Yeah, there's definitely plenty of fun little things you can do in Mercs if you look for them rather than staying with the same team the whole time to grind coins efficiently. Personally I find it more interesting than the things you can do in normal HS, with the added benefit that you aren't always dealing with powerful meta decks suppressing janky combos.
- I've dealt with the bomb so many times, but never once thought to insta-kill it with C'thun. I guess I just never gave that equipment much attention because bosses don't generally start with minions, so you're usually better off using one of his other equipments.
- I had used the infinite-Garonas and Chromie+Scabbs before though. They are certainly very effective for very little effort, though unfortunately the duplicate Garonas don't work with her 3rd ability so they can't discover anything fancy and are limited to a speed 8 attack to deal damage with... which is tough when you only have 1 health to survive with.
- I'm sure Nemsy against the rabbit works well, but Aranna and Xyrella trivially setting it's attack to 0 seems simpler to me. There is a related way to fight Maestra though: she can only attack once a turn at speed 4, so Kazakus can just keep summoning a taunt golem (also speed 4) and she's stuck.
Here's a couple of neat things I've been doing recently:
- Still on Nemsy: have you ever wanted that +12 attack bonus Cariel can have while in taunt but didn't want to waste a turn gaining taunt (and only temporarily at that!)? Well our little gnome warlock friend has us covered. By the same method, anyone and everyone can have taunt, giving Vanndar taunt teams much more freedom than they had before.
- Maiev's Warden's Shroud equipment is a great way to direct attacks towards your middle merc. A good use is with Bwonsamdi who can make himself take 0 damage for the turn them bounce everyone back to the bench, giving you a free turn against attack-based teams. This is particularly useful against Dragonbone Golem who starts as 2 protectors + 1 fighter and quickly summons a lot more protector mercs. So Malchezaar can turn the fighter into a protector, then when Bwonsamdi clears the board only 3 mercs will be replayed, so this process forces the 3 mercs summoned on turn 1 onto the bench. With everything now a protector and half their team sidelined, you can safely send out 3 casters to mop up the fight relatively easily.
Not really anything to do with bounty and bosses, but a task from Khadgar. To be precise task 14: cooked with perfection. Question: is this task bugged?
No matter what i try it never counts...or am i missing something?
Iirc the issue comes from using the equipment that starts his buff ability upgraded. Take that off and it will probably complete fine (just a little slower than you had hoped).
Why has this bug not been fixed yet when it has been known for nearly 2 months? I wish I knew.
By the way, anyone else no longer receiving daily and weekly quests since the latest patch? Not really a big issue for me yet, but I would like to have a full board of the highest XP quests lined up when the next expansion goes live in December.
Nope. I've still been getting mine, but the quests for the Hallow's End event disappeared once I finished that track, so maybe they have now coded it so it won't bother giving quests to people who have finished the rewards track?
If so, hopefully they built in a mechanism so they return shortly before the expansion launches so you can store up quests like the rest of us.
Rattlegore's Babbling Book task is a nightmare to prepare for i dont know what to even do
Since the final fight forces everything to be casters (kinda), you don't need to worry too much about your own role balance, so long as you have a team able to reach the end. Having ways to switch to fighters will help though (I used Garona and Tess for this).
Otherwise, having a team that can cast every spell school (Arcane, Fel, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature and Shadow) will obviously harm your ability to make an especially synergistic team. I started by looking at the naga, since they have a whole 'use lots of spell schools' sub-theme, but couldn't get everything in it. An even bigger problem is actually that you need a way to switch your mercs in and out - or otherwise wait for them to be killed - to use all the spell schools. Again, Garona helped since she can bounce out at the end of each turn.
In the end, I used the following mercs, each listed with the spell schools they provide:
Garona (Shadow, Nature, and Holy is often offered in her 3rd ability due to her draenai heritage)
Tess (Shadow, Arcane, and can principle steal others too, but I didn't do that)
Vashj (Nature, Fel)
Khadgar (Arcane, Frost, Fire)
Balinda (Frost, Fire)
Natalie (Holy, Shadow)
That gave me multiple options for every spell school except Fel, so I had to make sure Vashj didn't die on the way there. In the end, I only used Garona, Tess, Khadgar and Vashj in the final fight. Tess was mainly helpful because she can become a fighter like Garona, meaning I could get through the fight pretty efficiently, but Natalie would be 'safer' to fill in the Holy school in case Garona doesn't discover one. Either way, just make sure Vashj gets the Fel ability off and you shouldn't have too much trouble filling in the rest. Thankfully the fight itself doesn't require any super specific plan to win.
