It'll probably be revealed somewhere within the next 2 weeks. Its called a mid expansion, so it can be reasonably expected to be released by end of this month latest.
You might want to justify some points instead of just dumping a list of common cards in ranked standard. What would the proposed nerf to Spirit Jailer even do, for a example. Another example would be [Hearthstone Card (bonechew brawler) Not Found]'s proposed nerf. To be 'in line with Pompous Thespian' would suggest making it a 2/3 taunt for 2. Unfortunately, there's already a card like that in Injured Tol'vir. So what will that change actually do? Its better for everyone if your inputs are more adequetely expressed.
Doom in the Tomb showed us Evolve is OP at 1 mana when cards like Desert Hare exist (it is no coincidence Evolve Shaman was only strong back in the day thanks to [Hearthstone Card (Dopplegangster) Not Found], which is basically just a bigger version for evolve purposes), but it took a perfect storm of synergies for it to draw much attention at 5 mana.
Evolve shaman back in the day can actually function without Evolve or Doppelgangster. The archetype back then was alot about maintaining board and chipping face, hence cards like Bloodlust, Maelstrom Portal, and Thing from Below, which back then was a monster of a card.
Even that doom in the tomb evolve shaman was respectable to a degree. The one we got now relies entirely on the weapon so much that its entire deck is built for evolve shit and every other deck is now playing Kobold Stickyfinger, an otherwise useless card.
- Evolve can only affect active minions, not sleeping. - or Give evolve a 50/50 chance of success to a minion.
Evolve shenanigans must have killed your family and burned your house down. I can't see any other explanation for this proposed 'nerf'. Might as well just ask team5 to remove it altogether
The archetype still suffers from card draw and since its early game is so horrendous, nerfing the weapon's attack will go a long way in managing shaman until rotation, when most of the biggest problems of the deck (Desert Hare, Hoard Pillager, Mogu Fleshshaper) rotates away and the archetype loses at least half of its strengths.
In a sane world, that Lightning Bloom nerf would already been in effect. There's really nothing worse than seeing that knuckles come out early and completely tear you apart. In this case it even completely sidesteps its only counter in Kobold Stickyfinger
I'll be honest. The only reason why I'm even for a nerf is because evolve shaman is doing the same shit as giants mage in RoS is doing, and that is to put a tacit requirement to deal with its power card or die. In the latter's case, it was Mountain Giant on 4, and in evolve shaman's case its the knuckles. So every player out here is jamming stickyfingers to such a degree that no weapon with more than 2 durability can be played without severe consequences, and that basically destroys the viability of other decks not on the radar.
Personally I don't really mind evolve shaman, its the same tier 1 deck like most other tier 1 deck before it, and the fact that most of its cards rotate in a few months time makes me really reluctant to nerf anything. But when you do everything right against this deck that plays little to no early game, no board clears, only to find out that they can go from zero board to completely destroying you in a couple of turns, that's when we need to start talking about balance.
Not sure if you're thinking I meant adding the losing deck to the pool of active players... I meant just being able to play after with a losing deck versus other like-minded losers. Why not? Seems like a lost opportunity to me.
Additionally it would be awesome if 12 win decks could have an extra circuit of their own. Dreaming too big? Again I reply, why the hell not?
Basically you're suggesting that we be able to keep decks that have lost and play it again on another 12-win circuit. The real question would obviously then be how many players would actually want to do that, bearing in mind that most players would draft their initial deck efficiently (I wouldn't pass up a Fireball for a Deck of Lunacy, for example). A lost, especially one that is early, is more likely to be from a poorly drafted deck, one of which most players will immediately forget and try another draft, because the idea from the start is to draft a deck that can win.
The most obvious upgrade (and the most reasonable as well) would be to implement casual mode in arena, the same manner as for duels. In that case, then it would actually be sensible for them provide an option to keep a draft that have lost. That would actually perk up interest in arena, and would likely take the least effort for team5 to do so.
Now on to the crucial question; "why the hell not?". Well, what incentive is there for team5 to do so? Took them ages to implement scrolling through the card collection. Took a whole lot of poor excuses and time before they finally gave us more than 9 deck slots. Hell, it took somewhere around 2 years before arena was properly balanced. And now we face an even tougher question - why implement casuals for a mode that has traditionally require players to give up precious resources to play?
