I did Yogg Event #8: Mountain Rescue (Heroic Avalanchan with no casualties) using a modified Dragon comp. It relies on Onyxia, so it doesn't fit within the definition of a budget comp, but the other five mercs are rares, so it's relatively accessible. The final fight has a nice tank (Kazakus summoning taunt golems) + DPS (Onyxia) + healer (Sinestra) role distribution.
None of the existing tags really fit for events (like the current Yogg event): I considered "farming" or "achievement hunting", but neither really applies. It would be nice if a party could be tagged as designed for an event. Ideally the event + task could be selected, similar to how Tavern Brawls are handled, but just a single "event" tag would already be an improvement.
In the Mercenaries deck builder, if I add Kazakus, Golem Shaper to the party, I get to choose from 6 pieces of equipment instead of 3. It looks like 3 of them actually belong to Kazakus, while the other 3 belong to Valeera. For the other five mercs in the party I was offered the right 3 pieces of equipment, so I'm assuming that the builder itself is working fine but there is some incorrect data in the DB used to populate it.
Found this expansion through the second installment of the series. Overall I love the flavor of the set and how the risk and reward Doom Clock mechanic works. I looked through the entire 135 card set since I was interested to see the full set and scope of the project (in terms of Constructed mode) and I believe the themes and playstyles blend very well across each class and the expansion as a whole. While I won't go into a full and thorough critique and card review, I at least wanted to cover some specific cases and cards that were "pain points" for me while I was soaking in this expansion.
Firstly covering two pain points of the main and major mechanic of the expansion, Doom Clock.
Currently the Keyword tooltip box reads, "Once you activate it, it counts turns towards your inevitable death. Keep resetting it or stop it to survive it."
A few things about this description look and feel too wordy or longwinded to make it seem like it would fit and exist in Hearthstone. Now I understand that Hearthstone has been reaching a point where the devs are beginning to try more unique and ambitious designs in the game. But look at Murder at Castle Nathria's keywords/designs just revealed. Infuse's description is incredibly concise, clear, and to the point.
So in my view and opinion as a semi-experienced game dev (currently in college for game design and have worked on teams for multiple course's game projects), I believe the Doom Clock keyword should be condensed to this: "Counts down X number of turns. Upon reaching 0, your Hero is destroyed."
This version of the description is much more concise and clear how it operates. Since cards utilizing the keywords set, pause, or stop the Doom Clock themselves, the only information the actual keyword needs to provide is what is happening (the turn countdown) and what happens when the countdown reaches 0 (you die/lose). Any extra information is either unneeded or can be experienced and learned from in-game or via gameplay footage the devs create for marketing.
The second aspect of the Doom Clock keyword that stood out as a pain point to me is that any card that references setting the clock reads "Set your Doom Clockon X turns." The word usage of "on" here looks and feels very odd to me. Why doesn't the effect just read, "Set your Doom Clockto 3." This wording of the description keeps the completely same effect and even cuts off the word "turn" at the end which can (and should) make text formatting on more advanced cards easier and cleaner. And setting your Doom Clockto a number makes it easy and obvious to connect to the keyword because you can then hover over the card and see that the number being set is the "X" in the description.
Secondly, on to some specific cards that stood out to me.
Mal'Ganis the Inevitable: Unless you have been able to set up some form of card testing environment to feel out how Doom Clock plays out in fairly representative games, the Immune part of this card's effect seems far too strong and accessible to be balanced for the game. The Immune keyword in Hearthstone has always been either temporary or in some way interactable with. In the case of the currently existing Mal'Ganis in Hearthstone, he only provides your HeroImmune while he is alive on the board. If your opponent can kill him off, they can then start interacting with your Hero again. As it stands with this card's current design, if you get him down on the board with the Battlecry trigger, you'll have a permanent 9/7 on board for the rest of the game. NOTHING would be able to destroy or interact with it. I tried to come up with an alternative design or keyword to take the place of Immune but honestly it would change the card too much if you are trying to keep its design a callback to the old Mal'Ganis. This is also why I believe the Hearthstone devs themselves have not created a retrain of Mal'Ganis yet, because whatever they would design for a new version of him would have to be something completely new or different than what his existing version does and is themed around (Demons and Hero Immunity).
