First and only opponent: a Warlock. Easiest brawl ever.
Did you know that if a Warlock plays Reckless Apprentice, he draws a card (and takes damage) once for each enemy minion? I guess my opponent didn't know, either.
I doubt I will try very hard to level up many of the free starters. I'll use them just enough to earn some packs and then level up my favorites from those packs.
It looks like Tamsin will be an easy craft if I don't find her in free packs -- one of the Barrens bounties offers her coins at a boosted rate -- and she's one of the mercs I want to start working on soon, hoping to create a good demon team (or shadow team, or both) eventually.
If they had offered these before the Stormwind meta, I would have bought Rastakhan for sure. (I already have Elise.)
If it hadn't taken them three patches over the course of seven weeks to finally address The Demon Seed, I might have bought Rastakhan.
But as things stand, I'm really not in the mood to spend money on Hearthstone cosmetics. Honestly, there are so many skins in the game at this point, none of them seem special or interesting anymore.
It's a reasonable concern, but I also like to consider the bench. You'll definitely want to have all three roles represented in the full party, no matter what you do.
I'm actually pretty disappointed that Arcane is completely absent from the list of Protectors so far. I believe all the other schools are represented, so it kind of sucks that you cannot field a full, balanced team of Arcane synergy.
Do you want to, though? From what I've seen so far 1/1/1 might be a risky strategy, because while you're covering every Role you're also exposing yourself to double-damage in at least some capacity. You also spread out your damage such-that you can't burst down a major threat/boss with your superior color. There should be an Arcane Protector for when you want to do 2/1 comps in blue+red or red+green, but I don't know yet if fielding a "balanced" team is a good idea.
Yes, for easy bounties I'd definitely want something more like that.
But do you think 1-1-1 is a bad way to open in PvP, considering you have no idea what your opponent is going to open with?
Also, let's not forget that we've only seen non-Heroic, low-level PvE. These seem to be designed so that you can't possibly lose unless your party is severely under-leveled. I hope and expect the more challenging battles to involve some full RGB comps, in which case you are open to critical damage no matter what team you field.
I'm actually pretty disappointed that Arcane is completely absent from the list of Protectors so far. (Did I miss it?) I believe all the other schools are represented, so it kind of sucks that you cannot field a full, balanced team of Arcane synergy.
First, I absolutely agree with everyone who says Blizzard had done a terrible job of communicating. However, if you think information is lacking or poorly presented, then THAT is what you should complain about. You should not trash the whole game mode or feature based on assumptions you chose to make to fill those information gaps. In other words, "I still have questions about Mercenaries" does not in any way imply "Mercenaries sucks."
Second, don't feel sorry for me or imagine I care about downvotes. I really, really don't.
Im surprised you'd group the three together when both Regis and Dekkster, while being one of the earliest to address the issue, posted only 1 video each and it has been widely accepted as a balanced viewpoint (incidentally both Regis and Dekkster are still in blizz's good books unlike Zeddy, which will more or less show the difference between them).
I agree that Zeddy deserves the lion's share of the blame, but Regis and Dexxster both based their videos entirely on his analysis without doing any calculations themselves or considering what information might be missing. To me, that's pretty irresponsible and feels like pandering to the hater-base.
Also, a short comment on what you responded to Marega; the internet is a collective of people without any clear leader, and that's what set it apart from all the disasters in history, which can only be made possible whenever a community let a small group of people decide their lives for them.
I would argue that the Hearthstone community is a collection of both individuals and tribes, and those tribes do have very clear leaders. The Reward Track toxicity was headed up by Zeddy and exacerbated by Regis and Dexxter, among others. All three of those people presented a very incomplete picture of the Track because they lacked information -- much as you just did. You completely glossed over the special event XP that we never saw and never will because they changed the track before we got to that point. We were told that this (among other things) would have made a huge difference in the calculations. I'm sure there is other information about the original track that will never see daylight because it's all a moot point now.
As a company, Blizzard is surely out for itself, but trust me on this -- they know they cannot get away with outright lying to us. They know their fans are highly suspicious and will crunch every number possible to verify any and every claim Blizzard makes. They know they are wandering into a PR minefield every time they make a public statement of any kind. There is simply nothing to be gained by lying when you are under that kind of scrutiny -- especially when the lies are as easy to catch as they would have been with the Reward Track.
