Snow mechanic seems weak. The snow lands all come into play tapped and the benefits for the 'using snow mana' cards seems underpowered considering you'll pretty much always be behind curve. The two sided legendary cycle seems fun so far. The changling mechanic seems like it may support the 'Party' mechanic a bit and maybe make a few decent decks for it (hopefully, that was about as weak as expected). Vehicles back out of nowhere. Lots of stuff going on with this expansion so far. It doesn't feel like there are too many new archetypes that are going to be coming out of this expansion but lots of nice cards to plug into some weaker decks. Lots of very decent cards here that may see play. Some of the warrior angels seem like they could pull the R/W warrior into relevance.
I almost made a forum post last night very similar to this article. Basically I was analyzing my own gold earned over the course of the expansion so far and how much more I expect to earn over the course of the expansion based on my current level of progress. It all kind of depends on when the track resets, but I was thinking I may end with about 12,900 gold. That's with low roll quests only, and about 2000 (maybe 2400, can't remember) of that being left over from last expansion still. Some of that MIGHT get spent on mini set, but I also have 26 packs from rewards sitting in my inventory so not sure.
Anyway, my usual total gold on the old system was about 8,000 to 9,000. So earning about 10,500 this cycle is a positive gain for me. But again, I'm calculating that amount figuring only low roll quests AND I'm not factoring time played XP either. And I'm seeing that increase WITHOUT buying the Pass and without a noticeable change in my playing time.
While I still think the system needs a little more tweaking to make the game more affordable, it ultimately is showing to be an improvement (at least in my own, personal experience). I am also encouraged by the quick response from Team 5 to make improvements, and the fact that they are looking into ways to continually improve the system.
Yeah, pretty much what I end up doing most of the time, and now that I went over the math, it doesnt even bother, from the reward gain standpoint. Still bothers me that it is even a thing tho.
There are two 1500xp daily quests, Watch a friend win in Spectator Mode." and "Challenge a friend. You both earn a reward!". They used to award a full classic pack and 80g respectively in the old system. I did get both of these quests a few times in the new system already. But they never felt like anything too special, just extra ~500xp, kinda disappointing.
It would be less disappointing, if there was a 1000xp baseline and more than two 1500xp quests you could roll into, it would actually make sense to try and would feel nice if you could roll into them every few days or so.
Its stupid that reroll of 1000xp will always give you 900xp, but it won’t work the other way round. Because of this I never ever reroll 1000xp quest, and I’m also hesitant to even play the game when I’m on the low roll.
Maybe you misunderstood that part, I was mentioning that in regards to the old system. Re-rolling a 1000xp quest should not guarantee a 900xp one today. Some of those aren't even easier to complete in comparison, funnily enough :D But having them in the pool does dis-incentivize you re-rolling 1000xp ones looking for different conditions to fulfill or trying to get a 1500xp one for sure.
I've been using Secret Mage to climb up through Diamond for the past year. Honestly, it's not my favorite deck to play, but it is efficient and relatively easy to create. I also love to play my Even Warlock and Highlander Priest decks, but I cannot plow through games as quickly with those since they are control decks and thus the games take a lot longer to play.
One thing I will say is that there was an article put out about an Anti-Secret Mage deck that just destroys it. It is meh against other decks, but just beats the hell out of Secret Mage. Like it isn't even funny how fast I conceded against that much hate.
Realistically, this deck is still MUCH slower than it used to be when it had Mana Wyrm. Granted, it now has the Occult Conjurer and Cloud Prince, the efficiency of the 1 mana drop 1/3 that just got bigger and bigger cannot be compared easily.
With all that being said... I have changed up my build substantially and my play style since I encounter a lot of Eater of Secrets and other secret hate... mostly coming from Rogue Shadowstepping Flik Skyshiv and just leaving me with limited burn.
Only problem with that is that we already have two versions of Lilian Voss, one from Frozen throne and a living version from Scholomance. I don't think they're going to make a third to put in classic, assuming they're even keeping classic.
