Visually it looks similar to Artifact, but easier to see what is going on because everything is on a single screen. Mechanically, I guess it's closer to MtG, since you can assign blockers and react what the opponent is doing during a turn. It does have a mana curve like Hearthstone instead of lands, but with unspent mana being put into a separate pool that can only be used for spells.
I saw some RNG on cards, but not a whole lot. Probably less than HS, certainly less than Artifact with its random attack directions.
It's F2P, so more people are likely to try it out. You have some control over which region (class/color equivalent) you get cards from, so if you only play a particular type of deck, you can get only cards you need for that. I have no idea how competitive you can be without spending money, I guess it's too early to tell anyway since they can also re-tune the economy during the beta phase.
So yeah, it addresses the main concerns people had with Artifact.
They have separate art in the Chinese version of Hearthstone already; The Skeleton Knight is one I've seen used as an example. So even if the reason for having new art drawn was the Chinese market, they could have decided to keep the old art in the international version if they wanted to.
It does show that they're trying to avoid offending anyone, even if that means their game will be more bland.
It's good that Blizzard's president responded instead of staying silent. It's good that they addressed the harshness of the punishment, which was the main concern of a lot of people.
However, even with this reduced punishment, it likely still means Blitzchung is out of GM, since he can't compete for half a year and therefore can't defend his spot or re-qualify for GM by earning money/points in Masters. In the case of the casters, while they are now suspended for 6 months instead of indefinitely, that doesn't guarantee they will be returning, since Blizzard can just decide not to hire them again. So while the new punishments are less unfair, I'm not sure that makes them fair.
What is missing is any indication that they're going to do things differently in the future. Most of the statement is defending their actions. He does say "our process wasn’t adequate", but then doesn't explain how they're going to improve their process.
I haven't gotten the option to pick Duplitransmorgifyre, but I did pick BFF once and it ended up in other hero's decks as well. But as a 1/1, so not busted yet.
The flavor text does emphasize the "forever" part, so I think it's intentional.
On the one hand, I can sympathize with Sottle. I too have worked for a company that I disagreed with on some policies. In particular, I'm very much opposed to software patents, while the company was lobbying for them. Not as important as human rights abuses of course, but still something I feel strongly about.
On the other hand, while I was only known to my direct colleagues, as a caster Sottle is a public face for Hearthstone eSports. He might be in a position where he cannot avoid picking sides. It's likely there will be protests during BlizzCon; will he acknowledge those, duck behind the desk, or help Blizzard in keeping them off-camera?
I thought the idea was to give that card to your opponent and then play Unseen Saboteur
I can't think of a practical way to do that, not even for a meme deck.
You could play Lorewalker Cho, but then you have to play the spell before your opponent gets to. Of course you could tune your deck to come out better than an average deck would, but you'd still take a hit.
You could put cards in your opponent's deck with Mischief Maker or King Togwaggle, but in the former case you'd have to get very lucky for that one card to be exactly Renounce Darkness and in the latter case it's hard to tell when the opponent drew it.
If you can manage to get Renounce Darkness in your opponent's hand, you still need some luck for the Saboteur to cast it, since the opponent might be holding other spells. And even if you get lucky, unless Renounce Darkness is worded very poorly, it wouldn't do much unless your opponent also happens to be playing Warlock.
Playing only one Sul'thraze feels weird to me, since that together with the quest and Armored Goon is the core of the deck.
I had Hench-Clan Thug and also Dread Corsair in an earlier version of my quest deck, but while that deck did reasonably well, it got its wins before completing the quest, so it would be stronger if it could play a minion on turn 1 instead.
The quest reward isn't a huge tempo swing: while a 4/3 for 2 mana is better than what most cards offer you, it's not that much better at turn 6, which is the earliest you can hope to start using your new hero power. What the 4/3s are useful for is to keep reloading the board every turn, to run your opponent out of removal. But that is a plan that takes time to execute, so building the deck to complete the quest as early as possible doesn't pay off, in my experience.
Firebat brought this up a while back on Omni/Stone: tournaments have top-heavy prize money to attract attention, but as you said the skill difference between the top players is a lot smaller than the differences in prize money. The current system where prize money is used to select new GM players only increases this unfairness. Instead, they could use a points system to decide who gets into GM.
