Willing to place money on the Drown in the Loch being banned on the first Monday next month. After the last round of nerfs it's rogue's everywhere. It's the one card that seems to stop the opponent from establishing any defenses or wiping the board. It wasn't so bad before but the problem with bans and improper balancing is it just creates a Tier 0 deck to replace the old tier 0 deck.
Yeah from what I've heard so far, this book of heroes is significantly more difficult compared to the Jaina one. I personally struggled against Misha, only winning because the hero power killed their own creature which had lethal otherwise, and Gronn, which was the only one I lost to. Going off of what other people have said, it definitely feels like this one is a lot more RNG reliant, with Daelin being able to snowball out of control for some people, or in my case, not playing any minions until his hero power, which at that point the hero power and whatever board I had already could just handle all his boats.
I definitely do think having the hero power not kill the boats in one shot is fine, but it definitely could have been something more useful. with the same case being true for the final fight, where the hero power legitimately is just worthless.
I must say one thing that the story did open my eyes to a history that I didn't know, which was Rexxar actually fought for the horde in the first 2 wars of humans vs orcs.
Obviously he doesn't appear in the first 2 warcraft games, so he must have been an unusually lucky grunt somewhere since the orcs lost the fight canonically.
Can anyone actually confirm if the story relates anything to Rexxar's appearance in Warcraft 3? I knew there was one mission with him and the rest was something like a dlc that needed payment. Far as a I knew that mission was the first time Rexxar met Thrall.
Looks like you have to complete Jaina before playing Rexxar... bummer.
Havent started myself yet, is there a story progression that needs to be told in order? If not, that is a but silly, to not be able to choose which one(s) you want to play first.
the stories are connected
yeah, about as much as an orange is to an apple.
I played through both, and aside from the portraits, there's literally nothing more than the most minute connection between Rexxar's story and Jaina's. The only significant thing connecting the two is that one mission against a naga witch (no idea even if this is canon), of which Jaina spawns you 4 mirror images of herself.
Its possible to suggest that even if you knew nothing of Jaina aside from the fact that shes a human female, playing Rexxar's story wouldn't give you any more insight whatsoever. In fact, since Rexxar fights her father in the game, its possible to misconstrue that Jaina's a pirate or at least a sailor.
Both versions of Cult Aspirant were met with mixed reviews, so I went back to the drawing board for a bit. In order to prevent too much overlap with KT, I'm preferring the healing version over the Skeleton version. I changed the class to Neutral and reduced the amount of healing since I think it introduces interesting applications and deck-building opportunities for many classes. I reworked the summoning version into Eager Assist-Imps, which focuses much more on being an option for Zoo decks. Also, imp puns.
Its actually amazing how Jaina's adventure was like a walk in the park and Rexxar's, at least to me, is like trying to walk a very enthusiastic and insistent dog under heavy rain. I died twice in the adventure, once to that very odd mission with Misha where I mistakenly believe the idea was to kill her instead of the trap, and then to Gronn, which was like packing a ton of canned sardines for a field trip and then remembering that the can-opener was left at home.
That mission you refer to was against Daelin, and it was one of the hardest mission in the adventure, but only because your deck and hero power is largely shit, and your opponent has an unforeseen kill switch and two Eye of the Storms out of nowhere. To elaborate, your hp is to deal 4 damage (to a minion no less) in a game where your opponent's hp was to summon a ship with 6 health, and if not killed snowballs the fight. Suffice to say that I only won with some rng from [Hearthstone Card (misdirect) Not Found], of which without there was absolutely no chance of winning.
Its weird that Rexxar actually starts pretty well, with some well thought out cards, and that hp to summon Misha was amazing. For some reason this was then taken away for a crude hp that deals 5 damage to a minion (Gronn plays no minions for 5 turns by the way, if youre wondering). A little disappointing that the final hp wasn't just summon an animal companion, or even all three for 5 mana. Would at least be flavorful, if not making the fight less frustrating.
Yeah, the hardest part of the fight was trying to make Rexxar’s absolutely atrocious deck work. Like even the automatic deck builder is better than that garbage!
