The thing Hearthstone needs the most to maintain longevity is modes/formats. A lot of 'em. The base of the game is solid, but those are just the tools. Formats and modes are what dictates the rules in which these tools can be used. MtG, though far from perfect, has this down pat. They have so many formats you have to be someone who actively dislikes the game if you can't find a format that appeals to you. HS is very limited in this respect. It has three formats in total if we disregard BGs and Tavern Brawl and is only really actively supporting one of them. That has to change. Give us more ways to use our cards and pay attention to the state of these formats with more frequent balancing and updates and HS can keep going for decades.
Mine is a combination of various inspirations. One time at school during an IT class, we had a chance to play some games together instead of learning programming. At the time, I didn't really have an online nick, as I mostly played single player games like Diablo 2 where you name your characters, not your account as a whole. So when the game put me on the spot and asked me to make up a name that instant, first thing that popped into my head back then was the name Marcus. A variation on my real name, but with a bit of a Roman flavour as I really dug ancient mythology at the time and Greece, Egypt and Rome were some of my favourite cultures. The name is also partially inspired by the sheriff of Broken Hills from Fallout 2, a supermutant, humanoid so big he could strap a damn gattling cannon to his forearm and carry it in one hand.
Not long after that I forgot the password to my old e-mail account so I created a new one. I wanted to use the name Marcus again but an e-mail address like that already existed, even xMarcusx, and since e-mails don't allow you to use brackets and I really like symmetry, I took inspiration from what we were learing in math class at the time (absolute values) and used lower case L's as brackets around my nick. Have used that ever since, unless that name is taken, in which case I use MarcusTheAbsolute (my YT account for example).
I'd say George is a bit of an outlier on the list. He fails really hard in the early game or in the hands of an inexperienced player, which I think tanks his winrate a lot, but he's one of the strongest heroes out there if you make sure you're as strong in the early game as you can possibly be to preserve your health. The one thing holding him back from being outright broken past the midgame is the fact Nefarian exists (though in most cases Nefarian takes almost as much of a beating in the early game as George does, cause his hero power is only good mid-late) and the fact that juggler builds have become so strong. If not for jugglers, a single tiny poisonous murloc with George's hero power can take out massive demons other players have paid dozens of HP to build up.
Really wish they went back to the original system of deckbuilding for these adventures with special heroes etc. Sure, we're getting new cards for the adventure this time, which is nice, but the content itself seems, honestly, like a total hackjob. You get a premade experience with specific hero against specific boss, generally just breezing through on a wave of your deck's overpoweredness which you had nothing to do with, and then when heroic comes around, you just grab your best deck or some sort of OTK and kill the boss in one or two goes. No replay value, no fun deckbuilding shenanigans, no amazing new synergies, no treasures, just grab your OP deck of choice and kill everything as if it were ladder. Feels really lackluster, cheap and not worth the asking price compared to adventures, at least in terms of the gameplay you get out of it.
Star Aligner Druid is highly overrated. The moment the meta responded to it in any measure, be it through Deathlords, Dirty Rats or such, the deck completely fell to pieces since essentially the only minions it ran were the ones it needed for the combo. Druid's draw was so good that it really didn't need anything else, most card draw minions were severely subpar compared to the tools Druid had. Plus, the moment the Druid player used Psychmelon, they completely telegraphed they are open to getting Ratted. Once it became clear that Star Aligner Druids are a considerable part of the meta, control and combo decks started including Dirty Rats and all of a sudden, that deck became unplayable. I don't think there has been a single combo deck in the history of the game that has been that vulnerable to disruption.
In that respect, Snip-Snap Lock seems to be a much better fit because it was much harder to counter, and even if they couldn't OTK you because you kept clearing their mechs every turn, they could still just generate a board you couldn't really recover from without an unconditional board clear like Plague of Death. And obviously, they'd do it much sooner than turn 9.
