Hey, thanks for your reply Demon and letting us know what the thoughts of the staff are so far. I won't try to change your mind about the things you've agreed upon and discarded already, but I'd like to focus the spotlight on one of the ideas that haven't been discussed much yet.
What honestly really pisses me off majorly are the ratings in the finalist voting. Each and every week the ratings of the cards go waaaaay down during the finalist voting and I just don't get why. There may be the rare exception to the rule but I just don't see how anybody could give 1 or 2 stars to our finalists applying fair rules. Those cards are generally balanced, flavorful and neatly executed. This gets not reflected in their ratings at all.
Now what might take the sting from this issue would be to not rate them card for card anymore, but instead ordering them from first place to last (or maybe just picking the top 3). That's what most people seem to do anyway: pick your favorite and downvote all the rest to oblivion. KANSAS' idea of having "card battles" where you always see two cards and pick your favorite would be another iteration of the same concept. Do you think this would be possible from a programming point of view?
On second thought, is this a problem for anyone else at all? What it comes down to is that I'm fine with getting told that the 7 other cards are better than mine / my favorite, but I can't seem to get over good cards getting rated a 2.something average.
Regarding prices, maybe we can talk Flux into dishing out a bronze Premium membership for a year for the person who accumulates the most wins during one season. In case of a draw I'd greatly enjoy a deciding competition. This could be epic! On top of that, we could also do a final vote for the card of the season.
When it comes to encourage participation, most of the above aims at just that. Picking up what Wailor said, I'd encourage Shadows to reach out to the winner of each competition and let them share their thoughts about their card in a weekly article like in the spotlight articles Demon does but smaller. This could be seen as some further encouragement and a reminder at the same time. Should be completely voluntarily of course.
How would extending the Finalist Phase work? I don't think comps should last more than a week, as that neat duration makes them easier to follow. So, we would need to cut out the Submission Phase or remove the Voting Phase altogether, but I don't know if either of those options are a good idea.
Regarding the participation issue, maybe we should put more announcements in the main page. Right now we only have the Design Conversations once a week, which sure, mention WCDC, but aren't focused on them. I think having a reminder one day before the submission phase ends and maybe on the finalist phase would help. Not sure if this would end up being too annoying for people not interested in comps, though.
Yeah, that sounds better when you explain with the dust gain, even when the worst happen, the epic and legends don't see any play at all. 1600 (4xlegend) +200 (2xepic) dusts worth a lot with just 2K gold.
Then again, on the other hand, I (forgot) still have 6 arena tickets, and 5 from this season reward, makes ~11 Sunken packs total (assuming 1 for each ticket). Between this miniset and 20 packs of new expansion, I really don't know.
We'll see how my luck goes opening those.
EDIT. Agh, I could only hope I make a mistake judging them and those legends are actually good. Even 2 of those worth buying the miniset if they're good.
I think the arena was fine right now. You can feel that the bad cards are out and when they toned down the glaive sharks and flipper friends it got a bit less samey. But the powerlevel is high right now but that feels ok. Still lose mostly to the usual suspects. Onyxia, collossals and sneed. But will keep playing and hoping it stays this level of broken.
I bet the card initially costed 7 mana and had Divine Shield on it. But thankfully, the HS team was able to nerf it in advance. I’m not too sure if a 5/5 with taunt matters at all in the current paladin list but we’ll have to see
Depends on the legendary itself. So far, none of those really intrigue me personally. And no, with 5 packs from the season reward, I reckon I'll get 'majority' of miniset commons, and some rares. I don't think I'll go as far as spending 20packs just for rares and commons.
With the diminishing returns on packs, I'd still rather use 2k gold on an unexciting mini-set than save it for future packs. In all likelihood that would only net me 1 underwhelming legendary plus less dust than is needed to craft one I do want. Given I could dust 3 of the mini-set legendaries to be in a similar place dust-wise, I'd be happy to have got all the extra rares (and 2 epics I guess) for 'free'.
