To be honest, arena rewards are currently still okay, assuming you'd put the work in. Like yourself, I've grinded arena in my early days cause' I have literally no cards or dust to build even a decent aggro deck to go into ranked (I got my first month-end card back around 8 months from my start date. To put things in perspective, all you needed to do then was to reach rank 25).
A simplification of the details; you pay 150 gold, and you get 1 pack no matter what + a random reward of either dust or gold. The rewards scale with the number of wins, and the common ideal is to reach 7 wins, whereupon you get your gold back guaranteed. But this is only half the picture. To get the ticket's worth in gold, the actual number of wins required is 2 (for a chance of 40-50 gold) to 4 (where you are guaranteed 50 gold).
So all that is required to basically get 50 gold + a pack is actually 2-4 wins, very achievable. 3 wins is basically a gold standard in many cases. I won't discuss any higher than that, since most players don't get past 3 wins anyway.
But to go back to your proposal, its just broken. 50 gold to start, and only 1 win is all that is required to get value, 3 wins to get your gold back AND a pack. Let's be honest. If this was the structure back then I would be swimming in gold right now. Arena is grindy, and it should be grindy because the rewards it gives out for those who grind it is always better than it would be if you were grinding up gold via quests.
I left arena once I had a few decks to play with and never looked back. The reason is simple. Arena is only fun for only a small portion of players (and I mean really small). The vast majority of us (who play it at all) grind it for gold. If the idea is to make arena fun, its simple enough to remove all the rewards and allow players to go for it without charge. Hell, I'd play arena every now and then if I can go for it without charge, even without the rewards.
Theres no guarantee that both of those contributes to the xp gain and its more likely than not that it doesn't. A chill session with a solo adventure as compared to a stress-filled ranked play? If both gets xp, then why bother with ranked, especially for most players without an adequate collection.
Some changes are fair, the artwork change was unexpected but very welcome (Kill command in particular), but there are certain changes which I think really unjustified;
- Removing freezing trap is kinda harsh, especially since its not particularly hard to play around, and is perhaps the only defensive secret in classic. If this must go then something like wandering monster must replace it.
- What could removing charge from unleashed the hounds and tundra rhino actually serve, especially since the only buff provided as compensation is a mere 1 mana down to rhino (which wouldn't matter since you've more or less just destroyed any viability of this card). Hunter has little to no card draw and can barely generate cards, so they can't usually match up to any class in the mid-to-late game and this change simply makes it worse by ensuring that matches must end by turn 6 since theres little else they can do after that.
- removing highmane for being broken, and tracking for being 'complicated'. I don't particularly recall either as such.
- Your custom card, reload, is interesting. Its not really easy to draw more than 1 card but then again hunter isn't really good at that anyway.
Considering all the changes you've made, all I can see is a much, much watered down hunter that isn't exactly good at doing anything. This is deliberate, as you would say, since classic cards are supposed to be below average, but this is beyond just a little below average. Seems like you designed this with all the expansion cards in mind rather than the other way around, since nearly all hunter's aggressive cards have been neutered to a frankly insane degree. In my opinion, classic cards should be the core where all else is built, but if I was building some sort of midrange beast hunter right now in wild or standard, none of those cards which youve changed will be in it.
Its difficult to imagine blizz nowadays doing anything without some sort of upside towards greater profits, and they usually dont rely on the concept of 'fun' to pull in the money.
The real question would be if this battlepass is supposedly going to make things better than they were, then what's the incentive for them to push this out when its not so obvious that the time, money, and manpower being spent on this can be translated directly into profits.
Even if its not apparent, it would seem like the mini-backlash generated from the surveys had had an effect of forcing them to increase the rewards or at least mask it really well to the playerbase that they are not going to lose out from this deal. And for that reason, we should be continuing to push back against this idea until we can see the full scope covered by the battlepass.
Willow needs to be 8 mana. The body doesn't really matter. The main problem with her is there isn't really any demons you really want to pull out in standard at the moment aside from Enhanced Dreadlord, and that minion cost 8 mana. So why would anyone play this card when they can just play the dreadlord a turn earlier and not die in the process.