Something else that Firebat mentioned on this week's Omni/Stone is that the second tie breaker doesn't really make sense in the GM format. The first tie breaker is head-to-head results, so that is fair, but for a lot of players the head-to-head results were 1-1. The second tie breaker rewarded players who won vs higher ranked players. That is a useful tie breaker in Swiss tournaments, where different players face different opponents and some opponents will be tougher than others. But in the GM format, every player plays every other player in their division twice. So if someone won vs higher ranking players and still ended up at the same points total as someone else, it means they also lost to lower ranking players. Therefore the second tie breaker doesn't really measure performance.
On the other hand, the suggestion they had of deciding tie breakers by playing another match would work for two tied players, but in the case of a 4-player tie that would become a mini-tournament in itself. You can always make Hearthstone more fair by playing more matches, but you have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is always going to feel arbitrary.
They've been nerfing Basic and Classic cards that show up in decks too often, to make sure new expansions actually lead to a different meta each time. Fewer powerful cards makes it less attractive to get Classic packs.
I think that in the long run, they'll either have to merge Classic into Basic, as you suggest, or implement a rotating Classic set, as Brian Kibler has been saying for a while.
Most tavern brawls reward Classic packs and there is also the spectate daily quest. So it's probably around 55 free Classic packs per year. More if you get lucky with Twitch drops for playoffs/finals.
I've been playing almost non-stop since open beta and I don't have a full Classic collection either.
I much prefer the 300 health bosses. If you get a great deck, you can defeat them in one go. But if your deck isn't so great, you can at least achieve something. In one case, I knew my deck wasn't good enough to have a chance at winning, but I could still stall long enough to deal over 100 damage, so the run didn't feel like a failure.
These bosses are also designed for long fights: while it is still possible to get overwhelmed by an opponent with a strong start, it's far less likely than it was in for example the Monster Hunt.
I think something should certainly be done about Northshire Cleric, since all the other OP 1-drops have already been nerfed. The question is whether it will be nerfed to cost 2 mana or sent to the Hall of Fame. I wouldn't mind it at 2 mana, since it then becomes a card for which careful planning is needed rather than a minion that's relatively safe to play on turn 1.
Divine Spirit is a card they must address if they don't want the combo with Inner Fire to return again and again. Doubling the health can get out of control real fast, especially since you can collect two of these spells and quadruple the health of a minion in a single turn. Increasing its cost to 3 mana won't make much of a difference, since it is already only played when it has a huge swing effect, such as buffing High Priest Amet or dealing lethal damage. I think it should cost 4 or 5 before it actually makes a difference, since it then becomes hard to play a series of health boosts + Inner Fire in the same turn. Another way to nerf it would be to replace the doubling effect by a constant health boost, for example +5 health. That way it's much harder to set up lethal with a medium-health minion. Sending it to the Hall of Fame would not be my preference, since that would not solve the problem for Wild players. Also, giving a minion more health so healing it becomes more viable fits the identity of Priest, in my opinion.
I think Inner Fire wouldn't be so much of an issue without Divine Spirit. Note that there are cards that flip attack and health such as Topsy Turvy and Crazed Alchemist (the latter even being in Classic), which can take over the role of Inner Fire as a finisher (some decks even prefer Topsy Turvy over Inner Fire since it's easier to fit in due to its lower cost).
Circle of Healing at 0 mana is only good if you have the card draw to support it. If Cleric gets nerfed, that indirectly increases the cost of Circle.
About the kind of card I'd like to see: in my opinion Penance is a good Priest card: it's versatile enough to not be stuck in your hand too long, it's good for its mana cost, it has heal synergy and it cannot be used for dealing face damage with Velen and/or Malygos.
At some point I was at 7 health but had Crystalsmith Kangor + 2 Hallazeal the Ascended on board with Eye for an Eye in play.. plague starts going face for lethal with a 4 attack murloc and I heal for 16. Had no idea it worked that way.
Secrets going off count as your spells. They also benefit from spell damage, for example.
I beat him on the first try with Finley and the treasure that gives all opposing minions -1 attack. During the 200-100 HP phase I managed to get more murlocs on the board than the boss, so the golem's deathrattle was actually beneficial to me. The 100-0 HP phase was a bit scary since I was approaching the end of my deck, but fortunately the hero power of that phase needs to recharge, so the boss was only able to use it once before he ran out of life.
By the way, that -1 attack treasure is really good for the earlier bosses as well, since a lot of them go wide (the ones I got, anyway, I guess it's random). And the AI doesn't take it into account, for example trying and failing to remove your minion using 0/1 BEEEES!!!.
