Honestly, there's little need for Dragonbane. Kill Command more of less does the same thing anyway in most matches. The only thing this can do is to maybe snowball a priest or mage matchup, which you're favored to win anyway.
This isn't true at all and, honestly, a very poor and shallow comparison.
Kill Command is a single damage output of 3 or 5 damage (depending on your board state) to one target. For one mana more Dragonbane is a 3/5 worth of stats which, if not cleared quickly, puts you at a massive advantage, if not wins you the game outright. It will either win you the board (harder), deal the same amount of face damage as a single Kill Command does, unconditionally, every turn, or forces removal and/or minion trades from your opponent.
There's a reason every hunter archetype runs the card, because it's one of the class' best performers.
OP most definitely made the right decision by crafting it. Even more so now that the beast package got nerfed and might even be replaced entirely in some archetypes.
Im not disputing its potential to snowball, but from my own experience, that nearly never happens unless you're facing a slow, value oriented class/deck like mage, priest or druid which you are already favored to win.
I played with Dragonbane, but I mostly find myself in situations where its a 50-50 chance for me to outright win the game or lose it from there. Maybe its just me, but the power to Kill Command for guaranteed damage rather than merely a chance works better.
Just like to stress that I don't think Dragonbane is bad, but a majority, if not the entirety, of the time I don't find myself missing it.
The card is fine in the its current iteration. It provides a buffed hero power, which is just broken considering that dhunter's buffed hp is 2 attack for 1 mana.
Another argument against it is purely future card design and balances. If it gets too consistent, then devs might just want to avoid those very powerful unconditional cards for paladin in future expansions, not even mentioning its potential in wild.
Also, lets be honest, paladins state of affairs right now is the lack of tempo swing cards, like Rotnest Drake or, dare I say it, [Hearthstone Card (the lurker from below) Not Found], or even just a decent rush minion. Buffing sir finley will boost highlander's paladin chances, but nothing else. Its best to simply address paladin's core issue, than just buffing one very conditional card.
Dragon hunter is very strong, but not overwhelmingly so, and there's so many tech decisions that its not possible to just copy a hsreplay dragon hunter deck and expect to go well with it.
Since there's lots of highlander hunters and other dragon hunters, I replace the boar tech with Scalerider. I might change this to 1x Burrowing Scorpid, as rng keeps screwing me.
For some reason I keep facing murloc paladins, so I tech in Unleash the Hounds. Without this its nearly always an auto lost for hunter.
Honestly, there's little need for Dragonbane. Kill Command more of less does the same thing anyway in most matches. The only thing this can do is to maybe snowball a priest or mage matchup, which you're favored to win anyway.
Its always best to simply climb with a deck you're comfortable with since you are more likely to make better decisions and losing doesnt tilt as much.
Most players keep a poker face out of respect for their opponent. Others simply dislike grandiose celebrations.
There was once a korean pro in the old masters format for Asia, I can't remember his name but I think he actually qualified for 2018's worlds, who was pretty much laughing and clapping at every rng play that went his way. Can't imagine what's it like to lose to this guy. He might as well be showing the middle finger to the other side with every top deck win.
Blizz has made the right decision to cancel blizzcon for this year. But honestly, even if the COVID was not a thing, they should probably take a pause for a year anyway, considering how it went for the previous blizzcons.
Having made announcements of new games previously, but not release dates, I cant help but feel if this year's blizzcon went ahead it would be to hype up more diablo 4 and overwatch 2, but tacitly mention no release date again. If Im not mistaken, the much hated diablo immortal isn't even out yet, so what exactly is there to show that we aren't already waiting to be released?
I hear diablo 2 remastered being talked about, but judging by how starcraft and warcraft remastered got out, I'd rather see the thing itself than yet another hyped up illustration of how it could be.
Pure list have the better midgame. Lightforged Zealot can sometimes buy you enough tempo to somehow reach your libram cards.
Paladin currently lacks card draw and a poor start. In my opinion, if you're gonna play paladin, its better to just bow down to card draw RNG than trying to plaster it up with inefficient card draw.
If blizz really want people to get into wild just;
- Do more frequent balance changes in wild
- Make wild packs and adventures cheaper (if dust is the issue here, its inefficient to mine dust off packs for actual cards, and they still have to pay for it)
- Consider retiring some cards
- Make another format of wild that rotates between expansions like arena
- Make an effort to promote wild e.g. tournaments, discounts, etc.