Tidal Wave is outclassed by Earthquake at the moment, and if healing if your game you'll find Walking Fountain still does pretty well. To make this playable it has to be 6 mana, maybe deal 2 instead of 3.
Wyrm Weaver is honestly very strong. But most people would rather just play mana giant as the big minion than this one. Dropping this to 4 would make this the next cancerous card in standard second only to Lightning Bloom. Might see play in standard at some point in its life, the effect just cant be ignored, so this doesn't really need buffs.
This is just another question that can only be answered by someone from the dev team. All else is speculation, and a pretty impossible one at that. Its just not possible to somehow gauge a formula at something that can be from equal percentage to discover, to slightly skewed towards class cards.
Another way of seeing this is to consider from what position we were to have came to the current formula. Class cards were 4x more likely than neutrals in the past. If the change is then to configure the formula in such a way to sneak class cards into the equation by means of a 50-50 coin toss, then team5 might well have just never changed the formula in the first place.
Best to simply take their word for it. Ultimately even if discover effects were still skewed towards class cards, I dont see how they can profit by keeping that information from us.
No. While I sympathize with you over the reno decks, albatross had the nasty side effect of basically jamming classes with no card draw. At least the bombs would simply draw you the next card, those birds are a pure 1 mana 1/1 menace that sticks in your hand. There was a time where Bad Luck Albatross was basically in every deck in standard, and I really would rather they not be.
Maybe when it rotates to wild. Team5 have unnerf cards before and if Im not mistaken they say they're not opposed to do that again.
Its not really a weird interaction. Rattlegore is actually 8 minions in one, each an individual card. Its does not really interact with the health/attack of the minion itself, hence why Subdue doesnt just kill it all at once.
Its more like team5's code for this card is actually very different from its description. Very confusing, to be honest.
But isn't that weird? The card text for Rattlegore says "Resummon this with -1 -1," so it's logical to assume that whatever stats it's summoned in, that should be deducted when it's resummoned. S
Yes, but thats how team5 coded it apparently. Maybe having to paste the exact value of Rattlegore on all 8 cards may just be too much to ask.
Would've been cool to have the interaction actually fit its description as it makes deck building a little more interesting, but unfortunately its not to be.
Its not really a weird interaction. Rattlegore is actually 8 minions in one, each an individual card. Its does not really interact with the health/attack of the minion itself, hence why Subdue doesnt just kill it all at once.
Its more like team5's code for this card is actually very different from its description. Very confusing, to be honest.
Might as well just fix that Nozdormu effect or better yet, just make animations no longer cost time. Even better, just have the option to remove them altogether. I think some pros were asking for stuff like that for years.
If ever there is a card that desperately needs a redesign its Nozdormu, and I'm not entirely saying that because I still have a golden copy of him gathering cobwebs in my collection.
Well, everyone is assured to experiencing at least once, a bs druid play on turn 1-3 in this meta and it seems like you've drawn the lottery to be fked that day.
Agreed that mindrender feels really bad to play against. Its perhaps the greatest mistake made by team5 since Patches the Pirate and Jade Idol, but since its printed we all have to just live with it.
Priest is good, but far from the best. That class is most likely warrior
Its only the most banned because everyone is targeting druid. Since kael'thas is effectively gone, we will likely see more hunter, aggro druid, or even shaman, so warrior will most likely be the class to ban next.
Megasaur dead and no more cannon. Well thats a big change. But even bigger is perhaps dropping primalfin by a tier. Sure you dont get those divine shield murlocs anymore but its still only a brann away from complete domination and now you dont even have any incentive to get to tier 6 anymore.
I'm surprised that monstrous macaw didn't get a bigger nerf boot. Could've sworn that eveytime I see it in battlegrounds its always accompanied with plenty of divine shields and 4 damage bombs that instantly takes down my squad to nothing.
Kael'thas Sunstrider nerf is expected, given how swingy it is when cheated out with Lightning Bloom, but its not necessarily over for druid. Malydruid doesnt include him and is perhaps a better alternative to survival druid anyway.