Allari was generally perceived as boring, and I understand why. She's basically a minion with a basic keyword whose effect just gains stats, so I converted her into the rare Souldrinking Felbat.
To compensate being able to run two, its stats are now 5/2 (and it's also a Demon). As a point of reference, overkilling a 1/1 would result in a 6/6 with the old statline, while the new one is limited to 5/5. Maybe a 6/1 statline, which would become a 6/5, would be a nice middle ground, but I don't like Rager-like statlines lol
Finally, Deranged Shot gives Hunter a C'Thun card, which I believe the class was lacking. I had a hard time balancing the card, as the power level was much lower back then, especially for removal.
Feedback:
Demonxz95
I like the effect, it's pretty original and goes around a pretty frustrating mechanic. People are probably right about it being too expensive, though.
Besides this, I have some questions regarding to how this card interacts with other draw effects (and just with drawing at the beginning of the turn. Imagine you have 5 cards in your hand and use this. This would draw 5 cards and "remember" you still need to draw 3 more cards.
Now, at the beginning of your next turn, you draw one card. What would happen? Would the card draw simply not occur or would it be added to the remembered pending draws (adding to a total of 4).
Finally, when you draw all the "remembered" cards… Does the "cannot overdraw" effect still apply?
linkblade91
I wonder if this would work better as an Un'goro card, as the effect is pretty much Adapt (although the options are slightly different and the effects gained are completely random). Druid already has Living Mana in that expansion, so I don't know.
Besides that, would the Coral Treants also be Beasts? It's a bit lame, but corals are technically animals so 🤷🏼♂️
AeroJulwin
Hands down the best idea so far, could easily win the comp. It has some things to polish, though.
The white background is quite ugly, and the creature depicted, while cool, looks like a Totem more than like an Elemental. So, I suggest finding a regular fire elemental.
The wording should say "stores" instead of "store".
Maybe it has too much face potential with Fire AoE, especially with stuff that also hits the Guzzler itself (not sure if it exists right now). I don't know, I'd probably change it to target enemy minions only, but that might be too weak.
anchorm4n
The stats are definitely very strong for a 4 mana weapon, so I'd make the change AeroJulwin proposed.
Besides this, I'm not sure if the effect is a bit too simple for a legendary weapon, given it's basically a weaker version of Lifesteal. Maybe the fat stats make it such a strong control tool that the legendary status is warranted, I don't know.
- Priest got shafted. All their cards kinda only fits highlander and quest, and both archetype suck
Actually, I'm playing my take on Quest Priest on ladder and this is a very good meta to climb with it. Of course, if the opponent gets perfect cards, it can beat you, but otherwise it is a really good deck. Against attrition decks you win with Shard, against midrange/tempo you win with value cards. I love the 8 mana Whirlpool.
Your list must be superior to the ones Ive seen. For the most part quest priest feels very clunky, it never feels like the deck is in control of what is happening around it. I havent lost to one from the start of the expansion yet. The closest I came to a loss was with handbuff pally where my hand stunk like cat droppings and skipped the first three turns. Didnt really get going until turn 5, and my opponent had more cards in hand than myself. And yet somehow I still managed to win it.
I tried it once myself, and then never again. The loss of Palm Reading and Renew really hurt its viability, and I dont think any of the new cards would change anything. I say that they fit highlander and quest, but only because I cant see them fit anywhere else.
I encountered a strange bug. On PC the HS shows the old deck before edits, only on iPad I can see the current list.
So we are getting a ton of mech and dragon synergies while problematic cards like Snapdragon and all the Divers have not been removed yet… well looks like another garbage arena cycle.
Aren't there a ton of top decks that are midrange?
Aphelios Fae, Yuumi Pantheon, Scouts, Viego, Illaoi, Taliyah Ziggs, Deep, Bard. I mean these are all considerably pretty strong decks and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. I think it's the complete opposite where midrange is currently the arguably the best archetype right now just because these decks can get so much tempo while maintaining their value and hand state it's kinda crazy.