That's not to say I wouldn't want to see a casuals mode implemented for arena. Maybe its one of the goals in the roadmap that's spell-locked. Guess we'll find out.
That defeats the purpose of the arena draft, where you can never really face the same deck twice.
Casuals mode for arena, on the unlikely event its introduced, should likewise follow the same rule. If its possible to save the deck, then the concept of diversity will be lost. If the idea is a mode that allows one to play a drafted arena deck more than once, you'll swiftly find out that most of the decks you will be facing will be those that managed at least 10 wins, or the most absurdly unfair curvestone deck that ever existed.
Arena needs some help. Maybe something that adds additional arena only cards like the Murozond event in the past would spark more interest in the mode. But with both battlegrounds and duels in the mix, I struggle to see anyone but the most loyal of players continue to play this mode.
All hearthstone needs is a way to ban classes. You don't like playing against rez priest or control warrior? You like aggro v aggro matchups? Ban warrior and priest. Don't like face decks? Ban rogue, shaman, and demon hunter. Queue times would be longer but game QUALITY would increase. I HATE playing this game most of the time, usually i don't even want to log in for the dailies. Because i know that in the hour or less time it would take me to accomplish winning 7 times. I will get shit on at least 6 times, by people luckier than me, playing netdecks.
Probably impossible. Not least because classes are designed to have some intrinsic weakness against one another, like how hunter has an intrinsic advantage against most rogue and mage decks. So if your wish comes true, then all I need is to make up some hyper face hunter and ban warrior, paladin, shaman and maybe dhunter. Or ultra late game value rogue deck, with hunter and dhunter bans.
Logistics aside, it's not impossible. Warcraft 3 let people ban maps that they didn't like. There's not much difference there. And IF (big IF) a ban system were put into place it would most likely be "ban the 2 classes you don't want to see". This still leaves 8 other classes to counter your deck. With a big enough playerbase, this wouldn't even really affect queue times to be honest. It's not the best solution, but it is a viable solution..
Its hardly the same comparing banning classes with map bans in W3. From the competitive standpoint, the map bans were explained as necessary since certain maps are either too large, present too few resources, or simply skewed towards certain races. No such dilemma exists for hearthstone.
Allowing class bans in hearthstone is more or less equal to race bans in W3, in which case nearly everyone will ban either orcs or humans. Humans in particular.
In hearthstone, banning classes has huge implications. Aside from the ones I mentioned earlier, it also affects card design to a rather bizarre point where the stronger the deck the less it will face anything else aside from itself. Tech cards will be mostly unnecessary, while some cards like healing or board clears can be put aside with clever ban strats. In other words, its possible to simply have decks that have no counters.
Apart from everything else, it also doesnt really solve anything. Metas will simply adapt, and pretty soon we'll be seeing reports on what to ban, and what to play on certain bans. Then what follows would be the same thing as it has always been; people complaining about netdecking with an additional gripe on how the bans are unfair to certain classes (of which I would agree)
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
I would have thought it would help monetise Wild all by itself, at least enough to cover the small cost of implementing it (they don't need to do anything at all to support it beyond choosing new sets every so often). It would actually push people to buy Wild packs, whereas at the moment most Wild players already have what they need for the slowly changing meta and only buy Standard packs.
It would certainly push wild pack sales if this was implemented, but there will come a time when nearly all serious players would already have all the wild cards they need and then the sales will come crashing to a halt, which will ironically come faster than we think because of the duplicate protection. That's probably why it hasn't been implemented yet, despite the fact that it wouldn't even come to close to the resources needed to implement the duels mode.
There needs to be a monetization system for this mode that is equal if not surpassing that of duels for this to ever be a realistic consideration. Sadly that's the kind of world we live in with activision-blizz
As it stands, HS is failing to tap into the advantages of digital games being able to sell old packs to new players, and it cannot be that hard to convince the accounting department with the prospect of a permanent trickle of income from the entire history of the game for a low initial cost of setting it up.
Yeah I remembered that. That was what led me to believe that the incoming new format was going to be exactly a rotating wild mode. Then reality hit and we got duels instead, which incidentally enough, also came with the idea of a rotating set. Maybe the stars will align and limited wild gets considered in some distant future. But its becoming clear from battlegrounds and now duels, that unless a strong and subtle monetary system can be jammed, crying and screaming, right into it, I'm not optimistic.
