Just want to add one more thing kind of on the flip side from my rant below. Playing Galakrond Shaman feels amazing. Generating minions and lackeys and value and just continually nonstop refilling and going AT your opponent relentlessly feels amazing. Feels really powerful and satisfying. Feels equally horrible to the opponent of course. Closest thing from memory might be Deathstalker Rexxar at his worst.
But if all the classes had that power level and could throw and take punches and go toe to toe with powerful decks like that...well I don't know how well that can be balanced but seems like that's kinda what they're going for with this expansion. Make Shaman powerful and fun. Great. But makes all 8 other classes powerful and fun too! High power levels are a blast but it's gotta be balanced.
Rush can clear one minion. We see a lot of token boards these days since only a few classes have early board clears, and the token generators are in bigger number than the board clears. So that means rush becomes the other option to control/clear the board. It can be removal with a body. But you pay a price, since the rush tag means its stats are reduced. So often its only early/mid game useful. Exceptions are Zilliax and Siamat of course since they have rush and divine shield which basically can yield a free removal. And we now have the new dragon as well Evasive Wyrm.
It‘s not that easy guys. The entire business model is is based around those probabilities and Dust values. Lowering the pity timer is a bigger difference than you would think. I got there twice this expansion....
You essentially ask if HS should be cheaper. Everyone would like to see that. But is it realistic? I doubt it.
Don’t forgett, there was a time with duplicate legendaries....
Yes, the current pity timer is pretty ridiculous. Let's say a free to play player earns about 80 gold per day thanks to daily quests and 10 gold for 3 wins, it will take 4000 gold/80 gold per day = 50 days to get one legendary if they are unlucky enough to hit the pity timer. FIFTY. DAYS. And that's assuming that they have the time to play every single day and win at least 6 to 9 games per day (depending on whether they get 50 or 60 gold quests).
And like others have already mentioned, the cost of epics is stupidly high as well. The fact that you can still open duplicate epics while people have been asking for that change for years makes Blizzard seem incredibly greedy (whether they actually are or not).
Before anyone gets too far off base, this requires some real-life trivia knowledge. If it ends up still being massively obscure, I can narrow down the possibilities.
Buying 100 packs preorder and only opening 3 legendaries is a devastating experience. One friend totally quit Hearthstone from one day to another because of this
It's just weird. Like...do the people making cards for different classes talk to each other? How does Shaman get Corrupted Elementalist and Invocation of Frost (also a very good card) while Warlock gets Dragonblight Cultist and Fiendish Rites??? Warlock's invoke cards are shit. Fiendish Rites is ok if you've got a somewhat wide board but garbage if not. Dragonblight Cultist is a piece of shit. Oh you spent 3 mana for a 5/1 and two 1/1s? Cute. Allow me to ping that 5/1 easily as if it never existed. Meanwhile....Corrupted Elementalist??? Are you fucking joking? Do these people talk to each other?
Not to mention Warlock Galakrond's battlecry is extremely meh. You played your Galakrond and summoned two 8/8s with rush? Well let me retaliate with my....Void Terror and...Witchwood Imp...and Fellstalker and Witchwood Piper. Fear me.
The other classes' invokes: get a lackey, get a random Priest card, summon two 1/1s (off of shit tempo cards), deal 3 with your face
Shaman: deal 2 free damage on board immediately...twice...or four times
Oh and then there's Dragon's Pack. Yeah just a little cherry on top. Oh and infinite Shudderwock from Faceless Corrupter/Barista.
Oh and that whole sliiiightly oppressive quest they have that doubles their battlecries. Yeah that was a good idea.
Oh and Mogu/Mutate.
Oh and Evolve. Oh that's gone? Hm guess I'm not over the PTSD. It's like it's right here in my living room happening all over again. Bringing that back was awesome. Then laying Galakrond Shaman on us right afterward. Nice one-two punch there.
