We're doing this again. This time with some extra spicy bugs that render a couple of achievements either completely broken or needlessly difficult to complete. We also got a lot of grinding to do this time, and it's not the fun kind (trust me, I did most of it already and it was painful). On the flipside, very few of these achievements require you to have a large collection and can be done easily with mostly Standard cards (and a occasionally a few cheap Wild ones). Either way, let's get into the details.
Demon Hunter
Wreckoning:
Pretty simple grind. Sigil of Reckoning is a Fel Spell so if you're so inclined you can run Jace Darkweaver for an extra proc later on. Might take a while to grind, but 40 total isn't that much in the grand scheme. Big Demon DH is also a pretty fun and relatively playable deck (and could improve over time if we find a balanced build that makes the early game more bearable). Try to have fun with this one, you'll get to the pain later.
...The Harder They Fall:
Extremely simple. Just stuff all weapon buffs you can find into your deck and wait until your opponent plays a big minion. Given the abundance of Paladins at the moment this shouldn'T be hard at all. You can add some small Rush minions to soften up the target too.
Smash that Fury Button:
Pretty trivial overall. Felfire Deadeye + Expendable Performers into 6-health worth of minions and you've got it. If you don't have Performers you can substitute it with Command the Illidari or double Coordinated Strike since you only need 6 attacks total to get there (don't forget to HP before starting the combo). Personally not sure how competitive token DH is, but you can easily throw together a working list. Just make sure to run enough card draw.
Druid
PUPPIES!!!:
Tedious and boring but not difficult. Frostwolf Kennels and Dire Frostwolf with a Token shell around it and you even have a playable deck to do it with. Composting is kinda key here to get the necessary draw. This deck is also idea to complete some of the neutral achievements with that involve some of the more "generic" minions.
Choose One? Choose All!:
Even more boring and tedious. Use Moonlit Guidance to hopefully tutor and duplicate your Pathmaker. Unfortunately this achievement can't be completed in Standard due to the small number of Choose one spells. Do also note that each of the two effects of a card count seperately so you can use each spell twice.
Mo Mana Mo Problems:
Self explanatory. Use Guff. If you want to be a giga-chad like me you randomly generate Guff while doing Rogue achievements and do it that way.
Hunter
Krush from Above!:
Probably one of the hardest one due to the unpredictable nature of the card and how slow it is. There's one combo though. Use Emperor Thaurissan to discount Ichman and two Terrorguard Escapees. This way you don't rely on your opponent to have a board. Alternatively you can just bank on running into a boardfocussed deck at some point and use Dire Frenzy to shuffle a couple of smaller beasts with decent stats in there.
It's a Trap!:
Strongly recommend doing this in Wild. You get Cloaked Huntress and a bunch of way better Secrets. I did this before the expansion dropped and somehow climbed to Platinum rank on accident. Petting Zoo is one hell of a card.
Out for Blood:
This one'S kinda hard. You have to find the weapon early and then accumulate weapon buffs like Toxicologist and Captain Greenskin. The hard part is knowing when to use the weapon buffs. If you buff too early you might not be able to get honorable kills. Try and get 2-3 early kills and then finish the rest with weapon buffs. Might take a few games to get.
Mage:
HONORABLY DIE, INSECT!:
There's three ways to do this: The easy way, the hard way, and my way. Easy is through use of the plethora of Wild Hero Power buffs such as Daring Fire-Eater or Clockwork Automaton. If you have big balls you can also try doing it Majordomo Executus, but I don't know if it still counts if you transformed into Rag. The hard way is doing it in Standard with the thematically appropriate Magister Dawngrasp, a truly bad card with very little practical applications.
Now my way is what you get when you have neither Dawngrasp nor any of the Wild cards because you disenchanted them years ago thinking you'd never need them again. That way you have to use Archmage Vargoth, Potion of Illusion, Wildfire and a variety of copy and discounting effects to get it all together. It took long. It wasn't fun.
Makes Yogg Proud:
Relatively tedious and annoying, mainly because Big Spell Mage is a really bad deck right now (at least if you run Towers, I still believe there'S a version of it that cuts all the greedy stuff and just goes for efficient mana cheating). Just keep playing the bad deck until you succeed. You will probably need Clumsy Courier for this, because you can't wait until turn 9/10 to start towering. I'd also recommend running Mass Polymorph if you have it because it's a great stalling tool.
Do You Wanna Build A Snowtroll?:
This one was my favourite because I masterminded the entire thing perfectly. What you want is get to 10-mana and have a Celestial Ink Set equipped. At this point you play one of the Snowmen and its second stage. That way you will get a discount on either the 3rd stage of the 2nd copy of Snowman, meaning that on the next turn you can use the 2nd charge of Ink Set to play all 3 stages in one turn. As long as you don't have any other spells in hand this works everytime. Really, getting to 10-mana is the hardest part in this.
Paladin
You Are Not Worthy:
This achievement is currently broken and doesn't register. Other than that it's relatively trivial to complete. Cariel is the one of the better Hero cards and Paladin is currently doing really well so it shouldn't be too hard to just do this one along the way. If you don't have a dedicated Paladin deck to climb with just throw Cariel into a healing deck and just take lots of damage. You'lll be done eventually.
Not Maroon. Not Crimson. Scarlet:
Requires a bit of set up to do reliably. Handbuff helps but isn't necessary. What you really want is Blessing of Authority. That's a fat +16/+16, meaning you onld need 7 more attack, which you can do in Wild through Blessing of Might for instance or really any other cheap buffs. It's not a hard achievement to complete as long as you have the right cards for it.
Bold and Brass:
This one was designed by a complete idiot. Since there is no way to consistently manufacture boards with 2-health it's unreasonable to do this the normal way. What you want to do instead is use Animated Broomstick + any Lifesteal buff like Hold the Bridge or the old Lightforged Blessing (which is better because it reduces the need for discounts). Dragon Consort can also be used in Wild for discounts if you don't have Thaurissan or Cariel Roame. Either way, it will take a while to complete. I found that taking damage is actually quite difficult to do without dying. If you still ahve High Priest Thekal, now's his time to shine.
Priest
Salvation Army:
Pretty self-explanatory. Run discovery for more copies. Also try using small damage spells to set up HKs. This can also target friendly minions so if you really need to you can just nuke your own stuff. This contributes a good amount to the neutral HK achievement so try not grind that one prematurely.
Gesundheit!:
This one is currently bugged. It took a while to find out what exactly is wrong with it but as it turns out instead of counting the total attack you've given with Bless it wants you to give 200 attack in a single instance...which is virtually impossible outside of Test Subject or Shadow Visions shenanigans. Better wait for the eventual fix. Oh and if you don't have Divine Spirit for some reason this will take you a looong time.
I Will Remember You:
i've never been more happy to not own a legendary. This one sounds extremely painful to pull off. Not only is Deathrattle Priest not a great deck atm but you also hav to survive until you get Xyrella and stack a bunch of DRs in the meantime which will always make you want to be greedy and squeeze in a little more which could backfire because you either die or your opponent just gives up. Just put in the hours I guess. Should be significantly easier in Wild thanks to way more deathrattle and resurrection stuff. Just use what you have.