Anyway, if you can’t clear the first few ships you are definitely screwed. The key is to just keep removing his ships. Thats the whole fight. He can’t fight back outside of Monsoon (which is an awesome callback by the way).
Also, the final fight was such a disappointment as well. Whats the point of giving us such a hero power when your opponent barely has any minions either? It just came down to me smacking him over and over with the Eaglehorn Bow and then winning
I tried theorycrafting this with Demacia/Shyvana last night without luck -- not enough dragons. I might try again with Targon -- I think that could go much better.
Thanks for everyone's feedback. I'm going with the Ancestral Crescent this week since its was met quite positively.
More Feedback:
Show Spoiler
Linkblade91 – While sphere of sapience has shown that more weapons available to druid wont break the game, I don’t think they should have an abundance of weapons. For that, I like Horticulture Teacher better. As it is, the teacher is overcosted. Compare this to Tending Tauren that naturally summons 2 treants. I think the Teacher could easily be a 4 Mana 4/4 or 3/4 and be fine.
Grumpymonk – I like the attentive student with the enchanted book best. It is more skill testing than the other designs as it eliminates any possible abuse of the design (8x fireballs in a game sounds unfun) while providing a good option for extra value generation or stall strategies.
Nirast – You are correct in that it should say “If the spell…”. Other than that, I like the concept of differing effects from some component of the spell, but I think the Secret condition isn’t necessary and complicates the card more than it needs to be. Otherwise, seems like a fun design. (just as an idea, it could be interesting for this design to look at the odd/even cost of the spell to choose its effect). I dislike the murloc you posted earlier for being too snowbally.
Shaveyou – I do like the flavour you’re trying to evoke, its shame there likely isn’t art for that available (the woe of all custom card creators), and that usually doesn’t score very highly in the end. Balance-wise, I think it might be undercosted – comparing it to Imprisoned Felmaw (Dormant for 2 turns ~= -2 Mana cost), it would still be good at 5 mana I think.
Wailor – I think Spellcaster In Training is still the best among these and seems fine in its current iteration.
FieselFitz – Some good changes, though I question whether this needs to be a Legendary. Drawing cards is a Rogue Strength, and this is now starting to resemble Acolyte of Pain in statline/card draw.
Bananenparty – You could play this on 5 + a 0 mana spell, then cast a 9 cost spell the following turn. If that seems too dangerous, I’d suggest putting this into a class that cant abuse it as much, or reducing the cost to 4 and changing it to “the next spell you play this turn costs (3) less”.
KANSAS – As others may have mentioned, the flavour of Lorekeeper should be changed so there’s no clash with Lorekeeper Polkelt. Otherwise It seems fine. Wind Totem has the potential to be simply too strong in a totem-shaman deck – flooding your board with these would be a horrible experience. I could see it if it wasn’t a totem.
DavnanKillder – I like Mad Researcher. We haven’t seen many “looting” effects in hearthstone, so I think this fills some interesting design space. Trapmaster is a no go from me, we’ve seen how random secrets can be frustrating, and the balance on the card would likely have to suffer as a result.
Ekkeh – Shrieking Banshee is too feast/famine for my liking. Either its too strong against 1 big threat at a time, or just bad against a wide board.
TheHoax91 – Some bold designs this week so far. Archmage Karlain is unfortunately another misstep. I could be wrong but i believe that [Hearthstone Card (Kael’Thas) Not Found] would override the cost increase and could be used to negate the drawback very easily. (Kael’thas + spell + spell + karlain + spell that costs 1). Additionally, spells that conditionally lower their cost may do the same (Scorch for example), ultimately Karlain limits future design space in a hazardous way.
So right now Nintendo has a deal where you can play the Switch version of Overwatch free through the week if you have a subscription to Nintendo Switch Online. I found out by accident that if you download the game and go into the settings, you can link it to your Blizzard account and redeem the "digital goodies" that you could normally only get by buying the game, including the Overwatch cardback for Hearthstone. Just thought I'd throw this out there for anyone who might want the cardback without having to buy the full game.