While true, we still have mltiple otehr versions of different characters as cards more then lilians 2. and they could give her a title /bit different look to more match current time Lilian in WoW who is kinda the Forsaken Ruler atm.
Could be something lik LIlian the Forsaken. Or could use her ghost/soul from her fight in revamped scholomance.
I personally am shocked that the nerf to Boggspine Knuckles hurt as much as it did. I didn't think that it would have had an impact so much that it would have reduced the number of those deck floating around, but I too have not encountered nearly as many.
I've been sticking to my Pure Paladin and Guardian Druid decks and having a lot of fun with the Standard ladder with them.
Shockingly though, I am seeing more Rogue decks than I did before. I don't know if it is because people are just trying out how much of an impact Edwin VanCleef's nerf is having, or what but I am seeing a lot of Aggro, Galakrond, and Secret Rogue wandering around the ladder AND I am still seeing VanCleef being used.
IF theyre indeed gona rotate bbsic/clasisc in basicly entierly i hope get some compensation
By rotating you would get the same compensation as for rotating the old sets - nothing.
Well then that goes against evrythign theyve promised and said about classic set.
Hall of fame gave/gives dust refunds BECAUSE the classic and basic set are/where susposed to be eternaly standard By blzizards Own words.
The classic +basic set always has gotten a different treatment then regular sets. So i DONT think tis unreasonabe to expect/want ANYTHING at all if they rotate it all.
The differences in gold between the current rewards track and the original rewards track are stunning. I think that I am a C1 player on the new rewards chart. Most of the time I don't care enough to reroll dailies, and I make sure to do whatever I get plus I reroll weekly quests until I have a set that can be completed in ranked standard play. If I had the C2 level of gold when the next expansion came out, I would have quit the game.
I agree, mostly because I don't like to reroll 1000g quests, even if I don't like their condition. I find this frustrating, as I don't want to feel forced to play a class when I would rather play a different one, or just play battlegrounds ot something. My biggest gripe is actually with the forced rank win quest, though. Last week I didn't want to play ranked, and I was even on a long losing streak, making me extremely fed up with the game mode. It took me from monday to friday not being able to get 5 wins while playing here and there. There should be an alternate condition for that quest to just play 10 ranked games, so I at least feel like something is happening when I lose.
On the contrary, they are giving you fair warning that you should go ahead and dust cards that have been nerfed recently.
If they hadn't mentioned this, a bunch of people might have held on to the nerfed cards and then not gotten the free HoF dust. THAT would have felt more like cheating people out of dust.
But in the end, it's important to remember that with any big change will come some edge cases where someone's particular situation becomes slightly worse even though the change is a good one for most people. You can obsess about the bad stuff if you want to, but you won't get much sympathy when things are obviously better overall.
If the upcoming changes to the reward track are any indication, I think it's safe to say that Blizzard isn't trying to make the game less accessible. Given how hyper-aware everyone is about gold and dust, they know they can't get away with screwing people over in the ways you seem to be imagining.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if they had never gone down the treacherous free-to-play path, but that's a discussion for a different day.
Just wanted to chit chat a little about the impact of the nerfs in standard. They are online for a couple days now and first statistics are rolling in.
A quick look on HS Replay shows a rather balanced playfield (i don't have access to diamond and legend data though). The clear winners this time are paladin and hunter, followed by a majority of the classes pivoting around the 50% mark with only druids and priests at the bottom.
What amazes me the most is the huge decline of shamans. What a single attack point on a weapon can do is truly impressive. This decline in winrate might be biaised though since many people disenchanted their bonespine knuckels and picked up more experimental shaman decks like aggro, highlander or OTK.
However, this shows how cutthroat the fight for the top of the tierlist is and how little the differences in powerlevel can be. A multitude of decks have popped up in diamond wich results in a surprisingly entertaining ladder experience (for me). Different versions of warlocks, hunters, paladins, warriors ... A ton of decks seem viable.
