Nice write up on these cards. Personally, the warlock and warrior primes do an excellent show case of the class, regardless of their lore. But that's me.
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza - A much needed breath of fresh air. Seeing the occasional Dragonqueen Alexstrasza spawned again and for free was enough to say that is was a little OP. While the new dragons costing (1) will still be tough, they could be getting junk dragons as well
Corsair Cache - As much as I loved this card, I knew that it needed to be hit. Losing the +1 to attack will be sad, but there are many ways to buff the weapon with warrior. At the very least, this makes the Acidic Swamp Ooze continually viable.
Metamorphosis - I am not a big fan of Demon Hunter, but this card was devastatingly fun to use. Bringing the power down by 1 makes this more a pimp slap rather than a bludgeoning. It can still hurt face and remove mid range threats, but won't dominate bigger minions as much.
Kayn Sunfury - I personally have not seen this card abused. Whenever I have seen people put him on the board, I looked at it like a Kor'kron Elite, good for one turn, maybe helps his buddies, but nothing too meta defining.
Warglaives of Azzinoth - This is much needed. Demon Hunter being able to slap 4 targets a turn with 3+ damage is gross. Especially in wild with the Odd package kicking it up to 5+. At the very least that version of the deck will go down in flames.
[Hearthstone Card (Dragoncaster) Not Found]- I was so sick of seeing this card jump out at my on turn 5 and having them drop the Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron or in Wild Luna's Pocket Galaxy. That was just ridiculous. Delaying it one additional turn may be quite helpful.
Fungal Fortunes - Druid has been getting a lot more intense for draw power. Having this fire off first turn to fill their hand with mana buffs and other wonderful spells is a little overwhelming. Granted with an Innervate, this can still fire off quickly, but that would leave their hand wanting.
Galakrond, the Nightmare - I am on the fence with this one as much as I am about Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. Increasing their cost to (1) mana seems like it will stop a lot. However everytime I have used this card, I rarely drop a ton of things for free in one turn. I usually end up using them for other combo cards. I think that this will just force player to rethink a little more on strategy but will ultimately be negligible
Many of these were long over due. My true hope is that they start doing more in depth R&D to prevent situations like the past 3 months where there have been so many nerfs and change ups that the meta is completely destroyed.
I've used this for a little while, the past year-ish. It's functional but there are a few things that would be cool if they fixed. It doesn't seem to sync with your HSReplay account, my W/L on mobile is different than when I play on desktop. Also, you have to manually delete decks if you don't want them to show up in the list of decks, and sometimes that doesn't even work. I gave up and just have a list of hundreds of decks with 1 or 2 games played. The only other annoyance is that whenever a new hero (Illidan) or skin (Aranna) comes out, it can't figure out what deck you are playing until they update the app, which sometimes takes a few weeks.
Ultimately I still boot it up everytime and it gets the job done. I primarily play on mobile and it was starting to feel like a disadvantage, so I'm extremely grateful this exists. It even works with Battlegrounds; when you pick heroes there a link pops up to the hero winrates. It used to also give you the minions at each tier, but that doesn't seem to be working now (at least when I've tried it).
I think Blizzard really should cut down on having 0-mana cards/effects. A lot of recently nerfed cards had these 0-mana discounts, and they were a bit unhealthy for the game and led to some pretty oppressive/annoying archetypes. Just look at this list:
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza - Summoning three gigantic dragons in one turn is such a huge swing; nerfing its effect to 1 mana is fair (Highlander decks can still use her)
Galakrond, the Nightmare - Drawing 4 mana-less cards in a class that loves combos has always been insane, no wonder Galakrond Rogue dominated the previous meta
Dragoncaster - Allowing players to cast a 0-cost Puzzle Box of Yogg'saron will always piss off either player, it's such a roll of the dice
Twin Slice - Excellent DH tool that cost NO MANA until it was nerfed (sideways nerf though)
Even some of the Druid cards that cost (0) when you have 7+ mana crystals seem bound to be oppressive in the future. Just lessen 0-mana effects for the next expansion, that's my only wish. It just invites crazy gameplay that will make people tilt often.
