously very strong in this fight.

You can always choose to not cheese them. You can build sub-optimal or straight-up meme decks and challenge yourself that way.

I mean, how do you design a boss that's fun but can't be cheesed out by the 3000+ cards in the game? It's the reason they switched to the Dungeon Run style in the first place.

Quote From MurlocAggroB

You can always choose to not cheese them. You can build sub-optimal or straight-up meme decks and challenge yourself that way.

I mean, how do you design a boss that's fun but can't be cheesed out by the 3000+ cards in the game? It's the reason they switched to the Dungeon Run style in the first place.

which is why I will maintain that they should have stuck with Dungeon Runs. I don't want to handicap myself just for the sake of not winning too fast.

In fact I am building suboptimally because I have disenchanted so many Wild cards that I can't even build most of the appropriate decks, and it's still boring.

Just take for instance Dr. Boom. He doesn't even have a strategy. It's just like "hey remember Bomb  Warrior? Let's play against that for a while.

Now I'M currently stuck against him, because the game insists on not letting me draw Frostlich Jaina before turn 10, so I get to retry over and over against a boss that doesn't really challenge me in any way beyond having to survive until I draw the card that beats him.

The entire point of PvE content is to give you an experience that you can't get and challenge you to figure out ways to play around the boss strategy....instead we get watered-down ladder decks from past metas. That doesn't exactly spark much joy....especially considering that I liked Uldum so much that I bothered to beat every single level with every character....both normal and Heroic

I've played Big priest and won all heroic matches at 1st try.

So easy. :( 

I am enjoying this adventure because it is something different. It has been a while since we have had to build our own decks to tackle each boss one by one instead of getting semi random decks to beat a random array of bosses in one go. I do enjoy dungeon run style content, but I don't really need 8 different versions of the same sort of thing. It is nice to have a different mode.

I do think that they could have done the bosses better though. If the bosses were less generic than just a couple of cards with a "good" hero power and they had a stronger theme then it would made deck building a lot more interesting. For example, Lord Marrowgar was a very well designed boss because you had to build a special deck to defeat him. You couldn't just play a 'good deck' and have a fair chance. Whereas with bosses like Dr Boom are just kind of boring because there isn't too much of a big theme, just sort of okay-ish cards. 

I just wish the bosses were more interesting and more of a deck building challenge.

Quote From MurlocAggroB

You can always choose to not cheese them. You can build sub-optimal or straight-up meme decks and challenge yourself that way.

I mean, how do you design a boss that's fun but can't be cheesed out by the 3000+ cards in the game? It's the reason they switched to the Dungeon Run style in the first place.

That's a fair point. I suppose these heroic challenges would be a bit more tricky for players with very limited card pools.

One way to address this issue would be to make these kinds of adventures standard-only (I.e for the standard card pool available at that time, not one that refreshes). That would make it a lot easier for the devs to create challenging bosses that can still be beaten by the much more limited card pool in any given standard set.

Another alternative would be to introduce a third difficulty tier for masochists with access to all of the cheese available in wild.

Alright, i'm through all of them now

Evil side was just way too easy, but I guess that comes with being the free wing. Wouldn't want to turn away potential buyers by making heroic too hard there.

Good side was a mixed bag. Dr. Boom is mostly just obnoxious, but vulnerable to so many grinding strategies. Frostlich Jaina is good, Auctioneer Jade Druid probably works as well. Since he tends to magnetize everything running silence helps a lot. If anyone wants a challenge, try playing a draw heavy combo deck and pull off the combo before his bombs kill you.

The Avalanche is actually the only boss I thought had a fun design. I was testing with Quest Hunter only to get completely blown out by freeze spam into 4 Molten Giants....so I switched over to Mecha'thun Warlock and almost got rekt because of his Mountain Giants. I still beat him, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It's a well designed boss that punishes you for just playing for a quick board as well as stalling for a combo, but never being quite unfair enough to be frustrating.

Kriziki was just kind of boring. Her AI is absolutely garbage (I also noticed that while the AI understands how Doomsayer works and won't play into it...the same doesn't apply to Depth Charge...at least Kriziki doesn't. I suppose playing a minion and heropowering it to get a 1-health version of it is better than not having a board in their mind). Took two turns with Mecha'thun because I realized that I need Reno in their for the lategame heal. Now that the deck is perfected I fear it will be the default way to beat any boss that doesn't straight up counter it.

Overall I'm not really happy with it so far. For this being the return to the roots of PvE content I expected at least some sort of innovation. Then again, the first chapters are usually pretty unimpressive and I assume stuff gets a bit more challenging later on.