Straight Dope Message Board

[Budget Player Cadet]

All right, the new single-player content is fun.

[SenorBeef]

I usually only play tavern brawls to one win, but I've actually played like 50 games of this week's brawl. It's just a bunch of archetypes of the new decks, but it's fun to be able to try out a unique fully formed deck compared to most tavern brawls. I wish they'd do these more often.

[Budget Player Cadet]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

All right, the new single-player content is fun.

Having played significantly more of the new single-player content, I take this back. Fucking christ, who thought that was a good idea?

[carnalito]

I gave this Hearthstone up when the Old Gods expansion came along, boy did it turn the game to a pile of shit. Perhaps time to go back?

[SenorBeef]

Hunter seems to have become a decent arena class - I've gotten 5 to 7 wins in each of my last 6 runs with hunter.

[Wilson]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

Having played significantly more of the new single-player content, I take this back. Fucking christ, who thought that was a good idea?

Yeah the new Rumble Run is fun at first, but can get frustrating. The shrines are vastly different in power level; the cards you get may not at all synergize with your deck/shrine; and the AI's decks get crazy good real fast.
Managed to beat it yesterday with the Paladin shrine that damages your opponent for 5 when your hero takes damage; got enough weapons and healing to get through the early levels fairly easily. And then I got the shrine boost that gives you a second shrine, which made the seventh level a breeze and the eighth fairly easy.
Not sure how much I'll play it going forward.

[SenorBeef]

Balance update coming out in a while

Wild Growth – Will cost 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Nourish – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Level Up! – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Saronite Chain Gang – Now reads: Taunt. Battlecry: Summon another Saronite Chain Gang.
Leeching Poison – Will cost 1 mana. (Down from 2). Now reads: Give your weapon Lifesteal this turn.

So it seems like "man, druid is too strong with ultimate infestation and spreading plague. Let's nerf some classic set core identity cards!"

Level up is targeted specifically at odd paladin, which probably makes sense, but it sort of feels like overkill to basically remove it from that deck. Maybe +2/+2 would've been a better route to take.

Edit: Oh, I just figured out what the saronite nerf was about - shudderwock. That one makes sense.

Leeching poison kind of murders kingbanes rogue, doesn't it?

[Budget Player Cadet]

Note that two of the nerfs are for classic oldies, and that the other three all directly reference a build-around-me legendary/deck (Baku, Shudder, and Kingsbane, respectively). Sensible nerfs? Sure. But if I shelled out for a Shudderwock Shaman and it turns out that this broke its back, I'd be pissed.

[SenorBeef]

Yeah, I don't like those druid nerfs at all. UI and spreading plague are what make druid oppressive. You're murdering the basic class archetype (ramp druid) in an off-target attempt to nerf current druid power. Which leaves druid kind of screwed when rotation comes up. Plus ramp druid is the most fun way to play druid and kind of kills the identity of the class.

[Wilson]

Saronite Chain Gang and Level Up are rotating out in April, and I never play Wild, so this seems too little too late to me. Still I get why they are doing it - Saronite Chain Gang with Shudderwork combo is OP, and the nerf only really affects that. And Level Up is one of the keys to Odd Paladin, probably the strongest archetype this year.

I see their point about why they are nerfing Leeching Poison, but Kingsbane is rotating out also...

The druid ones are probably the biggest impact nerfs, since they are classic. Having read the developer's notes, I see what they are saying, but wow those are big changes. Nourish may still be playable, but Wild Growth seems like it would be almost useless.
Where I tend to play (15-13) you don't see a lot of Druids, but I understand they are much more common higher up.

[SenorBeef]

Originally Posted by Wilson

Saronite Chain Gang and Level Up are rotating out in April, and I never play Wild, so this seems too little too late to me. Still I get why they are doing it - Saronite Chain Gang with Shudderwork combo is OP, and the nerf only really affects that.

Actually, no, they could've been more precise in the change, because it also affects any sort of handbuff deck, because people are pretty sure it summons another 2/3 no matter what, not a copy of the original minion.

[SenorBeef]

The changes went live today which is surprising, usually they're very slow moving about these things.