To echo others points, I think Hearthstone succeeds in it's simplicity. I think the challenge for the devs moving forward is going to be to try to find ways to make that simplicity still feel exciting. I think something like spell mana or hero power mana could be a keyword or mechanic that they introduce, but would probably be difficult to tack onto the game as is. Blizzard might have to be more bold about adding new mechanics to the game that persist past an expansion; that decision makes sense from a casual perspective but it makes each expansion feel very isolated and hinders synergies from existing across expansions.
LoR sits in a weird place. It is more complex than Hearthstone, but not as complex as MtG. If people want something more complex, wouldn't they just play Magic? I like LoR well enough, but it feels very generic. I found myself playing it for the dopamine hit of getting so much free stuff rather than actually enjoying the game. We'll see, at least it has the unique space of being "complex card game" on mobile, which MtG doesn't have.
Loved the story about the Sporelings, didn't know they were a thing in Wow. Cool story and a good way to make the prime a viable thing. Wouldn't have known without this post.
In terms of games, I like Akama and Solarian. I remeber Akama from W3 and it fits what it did there. I like Solarian Prime's effect, though it's sometimes really powerful.
Since Murlocs are really important in HS, could we have a murloc post? Learn about tribes, alliances, and any other things we should know!
Ah, interesting. I'm not very familiar with the RTS, and have never played Warcraft III, but thanks for letting me know. I thought there might be something like that, but I couldn't find anything solid online and opted to play it safe. I'll look into that and possibly edit it in sometime in the future.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Akama from Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne and I'm pretty sure he has either Stealth or Permanent Stealth in the RTS. So the flavor is even more spot on regarding the Stealth.
If you want constructed, play constructed. But what deck you get matched against is still random. The demon hunter power is not broken. Just better if you have trouble playing on curve. Which is why you have the spare parts and chicken (which is actually more value than your hero power) Rogue power doubles the value over two turns and Mage power ignores taunt and doesn't take damage. The constructed tavern brawls are more likely to be a one and done once you figure out the optimal deck. Random actually gives you a reason to replay something, and since you play DH every week...you burn out You didn't have to explain why DH is more consistent, it was obvious New player friendly, because less of a knowledge threshold and more tempo oriented (which I assume you are play)
Hi Kovachut :) I"m happy to answer both of those questions. Firstly, the front page article for these lore guides is currently more of an attention-getter to let people know who don't see it in the lore sidebar wigit or my forum signature. We have transitioned them to officially be classified as guides in order to preserve them as evergreen references, rather than news that is buried within a week. I wrote this guide around a week ago, but we only just got around to fitting the front page article promotion into the release schedule.
Secondly, I know your frustration about the Reliquary of Souls info. As I mentioned in the guide, Burning Crusade was a period of time when World of Warcraft had yet to focus very much on the story aspect of the game, so boss backstories weren't included. What you saw was what you got, and people just assumed that Illidan had these imprisoned souls because he was a bad guy/raid boss. In recent years, a book was released called "Illidan" which tells some backstory about Illidan preparing his armies in Outland and fills in the blanks that the terrible Burning Crusade storytelling left behind. That's the only place where you can find that info, or any videos that talk about it. The wikis have yet to include it, and I'm very lucky that I remember the tidbit from a youtube video that I was able to go back and reference for this information. Otherwise, it would have been a far duller entry, lol.
I think part of the timing is simply the result of their approach to Demon Hunter. As that class has been slowly brought in line, problematic cards elsewhere have become easier to identify. I have no doubt some of these would have been hit months ago if DH didn't exist to redirect all the attention.
On a much wider note, there is an inherent conflict between wanting the meta to change to keep things fresh and interesting, and keeping existing decks strong to not force players into opening more packs. The standard/wild split embodies these two stances, with standard built entirely on the need to buy new packs sooner or later and wild letting you keep going with old cards and fewer packs.
Of course Blizz wants us to spend money on the game (that's how it keeps going after all!), but they do that by keeping us interested, and it is a moot point what the motives behind that are. Thought experiment: does it actually matter how greedy and devious someone is if all their money is earned by doing things that make people happy?