Even in this meta, aggro, control and combo still have a fair share of their decks that work even if they aren't at the top, I highly doubt these lists are considered as "bad".
Lol, I dont know what happened here, because I could have sworn Ive commented on this card here before.
Nevertheless,
This card sucks. The only reason why Im not rating this below 2 stars is because Barbaric Sorceress is in standard and there's the slight possibility you can play this on turn 7, which is something. Problems abundant with that idea, from running few spells to running big minions that will completely neuter your early turns.
And then even if you manage to get it out on 7, if your minions have neither taunt or rush you're essentially granting your opponent 7 charge minions with full mana. Worse still, if your opponent full clears your board, you've just lost 7 minions. So this card simply accelerates your death even when its working as intended.
In fact, Im not even sure if the best use of this card is to fill your board with stuff. In many cases you can just use this as a mega-dirty rat and get 7 minions from your opponent's deck out followed by an Equality (because you're very likely to get a pyro out anyway). Since you're playing control, it wouldn't matter as much as it would to your opponent.
90% of the time this card will suck hard in standard. But in wild, I wouldn't be too surprised to see some sort of OTK out of it.
I love the solo content, whether it be adventures, dungeon runs or these books. I'm curious as to what makes this one replayable though. Presumably the characters have different decks and hero powers, but I wonder if there's more.
We're entering into one of the most polarizing metas we've ever seen in LOR.
Winrates are down across the board and only very selective deck types are sucessful currently.
You have slow decks that go big, and slow decks that control.
You have aggro decks that go fast and burn decks that go burrr.
Midrange however, is arguable worse than its ever been and as a result is very unfriendly to brewing in general.
Oh you want to try playing Swain that's a 45%
Ekko not even on the map
Sundisc dead
Every bard deck is 50%
Generally speaking LOR is a game that is more fun when synergy is strong last patch with a million archetypes being viable, and is less fun when I just want to play cool stuff equals I feel like I have cancer and want to die.
This ultimately feels like a streamer expansion, like they got them all in a room to provide ideas for what they thought was fun and would help them climb and kinda neglected the whole 90% of the player base kind of thing.
Just my two cents, high synergy equals fun, card piles equals zzzzz.
I'm not even sure I'm seeing Champs flip anymore that aren't free like Annie or Illoi.
Like say what you want about movie time but players earned that sheeet.
That's the one I remembered where they said there'd be no adventures this year. The other reply had what I was looking for. I don't follow multiple sites for Hearthstone news, so I never saw that interview.
Seconded, this archetype is very fun and can win against more decks than one would think. Even when I’m playing less optimal cards like Lady Ashvane and Doctor Krastinov I can steal games against meta decks with a 10/3 hammer and Mr. Smite. Fully recommended!
Here's Coral Cluster with the changes suggested by AeroJulwin, and some editing to the wording.
Feedback:
Show Spoiler
anchorm4n - That is a lot of potential face damage, to the point where a deck might not even bother with the effect. I agree with the "Can't attack heroes" suggestion.
AeroJulwin - Maybe it should say "Stores"? Just to clarify 100% what is storing the damage (the Guzzler). Also, while the art's subject is cool-looking, the white-ish blank background makes it look very unnatural for a card. I like the gameplay side, though.
Wailor - Allari is ultimately a better Darius Crowley; personally, I don't find it compelling. It's more interesting than the spell, though. Sorry, that's not very helpful :/
Demonxz95 - The extra overdraw-protection is neat, but I honestly don't think anyone would play such an expensive card that only draws. Maybe slash the draw and Cost down to make it more appealing?
I feel I was quite negative, overall; apologies about that. I'm stressed about my job and super tired…
WCDC Season 5 Feedback Thread
Hey, thanks for your reply Demon and letting us know what the thoughts of the staff are so far. I won't try to change your mind about the things you've agreed upon and discarded already, but I'd like to focus the spotlight on one of the ideas that haven't been discussed much yet.
