Hearthstone

Excruciating. Feels like the longest wait ever for one. Wasn’t a big fan of AoO, pretty much why but I have a feeling this new one will be really good. Maybe news tomorrow. Sigh!

I prolly just missed it, but what were the 2 locked features of Phase 1?

I put together a detailed guide of every decision I made while playing Maiev. This was at 10.8k MMR in Americas Server. Some of the key points:

• Try to use your hero power as much as possible in the early game without being too picky, don't tier up on turn 2
• In the mid game, use your hero power on economy targets (pirate that sells for 3 gold or pirate that reduces your hero power tier cost), buff targets (cards that will buff your board that you don't need right away) or for possible triples in the future that you don't need to buy right away.
• The key to optimizing your hero power is planning ahead. Do you want to spend 3 gold now to strengthen your board or spend 1 gold to have it provide even better value in a future turn? Key considerations would be board state, your overall health and strength of the lobby, and whether or it helps you get a triple (do you want to discover a minion now or discover a higher tier minion later on?)
• Don't focus too much on the +1/+1 aspect of your hero power, that's just an added bonus

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Just wondering what others thought about getting an alternative 'wild-themed' card back for hitting legend in wild.  It could just be a re-work of the usual one with a few more wild-esque flourishes.

As a mainly standard, occasional wild player, I think I might be more motivated to try and hit legend in wild if it resulted in an alternative card back.

Thoughts?

Time for some positivity! What do you like about the decks you like? For instance, I like the wide variety of combos in Quest Warlock, and I love how outcast and the amount of damage available make you think ahead in Tempo Demon Hunter. What are yours?

Okay, so we're near the end of the AoO expansion with one month left to go, and the next expansion will very likely be announced after the felfire festival, so let's have a look at demon hunter as a class throughout its introduction.

Identity

What the class was imagined to be was, aggressively stated minions, with powerful card draw options, and clears minions using the hero via weapons etc. Its weak to board clears, have weak card generation, and supposedly big minions.

Meta Tier Performance

This needs no mention. Dhunters are currently at the top of the tier in both standard and wild, and it used to be top in arena as well until it was taken down. Suffice to say if you crafted Kayn Sunfury, Warglaives of Azzinoth, and Metamorphosis you'll not be left disappointed throughout this expansion.

Admitably, its no longer so easy to play as dhunter, at least in standard. There's plenty of counters and with a third round of nerf/change, dhunters are actually only barely on top of standard. But if ranking up is your game, then dhunters are easy picks. Even amid nerfs, changes, counters and predictability, the deck can still win with multiple options for burst and tempo.

Variety of decks in Demon Hunter Class

There's currently five archetypes of varied viability other than tempo: control, highlander, big demons, combo and token. That's a lot considering that they have the least number of cards between the classes.

Control dhunter (introduced by pro hearthstone player Eddie) is surprisingly good. In the current meta, there's just not enough healing so this deck practically kills you using nothing but Warglaives of Azzinoth + Metamorphosis. Reload via Hoard Pillager and Vulpera Scoundrel. Its actually insane how much damage you can put down with only those two cards, not even mentioning Magtheridon and Zephrys the Great. The deck preys on druids, aggro-tempo decks, mages, priest and rogues on a good day.

Highlander lacks consistency but is far from unplayable. I personally don't like the deck, and have only played limited amounts of it even in its heyday. Cant comment much, but I dont recall ever losing a match to highlander dhunters.

Big dhunter is perhaps the most interesting. Its actually not half bad, but suffers from lack of value. Pit Commander is absolutely insane, as is Coilfang Warlord. Unfortunately, the deck lacks reload, and since all Galakrond decks basically out values it, its hard to play this deck without an overwhelming sense of being screwed.

Combo dhunters are dead, basically. With Twin Slice no longer at 0 mana, you can't activate [Hearthstone Card (kael'thas) Not Found] to do that massive 20 + damage anymore. Ironically now we all got our golden kael'thas, the card is no longer relevant in standard.

Token never got off and as it stands its not going anywhere. More than any other archetype for this class, I've experimented with token dhunters to no success worth mentioning. Wrathscale Naga is excellent, but because theres no way to consistently manipulate all the 3 damage to face, the combo isnt worth preparing for. Not to mention that token dhunters can't maintain much tempo and doesnt have available the burst damage needed even if they somehow manages to stick a board.

Has the class been a net positive to hearthstone as a game?