Rogue
Top 10 Alterac Betrayals:
Pretty self-explanatory but Rogue has shenanigans to speed this up, namely Togwaggle's Scheme and Lab Recruiter. Fun fact: While doing this I ended up fighting a Mill Rogue who really did not appreciate the endless horde of identical pandas. Eventually he ran out of removal. I didn't run out of Pandas. Cause of death: Memed into submission.
Rolling In Their Grave:
Fuck me this one is garbage. It takes way too long and is just painful. Since this requires you to have DR minions die while the objective is up you'll be tempted to go greedy before playing the spell, which might cost you. Generally it's best to run lots of card draw, small deathrattle minions (preferably ones with stealth like Jade Swarmer and Skyvateer) and Preparation for flexibility with the Graveyard. You'll be doing this for while. Try using Korrak the Bloodrager too, since you can easily complete his achievement while doing this (Note: Korrak will be done in a fraction of the time it takes you to complete this achievement, that's how bad it is).
Third Cousins Twice Removed:
This one's bugged and only works with the Legacy version of Chillwind Yeti, so you ahve to do it in Wild. On the flipside it's completely trivial. I even managed to win the game I completed the achievement in. That poor Priest. He got the double Yeti beatdown.
Shaman
1-800-ELE-MENT:
Similar to Xyrella you just have to grind. Fortunately for you Bru'kan is part of an actually competitive deck and you don't have to be super greedy to pull it off. Just keep playing Shaman.
Snowball Effect:
This one is impossible to reliably engineer. However, it's not as hard as it sounds. First of all you play Freeze Shaman for the subsequent achievement anyways (which is not only competitive but also really fun), but also, due to the nature of the deck you'll be locking up boards with Snowfall Guardian and have beefy minions from Wildpaw Cavern. This way you just have to wait until a large enough board comes together and then get lucky with the snowballs. It'll take a few attempts but it'll happen eventually. Just make sure you don't ahve a Spell Damage minions on the board.
Winter Vacation:
PLay Freeze Shaman. It'S fun. Additional help you can get with Bolner Hammerbeak and Brann Bronzebeard. Do note that you don't have to freeze an unfrozen minion. It counts stacking freezes to so doing a double-up on Snowfall Guardian works well.
Warlock
Dreading This One:
You can duplicate Seeds of Destruction with Grave Defiler. This one gets done a lot quicker if you have Dreadlich Tamsin but you can probably do without. It'll take a while. Also make sure you have board space because the imps don't count if the spells trigger without actually summoning them. Just throw them into every deck you have.
Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying:
Very annoying but manageable. Don't play Zoolock to do this, it's a terribly frustrating deck that relies on highrolling early and has no comeback mechanics. Instead just do a draw-heavy imp farming deck and make sure you have enough disposable minions to get a proc each turn. Mindless grind.
Get Over Here!:
Another bugged one, this one doesn't work as advertised. Instead of having to kill a Legendary minion honorably you have to kill it honorably from full health. As such it's a lot more difficult to get naturally so we improvise. Bloodmage Thalnos is a core legendary and we just have to get it onto the opponent's board. You either do this with discounts from Runed Mithril Rod and Silas Darkmoon or you still have a copy of Treachery. Not very hard but still annoying that you can't just outright murder an opponent's legendary.
Warrior
What Happens When...?:
Since I don't have the card I can't tell how difficult this is, but if you put it into Pirate Warrior you'll probably get there eventually. I don't think there's a way to artificially set this up, even with Silas Darkmoon involved. At best you try and get them low and then have Silas + something like Bloodsail Raider. Since weapon removal is currently rather popular it might be frustrating to try and set it up over multiple turns so you're probably better off hoping for the eventual miracle. Might be easier to do in Duels now that I think of it.
Uncle Drek Wants You!:
Kind of a grind, but combines nicely with the next achievement, which I'll detail shortly. Just know that 5-mana minions are the best for this since you get the most value out of them when using double To the Front!.
My Lair, My Terms:
Now this one looks tedious but is actually really fun if you are big-brained mastermind like myself. Effectively we're gonna play this as a combo deck. We run double To the Front! + double Guild Trader + Mad Summoner (ye olde MVP for achievement farming) to get a 70-damage proc every game. This is a 10-mana combo so no disocunts required and if you set up Iceblood Garrison a turn early you only need 8. Just build your deck with enough draw and removal and you're good.
Neutral
Wrecking Ball:
One of those achievements not worth farming since it completes itself over the course of the expansion (unless you manage to dodge every HK card). If you do want to farm it you best use Hollow Abomination since he hits multiple targets. With Terrorguard Escapee you can knock this one out somewhat fast.
From Zero to Hero:
Similar to above this one just completes itself eventually. Rogue, Paladin, DH and Warlock all have playable and powerful Hero cards.
The Trees Speak For Themselves:
Either you play Druid with the Guff hero, or you just gamble at 10-mana. You can also handbuff him in Paladin.
King Of The Hill:
Completes itself as you complete class achievements.
The Everliving:
Rather easy to do when using the dedicated Rogue deck.
Congealing Essence:
No idea if this is worth forcing. I completed it on accident. If you want you can do it in Wild with Alexstrasza on yourself or in Classic by using Lord Jaraxxus.
Yummy In My Tummy:
This one's kidna hard depending on your card collection. It's easiest to do by using Treachery, discounted Flesh Giant and of course disocunts from Rod. If you don't have Treachery you need Silas Darkmoon, which is more expensive and thus harder. You'll also need to have an empty board for it to work consistently so Doomsayer might be of help. Alternatively you can try doing it in Paladin by buffing your opponent's minion.
Look! Holar!:
Best done while playing Freeze Shaman for the class achievements. Not a bad card at all. Do note that using Bolner Hammerbeak doesn't give extra procs because it's Bolner doing the effect and not the Herald. Brann Bronzebeard works though. I unironically climbed to Plat 5 using an achievement version of Freeze Shaman, it's a really solid deck.
Snoblind? Sno Problem!:
Same as the above. You can do it in Mage too obviously, but why would you? You're gonna have to play Shaman anyways.
Harder, Better, Warmaster, Stronger:
A good exploit is creating extra copies in Rogue since you get to play them all for 0 anyways. Do note that overcharging the effect doesn't work. Each Warmaster can only get a 4-mana discount (unless you're using stuff like Mana Wraith I guess, I haven't tried that though)
1600 Dust Bounty:
Just throw the BOunty Hunter into every deck, it'll come together eventually. You get golden copies of the rewards track so you can always do this one later.
Big Bird:
30 isn't a lot but you can make it a lot quicker by using Owl + Commanding Shout and Provoke. Getting up to 14 procs per game is pretty neat.
Flappy Bird:
Just put it into every deck. it's a decent card by itself to clear minions while grinding other achievements. In Druid you get to copy it too.
Gankster's Paradise:
You can try to get shenanigans rolling with Ramming Mount, but it's unnecessary. 15 is not a lot and usually if you play it on curve it kills something. People don't care enough to deny you the kill.
