The reason why even in iron there are quite decent player is that the wast majority of players don't play ranked at all.
If there is no real reason to play ranked casuals won't do it. They will play some PvE some normals and be fine with it.
Ranked is for those who want to prove to themselves that they are decent players so don't expect iron matches to be that easy.
Well, I'm not saying that I would be a Masters or Diamond player (or even Plat) but I have been playing since day 1 of the beta and never touched ranked. I imagine that it's not that uncommon for someone like me to appear and try out ranked once in a while. I also imagine that there are players who has played for a long time but never committed enough to ranked so they never really get anywhere in ranks.
Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.
The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?
What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.
If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.
Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, AzirIrelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC
Decks not being that problematic were ShenFiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)
If memory serves Fiora was nerfed because of the mono Fiora deck which depending on the match up could be an auto win or an auto lose, Fiora/Shen was a balanced deck with mostly 50/50 match up into the rest of the meta.
Now when it come balance nerfing tend to be more healthy than buffing, just look at recent buff to Dragon and daybreak what did those accomplish? Making the decks meta for 2 weeks? After the resent nerfs however many deck stated being more competitive just recently an EU player managed to reach rank on masters with Ekko/Zilian deck in previous meta that wasn't even a tier 3 deck.
That being said you are right when say that decks shouldn't be nerfed just because they are strong and that should be reserved to problematic ones.
As far as I remember, she was nerfed because of how she would always go between the ability of meta dominating to being tier 2 in most patches for a year. Fiora Shen was fine up until Golden Aegis appeared and people suddenly realized they couldn't really deal with it.
Often enough too many draw options leads to full hands and I cant dump anything. So Ive basically removed some of the many draw options and included some survival tools. Finish all three tiers in 4 games.
Aim for turn 9, 2x To the Front!, 2x Mo'arg Artificer, 1x Guild Trader, 1x Mad Summoner for a massive 168 proct in one go. If you're lucky you can even add one more guild trader and basically destroy 2/3 of the requirements in one sitting.
Best part is mo'arg is currently on full dust refund for the next few days. So get it done before its gone.
Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.
The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?
What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.
If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.
Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, AzirIrelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC
Decks not being that problematic were ShenFiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)
If memory serves Fiora was nerfed because of the mono Fiora deck which depending on the match up could be an auto win or an auto lose, Fiora/Shen was a balanced deck with mostly 50/50 match up into the rest of the meta.
Now when it come balance nerfing tend to be more healthy than buffing, just look at recent buff to Dragon and daybreak what did those accomplish? Making the decks meta for 2 weeks? After the resent nerfs however many deck stated being more competitive just recently an EU player managed to reach rank on masters with Ekko/Zilian deck in previous meta that wasn't even a tier 3 deck.
That being said you are right when say that decks shouldn't be nerfed just because they are strong and that should be reserved to problematic ones.
I wonder how deep the player pool is myself sometimes :) I've mostly stopped now, and that was in large part because when i DID play, i would get matched, over and over, with SI/Nox bots. Not the most fun way to pass the time.
I can't comment on how many people are playing, except to say that I recently dipped back into playing. It had been long enough that I was in the bottom of Iron IV. And none of my opponents have been even remotely what could be called "bots." Most of them have been playing shockingly well for being in the bottom of Iron.
Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.
The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?
What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.
If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.
Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, AzirIrelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC
Decks not being that problematic were ShenFiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)
I wonder how deep the player pool is myself sometimes :) I've mostly stopped now, and that was in large part because when i DID play, i would get matched, over and over, with SI/Nox bots. Not the most fun way to pass the time.
Real talk : Do you even know what you want at this point? Game being balanced is bad now? It wasn't that long ago were you would spam new threads non stop to complain about Azir/Irelia and the Turbo meta in general demanding nerfs and now you miss them?
So its well known that Runeterra is the most balanced card game in the genre.
It does this by sacrificing powerful archetypes with unique flavor upon the nerf cross over and over again until everything is essentially equal.
Case and point, I look and see what Graplr the only streamer still supporting the game daily is playing and its Heimer Zoe with Whiteflame?
So basically infinite value soup with zero synergy or deck flavor. I don't know about you guys but when I see that I'm just craving the days when I could get rushed down by pirate aggro, or Azir sandman, or a Zillian Ekko deck went infinite on me, or Ezreal burned me down, or Poppy built an insane board or a million other unique and interesting independent deck builds existed and were sucessful.