Expand on the murgurgle story please. I like to know if there is a side story where a spunky, independent female murloc slowly but surely freed murgurgle from his captive mind control state and eventually formed an avenger-style team of ragtag murlocs personalities, going on to beat Mecha-Jaraxxus with the power of friendship.
Oh, and there will of course be a mandatory required scene where mecha-jaraxxus somehow managed to control murgurgle again and later making that oh so obvious mistake of commanding him to kill the girl, rolling his eyes when the power of love triumphs to push him off a cliff to his certain doom, which will at some point be retcon into another blockbuster sequel.
I was already Hagatha the Witch, he had 54 health in total, I was really fudged with an inactive Reno in hand... Hagatha gave me Eureka! + another Healing Wave... I played both... Eureka! put Kobold Stickyfinger on the board, and Healing wave showed Platebreaker, healing me for 14.
After seeing the combo, it seems that this warrior realized that well... If I was lucky enough, I was going to win for sure, so... Conceded!
It's not the greatest game I had, but man... I felt really satisfied when I could theoretically counter every single thing he throwed at me!
I understand why the nerfs are healthy for the game/meta. Also - I totally agree it is good if new expansion brings new decks for us. I think we all remember year of the Raven, especially the RR, which was awful experience.
What I meant was the timing of these nerfs. It is not like these cards have suddenly become problematic. It is one thing to introduce new/funny cards, which makes us want to but new packs and another thing to nerf so many cards just before new expansion, so the power level of the "older decks" drops and we are forced to play more new cards to keep up with meta.
I am not a Blizz hater or anything, I am really wondering what the motives are to introduce these nerfs now.
Good nerfs,that in addition to the new expansion will definitely shake the meta, which it's been stale for too long. I guess Galakrond Rogue is dead now. They can't afford to play a 7 mana card that for that turn only gives them 5 armor and (maybe) a 5/2 weapon. Also drawing 1 mana backstab and shadowstep sucks.
Also DQA, this nerf should be enough to push her out of the meta
Please don't wait so lang for the next competition, I feel it is the main appeal of this site. Given the first teasers, there could be a great expansion-themed competition, where in the end the cards are also evaluated on closeness to the really set.
As for suggestions:
Either make it impossible for finalists to vote at all, or at least make it impossible for them to vote on their own cards.
make it possible to see the creators notes on a card after you voted.
Maybe add a "are you sure?" page after submitting your own card, where you can see the competition's rules again, and maybe even see the other already submitted cards, so that you can check whether you used the same art. (there were like three etheral worgen in the last comp)
Dawson was very clear that they do in fact have upcoming expansions in mind, but not because they want to milk us for $ with power-creeped cards - because they want the new cards to be able to bring out new archetypes and fun and unique playstyles, without what already exists overshadowing them or making them broken. It's quite obvious how Corsair Cache could make any strong Warrior weapon problematic, and how Fungal Fortunes looses its only downside if all-spell druid is at all viable.
Either they change these cards now, or the same people complaining they've made them too underpowered end up screaming about unbalanced metas when the new expansion makes them too good.
Hi, I just wanted to make this thread to discuss how HS could potentially learn from the innovations that LoR introduced and make the game better. Of course, HS is very unlikely to change any of its core gameplay even if it would be an improvement (due to it confusing new and returning players) but I think it could be an interesting thought experiment. Alternatively, this could be a new game mode!
1. Spell Mana: In LoR up to 3 of your unspent Mana can be kept as Spell Mana, which you can only spend on spells. HS could just directly implement Spell Mana, but I think it'd be more fitting for how HS works to make it so that any unspent Mana you have at the end of the turn reduces the cost of your next Hero Power by that much. This would allow players to play off-curve more often and might occasionally lead people to purposefully not spend Mana to save it for their next Hero Power. Additionally, it would make Inspire cards more interesting and viable.
