I am strugling with The General in BRM. Watched videos and tried different setups but no luck so far. Losing mercs before i am even there as well. I have the idea i need more maxed out mercenaries for this to get it done.
Am i right in this or what do you suggest to get it done?
Just curious, what team are you running in BRM anyway? The enemies there aren't usually too bad, definitely not as bad as winterspring.
In non heroic, its easy enough to just snipe off general Drak with a caster team and then sweep the two dragons away with protectors if you lose your first team. Gruul is unusually good in BRM and is good against this boss too. An ideal team would be using nature bros, which will just destroy this boss.
There are some enemies in BRM that you can easily ignore and then there's those you need to kill quickly, usually stuff that do DOT, like core hounds. Would be good to have some healers handy. Nature bros double duties this area because Malfurion allows free heals per attack and can easily deal with most bosses.
Well, it was only inevitable, because even druid mains will easily point out that an 8 mana deal 14 damage that cannot realistically be avoided by most classes, and a chance to do it again the following turn, is a cancerous piece of shit that dwarfs any impact that quel'delar can muster. Hell, even embers of rag can at least be played around and costs 10 mana.
The Kazakusan dust refund is a smart way to not nerf druid's insane mana ramp, by reducing its play rate so we're not facing druids 24 hours a day. While I dont think its the end for kazakusan as a deck, its surely going to push it down the tier lists, enough that I think druids will be going back to the old gods while relegating the dragons to a niche.
- Librams - If you want to know why this has stuck through 2 years? Its because paladin is probably the most fair class of them all. This is the only powerful thing paladin gets to do and I will sorely miss it. When Pen Flinger got nerfed, it was because of rogue, not paladin, who desperately need it then and still do now.
Cards I will definitely NOT miss from AoO
- Overgrowth - Its has NOT been fun, both for druids who instant lose without it, and for those facing druids who instantly lose because of it. Like seriously team5, stop designing druids that win/lose games on its own.
- Fungal Fortunes - To think that this was once 2 mana. Like seriously.
- Incanter's Flow - Nerfed twice, and still currently one of my personal most hated card in hearthstone history.
- Astromancer Solarian - In its heyday, this one card would just steal wins from everyone. Its scary to see this no longer being viable and yet here we are.
Even though I'm playing it a lot recently, Mercenaries still feels like a really predatory mode. The economy is terrible, and it basically wants you to sacrifice ALL of your time if you want to max out your mercs. I just so happened to have lots of time recently so I was able to, but man, I can see why a lot of people gave up on this mode. I mean, this was one of the things that made me hesitant to be invested in the mode in the first place.
To be honest, it only seems more predatory than usual because of the restrictions from the chi-ji event. Because if Im completely honest, I wouldn't even bother with 90% of all the mercs I utilized to complete these event if it didn't force me to. Had to grind up Yulon and Sinestra somewhat to even stand a chance, and even then I still felt I won by luck rather than skill.
Otherwise, I finished nearly all the bounties using nature bros. And the only expensive option here is Malfurion with lvl 4 liferoot treasure.
If players gave up on it, its only because mercs is at present uninteresting, unrewarding, and the pve can get tiresome at times. Not to mention that its incredibly expensive if youre wanting to pay, and grindy as hell if youre not. Im still half way through getting Valeera right now. Wonder how long it'll take me to get Longxin.
Yulon/sinestra/brightwing is absolutely the best thing that came out of this horrible set of tasks. To be honest I wouldn't even have seen it if it weren't for task 8. Too bad the dps from this team is so low it could never truly be top tier in pve.
Chi-ji being able to slot neatly into fire teams is another thing I discovered while completing the tasks. Being able to heal and combo with geddon definitely puts it one step higher than rag in pve.
Im not as optimistic about the way team5 handled this event though. Tasks 4 (annointed blade) and task 8 can go take a jump off a cliff far as Im concerned. The sheer levels of luck required, and Im still convinced that no casual fan that didn't grind from day 1 can go through this. I very nearly ragequit on task 8 myself.
- Use Yulon/brightwing/blink fox and try to focus down lokholar. Once he's dead, the others a really just easy pickings. You need to get a little lucky because Lok has three main moves and only one that attacks (and therefore damages himself).
