Add to that the Blizzard controversy (which they are determined to make even worse for some reason) and you have a perfect setup for many players to jump ship.
LoR is from Riot Games. They came out immediately after the Blizzard controversy to warning their players not to say anything concerning "sensitive topics" (because supporting democracy is now sensitive).
They are 100% owned by the Chinese firm Tencent. They would be issuing the same punishments as Blizzard (if not more severe) had the situation happened in one of their tournaments.
I'm not saying this to absolve Blizzard, they should be held to account but you cannot exactly jump ship from Blizzard to Riot without understanding that Riot games is wholly in China's pocket, more so than Blizzard.
oh ofc, Riot is being cucked just as bad, if not worse, by China. The thing is....they have yet to get into controversy because of it (although I'm sure it will happen eventually).
What I'm trying to say is that a lot of self appointed moral crusaders feel the need to abandon Blizzard alltogether, but won't have enough of a shared braincell to to do the research and therefore will jump the Riot train for an alternative that lets them pretend they defended democracy.
Let's be real here: Hearthstone hasn't changed much in the past years, mainly because it didn't need to. It's main appeal comes from the simple gameplay commbined with appealing visuals and ties to a well-known franchise.
LoR basically provides the same, but with some addeed depth. The gameplay is still fairly simple, but much more engaging than HS, the visual design isn't perfect, but it's definitely more appealing than most of the other card games, and finally it's set in the universe of a very popular MOBA that has many people hooked to it based on the characters and worldbuilding.
Add to that the Blizzard controversy (which they are determined to make even worse for some reason) and you have a perfect setup for many players to jump ship.
Personally, I'm gonna check the game out (once they actually let me in) and I'd have no problem completely dropping Hearthstone, if it ends up being better. Hearthstone just happens to occupy a niche that has yet to be sufficiently challenged and its claim to fame is flimsy at best.
Watching some of the LoR gameplay I realised just how basic and uninteractive Hearthstone has become, how many failed strategies keep being pushed and how the quality of a deck is determined by how fast it can turn a game into a one-sided curbstomp.
god I wish I could play it but for some reason I keep getting errors when trying to link my Twitch to my Riot account.
That being said, I think the reason behind the 20 HP nexus is to make games not drag on too long, given how each round already takes a while to complete with all the mechanics and steps.
additionally it's also much easier to defend yourself, courtesy of the combat system.
At the end of the day they can always just increase NExus HP if aggresssive strategies become too strong.
I'm done. I'm playing arena for the rest of the month. I've never had less fun on ladder. The Shaman BS is too much, and when the rest of games are against Secret Pally or N'Zoth Priest... I miss minion trading and strategy.
I feel you. Really makes you appreciate the rotation and demonstrates why Standard format was a necessary concept
This could have been amazing... and almost was... but N'Zoth, the Corruptor and Mysterious Challenger have turned Standard into Wild Lite---i.e., first to draw degenerate combo wins. I think they went just a little too far. Without those two cards (and maybe something more playable for Warlock), it would have been pretty good.
I have been playing a lot of Warlock lately, and I keep thinking to myself "What if Warlock got Defile instead of Renounce Darkness?" Defile would have been a true game changer for Warlock, but alas...
Defile would be too recent, but Demonwrath could have solved so many problems for Control Warlock. As it stands you can't deal with an early board before Hellfire which means you basically lose to Murloc Tidecaller 100% of the time. At the very least Darkbomb could have made it in.
The eight mana slot has been the sweet spot for evolves and such for ages, but this is probably one of the strongest pools ever. I say probably only because The Lich King is no longer in standard. It's a fair point to raise that Mogu probably would be considerably weaker as a 6 mana 3/3 or 8 mana 4/4 even if it kept the discount mechanic simply because it'd roll into considerably worse minion pools.
Another solution would be to consider just friendly minions for its discount effect: it will still evolve into an 8 drop, but it will come much later and its cost won't be reduced below 2
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//Sinti: banned the bot and removed the external link from this quote.
then you would have to reduce its cost by at least (2) or else it'd never hit the field. Not to mention that would remove it's original purpose of being a strong tempo tool in a token deck that works especially well against other token decks (or just board presence in general). If anything the total cost should go up so it's still a playable card even if you can't maintain a large board presence.
to be completely fair, those card art changes were probably not because of China....most likely something about ratings or marketing and definitely not "bringing card art up to standards"
either way it's just another case of them trying to get away with an obvious lie
- Evolve Shaman and Combo Priest are the aggro decks of choice IMO. Not sure which is better. Spirit of the Frog turned Evolve Shaman into a more consistent deck.
