Well, its going live in 6 days, so I guess at some point it'll be revealed, probably tomorrow or the day after.
Looks like training grounds is as useless as I thought. Useful perhaps to those who just joined into mercs and have tons of cash to splash on packs. I was actually thinking that this might passively give out some coins to the chosen merc, even if its very slow and in very small amounts. Because you'd passively level up your mercs while grinding up for coins anyway, so what is the point?
Jumping from one frying pan to another. The only difference here is being flamed by a different corporate entity.
Looking at the latest microsoft made release, halo infinite, Im not optimistic. There's no guarantee that this acquisition would suddenly push blizz out from that creative quagmire that they are currently drowning in. Nor would it signal a return to better days when games are created and released when ready, or represent bold new directions in the industry. If we're lucky blizzard would actually still be here in the next 10 years, and we don't find ourselves opening up battlenet with an xbox logo on it.
The only good thing coming out of this is B Kotick would probably finally be excised from the company, to allow another sort of tick to suck blood off this corpse that used to be blizzard entertainment.
As long as we're not discussing whether the midset needs to exist in the first place, 15 bucks or 2000 gold for 4 legendaries is quite a steal. Unless you're crafting all the rares and commons, you'd still need around 8-10 packs to get them all anyway.
The most important question would be whether you want the legendaries, because the rares and commons are easily gotten, if not crafted, while the one sole epic is by tradition, quite shit.
In deadmines, Edwin, Defias Kingpin and Mr. Smite are obviously good now, while cookie can possibly slot in one day should the meta turn away from combo. If by chance you get edwin or mr smite, I'd say you dont really need to splash the cash anymore.
Some short advise on how to play the Nature bros? And/or how to beat Vaelastrasz? Nevermind, got it.
There's nothing to it really. Just malfurion/guff/brukan, with treasures for lightning bolt and living brambles. The only true significant treasure here would be malfurion's liferoot staff, which heals for every nature ability, effectively meaning that you'll be healing for 18 every turn.
Buff up your nature spell damage with brukan and go ham with guff, dealing monstrous damage per turn. Malfurion is pretty much going to spam surge every turn.
Its the flex spots that makes nature bros work in pve. Brightwing is fairly good here, because her attack are nature oriented, meaning it also combos with guff. Another good thing is that everything in pve would aim to snipe her down, so you can bait out attacks then phase back to bench, practically wasting your opponent's turn. Useful against enemy heroes.
Fifth and sixth spot depends on bosses. Nature bros arent always favored against all bosses, so flex accordingly.
A "sense of accomplishment" is not my primary goal! I'd just like to unlock the next thing.
I don't think I've ever seen those Assassinate treasures. Closest I can recall is Sylvanas stealing 3x3 from everyone.
The Hunting Party treasure that prevents new things from spawning does not work on Blackhand's gang, so I need these additional ideas!
If you have diablo and Cairne this match is trivial. Just sack your first team (for me its nature bros) and then enter cairne and diablo with fire stomp. Blackhand would then be severely weakened if not outright dead from that move.
If you have that treasure that deals 6 fire damage to everything when something dies from a fire attack (usually gained from diablo) then the game is over. Just sack first team, fire stomp and win. In fact you might have to restart your game because the animation loops kinda too long.
You dont even need a fully loaded diablo to do this. Lvl 3 fire stomp is all you need.
Nature bros (Malfurion, Guff, Brukan) for everything, with the three extra flex slots for individual bosses. Usually I'd have brightwing and diablo in one of those spots.
Haven't fail me yet. The only time I'd ever change this arrangement is in winterspring where enemies attack twice, in which case I would usually add mutanus and xyrella somewhere.
Don't even need to take on difficult hero fights for those level 5 treasures. Just boost up your nature damage and at some point guff would do ridiculous damage, around 60 without crits, on entry. At that point the only way you lose is that you've fallen asleep halfway through.