- Or just use the tried tested and true, king krush + Mukla cheese for the win. All you need to do is to keep king krush alive by turn 2. Shouldn't be too hard. Or you can lead with the dragons, and then when they die, you can immediately go for the cheese.
I might add that its worth spending some time getting Yulon's third treasure (reduce damage to dragons). Then your climb towards lokholar wouldn't be too nerve wrecking. Once again team5 have demonstrated why attackers in mercs are so much less efficient than rangers.
But seriously this task is quite hellish because I doubt any average player would have longxin by now. And that one would be ideal in this task.
Shadow/Holy probably the best ones for this, Natalie/Voljin/Tamsin & Anduin/Velen/Xyrella.
Go with ring for anduin, speed ring with voljin, and equip your shadow party to do maximum damage. As far as passives go, its always helmet or failing that take damage boosters. Dont bother with Xyrella's subjugation, you'll be lucky if she attacks at all. In most cases Xyrella is only here to die or heal, because the blades inevitably always act first.
Start with shadow team and concentrate fire on the middle blade. Position your helmeted mercs on the sides. Basically if you dont kill off the middle blade by turn 3 you're probably dead. If you manage to kill the middle blade, then your holy team should be more than enough to kill off the other two without dying.
Honestly, this is one of the worst one Ive encountered so far. Its so luck dependent I can't wrap my head around what's best to do other than pray hard getting saronite helmet off the passives. In fact, if you dont get helmet on at least 2 mercs you're better off resetting.
Who knows, its might just be another bug, like task 4's buggering requirements.
Maybe try with all six being beasts? It could also be that the game scans the final result and turns out that you need 3 beasts to stay alive on winning for this to trigger.
So I finally complete task 4, and I can confirm that if you;
- Took no boon coins; spirit coins are okay
- and took no potatos. To be frank, I'd skip them altogether, because you want to face the bosses with all mercs having a passive.
You can then complete this task when you finally beat this fking boss with only casters. Because nothing is more grating than beating this thing and then finding out that you're screwed because of a bug
Here's a few tips for those trying. I did it with shadow/holy team
- Choose the helmet whenever you can
- Always beat the heroic mercs whenever you can, because the treasures here are invaluable
- Always position those with helmets or higher health merc on the sides.
- And above all; start by sniping the middle boss (the one with 150 health) because he deals a ton of damage and the side bosses are much more easier to manage.
One frustrating time to be sure. And Im not entirely certain you can do this with only rare mercs. Wont be too surprise if team5 eventually nerfs this task because its a massive gatekeeper against casuals.
Technically you only really need to complete the first two, because that's the only way to get the merc Chi-Ji. The rest are really just coin bonuses for and if you want to complete them.
I havent gone through all of them, but usually team5 would design stuff like that to be completable using rare mercs only. It may be harder, but not impossible. As in this example, it shouldn't be too difficult to do the first two at least, because you can easily beat popsicooler without any legendaries, and Ivus can be beaten on 50 health by a caster team that scales, like Millhouse or Brukan.
Done in 30 min. Its perhaps a bit too easy because the words were way too long. The only word that gave me any trouble at all was skeram, for obvious reasons.
Wanna make it more board based? All you need to do is to not print so many mana reduction stuff like Siphon Mana, don't print infinite damage, bring back Loatheb to standard, and perhaps even Unseen Saboteur and Dirty Rat
I dont have anything against OTK decks, when it takes actual effort to win with those things. I take great pride and pleasure at playing malygos rogue 2 years ago because I earned my wins. The whole solitaire meta was only aggravating because there's literally nothing you can do to stop them and as a result they just ignore your board because it doesn't matter. Its not about board, its about interaction. I get annoyed the same way by Sorcerer's Gambit as I do with the worst iterations of face hunter and ramp druid, because these decks don't lose, they just don't win.
I still dont understand why so many people get worked up so much about this fatigue issue with questlock, as though as there's some kind of unwritten rule on how an opponent should be beaten. What difference does it make if its fatigue or death from Garrote bleeds or bombs? The Demon Seed allows it to happen but its hardly a one card show, the whole thing cant function without the help of other cards like Backfire or Hand of Gul'dan.
