Overall it certainly looks like Wild finally gets the much needed attention, even if those nerfs are mostly aimed at Standard.
Most importantly, the nerf to Yogg takes away the ability to deal with wide boards for free from Miracle Rogue and Questline Druid, which is something they shouldn't have been able to do in the first place.
Generally, I for one am happy to know that I no longer have to fear a random board clear out of nowhere from every class.
Reworked Tony might find his way into people's ETCs to protect them from Mill Druid.
The Rake nerf is another slap on the wrist of QL Druid - nothing serious, but maybe enough to allow other decks some breathing room. It certainly got harder to combo it with Moonlit Guidance to get an extra copy, for example.
That leaves us with only two decks that look problematic for me - Quest Mage and Mine Rogue. Both are incredibly frustrating to play against. Mage has the downside of being quite reliant on RNG to work out for them while Rogue luckily is pretty boring to play even when you're winning. Maybe that's enough to save us from those two dominating the meta, but I'd love to see them being adressed anyway.
Thanks for the hint! I'm really looking forward to diving back into the story. I've decided to skip through book 1 and 2 to refresh my memory before I start the third volume and I've spent like 2 hours + with the first one alone! There's just so much going on, so many cool scenes I wanted to revisit :-)
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have a look at it! Mystery / detective usually isn't down my alley but you got me at potential destruction of the galaxy :D
Kaladin is a cool hero and I'm looking forward to seeing his character develop now he's embraced being a knight and no longer sulking and suffering. That got a bit too much for my taste to be honest.
Just finished "All the birds in the sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (Winner of the 2017 Nebula Award, Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award). It's kind of a dystopian Fantasy / Sci-Fi mix that takes a little too long to build up but gets better (that is more exciting) in the second half. I would have liked it to be somewhat more flashy about the magic and the science but the way it is written certainly feels quite realistic (if you can accept magic being a thing in the first place, that is). The main characters are studied closely and there's some romance going on as well. I'd rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars, it was a nice relaxing read of 320 sites.
I think I'll continue with the stormlight archives part 3 next. What are you guys and gals reading these days? Any hidden Sci-Fi gems I haven't heard of yet?
You've got me interested in trying out Hollow Knight, I'll add that to my wishlist. Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima are both games that I've tried and did not finish for very different reasons. While Elden Ring is just not my type of game, I completely agree with your assessment of Ghost of Tsushima: it's so so deep and rich, I've lost the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that doesn't really work out if you can't play it for at least one or two hours on a regular basis which I wasn't able to at the time. I've honestly never heard of Patapon before but I'll give it a look. Thanks again!
For me, these games have made the most lasting impression so far: Zelda Ocarina of Time, The Portal series, The Witcher 3.
When it comes to atmosphere I can also recommend Stray. It isn't a very long game (30ish hours if I remember correctly), but very well made and every cat lover should have a look at it.
Nothing spectacular from me. A friend of mine recently sent me a template for "your Top 25 games of all time" and I couldn't even come up with more than 10 :D On the plus side, I usually finish them.
Anyways. Here's my schedule for October:
Keep adding Rogue and DK wins in Hearthstone (less than 100 to go for 1.000 and 500 wins)
God of War 2018 (main story finished, need to look into the Valkyries before I get Ragnarök)
maybe polish up my Witcher 3 end game - I have yet to win all the horse races and fist fights as well as a few side quests
I can't express how happy I am for wild. Even not knowing what the changes will be, just the fact that they acknowledge the problematic decks and at least try to do something about them is a huge improvement. There's barely a problematic deck left imo and I'm very much looking forward to exploring the new meta.
Undead Priest is still working fine. I've climbed to D3 with it on a 6-star-bonus. To my surprise, Warrior isn't the worst matchup, Warlock is far more difficult to handle (Defile is a nightmare for Reborn boards). Soulburner Varia is a nice addition to the usual list. I replaced Astalor with her to spice things up a bit - as powerful as that guy is, playing him has become boring (insert angry reminder of the reasoning behind the Renathal nerf).
Honestly I think Undead Priest is still meta even without this new addition. VS rates it at tier 2 and I've piloted it to Diamond 6 on a 6-star bonus this month.
That said, rating the new card is pretty hard. I can see your argument, but on the other hand you usually want to hold the upper hand on the board for the first 2-4 turns, so there is potential here imo. The most important use case would probably be the necessity of trading your stuff into taunts, that actually becomes an advantage with Varia in play. Too bad she probably won't trigger on her own death because of the "after" wording.