I'd personally go much further back, and say that the most busted decks for their time were Combo Druid (Force of Nature + Savage Roar) and Patron OTK. Both decks were often waved off by idiots with the words "just play taunts and they're done, lol". That argument was bullshit. At the time, Druid's midgame minions were sufficiently hard to remove that it was nearly impossible to ensure that you can consistently keep their board clear or that you wouldn't take damage to your face to drop you to 14. Anything they had left on their board the turn they decide to OTK you just increased the damage potential of the combo and made sure no board of taunts you had could stop them. Essentially, all classes were playing against 30 health opponents, Druid was playing against 16 health opponents. As for Patron...your board didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was their APM. If they were fast enough, they'd kill you from no board and with you having full health and there wasn't shit you could do about it.
Edit: Forgot about Machine Gun Priest. That was possibly the most unpleasant HS has ever been to play for me. And that's counting now when I'm getting constant disconnects for no reason. Better disconnects than getting pinged down for 0 mana.
If only the Guardian wasn't a beast, it would be perfect for Hadronox Druid. Two taunts for revive for the price of one, and both sides would come with reborn when resummoned with Hadronox.
Not sure where on Wild you're playing but in my experience Zoo Warlock is a laughing stock among top decks (bottom tier 2 as of December). It has little to no flexibility and very poor answers to many other, more powerful decks. Any kind of AoE tends to just wipe it off the board and in most cases, everything Zoolock does, Odd Paladin does better. In a meta of ultra defensive Reno decks, mana-cheating control decks and lightning-fast Secret Mages, Zoolock seems to barely get a word in. And now it just got worse.
Seems better than Kobold Illusionist in some ways. Doesn't mess with N'Zoth's res pool, draws you towards your N'Zoth + Scheme combo, but doesn't go into bigrattle rogue which, honestly, doesn't really need the help,. Also lines up nicely with Ahnka and with Necrium Blade in terms of mana cost. Probably a good replacement for Elven Minstrel in those kinds of decks. Same limitations, less draw, better tempo. Me likes.
I think Wolf at 2 is way above the curve compared to the other minions available on that tier (e.g. Harvest Golem). They should both be at 3 or Wolf should be removed completely, since it's frankly just bad and upgrades really poorly.
First impressions of the new heroes: Brann is fairly decent provided you go for a tribe that benefits well from battlecries, and getting a Humonculus on 1 makes you really strong for the first few rounds. You do need your bonuses to land in the right place though, since they trigger after the battlecry comes in, meaning they can hit your battlecry minion you intended to resell.
Syndragosa can be really powerful, especially if your taverns align really well where you want to buy multiple minions from the same board. Even if you don't get lucky, just freezing the first board through turn 1, your tavern upgrade on 2, then buying on 3 and on 4 what you previously froze gives you a powerful start.
Elise is...eh...she's not bad, but I think her hero power could use a discount. When you have to pay a full 3 gold, it doesn't seem like that much of a benefit, especially since you only get to make use of her power a handful of times.
Finley though. Finley is actively atrocious. The token stacking and reselling mechanic of Deryl doesn't work since you have to pay for it, making it extremely gold inefficient, and your hero power will often end up hitting the tokens you intend to sell. Cycling battlecries to keep refreshing your hero power is awful since you forego your rerolls to do it and end up with measly +3/+3 to show for it a lot of the time. It's just. Ugh. I sincerely hope there is something utterly broken I'm not getting, because this guy makes Giantfin look OP.
One correction on the attack order. Assuming both players have the same number of minions, which player gets to attack first does seem to be random, or, I at least have not been able to find a pattern. However, if one player has more minions than the other, say 7 vs 6, the player with more minions gets to attack first. So even if you have a worthless battlecry minion occupying a space on your board, do not sell it for a last minute reroll. If your opponent happens to have fewer minions than you do, you get to guarantee that your first minon, say a Cave Hydra, gets its attack off before it gets killed.
