I'm glad Flux got gifts again, even through all the on-going blizzard drama, he still managed a very cool giveaway and ofc the reveal season. That tiny sword is so adorable!
I wonder how many HS devs we regularly engage with on these forums without knowing it (if they use the forum/comments at all)? There has to be at least one person checking up on this place for this to have been sent, right?
I agree, this seems to be a pretty fair assessment of the landmarks. I use Inner Sanctum in an Aksha/Renekton deck and it is quite useful there, as you can drop it turn three and slam two buffs on Renekton turn four. Although I haven’t used it outside of this deck so I can’t testify to its use elsewhere.
I’m not playing HS that much now due to the number of The Demon Seed warlocks, but I would definitely do a revamp of this deck to include Granite Forgeborns. Kazakus, Golem Shaper would definitely be out just because of how powerful Granite Forgeborn is and a Menacing Nimbus would go out as well. I’m not sure about Canal Slogger yet but would maybe try removing an extra Menacing Nimbus and maybe a Gyreworm to put him in. Another thing I’m going to try is to put Bolner Hammerbeak in and keep Menacing Nimbus and instead remove Gyreworms since it might be easy to activate him for a lot of value after you reduce the cost of elementals using Granite Forgeborn.
So overall I’m confident about Granite Forgeborn helping this deck and being better than Kazakus since he can help you get to your high cost burn cards faster and in general cheat mana, and I’m going to try out Bolner Hammerbeak and Canal Slogger versions after quest warlock in wild gets nerfed.
I’ll update this list and let you know of the results, I like Elemental Shaman a lot so I was definitely going to play a lot of games with it and update this deck to a more optimal version for this expansion eventually.
Ladder seems to be a bit better now. I've been playing a lot of Quest Warrior (a high-tempo version) and it's killing it. It's not really an aggro deck but a faster midrange one, and it beats the Quest Warlocks and Quest Mages pretty consistently. Raid the Docks still doesn't warrant a nerf though, contrary to the OP's point.
There are a wide variety of decks being played, and that makes this meta a little more fun. Some Elemental Shamans (Whack-A-Gnoll Hammer and Doomhammer variants), Quest Shaman, Aggro Shadow Priest(!), Quest Paladins, Quest Rogues...it's pretty nice! I even tried a Big Warrior list and it's working well too.
The devs might still nerf some Warlock cards to save Wild, if they actually care about that mode. But from my ladder experience, the meta's looking pretty balanced.
Raid the Docks is straight up consistent. I've not had many issues with it sucking I'll say that. Against many of the other decks out there, it provides longevity with taunt pirates a Ship's Cannon effect in the long haul, and continual board presence. Do I still think it needs a nerf, not necessarily given that the meta is far from evening out, but it certainly maintains a top deck in my plays
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You mentioned in your OP that it'll need a nerf, I'm saying it won't because it's simply a solid and fun card whose infinite value in the end game isn't that oppressive.
I saw Roffle play this Odd Quest Warrior deck, which looks incredibly fun. Just tank up, then play Brann Bronzebeard + Cap'n Rokara to get two Juggernauts. Definitely gonna try that out.
I never meant to imply that the archetypes were strict and didn't have fluctuations or even combinations between them. Just that the archetypes (as loosely defined as they can be) should still exist, and for lack of a better argument ...control is simply heavily under-represented in the current meta.
I'm fine with classes and archetypes being weaker in certain metas than others (we've seen this in the past, and it's generally how blizzard rotates balance between classes) but right now the combo-esque control decks (like mage and warlock) are so uninteractive that there's little to no way to counter them as a control deck. This leaves the only viable way to counter them to play faster combo decks or fast aggro decks.
This is not a healthy meta, not by a long shot.
And I constantly feel like I'm banging my head against wall trying to explain as such. I just had a debate on a reddit thread where a guy claimed that "they wished hearthstone would put a 7-8 minute timer in the game, and then control decks would be palatable".
