I'm really glad they moved Junkbot up a slot. I simply stopped levelling at tier 4 whenever I went mechs and wondered why anyone would be stupid enough to pay gold to dilute their minion pool with all the assorted T5-and-up crap, none of which is vital to the all-mech strategy. As it stands, I still wonder if it's enough, because for any other tribe the highest payoff is still at level 5-6 (Gentle Megasaur, Mama Bear, Jaraxxus & Voidlord). Junkbot is also not a card you need immediately for the mech strat to work, you can easily afford to lean on Cobalt guardian and Security Rover for most of the midgame, so it's probably still better to stay at Tier 4 for a while for triples and magnetic buffs.
Why should memes/jank be welcome everywhere while asking for their own space?
But they're not. Meme decks get filtered out by the ranking system at any rank that doesn't have a floor. You're not going to find a lot of meme decks at Rank 2 or high legend.
Why can't ladder strictly be ladder and casual be strictly casual?
Because there is no hard dividing line between casual and competitive, there isn't even a definition that everyone agrees with. Even if we get past definitional issues, there's a boatload of practical concerns: Suppose you could identify casual and competitive decks, how do you make players play them in the appropriate forum?
It'd certainly save me a lot of frustration and give me a chance at more variety: I basically have to aggro my way through to reach above r15 and sometimes make it to 10 before it gets a bit rough or I can play the non-aggro decks I actually want to play that are in top tiers.
What is stopping you from playing the decks you want to play at lower tiers? Also how does playing less decks result in greater variety?
I've had multiple runs with Brann, who is great, especially if you can transition into an amalgam-buff strategy with battlecries and the card Brann. If nothing else, he gives you an easy first few turns if you get a battlecry minion in your opening pool.
Elise is quite tough to use and evaluate because you still have to pay the price of a minion to make use of her discover-effect. You could think of it as a free reroll in the sense that you get to look at three new cards but you have to buy one.
I've only been offered Finley once, and Brann was the other option then. Have yet to see a Sindragosa, but I bet she's stronger than people give her credit for. I freeze quite a lot so I'm sure I'd benefit from the hero power.
I also wont miss Millificent, mainly because I thought she was boring. And frankly not even that strong in a meta where mechs were top-tier and you had to compete for literal scraps with 2-3 other players.
I'll play a tribal hero now and again but I much prefer heroes that don't tie me to one specific tribe.
How would we ensure the reverse for the competitive players? Keeping meme decks off the ladder.
"Oh well that's different because my meme deck doesn't have a high win-rate and it's more satisfying when I win versus your competitive deck."
But that could have been another competitive player that I beat instead of being the unfortunate soul that was the 10% chance of you pulling off your memory.
"Why can't they test decks on ladder?"
Why can't you keep your meme decks off ladder? It took me a long time to force myself to power through what I call "meme 15" because of all the memes and jank.
I play ladder to win and encounter ridiculous decks there and it's just uuuggghhh.
I might as well be playing casual so I switch to casual because I'm going to run into memes/jank anyway so what difference does it make?
I've found a sweet spot between 10-5 and I've made it to Wild R8 (I only play Wild) so far. I think it's only fair: if you want competitive decks out of casual, then keep your memes/jank out off the ladder.
What are you doing there? You HAD to have been playing at least semi-competitively to get there in the FIRST place, right?
As for TRUE casuals that strictly play casual, more power to you! I do have ONE deck I play in casual occasionally to blow off steam but it's not completely done. (Missing Velen)
Other than that, I'm on ladder 99% of the time I play. I understand your frustration and I think it's only fair you understand mine as well. Nothing feels worse than being proud of my plays just to lose because you happened to assemble all the pieces for your shenanigans.
I honestly don't really see how this is a problem though. If you're playing to win then you should be ecstatic to encounter low WR decks on your climb, right? Not to mention, the problem, if you want to call it that, is self-correcting: by beating the memesters at R20, 15, 10, 5 you go up in rank to where the meme decks can no longer survive due to their low WR.
I think these floored ranks present a healthy compromise, allowing players a place to experiment a little while still facing (hopefully) mostly competitive decks. If I build a new laddering deck there's not much point in testing it against meme decks, you want an environment where people are playing 'real' decks, but without the risk of losing rank. The alternative would be that all such experimentation or practice takes place in casual, which is how you end up with threads like this one.
Pretty minor point but it'd be nice if after the victory/defeat screen you'd have another second or so with your lineup unblurred for screenshots and gloating.