From what I see on forums, apparently Kingsbane rogue is one of the best counters to big priest. I've been playing wild more lately and big priest is already an annoying and frequent matchup. It sounds like it might get unbearable if this is true. I'm pretty tired of having 6+ statues dropped on me in a match.

[Tom Scud]

So I celebrated the nerfs by rolling out my odd paladin deck - it is still good. (Replaced the level ups and rejiggered a few other things to get a mech/magnetic theme going).

[Wilson]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Actually, no, they could've been more precise in the change, because it also affects any sort of handbuff deck, because people are pretty sure it summons another 2/3 no matter what, not a copy of the original minion.

Yup, I missed the handbuff/Keleseth part of this nerf, which is pretty embarrassing considering I play a Heallock deck sometimes. Shudderwock is still the biggest effect, though.

After listening to some streamer's reactions, I do appreciate more that Blizzard made this change so soon after the expansion dropped, which is not their past behavior. It is good that they are being more proactive.

[Wilson]

Originally Posted by Tom Scud

So I celebrated the nerfs by rolling out my odd paladin deck - it is still good. (Replaced the level ups and rejiggered a few other things to get a mech/magnetic theme going).

I finally broke down and crafted Zilliax for just this reason.

[SenorBeef]

I got Zilliax in one of those 4 freebie packs they gave for last expansion. I also happened to get the paladin mech resurrection legendary spell before. I guess I could try crafting some sort of odd mech paladin, especially since most decks I want to try in the current expansion costs like 8000+ dust.

Does it seem like they're making decks that are more reliant on more legendaries? Particularly specialized legendaries that only work in one sort of deck. Most of the rastakhan demo decks they had from that tavern brawl had 3+ specialized legendaries. The disco warlock I want to make probably costs more than building a wallet warrior deck from scratch.

[SenorBeef]

I just had a bizarrely stupid opponent. I'm playing wild around rank 12, he's playing kingsbane rogue. He decides to cast leeching poison on turn 2 after he used kingsbane, and he was at full health. So I think "okay, so the guy somehow doesn't notice the big change notice when he logs in, and also doesn't notice that leeching poison is only 1 mana now, but whatever, he'll figure it out"

Then on like turn 8, he attacks me with his 7/3 Kingsbane, and then... after he attacks with it, he applies his other leeching poison the kingsbane, so that it does nothing at all.

I'm a little baffled. Rank 12 isn't super high, but shouldn't that guy be stuck at rank 20 with those moves?

[Wilson]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

I got Zilliax in one of those 4 freebie packs they gave for last expansion. I also happened to get the paladin mech resurrection legendary spell before. I guess I could try crafting some sort of odd mech paladin, especially since most decks I want to try in the current expansion costs like 8000+ dust.

Does it seem like they're making decks that are more reliant on more legendaries? Particularly specialized legendaries that only work in one sort of deck. Most of the rastakhan demo decks they had from that tavern brawl had 3+ specialized legendaries. The disco warlock I want to make probably costs more than building a wallet warrior deck from scratch.

I agree - disco warlock, kragwa shaman and dragon warrior seem to require a lot of legendaries.

Sounds like you have all the legendaries you need for Odd Mech Paladin (assuming you have Baku). I’m not quite sure how good the deck is though...

Spell Hunter only requires DK Rexxar and the legendary weapon (and probably Zuljin).

Even shaman is working best for me. That requires only two specialty legendaries (Hagatha and Kalimos), plus Genn, Lich King and Al’Akir.

[SenorBeef]

I noticed that a few of the meta analysis sites, like tempostorm, hsreplay.net, others seem to have significantly different ideas of what the top decks are right now. Does anyone know how they're calculated and why they're so different, and which is the most useful guide?

[Jas09]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

I noticed that a few of the meta analysis sites, like tempostorm, hsreplay.net, others seem to have significantly different ideas of what the top decks are right now. Does anyone know how they're calculated and why they're so different, and which is the most useful guide?

The main difference I'm aware of is that VS and HSReplay use actual game logs and stats to determine the meta. I think VS puts some weighting on how common a deck is to build their meta snapshot. HSReplay pretty much just seems to use raw numbers.

