In this day and age where game choice are plentiful, and MMOs scattered everywhere, I really can't see where a subscription + upfront fee model would work. But of course, we're talking about WoW, which practically popularize MMOs so its always going sell even if its shit, as we have seen with diablo immortal.
But on first glance, it really shows that blizz cornered themselves with shadowlands, because that genuinely looked like WoW's ending to me. So this expansion looks less like a story progression than a magical fun tour somewhere else in Azeroth, assuming its even in there. Whatever it is, after the rollercoster blizz has gone through this year, they really need this one to hit home.
Guys, I'm so salty right now. I am only missing 3 Mercenaries (all legendaries, of course), so I decided to open up my 53 saved packs. Want to know what I got? TWO portraits for legendaries I already had (I do NOT care about cosmetics), a bunch of portraits for rares and epics, TONS of coins I cannot use for maxxed out Mercs, and yes, quite a few coins for Mercs I am still upgrading. I was hoping to net at LEAST one of the missing Mercs, hopefully two. I've clearly reached the point where my collection is so complete that packs are nearly worthless. This feels SO bad, man. I am eagerly awaiting news on what I will be able to use excess coins for. It better be good!
While I can sympathize, the unfortunate reality of mercs is that packs tend to devalue the more mercs you have in your collection. In fact opening a pack now I can easily get 0 value (and frequently do), because Ive all mercs with at least 60% maxed out. The best way to get mercs is grinding it out, waiting for the next big release so you can open more packs for a little more value than usual. I have 60 packs currently sitting in my collection, waiting for the eventual darkmoon (where we'll likely get Yogg) content to come out.
Ive actually considered slowing down on quest completion, because it almost always result in getting coins I dont need.
Pity timers are the best thing team5 can do to alleviate most of the concerns, but the big picture is that merc packs are nearly always worthless. Once you have at least 70% of all the mercs, opening further packs just infuriates, not alleviate.
Has anyone else noticed that AI characters NEVER make attacks that will kill them unless they have no other option, UNLESS you are working on a task where you need to kill them with a specific ability, then they gleefully commit suicide at every opportunity to deny you your task progress?
I suspect that there are different levels of enemy AI in the game. In barrens 1, the enemies dont tend to be smart, they will always attack where their damage will do the most, and the boss AI is pathetic, the third move is always to attack into the highest damage merc.
But at higher levels, the enemy AI is enhanced seemingly, moving in manners I would not expect them to, almost like they're making moves according to my merc composition. Like how in holy teams, the usual strat from the AI is to target anduin. But sometimes whenever I have the ring equipped they'd go for another merc instead. Its weirdly inconsistent.
I've stopped relying on the AI ages ago. In some cases I would farm at higher levels just so they cant suicide into my mercs.
Unless the gameplay is overhauled, Im not optimistic that it would be.
PvE is too much about efficiency. Play fire comp and destroy everything, and when that's not good enough then move to holy, or nature bros. Stuff like beasts, nagas, pirates, old gods, all these aren't bad themselves against the creeps and then the boss or dopplegangsters completely destroys them.
And then there's composition. Lose something like voljin or geddon in their respective comps to creeps and where do you go from there?
All this can be avoided simply by allowing us to switch out mercs, or at least removing retaliation damage, because whenever you're running attackers there's always the common situation where your merc literally kills himself because the whole pve game is seemingly balanced around casters.
Its still going to be a matter of opportunity cost. Running a 7 mana card that doesn't win you the game is usually a tense decision, and warrior having been nerfed to this extent makes me pessimistic about its chances.
If I look back at the times Nellie doesn't give me a 1 mana Smite (which thanks to my goddamn luck happens fairly frequently) I find her very underwhelming. Almost not worth it to even play, unless cheated out early. The 3 pirates (thats not smite) is nice and all, but control warrior rarely ever care about them unless they're winning the game for you.
On a side note. Scoundrel is actually an amazing card for a slow meta. Its hard to believe, but there was a time where this card was actually being played competitively in standard. I'd still take her if Im facing a control or value deck, especially if its still 1 mana 5/5.
There's still some good ones like Stonemaul Anchorman or Southsea Scoundrel on the top end that are actually good cards, more so if they cost only 1. I think team5 changed it into reduce cost by 1 because smite, costing 7 or not, is still going to lop games sideways because of the three 1 cost pirates. Besides, having it as 1 mana also enables brann to sometimes do silly things, particularly with scoundrel.