Mary Had A Little Lamb:
throw into a lot of decks, shuffle with Rogue, the usual deal.
One For All, Marshall For 1!:
Same as before although you can cheat with To the Front! and other discounts.
Reflecto Failure:
Any 0-attack minion will do.
Snivvle No More:
Do I even have to repeat myself?
Teamkill:
Sounds hard but is trivial as long as you own Grim Patron. Elven Archer + Patron + Arcanist and it'S done. JUst need to play a class that can discount or gets extra mana. NOte that this will leave you with a clear board and 4 Grim Patrons and the Arcanist once it ends meaning if you have board buffs you might be able to just kill your opponent for extra BM.
You're In Irondeep Trouble:
DO THIS NOW BEFORE TROGG GOES TO 2-MANA (or maybe they just have him some regular Trogg's instead of exact copies, idk). It's quite hard to pull off but in Rogue you can do it. As per usual you shuffle with Togwaggle's Scheme. The problem here is that you'd need handspace to hold all them troggs. To get around this I used Potion of Illusion so I only need 4 Troggs in hand. Discounts from Oct-o-bot and Preparation help.
Final Thoughts
A lot more grind this time around but also some really fun ones. Ignoring the multiple bugs all of the achievements are manageable given that you have the necessary cards.
As always, if you have better suggestions or need replacement ideas, feel free to post.
This took me way too long, I'm gonna go take a shit.
Yeah, it's probably not worth trying. But I did want to confirm it, and now I believe I have. I got a Deathlord up to 34/34, and now my progress is 32. So anyone trying to do this today has to do it all in one go on a single minion.
I just tried a game or two with a deck that also tries to cheese extra copies out of Test Subject, but it's honestly very hard to get all the pieces you need to do much of anything before you get wrecked in Wild.
Let's just wait for the fix, it's clearly unintended, since the wording of the achievement specifies "minions" meaning it can't possibly refer to a single instance. Probably just some dumb coding error.
That destroys any prestige of owning golden/diamond reward cards that cannot be crafted.
I don't care about such things, but apparently some people do, and it seems Blizzard definitely does.
Well, reality tells us that it is precisely Blizzard itself who has already destroyed any trace of prestige or exclusivity in the game in order to earn more money...
There are already a multitude of card backs and hero portraits that were supposed to be exclusive or indicators of prestige or seniority in the game and, however, have been given practically for free to everyone.
It is very obvious when a company is mainly dedicated to milking its customers for money, rather than offering good service and making them feel happy and fulfilled with its products. They certainly have their priorities clear.
Okay, so the implication here is that the Gesundheit! achievement is currently only tracking the max value you've ever granted (in my case, 25 attack). Certainly seems like a bug (since the achievement text clearly reads "Give 200 Attack to minions with Bless."), but it's something that we can test further. Of course, it would be incredibly hard to get a minion up to 200+ health for this.
So the main problem of this achievement that was coded bad is to find the afk/rope bots on the worst ranks , but it's heroic achievement mode , when they fix we probabily say "why we did it ? "
I just tried a game or two with a deck that also tries to cheese extra copies out of Test Subject, but it's honestly very hard to get all the pieces you need to do much of anything before you get wrecked in Wild.
Okay, so the implication here is that the Gesundheit! achievement is currently only tracking the max value you've ever granted (in my case, 25 attack). Certainly seems like a bug (since the achievement text clearly reads "Give 200 Attack to minions with Bless."), but it's something that we can test further. Of course, it would be incredibly hard to get a minion up to 200+ health for this.
Oh my god, I think you might be correct on that one. That would explain while I got progress a 2nd time but only to 44, because that's probably the size of my minion.
Now while that's clearly not intended, is there a way to cheese this? Even if you get perfect RNG with Shadow Visions for 4x Divine Spirit you'd still need at least a 13 base health for it to work (and the achievement is basically impossible for anyone who doesn't have double Shadow Visions).
The Chillwind Yeti bug makes it pretty clear that little to no manual testing goes into these achievements. I can imagine some poorly written unit tests that might exist and make it look like the code works as intended, but clearly no one ever bothered to try and do this achievement in Standard because you literally can't get the right version of Yeti in Standard.
Regarding Bless, I've got a new wrinkle to add here. After reading all of this I thought I might test a hypothesis, so I played my first Bless Priest game (which happened to be in Wild). I thought maybe there was some bug resulting in bad integer division (e.g. if it were dividing by 5, let's say, then any buff lower than 5 Attack would count as 0, anything between 5 and 9 would count as 1, etc.). That sort of thing might account for why a huge buff was only counted as 6 points.
However, my achievement worked exactly as it should have with the following plays: Kabal Talonpriest buff applied to a Northshire Cleric (both played in the same turn), then 2x Divine Spirit into Bless on the subsequent turn for a 26/26 Cleric. My achievement is now at 25/200.
EDIT: My second attempt with the same deck resulted in a gain of 0 despite buffing a Kabal Talonpriest to 11/11. I don't recall exactly what buffs I put on him when, but he got at least one Talonpriest buff and the Bless buff (and maybe a Focused Will buff?), and was not at full health when I cast Bless on him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I genuinely think it has something to do with breaking after the first game. My first game went just fine too, progress counted perfectly, but afterwards no game counted properly
Okay, so the implication here is that the Gesundheit! achievement is currently only tracking the max value you've ever granted (in my case, 25 attack). Certainly seems like a bug (since the achievement text clearly reads "Give 200 Attack to minions with Bless."), but it's something that we can test further. Of course, it would be incredibly hard to get a minion up to 200+ health for this.
I agree with you that the two biggest issues Hearthstone has is card draw and mana cheating. Time and again those are the things that end up warping metagames. But I also think that's kind of tangential to desire expressed by the OP to see new archetypes buffed to have a chance. Central to that is the question of whether or not all archetypes should be equally viable in competitive environments, and the Mark Rosewater articles are still hugely relevant to that.
Quick aside - you equate Timmy with Control and Spike with Aggro/OTK, but that's not really correct. Quoting from the Timmy article: "I should stress that Timmies don't like cards because they're expensive. They like cards that are impressive, and many of the most impressive cards are big (in size or effect) and thus are expensive. In addition, let me point out that a card doesn't have to be expensive to appeal to Timmy. If a card has a fun effect or creates interesting gameplay, Timmy can get quite excited even for cards that cost one or two mana."
Timmies care about big, impressive plays (which often requires a slower metagame), but they don't need to be playing a strict control deck to get that. Burgle Rogue is a great example of this - Contraband Stash is absolutely a Timmy card, but the deck is really more of a midrange/tempo deck than a control deck. Many versions happen to run disruption cards because that's the only way to stay alive in a warped OTK metagame. Similarly, Spike cares about efficient plays that rack up wins, so while Spikes tends to gravitate toward aggro decks for their efficiency they're not strictly aggro players. (Hearthstone has had some degenerate Control metas - e.g. Bomb Warrior meta - and you can bet Spike was playing optimized control decks in those metas.)