The main reason why OTK decks are cancerous in general has always been the same: mana reduction and overwhelming draw power. How they kill you is rarely a cause for concern.
Usually I get myself working only on achievements that gives out 500xp and anything else I can get along the way, because the sheer dedication required to actually complete it all is beyond me.
Some of these are just pure annoyances, like attacking with Frantic Hippogryph 80 times. Better off skipping these than wasting time I could have spent on better games. Which brings us to how these achievements are designed. The whole point of these, at least I thought, was to encourage us to play cards that would otherwise never see any play. Haleh is a good example of this. So theory goes that we'd try to make a deck that work with the card, but inevitably no one would bother doing it. Instead, we'd just pivot to the best deck around that can accomplish this task the fastest, not a deck that'll actually win games with.
Increase engagement? Some achievements have only managed tempting me into opening google play just to drop a nasty review on this bs. And to think that at one point the xp gain from achievements were actually being totaled up as part of the total xp that can be reasonably gained in the old rewards track.
How about removing the 4 month cap and let us complete these achievements naturally, or anytime we can be arsed? that'll solve most of the issues, not least for the fact that we couldn't budge one of pally's because of a bug that apparently took 2 months to fix.
My response and comment. Its related to the storyline. Spoilers at your discretion.
Show Spoiler
I'll be honest. It was so ham fisted the way they handled tamsin that the brukan storyline feels emotionally dead to me. It also kinda makes little sense too. For one thing, why is it established that brukan has to die to kill off tamsin, because cariel is still alive while fighting beside him. And another more obvious point: as a lich with a phylactery, how is it that brukan can even kill her directly?
I suppose the answer to all that would be "Just dont think about it".
As usual. Big patch. Big bugs. But blizz would be wise to quickly fix the quests and honor issues at least. If there's nothing more likely to get pitchforks up, is seeing the already expensive game get less generous.
Just curious, what team are you running in BRM anyway? The enemies there aren't usually too bad, definitely not as bad as winterspring.
In non heroic, its easy enough to just snipe off general Drak with a caster team and then sweep the two dragons away with protectors if you lose your first team. Gruul is unusually good in BRM and is good against this boss too. An ideal team would be using nature bros, which will just destroy this boss.
There are some enemies in BRM that you can easily ignore and then there's those you need to kill quickly, usually stuff that do DOT, like core hounds. Would be good to have some healers handy. Nature bros double duties this area because Malfurion allows free heals per attack and can easily deal with most bosses.
Compared to a deal 14 damage instantly and death the next turn if you dont heal or kill them now? I'll take it over queldelar any day.
Besides, its still scary to try assembling queldelar, because there's no guarantee you'll get the two pieces too.
Well, it was only inevitable, because even druid mains will easily point out that an 8 mana deal 14 damage that cannot realistically be avoided by most classes, and a chance to do it again the following turn, is a cancerous piece of shit that dwarfs any impact that quel'delar can muster. Hell, even embers of rag can at least be played around and costs 10 mana.
The Kazakusan dust refund is a smart way to not nerf druid's insane mana ramp, by reducing its play rate so we're not facing druids 24 hours a day. While I dont think its the end for kazakusan as a deck, its surely going to push it down the tier lists, enough that I think druids will be going back to the old gods while relegating the dragons to a niche.
Its stated above that Kazakusan will be refundable. Its also stated in the official website:
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23765274/22-4-3-patch-notes
Smart move in my opinion, because team5 is absolutely looking to lower down the play rate for ramp druid.
Cards I will miss from AoO
- Shadowjeweler Hanar - Who doesn't like a secret jamming engine. Too bad the meta has often moved past needing board to win
- Hand of Gul'dan - Probably one of the best discard support out there and single handedly made zoolock a thing...in the past anyway
- Warmaul Challenger - One of my favs from this set
- Librams - If you want to know why this has stuck through 2 years? Its because paladin is probably the most fair class of them all. This is the only powerful thing paladin gets to do and I will sorely miss it. When Pen Flinger got nerfed, it was because of rogue, not paladin, who desperately need it then and still do now.
Cards I will definitely NOT miss from AoO
- Overgrowth - Its has NOT been fun, both for druids who instant lose without it, and for those facing druids who instantly lose because of it. Like seriously team5, stop designing druids that win/lose games on its own.