TempoStorm is completely different in that (I think) they have a team of experts and use more analysis to determine what the top-Legend meta is. It's not very useful for folks grinding 20-5 or even 5-Legend - HSReplay or VS (using the All-Ranks or 5-1 Filter) is way better for that. With the caveat that I think VS is having a pretty bad data shortage problem - since they don't have a deck tracker app built in they rely on folks signing up via HDT to get data.

The other thing that I try to think about if ladder grinding is the length of the games. A 55% win-rate deck that has 5 minute games is better than a 60% win-rate deck that has 12 minute games. Although I pretty much just hit 5 every season and then play whatever I want - the grind to Legend doesn't interest me since it seems to be purely about how many games you can play.

[Turble]

I have Zero skill at deck building and am strictly a net decker.

I find the Tempo Storm mulligan guides very useful. My general approach is to play the highest ranking deck I have the cards to make; sometimes it is a Tier 1 deck on TS, sometimes a very similar one on HSR and the TS mulligan guide is close enough to be useful.

For those days when I’m stuck having to play a deck I don’t know much about for the daily quest or the Tavern Brawl I find HearthPwn useful for finding a deck I can make with the cards I have – although the decks there vary wildly in quality even if highly voted up.

This approach generally gets me to Rank 5 pretty quickly with a win rate of 60 to 63% (although Odd Paladin has been 68 to 70% the past couple of months [that’s probably over now with the nerfs]), then I just play Casual (or Tavern Brawl if it’s a fast one) for the rest of the month to grind some gold.

[SenorBeef]

I decided to play some wild this month because I missed playing evolve Shaman, and every third person you face is playing big priest. What a boring deck to face, too. Oh another turn 4 Barnes into Y'Shaarj into Lich King, fantastic.

I wish they'd try to balance wild a little bit. What could it hurt? Those cards are never rotating back into standard, so do what you want with them. Instead, it's just a graveyard they don't give a shit about meant to appease people about "losing" their old cards.

[SenorBeef]

I put together a mid-range hunter deck because it was free (already had all the cards) and it works fine, but man what a boring deck. Just straight curvestone with very little decision making.

I'm not sure what to do. I have 10k dust so I can craft an expensive deck, but it feels wasteful spending what must be a year's worth of dust on one heavily specialized deck that'll rotate out. Because it seems like all interesting decks have been designed to need 3 or 4 specialized legendaries that aren't much good for any other deck.

[Wilson]

I hear you. I've got a little more dust than you, but I'm just not willing to pull the trigger to spend over half of what I have to make Discard Warlock or Control Priest or one of the Big Druids.

Pretty much just playing Even Shaman, Spell Hunter, Heallock, and Mechathun Priest at this point. Plus arena.

And much to my surprise, I keep going back to Rumble Run... I've won with four of the Shrines at this point. Can't imagine getting them all, but there are still some I think I should be able to win with that I haven't yet.

[octopus]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

I decided to play some wild this month because I missed playing evolve Shaman, and every third person you face is playing big priest. What a boring deck to face, too. Oh another turn 4 Barnes into Y'Shaarj into Lich King, fantastic.

I wish they'd try to balance wild a little bit. What could it hurt? Those cards are never rotating back into standard, so do what you want with them. Instead, it's just a graveyard they don't give a shit about meant to appease people about "losing" their old cards.

People spend real money and in some cases lot of it for those cards. Of course, Blizzard doesn’t want to piss people off with too much uncertainty. They took some serious grief when they did an attack speed nerf in Diablo 3 back when the real money auction house was active.

[SenorBeef]

Just for the hell of it, I decided to craft a mill rogue wild deck. I sort of dislike playing against the deck because it's not quite interactive, but now that I'm actually playing it I've come to appreciate that it's a bit more interactive than I thought and it's sort of fun. It was basically free to try anyway, I just had to craft an academic espionage (which I now realize isn't really essential to the deck anyway).

I think I may pull it out when I reach a level in wild where every other opponent is a big priest deck. Holy shit does it feel good to make them draw themselves to death on like turn 10.