7-8 minute hard-coded timers. That's insane. And makes me realize that people's idea of what a control matchup should be (versus what they think it is) is heavily warped. Most AGGRO matches last 6 minutes to maybe 10 minutes. For people to think that a Hearthstone should have a 7-8 minute timer to "curb the length of control matches" makes me think that the demographic of Hearthstone has changed to ADD fortnite players who's attention spans start to wane the minute their aggro plan goes out the door. (Yes, that's a bit of a snide comment, but I'm extremely frustrated at the lack of verbal support for the control archetype...both from players and from developers.)
Was playing this deck before the expansion, and I'm still playing it after the release lol. Good stuff :) Would you consider dropping Kazakus at this point for Canal Slogger and/or Granite Forgeborn?
That questline Demon Hunter deck is very different and a lot of fun! The sword upgrading enough to complete a step of the questline itself is very useful.
Also, I'd like to agree with meisterz39's assessment. In metas where attrition based control were prominent, it was mostly an awful experience. I like slower games myself, and was gleefully playing control bomb warrior before the last rotation, and was playing lots of control priest in the early parts of the barrens meta. But whenever I face up against a mirror match I often find myself silently praying my opponent just t1 concedes. And I think this is a general sentiment towards control decks in the community.
This feels kind of hypocritical: "gleefully" playing bomb warrior, or control priest but then when you go into a mirror match hoping that they concede. What's that saying? "You can't have your cake and eat it too". You can't be someone who "enjoys slower games" and "plays control decks" but then agrees with the sentiment that "control decks bad".
And meisterz sentiment about how "control doesn't play a large part in Hearthstone's metagame" is PRECISELY why aggro is always running rampant. Aggro at it's core is about consistency and (lately) card draw. Control doesn't generally want a ton of card draw because naturally their cards are more expensive. Control's archtype is to keep aggro in check. Going back to the "holy trifecta". Control's role in card games is to keep aggro in check. OTK decks keep control in check. If control is pushed out of the meta all the time because of lack of support that's on the devs. If control is pushed out of the meta because people can't be bothered to play a match for anything longer than 5-10 minute games. That's on the players: The game is not here to cater to ADD kids who can't be arsed to think beyond their 5 minute face hunter smorc gameplan. Control is often given a bad rap because "my game lasted 20 minutes....hearthstone is so boring" , then perhaps those people are playing the wrong game.
Is it hypocritical to like playing with slow decks while not liking to play against slow decks? Im not sure. I'll leave that for others to judge.
But to address what I think is the central point of your response to mine; I simply don't believe hearthstone needs to follow a strict holy trinity, a 'trifecta' of how archetypes work, or should work because hearthstone decks regularly crosses between the lines. Quest mage plays like a control deck, controlock has at its core a combo that wins the game for them (whether its tickatus or neeru), as does barrens control shaman. Token druid is a combo deck that sometimes play like an aggro deck. It can never have a strict definition, much less a 'role' because one card can mean all the difference (Lock and Load in face hunter, Doomhammer or Whack-A-Gnoll Hammer in elemental shaman, etc.). For the sake of brevity we apply labels to them, but there's no holy book to mandate their roles in the game. Metas and viability are determined by deck builds, and certainly not by its 'roles' as the labels seem to imply. Control warrior in barrens specifically have a good match against pre-nerf control priest, and are played in tournaments to do just that. Pre-nerf token druid has good matchup against face hunter but not against rush warrior.
Im not saying we can't continue to use the labels, but to imply that they have to have certain specific roles in the game is perhaps a tad too far for something so fluid in a game like hearthstone.
Not entirely sure why you're making specific examples that "an OTK, you're a combo deck". Yes, and water is also wet. What's your point in defining things that have already been defined before? Traditional control isn't strictly attrition, but yes generally does involve "outvaluing" your opponent in terms of resources. Once again, what is the actual point you are trying to make here, other than padding out a response to make it look more substantial or have a higher level of veracity?
