I tried it for about 4 hours today and i barely got 200 xp, maybe it was good when the system first came out and i heard rumbling of a stealth nerf to it.
This is much lower than what I've seen on reddit, where the average xp/min is around 4.5 (including this analysis from a couple of weeks ago). Perhaps you're right, and there was a server-side patch to the system, but if you could, I think it would be useful to provide more info about how you implemented the strategy (e.g. how long do you think you were in queue, did you consistently queue up right after each match or was there some delay, etc.).
Depending on how you're implementing it, it's very possible that your four hours spent doing this AFK strategy translated to much less time in games than a bot doing the same thing would have had.
You getting only a mere 200xp for 4 hours is testament to them willing and having spent every ounce of muscle to stop easy xp from rolling in.
Is it really so bad that they want to limit people AFKing the game for XP? It makes for a more worse player experience if your opponents are regularly just roping/doing nothing. That negative impact is certainly diminished in battlegrounds (because you have six other opponents), but if everyone who AFKs ends up with a low MMR, it also creates two pretty bad results: 1) it means anyone trying out BG for the first time may be stuck with lots of AFK opponents at very low MMRs, and 2) it means the potential of wasting the cost of running servers on games populated mostly by AFK BG lobbies.
The game ought to reward you for playing the game rather than merely spending time in the game. There's room for improvement to how players gain XP, and the issues around queue times, etc., that make it hard for players to get the full value of an hour spent honestly playing the game. But despite that, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to try to prevent people from manipulating XP systems, because no matter how generous they are to players who are seriously playing the game, people will try to manipulate the reward system with bots, etc.
You still need a bot and electricity and device life are not free.
I have no idea why you're equating this to that
Because it may be cheaper to buy packs for money than to pay for electricity for “free” pack
But then you're supporting Blizzard with your money. Which is the polar opposite of what most people want to do currently.
Saving environment by preserving energy should be more important than boycotting a greedy company.
Anyways, I just think it's too small of amount of exp to rationalize afk-ing BG. Maybe in ranked it's worth it in terms of personal gain, but you ruin other's entertainment. If you want to send Blizzard a message, it's probably better to play less, rather then increasing their playtime numbers with afk-ing.
Playing the game naturally is healthier for everyone.
Spellbreaker would definitely help tone down the Libram package. For whatever reason, they decided Spellbreaker should be HOF'd, and so we just have to deal with a post-Spellbreaker standard meta.
Yeah i dont get that part on blizz really when just remove necarly tech/asnwers instead of keeping them, but hey maybe owl will be a bit better with classic rework.
All control cards, especially AoE cards, have low win rates. That's because they aren't used to finish the game and are situational. As a point of comparison you can look up any warrior deck and you'll find Brawl having the lowest win rate of all the cards and yet its still one warrior's best board clear of all time.
You probably aren't wrong. Pen Flinger versus Pyromancer is probably just a case of niche scenarios where one is better than the other but under different circumstances.
If you can bounce pen flingers multiple times then you're already on your way to victory, and in those cases I would agree that pyromancer is not a necessity. But those are really just the nuts scenario. In many cases you either dont have your Libram of Wisdom or your Libram of Justice costs you mana, usually around 2. Pyromancers can also save you from aggro sometimes, help gain tempo, and it has uses against pally and the odd big deck playing clowns.
Maybe its just me, but I like having an out when the chips are down.
Rip Bloodyface, I chose you for the pack, and I’m sorry for accidentally ruining your championship chances, bcs my champions have never made it past the first round X
You are not suffering from it so you don't understand how incredibly annoying it is to have to reload the game every few minutes just to be able to do a quest or simply to have some fun.
Really, You assume I've never suffered from any disconnects in any game before, and therefore can't possibly fathom how frustrating a disconnection experience can be? Of course I can. Everyone can. You are not some unique snowflake. I'm not trying to be snarky but assumptive statements like this are irksome to me. Everyone has had connection issues in some form or another.
