If the average aggro deck had the staying power of wild Odd Pally I'd agree mostly, but the problem with most classes that have the option of going aggro or midrange is that top notch control decks could eventually run more midrangy aggro decks out of resources without some form of pressure engine (ie dude spawning machine, multiple 4/3s to wack your opponent with, murlocs spawning themselves repeatedly, etc). I'd see many hypothetical new age aggro decks to look more like a midrange version of zoo in the sense that if you can survive turns 5-9ish then you pretty much beat them 9/10 when they're in top deck mode.
Quest Shaman, shark Rogue and quest Paladin are all fairly aggressive decks that exist today with more or less infinite resources if they play the value game. I'm sure if 60 life HS were a format other decks would emerge in a similar role, EG the Paladin loa was too slow for standard but might work in a slower format that cares more about resources. Conjurer mage might be great in that format too, despite the nerf.
Of the three prime archetypes I think combo is the only one that can truly be killed, and that only by gutting the card pool of cards that interact with each other, reducing the game to essentially basic cards. Aggro and control will always be present in some capacity, because ultimately these are just relative terms for whichever deck has an early advantage versus lategame inevitability.
You haven't convinced me that there is a problem here (...)
The problem: Let's assume that I am at rank 4 now. It's a matter of months before I reach Rank 20 through careful planning of my win/loss ratio, dropping 4 ranks at a time. Then I lose some more by conceding, to adjust my MMR accordingly, only to be matched against the poor souls who happened to be naive and ascend to the Rank 20 floor. My strat now is to win one match and concede the next or two and guess what; my MMR is low enough to be matched against those "Mark of Hakkar" players that are kind enough to greet me when they see me and are a delight to play against! On top of that, I farm gold faster than having to win an Archivist Elysiana mirror match! Only when I see another player like me (trust me when I say that they are easy to spot) I concede, but only if I was slow enough to press the concede button before they did. You would be surprised to learn that it actually hurts me more to win against those better win-rate guys, so I have learned how to concede in a blink of the eye (at the moment just before I hear the name of my hero, if taking reaction time into consideration)! What I've learned through this process: I'm actually better at assessing the correct match for me than the Hearthstone matchmaking algorithm!
Do people actually do this though? Why would you spend 4 months deliberately not gaining ranks only so you can continue to throw games to stay at rank 20? This scheme seems so laughably inefficient on its face that it hadn't even occurred to me that someone would try it. If we apply occam's razor to the phenomenon of players with golden portraits/expensive decks at low ranks, the far simpler explanation is that they're bad players who play a lot. This, incidentally, also goes a long way toward explaining their terrible attitudes.
The other issue I have is that I'm not seeing any suggestions being made that don't already exist to a degree. Farming low levels is discouraged because you have to lose and you miss out on higher tier ranked rewards. Blizzard already implemented a beginner's ranked system specifically to give new players a kiddie pool to paddle around in without having to face veteran players with full collections. Obviously any new player who passes the threshold onto the real ladder is going to experience a bit of a rough patch. I think that's unavoidable.
Please understand and don't make this about my friend. It's not about him or how well he will do against other players in general or what are his outs from the situation he put himself in. He didn't start this topic asking for help or to blow off some steam. I stared this discussion about something you might be interested to talk or might want to know about. My friend's experience on ladder is used just to make myself understood and to offer some insight of the whole condition.
That being said, it's about unfair matchmaking by an automated system, which allowed a "newbie" and a "pro" contest each other not once but consistently, just because it's convenient for the pro to abuse said system for profit. Do you find getting steamrolled and bullied that way fair? Maybe it doesn't affect you and you couldn't care less. Let us hear your thoughts on the whole new player experience from your point of view, rather than tips on what decks to play or which format and what strategy would be beneficial to them.
Don't be preposterous. Your friend's circumstances are absolutely pertinent to his "problem". In a card game you're obviously going to be at a disadvantage to people who have complete collections if you have barely any cards. That's the nature of the beast. People giving you tips and workarounds aren't doing so out of malice or apathy, they're doing so because they understand that the fundamental nature of card games isn't going to change just because your friend had a bad experience.