My prefered lists right now are OTK/deck of lunacy mage and ETC warrior. It's been quit a while since some true OTK decks have been this viable!
What are your first impressions and what decks work best for you? Do you think Hunters and/or Paladins will become as opressive as shamans were?
MY biggest fear about this is that they do what MTG did back in the day and create more environments to play. With MTG, they had Type 1, Type 2, Extended, and Type 1.5. It worked with physical play because you could have as many decks as you had cards to play. However, with the online format, we are restricted in the number of decks that we have and doing this, while it would allow more versatility with players, would make it difficult to play ALL the environments. I have no doubt that whatever Blizzard decides to do, a lot of griping will happen and people will threaten to leave the game. It happens with every change to every game. You have loyalists that want it to stay the same forever. Then you have people that get so bored with the monotony that they fade out and then the game has to find new blood to play or risk fading out as well.
I like the concept, but the basis of this deck seems completely contingent upon having Archmage Vargoth on deck. He's a priority to be removed in nearly every deck. So what happens when he gets an [Hearthstone Card (exploding runes) Not Found] to the face or Polymorphed?
The difference between the easier and slightly more difficult quests is minimal. They recently made quests easier overall, so why not go 1 step further and remove the lowest XP quests altogether which reduces the dillution of the XP quests pool giving us a better chance to reroll into the highest XP quests and get rid of the feels bad. Sounds like a win-win situation to me, even if I might or might not be part of the majority.
Btw, you're basically also assuming the contrary; that the majority of the players that do visit forums or fansites are trying to max out XP gains. I expect this would be more likely true for us, but no one else besides Blizzard knows which camp is bigger than the other. Why did you bring this up and add it into the discussion in the first place?
Seems like they intend to abolish the Hall of Fame. Since Edwin is rotating then this pretty much means that the entirety of the classic set is getting rotated.
Seems like a fair assumption.
No, it doesn't. They could easily rotate out specific cards without rotating the entire Classic set. In fact, I think the odds are extremely low that they would rotate out all of Classic at the same time. That would be far too disruptive -- and far too much dev work trying to fill in the gaps it left.
I'm just going to be happy to see Highlander decks go back to Wild where they belong. I hate having all these highlander builds in standard. I even play Highlander Priest in Wild, so I'm not complaining about their power or restrictions... I'm just so tired of having similar decks played in Standard AND Wild all the time.
I would like to see them deviate from the Defias Brotherhood. This was Classic, and what I played in WoW, and is a great bit of nostalgia. However, since Blizzard is revamping the class a bit, having it be someone not associated with Edwin VanCleef or the Defias whatsoever would be more appropriate.
Doing this shows that they aren't just taking away a power card, but they are "adjusting the class identity" like they did with Priest. When they HoF'd Prophet Velen, they didn't put in a card that acted like him... they went in a different direction. It is for that reason, I'd like to see either Garona or members of the Shado-Pan. It's unfortunate that they put Infiltrator Lilian into an expansion because that card alone has Rogue identity written all over it.
The official Blizzard response to this is that there are casual players who appreciate having quests that are easier to complete.
Note that such players are the least likely to visit or post on fansites (or official forums, for that matter), so we have no way of knowing how many of them exist. Just don't assume everyone else in the world shares your opinions. Hearthstone is the kind of game that can easily have a silent majority.
I personally don't care too much about the XP. I reroll quests only when they ask me to do something I don't want to do (like play Murlocs or Battlegrounds).
I've always just rerolled any 800/900 quests, then if I don't get 1000, I just do it anyway. That's all the effort I care to put into maximizing my XP.
