The purpose of Taunt is primarily to force trades to go in your favour instead of in your opponent’s favour. That means forcing big creatures to waste a turn knocking down a small taunt, or forcing little creatures to die in swarms trying to get through a big taunt, when your opponent would rather attack more valuable targets or targets that can’t fight back. You don’t want everything to have Taunt because if it does, you’re back to your opponent being able to choose which of their creatures is best suited to attack which of your creatures.
That Shade of Naxxramas card is absolutely disgusting. There aren’t many cards that can deal with it immediately.
I dunno about immediately. If he unstealths, then most classes can deal with him and he’s just another Questing Adventurer (I still don’t know how to use this guy, if ever). If he sits there for 9 turns he might be a problem though, so the aim will be to punish the other player for giving up his turn 3. Then keep his board clear and keep cheap taunts on the board?
As far as I can tell, Questing Adventurer is just a scare tactic. It gives your opponent an ultimatum: waste your time figuring out how to off this insignificant creature or get rolled by a big one. 90% of the time they deal with him immediately, but psychologically it can cause people who know how deadly he can get to overreact.
I’m doing really horrible since the reset.
Got sick of ranked, went to the arena… and managed to get an equally horrible deck. Went 1 and 3.
I’m just going to lie here for a bit…
Any ranked multiplayer game with seasons is going to be a mess near the beginning of the season. You have a higher chance of getting mulched by someone who should be a higher rank because the rankings haven’t had time to even out yet. Remember, everyone started at rank 25 this season. The people who play the game religiously/professionally are already Rank 1 or whatever, but the people who are good (rank 5-10 maybe), but play more casually are probably still sitting at Rank 15-20 and steamrolling their way up little by little.
Heh. I have also had my last two decks go under 7 wins. 6 and 3. The 3 wins was particularly frustrating because it was a decent Priest deck, but in my first game I ran into a druid who put out a turn 1 Yeti that I couldn’t deal with. I won the next three, and was about to win the next, when Windows decided to BSOD me. Log back in to find myself 3-2. Next game, got Cairne-d.
I don’t think that’s true. I got some bonus stars and started at rank 21.
Okay, either way, everyone started at a relatively low rank. I think it was indeed around rank 21 when all of a sudden I started encountering people with card backs from last season and well crafted decks with legendaries in them when previously it was all free/cheap decks.
Bonus stars depend on your performance last season. Per wiki
That would make sense, people around rank 10-15 would load in around rank 20-21, I don’t think that invalidates my claim too much.
I expect you’re right that at the beginning of a season rank 20 or thereabouts would be quite tough. I’ve also read/heard somewhere that there are people who artificially maintain a low rank to farm wins, and they also tend to hang around the rank 20 mark. I’m not quite sure how/why that would be a thing, but apparently it is.
I’m a free player – haven’t spent any money on the game. Ground my way up to around Rank 14 or 13 with occasional spurts to 11 before getting smacked back down. On the reset I went to Rank 20.
The first couple of days after the reset were tough; had a hard time getting past Rank 19. Battling the really good players who have spent a bunch of money to make really good decks as well as battling not so good players who have spent a lot of money building decks but don’t really know how to play them. It’s kind of fun to beat a guy with a fistful of epics with my free deck.
Made it up to 15 last night – the better players with strong cards have bubbled up past me … and the weaker players with expensive decks are still beatable much of the time.
It’s a fun game but the grind is beginning to wear on me. No useful epic cards for my mage yet from free Arena plays.
It doesn’t take a bunch of money to make a legendary quality deck. Several streamers have demonstrated decks that are free and make it to legend. I’ve seen Trump do Mage, Shaman and Warlock, and I know someone else has done Warrior (aggro). I’m pretty sure Hunter could make it quite easily.
Do they use the arena to get cards, or are they really starting from scratch with just the commons and level reward cards? I’d be really amazed if it was the latter!
Trump starts completely from scratch, with a brand new account. He does the one free arena which everyone gets, but no more. And if he gets a legendary(which he did in two of the runs), he doesn’t use it or disenchant it for dust. They’re honest to goodness free to play decks that make it to legend.
ETA - he does use the gold that he gets from the daily quests and from winning games to buy packs and then enchants cards that he needs.
In other news - Unleash the Hounds will be nerfed to three mana!
Ah ok. A pack a day does add up, but that’s pretty fair - take it as buying a 15 pack or something, that’s still a reasonable amount of money.
Funny thing is, ever since I started playing my face rogue (basically, windfury+coldblood and shadowstep + arcane golem and a whole lot of gagetzan), hunters aren’t a problem for me any more. For some reason, it’s the druids and shamans that are killing me.
I think he ends up opening somewhere around 10-15 packs in the course of the run(though I could be wrong), which takes him around 4-5 days, so that sounds correct. Interestingly, all three classes that he got to legend reached there within a spread of two-three wins, between 184 and 186 wins total.
The patch upping the cost of Unleash the Hounds just went live. Got in one game but not against a Hunter before the patch bugged out and can’t connect now.
BTW: I wasn’t supporting the idea that the game is Pay to Win, just making observations on the varying skill levels of players. Trump is a highly skilled and very experienced player. I learned most of what I know about this game by watching his videos.
From what I’ve seen, experience is very important in this game. Trump was always aware of what the other guy could do to him on the next turn. That only comes from playing all the other types and gaining a lot of experience.
I think the tutorial is very well done. I had never played a game of this type and it got me up and running very quickly. I like it … and am spending too much time on it.
Yeah, being able to plan ahead a few moves is key, I think. This really got driven home for me when Trump suddenly said out of nowhere “that’s a Holy Nova play. He’s going to Holy Nova.” and next turn, the player did! I don’t know the other classes well enough to do that right now, and I’m not sure I’ll ever do.
Anyway, floating around rank 19-16 right now. 
Ran into a priest last night, turn 1 coin lightwell, turn 3 divine spirit innerfire, self healing 10/10, BAM.
I had a sap in hand, but gawd that game sucked.