Like just.....fucking get your SHIT together and keep this game within the bounds of sanity so that we can have fun playing a variety of decks in a diverse meta with all these cool cards you've given us. Is that really too much to ask?? Is that REALLY too much??? Cuz that is ALL that I am fucking ASKING FOR!!!!
I haven't stopped giving of my money, my time, or...honestly...my love for this game. I was and still am stoked for DoD. It has a lot of potential. They really need to take charge and balance the game frequently and fine tune it to get it to where we all deserve it to be! Including the devs.
Of course some fuckface in a suit who doesn't care about any of this is the one pushing the faceless, heartless, entirely profit focused agenda of Blizzard's that is ever at odds with perfecting the game...what could be the greatest game in the world by far if they strove for greatness and sacrificed a few pinched pennies to get there. I'm sure the devs have to squeeze blood from those stones just to do as much as they have. I just hope somehow the seas will part and they can just give the game the treatment that it needs. Make Hearthstone truly great Blizzard!
The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..
Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way...
Agreed, rather than focusing on legendary drops alone, some kind of overhaul of the crafting system as a whole is needed. Im not sure if Blizzard will ever do that, but players would surely appretiate it.
We don't really need to completely rework the disenchanting/crafting system. Just changing the dusting cost of commons from 5 to 10 would be more than enough.
Do you think Blizzard would actually do something like that? For example to keep winrates of certain decks in control.
No, the consequences, if proven they are doing this, would most certainly not be worth the "upside".
I get it, we've all had these things happen to us and variance can make it feel rigged, but like others said, few dozen games is such a small sample size, you cant draw any conclusions from that. Play thousand, tens of thousands of games, then you might start having a sample size of some relevance ... which would still be affected by other factors outside your scope of influence, not even talking about anything Blizzard related.
Just vent a little and move on, not much else to do here :)
The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..
Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way...
Agreed, rather than focusing on legendary drops alone, some kind of overhaul of the crafting system as a whole is needed. Im not sure if Blizzard will ever do that, but players would surely appretiate it.
Faceless Corruptor - keep it at 5 mana and change stats to 3/2 with rush.
Special mention:
Mogu Fleshshaper - Don't know why this card exist for a class with evolve options, or why it has rush. But it has dodged every nerf swings since SoU so let us hope and pray he gets the hit this time.
Mogu Fleshshaper - is not the problem at all. Blizzard must change the entire evolve idea and keep what almost every player always says: evolve the card at actual mana cost and not at basis mana cost.
The card is definitely busted. But being a neutral card means that I get to play a similarly busted card as do my opponent.
This way of thinking about neutral cards isn't quite right. When Baku the Mooneater was the king of the standard meta, did you see a lot of Odd Priests? And when Grim Patron was around, were there a lot of non-Warrior classes taking advantage of that super powerful neutral card?
Many neutral cards synergize with specific strategies, and class differences mean that simply being a neutral card doesn't mean you fit into decks for every class. A card like Faceless Corruptor will always be unusually strong in decks that can generate junk minions (EVIL classes with lackeys, hyper aggro archetypes, Paladin and Shaman with hero powers, etc.), while control decks (whose AOE tools typically do about 3 damage that this point) will struggle to clear it.
A nerf on its stats is entirely appropriate to ensure it doesn't get to be both a strong tool for board-centric mirrors and a ton of free tempo against control decks.
I liked your sugestions, but I think the problem is the rush keycard, is too powerfull for a class like shaman, I played 3 games with to just complete my daily quest and I just needed to play on curve to win
I ve seen how blizz balancing and, i think, here is only 2 options - completly destroy sham (unlikely) and underwhelming nerfs and sham will be still tier 1 but 1 or 2 decks will be his counters and blizz will be fine with it.
Anyway, expansion launch was ruined, i don t know how they will fix player base in standart now
It's deceptively good, but it's got a really steep learning curve. I still haven't gotten it optimal, but it's absolutely promising. The main issue is hand restrictions, and the Lackeys (mainly the newest one) can be particularly frustrating--if you had unlimited hand space, this deck could have a nerf-worthy winrate against non-aggro metas. Decks that have minimal threats in the early turns let you do everything you need to do to pretty consistently set up lethals. Keep in mind though that Hearthstone's small hand size forces you to think very quickly at times, so you have to be pretty proficient at on-the-fly addition, subtraction, and multiplication (just times two, really). You also have to have a pretty good APM, since you're at the mercy of slow battlecry animations.