But ultimately nellie will likely never recover from this unless there's yet more crazy pirates in future expansions. The whole point of playing it in the first place is because of its interactions with smite. And since smite costs 7, and the pirates no longer costing 1 from nellie, it defeats all purpose of playing it in the first place.
It reads refresh, which means whatever the hell druid is doing they will likely still be able to do it. The only thing they cant do is cheat out their ramp or win cons. And I call that a 100% positive result.
Also, Lightning Bloom got a free pass for 2 years before completely cleared out from standard. The fact that it took this long is already charitable enough, considering the massive bs it did in standard. How many turn 1 Overgrowth, or turn 2 guffs, or turn 1 Wildpaw Caverns does it take before someone starts getting a picture of what this card does or did?
Edit: If its gets hit because its a dual class card, that's rough. But we cannot continue to ignore turn 1 concedes. Sorry
Okay, so the balance patch dropped and I got shocked, because I wasn't expecting such extensive changes. In fact, the change is so drastic its almost suggesting that the previous meta was wildly problematic, when in my opinion it wasn't.
Everyone was expecting warrior to get hit, but to get hit this hard? Ouch. I guess we're back to quest warrior until the next expansion. Because I cannot see control warrior ever getting back. The nerf to Shield Shatter basically shattered its AoE because its no longer guaranteed to clear 4 drops (or anything midrange for that matter), and then that massive nerf to From the Depths makes it even harder to play without dying, probably end up completely deleting that card from competitive.
Nerf to cariel...well that's been requested for ages. I personally disagree with it, but that card is basically in every paladin deck and now at 8 mana it'll likely no longer be so.
Changes to gnoll is near mandatory. Its insane that even the most greediest rogue deck around basically gets a free pass early game because of these things. The 3/5 will still be playable, but at least its no longer as offensive. The biggest change though is actually to Mr. Smite, which just completely demolish all of rogue's end game, making sure you can no longer do the combo with Shadowstep+edwin. I guess its all down to Pirate Admiral Hooktusk or bust.
Spitelash Siren change boggles the mind a bit. Not because the nerf wasn't expected, but why the additional health? Its hard enough to clear this shit as a 2/5 and now with 6 health its nearly impossible if you dont have board. I simply have to trust that team5 did the testing and the win rate drops from this change.
One change with a massive thumbs up. Lightning Bloom. Been asking for this since its very inception and for the life of me I cant understand why making this change took nearly 2 years, but here we are; a more balanced bloom. 2 years team5 have resisted and its not even druid's fault. Nice.
So where does this all leave us? My expectation would be warrior goes right back down to the bottom of the tier list, followed by rogue. On the top it might still be dhunters, followed by paladin. Priest, mage and shaman to fight off third spot. The wildcards here is hunter and warlock, because either its stuck on the bottom, or its literally the best class in the game.
Edit: I should have pointed out that nellie went from being the best colossal to instantly being the very worst of them. In fact its nigh unplayable now. They had one job, and that's simply removing mr smite from the pool. And instead we got this.
Lightning Bloom really needs a hit and fast. Like seriously, Ive seen asking for this since scholomance turned out, because all it does is create non-games.
As the power level in hearthstone increases year by year, flexible mana cheats like this one deserves a nuke, nothing less.
Haven't beaten this Task yet, but here's what I noticed: the dudes are just pre-existing Mercs with new names and art? I think one is Diablo, one is Cairne, Sylvanas, Blink Fox, Vol'Jin and maybe Cariel? Did anyone else notice the same thing?
task 9?
Yeah, those are just reskinned mercs, for our pleasure. Each comes with their own equipment.
Cariel/Voljin/Sylvannas, bench Cairne/Diablo/Fox
Here's a hint, take down sylvannas as soon as possible. Followed by Voljin. Preferably both by turn 2.
Interesting to see that what they've done is essentially duplicate noz's quest multiple times, suggesting that its possible that they think at some point they'll need to remove it, rather than add into the queue for regulars (assuming there's such a thing)
I dont expect pitchforks be raised over such a trivial thing but it does points out how transient these rewards really are in hearthstone. Cynically, we can even speculate that they may be testing the waters with this apparently mishap.
Honestly, I went from 119 to dumpster legend. I am going to try again next month, but with a less cute deck. I will try Pillager Rogue now since I don't think I can get back to where I was without a serious time investment.
I honestly have not considered that is what makes a deck tier 1. Playing against real pro players has made me realize I do not know as much as I thought I did. This player is playing Quest Mage, who I have not to beat once the 6 times I have played against him. It has been forever since I felt like I have been seriously challenged by Hearthstone.