I have never seen anything like this in any other online games that i played. It's bizarre the kind of problems that affect this game from time to time. If this keeps happening i'll have to stop playing because this seriously irritates me to the point of making me want to punch something. And i'm an incredibly chill person. It's that obnoxious.
Never seen d/c's happen like this in any other online game? I could regal you with an experience I had when I was 22 where one summer when playing LOTRO: Shadows of Angmar when it first released I could no longer raid with my clan due to getting disconnected every 5 seconds. Long story short? The issue wasn't locally and it wasn't the servers on their side. It was my connection chain in the middle getting feedback on the line causing micro-disconnects and signal interference on the trunk lines.
Secondly, you proved my point. If I'm clearly not suffering from it, it's not a server side issue. If it's happening to multiple people it's usually an ISP related issue or a chokepoint along the way that causes issues that are common to certain regions.
I work in IT, it's not uncommon for one person to have an issue, and another person to not have an issue. Things fault, don't work properly and often times there's not a particular party at fault. It's just the tangled nest of relayed connections having problems.
Your connection to Blizzard servers, or even specifically Hearthstone servers, may take a COMPLETELY different route in connecting than when you play other games.
And lastly, warning this is me being snarky: If a game d/cing makes you want to punch something, you aren't a chill person...no matter how much you may vehemently state that you are. Only children and unstable people think that punching things will fix them. Which one are you?
Any reason you are running Nourish instead of Overflow? Considering it's a pure control deck, the healing you miss out from Hidden Oasis can be essentially regained from Overflow, and healing your opponent is usually of little concern, it's the card draw and stall from healing you want combined into a single card.
My suggestions:
Drop 2x Rising Winds and put in 2x Guess the Weight (better pure draw for the most part)
Drop 2x Nourish and put in 2x Overflow (better card efficacy, Nourish is not needed in a deck with blooms and Overgrowth's
Drop 2x Wrath and put in 2x Nature Studies (versatility and mana cheating)
Drop 2x Moontouched Amulet and put in 2x Umbral Owl
When I think of spell druid, I think of a mana cheating deck that functions in a similar style to No-Minion Mage. It's also a possibility to drop the two beetles and put in a copy of Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate and a copy of Wild Growth to make the low end more consistent. Idea being that you want to draw into your win conditions being Yogg or C'thun. Crystalsong Portal can also be not used, and alternatively you lean into the card draw/spells hard with synergistic cards like Ysera, Unleashed or Archspore Msshi'fn or Speaker Gidra.
This has been happening ever since the patch with the new system was released. It never happened before. And i already did all sorts of checks to see if the problem is my connection. It's not. Also, none of my other games or applications suffer from such problem. I can log in and play Legends of Runeterra for hours without any issues. This isn't a problem that's happening only to me either. There are other people suffering from constant disconnections. It's on them and they need to fix it.
You are not suffering from it so you don't understand how incredibly annoying it is to have to reload the game every few minutes just to be able to do a quest or simply to have some fun. I have never seen anything like this in any other online games that i played. It's bizarre the kind of problems that affect this game from time to time. If this keeps happening i'll have to stop playing because this seriously irritates me to the point of making me want to punch something. And i'm an incredibly chill person. It's that obnoxious.
I mean to be fair, the deck doesn't need pyromancer when it can use a 0 cost libram of wisdom to bounce pen flinger multiple times in a turn. You rarely need a "full" board aoe these days except against evolve shaman.
And to answer your second question, libram paladin doesn't beat up demon hunters. One of the best things I learned playing Legends of Runeterra was that every game each person has a role "Are you the aggressor or the controller?". Even in mirror matches as the first few turns play out, it's clear one person gains the upper hand and it turns into "how do you retake control, or how do you leverage your lead?"
But to continue, libram paladin can control the board just enough to outheal the face damage. Libram of Hope coupled with taunts, big minions, and pings from Pen Flinger are usually enough. Yes, it can still lose to DH, but then gain so can any deck if the opponent gets a nuts draw.
