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I never realized the Honor quests were faction coloured until now. I just thought they made it blue to look prettier.

I'm dumb.

FOMO, while works, is utterly BS. I don't care if someone joins years later and get the stuff that I got at the time. Same for the Golden cards or Diamond cards. While I don't actually use them(personally, we should have the choice to be able to dust the Goldens). It gives the players a choice to be able to have a full Golden deck(since Team 5 is making a huge effort to try and get people to use Goldens more). Since they're churning more and more cosmetics out, you may not even see an individual cosmetic anymore.

It's *how* you made the memory is important. Nothing can actually change that except yourself. Not about the destination, but the journey. In this case, the Alterac Valley event of choosing a faction. Newer players may not get to experience it. There may be more down the line, but it'll be different.

Missing half the honor points for last level... 700/1400😢

My only comment is that I'd love to see Platebreaker in the Core set.

In before certain people storm in here shouting about how these were supposed to be "exclusive" and it's utter bullshit that the achievement will be available after the stated expiration date.

It took them many buffs but Riven and Viktor deck are finally meta, that deck is probably the best if your looking to climb, as it preys on Mono Shurima who is the most overplayed deck on the ladder. I am also happy to see Ziggs/Taliyah doing well the new landmark package was one the few good things that came out of this expansion.

I think Blizzard wanted you to play it over a long time. Having fun now just logging in and seeing what bounties to do. Dipped my foot into PvP but got destroyed... But with the new questlines it's more like timed achievments. And it is more fun doing the later bounties. But had a 2 month break before chi-ji event. 

It's mostly that she had hero emotes back in Rumble Run (and a Tavern Brawl I think), and they were among the best in the entire game imo. The simple fact she has reappeared multiple times means someone in Team 5 agrees she's great, but they don't seem to have much sway over cosmetics which endlessly go to the same few classes, often without really adding anything to their options. Like, who cared that warrior got another dwarf in Vanndar? Or that druid is getting another night elf in Faelin? Or that mage gets yet another character every damn expansion? Meanwhile rogue can't get a troll that lots of people already love and for whom they could be lazy and recycle existing emotes.

Sometimes I'm just baffled that they won't take the big, juicy, low-hanging fruit and instead spend their time stretching to pick fruit no one is really interested in. So in essence Hooktusk is just representative of a series of missed opportunities for portraits. She's not the only character we can use for that (Togwaggle, Rafaam, Mathias Shaw...), but she happens to be the most relevant one currently.

Well, considering I haven't even completed all the Barrens bounties, I was pretty certain I would have to skip this.

From what i've gathered shes a busty pirate badass that also kicks it, plus shes a troll so she gets +10 points from me just for that

For me it's a "can't unsee" situation. It's not something that's super important but once you notice it it's hard not to be confused and disappointed as to why they aren't here in the first place, given that it's just a matter of copy + paste.

I really don't get these weird obsessions with hooktusk...

Quote From Crusader2010

A report system would solve a lot of issues, but there is no intention for that. Maybe under MS rule, though the costs are probably not justified.

I mean, imagine how much spaghetti code they have since there are so many bugs all the time and stupid ones too (which means their database is all over the place, with hidden logic and other similar things). Bringing in a new system would probably make the bnet launcher stop working and your game crash on most interactions with it.

While i liked the ideas of this article, i think everyone just overcomplicates everything. Why have guilds in HS? Lets move away from WoW please. What do we really want? A way to complete quests with other people and a way to talk to other people. No need to even give specific rewards - the goal is NOT to fake-force everyone into joining a group/guild (and we know a lot care about cosmetics).

*Nods* Yea, I agree with that. Upvote.  We don't need emulated WoW guilds in a 1-on-1 card battler.

All we need is a lobby and moderated chat rooms. Ofc, listing priority for people near your area or in the same country as yourself. Sure, chat is gonna be full of "LF daily quest X - need to spectate you". Or "LF spectator that can provide some gameplay tips too".

True interaction comes when people help each-other willingly. I don't see myself being in a tavern with 49 other people just for the sake of it (also, how do i find THAT tavern which is suited for me?). Sure, in that lobby we could create chatrooms with 100+ people if we wanted to - but it depends how many people can spectate you at once.