They were sucessful not because.they were balanced but because.they weren't, and that's the real story here, "synergy" means when I run this card with that other card they are better than than both those cards alone...without synergy you don't have decks, and you dont have a card game.
I know I've been harping on this but it seems like people are starting to agree with the whole do the regions, Champs, followers, and spells have enough flavor. The answer they did before.that flavor was nerfed out of existence.
Riot stop nerfing and start buffing seriously, we get roughly 20 nerfs to every single buff on average and it's killing the "synergy" it's killing the "decks" its killing the "fun" in your game.
31st December update: Copa's Corrupt Reno Shaman, ft. Shudderwock and Y'Shaarj, the Defiler!
Happy New Year everyone! Another interesting off-meta Reno Shaman build, with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler and Freeze effects.
I was rather embarrassed - when part way through the video, I realised that Dunk Tank can target face. After talking to the deck author, I then realised why the Emperor is in the deck (to discount Bolner and Y'Shaarj). At that point, I realised the OTK potential of the deck.
So in conclusion... it would help if I actually read the card text before playing cards I am not familiar with! This was still a great learning experience though and a lot of fun! Beating Pirate Warrior and Odd Hunter is still an awesome achievement for an off-meta deck. I played this as a Reno Shaman deck, rather than an OTK deck. Turns out that works well too! 10 wins and 5 losses is pretty good!
Congrats Avalon! Demonic Illidan is definitely among the coolest portraits in the game.
I'm closing 2021 with these standings:
That's all in all +447 wins since my last post about 4 months ago. I took a break of a little more than a month trying out FIFA Ultimate Team (don't do that, trust me) and it shows. The biggest progress has been made with Priest (+155) since Shadowpriest got me to legend no less than three times. Warrior is still closest to the next 500 wins portrait but I tend to lose interest in a deck that proves to be really OP like Wild QL Pirate Warrior. So yeah, maybe I'll continue pushing Priest as long as I enjoy it or switch over to Druid which I found a very cool deck for yesterday. Feels good to know that 4 classes are within 150 wins to the golden portrait with Demon Hunter close behind at 162 missing. Good luck to you all and don't forget to have fun ;-)
Just looked it up, and clearly I've been wrong for a while lol - no pity timer. Original source is on this Hearthstone blog post from 2017: "These packs use the new pack opening rules regarding duplication protection, but will otherwise have an independent chance of containing Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards unrelated to any special rules (such as a guaranteed Legendary within 10 packs)." This is further clarified in 2020 to be broadly applicable to all Golden Packs (via a tweet by Celstalon: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1263560197143801857
Murlocs are out of control again and now it's a totally different reason. Now everyone gets poison and enough life that div shields aren't even necessary.
We need a unit, fairly formidable, called Herpetologist. While this unit is alive your units cannot be poisoned.
Right now only rly beefy mech comps can take them out and it's a little ridiculous. If murlocs are in lobby just forget about playing elems, demons and quillboar.
Tech card needed. Maybe make it like the snake where you can give your unit a dose of anti venom like it gives reborn.....
We'll get a fix out this week to deal with the format - honestly, I wasn't even aware that people were using it still since the majority of the syncs come from either our HS Deck Tracker plugin or Firestone.
This complete excludes those that can't.
Would be nice for it to be fixed. Otherwise the whole deck tracking and deck cost/your cost part of the website becomes useless to me.
I'm personally not interested in BG cosmetics. The icons are too small and if you buy a board it's not like you can flaunt it at other players.
If they really want to make money I think they are going to have to get really creative like hosting tournaments with prizes like pre-orders or alternative game modes that only paying customers are privy to.
I think it'd be a regretful purchase, just stick with the $15 perks.
Yeah, bringing up Diana and Nocturne seems to have obfuscated my point - I meant to point to them as Champions whose design is anchored in one-off mechanics (outside of their original support packages there is exactly one other Nightfall card, so playing them means very limited deck building options if you want to level your champ).
It's true that Nightfall is used in ways which are thematically relevant to the regions in question, so it's far less egregious than other examples like the Tahm Kench self-harm package, but I think it still qualifies as an example of putting Champion mechanics and identity above regional identity in a way that hinders deck-building.