2. Rounds instead of turns: In LoR, players also gain Mana at the start of their opponent's turn, and whenever a player plays a card the other player may play a card in response. One player has all the odd Mana turns and the other player has all the even Mana turns. HS could have a similar version of this, where whenever a player plays a minion their opponent gets initiative. Spells and minions would still resolve immediately, but with initiative swapping the opponent would still have the chance to react. For example, if your opponent plays a charge minion you could play a Taunt minion in response, or destroy the charge minion with a spell. Attacking would still work like normal and not swap initiative, which would encourage players to attack at the start of their turn. The advantage of this system is that it allows for counterplay and is a lot more engaging. It also eliminates the advantage for the first player.
What do you all think about these changes? Would this work in regular HS, or would it be better as a new mode?
1: As of a year ago when Saviors of Uldum launched, the "Unspent Mana" mechanic was first introduced for Druid. The mechanic does fine and shined when SoU launched since Quest druid was one of the top classes during that meta before the Doom in the Tomb event. With that being said, I think Druid should be the only class that uses this mechanic since the quest changes its hero power. Then you run into the issue of "How many unspent mana crystals count as one mana crystal discount"? It needs to be significant because a Warlock losing 2 HP to draw a card does not feel good to play against if the just didn't spend their last two mana on the previous turn. I miss inspire as a keyword, it's just too hard to balance without the cards being trash.
2: Hearthstone is famous for its simplicity and its speed. It takes, on average for the average non-hyper pro streamer, around ten minutes to play a game of Hearthstone. I've played since Naxx, a ~10 minute game during commutes and downtime feels just as good then as it does now. I'm sure you've red the subreddit and I'm sure you've seen forum posts complaining about "Ropers" just burning the rope every turn. Imagine how horrible it would be for those players to lengthen a game even more if they had an opportunity to extend the game time every time you made a move. Just think on that one. One last thing on this paragraph, the player who goes first does not ALWAYS have the advantage.
I understand that you want more complexity for Hearthstone. I do too, but you have to understand that it simply cannot do that.
Aggro: Odd Demon Hunter
Well with the glaives going bye bye with the nerfs...
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Nice write up on these cards. Personally, the warlock and warrior primes do an excellent show case of the class, regardless of their lore. But that's me.
10 Card Nerfs Arriving in Hearthstone on July 14! Targets Demon Hunters, Galakrond Rogue, Pirates & More
Here's my take on it all:
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza - A much needed breath of fresh air. Seeing the occasional Dragonqueen Alexstrasza spawned again and for free was enough to say that is was a little OP. While the new dragons costing (1) will still be tough, they could be getting junk dragons as well
Corsair Cache - As much as I loved this card, I knew that it needed to be hit. Losing the +1 to attack will be sad, but there are many ways to buff the weapon with warrior. At the very least, this makes the Acidic Swamp Ooze continually viable.
Metamorphosis - I am not a big fan of Demon Hunter, but this card was devastatingly fun to use. Bringing the power down by 1 makes this more a pimp slap rather than a bludgeoning. It can still hurt face and remove mid range threats, but won't dominate bigger minions as much.
Kayn Sunfury - I personally have not seen this card abused. Whenever I have seen people put him on the board, I looked at it like a Kor'kron Elite, good for one turn, maybe helps his buddies, but nothing too meta defining.
Warglaives of Azzinoth - This is much needed. Demon Hunter being able to slap 4 targets a turn with 3+ damage is gross. Especially in wild with the Odd package kicking it up to 5+. At the very least that version of the deck will go down in flames.
[Hearthstone Card (Dragoncaster) Not Found]- I was so sick of seeing this card jump out at my on turn 5 and having them drop the Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron or in Wild Luna's Pocket Galaxy. That was just ridiculous. Delaying it one additional turn may be quite helpful.
Fungal Fortunes - Druid has been getting a lot more intense for draw power. Having this fire off first turn to fill their hand with mana buffs and other wonderful spells is a little overwhelming. Granted with an Innervate, this can still fire off quickly, but that would leave their hand wanting.