I got 3 packs on Friday, 6 on Saturday and 0 on Sunday. I had the stream on pretty much the entire time it was live. It seems I was lucky to get this many packs, but as the spread over the days shows, it is very random.
The store page says "Earn 3 Savior of Uldum Packs by playing through each chapter, and a Golden Classic Pack when you conquer them all." So I think that counts as confirmed.
There are 4 chapters and a finale, so 5 wings in total, although I don't know if the finale is a full wing. The finale unlocks at the same time as chapter 4, so it might be that you automatically get the finale if you finish all the chapters and don't need to unlock it, but that's just speculation. If it's true and the first chapter is free as usual, there would be only 3 chapters to unlock with money or gold.
I've removed the mulligan guide, and will update in a bit. I somehow didn't save the last round of changes, swapping Grimestreet Enforcers with Arena Fanatics, which explains that error.
While Grimestreet Enforcer doesn't often stick for more than one turn, it does have pseudo-taunt in the sense that the opponent must react to it. Arena Fanatic has worse stats and doesn't force a reaction from the opponent. On the other hand, it does curve better when you're not on the coin.
I would expect Keleseth would break the draws, as I remember playing a Renounce lock at one point who managed to end up with a Spirit of the Frog, and that drew spells at their renounce discounted costs. I would imagine it would work the same, but I could test it. However, I can't think of a decent replacement for Sandwasp Queen that would fit nicely into the curve. Any suggestions?
Hearthstone isn't always logical in the way it's implemented. For example the Holy Wrath Paladin deck wouldn't work if Shirvallah, the Tiger's cost was adjusted while the card is in the deck.
The best replacement I can think of that you're not already running is Jar Dealer.
Anyway, test first, since if Crystology breaks then it's unlikely that Keleseth is worth it.
Are you sure about not keeping Glowstone Technician off the mulligan? It's such a key card that I'd certainly consider keeping it when on the coin and perhaps even when going first if I expect a slow opponent.
I'm wondering if it would be worth dumping the existing 2-drops in favor of Prince Keleseth. There are a lot of possible alternatives to Sandwasp Queen and while Grimestreet Outfitter used to be a core handbuff card, I think there are enough alternatives there as well (you mention Arena Fanatic although it is not in the current version of the deck). Does Keleseth break Crystology and Salhet's Pride or do those look at the printed card stats only?
Visually it looks similar to Artifact, but easier to see what is going on because everything is on a single screen. Mechanically, I guess it's closer to MtG, since you can assign blockers and react what the opponent is doing during a turn. It does have a mana curve like Hearthstone instead of lands, but with unspent mana being put into a separate pool that can only be used for spells.
I saw some RNG on cards, but not a whole lot. Probably less than HS, certainly less than Artifact with its random attack directions.
It's F2P, so more people are likely to try it out. You have some control over which region (class/color equivalent) you get cards from, so if you only play a particular type of deck, you can get only cards you need for that. I have no idea how competitive you can be without spending money, I guess it's too early to tell anyway since they can also re-tune the economy during the beta phase.
So yeah, it addresses the main concerns people had with Artifact.
They have separate art in the Chinese version of Hearthstone already; The Skeleton Knight is one I've seen used as an example. So even if the reason for having new art drawn was the Chinese market, they could have decided to keep the old art in the international version if they wanted to.
It does show that they're trying to avoid offending anyone, even if that means their game will be more bland.
I have mixed feelings about this.
It's good that Blizzard's president responded instead of staying silent. It's good that they addressed the harshness of the punishment, which was the main concern of a lot of people.
However, even with this reduced punishment, it likely still means Blitzchung is out of GM, since he can't compete for half a year and therefore can't defend his spot or re-qualify for GM by earning money/points in Masters. In the case of the casters, while they are now suspended for 6 months instead of indefinitely, that doesn't guarantee they will be returning, since Blizzard can just decide not to hire them again. So while the new punishments are less unfair, I'm not sure that makes them fair.
What is missing is any indication that they're going to do things differently in the future. Most of the statement is defending their actions. He does say "our process wasn’t adequate", but then doesn't explain how they're going to improve their process.
I haven't gotten the option to pick Duplitransmorgifyre, but I did pick BFF once and it ended up in other hero's decks as well. But as a 1/1, so not busted yet.