I am not just padding my response, I'm responding directly to AngryShuckie's definition of the control archetype. The relevant quote here from Shuckie is "What that win condition is can vary greatly, including plain attrition, overwhelming the opponent with big minions, or maybe even an OTK. The biggest distinction with combo is the amount of draw they run." My point was that I don't agree entirely with the definition Shuckie put forth - if your deck relies on an OTK, then it's a combo deck, plain and simple. Whether you do that quickly or slowly is irrelevant to the actual strategy of your deck.
Ultimately, I think any deck that's classified as Control needs to playing a value game. Brian Kibler's Control Shaman is a great recent example of this.
So it's ok for aggro or even combo/OTK to define the meta, but the minute control defines the meta it's "woe is me"? C'mon. This debate is getting ridiculous. It's like that meme…
This is not a "woe is me" complaint - I actually really like control decks, and played a ton of Reno Control Priest back before Knights of the Frozen Throne turned the deck into a combo deck. I'm fine playing some slow games, but tons of control mirrors do make for a boring, grindy experience.
It's also not me trying to define which decks are "allowed" to define the meta, I'm just trying to articular which archetypes tend to define a healthy metagame.
Let's examine a much more relevant card: Fire Sale. This card is the *perfect* control card. Cheap, decent aoe, tradable. Means control doesn't have to have it clog their hand. Yet, it's not really being used in control decks right now. It's being used in quest mage, which is (if we are being honest) closer to a OTK/combo deck than an actual Control deck. Though I could see arguments made to "classify" it as a partial control deck (it does control the game before completing it's quest).
I sort of feel like you're making my point for me here. My original argument was that the Aggro > Combo > Control triangle doesn't fit well in Hearthstone, and the place where it fits the worst is the Control part. I've already described in other posts why I think this MTG concept doesn't map perfectly to Hearthstone, but I'll sum it up as this: Hearthstone is much more tempo-oriented, and teching against other strategies is more expensive. This is exactly why you might reasonably classify Quest Mage is being "partial control" - it runs a bunch of cards like First Flame and Fire Sale to control the board because of how important it is to stifle opposing tempo.
This happens all the time in Hearthstone - Aggro and Combo archetypes are more frequently successful, so when you see slower value decks in the early days of the meta, you tend to see more mixed archetypes (i.e. Midrange and Control-Combo) that take elements of Control archetypes, but don't go full control. Traditional control decks don't really come about until late into a meta when the game is stable enough that a more traditional control deck can know what to build against.
All of this is why I think AngryShuckie's original argument is flawed; it leverages that triangle to articular what's wrong with the balance in the game, and blames card draw for that issue, but I don't think that balance problem really exists to nearly the degree that triangle would suggest because we're seeing exactly the kinds of archetypes we'd expect to see in Hearthstone at this stage of the meta: Midrange, Aggro, and Combo. That's a fairly healthy metagame for the early days of an expansion, and exactly what I'd expect to see in Hearthstone because Control in Hearthstone naturally needs a solid meta to play off of. There's a real possibility that the Tradeable keyword changes that by lowering the costs of early meta Control, but so far I don't think we're there, and I don't think we'll get there unless the keyword goes evergreen.
There's also a logging function you can enable, which is how the deck tracker functions, and that records every move made, without having to access the game's memory space. I think actions are recorded as some kind of code, but most of the reverse engineering work has been done already, and the deck tracker is open source. If it isn't possible to write such a bot as a plugin for the deck tracker.
Speaking as someone who mainlines Mage (in standard), I can see the calls for nerfs to Incanter's Flow, but, to be honest, dropping it early doesn't win as many games as you might think. Its real payoff is in the late game when you can draw a helluva lot of cards off of Cram Session. Nerf it to 3 mana, or even 4, and it'll still pay those late game dividends, and might even fit nicely with mid-game Arcane spell curve. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see it nerfed because this is the first time in forever I've felt like mage was competitive.
The only times that Incanter's Flow seems to make or break the game is in the mirror match. But in that case it's also who can drop a Primordial Studies followed by Brain Freeze fastest.
I rather they buff weak powers and treasures. Most classes only have 1 hero power that doesn't suck complete ass, and 1 or 2 starting treasures. There is no variety.