[SenorBeef]

Just had a pretty absurd game. Mill rogue vs dragon priest. Went to turn 28 or so.

He used drakanoid operative (discover a card in your opponent's deck) to steal my lab recruiter (add 3 copies of a friendly minion to your deck) so I couldn't mill him. He actually ended up playing 11 Drakanoid operatives in the game.

I don't know how long it could've gone on, but I mismanaged my shuffle cards into my deck cards. I didn't think that in order to play the last 2 I'd need to play the second to last one and then play the last one on that. So I ended up with just one shuffle minions into your deck card and realized I had lost, even though I made it last another 10-12 turns.

We had some many Faldorei Striders that at one point I think he pulled 12 spider ambushes in a row onto a full board.

[SenorBeef]

Feels like Hearthstone is dying. No one posts around it on here, I don't see any of my friends log in to the game. Of course that's anecdotal, just a few players on the SDMB. But I'm also taking 1+ minute to find a match in wild around rank 15, and often getting repeat opponents, which is something I've never seen before recently.

[Turble]

Seems to me Wild has been that way for a long time; not a lot players and often getting the same opponent in successive games. I only play Wild once in a while so usually start at low rank.

Remember those gold farmers who used to stay at Rank 20 to crush noobs with their Tier 1 decks? I think a lot of them are now clustered at Rank 15 and 10 since they don’t get set back to 20 every month. I experienced it this month in Wild, going quickly from 20 to 15, stuttering a bit, making it to 10, and have been stuck at 10 for the past week or so, often playing the same player with multiple golden legendaries two or three games in a row.

BTW, I am playing that Big Priest you mentioned a while back, a Tier 1 deck that I just happen to have the cards for. This is the first I’ve put any time into playing Priest.

[Budget Player Cadet]

I haven't been playing - nothing really appeals to me and MTGA is a much better online CCG.

[The Lurker Above]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Feels like Hearthstone is dying. No one posts around it on here, I don't see any of my friends log in to the game.

Dying seems a bit extreme, I'm sure we'd have seen crazy stuff from Blizzcon to win pack players if $$$ was trending down too fast; but I will admit I don't see many people on my friends list in HS these days. I haven't played in a few expansions myself.

I am loving MTGA. Heck, I'm even going to go to an actual paper pre-release event this weekend. And Civ6 has a CANADA! expansion coming in February ... I'm not coming back to HS for a while at least.

[SenorBeef]

I should've said shrinking/contracting. It won't be dead anytime soon. But it seems to be past its growing phase.

Decided to build a pogo-hopper deck which is a little goofy, and this happened.

[SenorBeef]

It just occured to me a great feature of the game would be the ability to save replays and rewatch them like they occured in the game client. Every few hundred games you end up getting a really interesting one that would be interesting to re-watch or share. I know there are a couple of websites that sort of do that, but it's pretty primitive. An in-client way would be cool.

[The Lurker Above]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

It just occured to me a great feature of the game would be the ability to save replays and rewatch them like they occured in the game client. Every few hundred games you end up getting a really interesting one that would be interesting to re-watch or share. I know there are a couple of websites that sort of do that, but it's pretty primitive. An in-client way would be cool.

You wouldn't think something like that would be hard. I know that my very first games with my Renounce-Yogg deck was bonkers and I'ld love to see the replay in-client. It was so good my opponent friended me after and loved it, even though he eventually lost to fatigue.

[SenorBeef]

I haven't been playing my silly pogo hopper deck very long, but I managed to get a 33/33 pogo hopper out there.

[SenorBeef]

Well, SDMB interest in hearthstone is definitely down. I think I have about 7 of you on my friends list, and I've been playing hearthstone plenty, and I've been holding on to a challenge quest for like 3 weeks now, because no one has been on.

I've been playing my silly mill/pogo rogue deck. It has a whopping 31% winrate. But I still find it fun. There are lots of directions it can go, and it takes more decision making than most decks. I think I only have a slightly positive winrate against priests, even though I designed it to basically beat all the big priest decks that annoyed me. I think 54%. Against paladin I'm like 16%.