What honestly really pisses me off majorly are the ratings in the finalist voting. Each and every week the ratings of the cards go waaaaay down during the finalist voting and I just don't get why. There may be the rare exception to the rule but I just don't see how anybody could give 1 or 2 stars to our finalists applying fair rules. Those cards are generally balanced, flavorful and neatly executed. This gets not reflected in their ratings at all.
Now what might take the sting from this issue would be to not rate them card for card anymore, but instead ordering them from first place to last (or maybe just picking the top 3). That's what most people seem to do anyway: pick your favorite and downvote all the rest to oblivion. KANSAS' idea of having "card battles" where you always see two cards and pick your favorite would be another iteration of the same concept. Do you think this would be possible from a programming point of view?
On second thought, is this a problem for anyone else at all? What it comes down to is that I'm fine with getting told that the 7 other cards are better than mine / my favorite, but I can't seem to get over good cards getting rated a 2.something average.
Regarding prices, maybe we can talk Flux into dishing out a bronze Premium membership for a year for the person who accumulates the most wins during one season. In case of a draw I'd greatly enjoy a deciding competition. This could be epic! On top of that, we could also do a final vote for the card of the season.
When it comes to encourage participation, most of the above aims at just that. Picking up what Wailor said, I'd encourage Shadows to reach out to the winner of each competition and let them share their thoughts about their card in a weekly article like in the spotlight articles Demon does but smaller. This could be seen as some further encouragement and a reminder at the same time. Should be completely voluntarily of course.
Hearthstone's Wild Packs to Receive Legacy Set Cards in This Week's Game Update
Nice! Will have to open some packs later
WCDC Season 5 Feedback Thread
How would extending the Finalist Phase work? I don't think comps should last more than a week, as that neat duration makes them easier to follow. So, we would need to cut out the Submission Phase or remove the Voting Phase altogether, but I don't know if either of those options are a good idea.
Regarding the participation issue, maybe we should put more announcements in the main page. Right now we only have the Design Conversations once a week, which sure, mention WCDC, but aren't focused on them. I think having a reminder one day before the submission phase ends and maybe on the finalist phase would help. Not sure if this would end up being too annoying for people not interested in comps, though.
New Paladin Minion - Lightray
That card can fit into a big pally deck.
You don't lose the synergy with Vitality Surge and can be cheated using early pally spells. That card will se play some day for sure.
Miniset: anything exciting ?
Yeah, that sounds better when you explain with the dust gain, even when the worst happen, the epic and legends don't see any play at all.
1600 (4xlegend) +200 (2xepic) dusts worth a lot with just 2K gold.
Then again, on the other hand, I (forgot) still have 6 arena tickets, and 5 from this season reward, makes ~11 Sunken packs total (assuming 1 for each ticket). Between this miniset and 20 packs of new expansion, I really don't know.
We'll see how my luck goes opening those.
EDIT. Agh, I could only hope I make a mistake judging them and those legends are actually good. Even 2 of those worth buying the miniset if they're good.
New Hearthstone Arena Rotation and Drafting Changes With ‘Throne of the Tides Mini-Set’ in Patch 23.4
I think the arena was fine right now. You can feel that the bad cards are out and when they toned down the glaive sharks and flipper friends it got a bit less samey. But the powerlevel is high right now but that feels ok. Still lose mostly to the usual suspects. Onyxia, collossals and sneed. But will keep playing and hoping it stays this level of broken.
New Paladin Minion - Lightray
I bet the card initially costed 7 mana and had Divine Shield on it. But thankfully, the HS team was able to nerf it in advance. I’m not too sure if a 5/5 with taunt matters at all in the current paladin list but we’ll have to see
New Mage Minion - Submerged Spacerock
Good arena card. Unless Mage gets a reason to play this, it’ll be bad in standard.
Miniset: anything exciting ?
With the diminishing returns on packs, I'd still rather use 2k gold on an unexciting mini-set than save it for future packs. In all likelihood that would only net me 1 underwhelming legendary plus less dust than is needed to craft one I do want. Given I could dust 3 of the mini-set legendaries to be in a similar place dust-wise, I'd be happy to have got all the extra rares (and 2 epics I guess) for 'free'.