The one case for getting a 10 golden pack bundle would be if you had no cards from that expansion. The first legendary pity timer for any expansion is 10 packs (rather than 40), so you'd be guaranteed a golden legendary with a 10 pack bundle. That might be relevant since you could dust it to craft any legendary you want, but after you've picked up your first legendary from an expansion the 45 packs is way more value.
Is that for real? Because I heard that golden packs don't follow the same rules for normals
The one case for getting a 10 golden pack bundle would be if you had no cards from that expansion. The first legendary pity timer for any expansion is 10 packs (rather than 40), so you'd be guaranteed a golden legendary with a 10 pack bundle. That might be relevant since you could dust it to craft any legendary you want, but after you've picked up your first legendary from an expansion the 45 packs is way more value.
What's going on R? Long time no see. We need to get the riddle game going again. Everyone but ⚓ and I just dissapears out of nowhere.... Take a look there's a riddle he has up.
I'd rather have the golden packs because I play so much I get pretty much every card anyway and can buy whatever I need.
I'm not a completionist but I do love looking snazzy when I play Arena
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
Well, I'm not saying that I would be a Masters or Diamond player (or even Plat) but I have been playing since day 1 of the beta and never touched ranked. I imagine that it's not that uncommon for someone like me to appear and try out ranked once in a while. I also imagine that there are players who has played for a long time but never committed enough to ranked so they never really get anywhere in ranks.
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
As far as I remember, she was nerfed because of how she would always go between the ability of meta dominating to being tier 2 in most patches for a year. Fiora Shen was fine up until Golden Aegis appeared and people suddenly realized they couldn't really deal with it.
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
The reason why even in iron there are quite decent player is that the wast majority of players don't play ranked at all.
If there is no real reason to play ranked casuals won't do it. They will play some PvE some normals and be fine with it.
Ranked is for those who want to prove to themselves that they are decent players so don't expect iron matches to be that easy.
How to Complete Alterac Valley's Warrior Achievements for Rewards Track Experience - Great Deck Lists!
Ive made some changes to your list for 'my lair, my terms'
# 2x (1) Shield Slam
# 1x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos
# 2x (2) Iceblood Garrison
# 2x (2) Man the Cannons
# 1x (2) Minefield
# 2x (2) Novice Engineer
# 2x (2) To the Front!
# 2x (2) Warpath
# 2x (3) Acolyte of Pain
# 2x (3) Coldlight Oracle
# 2x (3) Heavy Plate
# 2x (3) Mo'arg Artificer
# 2x (3) Shield Block
# 2x (4) Guild Trader
# 2x (4) Outrider's Axe
# 2x (6) Mad Summoner
AAEBAQcCtt4Dl6AEDpwC+Af/B/sMm/MC1p0D6b4Dju0DxfkD+IAEm4EEiaAE/KIEjLYEAA==
Often enough too many draw options leads to full hands and I cant dump anything. So Ive basically removed some of the many draw options and included some survival tools. Finish all three tiers in 4 games.
Aim for turn 9, 2x To the Front!, 2x Mo'arg Artificer, 1x Guild Trader, 1x Mad Summoner for a massive 168 proct in one go. If you're lucky you can even add one more guild trader and basically destroy 2/3 of the requirements in one sitting.
Best part is mo'arg is currently on full dust refund for the next few days. So get it done before its gone.
I like expeditions, but they are a bit to expensive to play.
You can play them with tokens or shards. I don't find them expensive at all.
How to Complete Alterac Valley's Warlock Achievements for Rewards Track Experience - Great Deck Lists!
For the 'Get Over here!' achievement, you can also run Treachery, and give them Bloodmage Thalnos before you play Hollow Abomination on the same turn, in wild that is.
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
If memory serves Fiora was nerfed because of the mono Fiora deck which depending on the match up could be an auto win or an auto lose, Fiora/Shen was a balanced deck with mostly 50/50 match up into the rest of the meta.
Now when it come balance nerfing tend to be more healthy than buffing, just look at recent buff to Dragon and daybreak what did those accomplish? Making the decks meta for 2 weeks? After the resent nerfs however many deck stated being more competitive just recently an EU player managed to reach rank on masters with Ekko/Zilian deck in previous meta that wasn't even a tier 3 deck.
That being said you are right when say that decks shouldn't be nerfed just because they are strong and that should be reserved to problematic ones.
I hope you enjoy your big stuff control & wombo combo meta.