In a ranked system, you will win or lose until you reach a rank where the wins and losses even each other out. Again, that's not an evil algorithm, that's just the nature of a ladder system.
You haven't convinced me that there is a problem here, other than your unwillingness to consider changing your friend's approach to the game rather than demanding the game itself change.
Yeah I thought for sure they would set it so you have to kill the plague lords in one run on heroic. Pretty surprising to me that they didn’t.
probably because it would ridiculously frustrating, since each of the boss phases requires a different type of strategy.
For example you can easily beat the Murloc's first two phases with a minion focussed deck, but the last phase ruins this strategy by just stealing your board and leaving you helpless
I'm genuinely puzzled by the hostility toward the suggestion that the weakening mechanic be made optional. If you like the way it works now, just don't hit the button, don't opt out. I don't see why you'd want to deny others the experience they want if it comes at no cost to your own. There's no reason it has to be one way or the other.
Do you know who else is stuck on the "75%" floor of this outdated image? Players who have abandoned the game for good and those who deserted or don't climb the ladder with their quest farming/"play-a-friend" accounts etc. That 100 million milestone that Hearthstone achieved some years ago, counts those accounts too. I know for a fact that, if you ever tried deleting your Hearthstone account, you would be asked for some form of ID to send them in order to process your demand. So, not carying anymore, they just leave and unsubscribe from mailing lists, having nothing to do with the game anymore and Blizzard gets to boast about their ever-growing, loyal fan base.
What I care about, is the new people who hear about this popular CCG as well as the community that sustain it, the guides and support outside of it etc, and get super-hyped to start a fresh account only to have their expectations crashed by examples like these. I do want new people to join in and feel valuable, protected and treated with respect from the game itself most importantly. If they do feel like it, they are going to support both the devs and the community with any way possible and the game will flourish. I'm saddened to say that my friend is not going to be one of them; "To hell with him", right? "This must be a very particular case of a low-motivated folk". Or is it?
Your buddy shouldn't expect to be able to compete at the highest level right out of the gate and with barely any cards to his collection, especially if he's had experience with other card games. If I enter a constructed tournament in MtG with a janky budget deck I should have every expectation to lose to people who invested the time and money to get all the necessary cards. Just like Magic has Limited formats, so too does HS have Arena, where you fight with cards you drafted for that run, and collections are irrelevant. Maybe your friend can play arena until his collection allows him to build better ladder decks?
I do think Quest Paladin is pretty fun it is just really weak, I guess that would be a control deck?
Quest paladin is hard to categorise. It plays like a tempo deck if you have a decent draw but then it transitions into insane lategame value. I suppose you could call it a very proactive control deck.
Leeroy is in most aggressive decks, and those tend to be a lot less expensive to craft than control or combo decks, so it's definitely a worthwhile investment for any budget or F2P payer, or any player really.
It's high up there on the priority list of must-craft classic legendaries unless you detest playing aggro.
Yeah, she said that to me one chapter one. I strongly dislike the whole weakening mechanic TBH. I get why they did it, so there'd be an easy out for people who don't enjoy the struggle, but it really takes the challenge out of it. There should be a way to turn it off, especially on heroic.
I don't see it so much as an "easy out" - I think they purposely designed the Plague Lords to be *nearly* impossible to defeat in one run. Heck they each get 3 separate decks so right off the bat you have half the cards they will, not to mention the sheer RNG factor - you only need one bad Plague of Murlocs giving the boss 3 Ol Murk Eyes to be dead, or - as happened for me - the Death Lord summoning 4 Thaddeus on Phase 2.
My guess is that those who have succeed in one try did it either with an amazing cheese deck (0-mana Sound the Bells, anyone?) or with the most insane luck imaginable. I'll be really curious to see if Blizz releases data one what % of people managed to one-shot any of the bosses - I expect it would be under 10%, probably even under 5%.