Doomer: I feel like the aura effect, "Your Doom Clock is paused." makes more sense than the current description, because the current description's word choice of "move" could be misconstrued as a physical action rather than temporal action, especially across card translations throughout the world. Pausing a clock makes more sense anyway, and the aura effect remains the same of preventing the Doom Clock's countdown from increasing or lowering. Also, a paused clock can be stopped (which the Bringer legendaries do) whereas it is unclear if an unmovable clock can or can't be stopped.
Future Memories: Currently this card's effect is incredibly confusing and unclear to the average player, as well as not accounting for / being worded correctly to make sense on both the player's turn and the opponent's turn. A more clear and understandable version of this effect, which retains the same outcome/goal of the card and can still be formatted well should read, "Secret: When your hero takes fatal damage, prevent it, become Immune, and restart that turn (Without this Secret)."
Doomsage Arkaan: Overall the majority of the Bringer legendaries' effects are worded in ways that are clear and understandable enough to make sense to the average player. However this card's effect is the exception and actually made me do a double take on it since the wording didn't make total sense to me when you described the card as super powerful/impactful. It made me realize that these Bringer legendaries would really benefit if they utilized the "(Upgrades when X.)" wording instead of a frontloaded effect. Here is my rewording of the effect that retains the same outcome/goal and makes it more clear and understandable: "Battlecry: Stop your Doom Clock. The next three spells you cast cost (1) less. (Upgrades each active Doom Clock turn.)".
Overall I hope my feedback and criticisms help and improve your custom card designs in the future. I firmly believe that you're a great card designer and would work greatly on the Hearthstone (or another card game) development team if that's your goal down the line. However I do believe that there is some wording and grammar aspects of card design that you need to work on and improve since there was a handful of other cards I didn't cover in this expansion set that had clarity or word choice issues. I'm not saying this to try to be rude or belittle you, it's just the only aspect of your card design that stands out to me as something that can be improved and learned from as you create more custom cards. Have a great rest of your day!
IMO dumb face decks are burn shaman, quest hunter, those on which you can't interact that much since the only thing they do is smack in the face with spells.
Although I dislike the decks you mentioned, at least they require the skill of knowing when to not over-extend, when to do value trades, value accumulation (shark turns), etc... They are dumb? Yeah, maybe. The dumbest? Don't think so.
I'm curious which aggro decks you consider "dumb face decks"? Because the current iteration of 'aggro' decks (murloc shaman, mech mage, mech paladin...) have very low skill floors & ceilings.
Unlike shadow priest & face hunter of the previous meta.
Anyway, right now it doesn't seem like any 40 health deck is good besides prestor druid which is barely playable. We'll see if they print more support for it otherwise they may very well die out already come next expansion.
Yes, agro will be stronger in boards than on direct damage, and that's exactly what I said, and I find it good actually. Playing the board game is more fun than healing and armoring up all game, which is the only "counter" against direct damage (apart from Renathal).
Burn shaman was one of the hardest decks to play of last expansion though. Knowing when to go face and how much chip damage you need to get in with your minions. Probably one of the hardest aggro decks of the past year and a half. And I wouldn't consider questline hunter an aggro deck either.
In fact, questline hunter usually beats control decks more than aggro decks because it has near infinite damage.
Anyway, looks like Renathal has been nothing more than a gimmick so far, only finding place in two or three tier 3 (at best) decks. It'll probably become even worse as we get more cards and decks become faster, outpacing decks with 40 cards even more than is already happening right now.
Flux, I literally never considered that the big final expansion might be to help with the transition into a 4 set rotation, but that is a brilliant deduction! Whether you thought of that or someone else pointed it out to you, bravo to whoever put that together.
Dupe clause is removed for Legendaries if you previously owned that legendary, so it is an easy explanation.
Isn't it removed from all cards once you've owned two non-golden copies of them as well? So if you own all the cards in a set, DE the nerfed cards, and then open up packs you won't be guaranteed anything other than not receiving more than two of the same Common, Rare, or Epic in the same pack (if that old rule still applies... might not as the duplicate protection makes it redundant)
Usually once they drop the patch with pre-orders the end of month packs switch to the upcoming set. The only difference is because of the timing this time we will get end of month rewards twice between the announcement patch and the set launch. So it's not really a "change" but just luck on the players' end to get more free packs prior to launch.
You could just not put the Shark in your deck, and hey presto! It's the "old type of Mech Mage".
Anyway, I doubt we'll see many mechs in Castle Nathria, if any. They have a negligible presence in the Shadowlands since they don't have souls to get sent there upon 'death', and the local denizens don't generally create them. I think some of Stewart's race made a few, so there could be a paladin mech, but I wouldn't hope for much more than that.
