I imagine the Ultra Rare pool exist to add more unpredictability to the runs. It's probably a similar logic to critical hits in RPGs. Whether they have a place in a competitive environment is another discussion (they probably don't)
I suppose you're right, it's just there are ways to make it feel better. A good example is TFT (I know I'm dirty). When you get lucky with a prismatic augment, that means so did everyone else. Everyone else has a choice of a prismatic, so you know that despite you getting 1 out of 3 choices for your prismatic, you picked the "best" one for you. And while it may or may not be better or worse than your opponent's, at least you all got the choice of a prismatic augment.
Duels makes it so that your opponent may have drafted both pieces of quel'delar, and gotten a pool 2 ultra rare, but meanwhile you were only able to draft Small Bags, Blood Moon, and Bag of Coins.
I get that unpredicability can make runs interesting but sometimes it feels like the odds are stacked against you. (Similar to how in Arena, you get no legendary cards drafted, but your 1st opponent managed to draft a deck with 3 legendaries, and tons of discover/removal effects.) Unpredictability to a degree is fine, but too much just makes me (and possibly others) feel like we have no control over the outcome of the match.
Huh, the duels nerf feels odd. I can't remember where the discussion was occurring (maybe here?) but obviously the big issue with treasures in duels is that if they are so strong that they need to be put in the "Pool 2 Ultra Rare" pool, then they probably should be balanced instead. Some builds are gonna have strong "non-rare" treasures, and others are going to effectively rely on those treasures. And it still takes the agency out of the players hands. You could have a mirror match where both players are playing something like....Duels Ping Mage, but the player who gets ultra lucky with Battle Totem is going to most likely have a way easier time than the person who doesn't.
Ultimately this is going to make the person who doesn't find that treasure feel bad when they go up against someone with that treasure. And this leads back to my initial through which is: why not just get rid of Pool 2 Ultra Rare, and just balance the treasures, or split them out so they aren't a problem. Instead of "Your battlecries trigger twice" maybe make it so "Your Battlecries with a cost <4 trigger twice" or something like that.
No, it's not unbeatable (in fact here above you can find many 12-win starting decks).
No, the whole game is definitely not cancer.
To be fair, he was probably being hyperbolic, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's an absurdly strong hero power that's easy to build around and draft for.
It's also weird when the "best" signature treasure is the one you almost never want to play. That's a bad design and moving into the Cobra Effect: (i.e. Hero power rewards you for including neutrals in your deck, so you therefore play *only* neutrals, and don't even bother playing the signature card because it forces buckets to be neutrals.)
And I do have to point out that "here above you can find many 12 win decks" doesn't equate to "These 12 win decks will beat vanndar decks". A deck being piloted by an expert in a mode does not translate to "ez 12 wins" for Joe AverageGuy.
Good thoughts in the thread. My only personal bias I'd like to add is that *Hero* power mage isn't overpowered. What's overpowered is Mordresh being able to double up with Battle Totem for 20 damage aoe burst. Nothing survives that. Even if you aren't dead after that turn, there's no way anything you had on board is surviving.
The 2nd thing is Infinite Arcane. Nerfing hero power mage because Infinite Arcane has been realized as a broken treasure is also not ok. Infinite Arcane is the problem, not wildfire/pings.
I'd like to see them rework or tune Infinite Arcane. Making it cost a lot more (like 8 or so) or changing it so it's not abusable. (It says infinite arcane, not infinite cards: It should only allow you to discover arcane spells and minions with the name "arcane" in them) Discovering only arcane spells isn't horrible either. A lot of arcane spells themselves generate more resources, so I honestly feel like if they redesigned Infinite Arcane to destroy your deck and then let you discover an arcane spell, it would be a lot more balanced, considering that it makes you more or less immune to fatigue, this redesign would work out well in a lot of areas and would be a far more elegant solution than just simply increasing the mana cost and hoping that balances the deck.