Generally that's how "games" work, yes. Blizzard has struggled immensely with tuning Priests (basically forever), and community feedback of "hey, that class sucks to play and sucks to play against" is generally good to give. They've signalled a willingness to make changes based on "wow, that's straight misery" in the past, why should now be any different?
Furthermore, I don't agree that Priests are "easily the worst class" right now. I'd say based on some meta snapshots (such as here), they're in a better place than Mages/Druids with some competitive archetypes. Cards can be changed without a class being DH-at-release levels of broken, you realize?
Nice that they are fixing some things but this is far from enough. I'm still having constant disconnections. This is happening even during games in adventure mode. I'm not even getting any achievements or anything. Yet, the game feels like disconnecting me every other game which is so obnoxious and infuriating!
Ever consider that the disconnects are possibly on your end or in the middle? I mean occasional disconnects happen, in every software application that communicates over a network. Obviously, frequent disconnections are annoying and possibly problematic, but casting blame on "I keep getting disconnected" and throwing fault at a company when it could be many things (Your ISP, your router, your network card or network configurations, etc) is shortsighted at best.
Frequently if you are able to connect in the first place, and you get disconnected it sounds like you are dropping packets or something.
A few things to help troubleshoot: Use MTR or Ping Plotter to help you determine where and how often you are dropping packets.
Secondly: Try enabling QoS in your router/modem, ensure your modem/router and PC are handshaking the correct bandwidth (the max), and lastly try manually setting the TCP and UDP ports for the games you play and giving them highest priority in your modem/router's settings.
Agreed, but the problem is, without librams paladins were kind of dumpster tier, relegated to playing murloc aggro decks (remember tip the scales?) or meme dragon decks. The biggest problem I see right now is super powerful neutrals like Pen Flinger and Broom. Without those, paladin is still counterable in a number of fashions.
Also the other inherent issue is the lack of priests on ladder.
The meta is being warped by Demon Hunter aggro and hunter aggro. As such, the only classes that can compete with that are:
Paladins with taunts/lots of healing.
Druids, mages, and shaman with highroll decks.
Warriors with insane armor gain and OTK
If demon hunter got nerfed enough, it would allow breathing room for other decks to flourish, thus allowing paladin's natural counter (priests with their steal/silence effects) to push the meta in a different direction.
I agree that Dragonbane is a fine card. It enables a semi-control hunter archtype or a face archetype and doesn't pigeonhole the class (which is a good thing). On the other hand, I don't really enjoy cards that cheat out other cards for free.
Take Phase Stalker for example. A 2 mana 2/3 body, that when you "inspire" (also, small side rant: There's literally NO reason for them to not re-use the keyword here...I'm honestly super annoyed that Hearthstone devs REFUSE to use previous keywords (except for discover which they apaprently have no problem re-using)) casts a free secret from your deck. You could compare it to Ancient Mysterious for mage (both are 2 mana, both pull a secret for free from your deck...except Phase Stalker is also a body. Yes, technically in order to gain value from phase stalker you have to have "4 mana" to use the inspire proc, but there are ways to cheat that out as well. Overall I just think what this card does is too good. And it being a 2/3 is problematic. It should be a 2/2 so it's easier to clear early on.
And voracious reader is a problem in many decks. It's essentially a BETTER jeeves. And that saw a ton of play in aggro decks. I understand at some point, similar mechanics and ideas are going to be recycled, but honestly it's like they aren't even trying to balance cards.
I can't tell if this is a tongue in cheek snarky comment, or a hat tip comment. In either case, it either needs clarification if the latter, or needs to not be said if the former. (If I want to read snarky asinine comments I can just go to reddit)
Spellbreaker would definitely help tone down the Libram package. For whatever reason, they decided Spellbreaker should be HOF'd, and so we just have to deal with a post-Spellbreaker standard meta.
Afk BGs
This is much lower than what I've seen on reddit, where the average xp/min is around 4.5 (including this analysis from a couple of weeks ago). Perhaps you're right, and there was a server-side patch to the system, but if you could, I think it would be useful to provide more info about how you implemented the strategy (e.g. how long do you think you were in queue, did you consistently queue up right after each match or was there some delay, etc.).