Tier 1 decks are defined by their win rates. Usually a win rate of over 55% is a tier 1 deck, against a set of other decks, and of course the data has to be good and clean.
Hearthstone being what it is, I wouldn't be too concerned with rank. Even good players will concede that ranking up ladder has more to do with attrition than mere skill. Most of the best hearthstone players in the world are grinders; you dont get to high legend MMR by winning 80% of your 10 matches per month. And even the best of the best rack up about 60% win rate against their peers.
If challenge if what you seek, just play one of those nerve wrecking combo decks like standard mine rogue.
Unfortunately, I had the pleasure of wasting 45 min only to find out that the task is bugged. And it was no easy feat climbing trying to keep the pirates alive until the end.
After reading through reddit its confirmed that there's no workaround. Some crazed guy tried only 5 mercs (all pirates), all 6 pirates, no death run, etc. Let's hope for a fix soon
Theres one very weird bug with the passives granted to nagas in mercs. Its supposed to grant all nagas +3 speed and reduce damage by 3, but what it does instead is to grant one merc this passive and then it jumps to another merc each turn.
Really makes the naga build unviable in pve, simply because its just more efficient to run other builds that actually benefit from passives.
This is perhaps the first and only time I feel the miniset wrecked a better meta. But I still like it more than the quest meta. Let's hope the next expansion doesn't screw it all up like they always seem to do.
In any case currently Tidal Revenant is doing wonders less because of its own merits but because of warrior's suprising mana cheating. To be honest, if it comes out at 8 its really not that great. The problem is when it comes out on 5 and suddenly all your work just went up the air and you're facing a 5/8 on the opposite side. Funny thing is that I still think the kazakusan build is the better ladder deck.
Fossil Fanatic is a winner because everyone except for rogue is playing greed to fight off control warrior. Its actually amazing how many cards this one thing can draw simply because your opponent cant remove it on 2. Also, perhaps buffing Xhilag that drastically isn't team5's best decision of the year. Just turned Caria literally into patches
Shaman still respectable in my opinion. Giving mutanus a 2 mana discount is about as insane as it gets in shaman, and Ive been enjoying it.
I think I happen on a bug for Yshaarj's task 5, the one where you need to finish Ursula Windfury without her attacking once.
Apparently if you finish up any fight then this one is completed automatically. Its obviously a bug. I think the trigger is if you finish off a fight without any of them attacking then this procts immediately.
This bug will save you the need to have Elise in your team, because from what Ive seen there's really no other way to do this other than one-shotting Ursula from full, with attacks that are speed 4 or less in turn 1.
Honestly, I cant come up with a defense for this one. Dopplegangster in mercs is the one thing that peeves me more than hot potato. Basically if you dont have AoE you are nearly guaranteed to lose one merc, or lose entirely as a matter of fact.
That move it does on the first turn has got to get nerfed to 5 or 6 speed. Currently, this one fight is a game ender, especially in heroics.
Is this confirmed? Because at the moment, I think naga builds aren't all that attractive.
The passives they gain seem to be bugged, without which they are just bang on average, maybe even worst than murlocs or pirates.
In this day and age where game choice are plentiful, and MMOs scattered everywhere, I really can't see where a subscription + upfront fee model would work. But of course, we're talking about WoW, which practically popularize MMOs so its always going sell even if its shit, as we have seen with diablo immortal.
But on first glance, it really shows that blizz cornered themselves with shadowlands, because that genuinely looked like WoW's ending to me. So this expansion looks less like a story progression than a magical fun tour somewhere else in Azeroth, assuming its even in there. Whatever it is, after the rollercoster blizz has gone through this year, they really need this one to hit home.
While I can sympathize, the unfortunate reality of mercs is that packs tend to devalue the more mercs you have in your collection. In fact opening a pack now I can easily get 0 value (and frequently do), because Ive all mercs with at least 60% maxed out. The best way to get mercs is grinding it out, waiting for the next big release so you can open more packs for a little more value than usual. I have 60 packs currently sitting in my collection, waiting for the eventual darkmoon (where we'll likely get Yogg) content to come out.
Ive actually considered slowing down on quest completion, because it almost always result in getting coins I dont need.
Pity timers are the best thing team5 can do to alleviate most of the concerns, but the big picture is that merc packs are nearly always worthless. Once you have at least 70% of all the mercs, opening further packs just infuriates, not alleviate.
I suspect that there are different levels of enemy AI in the game. In barrens 1, the enemies dont tend to be smart, they will always attack where their damage will do the most, and the boss AI is pathetic, the third move is always to attack into the highest damage merc.
