So if anybody follows the discussion around Irelia Azir on redit you'll know that Riot basically said its totally fine and there are no plans to nerf it because it's fun easy to play and brings in new players.

They also states that internally they believe it has a 52% winrate not sure where they got these numbers from because on mobalitics it's actually showing record high winrates the likes we've never seen before in this game.

I'm talking multiple variants with a 59 bordering on 60% win rate which has never happened before .

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks

Riot how is this okay?

One casual spin of ladder will have you facing this deck over and over and over again and sure you might be able to counter them perfectly one game, but they will roll you the next or the one after that till the matchup grinds you down and sucks the fun out of the game.

I'm not the only one who feels this way Swim and Mogwai have spoken out on how short sighted this decision was.

Riot nerf this deck seriously, it's token generation is simple too high

Its a really delicate balance figuring out how to counter swarming aggro decks that seem to be everywhere right now.

Some people claim braum does well but this doesn't work because you go around him.

Some people say you can out heal them with targon this doesn't work either because you can't out heal their tempo.

Some people say there is no counter and that felt wrong to me.

Finally I figured out a list that will beat every aggro deck thrown at it 9/10 games guaranteed.

Its only weak to big overwhelm dudes and even then there are lines of play to mitigate this.

I bring you Zillian Go Hard - with Elise of course as is standard.

It just turns out that time bombs are faster then red cards these days, especially if you pair it with all the draw in shadow isles  and healing.

We also have acess to deck buffing, and draw fixing which work great with pack your bags

Now out of all these cards you're probably looking at brood awakening and scratching your head, but it was a popular aggro  counter back when burn aggro was everywhere and you'd pair it with lux.  It turns out it works great during this aggro meta too, and gives sac fodder.

Would adore it if one day they released 10 new champions into the game, one for every class in the game. These new additions would all have the same hero power: "After you raise your tavern tier discover a [Mage, Warrior, etc] spell."

Which means you only get five a game. Also you can cast one per turn. Spells range from lightweight secrets to effects like a Flamestrike being cast before combat. It would be optimal if the pool for each discovery was 5 or 6 to keep it fresh.

It's pretty hopeful since it would be a balancing nightmare but if launched successfully would be amazing fun trying to use the 5 spells you get efficiently. Ideas?

So... what happened? I haven’t actually gotten around to playing Hearthstone after the nerfs but from what I can tell it seems pretty bad? Like Paladin has actually become even stronger? (Well, at least judging from HS replay statistics).

I mean, I hope this is only a short-term problem that comes from a recent meta fluctuation with people changing around their decks and what-not. But I’m also surprised to see that Hunter winrates have ballooned as well. I don’t remember Hunter having a particulary good matchup against Paladins either.

So my hypothesis right now is that: Yes, Paladin is still a very strong class but will have a tiny bit weaker early game considering the First Day of School and Crabrider nerfs... however, it clearly did not address enough of its power cards like Blessing of Authority or Hand of A’dal. Anyway, I would like to think that the current fluctuations in winrate (for Paladin and Hunter) are only because people are trying out their janky new N’zoth decks and Deathrattle Demom Hunters with the new buffs. Also, the Hysteria nerf cannot be downplayed as Warlock and Priest, Paladin’s major counters, were probably temporarily shelved away in light of the nerfs.I mean Priest in particular has really good matchups against anything that’s not Warlock, so I am honestly quite shocked at the massive fluctuation in winrates.

So to summarize, Paladin and Hunter are just beating up all the new homebrew decks, artificially boosting their winrates (combined with their main counters Priest and Warlock probably dipping in playrate a bit as well). So what do you all think? Just the usual doom and gloom from the community or a sign that the worse is yet to come?

So as stated previously Irelia and Azir are only (overpowered) in the deck where they are both present.

Or more specifically when daggers spawn sandman effectively forming an extra full board attack with free resources.

Easiest fix - an attack consisting of summoned units can no longer trigger the spawning of summoned units. 

So daggers still work fine on their own, and sandman will work with scouts but Irelia Azir will no longer be quite as synergistic.

Not sure of this viable from a coding perspective but it would potentially fix everything without "nerfing" anything

Competition Theme: There Can Be Only One

This is a solo adventure - I don't want to see any doubling up!