More than likely it won't be able to be silenced, but they did kind of hint that they could have a card or cards that can interact with locations. If they allow locations to be silenced you now have a board spot that is permanently taken by a token that can't do anything. The more likely is that a minion or spell might be able to destroy or remove locations from the board. But as Nirast said, if they have any cards that can interact with locations it would specifically call out that interaction. Such as "Destroy an enemy location" or "Remove an enemy location', something along those lines.
Mage and Paladin currently have Mech strategies, but personally would love to see some good Warrior mechs, maybe some additional good neutral mechs. Especially if they encourage board based play. Then maybe I can play the old type of Mech Mage in Wild like I really wanted before Shark came along.
I used the dragon comp. While there were a few close calls during the climb (only 2 health remaining in one case), it worked reliably in the boss fight.
If you haven't unlocked Tidemistress Athissa's equipment yet, that's another reason to use her over any other naga.
3rd July update: Murloc Shudderwock Shaman, ft. Prince Renathal
It has been a while since I have taken an active interest in Wild Hearthstone. 3 months since I last published a video. I see a new Shudderwock deck? Now I am interested again! Murlocs. So many Murlocs?!
Add Mercenaries party tag for events
Agreed. We'll have one on our next site deploy!
Beat That Bounty Boss!
I did Yogg Event #8: Mountain Rescue (Heroic Avalanchan with no casualties) using a modified Dragon comp. It relies on Onyxia, so it doesn't fit within the definition of a budget comp, but the other five mercs are rares, so it's relatively accessible. The final fight has a nice tank (Kazakus summoning taunt golems) + DPS (Onyxia) + healer (Sinestra) role distribution.
Add Mercenaries party tag for events
None of the existing tags really fit for events (like the current Yogg event): I considered "farming" or "achievement hunting", but neither really applies. It would be nice if a party could be tagged as designed for an event. Ideally the event + task could be selected, similar to how Tavern Brawls are handled, but just a single "event" tag would already be an improvement.
Mercenaries deck builder shows Valeera's equipment in addition to Kazakus'
In the Mercenaries deck builder, if I add Kazakus, Golem Shaper to the party, I get to choose from 6 pieces of equipment instead of 3. It looks like 3 of them actually belong to Kazakus, while the other 3 belong to Valeera. For the other five mercs in the party I was offered the right 3 pieces of equipment, so I'm assuming that the builder itself is working fine but there is some incorrect data in the DB used to populate it.
I was wrong the game is fixed
Favorite nerf of all and it's a sneaky one.
Scout cant' land on Viktor, Pantheon, or Aresnal anymore.
So it guarantees two turn lethal with these cards even if u high roll elusive spell shield.
Jesus it's like Christmas
I'm sorry for everything I said bad about u Riot over this expansion
Let this brewers meta roll on.
KingKuba's "Bringers of Doom" Custom Set: Part 1 (Main Set) - Hearthstone Fan Community Spotlight
Found this expansion through the second installment of the series. Overall I love the flavor of the set and how the risk and reward Doom Clock mechanic works. I looked through the entire 135 card set since I was interested to see the full set and scope of the project (in terms of Constructed mode) and I believe the themes and playstyles blend very well across each class and the expansion as a whole. While I won't go into a full and thorough critique and card review, I at least wanted to cover some specific cases and cards that were "pain points" for me while I was soaking in this expansion.
Firstly covering two pain points of the main and major mechanic of the expansion, Doom Clock.
Currently the Keyword tooltip box reads, "Once you activate it, it counts turns towards your inevitable death. Keep resetting it or stop it to survive it."
A few things about this description look and feel too wordy or longwinded to make it seem like it would fit and exist in Hearthstone. Now I understand that Hearthstone has been reaching a point where the devs are beginning to try more unique and ambitious designs in the game. But look at Murder at Castle Nathria's keywords/designs just revealed. Infuse's description is incredibly concise, clear, and to the point.
So in my view and opinion as a semi-experienced game dev (currently in college for game design and have worked on teams for multiple course's game projects), I believe the Doom Clock keyword should be condensed to this: "Counts down X number of turns. Upon reaching 0, your Hero is destroyed."