To be honest, why even bother having an ultra pool 2 when its clear that certain passives just end the games then and there.
But talking about shadowcasting 101, this is literally having the same impact as robes of gaudiness and to a lesser extend, meek mastery. It should ideally have died the same death as robes, simply because its just too good. The only way shadowcasting cannot just win the game is that the deck is not build for it i.e. a deck with no minions, etc. Anything with a damaging battlecry puts your opponent on a clock with nearly no counters.
Even if its only met 1% of the time, losing to something like this leaves just a bad taste in the mouth. Or at very least nerf it so the extra minion disappears from the hand at the end of the turn.
They very well may still rework the passive (they've reworked treasures in the past so it's not unheard of) to be something like "create a 1/1 copy in your hand that is removed at end of turn" or something like that.
But yea I knew from day 1 (as did many others) that this treasure was busted...
Because I was glad to see my "feelings" were actually correct with corroborating data? Sorry, I fail to see why I need your validation/excitement in order to make a statement about something.
I am really baffled about the fact that a big software company like Activision Blizzard is able to let such an embarrassing issue slip through their testing. Does their entire QA team consist of monkeys?
For now, I have not personally encountered this dust issue yet (knock on wood). I guess I have to be glad that they did not start this reimburse mess over here in the EU region or even worse all regions at once.
Look I'm not trying to defend Blizzard specifically but this whole mentality of "bLiZz BaD. Qa TeAm Is FuLl oFf MoNkEyS!1!" is kinda horseshit.
Software companies around the world have bugs and glitches and issues like these. The difference is, most software is actually work related and while there are definitely Karens and Kens out there who will gladly bitch about anything, they generally don't assume that the people working on the software are dumb.
I know because I've spent the last 2 decades working at software companies. (I'm not a developer myself but I work in IT and frequently communicate and work with devs)
It's easy for things to "work in a test environment" but then fail in real life. Often it's environmental issues they weren't expecting, or the issues of logistics from a scale much larger than a test environment that are the issue.
I'm not saying the "dustgate" situation is ideal or even valid, it's certainly embarrassing. No company wants to have to make statements like they did and make a public to-do of "sorry, we kinda fucked up." But the reality is that mistakes happen, people overlook things. Companies aren't perfect, and the people working at those companies are not perfect either. I empathize with developers and people who work at software companies because they got a LOT of flack, way more than the deserve...especially from the mercurial, entitled, and vitriolic userbase that is gamers.
I never said the classes didn't have ups and downs. I said hunter always seems to carve out a solid tier 2 deck every expansion. (which I noticed you conveniently left out of your quoted text) Which bothers me because I get tired of hunter being the "go-to" class for people looking to rank up with an easy and cheap deck. I think that's a fundamental problem with either the class design or a larger issue with the game design as a whole if with every expansion the go-to ranking deck is "smorc hunter".
At least I finally have stats to prove my theory: Hunter generally never carves a huge slice out of the meta barring a few exceptions, and generally never dies barring a few exceptions. It always seems to stay solidly a tier 2 deck no matter the meta, which I'm conflicted about because at this point it's apparent that Team5 has no problem allowing other classes to be top dogs or underdogs.
I think I kind of agree on this one. It's pretty apparent that this treasure is gonna need nerfing out of the gate. I think they are hoping it's just fairly rare to synergize with some strategies. IMO it's just a better battle totem/totem of the dead since it does effectively the same thing but works for both battlecries and deathrattles...
I 100% concur. Cannoneer doing "two pings of 2 damag each" in an archetype that access to infinite weapons just feels...wrong. Them nerfing the 2nd stage of the quest is a step in the right direction but the card would still see play if it was 4 mana. Hell, they could also keep it at 3 mana and make it do one ping and it would STILL see play.
I don't mind pirate warrior acting/playing out like an aggro deck. What I don't like is them having infinite resources and a source of continual damage that is guaranteed. (it's not like they have to luck into drawing a hero card after all).
