23rd October update: DustyScales 'Way of the Crier' Reno Shaman, ft. Varian King of Stormwind!
"Woe betide those who set themselves against me."
Thank you to DustyScales for taking the time to create this deck. The start of the video covers a guide, with some wisdom from DustyScales. Some clever deck design thoughts and synergies revealed.
Flux, you waiting with the reveal of the datamined data because of not wanting to spoil things for anyone and giving Blizz time to do the right thing themselves, even they don´t care that much, doesn´t make you look stupid, but loyal and caring in my eyes. All you wanted/needed was a little communication from their part. You could spoil it right away for more views/traffic/money/whatever - yet you didn´t. You earned my respect. Thank you for all your hard work for us (and them as well). Blizz sending you the stuff is always welcome, but they should appeciate you more, as much as we do here on OoC. Much love for you ♡
Ironically, all this really does is to switch air elemental with snowclaw. Is it really a change meeting their expectations? I'd argue if they make the coin drops a guaranteed thing then people might actually want to grind different bosses according to the coins given.
Ive been grinding air elemental before, and currently Im grinding snowclaw instead. My progress has been slowed down and so I play less hours as a result. Im sure for others the implications is similar if not worse, and I feel that the devs fully understand that the community is not happy with the change - hence why Dean was quick to suggest that they would be discussing this next week.
They designed a game that involved a lot of grinding and then decided that they didn't like how people were doing it efficiently. If they wanted us to enjoy the game while including the grind its fairly simple (outside of a game redesign); just make the playing the variety of bosses more rewarding. As for the time scale argument - Im willing to bet that a f2p player would never get beyond the mid tier of the MMR table even in the next 4 months assuming they didn't grind for strangers. And I base that on the fact that Ive been doing so for the last week and a half at over 4 hours per day, completing about 10-15 tasks - the best part is that Im not even close to being ready for high end pvp despite it all.
Well there is certainly some misalignment somewhere, as evidenced by you not understanding why some people like the potato. Wherever the split of the playerbase exists, there IS a downside to cutting out the non-stranger events to pander to those eager to farm asap. I don't want them removed because they make the bounties more interesting:
The potato forces you to factor its role into encounters. It isn't always useful, but sometimes juggling a downside is as enjoyable as getting stronger.
The portal speeds up getting the final reward chest, but you have to approach the boss with a weaker team than you otherwise would, ramping up the challenge a bit.
As demonstrated by the coin artwork, the sabotage is a bit of a coin flip. Sometimes it makes things easier, other times the opposite. Tbh I am yet to see it have enough impact to really warrant existing, especially as type-X encounters are rarely completely dominated by type-X opponents.
As for Blizz's change, I'm on the fence about it. I was never planning on grinding heroic air elemental anyway. However, I do respect that a monotonous grind of taking level 30s on a level 8 bounty is not the game Blizz wanted to make, and they have every right to modify systems to encourage players to properly interface with the game as they intended. The affected players will argue that they are within their rights to play the game however they choose, and that is true, but I do think the change happened early enough that it is better described as 'conceptual debugging' (I.e. a tweak to make the game better fit what the designers where conceptualising) than a plain scummy move.
Behind all of this is the time scale over which people want to reach some sort of end state. I think a lot of people are viewing it like everything needs to be achieved over a few weeks, while the game is actually designed for it to take months for F2P players, which makes perfectly good sense when HS has always had updates appear on those time scales.
Well, it makes sense, since double damage is not say once 32dmg, but twice 16dmg. The visuals do show 32, but you can see how it changed during the animation, so damage reduction subtracts damage from both parts = it does reduce double the amount vs double dmg taken.
There seem to be a difference in coin drop rate according to rarity. Ive grinded for legendary coins with a fairly small team and often enough I'll be getting coins for the lowest rarity available more often than the ones I need: hence why there seem to be lower rarity mercs along with legendaries in later boss chests, perhaps as some sort of small bump to slow down the grind efficiency.
Also, I notice that there's seemingly also a difference in the amount of coins gained according to rarity in the boss chests. Legendary mercs coins often drop as 10 and 15 occasionally while lower rarities can reach 20 easily. Maybe its just me, but it has happened way too often to be a coincidence to me.
i m farming for Mutanos coins (just to get 300 coins to craft him). I did Xaravan on normal 15 times with a party of 4 lv30 and 2 lv25 (raising up) and i got 0 strangers..... suggested level is 25 btw...
this is far worse than expected. feels like you just cant get the stranger if you have lv30 in party and you are not doing a lv30 bounty.