I did not mean to say that this mod is "necessary" to create bots, but that it is a great help for creating intelligent bots.
The point is that this mod not only allows you to control the game with keyboard commands (which greatly facilitates the work for a bot as you say) but it is also capable of interpreting the graphical interface (knowing what cards I have in hand,the minions, etc.), that is, thanks to this mod, as a programmer I can know everything that happens in the game and I can create an algorithm that knows how to respond to each situation, it is not that difficult.
Therefore, no, it would not be a bot that ignores what the other player does, but rather the opposite: a bot that "sees" the state of the game at all times and choose itself the best possible move, and in this way, winning is not that difficult, a bot can easily beat you at chess for example.
And obviously you are right: as I said before, it is very easy for Blizzard to detect whether the executable of the game has been altered and to ban the account immediately. Because I remember you, altering the executable of any game by injecting code is forbidden by Blizzard rules and is a direct and permanent ban.
I think you might have misinterpreted me. I am less convinced this mod is necessary to make such bots, but I can see how being able to send keypresses would make programming a bot easier.
I guess you mean programming the bot to do its thing and ignoring anything the other player does. I didn't know any decks existed that could allow you to win often enough to climb all the way by playing that way. I suppose one could be written and debugged in 2 or 3 days, which is probably enough time before overpowered decks get nerfed.
As I sort of said earlier, I don't think Blizzard will be happy about third-party code being injected in their game. I'm not sure what they can do to stop the mod from working and prevent the author from just updating the mod. I guess they could detect it and ban users. Either way, if an account is playing for more than 24 hours straight with 0 breaks, it should be pretty obvious they are botting.
consistently inconsistent once again, but at least the deck is still legitimately awful unless you're playing against some ultra slow control deck with no pressure (and Priest can instantly shut it down with Illucia)
That's pretty much what I always tend to do at the start of an expansion. No doubt it's a better use of gold than just buying the packs, but there are always time constraints to consider. Still, some fun times to be had in Arena; although I don't know about that [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found]...
Ladder seems to be a bit better now. I've been playing a lot of Quest Warrior (a high-tempo version) and it's killing it. It's not really an aggro deck but a faster midrange one, and it beats the Quest Warlocks and Quest Mages pretty consistently. Raid the Docks still doesn't warrant a nerf though, contrary to the OP's point.
There are a wide variety of decks being played, and that makes this meta a little more fun. Some Elemental Shamans (Whack-A-Gnoll Hammer and Doomhammer variants), Quest Shaman, Aggro Shadow Priest(!), Quest Paladins, Quest Rogues...it's pretty nice! I even tried a Big Warrior list and it's working well too.
The devs might still nerf some Warlock cards to save Wild, if they actually care about that mode. But from my ladder experience, the meta's looking pretty balanced.
Raid the Docks is straight up consistent. I've not had many issues with it sucking I'll say that. Against many of the other decks out there, it provides longevity with taunt pirates a Ship's Cannon effect in the long haul, and continual board presence. Do I still think it needs a nerf, not necessarily given that the meta is far from evening out, but it certainly maintains a top deck in my plays
The Alliance Left a Shield Sitting Around in The Barrens... (Thanks Hearthstone Team!)
I'm glad Flux got gifts again, even through all the on-going blizzard drama, he still managed a very cool giveaway and ofc the reveal season. That tiny sword is so adorable!
The Alliance Left a Shield Sitting Around in The Barrens... (Thanks Hearthstone Team!)
Sword! Tiny for Gnomes.
I love you guys.
The Alliance Left a Shield Sitting Around in The Barrens... (Thanks Hearthstone Team!)
I wonder how many HS devs we regularly engage with on these forums without knowing it (if they use the forum/comments at all)? There has to be at least one person checking up on this place for this to have been sent, right?
Landmarks, the impossible equation ?
I agree, this seems to be a pretty fair assessment of the landmarks. I use Inner Sanctum in an Aksha/Renekton deck and it is quite useful there, as you can drop it turn three and slam two buffs on Renekton turn four. Although I haven’t used it outside of this deck so I can’t testify to its use elsewhere.