So, why can't fun and competitive be the same thing? For some people they are the same thing, and some archetypes exist to support them. For some people they're not, and other archetypes exist to support them (e.g. Burgle Rogue). They can't all be buffed to equal competitive levels just because some part of the player base likes them. Now, should those "fun" decks like Burgle Rogue be more competitive than they are? Probably, but that reflects problems like excess draw and mana cheating, and buffing weaker decks will only serve to power creep the whole game rather than reign in the actual problems.
I just think the whole "choose one" idea was dumb. Yes, I get that they want "Horde vs. Alliance" to be a flavorful aspect of Hearthstone. However, I don't think that aspect of the game is top of mind for the majority of players.
Most players care a lot more about owning Legendaries so they can build the decks they want to build. This gameplay issue trumps any lore or atmosphere reason you could give for doing anything.
I really, really hated having to choose one of two legendaries before I opened any packs, knowing I might not get the other one for many weeks. I really, really hated that my Horde/Alliance decision was tied to a card that I might not care for on a mechanical level. And most of all, I really, really hate that we are only getting one diamond version out of all this, even though you know they have both cards prepared as diamond. Everything about this implementation has felt bad from start to finish.
Ultimately, the whole idea of golden cards is really dumb. It's an attempt to replicate the foil premium cards of physical TCGs. However, Hearthstone is NOT a physical TCG, and every time they try to make it seem like one, it causes problems, starting with the random-pack business model and ending with this.
It's because Warlock has too much healing. I've been saying this since Barrens.
One of the main points of Warlock is that it uses Health as a resource. That's all well and good, and makes for interesting decisions ... until you give the class so much healing that there are no more decisions. Just go ahead and spend that Health willy-nilly in full confidence that you'll have no trouble getting it back.
When you're trying to draw through your entire deck, life tapping and cards like Backfire are not the least bit scary because you are guaranteed to get 12 points of healing from quilboars and two 1-mana 6/6 taunts, not to mention all the lifesteal removal you'll draw along the way, some of which may be doubled by Tamsin.
Warlock may not technically have more healing than Priest, but it definitely has far more efficient healing, and a lot of it.
The problems go hand-in-hand, but I do think the latest "OwlTK" Warlock decks shows that card draw is the biggest issue. It's true that decks that care about self-harm (i.e. Questline Handlock) use Barrens Scavenger and Blood Shard Bristleback to recover, but they're only enabled by drawing your whole deck really fast. Meanwhile the "OwlTK" Warlock doesn't use either of those cards to stabalize, instead getting by with cheap AOE like Grimoire of Sacrifice along with extra card draw like Bloodmage Thalnos and the Tour Guide/Manafeeder Panthara combo.
I see what you're saying, but accelerated card draw is supposed to be part of the Warlock class identity. It wouldn't make sense to take that away from them. Healing, on the other hand, should be present but minimal.
I agree card draw is their identity. (hell it's built into their hero power) but they have so much also besides that. In fact I'd argue that the warlock class itself should have almost NO card draw in their class cards simply because their hero power is so central to it.
For the last year, if not two years, warlock has continually proven to be a problem because of it's core design (hero power, self-damage, and now lifesteal). I think this is a clear indication the class needs to be reworked from the ground up, similar to how Priest was. I know we are coming up on another core rotation next year so maybe that will help tone down the class. But I have to agree. Warlock has TOO much lifesteal/life gain. It has TOO much card draw.
It's because Warlock has too much healing. I've been saying this since Barrens.
One of the main points of Warlock is that it uses Health as a resource. That's all well and good, and makes for interesting decisions ... until you give the class so much healing that there are no more decisions. Just go ahead and spend that Health willy-nilly in full confidence that you'll have no trouble getting it back.
When you're trying to draw through your entire deck, life tapping and cards like Backfire are not the least bit scary because you are guaranteed to get 12 points of healing from quilboars and two 1-mana 6/6 taunts, not to mention all the lifesteal removal you'll draw along the way, some of which may be doubled by Tamsin.
Warlock may not technically have more healing than Priest, but it definitely has far more efficient healing, and a lot of it.
The problems go hand-in-hand, but I do think the latest "OwlTK" Warlock decks shows that card draw is the biggest issue. It's true that decks that care about self-harm (i.e. Questline Handlock) use Barrens Scavenger and Blood Shard Bristleback to recover, but they're only enabled by drawing your whole deck really fast. Meanwhile the "OwlTK" Warlock doesn't use either of those cards to stabalize, instead getting by with cheap AOE like Grimoire of Sacrifice along with extra card draw like Bloodmage Thalnos and the Tour Guide/Manafeeder Panthara combo.
I see what you're saying, but accelerated card draw is supposed to be part of the Warlock class identity. It wouldn't make sense to take that away from them. Healing, on the other hand, should be present but minimal.
I’m totally with you there. And yes, spending a little money to support your favorite game is nowhere a crime. And I have no problem with the fact that you inform people about deals, that’s actually pretty helpful. My problem is the fomo created by remembering everyone that this will leave soon. That’s exactly what blizzard wants and what I and a lot of other people are not okay with. My statement was not meant to be rude against you or the website itself. I always appreciated your efforts since the hearthpwn era and will continue so in the future
Yeah I'm very curious if we'll ever get to that point. Probably when there's a crazy number of skins for each of the heroes.
Battlegrounds being monetized purely off cosmetics does put them in a bit of a weird spot to continue supporting the mode if they just give stuff out for "free".
If we were going to take a position and not post about deals because of the stuff going on with Blizzard's higher-ups, then we would just stop posting about Hearthstone completely. Though at our core we're a community site, news is a big part of that and we like to keep people informed. If we're going to not post about deals in the shop then maybe we shouldn't post about decks that use lots of the new cards either because we're just trying to push it into people's minds that they need to buy the cards to be successful.
What's going on at Blizzard is disgusting on so many levels and I personally believe that Kotick should be removed from his position at the head of the company. But Kotick and other higher-ups aren't the only people at the company. In fact, if things don't change and all the Blizzard products stopped being profitable, I believe there is a decent chance hiring would stop and they might start letting some people go. You can still support the people that work on the games you love while thinking that the people at the top there are a bunch of assholes. Though its not like buying stuff is like a charity handout either, you are getting something in return. If you like or want something and you can afford it, buy it.
The politics at the company will eventually sort themselves out and if anyone doesn't think so, I recommend they stop playing the games completely because everything Blizzard releases is a live service product so if the company shuts down, any money or time invested into the games goes away. Not to say that time investment is completely wasted though as long as you were having fun.
And I agree, everyone is welcome to make their own opinions. Mine is that we're treating everything as business as usual because I'm not trying to create a cesspool - quite the opposite. We'll report on the biggest of the news items at Blizzard because I believe everyone should know what is happening, but we're not going to report on every single detail because at the end of the day, its mentally draining and there's days where our entire front page or Hearthstone portal would be nothing but "what did Blizzard management mess up today".
Yeah so you're getting stunned, you're getting comboed out, and burst down and you can't do anything. I know it's frustrating, the meta decks just aren't cutting it right now, and you dont want to play the mirror.