The Weekend of Kaldheim Card Spoilers for January 9 & 10
Snow mechanic seems weak. The snow lands all come into play tapped and the benefits for the 'using snow mana' cards seems underpowered considering you'll pretty much always be behind curve. The two sided legendary cycle seems fun so far. The changling mechanic seems like it may support the 'Party' mechanic a bit and maybe make a few decent decks for it (hopefully, that was about as weak as expected). Vehicles back out of nowhere. Lots of stuff going on with this expansion so far. It doesn't feel like there are too many new archetypes that are going to be coming out of this expansion but lots of nice cards to plug into some weaker decks. Lots of very decent cards here that may see play. Some of the warrior angels seem like they could pull the R/W warrior into relevance.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
I almost made a forum post last night very similar to this article. Basically I was analyzing my own gold earned over the course of the expansion so far and how much more I expect to earn over the course of the expansion based on my current level of progress. It all kind of depends on when the track resets, but I was thinking I may end with about 12,900 gold. That's with low roll quests only, and about 2000 (maybe 2400, can't remember) of that being left over from last expansion still. Some of that MIGHT get spent on mini set, but I also have 26 packs from rewards sitting in my inventory so not sure.
Anyway, my usual total gold on the old system was about 8,000 to 9,000. So earning about 10,500 this cycle is a positive gain for me. But again, I'm calculating that amount figuring only low roll quests AND I'm not factoring time played XP either. And I'm seeing that increase WITHOUT buying the Pass and without a noticeable change in my playing time.
While I still think the system needs a little more tweaking to make the game more affordable, it ultimately is showing to be an improvement (at least in my own, personal experience). I am also encouraged by the quick response from Team 5 to make improvements, and the fact that they are looking into ways to continually improve the system.
Great analysis though!
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
Yeah, pretty much what I end up doing most of the time, and now that I went over the math, it doesnt even bother, from the reward gain standpoint. Still bothers me that it is even a thing tho.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
There are two 1500xp daily quests, Watch a friend win in Spectator Mode." and "Challenge a friend. You both earn a reward!". They used to award a full classic pack and 80g respectively in the old system. I did get both of these quests a few times in the new system already. But they never felt like anything too special, just extra ~500xp, kinda disappointing.
It would be less disappointing, if there was a 1000xp baseline and more than two 1500xp quests you could roll into, it would actually make sense to try and would feel nice if you could roll into them every few days or so.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
Maybe you misunderstood that part, I was mentioning that in regards to the old system. Re-rolling a 1000xp quest should not guarantee a 900xp one today. Some of those aren't even easier to complete in comparison, funnily enough :D But having them in the pool does dis-incentivize you re-rolling 1000xp ones looking for different conditions to fulfill or trying to get a 1500xp one for sure.
Secret Mage in Wild
I've been using Secret Mage to climb up through Diamond for the past year. Honestly, it's not my favorite deck to play, but it is efficient and relatively easy to create. I also love to play my Even Warlock and Highlander Priest decks, but I cannot plow through games as quickly with those since they are control decks and thus the games take a lot longer to play.
One thing I will say is that there was an article put out about an Anti-Secret Mage deck that just destroys it. It is meh against other decks, but just beats the hell out of Secret Mage. Like it isn't even funny how fast I conceded against that much hate.
Realistically, this deck is still MUCH slower than it used to be when it had Mana Wyrm. Granted, it now has the Occult Conjurer and Cloud Prince, the efficiency of the 1 mana drop 1/3 that just got bigger and bigger cannot be compared easily.
With all that being said... I have changed up my build substantially and my play style since I encounter a lot of Eater of Secrets and other secret hate... mostly coming from Rogue Shadowstepping Flik Skyshiv and just leaving me with limited burn.
Which Warcraft Character Could Replace Edwin in Hearthstone's Base Rogue Set? Our Top 7 Lore Picks
While true, we still have mltiple otehr versions of different characters as cards more then lilians 2. and they could give her a title /bit different look to more match current time Lilian in WoW who is kinda the Forsaken Ruler atm.
Could be something lik LIlian the Forsaken. Or could use her ghost/soul from her fight in revamped scholomance.
Post-Nerf January
I personally am shocked that the nerf to Boggspine Knuckles hurt as much as it did. I didn't think that it would have had an impact so much that it would have reduced the number of those deck floating around, but I too have not encountered nearly as many.
