I wanted to create a similar thread, but the topic starter beat me to it. I visit OoC quite often daily and I understand ads are a big part of income for keeping the site up and running. That is why I hesitated at first when I also experienced the same annoying video ads issue and now the issue is already addressed. Kudos!
I opened Shadowcrafter Scabbs and Cera'thine Fleetrunner on the first day of the expansion, and was really excited to try out Burgle Rogue too. And it's certainly a cool deck that does some powerful stuff. The early tempo you can get from Double Agent and Wildpaw Gnoll thanks to how they interact with Maestra of the Masquerade is awesome, and Contraband Stash is a great payoff card that benefits from smart playing (e.g. by picking spells from Wand Thief that will always target enemies, picking high-value deathrattles from Reconnaissance, or maybe holding back a bit when playing Shadowjeweler Hanar to avoid losing out on the tempo value you might otherwise get from the Contraband Stash).
It's a sweet deck, and when it goes off it's incredibly fun. I played a game where, between Reconnaissance and Contraband Stash, I generated a full board of Greyboughs and become untouchable. A part of me feels the same way you do about wanting to see it be more competitive so that I can win more and enjoy these sweet moments.
The reality, though, is that cards and archetypes are intentionally not created equal. Thesearticlesby Mark Rosewater back in 2009 speak to how MTG goes about designing for different players. Together I think they paint a good picture of how cards and archetypes will naturally vary in strength because they're basically serving different constituencies. As I see it, Burgle Rogue is likely always going to occupy some Timmy/Johnny design space, and probably won't be terribly competitive. That's not to say that every individual player can't find success with it (e.g. Rogue has some nice disruption tools that can really mess with OwlTK Warlock), but it's naturally going to be weaker because it's built to serve a set of players who care more than the average player about the "how" of winning.
To the broader point about issues with the metagame, I think you're right that it's in an unhealthy place right now. You need only tune in to one of Kibler's streams to see a player who is famous for winning with "Timmy decks" frustrated at every turn by the efficiency of the top tier decks.
The efficiency of top tier decks continually seems to be born from "overwhelming" turns, usually due to some form of mana cheating. I think the most restrictive thing is that the hearthstone team constantly seems to turn to mana cheating as their "wow this card is so cool" as some sort of design crutch instead of creating other interesting mechanics or ways to interact on the board.
I've read the MTG articles before, and while I understand the premise, I also think it's highly outdated. Why can't fun and competitive be the same thing? (yes I know that "fun" is subjective but the underlying point still stands)
Timmy will play card "A" if its a powerful and aesthetic card, Johnny will play card "A" if it's a way to get a complicated flashy win, Spike will play card "A" only if it improves the efficacy of his deck and makes him win % more games.
Those are the fundamental (in a nutshell) differences between the players. If we want to give them "real names". Why does Timmy's control deck seem to never have the tools necessary to allow him a chance at reaching end game? Why does Spike's aggro/otk deck always seem to have a plethora of ways to easily win? People are fine with everyone having different playstyles. What they aren't fine with is more tools being available to the Spike players. Control players holistically have to "survive" an onslaught of cards and hope that they luck out. Meanwhile aggro players (and in this meta OTK decks) simply just draw their their deck spamming minions, or tutors, until they get their win condition.
It's a disparity in the way that cards are designed that fundamentally means that control players are always left feeling like they are on the back foot. Never being able to do anything except clear/taunt/survive until something hopefully breaks their way.
And to be honest, it's a problem with the way HS was designed. Other games such as MTG and even LoR have far better systems designed to allow control opponents flexibility. LoR allows control players to bank mana to use on later turns as "spell mana" which lets them access more expensive spells to summon stronger units or stronger board clears naturally because the aggro player isn't going to bank mana, they are going to spend their mana summoning a bunch of smaller units. The only way HS allows this is through mana cheating. Except mana cheating is universal. It can be used by any archetype (see Incanters flow)
What HS needs is either way more restrictive deck building decisions (similar to vandar or drek actually) that force players to build their decks in specific ways if they want some sort of bonus. Or they need to fundamentally change how the game works (which let's be honest, will probably never happen).