I still think the quests themselves were a very poor design decision all around and honestly most of them, if not all should not have been printed. The only other card I feel like I've ever felt that way about was Dr. Boom's hero card for warrior.
Edit: and the only cards they are losing in the rotation are Sword Eater and Circus Amalgam. Granted they may or may not lose pirates in the core rotation as well, such as fogsail freebooter or bloodsail raider, but honestly I suspect Team5 will just print more...
So I got 8800 dust (twice) which boosted me to somewhere around 19-20k dust. I logged back in today (I didn't spend any dust or craft anything) and all the dust is gone and I'm back to my original value...
So I thought the script/fix they were running was supposed to delete the *extra* dust, but not the reward dust...?
I should at least have somewhere around 11k dust after their dust reward.
Ah damn. I got 16k by mistake and only crafted 2 epics. Now I'm at 0 dust.
Let it be a lesson, next time there's free dust: spend it quick.
You can go into the negative just FYI. So don't 'spend it quick' cause then you'll just be a dust deficit. In the past people who abuse systems in place (either intentionally or unintentionally) will be....rectified.
Its about the severity of the nerf. At 4 mana, that basically kills the treasure. Because in the first 3 wins, that's simply less efficient than your hero power, and certainly without that passive that reduces deathrattles to 1 mana 1/1s, its a lot to ask for this card to ever get value.
3 mana nerf would have been more appropriate, but instead its 4 mana without better stats. It got nuked, there's no way around it.
Sorry dapper, gonna hard disagree with you. Not all treasures are meant to be equal at the same point in a run. There was no way that damn bird was balanced at 2 mana. I can't tell you how many times at 5+ wins I'd have a hunter on turn 2 play a 1/1 (shrunken deathrattle) and trigger it with the strider, nearly winning the game on turn 2 from a simple 2 card combo.
The term is referred to as the "golden parachute". In acquisitions, leadership usually stays around for roughly a year to maintain the infrastructure. I don't expect him to stay on permanently. And if he leaves he'll get a huge severance.
Also CEO's almost never get fired. The board usually approaches them, asks them to leave, and pays them off. It's bad publicity for a company if they have to outright fire a C-level person, because it usually indicates hostility, undermining, and even ignorance on the board level for getting to that point.
We might be in a situation where they could revert the nerf to Relentless Pursuit and let it be fast again. That could be one way to make Demacia champs more relevant (especially Lucian, since it's literally his champ spell). Poor Lucian sitting in the bottom half of all champs, with just under a 48% winrate overall. He's seen better days.
As minuano said, you can't buff the spell because then it still gets used as support for other regions. (i.e. Splashing Demacia into another regions deck instead of vice versa). The power needs to go into the champions themselves, not the support cards for those champions otherwise it just helps promote other strategies
I suppose you're right, it's just there are ways to make it feel better. A good example is TFT (I know I'm dirty). When you get lucky with a prismatic augment, that means so did everyone else. Everyone else has a choice of a prismatic, so you know that despite you getting 1 out of 3 choices for your prismatic, you picked the "best" one for you. And while it may or may not be better or worse than your opponent's, at least you all got the choice of a prismatic augment.
Duels makes it so that your opponent may have drafted both pieces of quel'delar, and gotten a pool 2 ultra rare, but meanwhile you were only able to draft Small Bags, Blood Moon, and Bag of Coins.
I get that unpredicability can make runs interesting but sometimes it feels like the odds are stacked against you. (Similar to how in Arena, you get no legendary cards drafted, but your 1st opponent managed to draft a deck with 3 legendaries, and tons of discover/removal effects.) Unpredictability to a degree is fine, but too much just makes me (and possibly others) feel like we have no control over the outcome of the match.