I just 'accidentally' won a game because the number 2 got knocked out by a ghost while I was fighting #3 and lost the opportunity to tally up my swole amalgams' stats. D:
What if they added to Snip-snap card text: "cannot cost less than 1?"
At that point I think I'd prefer they remove Sn1p-Sn4p altogether or give him a full remake. If time travel were possible I'd try to prevent them from releasing a card that has "abuse me" written all over it on a whim just for promotional purposes. It's not that that line of text wouldn't solve the immediate balance issues -it would- but it'd be terrible design. It'd be kind of like printing a terribly busted 0 cost card and then adding the line "if you play this on the same turn you win the game, you lose" just to prevent players from winning the game with it: just don't make the card so obviously busted and it doesn't need an ugly line of text to fix it.
I wasn't even aware the global games were on, which is a pretty sure sign that Blizzard doesn't care to market them. I watched the 2017 global games quite a bit and I had a good time doing so, so it'd be a shame if the tournament gets discontinued.
Just finished the most climactic battlegrounds match I've played so far. In the end it was just me and a 52 health Patchwerk that had been crushing players left and right. After two draws I started beating him, but all in all it took me seven rounds in 1v1 mode to kill the guy.
[Q] -> Do the minions you or your opponents have or pick affect the minions that you are offered? [A] -> Yes
That you just have less chance; or that if you have mechs your chance to get more of them is increased, meaning offerings from the pool aren't completely random.
These question/answer aren't very clear.
That's only half of Donais' answer, of course it's unclear. Here's the rest:
"Higher tavern tier gives you access to higher tier minions. There are 18 copies of each tier 1 minion and 15 copies of each tier 2 minion (and 13,11,9,6).
All the copies of all minions on your tier or less are thrown into a pool and you get one randomly from that pool. If someone else buys one and is still alive then you have less chance of getting it because it isn't in that pool.
There are no other multipliers, its just those numbers."
So no, drafting mechs doesn't improve your odds of getting offered more mechs, what it does do is remove the mechs you bought from the pool, meaning that everyone now has less of a chance to get offered the specific mechs you bought. There are eleven total Junkbots in any game's unit pool, so if you buy one that leaves ten for you and your opponents to draft.
They should also add a weekly reward, exactly as we have it in Tavern Brawl.
1x Classic or Latest pack per week, if you get top4 in a BG.
I am positive about them adding something like that once the mode gets out of Beta.
___
As for the gameplay, i'd love more tribes, and i wouldn't mind at all to have a generally more diluted pool. I don't like consisten powerspikes in Constructed, and i don't like them in BG.
Fun(Variety) > Fun(Power).
I think just introducing new units to the pool would have the opposite effect of promoting variety. It disincentivises going for tripling a bunch of otherwise mediocre/off-meta minions in favour of always picking strong individual minions. Right now there is a decent incentive to be the one guy going for demons or battlecries when several people are building mechs or beasts because your golden minions will be fighting basic mama bears and Cobalt Guardians.
Combining minions is a central mechanic in this game and I'd argue one of the most fun aspects, so I think it'd be a terrible idea to make it harder to accomplish.
Not putting sold minions back in the pool would create a heavy 'first came first served problem' where who was offered key minions first would likely win the whole thing leaving no comeback mechanic.
Isn't this what happens now with later game cards like Mama Bear, Junkbot, and Soul Juggler? I agree maybe that when players are killed their cards should go back, but the big comeback cards are never being sold. The sold cards are buffs and early minions, and the early minions really dilute the late-game pool when they go back in.
That's exactly what happens. When a player is killed their minions are added back to the minion pool for all to draft. When a minion is sold it goes back as well. I assume upgraded units going back will break it up into three normal units.
If it wasn't first come served (more or less: you still have to find the key minions), there wouldn't be much point in rushing early tavern tiers. The benefit isn't just first pickings, it's denying your opponents those crucial high tier minions from their lineup.
The issue with adding cards/units to a game like this is that it dilutes the pool, making it harder to upgrade your units. It's not an insurmountable problem, for example DotA underlords has a really clever mechanic where they stick a couple of units in "jail" every day, which means that the meta changes daily, depending on what units/combos are available. If/when they do add more cards to the game, I expect something similar to be implemented along with it to make sure players still have a reasonable chance to combine triples.
They could just make it so that when you have two same minions, your chances to get a third one are higher. There would have to be some balance beind that, to not be guaranteed to cheese it, but i there could be rather easy solution for this particular issue.