That's a weird explanation for Whirlwind Tempest. Considering only 4 cards can have Windfury (Crackling Cyclone, Zapp Slywick, Seabreaker Goliath and Amalgadon), and only the Cyclone can really benefit from it, I thought it was because its limited usability. Also, with it being a Tier 3 minion, it was already easy to triple for Mega-Windfury. So this essentially will have barely an impact.
I think the limited usability is why they're saying it wasn't a fun minion to have in the pool. In most situations it was just a tier 4 6/6 elemental, but in a very small amount of situations it could allow one windfury minion to completely remove half of the opponent's minions before those were able to do anything.
I like these book of heroes things. I don't know anything about the stories of these people, so a little hit is good. And I think it would be welcome if Blizzard just kept releasing a short, linear story to play through and get a pack after the book of heroes is done. Once a month or so.
Steven Rubin previously tweeted something about how the latency between when they decide to commit a change and when it actually makes it into a patch is something like 2 weeks; it's likely they didn't have a chance to respond in time for it to be incorporated into this one.
The sarcasm only applied to the last sentence of the second paragraph ;) I guess it was pretty redundant but you never know how dense people on the Internet can be.
And why make good points indeed when this is the extent of effort the devs intend to put into the mode. It's not like they're not getting feedback on this shit on forums. Pirates have been nigh-on useless for several patches now and Dragons have been so slow in scaling since their introduction that they're barely worth trying. Instead of addressing those long-standing issues we got another tribe shoved in last patch to overshadow them even more.
That's not to mention the discrepancy in hero power levels, which they're barely addressing. More than half the hero pool is still worthless, Maiev gets an irrelevant nerf (it's her insane economy that makes her busted, not the stats), Lich King still farms everyone and Rafaam swims in gold and triples just like Maiev. Getting +1 extra attack on frozen minions per turn isn't going to redeem Sindragosa in that environment. She's so deep down in the trash tier and all the top heroes get so many major stat or economy bonuses that this little change won't shift the scales in any significant way. She can technically get more stats on her minions than Kaelthas etc., but she could do that already. She pays for her extra stats with the inability to efficiently search for key minions to enhance her strategy, cause she's incentivised to skip the free rerolls she gets at the start of each turn. Thus she has the raw stats on her minions but is slow to reach those internal synergies that make builds tick.
They're as related as they were in Warcraft proper. I don't know what more you were expecting. These are faithful Sparknotes retellings of the heroes' backstories.
They probably want to avoid covering the same ground twice anyway.
Honestly, I suspect this will be a success for Riot. From this site and Reddit, I can confidently say that the festival is unpopular with American and maybe European players who are serious enough to go to message boards. But for the casual players? The rest of the world? The K/DA fans who haven’t tried the game yet? The LoL players who haven’t tried the game yet? There are lots of player bases out there that I don’t have any insight into.
I would bet money that this sells fewer passes than Spirit Blossom but brings in more new players, and that the game’s stakeholders will be perfectly happy.
This isn't the end of all aggro. It's just the end of aggro opponents when you are the one playing a healing archetype - exactly as it has been in every CCG ever.
This is the rock to aggro's scissors, nothing more.
MTG Arena State of the Game October 2020 - Zendikar Festival, Arena Open October, Kaldesh Remastered
Willing to place money on the Drown in the Loch being banned on the first Monday next month. After the last round of nerfs it's rogue's everywhere. It's the one card that seems to stop the opponent from establishing any defenses or wiping the board. It wasn't so bad before but the problem with bans and improper balancing is it just creates a Tier 0 deck to replace the old tier 0 deck.
Rexxar's 7th fight
Yeah from what I've heard so far, this book of heroes is significantly more difficult compared to the Jaina one. I personally struggled against Misha, only winning because the hero power killed their own creature which had lethal otherwise, and Gronn, which was the only one I lost to. Going off of what other people have said, it definitely feels like this one is a lot more RNG reliant, with Daelin being able to snowball out of control for some people, or in my case, not playing any minions until his hero power, which at that point the hero power and whatever board I had already could just handle all his boats.