That being said, I totally agree that it would be great if there was an off-switch and if you picked that, the boss randomly got one of their 3 phases and only 100 HP.
If it's possible to kill a plague lord in one shot then it makes no sense to deny people that challenge. I don't want to face a 100 health boss that doesn't change, I want the full experience. The present setup already caters to casuals by making victory inevitable as long as you don't give up, so why the hell do we need another casual mode? That's total BS. Heroic mode isn't supposed to be easy.
My first successful run against the murloc plaguelord was a breeze. I had captured Flag + Titanic Ring for +1/+2 and taunt on all my minions and a bunch of treasures and cards that generated tokens, not to mention the murloc infestation itself. I was basically free to go face while the boss had to find ways to clear my board over and over again, and I would have easily fatigued him if it weren't for his final form, murlocknado. I took down the plaguelord from nearly full health despite having a hero power that had zero synergy with the deck (spell power +2).
I'd say rank 15 is absolutely doable with a budget deck; even if you're facing netdecks full of legendaries the average skill level is quite low at these ranks. Zoo Warlock is almost always a viable ladder deck and you usually only need a handful of commons and rares to update the evergreen shell of the deck to a playable version of the latest standard list.
As for toxic a-holes, I'm afraid they're just a part of the game. Try to take their BM as a sign that they're really really upset about losing to a F2P player.
Not a single class in the game sees only one aspect of its class identity reinforced over and over again. Priest is just like any other class in this regard: sometimes buff priest gets attention, sometimes dragons, sometimes steal cards, etc. etc. etc. The class absolutely needs a fundamental revision, especially the evergreen set, but not because it has more than one theme that is periodically pushed. Hell I'd argue that affinity with deathrattle is one of the most consistent aspects of the class, even if that rarely materialises in a T1 deck.
Yeah, she said that to me one chapter one. I strongly dislike the whole weakening mechanic TBH. I get why they did it, so there'd be an easy out for people who don't enjoy the struggle, but it really takes the challenge out of it. There should be a way to turn it off, especially on heroic.
So far I've had atrociously bad luck playing Scepter of Summoning decks in Uldum. Small sample size, but I rarely get big minion buckets so it's happened more than once that I died on boss 3 or 4 without a single greater than 5 cost in my deck. Not sure if Reno is uniquely unfavoured at getting big minions, which would make sense for rogue if not for mage, or if this also applies to the rest of the league.
Speaking of game modes, i think the starting health of the heroes should be higher, not necessarily the number of cards in the deck. Or maybe a combination of the two. Having 60 starting health seems better than the 30 from now; double the fatigue damage too.
I know this can completely prevent aggro decks from working, but i'm tired of seeing them each and every expansion. There will likely be a new archetype to replace it. Also, don't mention the possibility of never running out of cards or gaining infinite armor - this is what the team of morons is choosing to bring into the game. They basically gimp their own design space with powercreeps and such.
If you double the standard health pool, it won't kill aggro, it'll just drastically alter what it means to be aggro. These new aggro decks wouldn't kill you by turn four and they wouldn't run as many 1-drops, but fundamentally they'd still try to punch you until you die in as few turns as possible. Control decks would become insanely greedy to balance the need to defend against these midrange "aggro" decks and still generate enough value to beat other control decks, and infinite damage combo decks would have a field day if present in the format.
A new balance of archetypes will always emerge and you might like it even less. Something something life finds a way.
Maybe we should get a "looking for friends" thread, possibly a different name. I know I always look through them to see if someone suits. No friends myself lol.
The vast majority of my friends are people I friended back fully expecting to get flamed and then unfriended after a game. I'm probably not the only one either, so that sounds like a good idea.
I don't think it's nearly as bad as the Ron and Hermoine change from books to film, but I do agree that the devs seem to make Elise a bit too perfect. I don't know if you've seen the comic con panel where they talk about the explorers in Uldum with Dave Kosak and the voice actors of the explorers? They talk a bit about the personality of each explorer, with each one having strong and weak points, but when they got to Elise they just kept talking about how she's smart, powerful and confident, without any real weak points.