Sure, they could, but you'd still find key cards less consistently and have more trouble making pairs. I know Blizzard likes putting complicated false randomness into their games to protect players from actual RNG, but I think the most elegant solution, especially for a game like autochess, is if that part of the math is simple and above-the-table.
The issue with adding cards/units to a game like this is that it dilutes the pool, making it harder to upgrade your units. It's not an insurmountable problem, for example DotA underlords has a really clever mechanic where they stick a couple of units in "jail" every day, which means that the meta changes daily, depending on what units/combos are available. If/when they do add more cards to the game, I expect something similar to be implemented along with it to make sure players still have a reasonable chance to combine triples.
Now I haven't played much evolve shaman, but I have played a ton of miracle burn shaman, where Spirit of the Frog is the engine that drives the deck. With enough cheap spells the card is a 3 mana Gadgetzan Auctioneer with built-in stealth. That's crazy good. In any deck that runs cheap spells Frog beats Mana Tide, and for quest shaman you don't want either, you want battlecry effects.
I've seen several people say that there is a limited pool of minions that all players share during a round, but I can't see anywhere where Blizzard expressly stated this. Does anyone know if this is the case or not? Would totally change your recruiting strategy to know this, since getting triples is so valuable.
According the the HS wiki the pool is shared (https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Battlegrounds#Tavern_Phase), and considering that's the way it works in other games of this type, that's no big surprise. What that means is that there can be value in for example monopolising a tribe that no other player is drafting, early levelling to snatch up high-tier minions before others do or early rerolling to combine popular low-tier minions.
Nightmare Amalgam is definitely a problem. It is way too good as a jack of all trades. In the endgame, unless it hits another poisonous minion (so Demons will always auto lose), it is a giant wall of stats with taunt, divine shield and poisonous that straight up destroys everything. I have no idea what they were thinking by putting this minion in the game.
Presumably the idea behind Amalgam was that it'd make it easier to combine more than one tribe into an effective build. Most of these autochess type games have multi-tribe units or some sort of jack-of-all-trades (or both) to allow for more modular builds. That said the result is a minion that is good in *any* lineup rather than a minion that rewards hybrid builds.
I think it's pretty stupid of Blizzard that they made access to battlegrounds dependent on pre-purchasing the new set. I for one still haven't forgiven them for the mess they made around the Blitzchung incident, so I'm not going to be giving them money anytime soon. What could have been a cool new feature to rope me back in, an olive branch to all the disgruntled HS players, is instead a reminder of all the bad blood between us. Wile E Coyote could probably take a few pointers from Blizzard on unnecessary self-sabotage.
I would estimate ~30 packs is when you acquire more or less all of the commons and ~50-80 for rares from a given set, or at least reach such diminishing returns that it's easier to just craft the remaining ones you need. For epics and legendaries you'd probably have to open several times that amount to reasonably expect to own even half of the complete set.
But since the devs are so incredibly reluctant with nerfs in Wild, WHILE being also so eager to release stupidly out-of-place-cards (Arcane Flakmage shouldn't exist at all), a hard-rule would fix the issue now, AND in the future as well, with future flawed cards.
In other words, they release flawed cards and they know it. Things are ok until a synergy abuses the flaw to its full potential. A hard-rule would proactively fix the flaw, by preventing it from becoming real (in Combo with other cards), whenever in time, for any present and future card.
I also dislike hitting Exodia Mage or other OTK with what i proposed, as well as QMage (which is one of my preferred decks ever) but since i have no faith in them applying the right nerfs in Wild, and since i am 100% sure that new flaws would appear not far in the future, because of their inherently flawed design policy, i would go with some brutal hard-rule, and be done with it.
If you think the devs don't care about wild at all, why on earth would they institute a rule-change with wide-ranging consequences for all hearthstone formats on behalf of wild? Why would that be more plausible than targeted nerfs to cards that only exist/see play in wild? That doesn't follow for me at all. I agree that the devs are rather conservative, but that would make them less inclined to go for radical changes, not more so.
With enough nagging from the community, Barnes got nerfed even though Res Priest was not a problem in terms of balance. It was and is vastly overrepresented despite being Tier 2. It might come at a glacial pace, but the devs do, sometimes, make changes for wild.
The radical change would spare them from repeatedly coming back to Wild and nerf things.
And it would spare us all years of frustration before the nerfs actually hit.
I do not think they don't care about Wild. I think they care too little, and too rarely. I deem their glacial pace extremely insufficient - hence the radical change hypothesis still holds its value, at least as much as a set of timely nerfs (now and in the future, when similar problems with (0) will certainly happen).