- Druid is again trying to figure out what its best win condition is. It probably won't settle on something until the metagame settles.
- Highlander Hunter is well positioned as probably the best midrange deck.
- Holy Wrath Paladin is in a decent spot at the moment with all of the greedy AF N'Zoth decks and it has an okay mu against Priest/Shaman.
- At least one of these greedy N'Zoth decks feels like it could be a high T2 deck. They shut down the game really quickly if they make it to the right point.
- I wonder what will happen to Quest Shaman. The aggro evolve ones feel better to me at the moment.
- Tempo Rogue is certainly better than it used to be.
- Not a fan of any of the variants of Flamewaker mage as of yet.
- Secret Paladin is fine. Not scared of it though.
I'd say Highlander Hunter has gotten a lot weaker despite the upgrades. It's just too slow to compete with fast decks and at the same time can't really pressure combo/N'zoth decks enough to win consistently.
Secret Hunter seems to be much better positioned because it's faster (at the expense of not having that good of a lategame)
Although there is always the possibility of cutting the reactive secret package from highlander and go for Octosari instead
pretty sure they included BFF to make sure that even the not-so-good players can still earn the reward without having to grind forever. I just kinda used Togwaggle because I thought his hero power would make for easy cheese...and it did.
It's looking like the meta has changed a solid amount but maybe not drastically.
Evolve is a huge buff to aggro/token shaman and even quest shaman. But both of those were top decks already
Rag is a buff to highlander decks which are mostly midrange. Emp is a buff to combo decks. Nzoth a buff to control decks, mainly res priest but warrior and warlock are interesting but probably not strong enough.
Mysterious challenger is pretty nutty.
Flamewaker mage is solid but inconsistent, i'm sure apxvoid will refine it.
All in all I don't like the "new" cards that much. I wish there wasn't as much generically powerful stuff and instead some build around stuff to explore "new" archtypes. I didn't really want to see these cards for the rest of this expansion.
Well boys, Flamewaker is breaking the game again. Whats new
Highlander Hunter can beat it pretty consistently, as can any deck doesn't lose to a single boarclear essentially. All Flamewaker can really do is a one turn wipe + burst, and after that they need to RNG further pressure from Cyclone or lose
After trying the deck for myself, I realise how much i get highrolled by the deck. It is incredibly hard to actually get the combo pieces, and by the time they are there, you simply do not survive half the time. It is a very high-rolly deck and you lose most of the time. But when you win, my God do you just delete people
I'M kinda numb to it at this point. I got highrolled by Shaman so much in the past weeks that this just doesn't register as much. Overall we got a lot of really highrolly combos with the update, so I don't think Mage is really going to stick out for too long. I'm more worried about Quest Priest at this point. If they get to play a minion and then follow it up with Psychopomp there's basically no way for any deck that isn't control Warrior to actually beat them (and even those have trouble)
I agree about nzoth priest. it is a bit toxic because if it picks up in popularity it will be very meta warping because it has very polarized match ups. and it's a fairly strong timmy kind of deck and people love to play these decks (like big priest). I think it's finnicky early game against aggressive strategies will keep in check enough but it's a deck i hate queuing into as most things (and i like playing the deck myself)
nzoth priest is very easy to counter if you want to target it though. It's a sitting duck for combo decks like holy wrath paladin and malygos druid and it can also be out greeded by decks that go psuedo infinite.
obviously combo decks wreck this kind of gameplan, but tbh I'm just not a fan of beating non-interactive strategies with even less interactive ones.
At this point Priest's early isn't even that bad. You have both all 3 Shadow Words + Penance which should keep the pressure low until 5 where you can Hysteria and follow it up with Lightbomb. If you aren'T dying at that point you basically won against any board centric strategy.
But yeah, I guess combo decks will keep it in check so it's not the only thing on ladder.
tfw best girl Rek'Sai isn't in there
oh ofc, Riot is being cucked just as bad, if not worse, by China. The thing is....they have yet to get into controversy because of it (although I'm sure it will happen eventually).