I've been sticking to my Pure Paladin and Guardian Druid decks and having a lot of fun with the Standard ladder with them.
Shockingly though, I am seeing more Rogue decks than I did before. I don't know if it is because people are just trying out how much of an impact Edwin VanCleef's nerf is having, or what but I am seeing a lot of Aggro, Galakrond, and Secret Rogue wandering around the ladder AND I am still seeing VanCleef being used.
Classic set - speculation
Well then that goes against evrythign theyve promised and said about classic set.
Hall of fame gave/gives dust refunds BECAUSE the classic and basic set are/where susposed to be eternaly standard By blzizards Own words.
The classic +basic set always has gotten a different treatment then regular sets. So i DONT think tis unreasonabe to expect/want ANYTHING at all if they rotate it all.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
The differences in gold between the current rewards track and the original rewards track are stunning. I think that I am a C1 player on the new rewards chart. Most of the time I don't care enough to reroll dailies, and I make sure to do whatever I get plus I reroll weekly quests until I have a set that can be completed in ranked standard play. If I had the C2 level of gold when the next expansion came out, I would have quit the game.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
I agree, mostly because I don't like to reroll 1000g quests, even if I don't like their condition. I find this frustrating, as I don't want to feel forced to play a class when I would rather play a different one, or just play battlegrounds ot something. My biggest gripe is actually with the forced rank win quest, though. Last week I didn't want to play ranked, and I was even on a long losing streak, making me extremely fed up with the game mode. It took me from monday to friday not being able to get 5 wins while playing here and there. There should be an alternate condition for that quest to just play 10 ranked games, so I at least feel like something is happening when I lose.
A Wonderful Runeterra Winter Wonderland Word Search Activity
I do not play Legends of Runeterra, but... I see word search puzzle, so I complete word search puzzle!
Rewarded with 2½ snowballs, wondering who to throw them onto now 😋
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
Wow... this is quite, expansive.
Edwin VanCleef is Not Being Hall of Famed, Hall of Fame Changing, Major Hearthstone Changes Coming in 2021
On the contrary, they are giving you fair warning that you should go ahead and dust cards that have been nerfed recently.
If they hadn't mentioned this, a bunch of people might have held on to the nerfed cards and then not gotten the free HoF dust. THAT would have felt more like cheating people out of dust.
But in the end, it's important to remember that with any big change will come some edge cases where someone's particular situation becomes slightly worse even though the change is a good one for most people. You can obsess about the bad stuff if you want to, but you won't get much sympathy when things are obviously better overall.
If the upcoming changes to the reward track are any indication, I think it's safe to say that Blizzard isn't trying to make the game less accessible. Given how hyper-aware everyone is about gold and dust, they know they can't get away with screwing people over in the ways you seem to be imagining.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if they had never gone down the treacherous free-to-play path, but that's a discussion for a different day.
Post-Nerf January
Hi folks,
Just wanted to chit chat a little about the impact of the nerfs in standard.
They are online for a couple days now and first statistics are rolling in.
A quick look on HS Replay shows a rather balanced playfield (i don't have access to diamond and legend data though).
The clear winners this time are paladin and hunter, followed by a majority of the classes pivoting around the 50% mark with only druids and priests at the bottom.
What amazes me the most is the huge decline of shamans. What a single attack point on a weapon can do is truly impressive.
This decline in winrate might be biaised though since many people disenchanted their bonespine knuckels and picked up more experimental shaman decks like aggro, highlander or OTK.
However, this shows how cutthroat the fight for the top of the tierlist is and how little the differences in powerlevel can be.
A multitude of decks have popped up in diamond wich results in a surprisingly entertaining ladder experience (for me).
Different versions of warlocks, hunters, paladins, warriors ... A ton of decks seem viable.
My prefered lists right now are OTK/deck of lunacy mage and ETC warrior.
It's been quit a while since some true OTK decks have been this viable!
What are your first impressions and what decks work best for you?
Do you think Hunters and/or Paladins will become as opressive as shamans were?