Well boys I've got you covered here are 3 deck concepts that all do well into Kenin, you could call them control lists but they play like midrange.
1. Just challenge everything
Drag that little ****** with laurent protégé or bird as soon as he comes down, and then drag everything else over and over until you get the concede. Keep your singles and sharpsights for reactive plays.
Pings all day long, and lots of attune and draw to keep things flexible. Probably the only "infinite" cycling deck I enjoy because there is some skill involved.
Vulnerable is almost as good as challenger, and we have things like vile feast and other sweepers to keep the party rolling. Has the addeded benefit of playing well into other midrange decks.
So yeah if you don't like these lists just build your own, remembering that if you can't out control the combo deck you have to out aggro them consistently so that limits your deck building option to low curve threats like pirate aggro etc. and most people already know those lists so here are the more interesting options.
Swain decks are always strong in combo situations because youre essentially putting them on a clock to go off and they don't run a ton of non self bounces sometimes none. So yeah thats basically all the regions so you can counter Kenen with pretty much anything you want to greater or lesser effect as long as its built right.
Worth Every Penny - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Got a triple threat for you guys this time around.
Worth Every Penny - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Competition Theme: Worth Every Penny
It's an expensive world we live in, and the cards you're making this week just keep asking for more mana!
DestroyerR has asked us for cards that just keep making you pay for them - so make sure you've got spare mana to hand!
As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
Discussion Thread Rules
No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.
Gotta love the complaining
Game mostly sucks. Even Arena is less fun with the new cards. Thx but I'll keep complaining in hopes someone reads it and makes a change.
Achievement Hunting: Alterac edition (featuring bugs from the smol indie company series & Knuckles)
Hello
it me
ya boi
We're doing this again. This time with some extra spicy bugs that render a couple of achievements either completely broken or needlessly difficult to complete. We also got a lot of grinding to do this time, and it's not the fun kind (trust me, I did most of it already and it was painful). On the flipside, very few of these achievements require you to have a large collection and can be done easily with mostly Standard cards (and a occasionally a few cheap Wild ones). Either way, let's get into the details.
Demon Hunter
Wreckoning:
Pretty simple grind. Sigil of Reckoning is a Fel Spell so if you're so inclined you can run Jace Darkweaver for an extra proc later on. Might take a while to grind, but 40 total isn't that much in the grand scheme. Big Demon DH is also a pretty fun and relatively playable deck (and could improve over time if we find a balanced build that makes the early game more bearable). Try to have fun with this one, you'll get to the pain later.
...The Harder They Fall:
Extremely simple. Just stuff all weapon buffs you can find into your deck and wait until your opponent plays a big minion. Given the abundance of Paladins at the moment this shouldn'T be hard at all. You can add some small Rush minions to soften up the target too.
Smash that Fury Button:
Pretty trivial overall. Felfire Deadeye + Expendable Performers into 6-health worth of minions and you've got it. If you don't have Performers you can substitute it with Command the Illidari or double Coordinated Strike since you only need 6 attacks total to get there (don't forget to HP before starting the combo). Personally not sure how competitive token DH is, but you can easily throw together a working list. Just make sure to run enough card draw.
Druid
PUPPIES!!!:
Tedious and boring but not difficult. Frostwolf Kennels and Dire Frostwolf with a Token shell around it and you even have a playable deck to do it with. Composting is kinda key here to get the necessary draw. This deck is also idea to complete some of the neutral achievements with that involve some of the more "generic" minions.
Choose One? Choose All!:
Even more boring and tedious. Use Moonlit Guidance to hopefully tutor and duplicate your Pathmaker. Unfortunately this achievement can't be completed in Standard due to the small number of Choose one spells. Do also note that each of the two effects of a card count seperately so you can use each spell twice.
Mo Mana Mo Problems:
Self explanatory. Use Guff. If you want to be a giga-chad like me you randomly generate Guff while doing Rogue achievements and do it that way.
Hunter
Krush from Above!:
Probably one of the hardest one due to the unpredictable nature of the card and how slow it is. There's one combo though. Use Emperor Thaurissan to discount Ichman and two Terrorguard Escapees. This way you don't rely on your opponent to have a board. Alternatively you can just bank on running into a boardfocussed deck at some point and use Dire Frenzy to shuffle a couple of smaller beasts with decent stats in there.
It's a Trap!:
Strongly recommend doing this in Wild. You get Cloaked Huntress and a bunch of way better Secrets. I did this before the expansion dropped and somehow climbed to Platinum rank on accident. Petting Zoo is one hell of a card.
Out for Blood:
This one'S kinda hard. You have to find the weapon early and then accumulate weapon buffs like Toxicologist and Captain Greenskin. The hard part is knowing when to use the weapon buffs. If you buff too early you might not be able to get honorable kills. Try and get 2-3 early kills and then finish the rest with weapon buffs. Might take a few games to get.
Mage:
HONORABLY DIE, INSECT!:
There's three ways to do this: The easy way, the hard way, and my way. Easy is through use of the plethora of Wild Hero Power buffs such as Daring Fire-Eater or Clockwork Automaton. If you have big balls you can also try doing it Majordomo Executus, but I don't know if it still counts if you transformed into Rag. The hard way is doing it in Standard with the thematically appropriate Magister Dawngrasp, a truly bad card with very little practical applications.
Now my way is what you get when you have neither Dawngrasp nor any of the Wild cards because you disenchanted them years ago thinking you'd never need them again. That way you have to use Archmage Vargoth, Potion of Illusion, Wildfire and a variety of copy and discounting effects to get it all together. It took long. It wasn't fun.
Makes Yogg Proud:
Relatively tedious and annoying, mainly because Big Spell Mage is a really bad deck right now (at least if you run Towers, I still believe there'S a version of it that cuts all the greedy stuff and just goes for efficient mana cheating). Just keep playing the bad deck until you succeed. You will probably need Clumsy Courier for this, because you can't wait until turn 9/10 to start towering. I'd also recommend running Mass Polymorph if you have it because it's a great stalling tool.
Do You Wanna Build A Snowtroll?:
This one was my favourite because I masterminded the entire thing perfectly. What you want is get to 10-mana and have a Celestial Ink Set equipped. At this point you play one of the Snowmen and its second stage. That way you will get a discount on either the 3rd stage of the 2nd copy of Snowman, meaning that on the next turn you can use the 2nd charge of Ink Set to play all 3 stages in one turn. As long as you don't have any other spells in hand this works everytime. Really, getting to 10-mana is the hardest part in this.
Paladin
You Are Not Worthy:
This achievement is currently broken and doesn't register. Other than that it's relatively trivial to complete. Cariel is the one of the better Hero cards and Paladin is currently doing really well so it shouldn't be too hard to just do this one along the way. If you don't have a dedicated Paladin deck to climb with just throw Cariel into a healing deck and just take lots of damage. You'lll be done eventually.
Not Maroon. Not Crimson. Scarlet:
Requires a bit of set up to do reliably. Handbuff helps but isn't necessary. What you really want is Blessing of Authority. That's a fat +16/+16, meaning you onld need 7 more attack, which you can do in Wild through Blessing of Might for instance or really any other cheap buffs. It's not a hard achievement to complete as long as you have the right cards for it.