• You must create a Highlander card for a class which does not already have one
  • A Highlander card is one which has an effect when there are no duplicates in your deck, like Reno Jackson
  • The classes which don't already have an effect like this are Demon Hunter, Rogue, Shaman and Warrior

This time, anchorm4n wants to make sure every class has the chance to go duplicate free - without relying on Zephrys and Reno, that is!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, May 10 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, May 15 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, May 15 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, May 16 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, May 16 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, May 17 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

This post is mostly directed to Nifty but i think it could enlight other people as well and spark some interesting discussion along the way

How tier works: 

Every deck starts equal at 0% winrate. The decks then face each other and the ones who perform best get to be placed at higher ranks, while the worst ones go to the botton. 
So the botton of the chain food will be filled with the most unique but terrible ideas: excess of extremely greedy cards, wacky wacky combos, not optimized aggro, Yasuo decks, etc  
Those "slow" and/or unrefined decks are terrible against any optimized aggressive startegy, even the worst ones; but given enough time they may win sometimes against control decks, even the best ones. 

So here comes the first big distinction between aggro and control:
Aggressive strategies will ALWAYS perform better then control against the botton spectrum of the range.
As long recreational players exist, any current meta isn't relevant at all.

Why the 50% winrate equals balance is a fallacy: 

In a theorical ideal perfect balanced game, every card should have a winrate close to 50%. In the real world that will never happen, even if the game is balanced for several reasons:
1- Skill gap between players -> The best players know the best time to play each card to increse its effectiveness
2- Skill gap between cards -> Some cards like Legion Rearguard are easier to play then others The Ruination
3- Metagame -> Some champions/deck/cards have better mechanics while facing other specific ones, which directly changes the winrate
4- Synergy -> Some cards perform much better alongside other cards, so those would never see play without their respective synergy
5- Its boring -> Perfect balance means no further optimiztion for decks. So any change translates into negative winrate.


Metrics and Winrate by tiers: 

We already conclude that even bad aggro strategies perform better at low ranks and they should get less and less effective in the face of more optimized decks along the way.
For instance, an extremely fast Darius deck will be very good choice to climb lower elos in ladder and it gets more even as it goes up.

So lets say Darius is balanced sitting at 50% winrate and assume those numbers just an example:
Platinum + -> 1000 games -> 47% winrate
Silver/Gold -> 1000 games -> 50% winrate
Iron/Bronze -> 1000 games -> 53% winrate
Average winrate / game = 50%

Now, imagine some time passed, the game gets older and players got smarter enough to understand when to properly play Darius. 
The metrics now would be something like this:
Platinum + -> 10 games -> 47% winrate
Silver/Gold -> 100 games -> 50% winrate
Iron/Bronze -> 1000 games -> 53% winrate
Average winrate / game = 52,68%

Notice that Darius had its winrate increased WITHOUT A SINGLE CHANGE in the game 

Overall Winrate is a useless stat: 

Here is where the overall winrate metric over all tiers together falls appart.

There are many more players bellow gold then anywhere else, so in short, any agressive card should have a winrate over 50%, and every skill intensive card should have a winrate under 50%. 
Every single agressive champion like Darius should show an overall winrate over 50% winrate. If an aggressive champiom sits at 50% winrate over all tiers he is not balanced; he is thrash tier. 

I strongly believe trying to measure cards/decks winrates without taking the tier in which they are played into consideration is extremely stupid and not helpfull to anything outside spoting very obvious imbalances that are either broken or unplayable.

As the title states, I don't know how to use the post image feature. Can someone please shine some light on this for me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkhbqXtNfSc&t=497s

So recently Swim has been delving into the newly released champion stats and talking about how low performing a lot of the new additions have been within this expansion...but is this really the case...I wanted to go in and talk about confirmation bias and how numbers mislead.