Just wanted to comment on two parts of your prediction;
- Wildpaw Gnoll at 6 is significant, because that means without Secret Passage shenanigans, its going to be 4 mana without further support, which means the card is just vanilla with rush. At 7 mana, it's just plain weak without an extra reduction at which point its just vanilla. In other words, 7 mana is overkill. With secret passage due to disappear in 3 months, I doubt team5 would ever go that far.
Especially if their intention is also to nerf scabbs. They'll never do two nerfs to thief rogue, and even if they do, the nerf will never be as far as you suggest.
- Defias Cannoneer nerf is unnecessary, as long as the idea is to ban or do something with Raid the Docks for wild. The most dangerous card in standard pirate warrior is actually Bloodsail Deckhand and Harbor Scamp, the former of which is particularly dangerous because the Whetstone Hatchet becomes immediately online, helping with keeping tempo.
Of all the top standard aggro decks, I consider quest pirate warrior the least threatening, the easiest to play around, and is stopped largely by taunts. In other words, its good but fair. I think if team5 nerfs this deck at all, it'll more likely be a stat revert to Stormwind Freebooter.
If only blizzard knew how many are AFK in bronze wild. That's one data I'd like to see.
Im bronze in wild myself, and its kinda funny how whenever I see someone with commander rank and above, I'd almost 90% of the time expect and get to go against a player whos simply not even playing. Just bot the end turn button.
Maybe, speculating obviously, that's why the completion rate is higher in APAC and China.
That's hardly surprising. A vast majority of players dont log in consistently every day, and legend rank is likely less than 5% of the total players every month. Most would spend less than 5 hours a week, probably finish up dailies and get somewhere around gold rank and call it a month.
If Im not mistaken, to finish up the honor track by 11th Jan, you'd need to play somewhere around 10 games, or get 170 honor per day. Which means about 2-3 hours a day. That's a lot to ask for a generation with plenty of choices, and work/life balance thrown into the equation.
The idea would be to nerf mozaki mage, and disable poison rogue from stealing games, the two most polarizing matchups in the game. Garrote is pivotal in poison rogue, because it sets up inevitability and you can't even taunt them up anymore, and both cloak and scabbs ensure that your opponent must run Rustrot Viper at all costs, maybe even 2, to stand more than a snowball's chance in hell.
Mozaki mage is basically quest mage in stormwind. They dont lose games, they just don't win. Your involvement in the entire match revolves around incanter's flow and mutanus, assuming you even get to turn 7 at all.
Thief rogue is everywhere, but I feel that touching up gnoll slightly would be enough to drastically alter its winrate. Its getting kinda ridiculous too when your opponent Secret Passage on 1 just to hit a 0 mana 4/5. Otherwise, thief rogue is fine to me.
In wild, well, fingers crossed that they would finally do something about quest hunter and warrior. Probably just ban the quest from wild until rotation.
There's also the possibility of buffs in standard. At some point team5 would probably start realizing how weak Rokara, the Valorous really is and buff it to 6. I mean, compared with the other hero cards, rokara is just plain awful. 7 mana equip a 5/2, because not many players tend to play massive minions worth smacking into anyway.
Im amazed that we're having a discussion about pronunciation here, in an article about internet stickers.
The correct pronunciation according to the creator is 'jif', with a soft g. It was a deliberate move to mirror the peanut butter brand jif, and before someone asks why isn't it just spelled jif then, the reason is because GIF is short for Graphics Interchange Format.
But ultimately its just language, where meaning is more important than the spoken word itself. As long as the other party understands what it is, we'll happily let language professors debate this impending armageddon amongst themselves
They can annoy a lot of people by making cards exclusive, or make more people happy playing their game by giving everyone something to enjoy.
I think most would merely need to be a human with normal amounts of empathy to make the right decision here.
I knew they were going to give away the card to everyone regardless and this is exactly why the “event” was meaningless. Trying to imply I’m a soulless troll with no feelings or caring for others tells me a lot about you. My comment criticized the people who make the game not those who play it. By the way the NFL announced both teams who play in the Super Bowl will be declared champions and will receive a trophy. The score will not even be kept because keeping score is offensive and can cause feelings of exclusion. If the NFL really announced this do you think anyone would even care to watch the game ? W
Except this isn't the NFL, its a card game where resources are created out of thin air. NFL players are paid high salaries to win, and likewise its audience pays a huge price to watch them butt heads against one another. NFL players would spend a third of their lives training in preparations, all in an effort to be the best in the game, and despite it all a majority of them will never make it big.