And the rewards they get for wasting their time with you. See, it's a rather hard thing to do when this game forces you to play a lot to achieve anything. If it were designed in a way to allow your collection to actually be useful (instead of 2% of it), then it would be a nice system to have

*Nods* Also agree.  Forcing systems for people to interact purely for cosmetics doesn't create genuine connections.  I'd argue that true interaction happens when people work collaboratively.  Which, sad to say, doesn't happen except for the random "boss" brawls that we get.

But it's not. The game is specifically tailored for whales to keep it going, and for the parents' debit cards. What would they gain out of a system like this? Well, nothing really. They'd be forced to give away more rewards so that more people actually use it (beyond the fringe cases that will be online in the lobby just for chatting and wasting time). More rewards equal less money in the short term.

And Blizzard's leadership is(was?) clearly on a run to maximize short term profits over investments, because it/he wanted to fill those pockets before going away (either to jail, or post-MS era). These kinds of people are the true crooks and the reason why we can't have nice things in most games anymore.

And there's the downvote material.  ALL card games are designed to induce players to buy the cards, that's why they are card games.  And yes, "free2play" digital games frequently survive off whales purchases, that's nothing new.  What was UNNECESSARY for the conversation was the comment regarding "parent's debit cards".  First off,  YOUR parents are more likely to have a credit card if they were going to allow you to use it for online purchases (it's easier for them to contest purchases via credit cards, than debit cards).  Secondly, the assumption that somehow everyone who plays is a kid? Rude.  Totally rude.  And then there's the tinfoil hat theory that they were "on the run" to maximize profits before they went to jail? What??

It's difficult to say until we see full-sized versions of the portraits when the patch arrives, but I suspect the trays and hero power effects might also be out of place sometimes. Sticking with Sylvanas, she might still have shadow-infused arrows, but why would she keep the bone motifs used in her tray?

I'm not someone who should be judging their worth though since I rarely even notice those effects these days if I'm honest, usually only noting them after I change hero with Maestra and keep whatever tray I started with. So if you think they're important, then they're important. For me, the new emotes matter the most, and we can at least be confident they'll have those at least.

Then scrap the entrance animation but at least keep the goddamn tray and hero power effects. they don't fit any less than the default stuff but at least I'm not paying for a straight-up downgrade.

Glad you found these guides useful! :)

Also to note, it may be better to prioritize the tier 3 class achievements as they award 500XP or 600XP with Tavern Pass.

I'm just praying there's no achievement bugs in the next expansion, coz clearly Blizzard doesn't care to compensate players for all the buggy FAV achievements. 

This feels like something to just not worry about for now, especially as I'd be surprised if that was ever the deciding factor in whether someone buys the Tavern Pass or not.  Plus, I doubt it would make much sense to carry over some of the existing entrance animations. E.g. Sylvanas' banshee wail and Maiev's shadowy cloak don't really fit with them being a naga and a mariner.

To be honest, lord banehollow grinding isn't really all that different from air elemental, with the added bonus that the coins you get from retiring early can actually net you legendary coins rather than the usual rares.

The average number of fights per stranger attempt is about 2, 1 if you're really lucky. If you're using a fire team, you can demolish each fight in one turn, which is the same as air elemental's creeps.

If there's any reason why anyone who has previously grinded strangers would drop this game, its the fact that mercs is a shallow game overall. You can get away with alot doing nothing but queuing the same thing over and over. In fact, the most efficient teams in mercs tend to be just that; doing the same shit over and over.

While I like this new direction of getting a bunch of themed skins for previous heroes, there's still one issue they haven't addressed so far, that being that these alternate skins for heroes that aren't the classic 10 (aka Maiev, Lunara, Liadrin, etc...) don't use the entrance animations, hero power effects and Hero trays that their original versions had, but instead just the regular classic effects. While I don't think all these skins need to come with new effects, it is somewhat stupid to have all these animations on the older FREE skins and not just carry them over to theese newer PAID versions.

I'm sooooo glad I saw this. I had 5 or 6 achievements that were almost done, so I went ahead and finished them. It would have been so sad to wake up to tomorrow and see that I had just barely missed them.

Head on over to Mastering Runeterra to see the latest meta report for the first couple days after the patch.

It's a fascinating picture of what is good and what is not good currently in the meta.

Note that the playrate of Mono-Shurima is decreasing at this point, so it's nothing to be concerned about.

The rest of the meta has a lot of interesting decks and it's pretty diverse. So far, I'd say Riot did a great job with this balance patch!

It’s hard for some decks to play around, mainly you have to just sort of play small spells/minions to test secrets but that depends on your deck - some decks have no way to play around the secrets effectively.