The Mindrender Illucia is perhaps more surprising. Its one of those cards that, like Glide, tests the limits of what team5 is willing to have printed and in my opinion has always been a mistake from the start. Illucia alone ensures that combo against priest will always be at a disadvantage and besides that makes keeping key cards in hand nearly impossible. This nerf will make it less severe to deal with by aggro and midrange decks but still makes it really really bad to play against.
Nice innovation just using Nine Lives with zixor as a win condition. But the more I look at it the more Im convinced that the quest is expendable. Just doesn't seem like your deck is using the quest to do anything other than cheese a win with Unleash the Hounds.
I tried a combo variant to abuse zixor along with a dragon shell but wasn't too successful with it. Maybe I can try your idea of abusing Nine Lives and go with it again.
Consider adding Pressure Plate in your deck. Its just nuts in this meta.
Day 1 breaks records for longest ever, finishing about a mere 3 hours before day 2 starts
As expected everyone is targeting druid, banning stuff like warrior or priest. Paladin nowhere to be seen, and tortollan mage confirmed as a meme deck.
I think the new Tortolian Mage combo with potion of illusions is totally broken. Not because it is incredibly strong but just because when you manage to pull out the combo (which comes out that it's surprisingly easy) it is totally uninteractive for your opponent.
For those who doesn't know the combo you drop tortolian and get copies with potion of illusion then drop 1 cost tortolians to freeze the enemy board turn after turn while you slowly kill your opponent and he has nothing to do than just pass turn
This deck is quite unknown for the people and a bit tricky to pilot but when it becomes popular the meta will be trash
Probably not as broken as you think.
Against aggro its very weak, and against everything else, draw your Potion of Illusion and there goes your combo. So the deck is a somewhat weird combo deck since it needs exactly the right cards, and at the same time cant play the distance since the longer the stall, the greater the chances of your combo being dead.
Its a fun deck to play, but probably impossible to get consistent results.
If cards are allowed to discover itself, its genuinely possible to simply outvalue an opponent simply by its inclusion.
Its not really a nerf as much as it is just making the mechanics fair. When the wording reads 'discover' it should do just that, a card for a card. Not basically turn into a win condition. The elegant way of dealing with this would have been to simply design cards in such a way that it cannot discover itself. Instead, we have cards like Frightened Flunky, Underbelly Angler, Renew, Arcane Breath, etc. necessitating this change.
Also, lets not forget that discover is still one of the best mechanics a card can have. This small change will not really change much in that regard, except there would be less overly lucky bastards and fewer destroyed keyboards in the world.
To be honest, arena rewards are currently still okay, assuming you'd put the work in. Like yourself, I've grinded arena in my early days cause' I have literally no cards or dust to build even a decent aggro deck to go into ranked (I got my first month-end card back around 8 months from my start date. To put things in perspective, all you needed to do then was to reach rank 25).
A simplification of the details; you pay 150 gold, and you get 1 pack no matter what + a random reward of either dust or gold. The rewards scale with the number of wins, and the common ideal is to reach 7 wins, whereupon you get your gold back guaranteed. But this is only half the picture. To get the ticket's worth in gold, the actual number of wins required is 2 (for a chance of 40-50 gold) to 4 (where you are guaranteed 50 gold).
So all that is required to basically get 50 gold + a pack is actually 2-4 wins, very achievable. 3 wins is basically a gold standard in many cases. I won't discuss any higher than that, since most players don't get past 3 wins anyway.
But to go back to your proposal, its just broken. 50 gold to start, and only 1 win is all that is required to get value, 3 wins to get your gold back AND a pack. Let's be honest. If this was the structure back then I would be swimming in gold right now. Arena is grindy, and it should be grindy because the rewards it gives out for those who grind it is always better than it would be if you were grinding up gold via quests.
I left arena once I had a few decks to play with and never looked back. The reason is simple. Arena is only fun for only a small portion of players (and I mean really small). The vast majority of us (who play it at all) grind it for gold. If the idea is to make arena fun, its simple enough to remove all the rewards and allow players to go for it without charge. Hell, I'd play arena every now and then if I can go for it without charge, even without the rewards.