The DK cards all look very bad, but I like the Priest package. The legendary will keep me interested in playing Standard until the next rotation on its own - Undead Priest is a very viable deck as it is and now it got a new toy.
Still, the overall impression of the mini-set is kinda meh for me. I'm not a big fan of RNG stuff so a Yogg-oriented bunch of cards has a hard time to get good marks from my side :D
So 4 years have gone by since I've started this thread and not only have I changed my mind about not doing a Hearthstone specific tattoo, I also came up with a unique design of my own. Luckily I have a very talented stepdaughter who polished it up a bit and so I've made an appointment for October the 13th to get the Hearthstone tattoo done! I'll post the design and a picture of the execution afterwards, just wanted to share my excitement for the moment :)
Seconded. At this point, even if the major overhaul that I suspect is going on behind the scenes were to happen tomorrow, it would need to be flanked by massive PR stunts because it feels like there's hardly a handful of people left who comes here regularly.
I usually am a very positive person but these "Wild" changes leave me disappointed af. No hype whatsoever for the buffed cards and the new stuff here.
Why? Well, good luck playing C'Thun decks against Tony Druid, Big Priest, Mech Paladin, Secret Mage and Frog Shaman. We have been waiting for months for them to address the problematic cards in Wild and got nothing. Nothing at all.
All the buffs coincidentally hit cards that are viable in the new Twist rotation. So yeah, this is all about Twist, Wild is left on its own once more.
And for all the people who want to tell me that we haven't seen the new cards for Wild yet and that they might change the meta, I have two questions: How high are the chances that happens? And if something is shipped that is more powerful than the current big bads, wouldn't that mean it is problematic on its own?
Wild needs nerfs for Yogg's sake!! Reliable OTKs on turn 4/5 are not OK, Big Priest has been cringe for years, draw your whole deck and vomit stats on turn 3 is not fun. How hard is it to acknowledge this and act upon it?
Hey, nice to read from you. Those numbers never fail to impress me, well done!
I'm currently focussing on Rogue, DK and DH (in that order). The first two will probably get done some time this year, but as much as I love 1.000 wins Illidan, collecting those wins is just a massive pain. I can't seem to find a DH deck that is good in Wild and fun to play (I just don't get along with Questline DH)... maybe the long anticipated Wild update will help.
Brilliant! I'm loving it! Now please let me know where I can buy those outfits for my Hearthstone heros... I want to see those shoulder plates on Jaina :D
Overall it certainly looks like Wild finally gets the much needed attention, even if those nerfs are mostly aimed at Standard.
That leaves us with only two decks that look problematic for me - Quest Mage and Mine Rogue. Both are incredibly frustrating to play against. Mage has the downside of being quite reliant on RNG to work out for them while Rogue luckily is pretty boring to play even when you're winning. Maybe that's enough to save us from those two dominating the meta, but I'd love to see them being adressed anyway.
Thanks for the hint! I'm really looking forward to diving back into the story. I've decided to skip through book 1 and 2 to refresh my memory before I start the third volume and I've spent like 2 hours + with the first one alone! There's just so much going on, so many cool scenes I wanted to revisit :-)
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have a look at it! Mystery / detective usually isn't down my alley but you got me at potential destruction of the galaxy :D
Kaladin is a cool hero and I'm looking forward to seeing his character develop now he's embraced being a knight and no longer sulking and suffering. That got a bit too much for my taste to be honest.
I'm sorry, I must have mixed something up here. Maybe I've finished it in 3 hours and it cost 30 € on release? It definitely felt too short.
About that 30 hours remark... I'm spoilt by the witcher 3 :D
Looking forward to those articles you've mentioned!
Just finished "All the birds in the sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (Winner of the 2017 Nebula Award, Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award). It's kind of a dystopian Fantasy / Sci-Fi mix that takes a little too long to build up but gets better (that is more exciting) in the second half. I would have liked it to be somewhat more flashy about the magic and the science but the way it is written certainly feels quite realistic (if you can accept magic being a thing in the first place, that is). The main characters are studied closely and there's some romance going on as well. I'd rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars, it was a nice relaxing read of 320 sites.
I think I'll continue with the stormlight archives part 3 next. What are you guys and gals reading these days? Any hidden Sci-Fi gems I haven't heard of yet?
Awesome article, thanks for sharing!
You've got me interested in trying out Hollow Knight, I'll add that to my wishlist. Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima are both games that I've tried and did not finish for very different reasons. While Elden Ring is just not my type of game, I completely agree with your assessment of Ghost of Tsushima: it's so so deep and rich, I've lost the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that doesn't really work out if you can't play it for at least one or two hours on a regular basis which I wasn't able to at the time. I've honestly never heard of Patapon before but I'll give it a look. Thanks again!