Fans have been clamoring for a new class ever since KotFT when everyone thought death knights would make an excellent class. They've got their wish, but perhaps not in the way they hoped. The class dominated so much in its early days that opinions on dhunters as a class cannot be anything less than scornful (at least from what I've seen in both this and hearthpwn forums/comments), both at how it was designed to be OP from the start, and the multiple nerfs it had to endure, including an early nerf coming 2 weeks after the expansion started (and announced a week after it started)

I'm of the opinion that unless the next expansion quickly introduces some better taunts and healing options, the class as it stands now is not a net positive for the game. That is mostly not because the class itself is problematic, but because tempo dhunters is messing around the way how an aggro deck should theoretically work like, and the available counters to it.

The basic gameplan of an aggro deck is to pump everything in the early turns to get them to lethal range before it eventually gets outvalued around turn 5 and above, while the opponent (if not an aggro deck itself) actively removes the board as efficiently as possible, stabilizes and present a counter board for lethal. If the aggro deck is able to continuously and consistently reload, i.e. zoolock via hp, aggro rogue, and now tempo dhunter, then clearing board is no longer efficient, and the way out now is to race while staying out of lethal range.

The problem currently: There's not enough good early game taunts. And with the identity thing that team5 is subjecting the classes to means that healing options are limited. In other words, you cannot have an aggro class with an aggressive draw engine without also providing decent (but not overpowered) counter options for midrange-control decks. Unsurprisingly, the only decks that competently counters tempo dhunters are warrior, and quest warlock.

Also, aggro deck mirrors used to be a battle of efficiency, planning and tempo. Now its just about playing around Warglaives of Azzinoth, with some traditional aggro decks (primarily murlocs and token) having absolutely no counter to how warglaives work.

This is basically what aggro rogue used to be (in the early days of RoS). Raiding Party at 3 mana and un-nerf prep was the skull of its time, and its late game burst with leeroy + [Hearthstone Card (wagglepick) Not Found] is comparable to Metamorphosis finisher turns. That deck was promptly nerfed, with many players expressing their disapproval with aggro rogue's dominance and gameplan. What made it bad then but acceptable now in dhunter?

Ironically, tempo dhunters are so efficient that its nearly impossible to consider any other archetypes in the same class. So this one archetype is not only screwing everyone but warrior, its also screwing itself.

What Next?

I don't necessarily think nerfing the class for any further should be warranted. As much as I think tempo dhunters is not healthy for hearthstone, a fourth change/nerf will be ridiculous, especially with an expansion incoming in a months time. I will list down what I personally think team5 should consider in the forthcoming expansion.

- No more new direct damage dealing spells or minions for dhunter class.

- Better early game taunts. Honestly just bring back Tar Creeper. I'd even go so far as to suggest that Wax Elemental would be a good fit for the current meta.

- A better replacement for Earthen Ring Farseer. nearly everthing in classic got powercrept, why not this one? a 3 mana 2/4 taunt that heals only face for 3 is a somewhat good card against aggro. Would also give Frozen Shadoweaver a run for her money.

- Late game value cards for dhunter class. Best still if its a demon. Maybe a 7 mana 4/4, summon a random demon at the end of your turn.

- Something to help out tempo in token dhunter. Maybe a 1 mana 1/2, give your illidari initiates +1+1. Or something like Goru the Mightree for illidari initiates.

What do you guys think about demon hunters as a class, and what future can we look forward to, with the forthcoming expansion in mind?

I'm going to assume her current emote is related to the Fire Festival, as are all of the Greetings emotes currently. When the Festival ends her emote will go back to normal...

Anyone else not opening legendaries? I've open 44 packs from ashes since the bundle came out and no legendaries

I opened the bundle for 20, i bought 15 with coins, 4 from the season, 3 from felfire 2 from twitch for a total of 44 ashes packs

I also bough 10 dragons packs with coins and opened the rest of the felfire packs 

I have opened 100 plus ashes packs

With the end of the season here, I pose a question.

On NA servers, what is the anticipated cut off for 11x Bonus Stars? Also, are you required to finish the season at that rank/MMR, or can you still get that bonus if you drop rank after hitting high legend?

Thanks!

How do you guys feel when you need/want to leave HS (for whatever reason) but already spent 'that' much (value is relative right) money in the game?

My work is taking so much time and yet i 'kinda' feel forced to keep playing HS so i'm not feeling my money and time spent is wasted.

I know it's irrational but damn it's hard to fight against.

Mind sharing your perspective, senpai?