Depending on how you're implementing it, it's very possible that your four hours spent doing this AFK strategy translated to much less time in games than a bot doing the same thing would have had.
Is it really so bad that they want to limit people AFKing the game for XP? It makes for a more worse player experience if your opponents are regularly just roping/doing nothing. That negative impact is certainly diminished in battlegrounds (because you have six other opponents), but if everyone who AFKs ends up with a low MMR, it also creates two pretty bad results: 1) it means anyone trying out BG for the first time may be stuck with lots of AFK opponents at very low MMRs, and 2) it means the potential of wasting the cost of running servers on games populated mostly by AFK BG lobbies.
The game ought to reward you for playing the game rather than merely spending time in the game. There's room for improvement to how players gain XP, and the issues around queue times, etc., that make it hard for players to get the full value of an hour spent honestly playing the game. But despite that, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to try to prevent people from manipulating XP systems, because no matter how generous they are to players who are seriously playing the game, people will try to manipulate the reward system with bots, etc.
Choose Your Champion Returns For The Hearthstone 2020 World Championship - Free Darkmoon Faire Card Packs!
My guess would be US only, but no idea.
Afk BGs
Saving environment by preserving energy should be more important than boycotting a greedy company.
Anyways, I just think it's too small of amount of exp to rationalize afk-ing BG. Maybe in ranked it's worth it in terms of personal gain, but you ruin other's entertainment. If you want to send Blizzard a message, it's probably better to play less, rather then increasing their playtime numbers with afk-ing.
Playing the game naturally is healthier for everyone.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
Yeah i dont get that part on blizz really when just remove necarly tech/asnwers instead of keeping them, but hey maybe owl will be a bit better with classic rework.
Choose Your Champion Returns For The Hearthstone 2020 World Championship - Free Darkmoon Faire Card Packs!
Anyone know how the T-mobile thing works? I have a longer phone number, than it requires. Is some countries exluded from that promotion?
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All control cards, especially AoE cards, have low win rates. That's because they aren't used to finish the game and are situational. As a point of comparison you can look up any warrior deck and you'll find Brawl having the lowest win rate of all the cards and yet its still one warrior's best board clear of all time.
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Pyro has a bad winrate in paladin. Pen flinger and Broom are integral parts of the libram paladin.
Afk BGs
But then you're supporting Blizzard with your money. Which is the polar opposite of what most people want to do currently.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
Clarification? Lol really?
Afk BGs
Because it may be cheaper to buy packs for money than to pay for electricity for “free” pack
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You probably aren't wrong. Pen Flinger versus Pyromancer is probably just a case of niche scenarios where one is better than the other but under different circumstances.
Top Legend Decks From Hearthstone's Elite - Climb the Ladder With These Decks This Weekend!
If you can bounce pen flingers multiple times then you're already on your way to victory, and in those cases I would agree that pyromancer is not a necessity. But those are really just the nuts scenario. In many cases you either dont have your Libram of Wisdom or your Libram of Justice costs you mana, usually around 2. Pyromancers can also save you from aggro sometimes, help gain tempo, and it has uses against pally and the odd big deck playing clowns.
Maybe its just me, but I like having an out when the chips are down.
Choose Your Champion Returns For The Hearthstone 2020 World Championship - Free Darkmoon Faire Card Packs!
Rip Bloodyface, I chose you for the pack, and I’m sorry for accidentally ruining your championship chances, bcs my champions have never made it past the first round X
Hearthstone Hotfixes - Nazmani Bloodweaver Fixed, Whizbang's Lost Decks, Darkmoon Arena, Quests, and More!
Really, You assume I've never suffered from any disconnects in any game before, and therefore can't possibly fathom how frustrating a disconnection experience can be? Of course I can. Everyone can. You are not some unique snowflake. I'm not trying to be snarky but assumptive statements like this are irksome to me. Everyone has had connection issues in some form or another.