That said, this is still Hearthstone and I personally enjoy the characters for their goofyness so I'm not really bothered by it.
I haven't seen that con panel but I can't say I'm surprised. I think it's a symptom of our times with outrage mobs and cancel culture that creatives are terrified to give female characters any sort of flaws lest they incur the wrath of twitter dot com. Instead we get implausibly perfect females which are supposed to be inspirational but come off as condescending pandering. To be clear, if Elise were Eric, the Enlightened he'd still be too good to be true, but I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened to Elise and not, say, Reno or Brann.
It's a minor annoyance with HS since at the end of the day the game is more important than the lore, but it's a bit disheartening considering how much more fun these characters used to be, especially the banter between macho Reno and snarky, bossy Elise back in LoE.
I totally agree. Brann is ok; the change wasn't that drastic but Sir Finley's art and character in the videos suggest he's suffered the consequences of a Devolve and some.. He's been fine in the adventure though. Just the looks.
As for Elise I don't mind saying it's an increase in confidence/ character maturing.
Then again I never played WoW so I really only know what LoE showed.
I think the problem is that the devs really like Elise, so much so that they can't handle her character objectively. I'd compare it to Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter books versus the films: In the books Hermione is smart, but she's a bratty know-it-all with bushy hair and buck teeth. Ron isn't the most talented Wizard but he's incredibly loyal and brave. In the films they made Ron into a pathetic joke character and Hermione is perfect in every way, despite the fact that JK Rowling was involved in the writing and casting for the movies.
I haven't played WOW either so I don't know what the LoE is like there, but that latest Uldum cinematic really really rubbed me the wrong way.
I'm more annoyed that they turned everyone in the League of Explorers except Elise into a total joke. Now Reno was always comic relief, and that's fine, but Brann was basically a dwarfish Indiana Jones and the joke with Finley is supposed to be the juxtaposition of a serious, studious scholar and a murloc. Making him a goofball just undermines the humour in the original premise: it's funnier to present something inherently funny with a straight face.
I don't mind that Elise somehow gets prettier every time she's released, but it absolutely bothers me that this seems to come at the expense of the rest of the league. In LoE her dry, pessimistic and condescending schoolteacher attitude was at least presented as a character flaw (sort of), but here in Uldum it's completely justified because the rest of the league have regressed into stupid unruly schoolchildren.
I have several runs done with jr tomb diver, trying to get a deck that works consistantly but due to literally never being offered a secret bucket, I always need to rely on random spell generation. Wondering if there even is a secret bucket at that point....
I mentioned this in another thread but it wouldn't hurt if Blizzard had treasure and bucket picks influence what buckets you get offered subsequently. It's such an obvious feature that I'd be surprising if it wasn't already there, but clearly it isn't working well enough. From the small amount of Tombs of Terror I've played, my impression is that there is some sort of feedback between what buckets you pick and get offered but no such interaction between treasures and buckets, although of course that could just be my bad luck.
Quest Shaman, shark Rogue and quest Paladin are all fairly aggressive decks that exist today with more or less infinite resources if they play the value game. I'm sure if 60 life HS were a format other decks would emerge in a similar role, EG the Paladin loa was too slow for standard but might work in a slower format that cares more about resources. Conjurer mage might be great in that format too, despite the nerf.
Of the three prime archetypes I think combo is the only one that can truly be killed, and that only by gutting the card pool of cards that interact with each other, reducing the game to essentially basic cards. Aggro and control will always be present in some capacity, because ultimately these are just relative terms for whichever deck has an early advantage versus lategame inevitability.