Huh, the duels nerf feels odd. I can't remember where the discussion was occurring (maybe here?) but obviously the big issue with treasures in duels is that if they are so strong that they need to be put in the "Pool 2 Ultra Rare" pool, then they probably should be balanced instead. Some builds are gonna have strong "non-rare" treasures, and others are going to effectively rely on those treasures. And it still takes the agency out of the players hands. You could have a mirror match where both players are playing something like....Duels Ping Mage, but the player who gets ultra lucky with Battle Totem is going to most likely have a way easier time than the person who doesn't.
Ultimately this is going to make the person who doesn't find that treasure feel bad when they go up against someone with that treasure. And this leads back to my initial through which is: why not just get rid of Pool 2 Ultra Rare, and just balance the treasures, or split them out so they aren't a problem. Instead of "Your battlecries trigger twice" maybe make it so "Your Battlecries with a cost <4 trigger twice" or something like that.
What does the Dragon Affinity hero power swap to? I've never actually used it lol
To be fair, he was probably being hyperbolic, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's an absurdly strong hero power that's easy to build around and draft for.
It's also weird when the "best" signature treasure is the one you almost never want to play. That's a bad design and moving into the Cobra Effect: (i.e. Hero power rewards you for including neutrals in your deck, so you therefore play *only* neutrals, and don't even bother playing the signature card because it forces buckets to be neutrals.)
And I do have to point out that "here above you can find many 12 win decks" doesn't equate to "These 12 win decks will beat vanndar decks". A deck being piloted by an expert in a mode does not translate to "ez 12 wins" for Joe AverageGuy.
Good thoughts in the thread. My only personal bias I'd like to add is that *Hero* power mage isn't overpowered. What's overpowered is Mordresh being able to double up with Battle Totem for 20 damage aoe burst. Nothing survives that. Even if you aren't dead after that turn, there's no way anything you had on board is surviving.
The 2nd thing is Infinite Arcane. Nerfing hero power mage because Infinite Arcane has been realized as a broken treasure is also not ok. Infinite Arcane is the problem, not wildfire/pings.
I'd like to see them rework or tune Infinite Arcane. Making it cost a lot more (like 8 or so) or changing it so it's not abusable. (It says infinite arcane, not infinite cards: It should only allow you to discover arcane spells and minions with the name "arcane" in them) Discovering only arcane spells isn't horrible either. A lot of arcane spells themselves generate more resources, so I honestly feel like if they redesigned Infinite Arcane to destroy your deck and then let you discover an arcane spell, it would be a lot more balanced, considering that it makes you more or less immune to fatigue, this redesign would work out well in a lot of areas and would be a far more elegant solution than just simply increasing the mana cost and hoping that balances the deck.
They very well may still rework the passive (they've reworked treasures in the past so it's not unheard of) to be something like "create a 1/1 copy in your hand that is removed at end of turn" or something like that.
But yea I knew from day 1 (as did many others) that this treasure was busted...
Because I was glad to see my "feelings" were actually correct with corroborating data? Sorry, I fail to see why I need your validation/excitement in order to make a statement about something.
Look I'm not trying to defend Blizzard specifically but this whole mentality of "bLiZz BaD. Qa TeAm Is FuLl oFf MoNkEyS!1!" is kinda horseshit.
Software companies around the world have bugs and glitches and issues like these. The difference is, most software is actually work related and while there are definitely Karens and Kens out there who will gladly bitch about anything, they generally don't assume that the people working on the software are dumb.
I know because I've spent the last 2 decades working at software companies. (I'm not a developer myself but I work in IT and frequently communicate and work with devs)
It's easy for things to "work in a test environment" but then fail in real life. Often it's environmental issues they weren't expecting, or the issues of logistics from a scale much larger than a test environment that are the issue.
I'm not saying the "dustgate" situation is ideal or even valid, it's certainly embarrassing. No company wants to have to make statements like they did and make a public to-do of "sorry, we kinda fucked up." But the reality is that mistakes happen, people overlook things. Companies aren't perfect, and the people working at those companies are not perfect either. I empathize with developers and people who work at software companies because they got a LOT of flack, way more than the deserve...especially from the mercurial, entitled, and vitriolic userbase that is gamers.