But at higher levels, the enemy AI is enhanced seemingly, moving in manners I would not expect them to, almost like they're making moves according to my merc composition. Like how in holy teams, the usual strat from the AI is to target anduin. But sometimes whenever I have the ring equipped they'd go for another merc instead. Its weirdly inconsistent.
I've stopped relying on the AI ages ago. In some cases I would farm at higher levels just so they cant suicide into my mercs.
Unless the gameplay is overhauled, Im not optimistic that it would be.
PvE is too much about efficiency. Play fire comp and destroy everything, and when that's not good enough then move to holy, or nature bros. Stuff like beasts, nagas, pirates, old gods, all these aren't bad themselves against the creeps and then the boss or dopplegangsters completely destroys them.
And then there's composition. Lose something like voljin or geddon in their respective comps to creeps and where do you go from there?
All this can be avoided simply by allowing us to switch out mercs, or at least removing retaliation damage, because whenever you're running attackers there's always the common situation where your merc literally kills himself because the whole pve game is seemingly balanced around casters.
Its still going to be a matter of opportunity cost. Running a 7 mana card that doesn't win you the game is usually a tense decision, and warrior having been nerfed to this extent makes me pessimistic about its chances.
If I look back at the times Nellie doesn't give me a 1 mana Smite (which thanks to my goddamn luck happens fairly frequently) I find her very underwhelming. Almost not worth it to even play, unless cheated out early. The 3 pirates (thats not smite) is nice and all, but control warrior rarely ever care about them unless they're winning the game for you.
On a side note. Scoundrel is actually an amazing card for a slow meta. Its hard to believe, but there was a time where this card was actually being played competitively in standard. I'd still take her if Im facing a control or value deck, especially if its still 1 mana 5/5.
There's still some good ones like Stonemaul Anchorman or Southsea Scoundrel on the top end that are actually good cards, more so if they cost only 1. I think team5 changed it into reduce cost by 1 because smite, costing 7 or not, is still going to lop games sideways because of the three 1 cost pirates. Besides, having it as 1 mana also enables brann to sometimes do silly things, particularly with scoundrel.
But ultimately nellie will likely never recover from this unless there's yet more crazy pirates in future expansions. The whole point of playing it in the first place is because of its interactions with smite. And since smite costs 7, and the pirates no longer costing 1 from nellie, it defeats all purpose of playing it in the first place.
It reads refresh, which means whatever the hell druid is doing they will likely still be able to do it. The only thing they cant do is cheat out their ramp or win cons. And I call that a 100% positive result.
Also, Lightning Bloom got a free pass for 2 years before completely cleared out from standard. The fact that it took this long is already charitable enough, considering the massive bs it did in standard. How many turn 1 Overgrowth, or turn 2 guffs, or turn 1 Wildpaw Caverns does it take before someone starts getting a picture of what this card does or did?
Edit: If its gets hit because its a dual class card, that's rough. But we cannot continue to ignore turn 1 concedes. Sorry
Okay, so the balance patch dropped and I got shocked, because I wasn't expecting such extensive changes. In fact, the change is so drastic its almost suggesting that the previous meta was wildly problematic, when in my opinion it wasn't.
Everyone was expecting warrior to get hit, but to get hit this hard? Ouch. I guess we're back to quest warrior until the next expansion. Because I cannot see control warrior ever getting back. The nerf to Shield Shatter basically shattered its AoE because its no longer guaranteed to clear 4 drops (or anything midrange for that matter), and then that massive nerf to From the Depths makes it even harder to play without dying, probably end up completely deleting that card from competitive.
Nerf to cariel...well that's been requested for ages. I personally disagree with it, but that card is basically in every paladin deck and now at 8 mana it'll likely no longer be so.
Changes to gnoll is near mandatory. Its insane that even the most greediest rogue deck around basically gets a free pass early game because of these things. The 3/5 will still be playable, but at least its no longer as offensive. The biggest change though is actually to Mr. Smite, which just completely demolish all of rogue's end game, making sure you can no longer do the combo with Shadowstep+edwin. I guess its all down to Pirate Admiral Hooktusk or bust.
Spitelash Siren change boggles the mind a bit. Not because the nerf wasn't expected, but why the additional health? Its hard enough to clear this shit as a 2/5 and now with 6 health its nearly impossible if you dont have board. I simply have to trust that team5 did the testing and the win rate drops from this change.
One change with a massive thumbs up. Lightning Bloom. Been asking for this since its very inception and for the life of me I cant understand why making this change took nearly 2 years, but here we are; a more balanced bloom. 2 years team5 have resisted and its not even druid's fault. Nice.