I definitely do think having the hero power not kill the boats in one shot is fine, but it definitely could have been something more useful. with the same case being true for the final fight, where the hero power legitimately is just worthless.
Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar is Now Live! New Shop Bundle With Alternate Rexxar Hero
I must say one thing that the story did open my eyes to a history that I didn't know, which was Rexxar actually fought for the horde in the first 2 wars of humans vs orcs.
Obviously he doesn't appear in the first 2 warcraft games, so he must have been an unusually lucky grunt somewhere since the orcs lost the fight canonically.
Can anyone actually confirm if the story relates anything to Rexxar's appearance in Warcraft 3? I knew there was one mission with him and the rest was something like a dlc that needed payment. Far as a I knew that mission was the first time Rexxar met Thrall.
Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar is Now Live! New Shop Bundle With Alternate Rexxar Hero
yeah, about as much as an orange is to an apple.
I played through both, and aside from the portraits, there's literally nothing more than the most minute connection between Rexxar's story and Jaina's. The only significant thing connecting the two is that one mission against a naga witch (no idea even if this is canon), of which Jaina spawns you 4 mirror images of herself.
Its possible to suggest that even if you knew nothing of Jaina aside from the fact that shes a human female, playing Rexxar's story wouldn't give you any more insight whatsoever. In fact, since Rexxar fights her father in the game, its possible to misconstrue that Jaina's a pirate or at least a sailor.
B-U-R-S-T - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Both versions of Cult Aspirant were met with mixed reviews, so I went back to the drawing board for a bit. In order to prevent too much overlap with KT, I'm preferring the healing version over the Skeleton version. I changed the class to Neutral and reduced the amount of healing since I think it introduces interesting applications and deck-building opportunities for many classes. I reworked the summoning version into Eager Assist-Imps, which focuses much more on being an option for Zoo decks. Also, imp puns.
Feedback sometime tonight or tomorrow!
Rexxar's 7th fight
Its actually amazing how Jaina's adventure was like a walk in the park and Rexxar's, at least to me, is like trying to walk a very enthusiastic and insistent dog under heavy rain. I died twice in the adventure, once to that very odd mission with Misha where I mistakenly believe the idea was to kill her instead of the trap, and then to Gronn, which was like packing a ton of canned sardines for a field trip and then remembering that the can-opener was left at home.
That mission you refer to was against Daelin, and it was one of the hardest mission in the adventure, but only because your deck and hero power is largely shit, and your opponent has an unforeseen kill switch and two Eye of the Storms out of nowhere. To elaborate, your hp is to deal 4 damage (to a minion no less) in a game where your opponent's hp was to summon a ship with 6 health, and if not killed snowballs the fight. Suffice to say that I only won with some rng from [Hearthstone Card (misdirect) Not Found], of which without there was absolutely no chance of winning.
Its weird that Rexxar actually starts pretty well, with some well thought out cards, and that hp to summon Misha was amazing. For some reason this was then taken away for a crude hp that deals 5 damage to a minion (Gronn plays no minions for 5 turns by the way, if youre wondering). A little disappointing that the final hp wasn't just summon an animal companion, or even all three for 5 mana. Would at least be flavorful, if not making the fight less frustrating.
Rexxar's 7th fight
Yes indeed I did ive been playing too much LoL sorry for the confusion
Rexxar's 7th fight
Yeah, the hardest part of the fight was trying to make Rexxar’s absolutely atrocious deck work. Like even the automatic deck builder is better than that garbage!
Anyway, if you can’t clear the first few ships you are definitely screwed. The key is to just keep removing his ships. Thats the whole fight. He can’t fight back outside of Monsoon (which is an awesome callback by the way).
Also, the final fight was such a disappointment as well. Whats the point of giving us such a hero power when your opponent barely has any minions either? It just came down to me smacking him over and over with the Eaglehorn Bow and then winning
Rexxar's 7th fight
First try was hard... Almost won though
Second try was a walk in the park. I think rng has a place there
New Noxus Landmark - Noxkraya Arena
I tried theorycrafting this with Demacia/Shyvana last night without luck -- not enough dragons. I might try again with Targon -- I think that could go much better.