What I'm trying to say is that a lot of self appointed moral crusaders feel the need to abandon Blizzard alltogether, but won't have enough of a shared braincell to to do the research and therefore will jump the Riot train for an alternative that lets them pretend they defended democracy.
It might.
Let's be real here: Hearthstone hasn't changed much in the past years, mainly because it didn't need to. It's main appeal comes from the simple gameplay commbined with appealing visuals and ties to a well-known franchise.
LoR basically provides the same, but with some addeed depth. The gameplay is still fairly simple, but much more engaging than HS, the visual design isn't perfect, but it's definitely more appealing than most of the other card games, and finally it's set in the universe of a very popular MOBA that has many people hooked to it based on the characters and worldbuilding.
Add to that the Blizzard controversy (which they are determined to make even worse for some reason) and you have a perfect setup for many players to jump ship.
Personally, I'm gonna check the game out (once they actually let me in) and I'd have no problem completely dropping Hearthstone, if it ends up being better. Hearthstone just happens to occupy a niche that has yet to be sufficiently challenged and its claim to fame is flimsy at best.
Watching some of the LoR gameplay I realised just how basic and uninteractive Hearthstone has become, how many failed strategies keep being pushed and how the quality of a deck is determined by how fast it can turn a game into a one-sided curbstomp.
god I wish I could play it but for some reason I keep getting errors when trying to link my Twitch to my Riot account.
That being said, I think the reason behind the 20 HP nexus is to make games not drag on too long, given how each round already takes a while to complete with all the mechanics and steps.
additionally it's also much easier to defend yourself, courtesy of the combat system.
At the end of the day they can always just increase NExus HP if aggresssive strategies become too strong.
I'm sure they'll add a filter eventually. This is just the first time they covered a different cardgame
I feel you. Really makes you appreciate the rotation and demonstrates why Standard format was a necessary concept
and much like in the real game, Noxus are just giant dickheads
fabricated outrage and all that
but really people are praising this because it looks good and they don't care about politics
Art and gameplay look pretty fantastic. If it holds up in the balance department I might just ditch Hearthstone permanently
Defile would be too recent, but Demonwrath could have solved so many problems for Control Warlock. As it stands you can't deal with an early board before Hellfire which means you basically lose to Murloc Tidecaller 100% of the time. At the very least Darkbomb could have made it in.
then you would have to reduce its cost by at least (2) or else it'd never hit the field. Not to mention that would remove it's original purpose of being a strong tempo tool in a token deck that works especially well against other token decks (or just board presence in general). If anything the total cost should go up so it's still a playable card even if you can't maintain a large board presence.
but then why do they have china-only card art version for stuff like Skeletons?
If it was only a chinese issue they would have just given the chinese versions different artwork.
to be completely fair, those card art changes were probably not because of China....most likely something about ratings or marketing and definitely not "bringing card art up to standards"
either way it's just another case of them trying to get away with an obvious lie
you know it's kinda funny when South Park makes exaggerated parodies for comedic effect....but this time it's so close to reality it's depressing
I'd say Highlander Hunter has gotten a lot weaker despite the upgrades. It's just too slow to compete with fast decks and at the same time can't really pressure combo/N'zoth decks enough to win consistently.
Secret Hunter seems to be much better positioned because it's faster (at the expense of not having that good of a lategame)
Although there is always the possibility of cutting the reactive secret package from highlander and go for Octosari instead
so that's just a blatant lie.
Jesus Christ, just shut up about it Blizzard, you're only making it worse.
You're not the only company in China's pocket and you certainly won't be the last
I have nothing but contempt for you
pretty sure they included BFF to make sure that even the not-so-good players can still earn the reward without having to grind forever. I just kinda used Togwaggle because I thought his hero power would make for easy cheese...and it did.
obviously combo decks wreck this kind of gameplan, but tbh I'm just not a fan of beating non-interactive strategies with even less interactive ones.
At this point Priest's early isn't even that bad. You have both all 3 Shadow Words + Penance which should keep the pressure low until 5 where you can Hysteria and follow it up with Lightbomb. If you aren'T dying at that point you basically won against any board centric strategy.
But yeah, I guess combo decks will keep it in check so it's not the only thing on ladder.