So where does this all leave us? My expectation would be warrior goes right back down to the bottom of the tier list, followed by rogue. On the top it might still be dhunters, followed by paladin. Priest, mage and shaman to fight off third spot. The wildcards here is hunter and warlock, because either its stuck on the bottom, or its literally the best class in the game.
Edit: I should have pointed out that nellie went from being the best colossal to instantly being the very worst of them. In fact its nigh unplayable now. They had one job, and that's simply removing mr smite from the pool. And instead we got this.
Lightning Bloom really needs a hit and fast. Like seriously, Ive seen asking for this since scholomance turned out, because all it does is create non-games.
As the power level in hearthstone increases year by year, flexible mana cheats like this one deserves a nuke, nothing less.
task 9?
Yeah, those are just reskinned mercs, for our pleasure. Each comes with their own equipment.
Cariel/Voljin/Sylvannas, bench Cairne/Diablo/Fox
Here's a hint, take down sylvannas as soon as possible. Followed by Voljin. Preferably both by turn 2.
Interesting to see that what they've done is essentially duplicate noz's quest multiple times, suggesting that its possible that they think at some point they'll need to remove it, rather than add into the queue for regulars (assuming there's such a thing)
I dont expect pitchforks be raised over such a trivial thing but it does points out how transient these rewards really are in hearthstone. Cynically, we can even speculate that they may be testing the waters with this apparently mishap.
Tier 1 decks are defined by their win rates. Usually a win rate of over 55% is a tier 1 deck, against a set of other decks, and of course the data has to be good and clean.
Hearthstone being what it is, I wouldn't be too concerned with rank. Even good players will concede that ranking up ladder has more to do with attrition than mere skill. Most of the best hearthstone players in the world are grinders; you dont get to high legend MMR by winning 80% of your 10 matches per month. And even the best of the best rack up about 60% win rate against their peers.
If challenge if what you seek, just play one of those nerve wrecking combo decks like standard mine rogue.
Yup, can confirm. Ive completed task 9.
Unfortunately, I had the pleasure of wasting 45 min only to find out that the task is bugged. And it was no easy feat climbing trying to keep the pirates alive until the end.
After reading through reddit its confirmed that there's no workaround. Some crazed guy tried only 5 mercs (all pirates), all 6 pirates, no death run, etc. Let's hope for a fix soon
Theres one very weird bug with the passives granted to nagas in mercs. Its supposed to grant all nagas +3 speed and reduce damage by 3, but what it does instead is to grant one merc this passive and then it jumps to another merc each turn.
Really makes the naga build unviable in pve, simply because its just more efficient to run other builds that actually benefit from passives.
This is perhaps the first and only time I feel the miniset wrecked a better meta. But I still like it more than the quest meta. Let's hope the next expansion doesn't screw it all up like they always seem to do.
In any case currently Tidal Revenant is doing wonders less because of its own merits but because of warrior's suprising mana cheating. To be honest, if it comes out at 8 its really not that great. The problem is when it comes out on 5 and suddenly all your work just went up the air and you're facing a 5/8 on the opposite side. Funny thing is that I still think the kazakusan build is the better ladder deck.
Fossil Fanatic is a winner because everyone except for rogue is playing greed to fight off control warrior. Its actually amazing how many cards this one thing can draw simply because your opponent cant remove it on 2. Also, perhaps buffing Xhilag that drastically isn't team5's best decision of the year. Just turned Caria literally into patches
Shaman still respectable in my opinion. Giving mutanus a 2 mana discount is about as insane as it gets in shaman, and Ive been enjoying it.
I think I happen on a bug for Yshaarj's task 5, the one where you need to finish Ursula Windfury without her attacking once.
Apparently if you finish up any fight then this one is completed automatically. Its obviously a bug. I think the trigger is if you finish off a fight without any of them attacking then this procts immediately.
This bug will save you the need to have Elise in your team, because from what Ive seen there's really no other way to do this other than one-shotting Ursula from full, with attacks that are speed 4 or less in turn 1.
Honestly, I cant come up with a defense for this one. Dopplegangster in mercs is the one thing that peeves me more than hot potato. Basically if you dont have AoE you are nearly guaranteed to lose one merc, or lose entirely as a matter of fact.
That move it does on the first turn has got to get nerfed to 5 or 6 speed. Currently, this one fight is a game ender, especially in heroics.
Just wanted to add that psychus' deathrattle also affects your nzoth. Funny, that interaction.