So who is the best champ with the highest winrate...Irelia or Azir right

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/cards?rarity=CHAMPION&sortBy=WIN_RATE&sortOrder=DESC

That would be wrong its actually Darius of all things with his tiny 13 percent inclusion rate

Great game solved lets all go home, all jokes aside it just shows us that aggressive champs perform very well right now even the bad ones

Alternatively slow champs are doing poorly TF and Aphelios once top tier are absolutely awful if you only look at their winrate

So what we are really seeing is less an objective way of rating the power level of cards, and more a measure of the meta

Fast is good, slow is bad...great and before fast was bad and slow was good...and around we go

I believe that changing the pace of play through balance and expansions is great for the health of Legends

Pretty soon nerfs will land and control will do far better and all of a sudden we'll see a huge influx of winrates as is always the case.

So don't judge champs on winrates alone its really not informative in the slightest

Hi everyone, 

Over the last few months I've been working on some Battlegrounds tribes and a Custom Core Set, all of which were extremely fun projects to make. Alongside these, I have been making a custom expansion which includes 135 cards and the possibility of a mini-set further down the line. The expansion is a little while off being ready (1-2 months as I have work commitments) but the cards are coming along nicely. 

Now, I have a proposal for the community on here. Would you be interested in doing a small-scale card reveal season on the actual expansion thread when it's ready to go? I'd initially reveal the expansion with about 10-15 cards on the thread. If anyone is interested then I'd message them a card from the expansion and you can then post it on the thread when you're ready. You can just post the card or if you really want to, do a big reveal I don't mind! After everyone's cards have been revealed, I'll do a final card dump. 

I thought this might be a fun experiment to try out and if there's enough interest then we can go ahead with it. Hope you like this idea.

Currently, I am playing Reno Priest. Every time I queue into a Handbuff Paladin I either win through my opponent being unable to draw both of their convictions or losing to three buffed-up charge minions and double conviction. Does anyone have any tips? I cannot run Skulking Geist as I am using the Loremaster Polkelt/Tealen Fordring combo. 

Invalid Deck ID

A new Common Ionia Spell, Lead and Follow, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Empires of the Ascended

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Empires of the Ascended!

Right, I've got another tribe here, but instead of doing it on a PowerPoint as per usual, I'm just gonna do the traditional method of putting the cards on this post behind the spoilers. The Quilboar tribe was fully revealed the other day which forced me to scrap my other tribe, the Kobolds, due to how staggeringly similar they were. This led me back to square one, and then suddenly, Nagas came to mind as a potential new tribe. 

The Nagas mainly function around one mechanic, surpassing Attack thresholds. The simplest card to demonstrate this idea is the Starving Seahunter, which gains Windfury once it reaches, or surpasses, the 5 Attack threshold. This effect will only go off once on the minion, similar to a delayed Battlecry. We also have minions with repeatable Attack triggers, such as the Advance Hydroguard or the Swamplands Stalker.

There is also a small synergy within the tribe related to Golden cards, which was partially inspired by the inclusion of a new version of Zola the Gorgon (Zola, Golden Witch). Goldscale Temptress is the other synergy with Golden minions.

Thank you for looking at this tribe!

Heroes

Minions

Golden Minions

Great subreddit meme post. 

"Neo Learns the Truth about Hearthstone"

Not mine, but deserves an upvote and to be shared. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/nc394g/neo_learns_the_truth_about_hearthstone/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Why are the emotes so passive-aggressive? I can't well play with half the heroes I have because they all sound so patronizing. What is worse is that sometimes you can't tell what kind of emote is being used by the opponent (or vice versa) because none of them sound like the original emotes (Ex: Nightslayer Valeera's well played is 'What is sharper- your wits or your blades?")

Hi there!

I'm currently on a medical leave on my job due to a shoulder operation so right now I have lot of time for myself. Reading, watching tv series and movies, playing with my left hand Runeterrra and Mario Kart On Tour and since two weeks ago discovering Marvel Champions board game.

For any of you that are not familiar with that MC is a LCG* by Fantasy Flight for one player that also allows play with 3 other friends. You fight against a boss (and differents encounter modules that you can add to change the game) that also has his own deck. There are 4 differents aspects (and the basic set) that allows you to play 4 differnt playstyles for every hero. With the base game you can build your own deck but every time you buy a hero (15 euros/10 dollars each) you also have new cards for one aspect so you can adapt your playstyle as you want.