For me, these games have made the most lasting impression so far: Zelda Ocarina of Time, The Portal series, The Witcher 3.
When it comes to atmosphere I can also recommend Stray. It isn't a very long game (30ish hours if I remember correctly), but very well made and every cat lover should have a look at it.
Free stuff yay!
Let's goooooo!
My idea, design by my daughter, execution by Sandro @ Stencil Tattoo in Fürth, Germany
Nothing spectacular from me. A friend of mine recently sent me a template for "your Top 25 games of all time" and I couldn't even come up with more than 10 :D On the plus side, I usually finish them.
Anyways. Here's my schedule for October:
I can't express how happy I am for wild. Even not knowing what the changes will be, just the fact that they acknowledge the problematic decks and at least try to do something about them is a huge improvement. There's barely a problematic deck left imo and I'm very much looking forward to exploring the new meta.
Undead Priest is still working fine. I've climbed to D3 with it on a 6-star-bonus. To my surprise, Warrior isn't the worst matchup, Warlock is far more difficult to handle (Defile is a nightmare for Reborn boards). Soulburner Varia is a nice addition to the usual list. I replaced Astalor with her to spice things up a bit - as powerful as that guy is, playing him has become boring (insert angry reminder of the reasoning behind the Renathal nerf).
Honestly I think Undead Priest is still meta even without this new addition. VS rates it at tier 2 and I've piloted it to Diamond 6 on a 6-star bonus this month.
That said, rating the new card is pretty hard. I can see your argument, but on the other hand you usually want to hold the upper hand on the board for the first 2-4 turns, so there is potential here imo. The most important use case would probably be the necessity of trading your stuff into taunts, that actually becomes an advantage with Varia in play. Too bad she probably won't trigger on her own death because of the "after" wording.
The DK cards all look very bad, but I like the Priest package. The legendary will keep me interested in playing Standard until the next rotation on its own - Undead Priest is a very viable deck as it is and now it got a new toy.
Still, the overall impression of the mini-set is kinda meh for me. I'm not a big fan of RNG stuff so a Yogg-oriented bunch of cards has a hard time to get good marks from my side :D
So 4 years have gone by since I've started this thread and not only have I changed my mind about not doing a Hearthstone specific tattoo, I also came up with a unique design of my own. Luckily I have a very talented stepdaughter who polished it up a bit and so I've made an appointment for October the 13th to get the Hearthstone tattoo done! I'll post the design and a picture of the execution afterwards, just wanted to share my excitement for the moment :)
Seconded. At this point, even if the major overhaul that I suspect is going on behind the scenes were to happen tomorrow, it would need to be flanked by massive PR stunts because it feels like there's hardly a handful of people left who comes here regularly.
Even Shaman will surely run Totally Totems as well, don't you think so?
I usually am a very positive person but these "Wild" changes leave me disappointed af. No hype whatsoever for the buffed cards and the new stuff here.
Why? Well, good luck playing C'Thun decks against Tony Druid, Big Priest, Mech Paladin, Secret Mage and Frog Shaman. We have been waiting for months for them to address the problematic cards in Wild and got nothing. Nothing at all.
All the buffs coincidentally hit cards that are viable in the new Twist rotation. So yeah, this is all about Twist, Wild is left on its own once more.
And for all the people who want to tell me that we haven't seen the new cards for Wild yet and that they might change the meta, I have two questions: How high are the chances that happens? And if something is shipped that is more powerful than the current big bads, wouldn't that mean it is problematic on its own?
Wild needs nerfs for Yogg's sake!! Reliable OTKs on turn 4/5 are not OK, Big Priest has been cringe for years, draw your whole deck and vomit stats on turn 3 is not fun. How hard is it to acknowledge this and act upon it?
Those aren't Wild changes. They are buffing these cards to make Twist more interesting.
Hey, nice to read from you. Those numbers never fail to impress me, well done!
I'm currently focussing on Rogue, DK and DH (in that order). The first two will probably get done some time this year, but as much as I love 1.000 wins Illidan, collecting those wins is just a massive pain. I can't seem to find a DH deck that is good in Wild and fun to play (I just don't get along with Questline DH)... maybe the long anticipated Wild update will help.
Brilliant! I'm loving it! Now please let me know where I can buy those outfits for my Hearthstone heros... I want to see those shoulder plates on Jaina :D