Too Much Is Not Enough - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Allari was generally perceived as boring, and I understand why. She's basically a minion with a basic keyword whose effect just gains stats, so I converted her into the rare Souldrinking Felbat.
To compensate being able to run two, its stats are now 5/2 (and it's also a Demon). As a point of reference, overkilling a 1/1 would result in a 6/6 with the old statline, while the new one is limited to 5/5. Maybe a 6/1 statline, which would become a 6/5, would be a nice middle ground, but I don't like Rager-like statlines lol
Finally, Deranged Shot gives Hunter a C'Thun card, which I believe the class was lacking. I had a hard time balancing the card, as the power level was much lower back then, especially for removal.
Feedback:
Besides this, I have some questions regarding to how this card interacts with other draw effects (and just with drawing at the beginning of the turn. Imagine you have 5 cards in your hand and use this. This would draw 5 cards and "remember" you still need to draw 3 more cards.
Besides that, would the Coral Treants also be Beasts? It's a bit lame, but corals are technically animals so 🤷🏼♂️
Besides this, I'm not sure if the effect is a bit too simple for a legendary weapon, given it's basically a weaker version of Lifesteal. Maybe the fat stats make it such a strong control tool that the legendary status is warranted, I don't know.
Miniset: anything exciting ?
I encountered a strange bug. On PC the HS shows the old deck before edits, only on iPad I can see the current list.
Here it is:
Standard · Quest Priest · by Alfi · 4 years, 3 months ago
New Hearthstone Arena Rotation and Drafting Changes With ‘Throne of the Tides Mini-Set’ in Patch 23.4
So we are getting a ton of mech and dragon synergies while problematic cards like Snapdragon and all the Divers have not been removed yet… well looks like another garbage arena cycle.
Why World Waker Isn't The Metas Savior
Aren't there a ton of top decks that are midrange?
Aphelios Fae, Yuumi Pantheon, Scouts, Viego, Illaoi, Taliyah Ziggs, Deep, Bard. I mean these are all considerably pretty strong decks and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. I think it's the complete opposite where midrange is currently the arguably the best archetype right now just because these decks can get so much tempo while maintaining their value and hand state it's kinda crazy.
Even in this meta, aggro, control and combo still have a fair share of their decks that work even if they aren't at the top, I highly doubt these lists are considered as "bad".
New Paladin Spell - Front Lines
Lol, I dont know what happened here, because I could have sworn Ive commented on this card here before.
Nevertheless,
This card sucks. The only reason why Im not rating this below 2 stars is because Barbaric Sorceress is in standard and there's the slight possibility you can play this on turn 7, which is something. Problems abundant with that idea, from running few spells to running big minions that will completely neuter your early turns.
And then even if you manage to get it out on 7, if your minions have neither taunt or rush you're essentially granting your opponent 7 charge minions with full mana. Worse still, if your opponent full clears your board, you've just lost 7 minions. So this card simply accelerates your death even when its working as intended.
In fact, Im not even sure if the best use of this card is to fill your board with stuff. In many cases you can just use this as a mega-dirty rat and get 7 minions from your opponent's deck out followed by an Equality (because you're very likely to get a pyro out anyway). Since you're playing control, it wouldn't matter as much as it would to your opponent.
90% of the time this card will suck hard in standard. But in wild, I wouldn't be too surprised to see some sort of OTK out of it.
Why World Waker Isn't The Metas Savior
Midrange is dead?
Interesting position given that Viego Legion Deserter is a very powerful archetype and is proably as midrangey ad it gets.
Cool stuff isn't viable? Well I think that depends a lot on your perspective. I find Bard Maokai selfmill very cool despite being janky as hell.
In general I like worlwaker even if some value cards were pushed a little too much in my opinion.