Its not like hunters are invincible. Most decks have a decent chance against dragon and highlander hunter.
As pointed out, the difference in win rate is a mere 2%. And the matchup is fairly predictable. They are fairly at the mercy of their draws, and even a semi-decent amount of healing throws them off. If you're really triggered by hunters, just play weapon destruction (which you would anyway because of dhunters), and an odd Dragonmaw Poacher and you more or less solved the dragon hunter riddle.
Lightforged Zealot is really good, and is one card in paladin that swings tempo. Since Libram of Justice is already pretty good with consecrate most people might think the Wild Pyromancer is just not good enough compared to what zealot is doing.
Also, Lightforged Crusader is actually pretty nuts. Unfortunately, its bad not because of what it does but because paladin rarely gets to the point where the card can actually be played without dying. And paladin's card draw is so atrocious that drawing crusader somewhere around mid game when you really just need something to stabilize board can be just game ending.
... We are strangely in a world where Stormforged Axe is one of shaman's best tempo tool early game. Yeah, that's not a good sign. ...
Stormforged Axe has never been that bad, it just happens to be really effective against Demon Hunter due to all the must-kill 2-health minions it has. The other 9 classes were rarely so reliant on 2-health minions so the Axe never took off.
If anything it is a great example of why cards should not be considered weak based purely on how much they are played. Often they just need the right circumstances to find a home. This has happened before of course: I remember Vanish being considered awful until Un'Goro brought OG quest rogue and everyone has respected the card ever since, even to the point of it being moved to the Hall of Fame.
Stormforged Axe is bad mostly because it overloads you for one, and unfortunately its only good versus dhunters. Against other classes, with the possible exception of rogue, it sucks. The overload here is pertinent. Its bad enough to put cards like that in your deck, its even worse when it disrupts your other plays.
I make a mention of it because shaman's tempo tools early game is so weak. We used to have cards like Zap! and Likkim, but these are now gone with nothing to replace it. Its not an easy comparison with Vanish because Vanish was actually a key card in quest rogue, no matter what the matchup. Had Stormforged Axe been a 3/2 with overload for 1, I might change my opinion, but its not.
Ever since the patch there's been plenty of lags, daily quest taking up to half a day to reroll, hearthstone loading forever, etc.
Tin foil hats aside, I think its time for blizz to consider spinning battlegrounds off from hearthstone's servers or from hearthstone itself. Seems like every time there's some change in battlegrounds the whole yarn gets unspun.
Been seeing less dhunters and rogue, but more hunters, mage and paladin. That will obviously change as people adjust and the brief few moments of dhunter not being top of hsreplay will be corrected, so stay tuned.
Just wanted to share some thoughts post nerf;
- Paladin still sucks; the change to Aldor Attendant was welcome, but the lack of card draw and absolutely little to no tempo swing cards are hindering the class. The closest thing we have to a tempo swing is either with Imprisoned Vilefiend + buff, or Lightforged Zealot. So we're trapped in a familiar scenario where they cant out tempo aggro decks like dragon hunter and can't put pressure on value decks like reno mage and priest.
- Shaman still sucks, but I think you hit the nail on the coffin when you mentioned the lack of a powerful payoff card like shudderwock. I'll add one more to the list; shaman's early game sucks, and their early board clears suck even more. Okay so that's two things. We are strangely in a world where Stormforged Axe is one of shaman's best tempo tool early game. Yeah, that's not a good sign.
- I haven't played against a dhunter since the nerfs, but I remain confident that players will simply switch away from the midrange priestess build back into the hyper aggro [Hearthstone Card (frienzied felwing) Not Found] build. Honestly, priestess at 5 is still pretty nice, but since it almost certainly going to die, its an all or nothing move that I think is just not worth it.
- Warrior still very much broken, but nerfing its best matchup means there's a little less of it now. I haven't seen much of warrior, but at some point not being able to farm dhunters off the meta means warrior might need to adjust itself to a ladder filled with value decks. Maybe go bomb? or perhaps even the famed quest warrior that Kibler is apparently swearing on his life is good.