Competition Theme: Uncharrrted Waters

Pirates have taken over Battlegrounds recently, and they're looking to expand their reach further!

• You must create a Pirate minion
• Your minion cannot be Warrior, Rogue or Neutral
  • We're looking to new waters! There are currently no Pirates in any other classes, so get creative.

Xarkkal wants us to expand the reach of the Pirate minion type, so that they may plunder and loot for every class!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Jun 29 18:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Jul 4 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jul 4 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Jul 5 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jul 5 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Jul 6 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

Like, I get that when a game after x years 'finally' gets a new, 10th class you want it to be a succesful one. And yes, giving it some overtuned cards to make up for its small collection in order to successfully compete with the other classes I can understand too.

But after nerfing the same deck of that class three times and to still have it be the best deck in standard (source) truly boggles my mind. 

Quest rogue was considered a cockroach after it had to be nerfed twice (and that deck didn't practically dominate the meta for months on end by itself). 

Why then, does everyone seem more okay with this deck? I see very little complaints this time around, unless I'm looking in the wrong places.

I hope the next expansion is a lot better balance-wise because if you ask me, this expansion was one of the worst in that regard. I still had fun, mind you, but the balance was extremely lacking.

Apologies for the salty flavored thread. I'm just genuinely curious if my perception is off, or if people really do tolerate the dominance of this deck more than they did with past 'oppressive' decks.

My go-to fun deck is Reno Demon Hunter at the moment. I net decked the list and didn't pay much attention to it, but today I noticed that Kazakus is missing from the usual Highlander package. So I tried to add him and... I couldn't. While the deck list is open, the card isn't shown in my collection, no matter what I do. Has anyone else encountered this? 

Now you see me... 

... now you don't. 

there is any date? god i hope it will be during the first days of July, but the corona virus thing really worries me

So the Felfire Festival ist drawing to a close, gifting us some packs, an adventure with little replayability, and no arena rotation. So what is the next big thing to look forward too?  How long to the next expansion, any chance of something inbetween? To have a better basis of discussion, I'd suggest implementing a calender where you can see the biggest events of this and former hearthstone years- expansions, midway shake-ups, arena rotations, maybe even large nerfs, or possible the biggest E-sports happenings.

Also, I'd bet that at the end of the Felfire Festival the replacements for Leeroy and co. will finally be introduced, as well a new arena rotation.

Golden Kael'thas Sunstrider Is not golden

More like silver or platinum 

Hello! I'm currently a 11k MMR Battlegrounds Player in Americas server (playing from Canada!). I post gameplay videos from matches I find interesting and I hope to move into tutorial-type videos as well. Please check me out and subscribe to my channel for future videos!

Spawn of RNGesus Youtube Channel

So I'm taking my question from the comments to the forums for some feedback. This is basically questions of wich cards to craft for a dude with decent collection but very little time to play.

I might craft Ancharrr after all since it seems like Warrior is totally impotent without it right now. Somewhat risky though since it might be affected by upcoming nerfs (without refund) and upcoming expansions.

Also, I don't play much now but still use Gala Secret Rogue on ladder. Is it obvious that Stealth is the way to go now instead of Shadowjeweler Hanar et al? I have all the cards so I will probably try it out at least.

I'm also missing a few cards for the strongest Tempo Demon Hunter lists. It's my impression that Metamorphosis is somewhat more vital than Kayn Sunfury. Am I right in this? As for now I'm running Maiev Shadowsong instead of Kayn to neutralize taunts.

By completed I mean still missing 4 epics (I know I said not to open classic packs but I opened one just cause opening packs is fun).

And I got 100 gold, I didn't screenshot it, I know I am not the first to point that out.. but I wonder.. what the developer who implemented the reward thought to himself back in 2013.. I play since 2014 it took me 6 years to finally have a copy of every single classic card and I am not even a F2P player,

There could be a collector card back or maybe a hero portrait to have for getting the full classic set but nope, 100 gold.

Just a friendly reminder that you can get 2 card packs free today by "watching" twitch

https://outof.cards/hearthstone/1458-battlegrounds-brawl-pirates-mayhem-brings-free-ashes-of-outland-packs-to-the-table-via-twitch-drops-on-june-23

Hopefully there will be a main page article reminder, but at time of posting there isn't and it's only a few hours to go.  So don't forget as it's only a 12 hour window to get 4 hours of watching done.

And good luck with your packs!!!!!!  If you get something good I encourage you to share it below :)