I've been meaning to write a properly comprehensive primer but that's a pretty time consuming and daunting task, and I think that time would be better spent on actually getting better and improving the deck further. If it's interesting enough to you and dust isn't really a problem, 800 is a small price.
Thanks for the thorough comment. I will experiment with this deck for sure, I just don't want to get steamrolled by secret mages and pirate warriors all the time. I hope this deck can at least challenge them properly.
The Archgryffyn looks really solid for the Expedition format and for any type of curse archetype. I think it could see a good bit of play. Ixtol's Pendant seems like it would be good for activated abilities (and if the cost persist when it hits the board, it could make "Evolve" synergies workable). The concept of the pendant looks very interesting. For most other decks, it is a power stone that doesn't add anything else. Eremot's Designs is meta-defning in the wrong way. In Expedition, that will make agro decks worthless and this could replace Hailstorm in the Throne format. Shadow already got a lot of good removal and they don't need anymore good removal when Shadow control is dominating in Expedition.
Hearthstone Balance Changes Confirmed For Next Week
-21 and counting. I don't care - frankly, the majority are wrong an awful lot of the time :P
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
Just want to add one more thing kind of on the flip side from my rant below. Playing Galakrond Shaman feels amazing. Generating minions and lackeys and value and just continually nonstop refilling and going AT your opponent relentlessly feels amazing. Feels really powerful and satisfying. Feels equally horrible to the opponent of course. Closest thing from memory might be Deathstalker Rexxar at his worst.
But if all the classes had that power level and could throw and take punches and go toe to toe with powerful decks like that...well I don't know how well that can be balanced but seems like that's kinda what they're going for with this expansion. Make Shaman powerful and fun. Great. But makes all 8 other classes powerful and fun too! High power levels are a blast but it's gotta be balanced.
[Legend] Leprosy SMOrc Hunter
Congrats on Legend! This makes me actually want to venture back to standard ladder to try it out.
Suspicious Matchmaking
There is a psychological term for this.
I don‘t remember it but i‘m certain there is one :P
People have a tendency of percieving bad luck more frequently even if the odds are 50/50.
Best example: USB sticks! You allways attempt to plugg them in upside down. Or at least, it feels like it.
New Neutral Minion - Faceless Corruptor
Rush can clear one minion. We see a lot of token boards these days since only a few classes have early board clears, and the token generators are in bigger number than the board clears. So that means rush becomes the other option to control/clear the board. It can be removal with a body. But you pay a price, since the rush tag means its stats are reduced. So often its only early/mid game useful. Exceptions are Zilliax and Siamat of course since they have rush and divine shield which basically can yield a free removal. And we now have the new dragon as well Evasive Wyrm.
Should the pity timer be lower?
It‘s not that easy guys. The entire business model is is based around those probabilities and Dust values. Lowering the pity timer is a bigger difference than you would think. I got there twice this expansion....
You essentially ask if HS should be cheaper. Everyone would like to see that. But is it realistic? I doubt it.
Don’t forgett, there was a time with duplicate legendaries....
Should the pity timer be lower?
Yes, the current pity timer is pretty ridiculous. Let's say a free to play player earns about 80 gold per day thanks to daily quests and 10 gold for 3 wins, it will take 4000 gold/80 gold per day = 50 days to get one legendary if they are unlucky enough to hit the pity timer. FIFTY. DAYS. And that's assuming that they have the time to play every single day and win at least 6 to 9 games per day (depending on whether they get 50 or 60 gold quests).
And like others have already mentioned, the cost of epics is stupidly high as well. The fact that you can still open duplicate epics while people have been asking for that change for years makes Blizzard seem incredibly greedy (whether they actually are or not).