This version of the description is much more concise and clear how it operates. Since cards utilizing the keywords set, pause, or stop the Doom Clock themselves, the only information the actual keyword needs to provide is what is happening (the turn countdown) and what happens when the countdown reaches 0 (you die/lose). Any extra information is either unneeded or can be experienced and learned from in-game or via gameplay footage the devs create for marketing.
The second aspect of the Doom Clock keyword that stood out as a pain point to me is that any card that references setting the clock reads "Set your Doom Clock on X turns." The word usage of "on" here looks and feels very odd to me. Why doesn't the effect just read, "Set your Doom Clock to 3." This wording of the description keeps the completely same effect and even cuts off the word "turn" at the end which can (and should) make text formatting on more advanced cards easier and cleaner. And setting your Doom Clock to a number makes it easy and obvious to connect to the keyword because you can then hover over the card and see that the number being set is the "X" in the description.
Secondly, on to some specific cards that stood out to me.
Mal'Ganis the Inevitable: Unless you have been able to set up some form of card testing environment to feel out how Doom Clock plays out in fairly representative games, the Immune part of this card's effect seems far too strong and accessible to be balanced for the game. The Immune keyword in Hearthstone has always been either temporary or in some way interactable with. In the case of the currently existing Mal'Ganis in Hearthstone, he only provides your Hero Immune while he is alive on the board. If your opponent can kill him off, they can then start interacting with your Hero again. As it stands with this card's current design, if you get him down on the board with the Battlecry trigger, you'll have a permanent 9/7 on board for the rest of the game. NOTHING would be able to destroy or interact with it. I tried to come up with an alternative design or keyword to take the place of Immune but honestly it would change the card too much if you are trying to keep its design a callback to the old Mal'Ganis. This is also why I believe the Hearthstone devs themselves have not created a retrain of Mal'Ganis yet, because whatever they would design for a new version of him would have to be something completely new or different than what his existing version does and is themed around (Demons and Hero Immunity).
Doomer: I feel like the aura effect, "Your Doom Clock is paused." makes more sense than the current description, because the current description's word choice of "move" could be misconstrued as a physical action rather than temporal action, especially across card translations throughout the world. Pausing a clock makes more sense anyway, and the aura effect remains the same of preventing the Doom Clock's countdown from increasing or lowering. Also, a paused clock can be stopped (which the Bringer legendaries do) whereas it is unclear if an unmovable clock can or can't be stopped.
Future Memories: Currently this card's effect is incredibly confusing and unclear to the average player, as well as not accounting for / being worded correctly to make sense on both the player's turn and the opponent's turn. A more clear and understandable version of this effect, which retains the same outcome/goal of the card and can still be formatted well should read, "Secret: When your hero takes fatal damage, prevent it, become Immune, and restart that turn (Without this Secret)."
Doomsage Arkaan: Overall the majority of the Bringer legendaries' effects are worded in ways that are clear and understandable enough to make sense to the average player. However this card's effect is the exception and actually made me do a double take on it since the wording didn't make total sense to me when you described the card as super powerful/impactful. It made me realize that these Bringer legendaries would really benefit if they utilized the "(Upgrades when X.)" wording instead of a frontloaded effect. Here is my rewording of the effect that retains the same outcome/goal and makes it more clear and understandable: "Battlecry: Stop your Doom Clock. The next three spells you cast cost (1) less. (Upgrades each active Doom Clock turn.)".
Overall I hope my feedback and criticisms help and improve your custom card designs in the future. I firmly believe that you're a great card designer and would work greatly on the Hearthstone (or another card game) development team if that's your goal down the line. However I do believe that there is some wording and grammar aspects of card design that you need to work on and improve since there was a handful of other cards I didn't cover in this expansion set that had clarity or word choice issues. I'm not saying this to try to be rude or belittle you, it's just the only aspect of your card design that stands out to me as something that can be improved and learned from as you create more custom cards. Have a great rest of your day!
IMO 40 Health is the best that happened
Burn shaman was one of the hardest decks to play of last expansion though. Knowing when to go face and how much chip damage you need to get in with your minions. Probably one of the hardest aggro decks of the past year and a half. And I wouldn't consider questline hunter an aggro deck either.
In fact, questline hunter usually beats control decks more than aggro decks because it has near infinite damage.
Anyway, looks like Renathal has been nothing more than a gimmick so far, only finding place in two or three tier 3 (at best) decks. It'll probably become even worse as we get more cards and decks become faster, outpacing decks with 40 cards even more than is already happening right now.