[Turble]

Yeah, interest does seem to be down. I usually only play for an hour or so a day now but do play most every day, usually somewhere around noonish Eastern time if you want to add me -- same name as here #1488. Be warned though that I generally play Suicide Lock in Challenges just to get the gold quickly. I'd play something else if you want but the other decks I would have available are ones I think you pretty much hate, like Wild Resurrect Priest or Standard Odd Paladin -- brainless net decks, that's me.

[Turble]

More nerfs to Basic / Classic cards coming on February 5.

Cold Blood – Will cost 2 Mana. (Up from 1)
Flametongue Totem – Will cost 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Equality – Will cost 4 mana. (Up from 2)
Hunter’s Mark – Will cost 2 mana. (Up from 1)

And one recent card:
Emerald Spellstone – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)

Five years in and still trying to straighten out the original cards. /sigh

[The Lurker Above]

Originally Posted by Turble

Equality – Will cost 4 mana. (Up from 2)
Hunter’s Mark – Will cost 2 mana. (Up from 1)

I know I've been away for a long time, when I don't even understand what problem they're trying to solve. How big an issue is Equality causing that it needs a 2 mana nerf?

And Hunter's Mark is too OP with Candleshot?

[Jas09]

Originally Posted by The Lurker Above

I know I've been away for a long time, when I don't even understand what problem they're trying to solve. How big an issue is Equality causing that it needs a 2 mana nerf?

And Hunter's Mark is too OP with Candleshot?

Seems they are targeting single-target removal. Hunter's Mark + Candleshot and Equality + just about anything are both very strong (and specifically Equality + Consecration is a very common board clear). Also Hunter and Paladin are both really strong (or at least were last time I knew the meta - around Thanksgiving).

But yeah, the game is definitely lost my interest over the last month or two (which is ironic since I actually have quite a bit more time to potentially play now).

[SenorBeef]

I don't like the flametongue nerf, and it murders one of my favorite decks, evolve shaman.

[SenorBeef]

You know, it's really weird how they go for the basic/classic cards first. We've had these cards for years that existed in a healthy way, and only in combination with a new set do they become more powerful. And that new set will rotate out eventually. But they attack the basic cards that were always fine. That seems like the exact opposite way you'd want to approach this sort of balance.

[The Lurker Above]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

You know, it's really weird how they go for the basic/classic cards first. We've had these cards for years that existed in a healthy way, and only in combination with a new set do they become more powerful. And that new set will rotate out eventually. But they attack the basic cards that were always fine. That seems like the exact opposite way you'd want to approach this sort of balance.

The only way it makes sense to me is if the designers feel that some of the basics/classics restrict the design space for the next set(s).

I think it's a real problem to have a set that never rotates. Equality/Consecrate was fine for years, but now it needs to be nerfed into the ground? If they let Classic/Basic rotate they wouldn't have to fiddle with them. I suppose coming up with "new player" free stuff every couple of years causes pther issues...

[SenorBeef]

Had a shudderwock Shaman spam "thank you" and other BM at me while I was using oracles to draw for us. On my last oracle, I burnt his Shudderwock. Suddenly he shut up.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

[SenorBeef]

Let's say the enemy has 5 minions on the board and 8 cards in his hand. You use vanish. 2 of his minions go back to his hand, and the other 3 are killed.

This is determined randomly, right? Because sometimes it seems like it picks random cards to go back into the hand, and about half the time it seems like it picks the left-most minions. More often than you would think based on randomness.

Three times in a row now, someone has played n'zoth, and I've saved a vanish for it, and even though they've got a full board with 7 minions, and there were either 1-2 empty card slots, all 3 times the N'zoth was returned to the hand with vanish.

At once, it's not consistently sending back the left-most minions, but that seems to happen way more than chance would suggest.

[octopus]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Let's say the enemy has 5 minions on the board and 8 cards in his hand. You use vanish. 2 of his minions go back to his hand, and the other 3 are killed.

This is determined randomly, right? Because sometimes it seems like it picks random cards to go back into the hand, and about half the time it seems like it picks the left-most minions. More often than you would think based on randomness.

