I got a counterspell from a cabalist tome and played it. The mage I played against also cast a secret. It was also counterspell. Which my counterspell countered from being played.
Counterspellception.
Alright, so my C’thun Warrior is not going as well as it seemed initially. I’m having a hard time getting past level 14 or so. Aggro shaman wrecks me - I’m in bad shape by the time I get to brawl, if I can manage to get it at all.
I haven’t played constructed seriously for a long time - it’s a lot harder now. Everyone is net decking with a lot of simple decks. It used to be that you could get to level 10 and beyond with any decent deck with competant play - now I’m having trouble getting past 14. Is the game a lot harder than it used to be?
It does seem to drop on the weekend, though. I guess the casual players flood in. During the week this week I dropped down from 14 to 17, but then when I played on the weekend I went on like a 10-2 type streak and got back up there because it was a lot easier.
I’ve almost got enough dust to craft a new legendary. Grommash was going to be my dude, since I’ve been enjoying the warrior lifestyle, but now I’m thinking I may try Fandrel instead. It’s a fun, versatile card, I’ve hardly played any druid, and there are some top tier decks I could build with him. I just got Malygos recently so I could even try the Malygos-Fendral-Yogg druid that’s at the top of the meta right now. And/or C’thun Druid. What do you think?
I decided to be a filthy netdecker and build the current deck on tempostorm listed as #1. And I can’t figure out how to play it. Is it a combo deck? A tempo deck? Am I supposed to save a bunch of spells for when I get Malygos in my hand and Thaurissan them down into combo range? What keeps aggro from eating my face during this time and easily clearing off the Thaurissan? There’s no early taunt. Am I supposed to spend all my spells on board clear? Then what do I do when I get maly? I’m also having a hard time using Fendral. He’s great, but since I have no taunts or board control, it’s rare that I can use him on tempo since he’s usually going to die that turn. I have to wait until I have him and some innervates later on to get some value on him. It’s just been a confusing deck for me that I’m winning like 20% with, usually against control so I have time to get a combo going. Aggro has been destroying me. Mid-range too, I think I faced like 4 call of the wild hunters in my first 10-12 games.
Trump played a couple games with it here:
I think you basically use spells to board control and try to race to yogg/giants vs. aggro. I mostly play token druid which has a bit more early game, so I don't really know for sure.I just played a Yogg. It killed his Sylvanas, which stole the Yogg, and the rest of the Yogg spells played out with the other guy casting them. Is that the normal behavior? I thought in the past I’ve seen it not work like that. The Yogg switched to him and then cast Astral Communion when he had like 8 cards.
Yes, they added that specific check some time ago…maybe even when the card launched. It checks for death effects between casting so that deathrattles resolve, and Sylvanas is one of the ones that can make things very interesting.
It annoys me that evolve doesn’t work on Yogg, because there are no 11-mana minions, so he doesn’t get transformed at all. It would be nice if they would just transform it into a minion of the same cost, or one one cost-slot higher (ie 12-mana giant of some type)
If you read the comments on that thread you will notice that most people say it is not good for climbing the ladder, it’s just good at the top-tier ranks.
Against aggro, you want spells like Swipe and wrath. Playing out stuff like Fandral and Azure drake even when you won’t get value out of them is key to surviving to the late game when you can lay down some huge minions. Your opponent HAS to trade for those instead of just going face, because they represent an incredible amount of value you can pull. But you also have to understand that those aggro decks are super-annoying to play against most of the time anyhow, and can often just clobber you. I don’t think there are many favorable decks against Shaman right now that aren’t other Shaman decks. With the right draws, Warlock is beatable but you have to have the right opening hand as well as a good amount of card draw in order to keep up with them, stabilize, and then turn the tables.
Holy shit, balance changes.
My precious Yogg.
From the description, it sounds an awful lot like the professional Hearthstone players were really pissed about Yogg, so the developers had to do something.
Me, I hate Yogg. So I’m more than happy to see it go far, far away.
[del]Balance changes[/del] Nerfs, rather.
Yogg was the most fun card in the game, by a lot. Taken from us too soon. RIP.