Bold and Brass:
This one was designed by a complete idiot. Since there is no way to consistently manufacture boards with 2-health it's unreasonable to do this the normal way. What you want to do instead is use Animated Broomstick + any Lifesteal buff like Hold the Bridge or the old Lightforged Blessing (which is better because it reduces the need for discounts). Dragon Consort can also be used in Wild for discounts if you don't have Thaurissan or Cariel Roame. Either way, it will take a while to complete. I found that taking damage is actually quite difficult to do without dying. If you still ahve High Priest Thekal, now's his time to shine.
Priest
Salvation Army:
Pretty self-explanatory. Run discovery for more copies. Also try using small damage spells to set up HKs. This can also target friendly minions so if you really need to you can just nuke your own stuff. This contributes a good amount to the neutral HK achievement so try not grind that one prematurely.
Gesundheit!:
This one is currently bugged. It took a while to find out what exactly is wrong with it but as it turns out instead of counting the total attack you've given with Bless it wants you to give 200 attack in a single instance...which is virtually impossible outside of Test Subject or Shadow Visions shenanigans. Better wait for the eventual fix. Oh and if you don't have Divine Spirit for some reason this will take you a looong time.
I Will Remember You:
i've never been more happy to not own a legendary. This one sounds extremely painful to pull off. Not only is Deathrattle Priest not a great deck atm but you also hav to survive until you get Xyrella and stack a bunch of DRs in the meantime which will always make you want to be greedy and squeeze in a little more which could backfire because you either die or your opponent just gives up. Just put in the hours I guess. Should be significantly easier in Wild thanks to way more deathrattle and resurrection stuff. Just use what you have.
Rogue
Top 10 Alterac Betrayals:
Pretty self-explanatory but Rogue has shenanigans to speed this up, namely Togwaggle's Scheme and Lab Recruiter. Fun fact: While doing this I ended up fighting a Mill Rogue who really did not appreciate the endless horde of identical pandas. Eventually he ran out of removal. I didn't run out of Pandas. Cause of death: Memed into submission.
Rolling In Their Grave:
Fuck me this one is garbage. It takes way too long and is just painful. Since this requires you to have DR minions die while the objective is up you'll be tempted to go greedy before playing the spell, which might cost you. Generally it's best to run lots of card draw, small deathrattle minions (preferably ones with stealth like Jade Swarmer and Skyvateer) and Preparation for flexibility with the Graveyard. You'll be doing this for while. Try using Korrak the Bloodrager too, since you can easily complete his achievement while doing this (Note: Korrak will be done in a fraction of the time it takes you to complete this achievement, that's how bad it is).
Third Cousins Twice Removed:
This one's bugged and only works with the Legacy version of Chillwind Yeti, so you ahve to do it in Wild. On the flipside it's completely trivial. I even managed to win the game I completed the achievement in. That poor Priest. He got the double Yeti beatdown.
Shaman
1-800-ELE-MENT:
Similar to Xyrella you just have to grind. Fortunately for you Bru'kan is part of an actually competitive deck and you don't have to be super greedy to pull it off. Just keep playing Shaman.
Snowball Effect:
This one is impossible to reliably engineer. However, it's not as hard as it sounds. First of all you play Freeze Shaman for the subsequent achievement anyways (which is not only competitive but also really fun), but also, due to the nature of the deck you'll be locking up boards with Snowfall Guardian and have beefy minions from Wildpaw Cavern. This way you just have to wait until a large enough board comes together and then get lucky with the snowballs. It'll take a few attempts but it'll happen eventually. Just make sure you don't ahve a Spell Damage minions on the board.
Winter Vacation:
PLay Freeze Shaman. It'S fun. Additional help you can get with Bolner Hammerbeak and Brann Bronzebeard. Do note that you don't have to freeze an unfrozen minion. It counts stacking freezes to so doing a double-up on Snowfall Guardian works well.
Warlock
Dreading This One:
You can duplicate Seeds of Destruction with Grave Defiler. This one gets done a lot quicker if you have Dreadlich Tamsin but you can probably do without. It'll take a while. Also make sure you have board space because the imps don't count if the spells trigger without actually summoning them. Just throw them into every deck you have.
Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying:
Very annoying but manageable. Don't play Zoolock to do this, it's a terribly frustrating deck that relies on highrolling early and has no comeback mechanics. Instead just do a draw-heavy imp farming deck and make sure you have enough disposable minions to get a proc each turn. Mindless grind.
Get Over Here!:
Another bugged one, this one doesn't work as advertised. Instead of having to kill a Legendary minion honorably you have to kill it honorably from full health. As such it's a lot more difficult to get naturally so we improvise. Bloodmage Thalnos is a core legendary and we just have to get it onto the opponent's board. You either do this with discounts from Runed Mithril Rod and Silas Darkmoon or you still have a copy of Treachery. Not very hard but still annoying that you can't just outright murder an opponent's legendary.
Warrior
What Happens When...?:
Since I don't have the card I can't tell how difficult this is, but if you put it into Pirate Warrior you'll probably get there eventually. I don't think there's a way to artificially set this up, even with Silas Darkmoon involved. At best you try and get them low and then have Silas + something like Bloodsail Raider. Since weapon removal is currently rather popular it might be frustrating to try and set it up over multiple turns so you're probably better off hoping for the eventual miracle. Might be easier to do in Duels now that I think of it.
Uncle Drek Wants You!:
Kind of a grind, but combines nicely with the next achievement, which I'll detail shortly. Just know that 5-mana minions are the best for this since you get the most value out of them when using double To the Front!.
My Lair, My Terms:
Now this one looks tedious but is actually really fun if you are big-brained mastermind like myself. Effectively we're gonna play this as a combo deck. We run double To the Front! + double Guild Trader + Mad Summoner (ye olde MVP for achievement farming) to get a 70-damage proc every game. This is a 10-mana combo so no disocunts required and if you set up Iceblood Garrison a turn early you only need 8. Just build your deck with enough draw and removal and you're good.
Neutral
Wrecking Ball:
One of those achievements not worth farming since it completes itself over the course of the expansion (unless you manage to dodge every HK card). If you do want to farm it you best use Hollow Abomination since he hits multiple targets. With Terrorguard Escapee you can knock this one out somewhat fast.
From Zero to Hero:
Similar to above this one just completes itself eventually. Rogue, Paladin, DH and Warlock all have playable and powerful Hero cards.
The Trees Speak For Themselves:
Either you play Druid with the Guff hero, or you just gamble at 10-mana. You can also handbuff him in Paladin.
King Of The Hill:
Completes itself as you complete class achievements.
The Everliving:
Rather easy to do when using the dedicated Rogue deck.
Congealing Essence:
No idea if this is worth forcing. I completed it on accident. If you want you can do it in Wild with Alexstrasza on yourself or in Classic by using Lord Jaraxxus.