Well, I'm glad I managed to finish an absurd Toki run with Mama Bears right before the patch hit. Was fun while it lasted, Toki. Will miss you lots. Good news is, my dear Jaraxxus just got a nifty boost and Mukla won't be as pathetic anymore. Giantfin still needs loads of work though.
Edit: Also, dummies forgot to change the damn text on Toki's hero power, or rather, what it says in the patch notes and what it says in the game does not match. ...and the rope now throws shadows in the opposite direction. Sigh.
If you play as Rafaam, you start with a treasure in your deck that makes the next card you play cost 0 but then it gets removed from your deck. It took me two runs with Rafaam and the right choice of treasures and I managed to get rid of all 20 of my BFFs from my deck. Otherwise, yeah, ruins the fun.
I wonder if they'll be adding alternate portraits also for the non-basic heroes, like Maiev. The 1000 win reward worked for all (gold border around the portrait) but this will require redrawing a lot of characters so not sure if they'd do it.
I would be super excited for a nice RTS autumn with AoE2:DE and (hopefully) Warcraft III reforged, but I'll be damned if I'm switching to Windows 10 just for AoE2:DE. Microsoft is being a real asshole as a platform holder. Instead of trying to get their product in the hands of as many excited players as possible, they're essentially using it as yet another tool to try and coerce people to switch to this hellspawn of an OS. So no AoE2 for me, I guess.
Wait, so...you're annoyed by Lackey shit every single game (which is patently false since like half the classes don't even care about Lackeys) and your solution to the problem would be adding Defile to Warlock forever so that whenever a new set comes out, all swarmy/early game strategies are dead on arrival because Defile is still around, killing everything? O-ok. At that point, why are you bothering with Standard, if you want new strategies to be unusable before the set is even released? What's the point of messing around with 1-hp Paladin synergies if Defile is around? What the point of the entire Reborn mechanic if Defile is around? What's the point of trying anything remotely midrangy if Zephrys will get you a 2 mana Twisting Nether in any class at a moment's notice?
Standard should remain as limited as possible, in fact, should probably be even more limited than it already is (i.e. Kibler's suggestion to remove the evergreen sets completely), otherwise, you might as well be playing Wild (which I do). In Wild, most strategies Blizz tries to push with each set are essentially already neutralised by strategies that exist in sets already available, and barely half of the new strategies end up being playable as a result. If there is one thing that should be added to the Basic and Classic set, it's a decent-ish Priest AoE at around 6 mana so that they don't have to make a new Lightbomb every year like they're doing now.
Because unlike most aggro decks, Priest was playing in a way that is pretty much impossible to answer for most decks. If they land Northshire turn 1, what can you do? Coin a Frostbolt or Pain? That's about it. IF you're a Mage or Priest. It's a Northshire and you're against Priest so playing your own 1 drop doesn't cut it, you can't wear down the Cleric's health over time because of healing AND they draw cards to boot. Turn after, Extra Arms. Now that minion you cannot trade into is a 3/5. Hope you have a Fireb...no wait, it's turn two, and your game is over. Now obviously a major part of that issue is the fact Blizz refuses to learn that 1/3 statline for 1 is not ok, let alone with additional abilities, but priests can be about as much trouble with any minion, say a Lightwarden. Even though Lightwarden is much easier to answer, the truth is that in most cases the cards that answer it aren't ones you want to play (Arcane Shot) because they're too narrow. So just allowing Priest to have a snowbally start in general is a recipe for disaster. Northshire should be on the chopping block, but if there isn't a good turn 2 follow up, they're manageable at least.
Is Zola and Bog Slosher even desirable for that deck? I ran Zola before the quest came out to get more fuel but with the new hero power I have more than enough gas to overwhelm enemies, and Zola thus felt both redundant and terribly slow, and Slosher seems to make the Shudder boards worse, as it both fills my hand with Lackeys and then mills the bounced Jades.