No it wouldn't. Instituting your rule change would create a bunch of chaos after which new metas would emerge with their own problems. Given the wide-ranging consequences of the proposed change and the chaotic, emergent nature of metagames, you may well end up with a game that's far more toxic and stale than what you have now.
But even if the proposed rule change were guaranteed to leave wild a peaceful, tranquil place for years to come I'd still say the price was way too high. Getting cards to 0 is absolutely fundamental to a ton of combo decks. Chopping my arm off might permanently cure my RSI but that still sounds like a bad deal to me.
I'm really glad they moved Junkbot up a slot. I simply stopped levelling at tier 4 whenever I went mechs and wondered why anyone would be stupid enough to pay gold to dilute their minion pool with all the assorted T5-and-up crap, none of which is vital to the all-mech strategy. As it stands, I still wonder if it's enough, because for any other tribe the highest payoff is still at level 5-6 (Gentle Megasaur, Mama Bear, Jaraxxus & Voidlord). Junkbot is also not a card you need immediately for the mech strat to work, you can easily afford to lean on Cobalt guardian and Security Rover for most of the midgame, so it's probably still better to stay at Tier 4 for a while for triples and magnetic buffs.
But they're not. Meme decks get filtered out by the ranking system at any rank that doesn't have a floor. You're not going to find a lot of meme decks at Rank 2 or high legend.
Because there is no hard dividing line between casual and competitive, there isn't even a definition that everyone agrees with. Even if we get past definitional issues, there's a boatload of practical concerns: Suppose you could identify casual and competitive decks, how do you make players play them in the appropriate forum?
What is stopping you from playing the decks you want to play at lower tiers? Also how does playing less decks result in greater variety?
I've had multiple runs with Brann, who is great, especially if you can transition into an amalgam-buff strategy with battlecries and the card Brann. If nothing else, he gives you an easy first few turns if you get a battlecry minion in your opening pool.
Elise is quite tough to use and evaluate because you still have to pay the price of a minion to make use of her discover-effect. You could think of it as a free reroll in the sense that you get to look at three new cards but you have to buy one.
I've only been offered Finley once, and Brann was the other option then. Have yet to see a Sindragosa, but I bet she's stronger than people give her credit for. I freeze quite a lot so I'm sure I'd benefit from the hero power.
I also wont miss Millificent, mainly because I thought she was boring. And frankly not even that strong in a meta where mechs were top-tier and you had to compete for literal scraps with 2-3 other players.
I'll play a tribal hero now and again but I much prefer heroes that don't tie me to one specific tribe.
I honestly don't really see how this is a problem though. If you're playing to win then you should be ecstatic to encounter low WR decks on your climb, right? Not to mention, the problem, if you want to call it that, is self-correcting: by beating the memesters at R20, 15, 10, 5 you go up in rank to where the meme decks can no longer survive due to their low WR.
I think these floored ranks present a healthy compromise, allowing players a place to experiment a little while still facing (hopefully) mostly competitive decks. If I build a new laddering deck there's not much point in testing it against meme decks, you want an environment where people are playing 'real' decks, but without the risk of losing rank. The alternative would be that all such experimentation or practice takes place in casual, which is how you end up with threads like this one.
Pretty minor point but it'd be nice if after the victory/defeat screen you'd have another second or so with your lineup unblurred for screenshots and gloating.
I just 'accidentally' won a game because the number 2 got knocked out by a ghost while I was fighting #3 and lost the opportunity to tally up my swole amalgams' stats. D:
At that point I think I'd prefer they remove Sn1p-Sn4p altogether or give him a full remake. If time travel were possible I'd try to prevent them from releasing a card that has "abuse me" written all over it on a whim just for promotional purposes. It's not that that line of text wouldn't solve the immediate balance issues -it would- but it'd be terrible design. It'd be kind of like printing a terribly busted 0 cost card and then adding the line "if you play this on the same turn you win the game, you lose" just to prevent players from winning the game with it: just don't make the card so obviously busted and it doesn't need an ugly line of text to fix it.
I wasn't even aware the global games were on, which is a pretty sure sign that Blizzard doesn't care to market them. I watched the 2017 global games quite a bit and I had a good time doing so, so it'd be a shame if the tournament gets discontinued.
Didn't you use to get 5 gold per win though?
I'm not complaining about free gold but I do find these quests a bit boring.
Just finished the most climactic battlegrounds match I've played so far. In the end it was just me and a 52 health Patchwerk that had been crushing players left and right. After two draws I started beating him, but all in all it took me seven rounds in 1v1 mode to kill the guy.