This is by far the worst Standard control meta since Warlock with Voidcaller + Voidlord was T1. x_X
There is not enough food for how much I could puke.
I hope you enjoy your big stuff control & wombo combo meta.
Think you spelled the title wrong, it's actually " hope you enjoy your boring, robotic meta" . I'm happy to proof-read any time
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
I can't comment on how many people are playing, except to say that I recently dipped back into playing. It had been long enough that I was in the bottom of Iron IV. And none of my opponents have been even remotely what could be called "bots." Most of them have been playing shockingly well for being in the bottom of Iron.
(Former Masters player here)
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
Nifty kinda has a point when he says that nerfing specific archetypes out of tier 1 status often results in just 1 deck less being viable without improving the rest of the metagame.
The thing that riot has to be aware of is: what archetypes are oppressive and completely devalue a legitimate strategy?
What I mean by that: should a meme deck get crushed by tier 1 decks? Most of the times it should. So if the majority of meme decks loose to a certain tier 1 deck that's not a problem. If strategies that proven itself in the past or that are overall 51%+ winrate strategies and if those can't win a certain popular matchup it's something you have to keep an eye on.
If a matchup is so polarized because 1 deck does exactly which is the weakness of the other deck it's more tolerable than a deck just doing it's thing leaving the other deck no chance to stop it.
Examples of problematic decks were therefore: Go Hard, Azir Irelia P&Z Noxus burn and TLC
Decks not being that problematic were Shen Fiora(although Fiora herself is problematic)
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
I wonder how deep the player pool is myself sometimes :) I've mostly stopped now, and that was in large part because when i DID play, i would get matched, over and over, with SI/Nox bots. Not the most fun way to pass the time.
A Site for Hearthstone Sounds - HearthSFX
Most definitely. I owe the Battlegrounds section some love in the New Year, along with a new section for the Duels heroes and unique cards.
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
Real talk : Do you even know what you want at this point? Game being balanced is bad now? It wasn't that long ago were you would spam new threads non stop to complain about Azir/Irelia and the Turbo meta in general demanding nerfs and now you miss them?
Or do you need a little reminder perhaps?
https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10147-riot-made-a-huge-mistake
https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10774-is-fixing-the-turbo-meta-possible
https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/11002-soooo-azir-irelia-is-still-dominant
https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10716-waiting-on-changes-promised-on-reddit
https://outof.cards/forums/legends-of-runeterra/runeterra-general/10784-still-no-news-from-riot
Real Talk - Is Anyone Playing Runeterra?
So its well known that Runeterra is the most balanced card game in the genre.
It does this by sacrificing powerful archetypes with unique flavor upon the nerf cross over and over again until everything is essentially equal.
Case and point, I look and see what Graplr the only streamer still supporting the game daily is playing and its Heimer Zoe with Whiteflame?
So basically infinite value soup with zero synergy or deck flavor. I don't know about you guys but when I see that I'm just craving the days when I could get rushed down by pirate aggro, or Azir sandman, or a Zillian Ekko deck went infinite on me, or Ezreal burned me down, or Poppy built an insane board or a million other unique and interesting independent deck builds existed and were sucessful.
They were sucessful not because.they were balanced but because.they weren't, and that's the real story here, "synergy" means when I run this card with that other card they are better than than both those cards alone...without synergy you don't have decks, and you dont have a card game.
I know I've been harping on this but it seems like people are starting to agree with the whole do the regions, Champs, followers, and spells have enough flavor. The answer they did before.that flavor was nerfed out of existence.
Riot stop nerfing and start buffing seriously, we get roughly 20 nerfs to every single buff on average and it's killing the "synergy" it's killing the "decks" its killing the "fun" in your game.
Darkseeker's channel - 13th November update: KOtsosKOtsos' Reno Evolve Shudderwock Shaman - ft. Archivist Elysiana
31st December update: Copa's Corrupt Reno Shaman, ft. Shudderwock and Y'Shaarj, the Defiler!
Happy New Year everyone! Another interesting off-meta Reno Shaman build, with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler and Freeze effects.
I was rather embarrassed - when part way through the video, I realised that Dunk Tank can target face. After talking to the deck author, I then realised why the Emperor is in the deck (to discount Bolner and Y'Shaarj). At that point, I realised the OTK potential of the deck.