- Priest is very annoying. Its literally live and die by rng as cards like Thoughtsteal and Galakrond's Wit outcomes literally decide games. I think team5 really needs to relook at priest's new design a little deeper.
Golden cards are great and all, but most players dont need golden cards they just need cards to play with.
So substituting 1 golden epic, 2 commons and a rare with 5 packs and a bunch of rare cards. Yeah that works out fine for most of us. Especially since the packs can sometimes net you a legendary, or more than 1 epic.
Also, let's not forget that the vast majority of players dont get that far to receive that gilded golden epic card.
You know what blizz? had you offered up some lets say 15 AoO packs at that price, that $15 in my pocket would've been yours.
As it stands, the only other good reason to take up this offer is for the higher dust ratio per pack (about a minimum of 300 dust per pack, assuming you'd dust them all) and it somewhat reaches the pity timer for a legendary.
With runeterra not slowing down and hearthstone generally been doing some good stuff lately, can't see artifact 2.0 taking down the competition anytime soon.
Its not just the game purchase price (not even sure if its still pay to play or going FTP now). The game's quite complex in itself, and yet not completely free from randomness. If anything, runeterra took the same model and made it simpler, so artifact's gotta do something to make it more than just a more complex clone of runeterra.
Dhunters as a class has plenty of good cards, but definitely not good at everything. It lacks value for example, and the weakness to clears cannot be underestimated. Anything that's not tempo dhunters gets swept hard by priests and can't really outvalue rogue. I've played plenty of big dhunters, and the moment my board gets swept I was left with little to nothing. The priestess nerf is significant in this regard; previously that was pretty much a key card to swing turns, now all that's left is Coilfang Warlord.
My opinion is that tempo dhunters is screwing the class, since there's little space left and the tempo variant is so good I can't see anything else being better until some key cards gets rotated/nerfed.
Also, enrage warrior has weaknesses, but card draw isn't one of them.
- Bloodboil Brute and Bloodsworn Mercenary will still see plenty of play since the nerf barely touch upon its power turns. Surprised that the hit wasn't to cards like Inner Rage, which would at least hit them where it hurts most. Bloodsworn was never played as a 3/3, and if it ever comes out at 3 its usually because there's already a big target to copy so I dont think making it 2/2 makes much difference. Would have been much more impactful if it gets a mana nerf, but that would make it fair and therefore unplayable.
Just a minor note, I think the health nerf might be more impactful than you think. On the skipper turn, that 1 less health can mean 1 less proc from skipper, 1 less card drawn, or 1 less discount from brute.
I will agree on the discount for brute.
But if you have enough minions to proc skipper twice, you'll not play bloodsworn first. Bloodsworn is almost always the last minion to play, making way only for brute or Bomb Wrangler
I think if you can reasonably pilot enrage warrior, then bloodsworn shouldn't be dying for nothing. At the moment, I'm not convinced that the health nerf is stopping warrior from doing what it has been doing before the announcement.
Im not disputing its potential to snowball, but from my own experience, that nearly never happens unless you're facing a slow, value oriented class/deck like mage, priest or druid which you are already favored to win.
I played with Dragonbane, but I mostly find myself in situations where its a 50-50 chance for me to outright win the game or lose it from there. Maybe its just me, but the power to Kill Command for guaranteed damage rather than merely a chance works better.
Just like to stress that I don't think Dragonbane is bad, but a majority, if not the entirety, of the time I don't find myself missing it.
The card is fine in the its current iteration. It provides a buffed hero power, which is just broken considering that dhunter's buffed hp is 2 attack for 1 mana.
Another argument against it is purely future card design and balances. If it gets too consistent, then devs might just want to avoid those very powerful unconditional cards for paladin in future expansions, not even mentioning its potential in wild.
Also, lets be honest, paladins state of affairs right now is the lack of tempo swing cards, like Rotnest Drake or, dare I say it, [Hearthstone Card (the lurker from below) Not Found], or even just a decent rush minion. Buffing sir finley will boost highlander's paladin chances, but nothing else. Its best to simply address paladin's core issue, than just buffing one very conditional card.
Dragon hunter is very strong, but not overwhelmingly so, and there's so many tech decisions that its not possible to just copy a hsreplay dragon hunter deck and expect to go well with it.