IMO 40 Health is the best that happened
Flux, I literally never considered that the big final expansion might be to help with the transition into a 4 set rotation, but that is a brilliant deduction! Whether you thought of that or someone else pointed it out to you, bravo to whoever put that together.
Hearthstone’s Fire Festival for Summer 2022 Is Underway - Free Packs and Hero Skins
Isn't it removed from all cards once you've owned two non-golden copies of them as well? So if you own all the cards in a set, DE the nerfed cards, and then open up packs you won't be guaranteed anything other than not receiving more than two of the same Common, Rare, or Epic in the same pack (if that old rule still applies... might not as the duplicate protection makes it redundant)
Hearthstone’s Fire Festival for Summer 2022 Is Underway - Free Packs and Hero Skins
Usually once they drop the patch with pre-orders the end of month packs switch to the upcoming set. The only difference is because of the timing this time we will get end of month rewards twice between the announcement patch and the set launch. So it's not really a "change" but just luck on the players' end to get more free packs prior to launch.
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
It's okay, when Paladin is good the meta is in shambles
KingKuba's "Bringers of Doom" Custom Set: Part 2 (Battlegrounds) - Hearthstone Fan Community Spotlight
So, how do you guys like this one? :D
(Worth noting - Golden Rewards of 3 turns Doom Clock are upgraded to 4 turns - would be pretty busted if it was 6 instead.)
Slowly prepare for the mini-set!
Beat That Bounty Boss!
I'm stuck on Belinda Stonehearth Bounty. Any advice would be appreciated.
Edit: Never mind, I finally got it with Murlocs & Brightwing.
RhinOTK Hunter
Good deck, but against evolve shaman has no power, because revolve and devolve.
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
This card for me is not good like all similarly cards for paladin. I play most evolve shaman so i need get devolve or revolve and i am chill.
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
You could just not put the Shark in your deck, and hey presto! It's the "old type of Mech Mage".
Anyway, I doubt we'll see many mechs in Castle Nathria, if any. They have a negligible presence in the Shadowlands since they don't have souls to get sent there upon 'death', and the local denizens don't generally create them. I think some of Stewart's race made a few, so there could be a paladin mech, but I wouldn't hope for much more than that.
silencing a location?
More than likely it won't be able to be silenced, but they did kind of hint that they could have a card or cards that can interact with locations. If they allow locations to be silenced you now have a board spot that is permanently taken by a token that can't do anything. The more likely is that a minion or spell might be able to destroy or remove locations from the board. But as Nirast said, if they have any cards that can interact with locations it would specifically call out that interaction. Such as "Destroy an enemy location" or "Remove an enemy location', something along those lines.
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
Mage and Paladin currently have Mech strategies, but personally would love to see some good Warrior mechs, maybe some additional good neutral mechs. Especially if they encourage board based play. Then maybe I can play the old type of Mech Mage in Wild like I really wanted before Shark came along.
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
No Standard play! I used him in a Wild Odd Paladin a ton after he was printed!
How to Complete Yogg-Saron Mercenaries Event Task 5 "Shallow Waters" - Tips & Parties Inside
I used the dragon comp. While there were a few close calls during the climb (only 2 health remaining in one case), it worked reliably in the boss fight.
If you haven't unlocked Tidemistress Athissa's equipment yet, that's another reason to use her over any other naga.
How to Complete Yogg-Saron Mercenaries Event Task 4 "Stay Cool" - Tips & Parties Inside
this guides are so damn good with the image of all skills for every enemy, good job indeed keep like this for the next mercs event plz thanks
New Paladin Minion - Stewart the Steward
Is this creature an owl with horns and wing-claws?
Also, the art looks like a close match to the one next (later today) in the reveal schedule.
Darkseeker's channel - 13th November update: KOtsosKOtsos' Reno Evolve Shudderwock Shaman - ft. Archivist Elysiana
3rd July update: Murloc Shudderwock Shaman, ft. Prince Renathal
It has been a while since I have taken an active interest in Wild Hearthstone. 3 months since I last published a video. I see a new Shudderwock deck? Now I am interested again! Murlocs. So many Murlocs?!
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https://youtu.be/sL4O9qKpdNg
3 New Paladin Cards Revealed for Castle Nathria by Hearthstone Esports - Tune In for Details!
Poor Lothraxion the Redeemed rotated 4 months ago without seeing any play and then you do this to us... this is just... this is just...
New Paladin Minion - Sinful Sous Chef
Cannibalism, clearly.