You had me at free packs! Hopefully, I'll get some new copies of Hysteria to replace the ones I dusted. :)

Wow... yeah Plaguebringer is a great treasure to have with no downside to the cost reduction. I'm on my second run with this and stopped at 3-0 last night for fear the IPA's would take over again. lol

Glad you're enjoying it!

I've been playing since day 1 of open beta. I have 1k+ wins with all 10 classes. I keep all my golden cards. I have the legend card back. Those cosmetics are more indicative of time than skill. If you meet me on ladder, you'll probably win. 

Welcome changes that should do the job for balance purposes. That 1 mana cost for Outlander is a great choice to slow the strategy down without killing the theme. It will still be strong but they can always increase it to 2 if necessary. Now they need to stop making insanely efficient, 1 mana DH cards. :)

I love the reduction to Royal Greatsword. The change to Death Games is nice but very easy to work around since the fast start is a bigger problem than targeting the HP. I think the bump to 8 for Bonecrusher is too much.

Great idea and write up. I'll definitely try this one later today. 

Also, thanks for triggering some fun memories. My kids used to sing and dance to this song when they were toddlers. 

Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater!

I have been spending the majority of my time in Duels and agree with the points in the article and comments. The mode can certainly get better but it'll take work on several fronts, starting with Blizzard being less greedy and reducing the collection requirements. That seems unlikely to happen. However, the mode can still get better if the buckets are tweaked to reduce the high/low roll effect between something like Double Time / Cannibalism or Staking A Claim / Sticky Fingers. There's definitely some balance work needed, as well. Outlander remains overpowered and Warlock has incredible synergy. 

I will say that the new HPs and Treasures have helped quite a bit with balance. [Hearthstone Card (Harvest Time) Not Found] looks strong (and has wrecked me a few times) for token druid builds. Frost Shards gives Mage a strong stall tactic that can work as a counter to DH's 1 mana hoards. Stormcatcher is totally busted and [Hearthstone Card (Magnetic Tiles) Not Found] has performed well in the games I've faced it. I think we will definitely see a more diverse meta based on those additions, which is great. Then again, Traktamer Aelessa makes Stelina even more scary...

There are simply too many barriers to entry. Treasures locked behind collection requirements that are too steep. Wild sets in play. 150 gold for Heroic. It does have a negative effect on the mode, as I'm consistently seeing long queue times and facing the same player in back to back games fairly often. 1 minute queue time after 4 wins then hitting 2 minute queue times after 6 wins. Please, please, please fix this Blizz. 

No ticket, and my run is still active. Oh well. 

I drafted a decent looking Shaman deck and promptly lost my first 2 games. The ticket will be a nice do-over. I'll leave a Duels run at 2 losses to test, as well, though I assume a full reset to ranks there would necessitate a closed run & ticket. 

Why are they so intent on reducing the number of players in the newest format? Heroic Duels are awesome but I'm getting 2 minute queue times whenever I get above 4 wins and that sucks. I'm facing the same player 2 games in a row at least every other run and that sucks. The 150 gold entry fee is a barrier to entry and the treasures being locked makes that worse. 

I'm excited for the new stuff but the first thing that comes to mind is the negative. Blizz Please. :(

I love the format but completely agree that it suffers from a serious balance problem. The synergy between HP & Treasure is just too high for DH & Lock so the other classes really suffer, especially in the early stages of each run. Facing DH is nearly an auto-loss in the first 2 matches for most classes. I'm still playing more duels than any other format.

My ranked play is largely copy/paste since I prefer playing Duels & Arena (not so much, lately). Never been a fan of running the top tier netdecks so I use these. Absolutely loving these deck spotlights, Avalon. Keep up the great work! I'm off to try some duels paladin. 

Cool idea but it definitely needs cost reduction, starting the game with extra crystals, or a mechanism that prevents high cost cards as options. Drawing 3 cards each turn is a fast track to burning cards.

Duels is a ton of fun but DH is still dominant due to the insane power/synergy of outlander. Most times any other class I play feels like the win/loss is a coin flip. Heads, you face DH and lose. Tails, you face some other class and have a chance to win. The mode needs each class to have a viable HP/Treasure/StarterDeck synergy that can compete. Right now a DH is S tier with a few classes playable beneath it and a few that are just awful and have no real synergy to win early in a run.

Happy Holidays!

Outlander definitely needs to be nerfed somehow. It's busted with all the very good, low cost cards available to DH. It doesn't feel good to win with it or lose to it. The game below was at 5-1 and it was disgusting.

https://hsreplay.net/replay/q9aWceaarAUPEj2GPyDxmA

Totally maniacal about it... one of my favorite scenes from that movie and always my first thought when I see/hear the word snowball. 

I've never actually been in a snowball fight. I don't even know the rules. Is there, like, a point system? Or is it... to the death.

They can't give us discounted stuff after they were just so awesome about fixing the Rewards Track that they introduced with absurdly low rewards. 

Thanks for the info. Turns out I'm an idiot and never realized I had to play through the stories a second time for achievements, anyway.