The thing Hearthstone needs the most to maintain longevity is modes/formats. A lot of 'em. The base of the game is solid, but those are just the tools. Formats and modes are what dictates the rules in which these tools can be used. MtG, though far from perfect, has this down pat. They have so many formats you have to be someone who actively dislikes the game if you can't find a format that appeals to you. HS is very limited in this respect. It has three formats in total if we disregard BGs and Tavern Brawl and is only really actively supporting one of them. That has to change. Give us more ways to use our cards and pay attention to the state of these formats with more frequent balancing and updates and HS can keep going for decades.
Mine is a combination of various inspirations. One time at school during an IT class, we had a chance to play some games together instead of learning programming. At the time, I didn't really have an online nick, as I mostly played single player games like Diablo 2 where you name your characters, not your account as a whole. So when the game put me on the spot and asked me to make up a name that instant, first thing that popped into my head back then was the name Marcus. A variation on my real name, but with a bit of a Roman flavour as I really dug ancient mythology at the time and Greece, Egypt and Rome were some of my favourite cultures. The name is also partially inspired by the sheriff of Broken Hills from Fallout 2, a supermutant, humanoid so big he could strap a damn gattling cannon to his forearm and carry it in one hand.
Not long after that I forgot the password to my old e-mail account so I created a new one. I wanted to use the name Marcus again but an e-mail address like that already existed, even xMarcusx, and since e-mails don't allow you to use brackets and I really like symmetry, I took inspiration from what we were learing in math class at the time (absolute values) and used lower case L's as brackets around my nick. Have used that ever since, unless that name is taken, in which case I use MarcusTheAbsolute (my YT account for example).
I'd say George is a bit of an outlier on the list. He fails really hard in the early game or in the hands of an inexperienced player, which I think tanks his winrate a lot, but he's one of the strongest heroes out there if you make sure you're as strong in the early game as you can possibly be to preserve your health. The one thing holding him back from being outright broken past the midgame is the fact Nefarian exists (though in most cases Nefarian takes almost as much of a beating in the early game as George does, cause his hero power is only good mid-late) and the fact that juggler builds have become so strong. If not for jugglers, a single tiny poisonous murloc with George's hero power can take out massive demons other players have paid dozens of HP to build up.
Was it also an oversight that all my decks are now incomplete, Blizzard? Let me guess, working as intended.
Really wish they went back to the original system of deckbuilding for these adventures with special heroes etc. Sure, we're getting new cards for the adventure this time, which is nice, but the content itself seems, honestly, like a total hackjob. You get a premade experience with specific hero against specific boss, generally just breezing through on a wave of your deck's overpoweredness which you had nothing to do with, and then when heroic comes around, you just grab your best deck or some sort of OTK and kill the boss in one or two goes. No replay value, no fun deckbuilding shenanigans, no amazing new synergies, no treasures, just grab your OP deck of choice and kill everything as if it were ladder. Feels really lackluster, cheap and not worth the asking price compared to adventures, at least in terms of the gameplay you get out of it.
Star Aligner Druid is highly overrated. The moment the meta responded to it in any measure, be it through Deathlords, Dirty Rats or such, the deck completely fell to pieces since essentially the only minions it ran were the ones it needed for the combo. Druid's draw was so good that it really didn't need anything else, most card draw minions were severely subpar compared to the tools Druid had. Plus, the moment the Druid player used Psychmelon, they completely telegraphed they are open to getting Ratted. Once it became clear that Star Aligner Druids are a considerable part of the meta, control and combo decks started including Dirty Rats and all of a sudden, that deck became unplayable. I don't think there has been a single combo deck in the history of the game that has been that vulnerable to disruption.
In that respect, Snip-Snap Lock seems to be a much better fit because it was much harder to counter, and even if they couldn't OTK you because you kept clearing their mechs every turn, they could still just generate a board you couldn't really recover from without an unconditional board clear like Plague of Death. And obviously, they'd do it much sooner than turn 9.