I remember what it was, it was the Doom in the Tomb event where a number of cards came back and created a meta which funnily enough, was defined by Evolve Shaman. I didn't like that event itself since the Wild cards stayed for wat too long, but I wouldn't be opposed to something similar happening again.
I think we can both agree that's hardly a fair assessment since team5 cherry picked cards from multiple expansions and grafted them onto standard. Either way, I didn't actually have any problems with it, since evolve shaman then was what I would call "manageable", hardly the same bs we are encountering right now. Like yourself, I would like to see more regular events like it in future.
The tavern brawl I cited provides a more accurate picture, and as I have mentioned, it was to me a great success.
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
I would have thought it would help monetise Wild all by itself, at least enough to cover the small cost of implementing it (they don't need to do anything at all to support it beyond choosing new sets every so often). It would actually push people to buy Wild packs, whereas at the moment most Wild players already have what they need for the slowly changing meta and only buy Standard packs.
It would certainly push wild pack sales if this was implemented, but there will come a time when nearly all serious players would already have all the wild cards they need and then the sales will come crashing to a halt, which will ironically come faster than we think because of the duplicate protection. That's probably why it hasn't been implemented yet, despite the fact that it wouldn't even come to close to the resources needed to implement the duels mode.
There needs to be a monetization system for this mode that is equal if not surpassing that of duels for this to ever be a realistic consideration. Sadly that's the kind of world we live in with activision-blizz
In all honesty, they could rotate some of these formats monthly and I'd be pretty happy with it. I just need some variance between Standard and Wild. Tribal could be a challenge for dragons and other tribes, one solution could be spell that spawn said 1/1 minions of that tribe. As for one of these formats becoming old really quick, that's inevitable, as for every mode that has came to the game. I see it as once the game has so much to do, it'll be hard to become tired of the game as a whole.
What you're describing is effectively tavern brawl, but focusing only on the constructed deck parts, which wouldn't be a bad idea but since tavern brawl already exists, its kinda hard to justify selling another mode thats essentially a larger and longer tavern brawl.
A slight comment on your comment about the tribal mode. Its a lot bigger problem than what I initially pointed out as an example. Murlocs and totems have more synergies than other tribes and are more or less confined within their own tribes. This is not the case for others, with the current pool of cards anyway. In order to make this work, team5 would have to create more cards, but the biggest problem would be, to paraphrase an old adage, "if everything is a tribe, then there are no tribes". Imagine an all or nothing murloc deck. Murloc Warleader might as well just read "all your minions have 2 attack". Where's the downside of a deck building constraint that comes with a tribe-heavy deck when we're only permitted to play said tribe cards? There's no conditions to fulfill, if the condition itself is mandatory from the start.
A format in which Wild sets rotate in and out was tried in the past, and it was terrible. I wouldn't be opposed to them trying it again though.
The only instant I can remember of this was a tavern brawl that actually managed this, allowing us to only use cards from 3 different expansions (cant remember which, but GvG was certainly part of it). From what I recall, it was a smashing success for the few brief days it was up. The only downside was that it only lasted a few days so it seemed a waste of dust for those without the cards and only committed to standard.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but to me that was one of the few tavern brawls I actually played just for the fun of it. Would be more than glad to see it full time.
Most of your suggestions are perhaps more suitable as a weekly rotating tavern brawl, because they tend to get old really fast, as well as presenting more problems of their own. Something like pauper mode might look good on paper but in practice is basically reducing hearthstone to curvestone, while Tribal would be unfeasible since there's basically not enough support for anything other than totems and murlocs. There's no 1 mana dragon, for example, and there's only like 2 feasible 1 drop demons, both coincidentally are locked in warlock.
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
Allowing players to build their decks, have powerful passives and treasures that are granted at random, and paywall certain important powerful starting treasures.
Its only a matter of time before the meta settles and all we see are the same decks over and over again.
The starting deck building shouldve followed the arena format, so its not technically possible to keep facing the most OP deck available while keeping, more or less, the same integrity of the duels format.
All hearthstone needs is a way to ban classes. You don't like playing against rez priest or control warrior? You like aggro v aggro matchups? Ban warrior and priest. Don't like face decks? Ban rogue, shaman, and demon hunter. Queue times would be longer but game QUALITY would increase. I HATE playing this game most of the time, usually i don't even want to log in for the dailies. Because i know that in the hour or less time it would take me to accomplish winning 7 times. I will get shit on at least 6 times, by people luckier than me, playing netdecks.