I'll also point out that with so much card draw, player hand management/resource management is next to nothing. If card draw wasn't so universally available or at least as "easily" available to use without restrictions, you'd see more careful play and more mid-range decks pop up.
If I personally had to boil down the two biggest issues in Hearthstone it would be "too much card draw" and "too much easy/non-restrictive mana cheating".
I'm going to add to what @anchom4n said by pointing out you recently opted to make a troll post when prompted to give a genuine answer to the thread in question (about people's favourite Merc character). I know nothing about you personally, but knowing that you are more than happy to make troll posts hardly makes me want to take what you say seriously.
If you are genuinely annoyed with how people respond to your comments, then you have been shooting yourself in the foot for a while and would benefit from taking a more genuine and respectful tone in future. You reap what you sow, so to speak.
If you don't actually care then fine, I guess. That's my baseline assumption anyway.
--------------------
FWIW, as a burgle rogue main, I actually think it has been the most consistently well-balanced archetypes in the game. It has never been prominent in the meta, but it is the sort of deck that we don't really want to be either lest things devolve into completely unpredictable RNG fiestas. They make some popular Tavern Brawls, but not constructed metas.
Ultimately, burgle rogue is a meme deck that manages to retain a following pretty much regardless of what the Wild and Standard metas are doing, and generally does so without inviting calls for nerfs or buffs. That's a lot more than most archetypes can claim, and makes it one of the most successful archetypes they have ever designed.
I mean it’s kind of you to say us that they will leave but with posts like this you only increase the Fomo in peoples minds. Blizzards price politics shouldn’t be advertised right now. But that’s just my opinion. Everyone else can feel free to have a different one
You're very obviously perfectly free to do and say what you want, but so is everyone else and with that controversial ideas to begin with and the way you express them on top of that, you really shouldn't be surprised about getting so much negative feedback.
The choice is between undisenchantable cosmetics or nothing - they're not going to suddenly drop a big increase in the amount of dust on the Rewards Track. If they WERE going to do that, they wouldn't do it through making the Goldens dustable, because as they've said many many times they don't like incentivizing card destruction.
As title says, has anyone here purchased the BG board skin and do you think it's worth it? Is it neat? Does it have interactables? etc. I haven't seen any videos reviewing it anywhere so wanted to see if I could get any feedback on if it makes the experience worth it or not.
I think a lot of people that play net-deck auto-win decks want to have their cake and eat it too.
I've caught flack on forums for admitting that I happily will rope those players (ideally for 7 turns playing excellently though I know I'm going to lose). And am vocal about not enjoying stale metas with obviously overpowered decks running rampant.
People, the amount of time I'm allotted a turn is for me to decide as are my opinions. They are as valid as yours and I don't call it BMing, I call it protest.
It honestly should be run, but it’s not a card I own so I didn’t include it. I didn’t end up running Saidan the Scarlet either because I didn’t unpack him
I do agree to some extent that it feels underwhelming when new archetypes don't immediately take off after they're released. But:
1) Don't forget the roation cycle. This is the last expansion of this year so completely new stuff will naturely have a hard time against archetypes that got support throughout the whole cycle so far. Sometimes things come to together two or three expansions later.
2) For some people, figuring out what works and what doesn't is part of the fun. It's no challenge and therefor less rewarding to put together "robot decks" as you call them on day 1 and go down a mirror match spiral of doom. Remember that we are only one week into the expansion yet, it takes some time to figure things out. My personal take is that they should completely abolish the theorycraft stream with the pros by the way.
3) As others have already pointed out, not every archetype is supposed to be competitive. Unfortunately, Burgle Rogue is one of them.