For example, the meta around diamond currently doesnt feature lots of dhunters, so I removed Explosive Trap for Freezing Trap and Snake Trap.
Since there's lots of highlander hunters and other dragon hunters, I replace the boar tech with Scalerider. I might change this to 1x Burrowing Scorpid, as rng keeps screwing me.
For some reason I keep facing murloc paladins, so I tech in Unleash the Hounds. Without this its nearly always an auto lost for hunter.
Honestly, there's little need for Dragonbane. Kill Command more of less does the same thing anyway in most matches. The only thing this can do is to maybe snowball a priest or mage matchup, which you're favored to win anyway.
Its always best to simply climb with a deck you're comfortable with since you are more likely to make better decisions and losing doesnt tilt as much.
Most players keep a poker face out of respect for their opponent. Others simply dislike grandiose celebrations.
There was once a korean pro in the old masters format for Asia, I can't remember his name but I think he actually qualified for 2018's worlds, who was pretty much laughing and clapping at every rng play that went his way. Can't imagine what's it like to lose to this guy. He might as well be showing the middle finger to the other side with every top deck win.
Blizz has made the right decision to cancel blizzcon for this year. But honestly, even if the COVID was not a thing, they should probably take a pause for a year anyway, considering how it went for the previous blizzcons.
Having made announcements of new games previously, but not release dates, I cant help but feel if this year's blizzcon went ahead it would be to hype up more diablo 4 and overwatch 2, but tacitly mention no release date again. If Im not mistaken, the much hated diablo immortal isn't even out yet, so what exactly is there to show that we aren't already waiting to be released?
I hear diablo 2 remastered being talked about, but judging by how starcraft and warcraft remastered got out, I'd rather see the thing itself than yet another hyped up illustration of how it could be.
Pure list have the better midgame. Lightforged Zealot can sometimes buy you enough tempo to somehow reach your libram cards.
Paladin currently lacks card draw and a poor start. In my opinion, if you're gonna play paladin, its better to just bow down to card draw RNG than trying to plaster it up with inefficient card draw.
Those goddamned priest mirrors. Lord have mercy
If blizz really want people to get into wild just;
- Do more frequent balance changes in wild
- Make wild packs and adventures cheaper (if dust is the issue here, its inefficient to mine dust off packs for actual cards, and they still have to pay for it)
- Consider retiring some cards
- Make another format of wild that rotates between expansions like arena
- Make an effort to promote wild e.g. tournaments, discounts, etc.
Its not like hunters are invincible. Most decks have a decent chance against dragon and highlander hunter.
As pointed out, the difference in win rate is a mere 2%. And the matchup is fairly predictable. They are fairly at the mercy of their draws, and even a semi-decent amount of healing throws them off. If you're really triggered by hunters, just play weapon destruction (which you would anyway because of dhunters), and an odd Dragonmaw Poacher and you more or less solved the dragon hunter riddle.
Lightforged Zealot is really good, and is one card in paladin that swings tempo. Since Libram of Justice is already pretty good with consecrate most people might think the Wild Pyromancer is just not good enough compared to what zealot is doing.
Also, Lightforged Crusader is actually pretty nuts. Unfortunately, its bad not because of what it does but because paladin rarely gets to the point where the card can actually be played without dying. And paladin's card draw is so atrocious that drawing crusader somewhere around mid game when you really just need something to stabilize board can be just game ending.
Stormforged Axe is bad mostly because it overloads you for one, and unfortunately its only good versus dhunters. Against other classes, with the possible exception of rogue, it sucks. The overload here is pertinent. Its bad enough to put cards like that in your deck, its even worse when it disrupts your other plays.
I make a mention of it because shaman's tempo tools early game is so weak. We used to have cards like Zap! and Likkim, but these are now gone with nothing to replace it. Its not an easy comparison with Vanish because Vanish was actually a key card in quest rogue, no matter what the matchup. Had Stormforged Axe been a 3/2 with overload for 1, I might change my opinion, but its not.
Ever since the patch there's been plenty of lags, daily quest taking up to half a day to reroll, hearthstone loading forever, etc.
Tin foil hats aside, I think its time for blizz to consider spinning battlegrounds off from hearthstone's servers or from hearthstone itself. Seems like every time there's some change in battlegrounds the whole yarn gets unspun.