Probably impossible. Not least because classes are designed to have some intrinsic weakness against one another, like how hunter has an intrinsic advantage against most rogue and mage decks. So if your wish comes true, then all I need is to make up some hyper face hunter and ban warrior, paladin, shaman and maybe dhunter. Or ultra late game value rogue deck, with hunter and dhunter bans.
Confirmed, via twitch's Moobot, that its one pack after 1 hour, and only 1 pack per day
Yeah, I´ve caught it today aswell:
"Moobot: Link your Twitch and Battle Net account, then watch the All-Star Invitational for one hour to earn Darkmoon Faire Card Pack! (One pack for each day)"
Wonder how many days this will go on, or are there just these two days?
I wonder where the disconnecting issues comes from? I've had some dc as well sometimes, but if this actually comes from Blizzard server itself, then I hope they fix it before any tournament in the future.
And I'm curious about the total of twitch viewer too, since it's below 5.000 rn.
Its disconnects from the casters not players. Probably because the viewer they used is all the way from USA so connection issues is hardly impossible.
The viewer count is low because blizz marketing fked up with the advertising. I mean, there's like no official news on this from blizz much less information on the twitch drop available. Probably because of the holidays.
Update: Okay, its confirmed later that Liooon is facing some connections issue. Maybe its because of China's connection to other countries (her opponent is from Taiwan).
I'll take the blame there. I knew it was a thing but forgot to re-check the date; I didn't guess they'd play over the holiday weekend. But in my defense Blizzard has only posted about it in Taiwanese sites (in English though), nothing on English playhs or even hsesports twitter.
Haven't seen any mention of drops anywhere though, not that I would doubt your word but that's definitely something they didn't communicate.
EDIT: There will be a constructed tournament in the same event tomorrow, so if you don't get the pack(s?) today, you can try again then.
Can't say its fair to blame you or anyone but blizz for the lack of news on this event. Its not like its being hosted outside of their circle anyway but for some reason its not posted anywhere but the most obscure of sites (I did some search and I could only find it on a Chinese website; the playhearthstone link there doesn't even work for some reason). And even then, it said nothing of the twitch drops, or the fact that its being hosted on youtube as well.
There is a constructed event tomorrow (so we can probably see first hand the auto shaman bans for once), but no news on twitch drops. Probably safe to assume that there's at least one pack there, since events like these tend to hand out at least 2 packs.
It'll probably be revealed somewhere within the next 2 weeks. Its called a mid expansion, so it can be reasonably expected to be released by end of this month latest.
You might want to justify some points instead of just dumping a list of common cards in ranked standard. What would the proposed nerf to Spirit Jailer even do, for a example. Another example would be [Hearthstone Card (bonechew brawler) Not Found]'s proposed nerf. To be 'in line with Pompous Thespian' would suggest making it a 2/3 taunt for 2. Unfortunately, there's already a card like that in Injured Tol'vir. So what will that change actually do? Its better for everyone if your inputs are more adequetely expressed.
Evolve shaman back in the day can actually function without Evolve or Doppelgangster. The archetype back then was alot about maintaining board and chipping face, hence cards like Bloodlust, Maelstrom Portal, and Thing from Below, which back then was a monster of a card.
Even that doom in the tomb evolve shaman was respectable to a degree. The one we got now relies entirely on the weapon so much that its entire deck is built for evolve shit and every other deck is now playing Kobold Stickyfinger, an otherwise useless card.
Evolve shenanigans must have killed your family and burned your house down. I can't see any other explanation for this proposed 'nerf'. Might as well just ask team5 to remove it altogether
Nerfs for Evolve Shaman
- Boggspine Knuckles, attack down to 2 from 4
- Lightning Bloom - refresh mana crystals instead of gain
The archetype still suffers from card draw and since its early game is so horrendous, nerfing the weapon's attack will go a long way in managing shaman until rotation, when most of the biggest problems of the deck (Desert Hare, Hoard Pillager, Mogu Fleshshaper) rotates away and the archetype loses at least half of its strengths.