4) Try to tune it down a bit. I certainly know how it feels when you perceive an injustice and people rush to defend that perceived injustice on top of that. Yesterday's Formula 1 finals did that for me when my wife defended everything about Verstappen and I flat out told her she wouldn't come to the same conclusions if the roles were reversed. It ended with me leaving the room because I didn't want to spoil the race for her (she's the fan, I'm most certainly not). What I'm trying to say is: Sometimes we should just agree to disagree and move on. Just keep things polite.
Thanks, but no thanks. I dont buy skins as a rule, and only a small part of the BG heroes is a huge waste of money imho. Better to buy the paid rewards track and get free skins and other goodies if you want skins.
Afterwards I checked my achievement and found....6 points of progress. So what happened? Obviously it counted something but clearly not anything involving Divine Spirit. It also can't be any of the regular health buffs since Will gives +3 health which would have left me with an odd number of progress. It similarly can't just be the buff applied by Bless itself because that would just be 4 points of progress.
Does anybody have ideas what is happening here and how to properly exploit it?
that's wrong, dirty Rat is 2-6 , Bless buff heal by 2 , so it goes 2-8 , than transform to 8-8 and so it gets the +6
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)_/¯
EDIT: Third attempt, buffed Reliquary of Souls (at full HP) with Divine Spirit and Bless, made no progress...
This let me thing there is a possibility that is not coded as a sum , but a one time buff , i have to try ..
edit: i managed to do 100/200 progress with a 131/131 minion , im pretty sure it was right since i have done some buffs with obelisk quest priest hp .
Maybe just me, But after trying a few games, I feel achievements becoming more and more grindier.
250 hunter secrets, 300 mana Iceblood Tower, 300 damage Cariel Weapon, 200 Xyrella deathrattles are just a few examples.
For some, it's fine, because Wild sets can help a lot. But Hero Card achievements are the worst. You only have 1 card, and it's not always gonna be playable in every single game.
Probably just gonna wait until they fixed the bugs. It's amusing how they can't bring a fully function expansion after all this year.
I opened Shadowcrafter Scabbs and Cera'thine Fleetrunner on the first day of the expansion, and was really excited to try out Burgle Rogue too. And it's certainly a cool deck that does some powerful stuff. The early tempo you can get from Double Agent and Wildpaw Gnoll thanks to how they interact with Maestra of the Masquerade is awesome, and Contraband Stash is a great payoff card that benefits from smart playing (e.g. by picking spells from Wand Thief that will always target enemies, picking high-value deathrattles from Reconnaissance, or maybe holding back a bit when playing Shadowjeweler Hanar to avoid losing out on the tempo value you might otherwise get from the Contraband Stash).
It's a sweet deck, and when it goes off it's incredibly fun. I played a game where, between Reconnaissance and Contraband Stash, I generated a full board of Greyboughs and become untouchable. A part of me feels the same way you do about wanting to see it be more competitive so that I can win more and enjoy these sweet moments.
The reality, though, is that cards and archetypes are intentionally not created equal. Thesearticlesby Mark Rosewater back in 2009 speak to how MTG goes about designing for different players. Together I think they paint a good picture of how cards and archetypes will naturally vary in strength because they're basically serving different constituencies. As I see it, Burgle Rogue is likely always going to occupy some Timmy/Johnny design space, and probably won't be terribly competitive. That's not to say that every individual player can't find success with it (e.g. Rogue has some nice disruption tools that can really mess with OwlTK Warlock), but it's naturally going to be weaker because it's built to serve a set of players who care more than the average player about the "how" of winning.
To the broader point about issues with the metagame, I think you're right that it's in an unhealthy place right now. You need only tune in to one of Kibler's streams to see a player who is famous for winning with "Timmy decks" frustrated at every turn by the efficiency of the top tier decks.
This works brilliantly. I think the deathrattle proc'ed about 60 times times in a single game - seemed like it would go on forever, but it did eventually resolve rather than break the game with an infinite battlecry.