Theres no guarantee that both of those contributes to the xp gain and its more likely than not that it doesn't. A chill session with a solo adventure as compared to a stress-filled ranked play? If both gets xp, then why bother with ranked, especially for most players without an adequate collection.
Some changes are fair, the artwork change was unexpected but very welcome (Kill command in particular), but there are certain changes which I think really unjustified;
- Removing freezing trap is kinda harsh, especially since its not particularly hard to play around, and is perhaps the only defensive secret in classic. If this must go then something like wandering monster must replace it.
- What could removing charge from unleashed the hounds and tundra rhino actually serve, especially since the only buff provided as compensation is a mere 1 mana down to rhino (which wouldn't matter since you've more or less just destroyed any viability of this card). Hunter has little to no card draw and can barely generate cards, so they can't usually match up to any class in the mid-to-late game and this change simply makes it worse by ensuring that matches must end by turn 6 since theres little else they can do after that.
- removing highmane for being broken, and tracking for being 'complicated'. I don't particularly recall either as such.
- Your custom card, reload, is interesting. Its not really easy to draw more than 1 card but then again hunter isn't really good at that anyway.
Considering all the changes you've made, all I can see is a much, much watered down hunter that isn't exactly good at doing anything. This is deliberate, as you would say, since classic cards are supposed to be below average, but this is beyond just a little below average. Seems like you designed this with all the expansion cards in mind rather than the other way around, since nearly all hunter's aggressive cards have been neutered to a frankly insane degree. In my opinion, classic cards should be the core where all else is built, but if I was building some sort of midrange beast hunter right now in wild or standard, none of those cards which youve changed will be in it.
Its difficult to imagine blizz nowadays doing anything without some sort of upside towards greater profits, and they usually dont rely on the concept of 'fun' to pull in the money.
The real question would be if this battlepass is supposedly going to make things better than they were, then what's the incentive for them to push this out when its not so obvious that the time, money, and manpower being spent on this can be translated directly into profits.
Even if its not apparent, it would seem like the mini-backlash generated from the surveys had had an effect of forcing them to increase the rewards or at least mask it really well to the playerbase that they are not going to lose out from this deal. And for that reason, we should be continuing to push back against this idea until we can see the full scope covered by the battlepass.
Willow needs to be 8 mana. The body doesn't really matter. The main problem with her is there isn't really any demons you really want to pull out in standard at the moment aside from Enhanced Dreadlord, and that minion cost 8 mana. So why would anyone play this card when they can just play the dreadlord a turn earlier and not die in the process.
Tidal Wave is outclassed by Earthquake at the moment, and if healing if your game you'll find Walking Fountain still does pretty well. To make this playable it has to be 6 mana, maybe deal 2 instead of 3.
Wyrm Weaver is honestly very strong. But most people would rather just play mana giant as the big minion than this one. Dropping this to 4 would make this the next cancerous card in standard second only to Lightning Bloom. Might see play in standard at some point in its life, the effect just cant be ignored, so this doesn't really need buffs.
This is just another question that can only be answered by someone from the dev team. All else is speculation, and a pretty impossible one at that. Its just not possible to somehow gauge a formula at something that can be from equal percentage to discover, to slightly skewed towards class cards.
Another way of seeing this is to consider from what position we were to have came to the current formula. Class cards were 4x more likely than neutrals in the past. If the change is then to configure the formula in such a way to sneak class cards into the equation by means of a 50-50 coin toss, then team5 might well have just never changed the formula in the first place.
Best to simply take their word for it. Ultimately even if discover effects were still skewed towards class cards, I dont see how they can profit by keeping that information from us.
No. While I sympathize with you over the reno decks, albatross had the nasty side effect of basically jamming classes with no card draw. At least the bombs would simply draw you the next card, those birds are a pure 1 mana 1/1 menace that sticks in your hand. There was a time where Bad Luck Albatross was basically in every deck in standard, and I really would rather they not be.
Maybe when it rotates to wild. Team5 have unnerf cards before and if Im not mistaken they say they're not opposed to do that again.
Yes, but thats how team5 coded it apparently. Maybe having to paste the exact value of Rattlegore on all 8 cards may just be too much to ask.