Ive stayed out of pvp and I cant say I can see myself ever going there. Talking strictly as a f2p (whom the lord may forgive but I cant let go of that 5 bucks deal), there is a good reason to grind the stranger and that's because that's the most efficient way of getting additional mercs so you can execute sweeter combos. Besides which, the upgrade requirements aren't exactly slouches themselves. You get 10-20 coins per boss chest and anything above the first upgrade comes in the hundreds. It is only with the bonuses granted by strangers that the grind feels even remotely tolerable - unless one is prepared to wait day by day for tasks to come in.
Its not a misalignment because clearly grinding is not mandatory for those who would rather take it slow. But for those who prefer a faster lane, blizz has just erected a metaphorical speed bump and that's just a downgrade worthy of being pointed out as slightly scummy, especially since there's really nothing wrong if a person would like to grind up air elemental for hours on end. Dean has pointed out that they didn't want "players...feeling like they have to farm the same low-level content over and over again to play optimally" but let's be honest here, there are plenty of alternatives other than this 'hotfix' that would achieve the same thing without pissing both sides of the divide off.
Lastly, Im not sure what's with the potato that apparently pve players like so much. I can only name one boss that it really genuinely helped but in all other times its either completely useless or usually end up blowing my face off.
Oddly enough, I haven't seen anywhere that can say for sure what the coin ranges are, but this reddit post includes a table for which mercs are part of the rewards for any given bounty.
Anecdotally, I think I've mostly seen 10- and 15-coin rewards for lower level (heroic) content, and 15- and 20-coin rewards for higher level (standard) content. (Note: I haven't done high level heroic content yet - that might yield better rewards.) I guess at this point the Heroic Air Elemental may no longer be the best task farm thanks to their hot "fix" to Mysterious Stranger, but it's honestly crazy how many extra coins I have for Cariel, Cornelius, and Rokara after the task farming I was doing.
Edit: Just did a quick Heroic Raven the Hunter mission to see what I'd get: 55 (as 15, 25, 15) for Kurtrus, 15 for Cariel, and 25 for Anduin. The chest says you get to earn coins for the mercs in your party along with one of the bounty mercs randomly, but this happened despite the fact that the mercs in that bounty are Grom, Tyrande, and Kurtrus, and despite my not having Anduin at all (let alone in my party). (My party did include Cariel.) So, it seems like maybe heroic bounties can also grant unlisted mercs.
If Blizzard felt that "over-leveled" parties were hitting Air Elemental too frequently, why change the appearance rate of the Stranger? Why not tweak what the Stranger offers to be a task from a larger pool of Mercs?
Stats matter, especially in the earlier rounds. You won't live long enough to assemble your ultimate board simply because you lost that extra 6 health because your minion did not have that 2 attack to tie that one round. And this happens more often that one thinks.
This is an absolutely horrible change for every single person playing Mercenaries. Yes, more so for F2Ps, but you have to realize that even ppl buying deals and packs with money have to complete at least 7 Tasks for each merc to get all their equipment. Now it is going to take way more time and it will be even harder to do so.
I mean I understand that farming low level Bounties for Tasks was definitely not what they intended, but they introduced it as mainly PVE mode ffs, and what do you do in PVE? You farm and you grind. And you find the easiest cheesiest way to do it, and that is ok! Have they never played their own games?
I have already spent substantially more time in Mercenaries and in HS in general ever since the game mode came out, but it was only fun for me because there was a sense of proggression for my time spent playing. Now forcing me to play specific bounties to maybe continue progressing is not something I want to do.
There cannot be a 100% or a high chance to get Mysterious Stranger because there are three outcomes from the mystery tile, doubt they will just eliminate the other two at lvl30 bounties, so even with 50/25/25 split, which I think is more than we will get, it will take a lot more time than run through a low level bounty bunch of times.
In the end, I hope they can come up with an alternative way to offer more tasks more often, or the game mode will lose the appeal to a lot of players already playing it, and to ones who would consider starting from scartch at this point.
Often there are "special events" on a mission map, which boosts all fighters, protectors or casters. Just take 2x fighters events and the task is done. :)
many thanks for the insights. You are absolutely right in every point. If a party is at fault here it's Blizzard. Datamining is legit and public is public and not private. One advice for Blizz: If you do not want to release something just do not publish it :) Keep up the good work!
P.S. Blizzard is my favorite game company and I genuinely believe there a loads of good people there, but it's blunder after blunder in the recent past. Hope they get better again.
As long as we don't have pictures we can't say what happened.