Perhaps you can credit the community for getting more out of the track -- we are certainly getting a LOT more gold now than we did under the old system, whereas the first iteration was said (by Blizzard) to be only slightly more for most people. But the collective tantrum was still grossly premature. The correct time to take Blizzard to task would have been AFTER one complete track, when everyone would have had solid data to compare to the gold of previous expansions. If the track had actually given less gold than everyone hoped and expected, I'm sure Blizzard would have been appropriately embarrassed and would have made up the difference. If they didn't, they would stand to lose a lot of players for good reason.
I'm not saying we shouldn't scrutinize and question. I'm just saying nothing good ever comes from jumping to conclusions and getting hateful based on incomplete information.
Hold up. The rewards track backlash was unfounded? Are you serious? You cant be. Thats the one thing that everyone agreed upon at the time.
You probably believe that because you bought into the negativity without actually getting the facts. "Everyone agrees" is the worst possible reason to adopt any opinion. That's how the worst parts of human history have happened, and it's also why I have such a big problem with the hate bandwagon.
If you actually looked into the facts about the Reward Track, you'd know that not much changed in the revamp. They just moved some of the rewards around to make it more obvious that it was better than the old system. The first iteration was already fine, but people were too willing to assume the worst, just like they are doing with Mercenaries.
Man, to deserve a full thread opened just to stick one up on a group of people on the internet who has apparently been harsh on blizz's new toy. Its like these guys spat into your cup of coffee one day and you swore to never let them get away with it.
For one thing, the video contains important information that absolutely does deserve a new thread.
But yes, I do have a huge problem with the constant stream of negativity from people who don't even have all the facts. I fully recognize that Blizzard is somewhat to blame for not providing those facts sooner, but that doesn't excuse this ridiculous repeat of the Reward Track backlash, which was also completely unfounded.
Trying to cancel a game mode before it's released -- before we even have answers to our questions about it -- is more harmful to Hearthstone than any of the stuff people were claiming Mercenaries was guilty of.
It seems Trump got his hands on an early access account so he could demonstrate the early stages of Mercenaries to the benighted masses eager fans. And OH BOY are the haters getting shut down bit by bit as new information trickles out.
As I predicted, they had to allow new players to build a village without having a huge pile of gold saved up; otherwise, you just wouldn't be able to play. That's exactly how it works -- all the basic buildings are free. That's right -- FREE. No need to tap into your precious gold reserves and cannibalize your Hearthstone card pack fund, you stupid overreacting babies precious darlings.
You get enough coins to upgrade some abilities before you even finish the tutorial. You also get some packs from bonus quests just for doing the first few bounties (which are extremely fast and easy), so all starting players will be well on their way to a nice robust collection.
I'm sure haters are still gonna hate (because reasons), but those reasons just aren't going to hold any water anymore.
I'm still betting on late October. They do updates every 2 weeks now, right? And the update with Mercenaries isn't really a major update to traditional Hearthstone, so you might reasonably expect the October 26 update to be the next major (traditional) Hearthstone update after that.
The end of the Wailing Caverns offer makes me think it could even be sooner.
We got some valuable information today about various aspects of Mercenaries, so I'm wondering what new thoughts are swirling out there.
Stuff that matters to me personally:
153 free packs plus 76,500 additional coins from Campfire quests
Crafting costs for mercs!
100 for rare
300 for epic
500 for legendary
Certain coins drop more frequently from certain Bounties, so you can farm that legendary you're dying to have
Less than 10 hours played time to get your party to level 30
Assumes you stick with the same party roster
Can power-level new Mercs by letting them watch from the bench
50% more Merc XP for Heroic Bounties
Mercenaries updates should be as frequent as Battlegrounds updates
No nerfs for PvE reasons, minimal for PvP unless something totally breaks the game
As someone who enjoys unlocking and collecting things, it seems like the game will be a lot of fun if I never buy a single pack with cash. The packs from quests will be more than enough to collect a ton of Mercs, and every Merc you pull from a pack will unlock more quests. This cycle breaks down once you've got all the rares and epics, so maybe you end up grinding coins for some legendaries at the end, but that doesn't seem so bad to me.
Still no answers to my only real questions -- What happens to coin drops once a mercenary is fully upgraded? What becomes of leftover coins?
But it's nice to know the price of crafting a new Merc -- that's important information. Honestly, they are making it seem so easy to collect and upgrade everything that I'm considering the f2p approach. I was willing to pay a bit to get a head start on the collection, but it kinda feels unnecessary now. I don't care at all about leaderboards, so I'm in no hurry to dive into PvP with a perfectly curated team.