Yummy In My Tummy:
This one's kidna hard depending on your card collection. It's easiest to do by using Treachery, discounted Flesh Giant and of course disocunts from Rod. If you don't have Treachery you need Silas Darkmoon, which is more expensive and thus harder. You'll also need to have an empty board for it to work consistently so Doomsayer might be of help. Alternatively you can try doing it in Paladin by buffing your opponent's minion.
Look! Holar!:
Best done while playing Freeze Shaman for the class achievements. Not a bad card at all. Do note that using Bolner Hammerbeak doesn't give extra procs because it's Bolner doing the effect and not the Herald. Brann Bronzebeard works though. I unironically climbed to Plat 5 using an achievement version of Freeze Shaman, it's a really solid deck.
Snoblind? Sno Problem!:
Same as the above. You can do it in Mage too obviously, but why would you? You're gonna have to play Shaman anyways.
Harder, Better, Warmaster, Stronger:
A good exploit is creating extra copies in Rogue since you get to play them all for 0 anyways. Do note that overcharging the effect doesn't work. Each Warmaster can only get a 4-mana discount (unless you're using stuff like Mana Wraith I guess, I haven't tried that though)
1600 Dust Bounty:
Just throw the BOunty Hunter into every deck, it'll come together eventually. You get golden copies of the rewards track so you can always do this one later.
Big Bird:
30 isn't a lot but you can make it a lot quicker by using Owl + Commanding Shout and Provoke. Getting up to 14 procs per game is pretty neat.
Flappy Bird:
Just put it into every deck. it's a decent card by itself to clear minions while grinding other achievements. In Druid you get to copy it too.
Gankster's Paradise:
You can try to get shenanigans rolling with Ramming Mount, but it's unnecessary. 15 is not a lot and usually if you play it on curve it kills something. People don't care enough to deny you the kill.
Mary Had A Little Lamb:
throw into a lot of decks, shuffle with Rogue, the usual deal.
One For All, Marshall For 1!:
Same as before although you can cheat with To the Front! and other discounts.
Reflecto Failure:
Any 0-attack minion will do.
Snivvle No More:
Do I even have to repeat myself?
Teamkill:
Sounds hard but is trivial as long as you own Grim Patron. Elven Archer + Patron + Arcanist and it'S done. JUst need to play a class that can discount or gets extra mana. NOte that this will leave you with a clear board and 4 Grim Patrons and the Arcanist once it ends meaning if you have board buffs you might be able to just kill your opponent for extra BM.
You're In Irondeep Trouble:
DO THIS NOW BEFORE TROGG GOES TO 2-MANA (or maybe they just have him some regular Trogg's instead of exact copies, idk). It's quite hard to pull off but in Rogue you can do it. As per usual you shuffle with Togwaggle's Scheme. The problem here is that you'd need handspace to hold all them troggs. To get around this I used Potion of Illusion so I only need 4 Troggs in hand. Discounts from Oct-o-bot and Preparation help.
Final Thoughts
A lot more grind this time around but also some really fun ones. Ignoring the multiple bugs all of the achievements are manageable given that you have the necessary cards.
As always, if you have better suggestions or need replacement ideas, feel free to post.
This took me way too long, I'm gonna go take a shit.
Alterac Valley Achievements
im doing warrior to the front! with SN1P-SN4P Phantom Militia Walnut Sprite
Alterac Valley Achievements
Yeah, it's probably not worth trying. But I did want to confirm it, and now I believe I have. I got a Deathlord up to 34/34, and now my progress is 32. So anyone trying to do this today has to do it all in one go on a single minion.
Alterac Valley Achievements
Let's just wait for the fix, it's clearly unintended, since the wording of the achievement specifies "minions" meaning it can't possibly refer to a single instance. Probably just some dumb coding error.
Celestalon Shares the Hearthstone Team's Thoughts on Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike as Free Golden Card Rewards
Well, reality tells us that it is precisely Blizzard itself who has already destroyed any trace of prestige or exclusivity in the game in order to earn more money...
There are already a multitude of card backs and hero portraits that were supposed to be exclusive or indicators of prestige or seniority in the game and, however, have been given practically for free to everyone.
It is very obvious when a company is mainly dedicated to milking its customers for money, rather than offering good service and making them feel happy and fulfilled with its products. They certainly have their priorities clear.
Alterac Valley Achievements
mb we can use more minions on single turn , like Djinni of Zephyrs or mb when we have an high hp minion copy with Faceless Manipulator and Bless both
@YourPrivateNightmare
There are multiple ways , Test Subject copies like APM priest , card generating cards ( Sethekk Veilweaver , Lyra the Sunshard )with minion decresing mana ( multiple Radiant Elemental , Nazmani Bloodweaver ),
So the main problem of this achievement that was coded bad is to find the afk/rope bots on the worst ranks , but it's heroic achievement mode , when they fix we probabily say "why we did it ? "
Alterac Valley Achievements
I just tried a game or two with a deck that also tries to cheese extra copies out of Test Subject, but it's honestly very hard to get all the pieces you need to do much of anything before you get wrecked in Wild.
Alterac Valley Achievements
Oh my god, I think you might be correct on that one. That would explain while I got progress a 2nd time but only to 44, because that's probably the size of my minion.
Now while that's clearly not intended, is there a way to cheese this? Even if you get perfect RNG with Shadow Visions for 4x Divine Spirit you'd still need at least a 13 base health for it to work (and the achievement is basically impossible for anyone who doesn't have double Shadow Visions).
Alterac Valley Achievements
I genuinely think it has something to do with breaking after the first game. My first game went just fine too, progress counted perfectly, but afterwards no game counted properly
Alterac Valley Achievements
Okay, so the implication here is that the Gesundheit! achievement is currently only tracking the max value you've ever granted (in my case, 25 attack). Certainly seems like a bug (since the achievement text clearly reads "Give 200 Attack to minions with Bless."), but it's something that we can test further. Of course, it would be incredibly hard to get a minion up to 200+ health for this.
Every meta. Why?
I agree with you that the two biggest issues Hearthstone has is card draw and mana cheating. Time and again those are the things that end up warping metagames. But I also think that's kind of tangential to desire expressed by the OP to see new archetypes buffed to have a chance. Central to that is the question of whether or not all archetypes should be equally viable in competitive environments, and the Mark Rosewater articles are still hugely relevant to that.
Quick aside - you equate Timmy with Control and Spike with Aggro/OTK, but that's not really correct. Quoting from the Timmy article: "I should stress that Timmies don't like cards because they're expensive. They like cards that are impressive, and many of the most impressive cards are big (in size or effect) and thus are expensive. In addition, let me point out that a card doesn't have to be expensive to appeal to Timmy. If a card has a fun effect or creates interesting gameplay, Timmy can get quite excited even for cards that cost one or two mana."
Timmies care about big, impressive plays (which often requires a slower metagame), but they don't need to be playing a strict control deck to get that. Burgle Rogue is a great example of this - Contraband Stash is absolutely a Timmy card, but the deck is really more of a midrange/tempo deck than a control deck. Many versions happen to run disruption cards because that's the only way to stay alive in a warped OTK metagame. Similarly, Spike cares about efficient plays that rack up wins, so while Spikes tends to gravitate toward aggro decks for their efficiency they're not strictly aggro players. (Hearthstone has had some degenerate Control metas - e.g. Bomb Warrior meta - and you can bet Spike was playing optimized control decks in those metas.)