Would've been cool to have the interaction actually fit its description as it makes deck building a little more interesting, but unfortunately its not to be.
Its not really a weird interaction. Rattlegore is actually 8 minions in one, each an individual card. Its does not really interact with the health/attack of the minion itself, hence why Subdue doesnt just kill it all at once.
Its more like team5's code for this card is actually very different from its description. Very confusing, to be honest.
Might as well just fix that Nozdormu effect or better yet, just make animations no longer cost time. Even better, just have the option to remove them altogether. I think some pros were asking for stuff like that for years.
If ever there is a card that desperately needs a redesign its Nozdormu, and I'm not entirely saying that because I still have a golden copy of him gathering cobwebs in my collection.
Well, its a decent if uninteresting brawl.
At very least it doesn't take forever to get that free pack.
2 weeks from nerf date
Well, everyone is assured to experiencing at least once, a bs druid play on turn 1-3 in this meta and it seems like you've drawn the lottery to be fked that day.
Agreed that mindrender feels really bad to play against. Its perhaps the greatest mistake made by team5 since Patches the Pirate and Jade Idol, but since its printed we all have to just live with it.
Priest is good, but far from the best. That class is most likely warrior
Its only the most banned because everyone is targeting druid. Since kael'thas is effectively gone, we will likely see more hunter, aggro druid, or even shaman, so warrior will most likely be the class to ban next.
Megasaur dead and no more cannon. Well thats a big change. But even bigger is perhaps dropping primalfin by a tier. Sure you dont get those divine shield murlocs anymore but its still only a brann away from complete domination and now you dont even have any incentive to get to tier 6 anymore.
I'm surprised that monstrous macaw didn't get a bigger nerf boot. Could've sworn that eveytime I see it in battlegrounds its always accompanied with plenty of divine shields and 4 damage bombs that instantly takes down my squad to nothing.
Kael'thas Sunstrider nerf is expected, given how swingy it is when cheated out with Lightning Bloom, but its not necessarily over for druid. Malydruid doesnt include him and is perhaps a better alternative to survival druid anyway.
The Mindrender Illucia is perhaps more surprising. Its one of those cards that, like Glide, tests the limits of what team5 is willing to have printed and in my opinion has always been a mistake from the start. Illucia alone ensures that combo against priest will always be at a disadvantage and besides that makes keeping key cards in hand nearly impossible. This nerf will make it less severe to deal with by aggro and midrange decks but still makes it really really bad to play against.
Nice innovation just using Nine Lives with zixor as a win condition. But the more I look at it the more Im convinced that the quest is expendable. Just doesn't seem like your deck is using the quest to do anything other than cheese a win with Unleash the Hounds.
I tried a combo variant to abuse zixor along with a dragon shell but wasn't too successful with it. Maybe I can try your idea of abusing Nine Lives and go with it again.
Consider adding Pressure Plate in your deck. Its just nuts in this meta.
Day 1 breaks records for longest ever, finishing about a mere 3 hours before day 2 starts
As expected everyone is targeting druid, banning stuff like warrior or priest. Paladin nowhere to be seen, and tortollan mage confirmed as a meme deck.
Probably not as broken as you think.
Against aggro its very weak, and against everything else, draw your Potion of Illusion and there goes your combo. So the deck is a somewhat weird combo deck since it needs exactly the right cards, and at the same time cant play the distance since the longer the stall, the greater the chances of your combo being dead.
Its a fun deck to play, but probably impossible to get consistent results.
If cards are allowed to discover itself, its genuinely possible to simply outvalue an opponent simply by its inclusion.
Its not really a nerf as much as it is just making the mechanics fair. When the wording reads 'discover' it should do just that, a card for a card. Not basically turn into a win condition. The elegant way of dealing with this would have been to simply design cards in such a way that it cannot discover itself. Instead, we have cards like Frightened Flunky, Underbelly Angler, Renew, Arcane Breath, etc. necessitating this change.
Also, lets not forget that discover is still one of the best mechanics a card can have. This small change will not really change much in that regard, except there would be less overly lucky bastards and fewer destroyed keyboards in the world.