- Glowfly Swarm - See above
- Fungal Fortunes - To think that this was once 2 mana. Like seriously.
- Incanter's Flow - Nerfed twice, and still currently one of my personal most hated card in hearthstone history.
- Astromancer Solarian - In its heyday, this one card would just steal wins from everyone. Its scary to see this no longer being viable and yet here we are.
To be honest, it only seems more predatory than usual because of the restrictions from the chi-ji event. Because if Im completely honest, I wouldn't even bother with 90% of all the mercs I utilized to complete these event if it didn't force me to. Had to grind up Yulon and Sinestra somewhat to even stand a chance, and even then I still felt I won by luck rather than skill.
Otherwise, I finished nearly all the bounties using nature bros. And the only expensive option here is Malfurion with lvl 4 liferoot treasure.
If players gave up on it, its only because mercs is at present uninteresting, unrewarding, and the pve can get tiresome at times. Not to mention that its incredibly expensive if youre wanting to pay, and grindy as hell if youre not. Im still half way through getting Valeera right now. Wonder how long it'll take me to get Longxin.
Yulon/sinestra/brightwing is absolutely the best thing that came out of this horrible set of tasks. To be honest I wouldn't even have seen it if it weren't for task 8. Too bad the dps from this team is so low it could never truly be top tier in pve.
Chi-ji being able to slot neatly into fire teams is another thing I discovered while completing the tasks. Being able to heal and combo with geddon definitely puts it one step higher than rag in pve.
Im not as optimistic about the way team5 handled this event though. Tasks 4 (annointed blade) and task 8 can go take a jump off a cliff far as Im concerned. The sheer levels of luck required, and Im still convinced that no casual fan that didn't grind from day 1 can go through this. I very nearly ragequit on task 8 myself.
There's two main ways far as I know;
- Use Yulon/brightwing/blink fox and try to focus down lokholar. Once he's dead, the others a really just easy pickings. You need to get a little lucky because Lok has three main moves and only one that attacks (and therefore damages himself).
- Or just use the tried tested and true, king krush + Mukla cheese for the win. All you need to do is to keep king krush alive by turn 2. Shouldn't be too hard. Or you can lead with the dragons, and then when they die, you can immediately go for the cheese.
I might add that its worth spending some time getting Yulon's third treasure (reduce damage to dragons). Then your climb towards lokholar wouldn't be too nerve wrecking. Once again team5 have demonstrated why attackers in mercs are so much less efficient than rangers.
But seriously this task is quite hellish because I doubt any average player would have longxin by now. And that one would be ideal in this task.
Shadow/Holy probably the best ones for this, Natalie/Voljin/Tamsin & Anduin/Velen/Xyrella.
Go with ring for anduin, speed ring with voljin, and equip your shadow party to do maximum damage. As far as passives go, its always helmet or failing that take damage boosters. Dont bother with Xyrella's subjugation, you'll be lucky if she attacks at all. In most cases Xyrella is only here to die or heal, because the blades inevitably always act first.
Start with shadow team and concentrate fire on the middle blade. Position your helmeted mercs on the sides. Basically if you dont kill off the middle blade by turn 3 you're probably dead. If you manage to kill the middle blade, then your holy team should be more than enough to kill off the other two without dying.
Honestly, this is one of the worst one Ive encountered so far. Its so luck dependent I can't wrap my head around what's best to do other than pray hard getting saronite helmet off the passives. In fact, if you dont get helmet on at least 2 mercs you're better off resetting.
So technically you can have a bench of 3 beasts while piloting a non-beast team to victory and it'll still trigger?
Who knows, its might just be another bug, like task 4's buggering requirements.
Maybe try with all six being beasts? It could also be that the game scans the final result and turns out that you need 3 beasts to stay alive on winning for this to trigger.
So I finally complete task 4, and I can confirm that if you;
- Took no boon coins; spirit coins are okay
- and took no potatos. To be frank, I'd skip them altogether, because you want to face the bosses with all mercs having a passive.