If you want any constructive feedback you therefore know what to do.
The only thing I can say is that the game never cheated me so far so I can't relate to the situations that you are describing
I however know from other forums that people often don't read cards properly and therefore accuse the opponent to be a cheater because they make use of a niche rule.
If for example you let a scout use Cataclysm there will be plenty players who won't understand why you rally after that despite it just being a rule of the game.
As someone who is enjoying playing the Mercs PvE for what it is, I have to say I'm a little perplexed (though not entirely surprised) by people's need for an optimised grind for coins. I haven't touched PvP at all, but isn't it designed so you're not actually at a disadvantage if you don't have maxed out mercs? If so, why would people need to rush it?
I would happily stay out of the discussion as I play it at my own pace, but I'm conscious that what benefits PvP-focused grinders is a bit misaligned with what benefits PvE-focused players, who want the game to be tolerably fast to grind (which it already is) while retaining the game's longevity. Your comments about the potato, sabotage and portal acknowledge this disconnect, but disregard the opinions of the PvE players who like them rather too lightly for my liking.
Darkseeker's channel - 13th November update: KOtsosKOtsos' Reno Evolve Shudderwock Shaman - ft. Archivist Elysiana
23rd October update: DustyScales 'Way of the Crier' Reno Shaman, ft. Varian King of Stormwind!
"Woe betide those who set themselves against me."
Thank you to DustyScales for taking the time to create this deck. The start of the video covers a guide, with some wisdom from DustyScales. Some clever deck design thoughts and synergies revealed.
Deck code : AAEBAaoIHvoOwxb2vQL5vwLfxAKbywKLzgKnzgLz5wLD6gKm8ALv9wKggAOtkQO1mAO5mAO9mQP8owPWvgOTwgOPzgOo7gPj7gOU8APB9gPA+QPZ+QOoigT9nwSUoAQAAA==
Find Dusty Scales here: https://twitter.com/DustyScales
For Doomhammer Discord Server: https://t.co/cCIkXlMcYY?amp=1
https://youtu.be/oKt7trlrneA
Blizzard is Rebalancing the Mysterious Stranger in Mercenaries, Fixes to Tasks Coming
it wasnt exactly explained very well in the game. But if you watched any streamers or ytbers you would know.
Blizzard Sent Me a Hearthstone Mercenaries Care Package, Let's Talk Public Datamining!
Flux, you waiting with the reveal of the datamined data because of not wanting to spoil things for anyone and giving Blizz time to do the right thing themselves, even they don´t care that much, doesn´t make you look stupid, but loyal and caring in my eyes. All you wanted/needed was a little communication from their part. You could spoil it right away for more views/traffic/money/whatever - yet you didn´t. You earned my respect. Thank you for all your hard work for us (and them as well). Blizz sending you the stuff is always welcome, but they should appeciate you more, as much as we do here on OoC. Much love for you ♡
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
Ironically, all this really does is to switch air elemental with snowclaw. Is it really a change meeting their expectations? I'd argue if they make the coin drops a guaranteed thing then people might actually want to grind different bosses according to the coins given.
Ive been grinding air elemental before, and currently Im grinding snowclaw instead. My progress has been slowed down and so I play less hours as a result. Im sure for others the implications is similar if not worse, and I feel that the devs fully understand that the community is not happy with the change - hence why Dean was quick to suggest that they would be discussing this next week.
They designed a game that involved a lot of grinding and then decided that they didn't like how people were doing it efficiently. If they wanted us to enjoy the game while including the grind its fairly simple (outside of a game redesign); just make the playing the variety of bosses more rewarding. As for the time scale argument - Im willing to bet that a f2p player would never get beyond the mid tier of the MMR table even in the next 4 months assuming they didn't grind for strangers. And I base that on the fact that Ive been doing so for the last week and a half at over 4 hours per day, completing about 10-15 tasks - the best part is that Im not even close to being ready for high end pvp despite it all.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
Well there is certainly some misalignment somewhere, as evidenced by you not understanding why some people like the potato. Wherever the split of the playerbase exists, there IS a downside to cutting out the non-stranger events to pander to those eager to farm asap. I don't want them removed because they make the bounties more interesting:
As for Blizz's change, I'm on the fence about it. I was never planning on grinding heroic air elemental anyway. However, I do respect that a monotonous grind of taking level 30s on a level 8 bounty is not the game Blizz wanted to make, and they have every right to modify systems to encourage players to properly interface with the game as they intended. The affected players will argue that they are within their rights to play the game however they choose, and that is true, but I do think the change happened early enough that it is better described as 'conceptual debugging' (I.e. a tweak to make the game better fit what the designers where conceptualising) than a plain scummy move.