In a sane world, that Lightning Bloom nerf would already been in effect. There's really nothing worse than seeing that knuckles come out early and completely tear you apart. In this case it even completely sidesteps its only counter in Kobold Stickyfinger
I'll be honest. The only reason why I'm even for a nerf is because evolve shaman is doing the same shit as giants mage in RoS is doing, and that is to put a tacit requirement to deal with its power card or die. In the latter's case, it was Mountain Giant on 4, and in evolve shaman's case its the knuckles. So every player out here is jamming stickyfingers to such a degree that no weapon with more than 2 durability can be played without severe consequences, and that basically destroys the viability of other decks not on the radar.
Personally I don't really mind evolve shaman, its the same tier 1 deck like most other tier 1 deck before it, and the fact that most of its cards rotate in a few months time makes me really reluctant to nerf anything. But when you do everything right against this deck that plays little to no early game, no board clears, only to find out that they can go from zero board to completely destroying you in a couple of turns, that's when we need to start talking about balance.
Basically you're suggesting that we be able to keep decks that have lost and play it again on another 12-win circuit. The real question would obviously then be how many players would actually want to do that, bearing in mind that most players would draft their initial deck efficiently (I wouldn't pass up a Fireball for a Deck of Lunacy, for example). A lost, especially one that is early, is more likely to be from a poorly drafted deck, one of which most players will immediately forget and try another draft, because the idea from the start is to draft a deck that can win.
The most obvious upgrade (and the most reasonable as well) would be to implement casual mode in arena, the same manner as for duels. In that case, then it would actually be sensible for them provide an option to keep a draft that have lost. That would actually perk up interest in arena, and would likely take the least effort for team5 to do so.
Now on to the crucial question; "why the hell not?". Well, what incentive is there for team5 to do so? Took them ages to implement scrolling through the card collection. Took a whole lot of poor excuses and time before they finally gave us more than 9 deck slots. Hell, it took somewhere around 2 years before arena was properly balanced. And now we face an even tougher question - why implement casuals for a mode that has traditionally require players to give up precious resources to play?
That's not to say I wouldn't want to see a casuals mode implemented for arena. Maybe its one of the goals in the roadmap that's spell-locked. Guess we'll find out.
That defeats the purpose of the arena draft, where you can never really face the same deck twice.
Casuals mode for arena, on the unlikely event its introduced, should likewise follow the same rule. If its possible to save the deck, then the concept of diversity will be lost. If the idea is a mode that allows one to play a drafted arena deck more than once, you'll swiftly find out that most of the decks you will be facing will be those that managed at least 10 wins, or the most absurdly unfair curvestone deck that ever existed.
Arena needs some help. Maybe something that adds additional arena only cards like the Murozond event in the past would spark more interest in the mode. But with both battlegrounds and duels in the mix, I struggle to see anyone but the most loyal of players continue to play this mode.
Its hardly the same comparing banning classes with map bans in W3. From the competitive standpoint, the map bans were explained as necessary since certain maps are either too large, present too few resources, or simply skewed towards certain races. No such dilemma exists for hearthstone.
Allowing class bans in hearthstone is more or less equal to race bans in W3, in which case nearly everyone will ban either orcs or humans. Humans in particular.
In hearthstone, banning classes has huge implications. Aside from the ones I mentioned earlier, it also affects card design to a rather bizarre point where the stronger the deck the less it will face anything else aside from itself. Tech cards will be mostly unnecessary, while some cards like healing or board clears can be put aside with clever ban strats. In other words, its possible to simply have decks that have no counters.
Apart from everything else, it also doesnt really solve anything. Metas will simply adapt, and pretty soon we'll be seeing reports on what to ban, and what to play on certain bans. Then what follows would be the same thing as it has always been; people complaining about netdecking with an additional gripe on how the bans are unfair to certain classes (of which I would agree)
Yeah I remembered that. That was what led me to believe that the incoming new format was going to be exactly a rotating wild mode. Then reality hit and we got duels instead, which incidentally enough, also came with the idea of a rotating set. Maybe the stars will align and limited wild gets considered in some distant future. But its becoming clear from battlegrounds and now duels, that unless a strong and subtle monetary system can be jammed, crying and screaming, right into it, I'm not optimistic.
I think we can both agree that's hardly a fair assessment since team5 cherry picked cards from multiple expansions and grafted them onto standard. Either way, I didn't actually have any problems with it, since evolve shaman then was what I would call "manageable", hardly the same bs we are encountering right now. Like yourself, I would like to see more regular events like it in future.