EDIT: I should mention that I tried this twos ways - killing the Kobold Illusionist before dropping Spammy Arcanist (to spawn 1/1s that Spammy would kill for sure), and setting up the board to have the battlecry kill the original Kobold Illusionist (by ensuring there was a 1-Health and 2-Health minion on board to chain into the Illusionist). The former didn't work (which surprised me, since the chaining works fine otherwise), but the latter did twice. So, there's some amount of setup required to get Spammy to kill a played version of the Illusionist, but it worked like a charm otherwise.
Tried it and can confirm that it works as well.
You only really need to drop the illusionist to 1, because on death it'll just continue the chain from there. A handy backstab works wonders in this regard. Just need to make sure that illusionist is the one that gets summoned.
We are pushing out a deploy now and we're going to be reverting to our original video ad provider.
We'll probably give the new unit a shot again in the future but its still too early and problems need to be worked out. I know our ads are annoying but they keep the site online and my, hopeful, goal is that ads we do display aren't a major pain in the ass.
Recent change to video ads?
Good call 👍🏻
I wanted to create a similar thread, but the topic starter beat me to it. I visit OoC quite often daily and I understand ads are a big part of income for keeping the site up and running. That is why I hesitated at first when I also experienced the same annoying video ads issue and now the issue is already addressed. Kudos!
Every meta. Why?
The efficiency of top tier decks continually seems to be born from "overwhelming" turns, usually due to some form of mana cheating. I think the most restrictive thing is that the hearthstone team constantly seems to turn to mana cheating as their "wow this card is so cool" as some sort of design crutch instead of creating other interesting mechanics or ways to interact on the board.
I've read the MTG articles before, and while I understand the premise, I also think it's highly outdated. Why can't fun and competitive be the same thing? (yes I know that "fun" is subjective but the underlying point still stands)
Timmy will play card "A" if its a powerful and aesthetic card, Johnny will play card "A" if it's a way to get a complicated flashy win, Spike will play card "A" only if it improves the efficacy of his deck and makes him win % more games.
Those are the fundamental (in a nutshell) differences between the players. If we want to give them "real names". Why does Timmy's control deck seem to never have the tools necessary to allow him a chance at reaching end game? Why does Spike's aggro/otk deck always seem to have a plethora of ways to easily win? People are fine with everyone having different playstyles. What they aren't fine with is more tools being available to the Spike players. Control players holistically have to "survive" an onslaught of cards and hope that they luck out. Meanwhile aggro players (and in this meta OTK decks) simply just draw their their deck spamming minions, or tutors, until they get their win condition.
It's a disparity in the way that cards are designed that fundamentally means that control players are always left feeling like they are on the back foot. Never being able to do anything except clear/taunt/survive until something hopefully breaks their way.
And to be honest, it's a problem with the way HS was designed. Other games such as MTG and even LoR have far better systems designed to allow control opponents flexibility. LoR allows control players to bank mana to use on later turns as "spell mana" which lets them access more expensive spells to summon stronger units or stronger board clears naturally because the aggro player isn't going to bank mana, they are going to spend their mana summoning a bunch of smaller units. The only way HS allows this is through mana cheating. Except mana cheating is universal. It can be used by any archetype (see Incanters flow)
What HS needs is either way more restrictive deck building decisions (similar to vandar or drek actually) that force players to build their decks in specific ways if they want some sort of bonus. Or they need to fundamentally change how the game works (which let's be honest, will probably never happen).
I'll also point out that with so much card draw, player hand management/resource management is next to nothing. If card draw wasn't so universally available or at least as "easily" available to use without restrictions, you'd see more careful play and more mid-range decks pop up.
If I personally had to boil down the two biggest issues in Hearthstone it would be "too much card draw" and "too much easy/non-restrictive mana cheating".
Quest Rogue
very strong deck, i will probably catch legend with it!
Mozaki Mage
nice
Buff Paladin
nice deck bro
Every meta. Why?
I'm going to add to what @anchom4n said by pointing out you recently opted to make a troll post when prompted to give a genuine answer to the thread in question (about people's favourite Merc character). I know nothing about you personally, but knowing that you are more than happy to make troll posts hardly makes me want to take what you say seriously.