This ultra-rare pool is a huge move that I both love and hate. I love that we'll see less of these cards, but after so much as admitting they are bad for the game, wouldn't it make more sense to remove them entirely, or nerf them like you'd nerf other broken cards?
The whole idea of getting lucky with a crazy powerful loot drop was fine in Dungeon Runs, but it's stupid as hell in a PvP mode.
It's weird to think about how they are banning an Arena card that I've never even seen played in constructed. Just goes to show how unimportant the board is in the Standard meta.
I can't believe they straight-up murdered Illucia. They could have changed her in a way that left her viable in non-aggro archetypes. It has been quite sime time since they utterly trashed a card like this.
Can't wait to start making Wildfire with Wandmaker. Fire Mage is about to get spicy! If it does work, it will be just as overplayed as Quest Mage, and we'll get a whole new round of whining about a whole new Tier 2 deck that's not actually oppressive.
I made a hero power Mage.
First and only opponent: a Warlock. Easiest brawl ever.
Did you know that if a Warlock plays Reckless Apprentice, he draws a card (and takes damage) once for each enemy minion? I guess my opponent didn't know, either.
I doubt I will try very hard to level up many of the free starters. I'll use them just enough to earn some packs and then level up my favorites from those packs.
It looks like Tamsin will be an easy craft if I don't find her in free packs -- one of the Barrens bounties offers her coins at a boosted rate -- and she's one of the mercs I want to start working on soon, hoping to create a good demon team (or shadow team, or both) eventually.
If they had offered these before the Stormwind meta, I would have bought Rastakhan for sure. (I already have Elise.)
If it hadn't taken them three patches over the course of seven weeks to finally address The Demon Seed, I might have bought Rastakhan.
But as things stand, I'm really not in the mood to spend money on Hearthstone cosmetics. Honestly, there are so many skins in the game at this point, none of them seem special or interesting anymore.
It's a reasonable concern, but I also like to consider the bench. You'll definitely want to have all three roles represented in the full party, no matter what you do.
Yes, for easy bounties I'd definitely want something more like that.
But do you think 1-1-1 is a bad way to open in PvP, considering you have no idea what your opponent is going to open with?
Also, let's not forget that we've only seen non-Heroic, low-level PvE. These seem to be designed so that you can't possibly lose unless your party is severely under-leveled. I hope and expect the more challenging battles to involve some full RGB comps, in which case you are open to critical damage no matter what team you field.
I'm actually pretty disappointed that Arcane is completely absent from the list of Protectors so far. (Did I miss it?) I believe all the other schools are represented, so it kind of sucks that you cannot field a full, balanced team of Arcane synergy.
Just a couple of notes here:
First, I absolutely agree with everyone who says Blizzard had done a terrible job of communicating. However, if you think information is lacking or poorly presented, then THAT is what you should complain about. You should not trash the whole game mode or feature based on assumptions you chose to make to fill those information gaps. In other words, "I still have questions about Mercenaries" does not in any way imply "Mercenaries sucks."
Second, don't feel sorry for me or imagine I care about downvotes. I really, really don't.
I agree that Zeddy deserves the lion's share of the blame, but Regis and Dexxster both based their videos entirely on his analysis without doing any calculations themselves or considering what information might be missing. To me, that's pretty irresponsible and feels like pandering to the hater-base.
I would argue that the Hearthstone community is a collection of both individuals and tribes, and those tribes do have very clear leaders. The Reward Track toxicity was headed up by Zeddy and exacerbated by Regis and Dexxter, among others. All three of those people presented a very incomplete picture of the Track because they lacked information -- much as you just did. You completely glossed over the special event XP that we never saw and never will because they changed the track before we got to that point. We were told that this (among other things) would have made a huge difference in the calculations. I'm sure there is other information about the original track that will never see daylight because it's all a moot point now.
As a company, Blizzard is surely out for itself, but trust me on this -- they know they cannot get away with outright lying to us. They know their fans are highly suspicious and will crunch every number possible to verify any and every claim Blizzard makes. They know they are wandering into a PR minefield every time they make a public statement of any kind. There is simply nothing to be gained by lying when you are under that kind of scrutiny -- especially when the lies are as easy to catch as they would have been with the Reward Track.
Perhaps you can credit the community for getting more out of the track -- we are certainly getting a LOT more gold now than we did under the old system, whereas the first iteration was said (by Blizzard) to be only slightly more for most people. But the collective tantrum was still grossly premature. The correct time to take Blizzard to task would have been AFTER one complete track, when everyone would have had solid data to compare to the gold of previous expansions. If the track had actually given less gold than everyone hoped and expected, I'm sure Blizzard would have been appropriately embarrassed and would have made up the difference. If they didn't, they would stand to lose a lot of players for good reason.