Do people actually do this though? Why would you spend 4 months deliberately not gaining ranks only so you can continue to throw games to stay at rank 20? This scheme seems so laughably inefficient on its face that it hadn't even occurred to me that someone would try it. If we apply occam's razor to the phenomenon of players with golden portraits/expensive decks at low ranks, the far simpler explanation is that they're bad players who play a lot. This, incidentally, also goes a long way toward explaining their terrible attitudes.
The other issue I have is that I'm not seeing any suggestions being made that don't already exist to a degree. Farming low levels is discouraged because you have to lose and you miss out on higher tier ranked rewards. Blizzard already implemented a beginner's ranked system specifically to give new players a kiddie pool to paddle around in without having to face veteran players with full collections. Obviously any new player who passes the threshold onto the real ladder is going to experience a bit of a rough patch. I think that's unavoidable.
Don't be preposterous. Your friend's circumstances are absolutely pertinent to his "problem". In a card game you're obviously going to be at a disadvantage to people who have complete collections if you have barely any cards. That's the nature of the beast. People giving you tips and workarounds aren't doing so out of malice or apathy, they're doing so because they understand that the fundamental nature of card games isn't going to change just because your friend had a bad experience.
In a ranked system, you will win or lose until you reach a rank where the wins and losses even each other out. Again, that's not an evil algorithm, that's just the nature of a ladder system.
You haven't convinced me that there is a problem here, other than your unwillingness to consider changing your friend's approach to the game rather than demanding the game itself change.
I'm genuinely puzzled by the hostility toward the suggestion that the weakening mechanic be made optional. If you like the way it works now, just don't hit the button, don't opt out. I don't see why you'd want to deny others the experience they want if it comes at no cost to your own. There's no reason it has to be one way or the other.
Your buddy shouldn't expect to be able to compete at the highest level right out of the gate and with barely any cards to his collection, especially if he's had experience with other card games. If I enter a constructed tournament in MtG with a janky budget deck I should have every expectation to lose to people who invested the time and money to get all the necessary cards. Just like Magic has Limited formats, so too does HS have Arena, where you fight with cards you drafted for that run, and collections are irrelevant. Maybe your friend can play arena until his collection allows him to build better ladder decks?
Quest paladin is hard to categorise. It plays like a tempo deck if you have a decent draw but then it transitions into insane lategame value. I suppose you could call it a very proactive control deck.
Leeroy is in most aggressive decks, and those tend to be a lot less expensive to craft than control or combo decks, so it's definitely a worthwhile investment for any budget or F2P payer, or any player really.
It's high up there on the priority list of must-craft classic legendaries unless you detest playing aggro.
If it's possible to kill a plague lord in one shot then it makes no sense to deny people that challenge. I don't want to face a 100 health boss that doesn't change, I want the full experience. The present setup already caters to casuals by making victory inevitable as long as you don't give up, so why the hell do we need another casual mode? That's total BS. Heroic mode isn't supposed to be easy.
The fact that plague lords remember how much damage you dealt to them between runs, so you can kill them slowly over multiple attempts.
My first successful run against the murloc plaguelord was a breeze. I had captured Flag + Titanic Ring for +1/+2 and taunt on all my minions and a bunch of treasures and cards that generated tokens, not to mention the murloc infestation itself. I was basically free to go face while the boss had to find ways to clear my board over and over again, and I would have easily fatigued him if it weren't for his final form, murlocknado. I took down the plaguelord from nearly full health despite having a hero power that had zero synergy with the deck (spell power +2).
I'd say rank 15 is absolutely doable with a budget deck; even if you're facing netdecks full of legendaries the average skill level is quite low at these ranks. Zoo Warlock is almost always a viable ladder deck and you usually only need a handful of commons and rares to update the evergreen shell of the deck to a playable version of the latest standard list.
As for toxic a-holes, I'm afraid they're just a part of the game. Try to take their BM as a sign that they're really really upset about losing to a F2P player.