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
It's not Weasel Tunneler either.
Before anyone gets too far off base, this requires some real-life trivia knowledge. If it ends up still being massively obscure, I can narrow down the possibilities.
Deckbuilder: Unlisted Option
I’m with this one.
I’m also using hearthstone with mobile/tablet only, and this website is really great for it!
Looking forward to that too!
Should the pity timer be lower?
Buying 100 packs preorder and only opening 3 legendaries is a devastating experience. One friend totally quit Hearthstone from one day to another because of this
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
It's just weird. Like...do the people making cards for different classes talk to each other? How does Shaman get Corrupted Elementalist and Invocation of Frost (also a very good card) while Warlock gets Dragonblight Cultist and Fiendish Rites??? Warlock's invoke cards are shit. Fiendish Rites is ok if you've got a somewhat wide board but garbage if not. Dragonblight Cultist is a piece of shit. Oh you spent 3 mana for a 5/1 and two 1/1s? Cute. Allow me to ping that 5/1 easily as if it never existed. Meanwhile....Corrupted Elementalist??? Are you fucking joking? Do these people talk to each other?
Not to mention Warlock Galakrond's battlecry is extremely meh. You played your Galakrond and summoned two 8/8s with rush? Well let me retaliate with my....Void Terror and...Witchwood Imp...and Fellstalker and Witchwood Piper. Fear me.
The other classes' invokes: get a lackey, get a random Priest card, summon two 1/1s (off of shit tempo cards), deal 3 with your face
Shaman: deal 2 free damage on board immediately...twice...or four times
Oh and then there's Dragon's Pack. Yeah just a little cherry on top. Oh and infinite Shudderwock from Faceless Corrupter/Barista.
Oh and that whole sliiiightly oppressive quest they have that doubles their battlecries. Yeah that was a good idea.
Oh and Mogu/Mutate.
Oh and Evolve. Oh that's gone? Hm guess I'm not over the PTSD. It's like it's right here in my living room happening all over again. Bringing that back was awesome. Then laying Galakrond Shaman on us right afterward. Nice one-two punch there.
Like just.....fucking get your SHIT together and keep this game within the bounds of sanity so that we can have fun playing a variety of decks in a diverse meta with all these cool cards you've given us. Is that really too much to ask?? Is that REALLY too much??? Cuz that is ALL that I am fucking ASKING FOR!!!!
I haven't stopped giving of my money, my time, or...honestly...my love for this game. I was and still am stoked for DoD. It has a lot of potential. They really need to take charge and balance the game frequently and fine tune it to get it to where we all deserve it to be! Including the devs.
Of course some fuckface in a suit who doesn't care about any of this is the one pushing the faceless, heartless, entirely profit focused agenda of Blizzard's that is ever at odds with perfecting the game...what could be the greatest game in the world by far if they strove for greatness and sacrificed a few pinched pennies to get there. I'm sure the devs have to squeeze blood from those stones just to do as much as they have. I just hope somehow the seas will part and they can just give the game the treatment that it needs. Make Hearthstone truly great Blizzard!
/rant
Should the pity timer be lower?
We don't really need to completely rework the disenchanting/crafting system. Just changing the dusting cost of commons from 5 to 10 would be more than enough.
Suspicious Matchmaking
No, the consequences, if proven they are doing this, would most certainly not be worth the "upside".
I get it, we've all had these things happen to us and variance can make it feel rigged, but like others said, few dozen games is such a small sample size, you cant draw any conclusions from that. Play thousand, tens of thousands of games, then you might start having a sample size of some relevance ... which would still be affected by other factors outside your scope of influence, not even talking about anything Blizzard related.
Just vent a little and move on, not much else to do here :)
Should the pity timer be lower?
Agreed, rather than focusing on legendary drops alone, some kind of overhaul of the crafting system as a whole is needed. Im not sure if Blizzard will ever do that, but players would surely appretiate it.