Galakrond, the Nightmare - I am on the fence with this one as much as I am about Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. Increasing their cost to (1) mana seems like it will stop a lot. However everytime I have used this card, I rarely drop a ton of things for free in one turn. I usually end up using them for other combo cards. I think that this will just force player to rethink a little more on strategy but will ultimately be negligible
Hearthstone Game Designer Alec Dawson Comments on Upcoming Card Nerfs
Many of these were long over due. My true hope is that they start doing more in depth R&D to prevent situations like the past 3 months where there have been so many nerfs and change ups that the meta is completely destroyed.
mobile deck tracker finally available
I've used this for a little while, the past year-ish. It's functional but there are a few things that would be cool if they fixed. It doesn't seem to sync with your HSReplay account, my W/L on mobile is different than when I play on desktop. Also, you have to manually delete decks if you don't want them to show up in the list of decks, and sometimes that doesn't even work. I gave up and just have a list of hundreds of decks with 1 or 2 games played. The only other annoyance is that whenever a new hero (Illidan) or skin (Aranna) comes out, it can't figure out what deck you are playing until they update the app, which sometimes takes a few weeks.
Ultimately I still boot it up everytime and it gets the job done. I primarily play on mobile and it was starting to feel like a disadvantage, so I'm extremely grateful this exists. It even works with Battlegrounds; when you pick heroes there a link pops up to the hero winrates. It used to also give you the minions at each tier, but that doesn't seem to be working now (at least when I've tried it).
Card Nerf - Dragonqueen Alexstrasza
I think Blizzard really should cut down on having 0-mana cards/effects. A lot of recently nerfed cards had these 0-mana discounts, and they were a bit unhealthy for the game and led to some pretty oppressive/annoying archetypes. Just look at this list:
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza - Summoning three gigantic dragons in one turn is such a huge swing; nerfing its effect to 1 mana is fair (Highlander decks can still use her)
Eye Beam - 0-mana heal 3? Disgusting
Galakrond, the Nightmare - Drawing 4 mana-less cards in a class that loves combos has always been insane, no wonder Galakrond Rogue dominated the previous meta
Dragoncaster - Allowing players to cast a 0-cost Puzzle Box of Yogg'saron will always piss off either player, it's such a roll of the dice
Twin Slice - Excellent DH tool that cost NO MANA until it was nerfed (sideways nerf though)
Even some of the Druid cards that cost (0) when you have 7+ mana crystals seem bound to be oppressive in the future. Just lessen 0-mana effects for the next expansion, that's my only wish. It just invites crazy gameplay that will make people tilt often.
Game Design Lessons HS could learn from LoR
To echo others points, I think Hearthstone succeeds in it's simplicity. I think the challenge for the devs moving forward is going to be to try to find ways to make that simplicity still feel exciting. I think something like spell mana or hero power mana could be a keyword or mechanic that they introduce, but would probably be difficult to tack onto the game as is. Blizzard might have to be more bold about adding new mechanics to the game that persist past an expansion; that decision makes sense from a casual perspective but it makes each expansion feel very isolated and hinders synergies from existing across expansions.
LoR sits in a weird place. It is more complex than Hearthstone, but not as complex as MtG. If people want something more complex, wouldn't they just play Magic? I like LoR well enough, but it feels very generic. I found myself playing it for the dopamine hit of getting so much free stuff rather than actually enjoying the game. We'll see, at least it has the unique space of being "complex card game" on mobile, which MtG doesn't have.
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Loved the story about the Sporelings, didn't know they were a thing in Wow. Cool story and a good way to make the prime a viable thing. Wouldn't have known without this post.
In terms of games, I like Akama and Solarian. I remeber Akama from W3 and it fits what it did there. I like Solarian Prime's effect, though it's sometimes really powerful.
Since Murlocs are really important in HS, could we have a murloc post? Learn about tribes, alliances, and any other things we should know!
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Ah, interesting. I'm not very familiar with the RTS, and have never played Warcraft III, but thanks for letting me know. I thought there might be something like that, but I couldn't find anything solid online and opted to play it safe. I'll look into that and possibly edit it in sometime in the future.
language in runeterra
tks !
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Amazing article!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Akama from Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne and I'm pretty sure he has either Stealth or Permanent Stealth in the RTS. So the flavor is even more spot on regarding the Stealth.