Edwin VanCleef is Not Being Hall of Famed, Hall of Fame Changing, Major Hearthstone Changes Coming in 2021
MY biggest fear about this is that they do what MTG did back in the day and create more environments to play. With MTG, they had Type 1, Type 2, Extended, and Type 1.5. It worked with physical play because you could have as many decks as you had cards to play. However, with the online format, we are restricted in the number of decks that we have and doing this, while it would allow more versatility with players, would make it difficult to play ALL the environments. I have no doubt that whatever Blizzard decides to do, a lot of griping will happen and people will threaten to leave the game. It happens with every change to every game. You have loyalists that want it to stay the same forever. Then you have people that get so bored with the monotony that they fade out and then the game has to find new blood to play or risk fading out as well.
Menagerie Quest Warrior
It is decks like this that make me want to invest more in my Warrior collection. This looks super fun.
Vargoth/Mask of C'thun Combo
I like the concept, but the basis of this deck seems completely contingent upon having Archmage Vargoth on deck. He's a priority to be removed in nearly every deck. So what happens when he gets an [Hearthstone Card (exploding runes) Not Found] to the face or Polymorphed?
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
The difference between the easier and slightly more difficult quests is minimal. They recently made quests easier overall, so why not go 1 step further and remove the lowest XP quests altogether which reduces the dillution of the XP quests pool giving us a better chance to reroll into the highest XP quests and get rid of the feels bad. Sounds like a win-win situation to me, even if I might or might not be part of the majority.
Btw, you're basically also assuming the contrary; that the majority of the players that do visit forums or fansites are trying to max out XP gains. I expect this would be more likely true for us, but no one else besides Blizzard knows which camp is bigger than the other. Why did you bring this up and add it into the discussion in the first place?
Edwin VanCleef is Not Being Hall of Famed, Hall of Fame Changing, Major Hearthstone Changes Coming in 2021
No, it doesn't. They could easily rotate out specific cards without rotating the entire Classic set. In fact, I think the odds are extremely low that they would rotate out all of Classic at the same time. That would be far too disruptive -- and far too much dev work trying to fill in the gaps it left.
10/10 would rage quit every game played against this with Secret Mage. Nice deck.
5 Spicy Standard Hearthstone Decks to Start the New Meta Off Right
I'm just going to be happy to see Highlander decks go back to Wild where they belong. I hate having all these highlander builds in standard. I even play Highlander Priest in Wild, so I'm not complaining about their power or restrictions... I'm just so tired of having similar decks played in Standard AND Wild all the time.
Which Warcraft Character Could Replace Edwin in Hearthstone's Base Rogue Set? Our Top 7 Lore Picks
I would like to see them deviate from the Defias Brotherhood. This was Classic, and what I played in WoW, and is a great bit of nostalgia. However, since Blizzard is revamping the class a bit, having it be someone not associated with Edwin VanCleef or the Defias whatsoever would be more appropriate.
Doing this shows that they aren't just taking away a power card, but they are "adjusting the class identity" like they did with Priest. When they HoF'd Prophet Velen, they didn't put in a card that acted like him... they went in a different direction. It is for that reason, I'd like to see either Garona or members of the Shado-Pan. It's unfortunate that they put Infiltrator Lilian into an expansion because that card alone has Rogue identity written all over it.
... but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
The official Blizzard response to this is that there are casual players who appreciate having quests that are easier to complete.
Note that such players are the least likely to visit or post on fansites (or official forums, for that matter), so we have no way of knowing how many of them exist. Just don't assume everyone else in the world shares your opinions. Hearthstone is the kind of game that can easily have a silent majority.
I personally don't care too much about the XP. I reroll quests only when they ask me to do something I don't want to do (like play Murlocs or Battlegrounds).
Opinion: The Current State of Quests in Hearthstone and Its Impact on the Rewards Track
I've always just rerolled any 800/900 quests, then if I don't get 1000, I just do it anyway. That's all the effort I care to put into maximizing my XP.