If it ultimately is a good or bad meta will be a subject to discuss when the dust has settled (what it absolutely hasn't)
But hey call the meta bad and it being only aggro or control I can't confirm that at all and I doubt others can do so eighter
Hearthstone's Book of Heroes Gets a New Entry This Week With Ambassador Faelin - 17 Missions, 3 Characters, 1 Card Back
I love the solo content, whether it be adventures, dungeon runs or these books. I'm curious as to what makes this one replayable though. Presumably the characters have different decks and hero powers, but I wonder if there's more.
Hearthstone's Previously Datamined "Overcapped Decks" Feature is Releasing This Week
I'm looking forward to this new feature!
Why World Waker Isn't The Metas Savior
We're entering into one of the most polarizing metas we've ever seen in LOR.
Winrates are down across the board and only very selective deck types are sucessful currently.
You have slow decks that go big, and slow decks that control.
You have aggro decks that go fast and burn decks that go burrr.
Midrange however, is arguable worse than its ever been and as a result is very unfriendly to brewing in general.
Oh you want to try playing Swain that's a 45%
Ekko not even on the map
Sundisc dead
Every bard deck is 50%
Generally speaking LOR is a game that is more fun when synergy is strong last patch with a million archetypes being viable, and is less fun when I just want to play cool stuff equals I feel like I have cancer and want to die.
This ultimately feels like a streamer expansion, like they got them all in a room to provide ideas for what they thought was fun and would help them climb and kinda neglected the whole 90% of the player base kind of thing.
Just my two cents, high synergy equals fun, card piles equals zzzzz.
I'm not even sure I'm seeing Champs flip anymore that aren't free like Annie or Illoi.
Like say what you want about movie time but players earned that sheeet.
Aggro, control equals kill me.
Hearthstone's Previously Datamined "Overcapped Decks" Feature is Releasing This Week
Fingers crossed that this doesn't result in a bug
Hearthstone Patch Notes Partially Leaked - Battlegrounds & Mercenaries Updates, Book of Heroes Returns
That's the one I remembered where they said there'd be no adventures this year. The other reply had what I was looking for. I don't follow multiple sites for Hearthstone news, so I never saw that interview.
Blacksmithing
Seconded, this archetype is very fun and can win against more decks than one would think. Even when I’m playing less optimal cards like Lady Ashvane and Doctor Krastinov I can steal games against meta decks with a 10/3 hammer and Mr. Smite. Fully recommended!
Naga Invade Another Hearthstone Game Mode - Old Guardian Reveals 6 New Mercenaries (Abilities + Equipment)
The sea witch is the one who killed Sen'jin, Vol'jin's father. She appeared in Warcraft 3 and in WoW in the troll starting zone quests
Hearthstone Mercenaries Expands - 18 New Characters, Free Tyrael Legendary, Special Y’Shaarj Event, New Bounties, Features & Bugfixes
I had no idea Lady Vashj could play the guitar.
Plenty of innovative effects overall. Looking forward to the patch!
New Hearthstone Arena Rotation and Drafting Changes With ‘Throne of the Tides Mini-Set’ in Patch 23.4
Sadly, new rotation doesn’t look interesting “on paper”, wanted to see older expansions, not the current standard cards + 2 wild sets
Too Much Is Not Enough - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Here's Coral Cluster with the changes suggested by AeroJulwin, and some editing to the wording.
Feedback:
anchorm4n - That is a lot of potential face damage, to the point where a deck might not even bother with the effect. I agree with the "Can't attack heroes" suggestion.
AeroJulwin - Maybe it should say "Stores"? Just to clarify 100% what is storing the damage (the Guzzler). Also, while the art's subject is cool-looking, the white-ish blank background makes it look very unnatural for a card. I like the gameplay side, though.
Wailor - Allari is ultimately a better Darius Crowley; personally, I don't find it compelling. It's more interesting than the spell, though. Sorry, that's not very helpful :/
Demonxz95 - The extra overdraw-protection is neat, but I honestly don't think anyone would play such an expensive card that only draws. Maybe slash the draw and Cost down to make it more appealing?
I feel I was quite negative, overall; apologies about that. I'm stressed about my job and super tired…