Hope this all gets resolved soon
Been seeing less dhunters and rogue, but more hunters, mage and paladin. That will obviously change as people adjust and the brief few moments of dhunter not being top of hsreplay will be corrected, so stay tuned.
Just wanted to share some thoughts post nerf;
- Paladin still sucks; the change to Aldor Attendant was welcome, but the lack of card draw and absolutely little to no tempo swing cards are hindering the class. The closest thing we have to a tempo swing is either with Imprisoned Vilefiend + buff, or Lightforged Zealot. So we're trapped in a familiar scenario where they cant out tempo aggro decks like dragon hunter and can't put pressure on value decks like reno mage and priest.
- Shaman still sucks, but I think you hit the nail on the coffin when you mentioned the lack of a powerful payoff card like shudderwock. I'll add one more to the list; shaman's early game sucks, and their early board clears suck even more. Okay so that's two things. We are strangely in a world where Stormforged Axe is one of shaman's best tempo tool early game. Yeah, that's not a good sign.
- I haven't played against a dhunter since the nerfs, but I remain confident that players will simply switch away from the midrange priestess build back into the hyper aggro [Hearthstone Card (frienzied felwing) Not Found] build. Honestly, priestess at 5 is still pretty nice, but since it almost certainly going to die, its an all or nothing move that I think is just not worth it.
- Warrior still very much broken, but nerfing its best matchup means there's a little less of it now. I haven't seen much of warrior, but at some point not being able to farm dhunters off the meta means warrior might need to adjust itself to a ladder filled with value decks. Maybe go bomb? or perhaps even the famed quest warrior that Kibler is apparently swearing on his life is good.
- Priest is very annoying. Its literally live and die by rng as cards like Thoughtsteal and Galakrond's Wit outcomes literally decide games. I think team5 really needs to relook at priest's new design a little deeper.
Really? has this progressive chance increased been confirmed or hinted at before?
I've often suspected it, but obviously never confirmed
Golden cards are great and all, but most players dont need golden cards they just need cards to play with.
So substituting 1 golden epic, 2 commons and a rare with 5 packs and a bunch of rare cards. Yeah that works out fine for most of us. Especially since the packs can sometimes net you a legendary, or more than 1 epic.
Also, let's not forget that the vast majority of players dont get that far to receive that gilded golden epic card.
$15 dollars for golden classic packs...hmm
You know what blizz? had you offered up some lets say 15 AoO packs at that price, that $15 in my pocket would've been yours.
As it stands, the only other good reason to take up this offer is for the higher dust ratio per pack (about a minimum of 300 dust per pack, assuming you'd dust them all) and it somewhat reaches the pity timer for a legendary.
Sorry, just cant do it
With runeterra not slowing down and hearthstone generally been doing some good stuff lately, can't see artifact 2.0 taking down the competition anytime soon.
Its not just the game purchase price (not even sure if its still pay to play or going FTP now). The game's quite complex in itself, and yet not completely free from randomness. If anything, runeterra took the same model and made it simpler, so artifact's gotta do something to make it more than just a more complex clone of runeterra.
Its really not that difficult to play around Priestess of Fury. The main problem has always been how to kill it.
It has only 5 health now, and at 7 mana its barely playable. I would give it some time, but I honestly think its days are numbered.
Dhunters as a class has plenty of good cards, but definitely not good at everything. It lacks value for example, and the weakness to clears cannot be underestimated. Anything that's not tempo dhunters gets swept hard by priests and can't really outvalue rogue. I've played plenty of big dhunters, and the moment my board gets swept I was left with little to nothing. The priestess nerf is significant in this regard; previously that was pretty much a key card to swing turns, now all that's left is Coilfang Warlord.
My opinion is that tempo dhunters is screwing the class, since there's little space left and the tempo variant is so good I can't see anything else being better until some key cards gets rotated/nerfed.
Also, enrage warrior has weaknesses, but card draw isn't one of them.
I will agree on the discount for brute.
But if you have enough minions to proc skipper twice, you'll not play bloodsworn first. Bloodsworn is almost always the last minion to play, making way only for brute or Bomb Wrangler
I think if you can reasonably pilot enrage warrior, then bloodsworn shouldn't be dying for nothing. At the moment, I'm not convinced that the health nerf is stopping warrior from doing what it has been doing before the announcement.