I'd personally go much further back, and say that the most busted decks for their time were Combo Druid (Force of Nature + Savage Roar) and Patron OTK. Both decks were often waved off by idiots with the words "just play taunts and they're done, lol". That argument was bullshit. At the time, Druid's midgame minions were sufficiently hard to remove that it was nearly impossible to ensure that you can consistently keep their board clear or that you wouldn't take damage to your face to drop you to 14. Anything they had left on their board the turn they decide to OTK you just increased the damage potential of the combo and made sure no board of taunts you had could stop them. Essentially, all classes were playing against 30 health opponents, Druid was playing against 16 health opponents. As for Patron...your board didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was their APM. If they were fast enough, they'd kill you from no board and with you having full health and there wasn't shit you could do about it.
Edit: Forgot about Machine Gun Priest. That was possibly the most unpleasant HS has ever been to play for me. And that's counting now when I'm getting constant disconnects for no reason. Better disconnects than getting pinged down for 0 mana.
If only the Guardian wasn't a beast, it would be perfect for Hadronox Druid. Two taunts for revive for the price of one, and both sides would come with reborn when resummoned with Hadronox.
Not sure where on Wild you're playing but in my experience Zoo Warlock is a laughing stock among top decks (bottom tier 2 as of December). It has little to no flexibility and very poor answers to many other, more powerful decks. Any kind of AoE tends to just wipe it off the board and in most cases, everything Zoolock does, Odd Paladin does better. In a meta of ultra defensive Reno decks, mana-cheating control decks and lightning-fast Secret Mages, Zoolock seems to barely get a word in. And now it just got worse.
The fuck did Fiendish Rites ever do to anyone? Zoo is barely playable as is.
Seems better than Kobold Illusionist in some ways. Doesn't mess with N'Zoth's res pool, draws you towards your N'Zoth + Scheme combo, but doesn't go into bigrattle rogue which, honestly, doesn't really need the help,. Also lines up nicely with Ahnka and with Necrium Blade in terms of mana cost. Probably a good replacement for Elven Minstrel in those kinds of decks. Same limitations, less draw, better tempo. Me likes.
I think Wolf at 2 is way above the curve compared to the other minions available on that tier (e.g. Harvest Golem). They should both be at 3 or Wolf should be removed completely, since it's frankly just bad and upgrades really poorly.
First impressions of the new heroes: Brann is fairly decent provided you go for a tribe that benefits well from battlecries, and getting a Humonculus on 1 makes you really strong for the first few rounds. You do need your bonuses to land in the right place though, since they trigger after the battlecry comes in, meaning they can hit your battlecry minion you intended to resell.
Syndragosa can be really powerful, especially if your taverns align really well where you want to buy multiple minions from the same board. Even if you don't get lucky, just freezing the first board through turn 1, your tavern upgrade on 2, then buying on 3 and on 4 what you previously froze gives you a powerful start.
Elise is...eh...she's not bad, but I think her hero power could use a discount. When you have to pay a full 3 gold, it doesn't seem like that much of a benefit, especially since you only get to make use of her power a handful of times.
Finley though. Finley is actively atrocious. The token stacking and reselling mechanic of Deryl doesn't work since you have to pay for it, making it extremely gold inefficient, and your hero power will often end up hitting the tokens you intend to sell. Cycling battlecries to keep refreshing your hero power is awful since you forego your rerolls to do it and end up with measly +3/+3 to show for it a lot of the time. It's just. Ugh. I sincerely hope there is something utterly broken I'm not getting, because this guy makes Giantfin look OP.
One correction on the attack order. Assuming both players have the same number of minions, which player gets to attack first does seem to be random, or, I at least have not been able to find a pattern. However, if one player has more minions than the other, say 7 vs 6, the player with more minions gets to attack first. So even if you have a worthless battlecry minion occupying a space on your board, do not sell it for a last minute reroll. If your opponent happens to have fewer minions than you do, you get to guarantee that your first minon, say a Cave Hydra, gets its attack off before it gets killed.