Conversely hearthstone is none of those things. It is instead a game where a majority spend naught but an hour a day in, unpaid, where people come in and out in an effort to have fun. Its a game, not a sport, not a big part of our lives.
So let's assume that team5 really did make certain cards exclusive to winners, and that this Alterac event had high stakes attached where winners take all. Well, then they'd find out that the majority would simply not engage in it and at least half of its playerbase would come out pissed and move on to another game. And the next attempt at an event will likely be even worse in terms of player engagement. Its likely less an emotional decision, but a rational one designed to keep the vast majority of its playerbase happy
Not everything in life needs to be a race. I don't wake up every morning, do my 12 hour job, come back and attend to my second job - unpaid - called hearthstone.
I think dean has already clarified before that this is supposed to be a 'cosmetic' so its deliberately not allowed to be dusted. Obviously this is an ongoing point where golden cards are offered in the rewards track, perfectly usable on its own, but cannot be dusted if you have a normal copy.
The advantage is being able to marvel at your diamond copy I guess.
Its likely entangled together with additional balancing issues, and the fact that they'd have to nail dhunters right or otherwise it just turns into either an overpowered mess or a class aping another class. The decision on the hero power alone would probably make a 2 hour documentary.
So I'd understand if they wanted to make it temporary, because then the design work becomes simpler. Overpowered or underpowered, its all temporary, and as diablo has shown, you might not even need to bother creating new cards to make it a success.
If they actually removed cards from the core set and properly retire those cards, I'll have to say Im more than okay with it. The fact is that most TCGs out there have loads of cards that are either underpowered or practically carbon copies of others, which is why often enough those cards are retired away. Since core cards aren't bought or earned, there's no conflict here about losing value.
Yes, we might lose some real gems, like Alexstrasza the Life-Binder or Taelan Fordring, but with that will come new cards. And these cards aren't gone for life, just for the year. They might come back later, slightly tweaked or otherwise.
Well, its going live in 6 days, so I guess at some point it'll be revealed, probably tomorrow or the day after.
Looks like training grounds is as useless as I thought. Useful perhaps to those who just joined into mercs and have tons of cash to splash on packs. I was actually thinking that this might passively give out some coins to the chosen merc, even if its very slow and in very small amounts. Because you'd passively level up your mercs while grinding up for coins anyway, so what is the point?
Jumping from one frying pan to another. The only difference here is being flamed by a different corporate entity.
Looking at the latest microsoft made release, halo infinite, Im not optimistic. There's no guarantee that this acquisition would suddenly push blizz out from that creative quagmire that they are currently drowning in. Nor would it signal a return to better days when games are created and released when ready, or represent bold new directions in the industry. If we're lucky blizzard would actually still be here in the next 10 years, and we don't find ourselves opening up battlenet with an xbox logo on it.
The only good thing coming out of this is B Kotick would probably finally be excised from the company, to allow another sort of tick to suck blood off this corpse that used to be blizzard entertainment.
As long as we're not discussing whether the midset needs to exist in the first place, 15 bucks or 2000 gold for 4 legendaries is quite a steal. Unless you're crafting all the rares and commons, you'd still need around 8-10 packs to get them all anyway.
The most important question would be whether you want the legendaries, because the rares and commons are easily gotten, if not crafted, while the one sole epic is by tradition, quite shit.
In deadmines, Edwin, Defias Kingpin and Mr. Smite are obviously good now, while cookie can possibly slot in one day should the meta turn away from combo. If by chance you get edwin or mr smite, I'd say you dont really need to splash the cash anymore.
There's nothing to it really. Just malfurion/guff/brukan, with treasures for lightning bolt and living brambles. The only true significant treasure here would be malfurion's liferoot staff, which heals for every nature ability, effectively meaning that you'll be healing for 18 every turn.
