I think people are aware it's mostly just WoW news this year, with D4 and Overwatch 2 being pretty freshly launched for them to have big news at Blizzcon. Also, considering how recent Blizzcons haven't been particularly... flawless (gonna have an article on this later lol), Blizzcon 2023 might be similar to WoW: Dragonflight - an expansion that's pretty good, but it'll take until next expansion for people to 'buy in' again.
I believe her Ultimate was Wailing Arrow! With Black Arrow being her "D" key ability and a mix between WC3's Black Arrow and Silence - attacks stunning (basically silencing in this context) minions and structures for some time.
I think *checks notes* I agree with everything you said. Indeed Magma/Ice Rager was just a bit of humour!
Perhaps the Harpstone example in the table I made was a bit extreme - it was meant more as a visual aid of how health could be balanced, but I reckon the subject matter was a bit too vast to fit neatly within a table.
Regarding your bullet points, let's consider Hearthstone's upcoming release of Showdown in the Badlands. The expansion, as usual, launches with every Hero being 30 Health, and not with 'custom' HP/armor amounts because of the points you've made in those bullets.
Let's consider that week 2, once the meta is fairly settled, three classes are underperforming - they've got, 42% winrate or whatever. This is usually the point when the devs release a balance patch and probably throw a few buffs in the way of those classes. Now, buffing specific cards means decks whose concepts/archetypes use those exact cards will be better, but other decks won't receive the same 'pick-me-up' and the buffed classes can feel pigeonholed into playing decks whose archetypes are supported by the buffed cards.
Now, instead of buffing these cards, would buffing these three underperforming classes' health generate a higher diversity of good decks, compared to just buffing a few cards? Would these classes having more time to set up their game / win condition result in more deck variety and more win rate, than buffing cards, which rarely results in more deck variety?
One thing that's made deckbuilding less fun for me is cards like your aforementioned Odin. Don't get me wrong, I like his effect, and he can still feel fun to play, but he's so much better that I'll never choose to make a deck around, say, Desert Obelisk instead of him. I actually tried to make a Desert Obelisk-viable deck back in the day (there's an article in here somewhere), and a little more health to give me time to pull it off could have helped hehe. I don't think buffing Desert Obelisk is appropriate, but it sucks that such a cool card barely found any space to be used.
I suppose I'm sort of hoping more health would be the solution to allowing more interesting, fun, gimmicky decks to perform well in the meta. Hearthstone is desperately missing a 'fun mode' format, and Twist (so far) doesn't seem to be it.
Honestly I'm starting to wonder if we don't have too many deck slots lmao. Hearthstone's interface is not exactly great when you've got 18 decks lying around, spread across a bajillion different modes.
I agree messing with health isn't a perfect solution, but it seems Team 5 is already designing around the - for these times - small-ish health pool heroes have. The stronger cards' effects and stats get, the stronger healing & armor effects you get. If Grace of the Highfather restores 8 health today, I worry the future's 3-cost healing card will have to restore 10 to be competitive, and so on. Card numbers keep going up, health stays the same, and the game gets swingier and faster.
What could be a solution that isn't a bandaid which results in the team still designing around it?
I, too, am a slugfest enjoyer. I'm not looking for all games to last at least 15 minutes, but just enough to feel like I've used most of the cards in my deck and they all had a bit of weight to them (so, not drawing half my deck by turn 7). It's the same jarring feeling you get in Warcraft III when you move from the campaign to some 1v1 multiplayer: Instead of having a bit of time to get your base set up, 2 minutes in you've already got some damn enemy Ghoul hounding on your peasants!
That... actually looks great! As long as the 'Enter' key functionality, to use items remains working, it looks like a net positive improvement over's the game's extremely clunky wheels.
I've found the new stack size for WoW reagents (of 1000x) to be pretty good, apart from the enormous quantities of Desolate Leather I seem to be hoarding in the guild tab screenshot above. It's more all the little situational stuff that bogs me down: shadowlands reagents for that secret Maw mount, items related to that whole "demon eye grind" thing in Argus, six different rare materials required for upgrading Dragon Isles fishing etc.
There's just a lot of stuff that the game has you carry around unless you no-life the content tied to it for hours at an end (horrible). Throw it in your bank? You just might forget it exists.
If the Infernal Host runs anything like the Zerg, I'll be out of my depth playing it for the entire game's lifespan hehe!
I never really 'got' how to play Zerg because in the Heart of the Swarm campaign in SC2, even on high difficulties, I just needed Kerrigan to win the game lol
Yeah, The Jailer's nerf is a bit heavy handed. Destroy your deck and The Jailer can still be destroyed by effects such as Twisting Nether? Back to jail with you!
That's probably an artifact of the way the shop is coded - maybe it was never coded for exchanging something for 0 currency, so you still need the confirmation :D And the non-confirmation part of the system only works with gold transactions.
I think it's less about the "baseline" lag (such as input lag) some games generally have, and more about just playing the game on a poor connection. As in, that's where rollback netcode will really shine, when your power is out and you're playing Stormgate on your laptop while getting a wi-fi hotspot from your mobile's data :D
I believe it launched in Early Access last year, with the official launch August this year!
I think people are aware it's mostly just WoW news this year, with D4 and Overwatch 2 being pretty freshly launched for them to have big news at Blizzcon. Also, considering how recent Blizzcons haven't been particularly... flawless (gonna have an article on this later lol), Blizzcon 2023 might be similar to WoW: Dragonflight - an expansion that's pretty good, but it'll take until next expansion for people to 'buy in' again.