As I said the game is awesome playing with friends (enemy and sidequests escale with the number of players) but I'm currently playing alone and what a wonderful game is it. You can spend hours trying to find the best deck for each situation and, of course, each hero has its unique mechanic of play (for example, Iron Man should find in its decks differents tech parts of his armour in order to be more powerful, Dr. Strange has a side deck of 5 cards with differents invocations to play during the game, Antman goes bigger or smaller whenever he wants to play defensive or attack, etc...)

But let's leave appart this "I want to talk you about the messias" post. This game rely a lot in differents decks. You can play aggresive with BlackPanther, build a deck for playing counterattacks against the enemy, playing very deffensive  or summoning allies at your side. It totally depens on your mood that day. On the web you can find different people trying decks from marvelcdb and watching guides and videoplays but... do you know any web like outofcards for that purpose? Something to see which cards you miss in your collection for having a good deck or guides to play against Hardcore Ultron, which are the new heroes or scenario packs to come, etc.... Maybe if some of you already know this game are agree with me that the community is real but exists under the radar. Reddit is a thing but sometimes it lacks on having a good base such as threads or too much disperse information. Is there any web like I desire somewhere? Could outofcards be the proper community for that?

Feel free to ask me :)

Here is a little breef video about Marvel Champions. 

https://youtu.be/hYu5oSHScig

* LCG means Living Card Game. The concept is the same as a TCG with one major difference: the packs of cards are not randomized. When a player purchases a pack for a LCG, they know exactly what cards they'll be getting.

Hey there card game fans, I've been playing the expansion for a little while now and have finally caught up on Champs which means it's time for another off meta deck list roundup.

1. The landmark deck - very flexible with its option selection right now but primarily comes in 3 forms Malphite Thaliyah, Malphite Yassao, Thaliyah Lisandra. The goal is to A reduce countdowns in lissandeas case, two control things out with Yassao stuns, three turbo level landmark Champs.

2. The anti Irelia tech, there are some very strong deck options out there for beating Irelia Azir but the strongest by far I found to be shadow Irelia. 

3. Time bomb fun - the strongest version I found to be ezreal duplicate shuffling more bombs in and predicting that Tefari want to be. Although Swain time bomb works okay as a win con too, where you have access to flock

4. Finally new takes on old classics like lee sin and  plunder using the expansion options

Let me know what lists you guys are playing

Hi there, Nifty back to introduce everyone to  a healthy dose of down to earth meta statistics and a happy analysis of what they mean.

1. Azir, Irela the new hotness with a 20% percent play rate and a 56% winrate. Is it good yes absolutely, is it op not based on the numbers as of yet, pirate aggro and spider aggro do just as well. However if it becomes oppressive Riot should look at it in 2 - 3 weeks.

2. Midrange is an okay answer to aggro we typically see things like dragons, vlad, and swain doing okay early on into an unstable meta not because it's optimal but because it's flexible.

3. Control is not doing well again this is typical TF was nerfed and aggro was pushed and the lists have yet to adjust to changing circumstances like the prevalence of extra attack phases.

4. Combo fringe lists will do well early on as outliers but these too will fissle out. For example Swim has a massive 70 winrate with flurry of fists...except when everyone tries it it will go sub 40% percent in aggregate like Lee Sin decks.

 Expect things to solidify in the comming weeks when everyone remembers that healing exists along with easy answers for 3 mana Champs like culling strike.

Long term prediction is that a control list will rise to the top and start putting aggro in its place, it's just not as easy as copy paste TF/Aphelios anymore and that's okay.

I've had 2 recent encounters with Secret Passage that I do not think are working as intended.

1) Playing Rogue, I discovered Deck of Lunacy from a Wand Thief and played it, then later drew a 2-cost Blessing of Authority. After playing Secret Passage, I re-drew the Blessing and it cost 5. Cards you discount with Efficient Octo-bot keep their discounts after being shuffled around, but this one did not.

2) My opponent (a Rogue) discovered Evocation, played it, then played Secret Passage. The unused "temporary" Mage spells were returned to his hand at the end of the turn, and never went away until cast. He played one of them the following turn, and another the turn after.

Thoughts?

Just wondering if there were any news items I missed about Oh My Yogg! being a known issue for the HS devs?