The tavern brawl I cited provides a more accurate picture, and as I have mentioned, it was to me a great success.
It would certainly push wild pack sales if this was implemented, but there will come a time when nearly all serious players would already have all the wild cards they need and then the sales will come crashing to a halt, which will ironically come faster than we think because of the duplicate protection. That's probably why it hasn't been implemented yet, despite the fact that it wouldn't even come to close to the resources needed to implement the duels mode.
There needs to be a monetization system for this mode that is equal if not surpassing that of duels for this to ever be a realistic consideration. Sadly that's the kind of world we live in with activision-blizz
What you're describing is effectively tavern brawl, but focusing only on the constructed deck parts, which wouldn't be a bad idea but since tavern brawl already exists, its kinda hard to justify selling another mode thats essentially a larger and longer tavern brawl.
A slight comment on your comment about the tribal mode. Its a lot bigger problem than what I initially pointed out as an example. Murlocs and totems have more synergies than other tribes and are more or less confined within their own tribes. This is not the case for others, with the current pool of cards anyway. In order to make this work, team5 would have to create more cards, but the biggest problem would be, to paraphrase an old adage, "if everything is a tribe, then there are no tribes". Imagine an all or nothing murloc deck. Murloc Warleader might as well just read "all your minions have 2 attack". Where's the downside of a deck building constraint that comes with a tribe-heavy deck when we're only permitted to play said tribe cards? There's no conditions to fulfill, if the condition itself is mandatory from the start.
The only instant I can remember of this was a tavern brawl that actually managed this, allowing us to only use cards from 3 different expansions (cant remember which, but GvG was certainly part of it). From what I recall, it was a smashing success for the few brief days it was up. The only downside was that it only lasted a few days so it seemed a waste of dust for those without the cards and only committed to standard.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but to me that was one of the few tavern brawls I actually played just for the fun of it. Would be more than glad to see it full time.
Most of your suggestions are perhaps more suitable as a weekly rotating tavern brawl, because they tend to get old really fast, as well as presenting more problems of their own. Something like pauper mode might look good on paper but in practice is basically reducing hearthstone to curvestone, while Tribal would be unfeasible since there's basically not enough support for anything other than totems and murlocs. There's no 1 mana dragon, for example, and there's only like 2 feasible 1 drop demons, both coincidentally are locked in warlock.
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
Allowing players to build their decks, have powerful passives and treasures that are granted at random, and paywall certain important powerful starting treasures.
Its only a matter of time before the meta settles and all we see are the same decks over and over again.
The starting deck building shouldve followed the arena format, so its not technically possible to keep facing the most OP deck available while keeping, more or less, the same integrity of the duels format.
Probably impossible. Not least because classes are designed to have some intrinsic weakness against one another, like how hunter has an intrinsic advantage against most rogue and mage decks. So if your wish comes true, then all I need is to make up some hyper face hunter and ban warrior, paladin, shaman and maybe dhunter. Or ultra late game value rogue deck, with hunter and dhunter bans.
Just two. Yesterday and today.
https://goblizzard.tw/esports/#/news/73
Probably the only english website on the matter.
Confirmed, via twitch's Moobot, that its one pack after 1 hour, and only 1 pack per day
Its disconnects from the casters not players. Probably because the viewer they used is all the way from USA so connection issues is hardly impossible.
The viewer count is low because blizz marketing fked up with the advertising. I mean, there's like no official news on this from blizz much less information on the twitch drop available. Probably because of the holidays.
Update: Okay, its confirmed later that Liooon is facing some connections issue. Maybe its because of China's connection to other countries (her opponent is from Taiwan).
Day 2, constructed invitational is up like an hour ago.
Twitch drops available, though like yesterday I have no idea how long it will take. Probably the same 1.5 hours.
Can't say its fair to blame you or anyone but blizz for the lack of news on this event. Its not like its being hosted outside of their circle anyway but for some reason its not posted anywhere but the most obscure of sites (I did some search and I could only find it on a Chinese website; the playhearthstone link there doesn't even work for some reason). And even then, it said nothing of the twitch drops, or the fact that its being hosted on youtube as well.
There is a constructed event tomorrow (so we can probably see first hand the auto shaman bans for once), but no news on twitch drops. Probably safe to assume that there's at least one pack there, since events like these tend to hand out at least 2 packs.