'Twas Rhea indeed!
I believe her Ultimate was Wailing Arrow! With Black Arrow being her "D" key ability and a mix between WC3's Black Arrow and Silence - attacks stunning (basically silencing in this context) minions and structures for some time.
Sounds wonderful - I'm still quite a way away from yet another playthrough, but I think I'll give your mod a spin next time!
I think *checks notes* I agree with everything you said. Indeed Magma/Ice Rager was just a bit of humour!
Perhaps the Harpstone example in the table I made was a bit extreme - it was meant more as a visual aid of how health could be balanced, but I reckon the subject matter was a bit too vast to fit neatly within a table.
Regarding your bullet points, let's consider Hearthstone's upcoming release of Showdown in the Badlands. The expansion, as usual, launches with every Hero being 30 Health, and not with 'custom' HP/armor amounts because of the points you've made in those bullets.
Let's consider that week 2, once the meta is fairly settled, three classes are underperforming - they've got, 42% winrate or whatever. This is usually the point when the devs release a balance patch and probably throw a few buffs in the way of those classes. Now, buffing specific cards means decks whose concepts/archetypes use those exact cards will be better, but other decks won't receive the same 'pick-me-up' and the buffed classes can feel pigeonholed into playing decks whose archetypes are supported by the buffed cards.
Now, instead of buffing these cards, would buffing these three underperforming classes' health generate a higher diversity of good decks, compared to just buffing a few cards? Would these classes having more time to set up their game / win condition result in more deck variety and more win rate, than buffing cards, which rarely results in more deck variety?
One thing that's made deckbuilding less fun for me is cards like your aforementioned Odin. Don't get me wrong, I like his effect, and he can still feel fun to play, but he's so much better that I'll never choose to make a deck around, say, Desert Obelisk instead of him. I actually tried to make a Desert Obelisk-viable deck back in the day (there's an article in here somewhere), and a little more health to give me time to pull it off could have helped hehe. I don't think buffing Desert Obelisk is appropriate, but it sucks that such a cool card barely found any space to be used.
I suppose I'm sort of hoping more health would be the solution to allowing more interesting, fun, gimmicky decks to perform well in the meta. Hearthstone is desperately missing a 'fun mode' format, and Twist (so far) doesn't seem to be it.
Honestly I'm starting to wonder if we don't have too many deck slots lmao. Hearthstone's interface is not exactly great when you've got 18 decks lying around, spread across a bajillion different modes.
I agree messing with health isn't a perfect solution, but it seems Team 5 is already designing around the - for these times - small-ish health pool heroes have. The stronger cards' effects and stats get, the stronger healing & armor effects you get. If Grace of the Highfather restores 8 health today, I worry the future's 3-cost healing card will have to restore 10 to be competitive, and so on. Card numbers keep going up, health stays the same, and the game gets swingier and faster.
What could be a solution that isn't a bandaid which results in the team still designing around it?
I, too, am a slugfest enjoyer. I'm not looking for all games to last at least 15 minutes, but just enough to feel like I've used most of the cards in my deck and they all had a bit of weight to them (so, not drawing half my deck by turn 7). It's the same jarring feeling you get in Warcraft III when you move from the campaign to some 1v1 multiplayer: Instead of having a bit of time to get your base set up, 2 minutes in you've already got some damn enemy Ghoul hounding on your peasants!
A simple tooltip simply makes the game too complicated!
That... actually looks great! As long as the 'Enter' key functionality, to use items remains working, it looks like a net positive improvement over's the game's extremely clunky wheels.
I've found the new stack size for WoW reagents (of 1000x) to be pretty good, apart from the enormous quantities of Desolate Leather I seem to be hoarding in the guild tab screenshot above. It's more all the little situational stuff that bogs me down: shadowlands reagents for that secret Maw mount, items related to that whole "demon eye grind" thing in Argus, six different rare materials required for upgrading Dragon Isles fishing etc.
There's just a lot of stuff that the game has you carry around unless you no-life the content tied to it for hours at an end (horrible). Throw it in your bank? You just might forget it exists.
If the Infernal Host runs anything like the Zerg, I'll be out of my depth playing it for the entire game's lifespan hehe!
I never really 'got' how to play Zerg because in the Heart of the Swarm campaign in SC2, even on high difficulties, I just needed Kerrigan to win the game lol
Yeah, The Jailer's nerf is a bit heavy handed. Destroy your deck and The Jailer can still be destroyed by effects such as Twisting Nether? Back to jail with you!
Now hang on a minute, we haven't even seen the third faction yet!
But are you really sure?
That's probably an artifact of the way the shop is coded - maybe it was never coded for exchanging something for 0 currency, so you still need the confirmation :D And the non-confirmation part of the system only works with gold transactions.
Yeah, we're still a few Deathwings away from an entire deck of 12/12 Deathwings!
I think it's less about the "baseline" lag (such as input lag) some games generally have, and more about just playing the game on a poor connection. As in, that's where rollback netcode will really shine, when your power is out and you're playing Stormgate on your laptop while getting a wi-fi hotspot from your mobile's data :D
History repeats itself, we simply misunderstood the Jailer's intentions and yet still banned him!
"A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come."
It really isn't a good BlizzCon unless Chris Metzen presents it. Who knew charisma would be so hard to find in the gamedev industry?