I had a game recently where it turned my Scrap Shot into Dunk Tank but Dunk Tank never cast.  Instead, the animation hung over my character for the rest of the game and Yogg delighted in my misery :(

A quick search on this site suggests there have been Yogg bugs dating back a few months so I was just curious if it's ever been addressed by Iksar/the team.

Thanks!

I hit 350 last expansion and am currently working toward 135 in barrens progression. That would be my tavern regular should be 350+134= 484? Instead it says 482. I know that's minor at the cheaper high levels but would gate me at the even caps at some point.

Since I am waiting for Mercenaries to be released, I thought it would be fun to guess what roles the mercs will play in the new mode. 

The "roles" I am talking about are the main 3 for dungeon and raid running in WoW: healers, to keep their allies alive, tanks that act as targets and can soak damage, and DPS, or damage dealers.

So now that this is out of the way, I am now going to guess, using Wow class knowledge, what role the Forged in the Barrens mercs might play.

Kurtrus:  One word tips me off about Kurtrus; VENGEANCE! In Wow, V DHs are tanks with high mobility and are able to deal heavy AoE damage to enemies. In Hearthstone, he swiftly attacks minions, so that checks out. Maybe  fast slashes might bolster Kurtrus' allies

Guff: My best guess for Guff is Restoration Druid, a type of healer. They heal allies equal to their spell power. In BoM, he really isn't the fighting type, instead buffing friendly minions. But don't worry, he can still defend himself with shapeshifting. 

Tavish: With all of the animals following him, he is obviously a form of DPS for Hunter called Beast Mastery. They can pair up with a ferocious friend and deal damage. Hunters themselves can shoot with guns and bows, so we can expect some sharpshooting from Ol' Tavish.

Varden: Frost Mages can literally freeze enemies in their tracks and have great AoE with crowd control. Perhaps they can stop the bosses, making them skip their turn. If so, I would sign them up to be on my team in a heartbeat!

Cariel:  Due the ridiculous size of that hammer, I am making an educated guess that she is a Ret Pally, a melee DPS. They can heal also a tiny bit. Also, they can cast Avenging Wrath. to buff themselves for damage. 

Xyrella: For Xyrella, I am thinking Discipline Priest, a protective healer. They can shield their allies from harm, then unleash the Holy Light on their enemies. They can also heal, making them a jack for all trades.

Scabbs: With steel-tipped shivs and a small stature, this gnome has me confused. I am torn between Assassination and Subtlety. While they are both melee DPS, they are both starkly different. Assassination Rogues use poisons to deal damage between strikes. Subtlety, on the other hand,  are quick and stab quickly. I am leaning towards Subtlety, since he works for SI:7 and they are as stealthy as they get.

Bru'kan: His strong connection to Nature makes him a strong contender for a powerful caster DPS spec called Elemental Shaman. They can scorch and shock enemies with strong elemental magic. A valuable asset for a team.

Tamsin: Tamsin belongs to a shadow-magic using DPS spec called Affliction Warlock. They revel in damaging enemies over time, siphoning their life out bit by bit.  Pain is in your future if you are fighting one of these. They also summon imps to help you fight.

Rokara: Berserker rage lays in her soul, because she's a Fury Warrior, feared melee DPS. They go into a frenzy, swinging their two weapons to cut their enemies to ribbons. Expect heavy damage.

ALL DONE! I really had fun looking all of this up. Do you agree with my selections for these ten mercs? Any guess what roles the other mercs will play, like the regular Hearthstone heroes?

Hey, just wanted to suggest another ad concept for mobile users. With a medium sized phone, a banner ad above the keyboard and a video ad below the logo and browser interface I often can't see what I'm typing since the comment in progress is covered by ads. I understand why you need ads, but could you be able to see what you write? Like a stripe of 20-30% of a mobile screen would stay free at least?

And, if possible no video ads for mobile users, they take more data than pictures or banner ads. 

I can recommend using the WoW Secrets Discord channel. They provide a shared sheet with all the known info so far. All 4 puzzles have been found, so far only Warrior has been solved.

Edit: the links are in Celestalon's tweet

Hi there,

I just signed up for premium, and while I see the charge on my Paypal, it hung on the "return to site" on Paypal's side and I don't seem to have premium status on the site.

Couldn't find a support e-mail so hopefully this is the right place to post.

Thanks!