Not a single class in the game sees only one aspect of its class identity reinforced over and over again. Priest is just like any other class in this regard: sometimes buff priest gets attention, sometimes dragons, sometimes steal cards, etc. etc. etc. The class absolutely needs a fundamental revision, especially the evergreen set, but not because it has more than one theme that is periodically pushed. Hell I'd argue that affinity with deathrattle is one of the most consistent aspects of the class, even if that rarely materialises in a T1 deck.
Yeah, she said that to me one chapter one. I strongly dislike the whole weakening mechanic TBH. I get why they did it, so there'd be an easy out for people who don't enjoy the struggle, but it really takes the challenge out of it. There should be a way to turn it off, especially on heroic.
So far I've had atrociously bad luck playing Scepter of Summoning decks in Uldum. Small sample size, but I rarely get big minion buckets so it's happened more than once that I died on boss 3 or 4 without a single greater than 5 cost in my deck. Not sure if Reno is uniquely unfavoured at getting big minions, which would make sense for rogue if not for mage, or if this also applies to the rest of the league.
If you double the standard health pool, it won't kill aggro, it'll just drastically alter what it means to be aggro. These new aggro decks wouldn't kill you by turn four and they wouldn't run as many 1-drops, but fundamentally they'd still try to punch you until you die in as few turns as possible. Control decks would become insanely greedy to balance the need to defend against these midrange "aggro" decks and still generate enough value to beat other control decks, and infinite damage combo decks would have a field day if present in the format.
A new balance of archetypes will always emerge and you might like it even less. Something something life finds a way.
The vast majority of my friends are people I friended back fully expecting to get flamed and then unfriended after a game. I'm probably not the only one either, so that sounds like a good idea.
I haven't seen that con panel but I can't say I'm surprised. I think it's a symptom of our times with outrage mobs and cancel culture that creatives are terrified to give female characters any sort of flaws lest they incur the wrath of twitter dot com. Instead we get implausibly perfect females which are supposed to be inspirational but come off as condescending pandering. To be clear, if Elise were Eric, the Enlightened he'd still be too good to be true, but I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened to Elise and not, say, Reno or Brann.
It's a minor annoyance with HS since at the end of the day the game is more important than the lore, but it's a bit disheartening considering how much more fun these characters used to be, especially the banter between macho Reno and snarky, bossy Elise back in LoE.
I think the problem is that the devs really like Elise, so much so that they can't handle her character objectively. I'd compare it to Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter books versus the films: In the books Hermione is smart, but she's a bratty know-it-all with bushy hair and buck teeth. Ron isn't the most talented Wizard but he's incredibly loyal and brave. In the films they made Ron into a pathetic joke character and Hermione is perfect in every way, despite the fact that JK Rowling was involved in the writing and casting for the movies.
I haven't played WOW either so I don't know what the LoE is like there, but that latest Uldum cinematic really really rubbed me the wrong way.
There's actually a thread dedicated to trading 80 gold quests: https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/423-80g-quest-trading-play-a-friend.
I'm sure you can find people willing to play you there.
I'm more annoyed that they turned everyone in the League of Explorers except Elise into a total joke. Now Reno was always comic relief, and that's fine, but Brann was basically a dwarfish Indiana Jones and the joke with Finley is supposed to be the juxtaposition of a serious, studious scholar and a murloc. Making him a goofball just undermines the humour in the original premise: it's funnier to present something inherently funny with a straight face.
I don't mind that Elise somehow gets prettier every time she's released, but it absolutely bothers me that this seems to come at the expense of the rest of the league. In LoE her dry, pessimistic and condescending schoolteacher attitude was at least presented as a character flaw (sort of), but here in Uldum it's completely justified because the rest of the league have regressed into stupid unruly schoolchildren.
I mentioned this in another thread but it wouldn't hurt if Blizzard had treasure and bucket picks influence what buckets you get offered subsequently. It's such an obvious feature that I'd be surprising if it wasn't already there, but clearly it isn't working well enough. From the small amount of Tombs of Terror I've played, my impression is that there is some sort of feedback between what buckets you pick and get offered but no such interaction between treasures and buckets, although of course that could just be my bad luck.