Three times in a row now, someone has played n'zoth, and I've saved a vanish for it, and even though they've got a full board with 7 minions, and there were either 1-2 empty card slots, all 3 times the N'zoth was returned to the hand with vanish.

At once, it's not consistently sending back the left-most minions, but that seems to happen way more than chance would suggest.

If I had to guess I’d say it would be based on time stamp of the minion when it was put on board. However, Blizz is not known for consistent coding.

[Tabby_Cat]

It is actually based on time. First on the board, first back to hand. So you have to keep in mind the order of minions played when using vanish.

Way back when, Dr. Boom was the most unintuitive exception - You would think that Boom hit the board after the bots, since the bots are created by battlecry, but in fact Boom was always the FIRST to hit the board, but the LAST to complete, since Boom's summoning is only completed after the battlecry is completed, and so the order goes Boom (bot bot) Boom(done), not bot bot Boom.

So Boom always goes back into the hand, and Sylvanas always gets Deathwing. Such is life.

[SenorBeef]

I got myself in trouble today. After losing to a big priest in wild for the 80th time I decided I wanted to give the deck a test run. But I had to craft a few things like mass hysterias, a lightbomb, the eternal servitudes... all together like 2000 dust. I home brewed a deck without looking at a netdeck list and it was good but it didn't quite feel right. I then realized I totally forgot to put Y'Shaarj in my deck. I thought I had Y'Shaarj but apparently not. When I was mentally figuring out what cards I needed for the deck I thought I had it. So I was stuck, already invested 2000 dust, might as well put in the last 1600.

So now I'm just a dickbag big priest player shitting all over wild. Gone like 30-20 with this deck. Decided to modify mine with a malygos/velen combo with some damage spells to give me OTK chances against other control decks, particularly other big priests.

What this deck can do is just stupid. You're summoning like 20-25 mana worth of shit every turn after like turn 5. I just dropped 4 Ragnaroses on a guy on one turn.

Oh, Blizzard. I wish you took wild seriously. There are so many expired decks I like. But they'll never balance anything there even if it's a rotated out card - I mean, if it's rotated out, why not balance the damn thing without affecting current/future design, only wild? Honestly I think they're so cheap that they don't want to give anyone dust back for disenchanting it at full value if they change it.

[SenorBeef]

Played against a priest who had a deck that was designed to put as many tunnel weasels into the enemy deck as possible. Used cubes, mirage caller, harold volajz, spirit of the dead, etc. I was using big priest. Put about 15 tunnel weasels into my deck. It was also a quest priest with Anduin. The game took like a half hour because as per usual the guy played extremely slowly for some reason but I'm a little confused about what his win condition is. I guess against other super super slow control decks he can eventually out-topdeck value them because they're drawing tunnel weasels most of the time after turn 20? It did take a long time and inconveniene me since deck-cheating to pull out minions like shadow essence and y'shaarj would keep pulling out tunnel weasels.

Well, props to that guy for trying a weird deck. I enjoy my matches with people who built their own unique deaths rather than the 40th netdecker game in a row.


When I started playing big priest I shot right up to rank 6 (highest I've been in wild, I think) but then noticed that there's a threshold going on. Around rank 9-10 everyone is playing big priest. But then as you get past those ranks, you've reached the decks designed to beat big priest, which are all sitting in the rank 8 to 5 range. So after that big start, I got deck after deck designed to beat me. Kingsbane rogues, super aggressive pirate/aggro rogues and warriors, etc. The deck went from a 60%+ winrate over the first 40 or 50 games to 46% over 130. My deck has a 62% winrate over other priests, which was propelling me from 10 to 7 or so, but then I only faced a few priests at that rank.

I guess you gotta switch decks to beat the meta. Use big priest to get down to rank 8, switch to decks that can face those super aggro decks to get down to 5, maybe something new from there.

[aktep]

One of the big streamers (I think it was Thijs) was playing that weasel deck a few months ago. I remember youtube kept recommending me videos featuring it. I got the opinion it was a troll deck more than than anything else.