The Alliance Left a Shield Sitting Around in The Barrens... (Thanks Hearthstone Team!)
Is Flux'thar secretly the 11th mercenary..?
The Alliance Left a Shield Sitting Around in The Barrens... (Thanks Hearthstone Team!)
ORC WILL NOT BE BOUND BY PANTS!!!
Elemental Shaman
I’m not playing HS that much now due to the number of The Demon Seed warlocks, but I would definitely do a revamp of this deck to include Granite Forgeborns. Kazakus, Golem Shaper would definitely be out just because of how powerful Granite Forgeborn is and a Menacing Nimbus would go out as well. I’m not sure about Canal Slogger yet but would maybe try removing an extra Menacing Nimbus and maybe a Gyreworm to put him in. Another thing I’m going to try is to put Bolner Hammerbeak in and keep Menacing Nimbus and instead remove Gyreworms since it might be easy to activate him for a lot of value after you reduce the cost of elementals using Granite Forgeborn.
So overall I’m confident about Granite Forgeborn helping this deck and being better than Kazakus since he can help you get to your high cost burn cards faster and in general cheat mana, and I’m going to try out Bolner Hammerbeak and Canal Slogger versions after quest warlock in wild gets nerfed.
I’ll update this list and let you know of the results, I like Elemental Shaman a lot so I was definitely going to play a lot of games with it and update this deck to a more optimal version for this expansion eventually.
Hunter and Warrior Quests are Total Nerf Targets
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You mentioned in your OP that it'll need a nerf, I'm saying it won't because it's simply a solid and fun card whose infinite value in the end game isn't that oppressive.
I saw Roffle play this Odd Quest Warrior deck, which looks incredibly fun. Just tank up, then play Brann Bronzebeard + Cap'n Rokara to get two Juggernauts. Definitely gonna try that out.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
I never meant to imply that the archetypes were strict and didn't have fluctuations or even combinations between them. Just that the archetypes (as loosely defined as they can be) should still exist, and for lack of a better argument ...control is simply heavily under-represented in the current meta.
I'm fine with classes and archetypes being weaker in certain metas than others (we've seen this in the past, and it's generally how blizzard rotates balance between classes) but right now the combo-esque control decks (like mage and warlock) are so uninteractive that there's little to no way to counter them as a control deck. This leaves the only viable way to counter them to play faster combo decks or fast aggro decks.
This is not a healthy meta, not by a long shot.
And I constantly feel like I'm banging my head against wall trying to explain as such. I just had a debate on a reddit thread where a guy claimed that "they wished hearthstone would put a 7-8 minute timer in the game, and then control decks would be palatable".
7-8 minute hard-coded timers. That's insane. And makes me realize that people's idea of what a control matchup should be (versus what they think it is) is heavily warped. Most AGGRO matches last 6 minutes to maybe 10 minutes. For people to think that a Hearthstone should have a 7-8 minute timer to "curb the length of control matches" makes me think that the demographic of Hearthstone has changed to ADD fortnite players who's attention spans start to wane the minute their aggro plan goes out the door. (Yes, that's a bit of a snide comment, but I'm extremely frustrated at the lack of verbal support for the control archetype...both from players and from developers.)
The Latest Top Decks From Legend of Runeterra's Sentinels of Light Event
Is Thrumming Swarm really a better alternative to Alpha Wildclaw? Sure it provides more value but at seven mana the card isn't cheap and with only 4 health it dies to Black Spear, Ravenous Flock and Monster Harpoon, whereas wildclaw don't.
Elemental Shaman
Was playing this deck before the expansion, and I'm still playing it after the release lol. Good stuff :) Would you consider dropping Kazakus at this point for Canal Slogger and/or Granite Forgeborn?
Did You Receive a Classic Pack in Last Week's Tavern Brawl? 100 Gold Compensation is Coming Soon
Sometimes I wish 100 gold was the reward for the first TB victory
Fresh 12-Win Starting Decks for the New United in Stormwind Duels Meta
That questline Demon Hunter deck is very different and a lot of fun! The sword upgrading enough to complete a step of the questline itself is very useful.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
Is it hypocritical to like playing with slow decks while not liking to play against slow decks? Im not sure. I'll leave that for others to judge.