Buff up your nature spell damage with brukan and go ham with guff, dealing monstrous damage per turn. Malfurion is pretty much going to spam surge every turn.
Its the flex spots that makes nature bros work in pve. Brightwing is fairly good here, because her attack are nature oriented, meaning it also combos with guff. Another good thing is that everything in pve would aim to snipe her down, so you can bait out attacks then phase back to bench, practically wasting your opponent's turn. Useful against enemy heroes.
Fifth and sixth spot depends on bosses. Nature bros arent always favored against all bosses, so flex accordingly.
If you have diablo and Cairne this match is trivial. Just sack your first team (for me its nature bros) and then enter cairne and diablo with fire stomp. Blackhand would then be severely weakened if not outright dead from that move.
If you have that treasure that deals 6 fire damage to everything when something dies from a fire attack (usually gained from diablo) then the game is over. Just sack first team, fire stomp and win. In fact you might have to restart your game because the animation loops kinda too long.
You dont even need a fully loaded diablo to do this. Lvl 3 fire stomp is all you need.
Nature bros (Malfurion, Guff, Brukan) for everything, with the three extra flex slots for individual bosses. Usually I'd have brightwing and diablo in one of those spots.
Haven't fail me yet. The only time I'd ever change this arrangement is in winterspring where enemies attack twice, in which case I would usually add mutanus and xyrella somewhere.
Don't even need to take on difficult hero fights for those level 5 treasures. Just boost up your nature damage and at some point guff would do ridiculous damage, around 60 without crits, on entry. At that point the only way you lose is that you've fallen asleep halfway through.
Agreed. I like how she clenches her teeth
Just wanted to comment on two parts of your prediction;
- Wildpaw Gnoll at 6 is significant, because that means without Secret Passage shenanigans, its going to be 4 mana without further support, which means the card is just vanilla with rush. At 7 mana, it's just plain weak without an extra reduction at which point its just vanilla. In other words, 7 mana is overkill. With secret passage due to disappear in 3 months, I doubt team5 would ever go that far.
Especially if their intention is also to nerf scabbs. They'll never do two nerfs to thief rogue, and even if they do, the nerf will never be as far as you suggest.
- Defias Cannoneer nerf is unnecessary, as long as the idea is to ban or do something with Raid the Docks for wild. The most dangerous card in standard pirate warrior is actually Bloodsail Deckhand and Harbor Scamp, the former of which is particularly dangerous because the Whetstone Hatchet becomes immediately online, helping with keeping tempo.
Of all the top standard aggro decks, I consider quest pirate warrior the least threatening, the easiest to play around, and is stopped largely by taunts. In other words, its good but fair. I think if team5 nerfs this deck at all, it'll more likely be a stat revert to Stormwind Freebooter.
If only blizzard knew how many are AFK in bronze wild. That's one data I'd like to see.
Im bronze in wild myself, and its kinda funny how whenever I see someone with commander rank and above, I'd almost 90% of the time expect and get to go against a player whos simply not even playing. Just bot the end turn button.
Maybe, speculating obviously, that's why the completion rate is higher in APAC and China.
That's hardly surprising. A vast majority of players dont log in consistently every day, and legend rank is likely less than 5% of the total players every month. Most would spend less than 5 hours a week, probably finish up dailies and get somewhere around gold rank and call it a month.
If Im not mistaken, to finish up the honor track by 11th Jan, you'd need to play somewhere around 10 games, or get 170 honor per day. Which means about 2-3 hours a day. That's a lot to ask for a generation with plenty of choices, and work/life balance thrown into the equation.
In standard, the likeliest to be hit would be Wildpaw Gnoll, Shadowcrafter Scabbs, garrote (again), Cloak of Shadows, Incanter's Flow (at this point they might as well just remove this card from the game), Mozaki, Master Duelist. Probably not all above, but certainly some.
The idea would be to nerf mozaki mage, and disable poison rogue from stealing games, the two most polarizing matchups in the game. Garrote is pivotal in poison rogue, because it sets up inevitability and you can't even taunt them up anymore, and both cloak and scabbs ensure that your opponent must run Rustrot Viper at all costs, maybe even 2, to stand more than a snowball's chance in hell.