If they want a different balance for tournaments they should have a better management of a core set (not classic, which was designed before they ever developed the idea of classic being a core set) and various ban lists and rules for different sorts of tournaments. Having them commit to the idea of classic being the core identity of a class that will never change 2-3 years after they designed that set was limiting and misguided. When they decided they were going to rework the relationship between a core set and expansion sets, they should’ve created a core set where the classic set is, of hand-picked cards that are balanced and identify a class. “Oh yeah so 2 years later we decided the classic set is the core set now and everything else, no matter how good, is only here for a bit” was a bad idea.
I think these nerfs are likely a panic reaction by Blizzard to the recent folding of two more big name Hearthstone teams – Archon and Navi. Amaz disbanded Archon and intends to work as a caster. Navi had the best tournament record in the game and included Xixo, who is probably the best player in the world.
There really are no professional Hearthstone players, at least none who are able to support themselves strictly by playing the game. They were all being supported by the team owners with money earned through means other than tournament winnings. Reynad figured it out quite a while ago and started hiring people who could produce profitable content rather than players who could win tournaments – I don’t think the TempoStorm team won a single tournament this year.
There are two problems: there isn’t enough tournament prize money to support the players and the flawed nature of the game means top level players are too frequently knocked out of tournaments too early to let their skill take them to the finals. Sponsors aren’t willing to put up big prize money when it is so likely the popular big name players will not be the ones still in the game at the finish.
The people who are earning a living through Hearthstone are guys like Kripp, who says he works 13 hours a day streaming and producing content for Youtube and such … and selling T-shirts.
So, yeah … over two years in and they are still making changes to the basic cards. The game is fundamentally flawed. If it is even possible to balance a game with nine different classes each with a different Hero Power, and sooo many different cards, the current Blizzard team aren’t the people to do it.
I’ve had 4 Yoggs in a row that cast Astral Communion and knocked out a good hand I had. What would’ve been very likely wins. Ah well, live by the Yogg, die by the Yogg.
I do wish they’d pause the 90 second turn timer for animations, though. Sometimes I’ll have a Yogg so big that resolving it takes the entire turn, but there are moves I can make like units summoned with charge or weapon attacks that I can’t get through before the end of the turn.
In other news, the new geforce experience seems to understand when something in a window is a game, so you appear to now be able to do shadowplay recording on hearthstone without fiddling with desktop capture. Plus it only records that window, so if you alt tab to the desktop it won’t capture it, it’ll stay on the game. This will make recording interesting games a lot easier.
Well, I took about 3 months off from Arena due to the new job and crazy commute; but when I came back it doesn’t look like the card restrictions have made that big of a change to the class variety.
Here’s my lastest run (12-1). My opponents, 7 Mages, 3 Rogues, 2 Shaman, and one lonely Druid. I, of course, had only taken Mage because I had two quests :rolleyes:. No other reason at all :p.
So I am in the process of playing all the classes since the change - 8 wins with Priest, 1 win with Druid (ow), 10 wins with Warrior and (drumroll)
12-0 with Shaman - my first 12-0.
Haven’t really been seeing many mages, and the ones I have been seeing I’ve been beating for the most part.
Changes went through. Is it worth keeping Yogg now or should I get full dust? It’s a shame, I really love Yogg.
Am I the only one seeing a ton of Mages in ladder play? Is it just me, or, with the recent changes, has Tempo Mage become the dominant deck, with everyone and their brother taking advantage of the additions that made Mage, already a powerful deck, even more powerful?
I really liked the old Yogg. Someone played him against me today and it ended up casting a couple of useless spells then mulching himself…In many of the situations I have played him, he typically kills himself long before he runs out of spells, so I expect him to be a much poorer card now. I am pretty sure I am going to dust him and craft a Standard legendary like Grommash, Antonidas, or VanCleef so I can enable some other deck archetypes. I’m also toying with the idea of crafting Ragnaros, Lightlord for use in my Dragon Paladin deck (used by Brian Kibler on stream), but right now I am using forbidden healing as a substitute and it seems to be working fairly well. I have run into very few situations where it would have (in my opinion) been better to have played RagL than the forbidden healing.
I dusted him. I figure I can always get him back later if I change my mind.
That’s a 12-win deck? No 1-drops, no really good 2-drops, one or two good 3-drops… I see that it has a deck score of 72, but I really don’t get it…
Meanwhile, today I got my highest heartharena score ever: 225 on a Muster For Battle. 