But to address what I think is the central point of your response to mine; I simply don't believe hearthstone needs to follow a strict holy trinity, a 'trifecta' of how archetypes work, or should work because hearthstone decks regularly crosses between the lines. Quest mage plays like a control deck, controlock has at its core a combo that wins the game for them (whether its tickatus or neeru), as does barrens control shaman. Token druid is a combo deck that sometimes play like an aggro deck. It can never have a strict definition, much less a 'role' because one card can mean all the difference (Lock and Load in face hunter, Doomhammer or Whack-A-Gnoll Hammer in elemental shaman, etc.). For the sake of brevity we apply labels to them, but there's no holy book to mandate their roles in the game. Metas and viability are determined by deck builds, and certainly not by its 'roles' as the labels seem to imply. Control warrior in barrens specifically have a good match against pre-nerf control priest, and are played in tournaments to do just that. Pre-nerf token druid has good matchup against face hunter but not against rush warrior.
Im not saying we can't continue to use the labels, but to imply that they have to have certain specific roles in the game is perhaps a tad too far for something so fluid in a game like hearthstone.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
I am not just padding my response, I'm responding directly to AngryShuckie's definition of the control archetype. The relevant quote here from Shuckie is "What that win condition is can vary greatly, including plain attrition, overwhelming the opponent with big minions, or maybe even an OTK. The biggest distinction with combo is the amount of draw they run." My point was that I don't agree entirely with the definition Shuckie put forth - if your deck relies on an OTK, then it's a combo deck, plain and simple. Whether you do that quickly or slowly is irrelevant to the actual strategy of your deck.
Ultimately, I think any deck that's classified as Control needs to playing a value game. Brian Kibler's Control Shaman is a great recent example of this.
This is not a "woe is me" complaint - I actually really like control decks, and played a ton of Reno Control Priest back before Knights of the Frozen Throne turned the deck into a combo deck. I'm fine playing some slow games, but tons of control mirrors do make for a boring, grindy experience.
It's also not me trying to define which decks are "allowed" to define the meta, I'm just trying to articular which archetypes tend to define a healthy metagame.
I sort of feel like you're making my point for me here. My original argument was that the Aggro > Combo > Control triangle doesn't fit well in Hearthstone, and the place where it fits the worst is the Control part. I've already described in other posts why I think this MTG concept doesn't map perfectly to Hearthstone, but I'll sum it up as this: Hearthstone is much more tempo-oriented, and teching against other strategies is more expensive. This is exactly why you might reasonably classify Quest Mage is being "partial control" - it runs a bunch of cards like First Flame and Fire Sale to control the board because of how important it is to stifle opposing tempo.
This happens all the time in Hearthstone - Aggro and Combo archetypes are more frequently successful, so when you see slower value decks in the early days of the meta, you tend to see more mixed archetypes (i.e. Midrange and Control-Combo) that take elements of Control archetypes, but don't go full control. Traditional control decks don't really come about until late into a meta when the game is stable enough that a more traditional control deck can know what to build against.
All of this is why I think AngryShuckie's original argument is flawed; it leverages that triangle to articular what's wrong with the balance in the game, and blames card draw for that issue, but I don't think that balance problem really exists to nearly the degree that triangle would suggest because we're seeing exactly the kinds of archetypes we'd expect to see in Hearthstone at this stage of the meta: Midrange, Aggro, and Combo. That's a fairly healthy metagame for the early days of an expansion, and exactly what I'd expect to see in Hearthstone because Control in Hearthstone naturally needs a solid meta to play off of. There's a real possibility that the Tradeable keyword changes that by lowering the costs of early meta Control, but so far I don't think we're there, and I don't think we'll get there unless the keyword goes evergreen.