Well, I'm glad I managed to finish an absurd Toki run with Mama Bears right before the patch hit. Was fun while it lasted, Toki. Will miss you lots. Good news is, my dear Jaraxxus just got a nifty boost and Mukla won't be as pathetic anymore. Giantfin still needs loads of work though.
Edit: Also, dummies forgot to change the damn text on Toki's hero power, or rather, what it says in the patch notes and what it says in the game does not match. ...and the rope now throws shadows in the opposite direction. Sigh.
If you play as Rafaam, you start with a treasure in your deck that makes the next card you play cost 0 but then it gets removed from your deck. It took me two runs with Rafaam and the right choice of treasures and I managed to get rid of all 20 of my BFFs from my deck. Otherwise, yeah, ruins the fun.
I wonder if they'll be adding alternate portraits also for the non-basic heroes, like Maiev. The 1000 win reward worked for all (gold border around the portrait) but this will require redrawing a lot of characters so not sure if they'd do it.
I would be super excited for a nice RTS autumn with AoE2:DE and (hopefully) Warcraft III reforged, but I'll be damned if I'm switching to Windows 10 just for AoE2:DE. Microsoft is being a real asshole as a platform holder. Instead of trying to get their product in the hands of as many excited players as possible, they're essentially using it as yet another tool to try and coerce people to switch to this hellspawn of an OS. So no AoE2 for me, I guess.
Wait, so...you're annoyed by Lackey shit every single game (which is patently false since like half the classes don't even care about Lackeys) and your solution to the problem would be adding Defile to Warlock forever so that whenever a new set comes out, all swarmy/early game strategies are dead on arrival because Defile is still around, killing everything? O-ok. At that point, why are you bothering with Standard, if you want new strategies to be unusable before the set is even released? What's the point of messing around with 1-hp Paladin synergies if Defile is around? What the point of the entire Reborn mechanic if Defile is around? What's the point of trying anything remotely midrangy if Zephrys will get you a 2 mana Twisting Nether in any class at a moment's notice?
Standard should remain as limited as possible, in fact, should probably be even more limited than it already is (i.e. Kibler's suggestion to remove the evergreen sets completely), otherwise, you might as well be playing Wild (which I do). In Wild, most strategies Blizz tries to push with each set are essentially already neutralised by strategies that exist in sets already available, and barely half of the new strategies end up being playable as a result. If there is one thing that should be added to the Basic and Classic set, it's a decent-ish Priest AoE at around 6 mana so that they don't have to make a new Lightbomb every year like they're doing now.
Because unlike most aggro decks, Priest was playing in a way that is pretty much impossible to answer for most decks. If they land Northshire turn 1, what can you do? Coin a Frostbolt or Pain? That's about it. IF you're a Mage or Priest. It's a Northshire and you're against Priest so playing your own 1 drop doesn't cut it, you can't wear down the Cleric's health over time because of healing AND they draw cards to boot. Turn after, Extra Arms. Now that minion you cannot trade into is a 3/5. Hope you have a Fireb...no wait, it's turn two, and your game is over. Now obviously a major part of that issue is the fact Blizz refuses to learn that 1/3 statline for 1 is not ok, let alone with additional abilities, but priests can be about as much trouble with any minion, say a Lightwarden. Even though Lightwarden is much easier to answer, the truth is that in most cases the cards that answer it aren't ones you want to play (Arcane Shot) because they're too narrow. So just allowing Priest to have a snowbally start in general is a recipe for disaster. Northshire should be on the chopping block, but if there isn't a good turn 2 follow up, they're manageable at least.
Is Zola and Bog Slosher even desirable for that deck? I ran Zola before the quest came out to get more fuel but with the new hero power I have more than enough gas to overwhelm enemies, and Zola thus felt both redundant and terribly slow, and Slosher seems to make the Shudder boards worse, as it both fills my hand with Lackeys and then mills the bounced Jades.