I'm not saying we shouldn't scrutinize and question. I'm just saying nothing good ever comes from jumping to conclusions and getting hateful based on incomplete information.
You probably believe that because you bought into the negativity without actually getting the facts. "Everyone agrees" is the worst possible reason to adopt any opinion. That's how the worst parts of human history have happened, and it's also why I have such a big problem with the hate bandwagon.
If you actually looked into the facts about the Reward Track, you'd know that not much changed in the revamp. They just moved some of the rewards around to make it more obvious that it was better than the old system. The first iteration was already fine, but people were too willing to assume the worst, just like they are doing with Mercenaries.
For one thing, the video contains important information that absolutely does deserve a new thread.
But yes, I do have a huge problem with the constant stream of negativity from people who don't even have all the facts. I fully recognize that Blizzard is somewhat to blame for not providing those facts sooner, but that doesn't excuse this ridiculous repeat of the Reward Track backlash, which was also completely unfounded.
Trying to cancel a game mode before it's released -- before we even have answers to our questions about it -- is more harmful to Hearthstone than any of the stuff people were claiming Mercenaries was guilty of.
It seems Trump got his hands on an early access account so he could demonstrate the early stages of Mercenaries to the benighted masses eager fans. And OH BOY are the haters getting shut down bit by bit as new information trickles out.
As I predicted, they had to allow new players to build a village without having a huge pile of gold saved up; otherwise, you just wouldn't be able to play. That's exactly how it works -- all the basic buildings are free. That's right -- FREE. No need to tap into your precious gold reserves and cannibalize your Hearthstone card pack fund, you stupid overreacting babies precious darlings.
You get enough coins to upgrade some abilities before you even finish the tutorial. You also get some packs from bonus quests just for doing the first few bounties (which are extremely fast and easy), so all starting players will be well on their way to a nice robust collection.
I'm sure haters are still gonna hate (because reasons), but those reasons just aren't going to hold any water anymore.
I'm still betting on late October. They do updates every 2 weeks now, right? And the update with Mercenaries isn't really a major update to traditional Hearthstone, so you might reasonably expect the October 26 update to be the next major (traditional) Hearthstone update after that.
The end of the Wailing Caverns offer makes me think it could even be sooner.
We got some valuable information today about various aspects of Mercenaries, so I'm wondering what new thoughts are swirling out there.
Stuff that matters to me personally:
As someone who enjoys unlocking and collecting things, it seems like the game will be a lot of fun if I never buy a single pack with cash. The packs from quests will be more than enough to collect a ton of Mercs, and every Merc you pull from a pack will unlock more quests. This cycle breaks down once you've got all the rares and epics, so maybe you end up grinding coins for some legendaries at the end, but that doesn't seem so bad to me.
EDIT: Corrected price of legendary crafting
Iksar tweeted that it's the same as ranked constructed for PvP, same as other modes for PvE.
Still no answers to my only real questions -- What happens to coin drops once a mercenary is fully upgraded? What becomes of leftover coins?
But it's nice to know the price of crafting a new Merc -- that's important information. Honestly, they are making it seem so easy to collect and upgrade everything that I'm considering the f2p approach. I was willing to pay a bit to get a head start on the collection, but it kinda feels unnecessary now. I don't care at all about leaderboards, so I'm in no hurry to dive into PvP with a perfectly curated team.
This ultra-rare pool is a huge move that I both love and hate. I love that we'll see less of these cards, but after so much as admitting they are bad for the game, wouldn't it make more sense to remove them entirely, or nerf them like you'd nerf other broken cards?
The whole idea of getting lucky with a crazy powerful loot drop was fine in Dungeon Runs, but it's stupid as hell in a PvP mode.
It's weird to think about how they are banning an Arena card that I've never even seen played in constructed. Just goes to show how unimportant the board is in the Standard meta.
I can't believe they straight-up murdered Illucia. They could have changed her in a way that left her viable in non-aggro archetypes. It has been quite sime time since they utterly trashed a card like this.
Can't wait to start making Wildfire with Wandmaker. Fire Mage is about to get spicy! If it does work, it will be just as overplayed as Quest Mage, and we'll get a whole new round of whining about a whole new Tier 2 deck that's not actually oppressive.
OK, here's what I'd like to see:
4-Cost 4/5, Tradeable, Battlecry: Destroy your opponent's Quest. If you do, deal 8 damage to your Hero.