Hearthstone Access - A New Mod Improves Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Players
There's also a logging function you can enable, which is how the deck tracker functions, and that records every move made, without having to access the game's memory space. I think actions are recorded as some kind of code, but most of the reverse engineering work has been done already, and the deck tracker is open source. If it isn't possible to write such a bot as a plugin for the deck tracker.
Hunter and Warrior Quests are Total Nerf Targets
Speaking as someone who mainlines Mage (in standard), I can see the calls for nerfs to Incanter's Flow, but, to be honest, dropping it early doesn't win as many games as you might think. Its real payoff is in the late game when you can draw a helluva lot of cards off of Cram Session. Nerf it to 3 mana, or even 4, and it'll still pay those late game dividends, and might even fit nicely with mid-game Arcane spell curve. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see it nerfed because this is the first time in forever I've felt like mage was competitive.
The only times that Incanter's Flow seems to make or break the game is in the mirror match. But in that case it's also who can drop a Primordial Studies followed by Brain Freeze fastest.
Duels Balance Changes Incoming? What's the Deal with Mind Tether Priest?
I rather they buff weak powers and treasures. Most classes only have 1 hero power that doesn't suck complete ass, and 1 or 2 starting treasures. There is no variety.
Hearthstone Access - A New Mod Improves Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Players
I did not mean to say that this mod is "necessary" to create bots, but that it is a great help for creating intelligent bots.
The point is that this mod not only allows you to control the game with keyboard commands (which greatly facilitates the work for a bot as you say) but it is also capable of interpreting the graphical interface (knowing what cards I have in hand, the minions, etc.), that is, thanks to this mod, as a programmer I can know everything that happens in the game and I can create an algorithm that knows how to respond to each situation, it is not that difficult.
Therefore, no, it would not be a bot that ignores what the other player does, but rather the opposite: a bot that "sees" the state of the game at all times and choose itself the best possible move, and in this way, winning is not that difficult, a bot can easily beat you at chess for example.
And obviously you are right: as I said before, it is very easy for Blizzard to detect whether the executable of the game has been altered and to ban the account immediately. Because I remember you, altering the executable of any game by injecting code is forbidden by Blizzard rules and is a direct and permanent ban.
Hearthstone Access - A New Mod Improves Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Players
I think you might have misinterpreted me. I am less convinced this mod is necessary to make such bots, but I can see how being able to send keypresses would make programming a bot easier.
I guess you mean programming the bot to do its thing and ignoring anything the other player does. I didn't know any decks existed that could allow you to win often enough to climb all the way by playing that way. I suppose one could be written and debugged in 2 or 3 days, which is probably enough time before overpowered decks get nerfed.
As I sort of said earlier, I don't think Blizzard will be happy about third-party code being injected in their game. I'm not sure what they can do to stop the mod from working and prevent the author from just updating the mod. I guess they could detect it and ban users. Either way, if an account is playing for more than 24 hours straight with 0 breaks, it should be pretty obvious they are botting.
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
consistently inconsistent once again, but at least the deck is still legitimately awful unless you're playing against some ultra slow control deck with no pressure (and Priest can instantly shut it down with Illucia)
Duels Balance Changes Incoming? What's the Deal with Mind Tether Priest?
Seeing how nothing in Duels is balanced whatsoever, would it really be that much of a loss if they just removed it altogether?
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
'tis not a bug. I'm sorry to disappoint if you haven't yet seen this particular exchange, but: https://twitter.com/wiRerHS/status/1422732413478780929
For what it's worth I still saw a lot of pros agreeing with your initial assessment and calling the Garrote deck overrated regardless.
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
That's pretty much what I always tend to do at the start of an expansion. No doubt it's a better use of gold than just buying the packs, but there are always time constraints to consider. Still, some fun times to be had in Arena; although I don't know about that [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found]...
Hunter and Warrior Quests are Total Nerf Targets
Raid the Docks is straight up consistent. I've not had many issues with it sucking I'll say that. Against many of the other decks out there, it provides longevity with taunt pirates a Ship's Cannon effect in the long haul, and continual board presence. Do I still think it needs a nerf, not necessarily given that the meta is far from evening out, but it certainly maintains a top deck in my plays