So in conclusion... it would help if I actually read the card text before playing cards I am not familiar with! This was still a great learning experience though and a lot of fun! Beating Pirate Warrior and Odd Hunter is still an awesome achievement for an off-meta deck. I played this as a Reno Shaman deck, rather than an OTK deck. Turns out that works well too! 10 wins and 5 losses is pretty good!
Deck code: AAEBAaoIHvoO1hHDFva9At/EAovOAvPnAsPqAu/3ArWYA/yjA+GoA8O2A5PCA+HMA/DUA7PcA6feA/zeA5LkA6juA+PuA6bvA4b6A9OABKiKBKWNBLmRBJWSBNySBAAA
For Doomhammer Discord Server: https://discord.gg/nU2bkEV
https://youtu.be/oWD_v5ERuS4
Golden Hero Portrait - Completionist & Grind
Congrats Avalon! Demonic Illidan is definitely among the coolest portraits in the game.
I'm closing 2021 with these standings:
That's all in all +447 wins since my last post about 4 months ago. I took a break of a little more than a month trying out FIFA Ultimate Team (don't do that, trust me) and it shows. The biggest progress has been made with Priest (+155) since Shadowpriest got me to legend no less than three times. Warrior is still closest to the next 500 wins portrait but I tend to lose interest in a deck that proves to be really OP like Wild QL Pirate Warrior. So yeah, maybe I'll continue pushing Priest as long as I enjoy it or switch over to Druid which I found a very cool deck for yesterday. Feels good to know that 4 classes are within 150 wins to the golden portrait with Demon Hunter close behind at 162 missing. Good luck to you all and don't forget to have fun ;-)
Opening Packs
Just looked it up, and clearly I've been wrong for a while lol - no pity timer. Original source is on this Hearthstone blog post from 2017: "These packs use the new pack opening rules regarding duplication protection, but will otherwise have an independent chance of containing Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards unrelated to any special rules (such as a guaranteed Legendary within 10 packs)." This is further clarified in 2020 to be broadly applicable to all Golden Packs (via a tweet by Celstalon: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1263560197143801857
BG needs Herpetologist.
Murlocs are out of control again and now it's a totally different reason. Now everyone gets poison and enough life that div shields aren't even necessary.
We need a unit, fairly formidable, called Herpetologist. While this unit is alive your units cannot be poisoned.
Right now only rly beefy mech comps can take them out and it's a little ridiculous. If murlocs are in lobby just forget about playing elems, demons and quillboar.
Tech card needed. Maybe make it like the snake where you can give your unit a dose of anti venom like it gives reborn.....
How To: JSON Importer for Hearthstone Collection
This complete excludes those that can't.
Would be nice for it to be fixed. Otherwise the whole deck tracking and deck cost/your cost part of the website becomes useless to me.
BG Skin - Arena of Champions - Is it worth it?
I'm personally not interested in BG cosmetics. The icons are too small and if you buy a board it's not like you can flaunt it at other players.
If they really want to make money I think they are going to have to get really creative like hosting tournaments with prizes like pre-orders or alternative game modes that only paying customers are privy to.
I think it'd be a regretful purchase, just stick with the $15 perks.
Does each region have enough of an identity?
Yeah, bringing up Diana and Nocturne seems to have obfuscated my point - I meant to point to them as Champions whose design is anchored in one-off mechanics (outside of their original support packages there is exactly one other Nightfall card, so playing them means very limited deck building options if you want to level your champ).
It's true that Nightfall is used in ways which are thematically relevant to the regions in question, so it's far less egregious than other examples like the Tahm Kench self-harm package, but I think it still qualifies as an example of putting Champion mechanics and identity above regional identity in a way that hinders deck-building.
Opening Packs
Is that for real? Because I heard that golden packs don't follow the same rules for normals
Opening Packs
The one case for getting a 10 golden pack bundle would be if you had no cards from that expansion. The first legendary pity timer for any expansion is 10 packs (rather than 40), so you'd be guaranteed a golden legendary with a 10 pack bundle. That might be relevant since you could dust it to craft any legendary you want, but after you've picked up your first legendary from an expansion the 45 packs is way more value.
Opening Packs
What's going on R? Long time no see. We need to get the riddle game going again. Everyone but ⚓ and I just dissapears out of nowhere.... Take a look there's a riddle he has up.
I'd rather have the golden packs because I play so much I get pretty much every card anyway and can buy whatever I need.
I'm not a completionist but I do love looking snazzy when I play Arena