I never said the classes didn't have ups and downs. I said hunter always seems to carve out a solid tier 2 deck every expansion. (which I noticed you conveniently left out of your quoted text) Which bothers me because I get tired of hunter being the "go-to" class for people looking to rank up with an easy and cheap deck. I think that's a fundamental problem with either the class design or a larger issue with the game design as a whole if with every expansion the go-to ranking deck is "smorc hunter".
At least I finally have stats to prove my theory: Hunter generally never carves a huge slice out of the meta barring a few exceptions, and generally never dies barring a few exceptions. It always seems to stay solidly a tier 2 deck no matter the meta, which I'm conflicted about because at this point it's apparent that Team5 has no problem allowing other classes to be top dogs or underdogs.
I think I kind of agree on this one. It's pretty apparent that this treasure is gonna need nerfing out of the gate. I think they are hoping it's just fairly rare to synergize with some strategies. IMO it's just a better battle totem/totem of the dead since it does effectively the same thing but works for both battlecries and deathrattles...
I 100% concur. Cannoneer doing "two pings of 2 damag each" in an archetype that access to infinite weapons just feels...wrong. Them nerfing the 2nd stage of the quest is a step in the right direction but the card would still see play if it was 4 mana. Hell, they could also keep it at 3 mana and make it do one ping and it would STILL see play.
I don't mind pirate warrior acting/playing out like an aggro deck. What I don't like is them having infinite resources and a source of continual damage that is guaranteed. (it's not like they have to luck into drawing a hero card after all).
I still think the quests themselves were a very poor design decision all around and honestly most of them, if not all should not have been printed. The only other card I feel like I've ever felt that way about was Dr. Boom's hero card for warrior.
Edit: and the only cards they are losing in the rotation are Sword Eater and Circus Amalgam. Granted they may or may not lose pirates in the core rotation as well, such as fogsail freebooter or bloodsail raider, but honestly I suspect Team5 will just print more...
Oh my god. The duels update seems fantastic. So many broken combos were toned down or removed completely. This alone gives me hope!
So I got 8800 dust (twice) which boosted me to somewhere around 19-20k dust. I logged back in today (I didn't spend any dust or craft anything) and all the dust is gone and I'm back to my original value...
So I thought the script/fix they were running was supposed to delete the *extra* dust, but not the reward dust...?
I should at least have somewhere around 11k dust after their dust reward.
You can go into the negative just FYI. So don't 'spend it quick' cause then you'll just be a dust deficit. In the past people who abuse systems in place (either intentionally or unintentionally) will be....rectified.
I'm still waiting on the priest passive hero power to get nerfed or something. like "only shadow spells trigger this effect" or something
Sorry dapper, gonna hard disagree with you. Not all treasures are meant to be equal at the same point in a run. There was no way that damn bird was balanced at 2 mana. I can't tell you how many times at 5+ wins I'd have a hunter on turn 2 play a 1/1 (shrunken deathrattle) and trigger it with the strider, nearly winning the game on turn 2 from a simple 2 card combo.
Yea I got 7700 dust, and it popped up twice. So I now have around 21k dust...
I'm assuming they subtract the double dipping dust refund but still nice to get all the dust right before a new rotation/patch.
The term is referred to as the "golden parachute". In acquisitions, leadership usually stays around for roughly a year to maintain the infrastructure. I don't expect him to stay on permanently. And if he leaves he'll get a huge severance.
Also CEO's almost never get fired. The board usually approaches them, asks them to leave, and pays them off. It's bad publicity for a company if they have to outright fire a C-level person, because it usually indicates hostility, undermining, and even ignorance on the board level for getting to that point.
As minuano said, you can't buff the spell because then it still gets used as support for other regions. (i.e. Splashing Demacia into another regions deck instead of vice versa). The power needs to go into the champions themselves, not the support cards for those champions otherwise it just helps promote other strategies