Behind all of this is the time scale over which people want to reach some sort of end state. I think a lot of people are viewing it like everything needs to be achieved over a few weeks, while the game is actually designed for it to take months for F2P players, which makes perfectly good sense when HS has always had updates appear on those time scales.
"Reduce Damage" abilities calculate before or after critical damage?
Well, it makes sense, since double damage is not say once 32dmg, but twice 16dmg. The visuals do show 32, but you can see how it changed during the animation, so damage reduction subtracts damage from both parts = it does reduce double the amount vs double dmg taken.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
"The change to Mysterious Stranger today is so players don't feel forced to run low-level content."
So, the solution is to literally force us to do high-level bounties only instead and not have any choice at all? Cool.
Fliboce's 12 Wins Taunt Druid
I'll give a try, but I don't own Plaguemaw. Replaced it by Naturalize
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
They are banning people man....
[Question] Bounty rewards
There seem to be a difference in coin drop rate according to rarity. Ive grinded for legendary coins with a fairly small team and often enough I'll be getting coins for the lowest rarity available more often than the ones I need: hence why there seem to be lower rarity mercs along with legendaries in later boss chests, perhaps as some sort of small bump to slow down the grind efficiency.
Also, I notice that there's seemingly also a difference in the amount of coins gained according to rarity in the boss chests. Legendary mercs coins often drop as 10 and 15 occasionally while lower rarities can reach 20 easily. Maybe its just me, but it has happened way too often to be a coincidence to me.
Blizzard is Rebalancing the Mysterious Stranger in Mercenaries, Fixes to Tasks Coming
i m farming for Mutanos coins (just to get 300 coins to craft him).
I did Xaravan on normal 15 times with a party of 4 lv30 and 2 lv25 (raising up) and i got 0 strangers..... suggested level is 25 btw...
this is far worse than expected. feels like you just cant get the stranger if you have lv30 in party and you are not doing a lv30 bounty.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
Ive stayed out of pvp and I cant say I can see myself ever going there. Talking strictly as a f2p (whom the lord may forgive but I cant let go of that 5 bucks deal), there is a good reason to grind the stranger and that's because that's the most efficient way of getting additional mercs so you can execute sweeter combos. Besides which, the upgrade requirements aren't exactly slouches themselves. You get 10-20 coins per boss chest and anything above the first upgrade comes in the hundreds. It is only with the bonuses granted by strangers that the grind feels even remotely tolerable - unless one is prepared to wait day by day for tasks to come in.
Its not a misalignment because clearly grinding is not mandatory for those who would rather take it slow. But for those who prefer a faster lane, blizz has just erected a metaphorical speed bump and that's just a downgrade worthy of being pointed out as slightly scummy, especially since there's really nothing wrong if a person would like to grind up air elemental for hours on end. Dean has pointed out that they didn't want "players...feeling like they have to farm the same low-level content over and over again to play optimally" but let's be honest here, there are plenty of alternatives other than this 'hotfix' that would achieve the same thing without pissing both sides of the divide off.
Lastly, Im not sure what's with the potato that apparently pve players like so much. I can only name one boss that it really genuinely helped but in all other times its either completely useless or usually end up blowing my face off.
[Question] Bounty rewards
Oddly enough, I haven't seen anywhere that can say for sure what the coin ranges are, but this reddit post includes a table for which mercs are part of the rewards for any given bounty.
Anecdotally, I think I've mostly seen 10- and 15-coin rewards for lower level (heroic) content, and 15- and 20-coin rewards for higher level (standard) content. (Note: I haven't done high level heroic content yet - that might yield better rewards.) I guess at this point the Heroic Air Elemental may no longer be the best task farm thanks to their hot "fix" to Mysterious Stranger, but it's honestly crazy how many extra coins I have for Cariel, Cornelius, and Rokara after the task farming I was doing.
Edit: Just did a quick Heroic Raven the Hunter mission to see what I'd get: 55 (as 15, 25, 15) for Kurtrus, 15 for Cariel, and 25 for Anduin. The chest says you get to earn coins for the mercs in your party along with one of the bounty mercs randomly, but this happened despite the fact that the mercs in that bounty are Grom, Tyrande, and Kurtrus, and despite my not having Anduin at all (let alone in my party). (My party did include Cariel.) So, it seems like maybe heroic bounties can also grant unlisted mercs.