That's only half of Donais' answer, of course it's unclear. Here's the rest:
"Higher tavern tier gives you access to higher tier minions. There are 18 copies of each tier 1 minion and 15 copies of each tier 2 minion (and 13,11,9,6).
All the copies of all minions on your tier or less are thrown into a pool and you get one randomly from that pool. If someone else buys one and is still alive then you have less chance of getting it because it isn't in that pool.
There are no other multipliers, its just those numbers."
So no, drafting mechs doesn't improve your odds of getting offered more mechs, what it does do is remove the mechs you bought from the pool, meaning that everyone now has less of a chance to get offered the specific mechs you bought. There are eleven total Junkbots in any game's unit pool, so if you buy one that leaves ten for you and your opponents to draft.
I think just introducing new units to the pool would have the opposite effect of promoting variety. It disincentivises going for tripling a bunch of otherwise mediocre/off-meta minions in favour of always picking strong individual minions. Right now there is a decent incentive to be the one guy going for demons or battlecries when several people are building mechs or beasts because your golden minions will be fighting basic mama bears and Cobalt Guardians.
Combining minions is a central mechanic in this game and I'd argue one of the most fun aspects, so I think it'd be a terrible idea to make it harder to accomplish.
That's exactly what happens. When a player is killed their minions are added back to the minion pool for all to draft. When a minion is sold it goes back as well. I assume upgraded units going back will break it up into three normal units.
If it wasn't first come served (more or less: you still have to find the key minions), there wouldn't be much point in rushing early tavern tiers. The benefit isn't just first pickings, it's denying your opponents those crucial high tier minions from their lineup.
Sure, they could, but you'd still find key cards less consistently and have more trouble making pairs. I know Blizzard likes putting complicated false randomness into their games to protect players from actual RNG, but I think the most elegant solution, especially for a game like autochess, is if that part of the math is simple and above-the-table.
The issue with adding cards/units to a game like this is that it dilutes the pool, making it harder to upgrade your units. It's not an insurmountable problem, for example DotA underlords has a really clever mechanic where they stick a couple of units in "jail" every day, which means that the meta changes daily, depending on what units/combos are available. If/when they do add more cards to the game, I expect something similar to be implemented along with it to make sure players still have a reasonable chance to combine triples.
Battletag: AliRadicali#2939
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes
Now I haven't played much evolve shaman, but I have played a ton of miracle burn shaman, where Spirit of the Frog is the engine that drives the deck. With enough cheap spells the card is a 3 mana Gadgetzan Auctioneer with built-in stealth. That's crazy good. In any deck that runs cheap spells Frog beats Mana Tide, and for quest shaman you don't want either, you want battlecry effects.
According the the HS wiki the pool is shared (https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Battlegrounds#Tavern_Phase), and considering that's the way it works in other games of this type, that's no big surprise. What that means is that there can be value in for example monopolising a tribe that no other player is drafting, early levelling to snatch up high-tier minions before others do or early rerolling to combine popular low-tier minions.
Presumably the idea behind Amalgam was that it'd make it easier to combine more than one tribe into an effective build. Most of these autochess type games have multi-tribe units or some sort of jack-of-all-trades (or both) to allow for more modular builds. That said the result is a minion that is good in *any* lineup rather than a minion that rewards hybrid builds.
I think it's pretty stupid of Blizzard that they made access to battlegrounds dependent on pre-purchasing the new set. I for one still haven't forgiven them for the mess they made around the Blitzchung incident, so I'm not going to be giving them money anytime soon. What could have been a cool new feature to rope me back in, an olive branch to all the disgruntled HS players, is instead a reminder of all the bad blood between us. Wile E Coyote could probably take a few pointers from Blizzard on unnecessary self-sabotage.
I would estimate ~30 packs is when you acquire more or less all of the commons and ~50-80 for rares from a given set, or at least reach such diminishing returns that it's easier to just craft the remaining ones you need. For epics and legendaries you'd probably have to open several times that amount to reasonably expect to own even half of the complete set.
No it wouldn't. Instituting your rule change would create a bunch of chaos after which new metas would emerge with their own problems. Given the wide-ranging consequences of the proposed change and the chaotic, emergent nature of metagames, you may well end up with a game that's far more toxic and stale than what you have now.
But even if the proposed rule change were guaranteed to leave wild a peaceful, tranquil place for years to come I'd still say the price was way too high. Getting cards to 0 is absolutely fundamental to a ton of combo decks. Chopping my arm off might permanently cure my RSI but that still sounds like a bad deal to me.