The flavor text does emphasize the "forever" part, so I think it's intentional.
On the one hand, I can sympathize with Sottle. I too have worked for a company that I disagreed with on some policies. In particular, I'm very much opposed to software patents, while the company was lobbying for them. Not as important as human rights abuses of course, but still something I feel strongly about.
On the other hand, while I was only known to my direct colleagues, as a caster Sottle is a public face for Hearthstone eSports. He might be in a position where he cannot avoid picking sides. It's likely there will be protests during BlizzCon; will he acknowledge those, duck behind the desk, or help Blizzard in keeping them off-camera?
I can't think of a practical way to do that, not even for a meme deck.
You could play Lorewalker Cho, but then you have to play the spell before your opponent gets to. Of course you could tune your deck to come out better than an average deck would, but you'd still take a hit.
You could put cards in your opponent's deck with Mischief Maker or King Togwaggle, but in the former case you'd have to get very lucky for that one card to be exactly Renounce Darkness and in the latter case it's hard to tell when the opponent drew it.
If you can manage to get Renounce Darkness in your opponent's hand, you still need some luck for the Saboteur to cast it, since the opponent might be holding other spells. And even if you get lucky, unless Renounce Darkness is worded very poorly, it wouldn't do much unless your opponent also happens to be playing Warlock.
BlizzCon is in 3 weeks. If they don't change their position, they'll have some very awkward moments there.
Playing only one Sul'thraze feels weird to me, since that together with the quest and Armored Goon is the core of the deck.
I had Hench-Clan Thug and also Dread Corsair in an earlier version of my quest deck, but while that deck did reasonably well, it got its wins before completing the quest, so it would be stronger if it could play a minion on turn 1 instead.
The quest reward isn't a huge tempo swing: while a 4/3 for 2 mana is better than what most cards offer you, it's not that much better at turn 6, which is the earliest you can hope to start using your new hero power. What the 4/3s are useful for is to keep reloading the board every turn, to run your opponent out of removal. But that is a plan that takes time to execute, so building the deck to complete the quest as early as possible doesn't pay off, in my experience.
Firebat brought this up a while back on Omni/Stone: tournaments have top-heavy prize money to attract attention, but as you said the skill difference between the top players is a lot smaller than the differences in prize money. The current system where prize money is used to select new GM players only increases this unfairness. Instead, they could use a points system to decide who gets into GM.
Something else that Firebat mentioned on this week's Omni/Stone is that the second tie breaker doesn't really make sense in the GM format. The first tie breaker is head-to-head results, so that is fair, but for a lot of players the head-to-head results were 1-1. The second tie breaker rewarded players who won vs higher ranked players. That is a useful tie breaker in Swiss tournaments, where different players face different opponents and some opponents will be tougher than others. But in the GM format, every player plays every other player in their division twice. So if someone won vs higher ranking players and still ended up at the same points total as someone else, it means they also lost to lower ranking players. Therefore the second tie breaker doesn't really measure performance.
On the other hand, the suggestion they had of deciding tie breakers by playing another match would work for two tied players, but in the case of a 4-player tie that would become a mini-tournament in itself. You can always make Hearthstone more fair by playing more matches, but you have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is always going to feel arbitrary.
They've been nerfing Basic and Classic cards that show up in decks too often, to make sure new expansions actually lead to a different meta each time. Fewer powerful cards makes it less attractive to get Classic packs.
I think that in the long run, they'll either have to merge Classic into Basic, as you suggest, or implement a rotating Classic set, as Brian Kibler has been saying for a while.
Most tavern brawls reward Classic packs and there is also the spectate daily quest. So it's probably around 55 free Classic packs per year. More if you get lucky with Twitch drops for playoffs/finals.
I've been playing almost non-stop since open beta and I don't have a full Classic collection either.
I much prefer the 300 health bosses. If you get a great deck, you can defeat them in one go. But if your deck isn't so great, you can at least achieve something. In one case, I knew my deck wasn't good enough to have a chance at winning, but I could still stall long enough to deal over 100 damage, so the run didn't feel like a failure.
These bosses are also designed for long fights: while it is still possible to get overwhelmed by an opponent with a strong start, it's far less likely than it was in for example the Monster Hunt.