Blizzard is Rebalancing the Mysterious Stranger in Mercenaries, Fixes to Tasks Coming
If Blizzard felt that "over-leveled" parties were hitting Air Elemental too frequently, why change the appearance rate of the Stranger? Why not tweak what the Stranger offers to be a task from a larger pool of Mercs?
Samuro Task 8
ah ... that's all? i will try :) tks
Am I the only one who feels Lurk is a bad mechanic?
After Patch 2.18.0 you guys might wanna give Lurks a try. Dragons a popular on the ladder after the recent buffs and lurks smash them.
Hearthstone Patch 21.4.4 Arrives Today - Battlegrounds Mechs & Elementals Nerfs, Mercenaries Bugs Squashed, & More
Also matters for resummons from kangor
Blizzard is Rebalancing the Mysterious Stranger in Mercenaries, Fixes to Tasks Coming
This is an absolutely horrible change for every single person playing Mercenaries. Yes, more so for F2Ps, but you have to realize that even ppl buying deals and packs with money have to complete at least 7 Tasks for each merc to get all their equipment. Now it is going to take way more time and it will be even harder to do so.
I mean I understand that farming low level Bounties for Tasks was definitely not what they intended, but they introduced it as mainly PVE mode ffs, and what do you do in PVE? You farm and you grind. And you find the easiest cheesiest way to do it, and that is ok! Have they never played their own games?
I have already spent substantially more time in Mercenaries and in HS in general ever since the game mode came out, but it was only fun for me because there was a sense of proggression for my time spent playing. Now forcing me to play specific bounties to maybe continue progressing is not something I want to do.
There cannot be a 100% or a high chance to get Mysterious Stranger because there are three outcomes from the mystery tile, doubt they will just eliminate the other two at lvl30 bounties, so even with 50/25/25 split, which I think is more than we will get, it will take a lot more time than run through a low level bounty bunch of times.
In the end, I hope they can come up with an alternative way to offer more tasks more often, or the game mode will lose the appeal to a lot of players already playing it, and to ones who would consider starting from scartch at this point.
Samuro Task 8
Often there are "special events" on a mission map, which boosts all fighters, protectors or casters. Just take 2x fighters events and the task is done. :)
Samuro Task 8
Bladmaster Samuro Task 8 is
Use the Boon: Fighter coin 2 times
What does that mean? Tks
Hearthstone Patch 21.4.4 Arrives Today - Battlegrounds Mechs & Elementals Nerfs, Mercenaries Bugs Squashed, & More
I see.
One of the things I have long appreciated about HS is that unless I specifically add someone to my friends list, they can only Emote at me.
Default HS feels quite private, so I was a little confused about further controls.
Blizzard Sent Me a Hearthstone Mercenaries Care Package, Let's Talk Public Datamining!
Hi there,
many thanks for the insights. You are absolutely right in every point. If a party is at fault here it's Blizzard. Datamining is legit and public is public and not private. One advice for Blizz: If you do not want to release something just do not publish it :) Keep up the good work!
P.S. Blizzard is my favorite game company and I genuinely believe there a loads of good people there, but it's blunder after blunder in the recent past. Hope they get better again.
Blizzard is Rebalancing the Mysterious Stranger in Mercenaries, Fixes to Tasks Coming
could not have said better myself, completely agree.
How common is it to find hackers?
As long as we don't have pictures we can't say what happened.
If you want any constructive feedback you therefore know what to do.
The only thing I can say is that the game never cheated me so far so I can't relate to the situations that you are describing
I however know from other forums that people often don't read cards properly and therefore accuse the opponent to be a cheater because they make use of a niche rule.
If for example you let a scout use Cataclysm there will be plenty players who won't understand why you rally after that despite it just being a rule of the game.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Q&A #34 - Balance, Pandaren Ninjas, Mercenaries, Datamining, & More
As someone who is enjoying playing the Mercs PvE for what it is, I have to say I'm a little perplexed (though not entirely surprised) by people's need for an optimised grind for coins. I haven't touched PvP at all, but isn't it designed so you're not actually at a disadvantage if you don't have maxed out mercs? If so, why would people need to rush it?
I would happily stay out of the discussion as I play it at my own pace, but I'm conscious that what benefits PvP-focused grinders is a bit misaligned with what benefits PvE-focused players, who want the game to be tolerably fast to grind (which it already is) while retaining the game's longevity. Your comments about the potato, sabotage and portal acknowledge this disconnect, but disregard the opinions of the PvE players who like them rather too lightly for my liking.