Never seen d/c's happen like this in any other online game? I could regal you with an experience I had when I was 22 where one summer when playing LOTRO: Shadows of Angmar when it first released I could no longer raid with my clan due to getting disconnected every 5 seconds. Long story short? The issue wasn't locally and it wasn't the servers on their side. It was my connection chain in the middle getting feedback on the line causing micro-disconnects and signal interference on the trunk lines.
Secondly, you proved my point. If I'm clearly not suffering from it, it's not a server side issue. If it's happening to multiple people it's usually an ISP related issue or a chokepoint along the way that causes issues that are common to certain regions.
I work in IT, it's not uncommon for one person to have an issue, and another person to not have an issue. Things fault, don't work properly and often times there's not a particular party at fault. It's just the tangled nest of relayed connections having problems.
Your connection to Blizzard servers, or even specifically Hearthstone servers, may take a COMPLETELY different route in connecting than when you play other games.
And lastly, warning this is me being snarky: If a game d/cing makes you want to punch something, you aren't a chill person...no matter how much you may vehemently state that you are. Only children and unstable people think that punching things will fix them. Which one are you?
C'Thun Druid
Any reason you are running Nourish instead of Overflow? Considering it's a pure control deck, the healing you miss out from Hidden Oasis can be essentially regained from Overflow, and healing your opponent is usually of little concern, it's the card draw and stall from healing you want combined into a single card.
My suggestions:
Drop 2x Rising Winds and put in 2x Guess the Weight (better pure draw for the most part)
Drop 2x Nourish and put in 2x Overflow (better card efficacy, Nourish is not needed in a deck with blooms and Overgrowth's
Drop 2x Wrath and put in 2x Nature Studies (versatility and mana cheating)
Drop 2x Moontouched Amulet and put in 2x Umbral Owl
Drop 2x Mo'Arg and put in 2x Crystalsong Portal
When I think of spell druid, I think of a mana cheating deck that functions in a similar style to No-Minion Mage. It's also a possibility to drop the two beetles and put in a copy of Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate and a copy of Wild Growth to make the low end more consistent. Idea being that you want to draw into your win conditions being Yogg or C'thun. Crystalsong Portal can also be not used, and alternatively you lean into the card draw/spells hard with synergistic cards like Ysera, Unleashed or Archspore Msshi'fn or Speaker Gidra.
Hearthstone Hotfixes - Nazmani Bloodweaver Fixed, Whizbang's Lost Decks, Darkmoon Arena, Quests, and More!
This has been happening ever since the patch with the new system was released. It never happened before. And i already did all sorts of checks to see if the problem is my connection. It's not. Also, none of my other games or applications suffer from such problem. I can log in and play Legends of Runeterra for hours without any issues. This isn't a problem that's happening only to me either. There are other people suffering from constant disconnections. It's on them and they need to fix it.
You are not suffering from it so you don't understand how incredibly annoying it is to have to reload the game every few minutes just to be able to do a quest or simply to have some fun. I have never seen anything like this in any other online games that i played. It's bizarre the kind of problems that affect this game from time to time. If this keeps happening i'll have to stop playing because this seriously irritates me to the point of making me want to punch something. And i'm an incredibly chill person. It's that obnoxious.
Top Legend Decks From Hearthstone's Elite - Climb the Ladder With These Decks This Weekend!
I mean to be fair, the deck doesn't need pyromancer when it can use a 0 cost libram of wisdom to bounce pen flinger multiple times in a turn. You rarely need a "full" board aoe these days except against evolve shaman.
And to answer your second question, libram paladin doesn't beat up demon hunters. One of the best things I learned playing Legends of Runeterra was that every game each person has a role "Are you the aggressor or the controller?". Even in mirror matches as the first few turns play out, it's clear one person gains the upper hand and it turns into "how do you retake control, or how do you leverage your lead?"