Rexxar's 7th fight
You meant "Rexxar" instead of "Rengar", I presume? ;-)
Saw the subject on this thread from the homepage and clicked it, thinking there was some LoR/LoL content I missed. :-P
B-U-R-S-T - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Thanks for everyone's feedback. I'm going with the Ancestral Crescent this week since its was met quite positively.
More Feedback:
Linkblade91 – While sphere of sapience has shown that more weapons available to druid wont break the game, I don’t think they should have an abundance of weapons. For that, I like Horticulture Teacher better. As it is, the teacher is overcosted. Compare this to Tending Tauren that naturally summons 2 treants. I think the Teacher could easily be a 4 Mana 4/4 or 3/4 and be fine.
Grumpymonk – I like the attentive student with the enchanted book best. It is more skill testing than the other designs as it eliminates any possible abuse of the design (8x fireballs in a game sounds unfun) while providing a good option for extra value generation or stall strategies.
Nirast – You are correct in that it should say “If the spell…”. Other than that, I like the concept of differing effects from some component of the spell, but I think the Secret condition isn’t necessary and complicates the card more than it needs to be. Otherwise, seems like a fun design. (just as an idea, it could be interesting for this design to look at the odd/even cost of the spell to choose its effect). I dislike the murloc you posted earlier for being too snowbally.
Shaveyou – I do like the flavour you’re trying to evoke, its shame there likely isn’t art for that available (the woe of all custom card creators), and that usually doesn’t score very highly in the end. Balance-wise, I think it might be undercosted – comparing it to Imprisoned Felmaw (Dormant for 2 turns ~= -2 Mana cost), it would still be good at 5 mana I think.
Wailor – I think Spellcaster In Training is still the best among these and seems fine in its current iteration.
FieselFitz – Some good changes, though I question whether this needs to be a Legendary. Drawing cards is a Rogue Strength, and this is now starting to resemble Acolyte of Pain in statline/card draw.
Bananenparty – You could play this on 5 + a 0 mana spell, then cast a 9 cost spell the following turn. If that seems too dangerous, I’d suggest putting this into a class that cant abuse it as much, or reducing the cost to 4 and changing it to “the next spell you play this turn costs (3) less”.
KANSAS – As others may have mentioned, the flavour of Lorekeeper should be changed so there’s no clash with Lorekeeper Polkelt. Otherwise It seems fine. Wind Totem has the potential to be simply too strong in a totem-shaman deck – flooding your board with these would be a horrible experience. I could see it if it wasn’t a totem.
DavnanKillder – I like Mad Researcher. We haven’t seen many “looting” effects in hearthstone, so I think this fills some interesting design space. Trapmaster is a no go from me, we’ve seen how random secrets can be frustrating, and the balance on the card would likely have to suffer as a result.
Ekkeh – Shrieking Banshee is too feast/famine for my liking. Either its too strong against 1 big threat at a time, or just bad against a wide board.
TheHoax91 – Some bold designs this week so far. Archmage Karlain is unfortunately another misstep. I could be wrong but i believe that [Hearthstone Card (Kael’Thas) Not Found] would override the cost increase and could be used to negate the drawback very easily. (Kael’thas + spell + spell + karlain + spell that costs 1). Additionally, spells that conditionally lower their cost may do the same (Scorch for example), ultimately Karlain limits future design space in a hazardous way.
New Noxus Landmark - Noxkraya Arena
Armoured Tuskrider is a thing
PSA: You can get the Overwatch cardback free with Nintendo Switch Online
So right now Nintendo has a deal where you can play the Switch version of Overwatch free through the week if you have a subscription to Nintendo Switch Online. I found out by accident that if you download the game and go into the settings, you can link it to your Blizzard account and redeem the "digital goodies" that you could normally only get by buying the game, including the Overwatch cardback for Hearthstone. Just thought I'd throw this out there for anyone who might want the cardback without having to buy the full game.