So, why can't fun and competitive be the same thing? For some people they are the same thing, and some archetypes exist to support them. For some people they're not, and other archetypes exist to support them (e.g. Burgle Rogue). They can't all be buffed to equal competitive levels just because some part of the player base likes them. Now, should those "fun" decks like Burgle Rogue be more competitive than they are? Probably, but that reflects problems like excess draw and mana cheating, and buffing weaker decks will only serve to power creep the whole game rather than reign in the actual problems.
Celestalon Shares the Hearthstone Team's Thoughts on Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike as Free Golden Card Rewards
I just think the whole "choose one" idea was dumb. Yes, I get that they want "Horde vs. Alliance" to be a flavorful aspect of Hearthstone. However, I don't think that aspect of the game is top of mind for the majority of players.
Most players care a lot more about owning Legendaries so they can build the decks they want to build. This gameplay issue trumps any lore or atmosphere reason you could give for doing anything.
I really, really hated having to choose one of two legendaries before I opened any packs, knowing I might not get the other one for many weeks. I really, really hated that my Horde/Alliance decision was tied to a card that I might not care for on a mechanical level. And most of all, I really, really hate that we are only getting one diamond version out of all this, even though you know they have both cards prepared as diamond. Everything about this implementation has felt bad from start to finish.
Ultimately, the whole idea of golden cards is really dumb. It's an attempt to replicate the foil premium cards of physical TCGs. However, Hearthstone is NOT a physical TCG, and every time they try to make it seem like one, it causes problems, starting with the random-pack business model and ending with this.
Celestalon Shares the Hearthstone Team's Thoughts on Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike as Free Golden Card Rewards
Understandable, but not excusable. They need to have someone on staff who looks at every decision from the player's perspective.
What is the Alterac Valley Meta going to be?
I agree card draw is their identity. (hell it's built into their hero power) but they have so much also besides that. In fact I'd argue that the warlock class itself should have almost NO card draw in their class cards simply because their hero power is so central to it.
For the last year, if not two years, warlock has continually proven to be a problem because of it's core design (hero power, self-damage, and now lifesteal). I think this is a clear indication the class needs to be reworked from the ground up, similar to how Priest was. I know we are coming up on another core rotation next year so maybe that will help tone down the class. But I have to agree. Warlock has TOO much lifesteal/life gain. It has TOO much card draw.
Celestalon Shares the Hearthstone Team's Thoughts on Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike as Free Golden Card Rewards
That destroys any prestige of owning golden/diamond reward cards that cannot be crafted.
I don't care about such things, but apparently some people do, and it seems Blizzard definitely does.
What is the Alterac Valley Meta going to be?
I see what you're saying, but accelerated card draw is supposed to be part of the Warlock class identity. It wouldn't make sense to take that away from them. Healing, on the other hand, should be present but minimal.
OwlTK does make use of the worst offender, Touch of the Nathrezim, along with Drain Soul, exacerbated by Mo'arg Artificer and Tamsin Roame (in a pinch). So the amount of healing generated by even OwlTK is way too much.
3 Off Meta Decks To Beat Kenin
Yeah bro for sure. Vengeance is probably the cut, doesn't have a lot of great targets these days.
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
I’m totally with you there. And yes, spending a little money to support your favorite game is nowhere a crime. And I have no problem with the fact that you inform people about deals, that’s actually pretty helpful. My problem is the fomo created by remembering everyone that this will leave soon. That’s exactly what blizzard wants and what I and a lot of other people are not okay with.
My statement was not meant to be rude against you or the website itself. I always appreciated your efforts since the hearthpwn era and will continue so in the future
3 Off Meta Decks To Beat Kenin
Only 1 The Box in slay control?
Given the frequency of turn 4 wayfinders i would run at least 2 copies to always "welcome" our Kennens
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
Yeah I'm very curious if we'll ever get to that point. Probably when there's a crazy number of skins for each of the heroes.
Battlegrounds being monetized purely off cosmetics does put them in a bit of a weird spot to continue supporting the mode if they just give stuff out for "free".
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
If we were going to take a position and not post about deals because of the stuff going on with Blizzard's higher-ups, then we would just stop posting about Hearthstone completely. Though at our core we're a community site, news is a big part of that and we like to keep people informed. If we're going to not post about deals in the shop then maybe we shouldn't post about decks that use lots of the new cards either because we're just trying to push it into people's minds that they need to buy the cards to be successful.
What's going on at Blizzard is disgusting on so many levels and I personally believe that Kotick should be removed from his position at the head of the company. But Kotick and other higher-ups aren't the only people at the company. In fact, if things don't change and all the Blizzard products stopped being profitable, I believe there is a decent chance hiring would stop and they might start letting some people go. You can still support the people that work on the games you love while thinking that the people at the top there are a bunch of assholes. Though its not like buying stuff is like a charity handout either, you are getting something in return. If you like or want something and you can afford it, buy it.
The politics at the company will eventually sort themselves out and if anyone doesn't think so, I recommend they stop playing the games completely because everything Blizzard releases is a live service product so if the company shuts down, any money or time invested into the games goes away. Not to say that time investment is completely wasted though as long as you were having fun.
And I agree, everyone is welcome to make their own opinions. Mine is that we're treating everything as business as usual because I'm not trying to create a cesspool - quite the opposite. We'll report on the biggest of the news items at Blizzard because I believe everyone should know what is happening, but we're not going to report on every single detail because at the end of the day, its mentally draining and there's days where our entire front page or Hearthstone portal would be nothing but "what did Blizzard management mess up today".
3 Off Meta Decks To Beat Kenin
Yeah so you're getting stunned, you're getting comboed out, and burst down and you can't do anything. I know it's frustrating, the meta decks just aren't cutting it right now, and you dont want to play the mirror.
Well boys I've got you covered here are 3 deck concepts that all do well into Kenin, you could call them control lists but they play like midrange.
1. Just challenge everything
Drag that little ****** with laurent protégé or bird as soon as he comes down, and then drag everything else over and over until you get the concede. Keep your singles and sharpsights for reactive plays.
2. Nami TF control
Pings all day long, and lots of attune and draw to keep things flexible. Probably the only "infinite" cycling deck I enjoy because there is some skill involved.
3. Slay Control
Vulnerable is almost as good as challenger, and we have things like vile feast and other sweepers to keep the party rolling. Has the addeded benefit of playing well into other midrange decks.
So yeah if you don't like these lists just build your own, remembering that if you can't out control the combo deck you have to out aggro them consistently so that limits your deck building option to low curve threats like pirate aggro etc. and most people already know those lists so here are the more interesting options.
---Bonus---
Swain decks are always strong in combo situations because youre essentially putting them on a clock to go off and they don't run a ton of non self bounces sometimes none. So yeah thats basically all the regions so you can counter Kenen with pretty much anything you want to greater or lesser effect as long as its built right.