This Week's Tavern Brawl is "Decks Assemble" - Build Decks Via Discover
If you want constructed, play constructed.
But what deck you get matched against is still random.
The demon hunter power is not broken. Just better if you have trouble playing on curve.
Which is why you have the spare parts and chicken (which is actually more value than your hero power)
Rogue power doubles the value over two turns and Mage power ignores taunt and doesn't take damage.
The constructed tavern brawls are more likely to be a one and done once you figure out the optimal deck.
Random actually gives you a reason to replay something, and since you play DH every week...you burn out
You didn't have to explain why DH is more consistent, it was obvious
New player friendly, because less of a knowledge threshold and more tempo oriented (which I assume you are play)
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Hi Kovachut :) I"m happy to answer both of those questions. Firstly, the front page article for these lore guides is currently more of an attention-getter to let people know who don't see it in the lore sidebar wigit or my forum signature. We have transitioned them to officially be classified as guides in order to preserve them as evergreen references, rather than news that is buried within a week. I wrote this guide around a week ago, but we only just got around to fitting the front page article promotion into the release schedule.
Secondly, I know your frustration about the Reliquary of Souls info. As I mentioned in the guide, Burning Crusade was a period of time when World of Warcraft had yet to focus very much on the story aspect of the game, so boss backstories weren't included. What you saw was what you got, and people just assumed that Illidan had these imprisoned souls because he was a bad guy/raid boss. In recent years, a book was released called "Illidan" which tells some backstory about Illidan preparing his armies in Outland and fills in the blanks that the terrible Burning Crusade storytelling left behind. That's the only place where you can find that info, or any videos that talk about it. The wikis have yet to include it, and I'm very lucky that I remember the tidbit from a youtube video that I was able to go back and reference for this information. Otherwise, it would have been a far duller entry, lol.
Hearthstone Game Designer Alec Dawson Comments on Upcoming Card Nerfs
I think part of the timing is simply the result of their approach to Demon Hunter. As that class has been slowly brought in line, problematic cards elsewhere have become easier to identify. I have no doubt some of these would have been hit months ago if DH didn't exist to redirect all the attention.
On a much wider note, there is an inherent conflict between wanting the meta to change to keep things fresh and interesting, and keeping existing decks strong to not force players into opening more packs. The standard/wild split embodies these two stances, with standard built entirely on the need to buy new packs sooner or later and wild letting you keep going with old cards and fewer packs.
Of course Blizz wants us to spend money on the game (that's how it keeps going after all!), but they do that by keeping us interested, and it is a moot point what the motives behind that are. Thought experiment: does it actually matter how greedy and devious someone is if all their money is earned by doing things that make people happy?
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Expand on the murgurgle story please. I like to know if there is a side story where a spunky, independent female murloc slowly but surely freed murgurgle from his captive mind control state and eventually formed an avenger-style team of ragtag murlocs personalities, going on to beat Mecha-Jaraxxus with the power of friendship.
Oh, and there will of course be a mandatory required scene where mecha-jaraxxus somehow managed to control murgurgle again and later making that oh so obvious mistake of commanding him to kill the girl, rolling his eyes when the power of love triumphs to push him off a cliff to his certain doom, which will at some point be retcon into another blockbuster sequel.
language in runeterra
In the patch notes for the last(?) patch they said it is possible to change to language on apple phones.
On android it isn't possible via an ingame option right now, but probably thr devs are working on that.
List of Runeterra Daily Quests
I'm quite certain the latter is pretty new ;)
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Zixor is the best
The Pepper Thread - Share Some Good Vibes!
After losing around 4-5 games in a row with my Lockdown Shudderman deck, I faced Bomb Warrior and was always at the brink of death.
The game was in turn 10, 4 bombs in my deck and a Mine from Iron Juggernaut, he still had 1 Wrenchcalibur and 2 Hoard Pillagers.
He played Blastmaster Boom, and I responded with Volcano and healed to 20 with Murmuring Elemental and Antique Healbot, then played Boompistol Bully (Thanks for the discounts via an unkilled Emperor Thaurissan)
I was already Hagatha the Witch, he had 54 health in total, I was really fudged with an inactive Reno in hand... Hagatha gave me Eureka! + another Healing Wave... I played both... Eureka! put Kobold Stickyfinger on the board, and Healing wave showed Platebreaker, healing me for 14.