An alternative King Phaoris Paladin deck is Chump's Tiger Paladin:
Players hate Anduin? Wow. ;)
I think something should certainly be done about Northshire Cleric, since all the other OP 1-drops have already been nerfed. The question is whether it will be nerfed to cost 2 mana or sent to the Hall of Fame. I wouldn't mind it at 2 mana, since it then becomes a card for which careful planning is needed rather than a minion that's relatively safe to play on turn 1.
Divine Spirit is a card they must address if they don't want the combo with Inner Fire to return again and again. Doubling the health can get out of control real fast, especially since you can collect two of these spells and quadruple the health of a minion in a single turn. Increasing its cost to 3 mana won't make much of a difference, since it is already only played when it has a huge swing effect, such as buffing High Priest Amet or dealing lethal damage. I think it should cost 4 or 5 before it actually makes a difference, since it then becomes hard to play a series of health boosts + Inner Fire in the same turn. Another way to nerf it would be to replace the doubling effect by a constant health boost, for example +5 health. That way it's much harder to set up lethal with a medium-health minion. Sending it to the Hall of Fame would not be my preference, since that would not solve the problem for Wild players. Also, giving a minion more health so healing it becomes more viable fits the identity of Priest, in my opinion.
I think Inner Fire wouldn't be so much of an issue without Divine Spirit. Note that there are cards that flip attack and health such as Topsy Turvy and Crazed Alchemist (the latter even being in Classic), which can take over the role of Inner Fire as a finisher (some decks even prefer Topsy Turvy over Inner Fire since it's easier to fit in due to its lower cost).
Circle of Healing at 0 mana is only good if you have the card draw to support it. If Cleric gets nerfed, that indirectly increases the cost of Circle.
About the kind of card I'd like to see: in my opinion Penance is a good Priest card: it's versatile enough to not be stuck in your hand too long, it's good for its mana cost, it has heal synergy and it cannot be used for dealing face damage with Velen and/or Malygos.
Secrets going off count as your spells. They also benefit from spell damage, for example.
I beat him on the first try with Finley and the treasure that gives all opposing minions -1 attack. During the 200-100 HP phase I managed to get more murlocs on the board than the boss, so the golem's deathrattle was actually beneficial to me. The 100-0 HP phase was a bit scary since I was approaching the end of my deck, but fortunately the hero power of that phase needs to recharge, so the boss was only able to use it once before he ran out of life.
By the way, that -1 attack treasure is really good for the earlier bosses as well, since a lot of them go wide (the ones I got, anyway, I guess it's random). And the AI doesn't take it into account, for example trying and failing to remove your minion using 0/1 BEEEES!!!.
I got 3 packs on Friday, 6 on Saturday and 0 on Sunday. I had the stream on pretty much the entire time it was live. It seems I was lucky to get this many packs, but as the spread over the days shows, it is very random.
The store page says "Earn 3 Savior of Uldum Packs by playing through each chapter, and a Golden Classic Pack when you conquer them all." So I think that counts as confirmed.
There are 4 chapters and a finale, so 5 wings in total, although I don't know if the finale is a full wing. The finale unlocks at the same time as chapter 4, so it might be that you automatically get the finale if you finish all the chapters and don't need to unlock it, but that's just speculation. If it's true and the first chapter is free as usual, there would be only 3 chapters to unlock with money or gold.
While Grimestreet Enforcer doesn't often stick for more than one turn, it does have pseudo-taunt in the sense that the opponent must react to it. Arena Fanatic has worse stats and doesn't force a reaction from the opponent. On the other hand, it does curve better when you're not on the coin.
Hearthstone isn't always logical in the way it's implemented. For example the Holy Wrath Paladin deck wouldn't work if Shirvallah, the Tiger's cost was adjusted while the card is in the deck.
The best replacement I can think of that you're not already running is Jar Dealer.
Anyway, test first, since if Crystology breaks then it's unlikely that Keleseth is worth it.
Are you sure about not keeping Glowstone Technician off the mulligan? It's such a key card that I'd certainly consider keeping it when on the coin and perhaps even when going first if I expect a slow opponent.
I'm wondering if it would be worth dumping the existing 2-drops in favor of Prince Keleseth. There are a lot of possible alternatives to Sandwasp Queen and while Grimestreet Outfitter used to be a core handbuff card, I think there are enough alternatives there as well (you mention Arena Fanatic although it is not in the current version of the deck). Does Keleseth break Crystology and Salhet's Pride or do those look at the printed card stats only?