Cora's Quick "Before Lunch" Designer Insights on Upcoming Battlegrounds Changes
I think the limited usability is why they're saying it wasn't a fun minion to have in the pool. In most situations it was just a tier 4 6/6 elemental, but in a very small amount of situations it could allow one windfury minion to completely remove half of the opponent's minions before those were able to do anything.
Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar is Now Live! New Shop Bundle With Alternate Rexxar Hero
I like these book of heroes things. I don't know anything about the stories of these people, so a little hit is good. And I think it would be welcome if Blizzard just kept releasing a short, linear story to play through and get a pack after the book of heroes is done. Once a month or so.
Book of murlocs.
Large Battlegrounds Update Coming in Patch 18.4.2 - Ragnaros Nerfed!
Now it will always give at least a +1/+1 buff even if you haven't played any elementals in a turn.
Runeterra Patch 1.12 - Monuments of Power! Card Balance, New Labs, Shyvana Bundle with Exclusive Emote, Poro Halloween Card Back
Steven Rubin previously tweeted something about how the latency between when they decide to commit a change and when it actually makes it into a patch is something like 2 weeks; it's likely they didn't have a chance to respond in time for it to be incorporated into this one.
Large Battlegrounds Update Coming in Patch 18.4.2 - Ragnaros Nerfed!
The sarcasm only applied to the last sentence of the second paragraph ;) I guess it was pretty redundant but you never know how dense people on the Internet can be.
And why make good points indeed when this is the extent of effort the devs intend to put into the mode. It's not like they're not getting feedback on this shit on forums. Pirates have been nigh-on useless for several patches now and Dragons have been so slow in scaling since their introduction that they're barely worth trying. Instead of addressing those long-standing issues we got another tribe shoved in last patch to overshadow them even more.
That's not to mention the discrepancy in hero power levels, which they're barely addressing. More than half the hero pool is still worthless, Maiev gets an irrelevant nerf (it's her insane economy that makes her busted, not the stats), Lich King still farms everyone and Rafaam swims in gold and triples just like Maiev. Getting +1 extra attack on frozen minions per turn isn't going to redeem Sindragosa in that environment. She's so deep down in the trash tier and all the top heroes get so many major stat or economy bonuses that this little change won't shift the scales in any significant way. She can technically get more stats on her minions than Kaelthas etc., but she could do that already. She pays for her extra stats with the inability to efficiently search for key minions to enhance her strategy, cause she's incentivised to skip the free rerolls she gets at the start of each turn. Thus she has the raw stats on her minions but is slow to reach those internal synergies that make builds tick.
Rexxar's 7th fight
Yes, wtf is this fight. Secrets are very bad too, hard to proc for eaglehorn bow
Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar is Now Live! New Shop Bundle With Alternate Rexxar Hero
They're as related as they were in Warcraft proper. I don't know what more you were expecting. These are faithful Sparknotes retellings of the heroes' backstories.
They probably want to avoid covering the same ground twice anyway.
Large Battlegrounds Update Coming in Patch 18.4.2 - Ragnaros Nerfed!
Why did they change the wording on majordomo? That just seems like it'll mean more animations
Riot Addresses Concerns Over the Upcoming K/DA Event, Clarifies Cards Still Obtainable for Free After Event
Honestly, I suspect this will be a success for Riot. From this site and Reddit, I can confidently say that the festival is unpopular with American and maybe European players who are serious enough to go to message boards. But for the casual players? The rest of the world? The K/DA fans who haven’t tried the game yet? The LoL players who haven’t tried the game yet? There are lots of player bases out there that I don’t have any insight into.
I would bet money that this sells fewer passes than Spirit Blossom but brings in more new players, and that the game’s stakeholders will be perfectly happy.
I’ll still miss the cohesive lore, though.
Large Battlegrounds Update Coming in Patch 18.4.2 - Ragnaros Nerfed!
Why make good points besides Sindragosa being useless and then end it with "/s"?
Soraka Is Spicey As Hell - Goodbye Aggro
This isn't the end of all aggro. It's just the end of aggro opponents when you are the one playing a healing archetype - exactly as it has been in every CCG ever.
This is the rock to aggro's scissors, nothing more.