You can then complete this task when you finally beat this fking boss with only casters. Because nothing is more grating than beating this thing and then finding out that you're screwed because of a bug
Here's a few tips for those trying. I did it with shadow/holy team
- Choose the helmet whenever you can
- Always beat the heroic mercs whenever you can, because the treasures here are invaluable
- Always position those with helmets or higher health merc on the sides.
- And above all; start by sniping the middle boss (the one with 150 health) because he deals a ton of damage and the side bosses are much more easier to manage.
One frustrating time to be sure. And Im not entirely certain you can do this with only rare mercs. Wont be too surprise if team5 eventually nerfs this task because its a massive gatekeeper against casuals.
Technically you only really need to complete the first two, because that's the only way to get the merc Chi-Ji. The rest are really just coin bonuses for and if you want to complete them.
I havent gone through all of them, but usually team5 would design stuff like that to be completable using rare mercs only. It may be harder, but not impossible. As in this example, it shouldn't be too difficult to do the first two at least, because you can easily beat popsicooler without any legendaries, and Ivus can be beaten on 50 health by a caster team that scales, like Millhouse or Brukan.
Done in 30 min. Its perhaps a bit too easy because the words were way too long. The only word that gave me any trouble at all was skeram, for obvious reasons.
Wanna make it more board based? All you need to do is to not print so many mana reduction stuff like Siphon Mana, don't print infinite damage, bring back Loatheb to standard, and perhaps even Unseen Saboteur and Dirty Rat
Thereafter you may print as many Sorcerer's Gambits and The Demon Seed as you wish.
I dont have anything against OTK decks, when it takes actual effort to win with those things. I take great pride and pleasure at playing malygos rogue 2 years ago because I earned my wins. The whole solitaire meta was only aggravating because there's literally nothing you can do to stop them and as a result they just ignore your board because it doesn't matter. Its not about board, its about interaction. I get annoyed the same way by Sorcerer's Gambit as I do with the worst iterations of face hunter and ramp druid, because these decks don't lose, they just don't win.
I still dont understand why so many people get worked up so much about this fatigue issue with questlock, as though as there's some kind of unwritten rule on how an opponent should be beaten. What difference does it make if its fatigue or death from Garrote bleeds or bombs? The Demon Seed allows it to happen but its hardly a one card show, the whole thing cant function without the help of other cards like Backfire or Hand of Gul'dan.
The main reason why OTK decks are cancerous in general has always been the same: mana reduction and overwhelming draw power. How they kill you is rarely a cause for concern.
Usually I get myself working only on achievements that gives out 500xp and anything else I can get along the way, because the sheer dedication required to actually complete it all is beyond me.
Some of these are just pure annoyances, like attacking with Frantic Hippogryph 80 times. Better off skipping these than wasting time I could have spent on better games. Which brings us to how these achievements are designed. The whole point of these, at least I thought, was to encourage us to play cards that would otherwise never see any play. Haleh is a good example of this. So theory goes that we'd try to make a deck that work with the card, but inevitably no one would bother doing it. Instead, we'd just pivot to the best deck around that can accomplish this task the fastest, not a deck that'll actually win games with.
Increase engagement? Some achievements have only managed tempting me into opening google play just to drop a nasty review on this bs. And to think that at one point the xp gain from achievements were actually being totaled up as part of the total xp that can be reasonably gained in the old rewards track.
How about removing the 4 month cap and let us complete these achievements naturally, or anytime we can be arsed? that'll solve most of the issues, not least for the fact that we couldn't budge one of pally's because of a bug that apparently took 2 months to fix.
My response and comment. Its related to the storyline. Spoilers at your discretion.
I'll be honest. It was so ham fisted the way they handled tamsin that the brukan storyline feels emotionally dead to me. It also kinda makes little sense too. For one thing, why is it established that brukan has to die to kill off tamsin, because cariel is still alive while fighting beside him. And another more obvious point: as a lich with a phylactery, how is it that brukan can even kill her directly?
I suppose the answer to all that would be "Just dont think about it".
As usual. Big patch. Big bugs. But blizz would be wise to quickly fix the quests and honor issues at least. If there's nothing more likely to get pitchforks up, is seeing the already expensive game get less generous.
At this point Im having to come to OoC just to see what the tavern brawl is this week.
Rogue -> Plaguebringer + shadowstep + draw options -> easy win