If you are genuinely annoyed with how people respond to your comments, then you have been shooting yourself in the foot for a while and would benefit from taking a more genuine and respectful tone in future. You reap what you sow, so to speak.
If you don't actually care then fine, I guess. That's my baseline assumption anyway.
--------------------
FWIW, as a burgle rogue main, I actually think it has been the most consistently well-balanced archetypes in the game. It has never been prominent in the meta, but it is the sort of deck that we don't really want to be either lest things devolve into completely unpredictable RNG fiestas. They make some popular Tavern Brawls, but not constructed metas.
Ultimately, burgle rogue is a meme deck that manages to retain a following pretty much regardless of what the Wild and Standard metas are doing, and generally does so without inviting calls for nerfs or buffs. That's a lot more than most archetypes can claim, and makes it one of the most successful archetypes they have ever designed.
Alterac Valley Achievements
Add Knife Juggler and Deathspeaker and *Puff* hilarious OTK deck.
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
I mean it’s kind of you to say us that they will leave but with posts like this you only increase the Fomo in peoples minds. Blizzards price politics shouldn’t be advertised right now. But that’s just my opinion. Everyone else can feel free to have a different one
Every meta. Why?
You're very obviously perfectly free to do and say what you want, but so is everyone else and with that controversial ideas to begin with and the way you express them on top of that, you really shouldn't be surprised about getting so much negative feedback.
Celestalon Shares the Hearthstone Team's Thoughts on Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike as Free Golden Card Rewards
The choice is between undisenchantable cosmetics or nothing - they're not going to suddenly drop a big increase in the amount of dust on the Rewards Track. If they WERE going to do that, they wouldn't do it through making the Goldens dustable, because as they've said many many times they don't like incentivizing card destruction.
BG Skin - Arena of Champions - Is it worth it?
As title says, has anyone here purchased the BG board skin and do you think it's worth it? Is it neat? Does it have interactables? etc. I haven't seen any videos reviewing it anywhere so wanted to see if I could get any feedback on if it makes the experience worth it or not.
Thanks!
Every meta. Why?
I think a lot of people that play net-deck auto-win decks want to have their cake and eat it too.
I've caught flack on forums for admitting that I happily will rope those players (ideally for 7 turns playing excellently though I know I'm going to lose). And am vocal about not enjoying stale metas with obviously overpowered decks running rampant.
People, the amount of time I'm allotted a turn is for me to decide as are my opinions. They are as valid as yours and I don't call it BMing, I call it protest.
Lightforged Smiting
It honestly should be run, but it’s not a card I own so I didn’t include it. I didn’t end up running Saidan the Scarlet either because I didn’t unpack him
Every meta. Why?
I do agree to some extent that it feels underwhelming when new archetypes don't immediately take off after they're released. But:
1) Don't forget the roation cycle. This is the last expansion of this year so completely new stuff will naturely have a hard time against archetypes that got support throughout the whole cycle so far. Sometimes things come to together two or three expansions later.
2) For some people, figuring out what works and what doesn't is part of the fun. It's no challenge and therefor less rewarding to put together "robot decks" as you call them on day 1 and go down a mirror match spiral of doom. Remember that we are only one week into the expansion yet, it takes some time to figure things out. My personal take is that they should completely abolish the theorycraft stream with the pros by the way.
3) As others have already pointed out, not every archetype is supposed to be competitive. Unfortunately, Burgle Rogue is one of them.
4) Try to tune it down a bit. I certainly know how it feels when you perceive an injustice and people rush to defend that perceived injustice on top of that. Yesterday's Formula 1 finals did that for me when my wife defended everything about Verstappen and I flat out told her she wouldn't come to the same conclusions if the roles were reversed. It ended with me leaving the room because I didn't want to spoil the race for her (she's the fan, I'm most certainly not). What I'm trying to say is: Sometimes we should just agree to disagree and move on. Just keep things polite.