[Legend] Leprosy SMOrc Hunter
That's a fun deck, lots of pew and puke
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
First of all: Amazing meta report guys.
What i think Blizzard should do:
Make Galakronds elementals 1/1 with rush or 2/1 without it.
Corrupt Elementalist - 5 mana and nerf stats to 1/1. Mana increase only if elementals keep rush.
Dragon's Pack - Mana increase for 7.
Faceless Corruptor - keep it at 5 mana and change stats to 3/2 with rush.
Special mention:
Mogu Fleshshaper - is not the problem at all. Blizzard must change the entire evolve idea and keep what almost every player always says: evolve the card at actual mana cost and not at basis mana cost.
What i think Blizzard WILL do:
Corrupt Elementalist - Mana increase.
Dragon's Pack - Mana increase.
Faceless Corruptor - Mana increase.
Special mention:
Totally agree with this one.
Legendary Reno DK Mage
Im not fully convinced with your updates this expansion. Depth Charge seems really iffy and not nearly as flexible as Volcanic Potion.
Polymorph’s removal generally scares me since it’s such a potent removal card and removes the largest of threats, and synergizes with Jaina.
Vulpera I think I could be convinced but I’m still hesitant due to the number of times Keysmith won me games, and it’s generally more consistent.
Now some theorycrafting:
Potential dragon package? Utilizing new Alex, new malygos, and maybe azure drake? Just a though.
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
This way of thinking about neutral cards isn't quite right. When Baku the Mooneater was the king of the standard meta, did you see a lot of Odd Priests? And when Grim Patron was around, were there a lot of non-Warrior classes taking advantage of that super powerful neutral card?
Many neutral cards synergize with specific strategies, and class differences mean that simply being a neutral card doesn't mean you fit into decks for every class. A card like Faceless Corruptor will always be unusually strong in decks that can generate junk minions (EVIL classes with lackeys, hyper aggro archetypes, Paladin and Shaman with hero powers, etc.), while control decks (whose AOE tools typically do about 3 damage that this point) will struggle to clear it.
A nerf on its stats is entirely appropriate to ensure it doesn't get to be both a strong tool for board-centric mirrors and a ton of free tempo against control decks.
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
I liked your sugestions, but I think the problem is the rush keycard, is too powerfull for a class like shaman, I played 3 games with to just complete my daily quest and I just needed to play on curve to win
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
It was pleasure to read this article. Keep up good work.
The Pepper Thread - Share Some Good Vibes!
Try this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK_Q2Jz3YBU
Waxadred Rogue deck code: AAECAYO6AgaaAu0F4PoCoIADoaEDwK4DDLQBmwXdCN76AvWAA4+XA4CmA7uuA72uA76uA7+uA+ewAwA=
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
I ve seen how blizz balancing and, i think, here is only 2 options - completly destroy sham (unlikely) and underwhelming nerfs and sham will be still tier 1 but 1 or 2 decks will be his counters and blizz will be fine with it.
Anyway, expansion launch was ruined, i don t know how they will fix player base in standart now
Galakrond Storm Rogue
Thanks for the thorough comment. I will experiment with this deck for sure, I just don't want to get steamrolled by secret mages and pirate warriors all the time. I hope this deck can at least challenge them properly.
Eternal - Promises by Firelight Spoilers Dec. 15
The Archgryffyn looks really solid for the Expedition format and for any type of curse archetype. I think it could see a good bit of play.
Ixtol's Pendant seems like it would be good for activated abilities (and if the cost persist when it hits the board, it could make "Evolve" synergies workable). The concept of the pendant looks very interesting. For most other decks, it is a power stone that doesn't add anything else.
Eremot's Designs is meta-defning in the wrong way. In Expedition, that will make agro decks worthless and this could replace Hailstorm in the Throne format. Shadow already got a lot of good removal and they don't need anymore good removal when Shadow control is dominating in Expedition.
Renolock [DoD]
Very nice deck! Thanks for sharing it. I will definitely give it a try and keep an eye on any changes you might do.