After seeing the combo, it seems that this warrior realized that well... If I was lucky enough, I was going to win for sure, so... Conceded!
It's not the greatest game I had, but man... I felt really satisfied when I could theoretically counter every single thing he throwed at me!
Wild · Shudderwock Shaman · by Fedrion · 6 years, 2 months ago
Ashes of Outland Prime Legendaries: Archivist's Lore
Ah so i'm late here. This just show up in the front page.
Thanks for the read! My fav is ofc Zixor and i would like it to be my pet.
Hearthstone Game Designer Alec Dawson Comments on Upcoming Card Nerfs
Hi guys, thank you for your replies.
I understand why the nerfs are healthy for the game/meta. Also - I totally agree it is good if new expansion brings new decks for us. I think we all remember year of the Raven, especially the RR, which was awful experience.
What I meant was the timing of these nerfs. It is not like these cards have suddenly become problematic. It is one thing to introduce new/funny cards, which makes us want to but new packs and another thing to nerf so many cards just before new expansion, so the power level of the "older decks" drops and we are forced to play more new cards to keep up with meta.
I am not a Blizz hater or anything, I am really wondering what the motives are to introduce these nerfs now.
Cheers,
10 Card Nerfs Arriving in Hearthstone on July 14! Targets Demon Hunters, Galakrond Rogue, Pirates & More
Good nerfs,that in addition to the new expansion will definitely shake the meta, which it's been stale for too long. I guess Galakrond Rogue is dead now. They can't afford to play a 7 mana card that for that turn only gives them 5 armor and (maybe) a 5/2 weapon. Also drawing 1 mana backstab and shadowstep sucks.
Also DQA, this nerf should be enough to push her out of the meta
Card Design Conversation - Finale À Deux
Please don't wait so lang for the next competition, I feel it is the main appeal of this site. Given the first teasers, there could be a great expansion-themed competition, where in the end the cards are also evaluated on closeness to the really set.
As for suggestions:
Hearthstone Game Designer Alec Dawson Comments on Upcoming Card Nerfs
Dawson was very clear that they do in fact have upcoming expansions in mind, but not because they want to milk us for $ with power-creeped cards - because they want the new cards to be able to bring out new archetypes and fun and unique playstyles, without what already exists overshadowing them or making them broken. It's quite obvious how Corsair Cache could make any strong Warrior weapon problematic, and how Fungal Fortunes looses its only downside if all-spell druid is at all viable.
Either they change these cards now, or the same people complaining they've made them too underpowered end up screaming about unbalanced metas when the new expansion makes them too good.
Game Design Lessons HS could learn from LoR
1: As of a year ago when Saviors of Uldum launched, the "Unspent Mana" mechanic was first introduced for Druid. The mechanic does fine and shined when SoU launched since Quest druid was one of the top classes during that meta before the Doom in the Tomb event. With that being said, I think Druid should be the only class that uses this mechanic since the quest changes its hero power. Then you run into the issue of "How many unspent mana crystals count as one mana crystal discount"? It needs to be significant because a Warlock losing 2 HP to draw a card does not feel good to play against if the just didn't spend their last two mana on the previous turn. I miss inspire as a keyword, it's just too hard to balance without the cards being trash.
2: Hearthstone is famous for its simplicity and its speed. It takes, on average for the average non-hyper pro streamer, around ten minutes to play a game of Hearthstone. I've played since Naxx, a ~10 minute game during commutes and downtime feels just as good then as it does now. I'm sure you've red the subreddit and I'm sure you've seen forum posts complaining about "Ropers" just burning the rope every turn. Imagine how horrible it would be for those players to lengthen a game even more if they had an opportunity to extend the game time every time you made a move. Just think on that one. One last thing on this paragraph, the player who goes first does not ALWAYS have the advantage.
I understand that you want more complexity for Hearthstone. I do too, but you have to understand that it simply cannot do that.