Every meta. Why?
Because my soul is already dead.
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
Thanks, but no thanks. I dont buy skins as a rule, and only a small part of the BG heroes is a huge waste of money imho. Better to buy the paid rewards track and get free skins and other goodies if you want skins.
Last Call for Hearthstone Battleground's Pirate-themed Shop Skins - Buccaneer's Booty Leaves Soon!
Would love to buy these skins individually for gold.
A Site for Hearthstone Sounds - HearthSFX
I've started some work on making the voicelines available for all languages. I'll be sure to let you know if and when that eventually goes live!
Alterac Valley Achievements
that's wrong, dirty Rat is 2-6 , Bless buff heal by 2 , so it goes 2-8 , than transform to 8-8 and so it gets the +6
This let me thing there is a possibility that is not coded as a sum , but a one time buff , i have to try ..
edit: i managed to do 100/200 progress with a 131/131 minion , im pretty sure it was right since i have done some buffs with obelisk quest priest hp .
Alterac Valley Achievements
Maybe just me, But after trying a few games, I feel achievements becoming more and more grindier.
250 hunter secrets, 300 mana Iceblood Tower, 300 damage Cariel Weapon, 200 Xyrella deathrattles are just a few examples.
For some, it's fine, because Wild sets can help a lot. But Hero Card achievements are the worst. You only have 1 card, and it's not always gonna be playable in every single game.
Probably just gonna wait until they fixed the bugs. It's amusing how they can't bring a fully function expansion after all this year.
Every meta. Why?
I opened Shadowcrafter Scabbs and Cera'thine Fleetrunner on the first day of the expansion, and was really excited to try out Burgle Rogue too. And it's certainly a cool deck that does some powerful stuff. The early tempo you can get from Double Agent and Wildpaw Gnoll thanks to how they interact with Maestra of the Masquerade is awesome, and Contraband Stash is a great payoff card that benefits from smart playing (e.g. by picking spells from Wand Thief that will always target enemies, picking high-value deathrattles from Reconnaissance, or maybe holding back a bit when playing Shadowjeweler Hanar to avoid losing out on the tempo value you might otherwise get from the Contraband Stash).
It's a sweet deck, and when it goes off it's incredibly fun. I played a game where, between Reconnaissance and Contraband Stash, I generated a full board of Greyboughs and become untouchable. A part of me feels the same way you do about wanting to see it be more competitive so that I can win more and enjoy these sweet moments.
The reality, though, is that cards and archetypes are intentionally not created equal. These articles by Mark Rosewater back in 2009 speak to how MTG goes about designing for different players. Together I think they paint a good picture of how cards and archetypes will naturally vary in strength because they're basically serving different constituencies. As I see it, Burgle Rogue is likely always going to occupy some Timmy/Johnny design space, and probably won't be terribly competitive. That's not to say that every individual player can't find success with it (e.g. Rogue has some nice disruption tools that can really mess with OwlTK Warlock), but it's naturally going to be weaker because it's built to serve a set of players who care more than the average player about the "how" of winning.
To the broader point about issues with the metagame, I think you're right that it's in an unhealthy place right now. You need only tune in to one of Kibler's streams to see a player who is famous for winning with "Timmy decks" frustrated at every turn by the efficiency of the top tier decks.
Alterac Valley Achievements
Tried it and can confirm that it works as well.
You only really need to drop the illusionist to 1, because on death it'll just continue the chain from there. A handy backstab works wonders in this regard. Just need to make sure that illusionist is the one that gets summoned.
Honourable Mentions - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Good luck to the other finalists :)
Recent change to video ads?
We are pushing out a deploy now and we're going to be reverting to our original video ad provider.
We'll probably give the new unit a shot again in the future but its still too early and problems need to be worked out. I know our ads are annoying but they keep the site online and my, hopeful, goal is that ads we do display aren't a major pain in the ass.
Every meta. Why?
No one asked for quest warrior deck buff. No one