But to continue, libram paladin can control the board just enough to outheal the face damage. Libram of Hope coupled with taunts, big minions, and pings from Pen Flinger are usually enough. Yes, it can still lose to DH, but then gain so can any deck if the opponent gets a nuts draw.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
Generally that's how "games" work, yes. Blizzard has struggled immensely with tuning Priests (basically forever), and community feedback of "hey, that class sucks to play and sucks to play against" is generally good to give. They've signalled a willingness to make changes based on "wow, that's straight misery" in the past, why should now be any different?
Furthermore, I don't agree that Priests are "easily the worst class" right now. I'd say based on some meta snapshots (such as here), they're in a better place than Mages/Druids with some competitive archetypes. Cards can be changed without a class being DH-at-release levels of broken, you realize?
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Not to mention but I personally find SilverName bloody annoying to watch. He's worse than Kripp when it comes to being salty about opponent's plays.
Hearthstone Hotfixes - Nazmani Bloodweaver Fixed, Whizbang's Lost Decks, Darkmoon Arena, Quests, and More!
Ever consider that the disconnects are possibly on your end or in the middle? I mean occasional disconnects happen, in every software application that communicates over a network. Obviously, frequent disconnections are annoying and possibly problematic, but casting blame on "I keep getting disconnected" and throwing fault at a company when it could be many things (Your ISP, your router, your network card or network configurations, etc) is shortsighted at best.
Frequently if you are able to connect in the first place, and you get disconnected it sounds like you are dropping packets or something.
A few things to help troubleshoot: Use MTR or Ping Plotter to help you determine where and how often you are dropping packets.
Secondly: Try enabling QoS in your router/modem, ensure your modem/router and PC are handshaking the correct bandwidth (the max), and lastly try manually setting the TCP and UDP ports for the games you play and giving them highest priority in your modem/router's settings.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
Agreed, but the problem is, without librams paladins were kind of dumpster tier, relegated to playing murloc aggro decks (remember tip the scales?) or meme dragon decks. The biggest problem I see right now is super powerful neutrals like Pen Flinger and Broom. Without those, paladin is still counterable in a number of fashions.
Also the other inherent issue is the lack of priests on ladder.
The meta is being warped by Demon Hunter aggro and hunter aggro. As such, the only classes that can compete with that are:
If demon hunter got nerfed enough, it would allow breathing room for other decks to flourish, thus allowing paladin's natural counter (priests with their steal/silence effects) to push the meta in a different direction.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
I agree that Dragonbane is a fine card. It enables a semi-control hunter archtype or a face archetype and doesn't pigeonhole the class (which is a good thing). On the other hand, I don't really enjoy cards that cheat out other cards for free.
Take Phase Stalker for example. A 2 mana 2/3 body, that when you "inspire" (also, small side rant: There's literally NO reason for them to not re-use the keyword here...I'm honestly super annoyed that Hearthstone devs REFUSE to use previous keywords (except for discover which they apaprently have no problem re-using)) casts a free secret from your deck. You could compare it to Ancient Mysterious for mage (both are 2 mana, both pull a secret for free from your deck...except Phase Stalker is also a body. Yes, technically in order to gain value from phase stalker you have to have "4 mana" to use the inspire proc, but there are ways to cheat that out as well. Overall I just think what this card does is too good. And it being a 2/3 is problematic. It should be a 2/2 so it's easier to clear early on.
And voracious reader is a problem in many decks. It's essentially a BETTER jeeves. And that saw a ton of play in aggro decks. I understand at some point, similar mechanics and ideas are going to be recycled, but honestly it's like they aren't even trying to balance cards.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
I can't tell if this is a tongue in cheek snarky comment, or a hat tip comment. In either case, it either needs clarification if the latter, or needs to not be said if the former. (If I want to read snarky asinine comments I can just go to reddit)
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
Spellbreaker would definitely help tone down the Libram package. For whatever reason, they decided Spellbreaker should be HOF'd, and so we just have to deal with a post-Spellbreaker standard meta.
The Hearthstone Cards the Community Would Like to See Nerfed
So... it should be nerfed because you feel bad playing against it even tought you win most of the time anyway?