Mozaki mage is basically quest mage in stormwind. They dont lose games, they just don't win. Your involvement in the entire match revolves around incanter's flow and mutanus, assuming you even get to turn 7 at all.
Thief rogue is everywhere, but I feel that touching up gnoll slightly would be enough to drastically alter its winrate. Its getting kinda ridiculous too when your opponent Secret Passage on 1 just to hit a 0 mana 4/5. Otherwise, thief rogue is fine to me.
In wild, well, fingers crossed that they would finally do something about quest hunter and warrior. Probably just ban the quest from wild until rotation.
There's also the possibility of buffs in standard. At some point team5 would probably start realizing how weak Rokara, the Valorous really is and buff it to 6. I mean, compared with the other hero cards, rokara is just plain awful. 7 mana equip a 5/2, because not many players tend to play massive minions worth smacking into anyway.
Im amazed that we're having a discussion about pronunciation here, in an article about internet stickers.
The correct pronunciation according to the creator is 'jif', with a soft g. It was a deliberate move to mirror the peanut butter brand jif, and before someone asks why isn't it just spelled jif then, the reason is because GIF is short for Graphics Interchange Format.
But ultimately its just language, where meaning is more important than the spoken word itself. As long as the other party understands what it is, we'll happily let language professors debate this impending armageddon amongst themselves
Except this isn't the NFL, its a card game where resources are created out of thin air. NFL players are paid high salaries to win, and likewise its audience pays a huge price to watch them butt heads against one another. NFL players would spend a third of their lives training in preparations, all in an effort to be the best in the game, and despite it all a majority of them will never make it big.
Conversely hearthstone is none of those things. It is instead a game where a majority spend naught but an hour a day in, unpaid, where people come in and out in an effort to have fun. Its a game, not a sport, not a big part of our lives.
So let's assume that team5 really did make certain cards exclusive to winners, and that this Alterac event had high stakes attached where winners take all. Well, then they'd find out that the majority would simply not engage in it and at least half of its playerbase would come out pissed and move on to another game. And the next attempt at an event will likely be even worse in terms of player engagement. Its likely less an emotional decision, but a rational one designed to keep the vast majority of its playerbase happy
Not everything in life needs to be a race. I don't wake up every morning, do my 12 hour job, come back and attend to my second job - unpaid - called hearthstone.
They can annoy a lot of people by making cards exclusive, or make more people happy playing their game by giving everyone something to enjoy.
I think most would merely need to be a human with normal amounts of empathy to make the right decision here.
I think dean has already clarified before that this is supposed to be a 'cosmetic' so its deliberately not allowed to be dusted. Obviously this is an ongoing point where golden cards are offered in the rewards track, perfectly usable on its own, but cannot be dusted if you have a normal copy.
The advantage is being able to marvel at your diamond copy I guess.
Its likely entangled together with additional balancing issues, and the fact that they'd have to nail dhunters right or otherwise it just turns into either an overpowered mess or a class aping another class. The decision on the hero power alone would probably make a 2 hour documentary.
So I'd understand if they wanted to make it temporary, because then the design work becomes simpler. Overpowered or underpowered, its all temporary, and as diablo has shown, you might not even need to bother creating new cards to make it a success.
If they actually removed cards from the core set and properly retire those cards, I'll have to say Im more than okay with it. The fact is that most TCGs out there have loads of cards that are either underpowered or practically carbon copies of others, which is why often enough those cards are retired away. Since core cards aren't bought or earned, there's no conflict here about losing value.
Yes, we might lose some real gems, like Alexstrasza the Life-Binder or Taelan Fordring, but with that will come new cards. And these cards aren't gone for life, just for the year. They might come back later, slightly tweaked or otherwise.
Let's hope part of the big plans is to actually release a big patch without introducing yet more bugs into the system.
Same rules as per the daily quests. You need to either reach 10 turns or 15 health before conceding or you dont get those honor points.