Quote From AngryShuckieThe good news is, I beat the bounty and can legitimately give you a winning strategy. The bad news is I took my favourite meme team of the female rogue characters:
I see no bad news here. While that's not a team I would have come up with, it worked, and on the first try!
Valeera snagged an Assassinate 2, and Tess picked up a Darkmoon Rabbit; both of those were very helpful.
Mask of Rage is the equipment that Garrosh provides, and now it is mine, thanks to your good advice.
I'm glad they did their job so effectively :)
I find that team to be a perfect counter-example against the people who talk like Mercs (PvE) only encourages a few optimised teams. In reality you can find success throwing together all sorts of mercs, even in max-level heroic bounties, so there is nothing stopping us just messing around with what we find fun, rather than what's efficient.
That said, there were some refinements along the way, with Maiev and Hooktusk being left out for a reason. Maiev's issue was that she was a bit too slow, since Maestra and Valeera really wanted someone to have a speed 3 attack to avoid tripping over each other. Hence why Vanessa + Dreadblades was so important. Also, while Maiev does have some of the usual rogue role changing and bench bouncing to fit that theme, hers are are a bit awkward to make good use of in PvE.
As for Hooktusk, she's all about role changing, which is redundant in a team that already changes its own roles so much. So she just never felt needed, and Aranna took her place. Ending with a nice balance of 2 protectors, 2 fighters and 2 casters, with 1 of each being able to change roles on a whim.
With the coin changes coming, I thought I might try and collect a few missing equipments. Maestra has me stuck. She's supposed to be on a team beating Heroic Garrosh.
With an orc comp, I can barely beat Garrosh on Normal. Dragons also got their tails handed to them. What else should I try?
It had been a while since I last went against Garrosh, so I just went and did this bounty (heroic) to remind myself of what he's all about. Clearly, he's teched pretty hard against most spell-heavy teams, so I understand picking something attack-heavy like orcs, especially since Maestra is herself an orc.
The good news is, I beat the bounty and can legitimately give you a winning strategy. The bad news is I took my favourite meme team of the female rogue characters:
Tess (using Steadfast Convictions equipment)
Vanessa (using Dreadbaldes; maxed to get Burgle Barrage to speed 3, which is important for combo reasons with both Maestra and Valeera)
Valeera (using Unnatural Smoke)
Garona (using Shadowstep)
Maestra (using Mask of Mimicry; hopefully that's not the one you get from completing this bounty!)
Aranna (using Iambic Pentameter; yes I know she's a DH, but she was a rogue before that and she fits the theme!)
The team is very... shananigans-y. There's lots of bouncing around and changing positions, not to mention tons of role changing. It also has stealth, speed changing, attack debuffs and discovering abilities. Frankly, it's a lot of fun, and avoids the usual problem of becoming boring by just using the same abilities over and over because it's so damn janky you have to change plans on the fly. I finish so many fights with this team thinking "well that was a scrappy mess, but somehow it worked" :P
As for how well it fared against Garrosh... well, both Maestra and Valeera managed to pick up Assassinate 2 along the way, so I insta-killed 2 enemies before the fight began. That trivialised it somewhat, and means I don't really know how well they'd fare normally. But it's worth noting the team can actually do that, and usually getting just a single Assassinate 2 will make things much, much easier. So it's definitely a real advantage. It does mean you'll want to brave the elite encounters to get it though.
Otherwise, you'd be surprised how effective this team ends up being when you get used to using it. Every merc is independently good, and while there isn't lots of obvious synergy, they do work well together. The attack debuffs help with survival as you quickly punch the enemy. Also, by being an attack-based team, it should be OK against Garrosh.
Defensively, the team is weirdly tanky. Valeera hides in stealth; Aranna can bounce out of there, obliterate the enemies' attack stats and switch places to redirect attacks; Garona can draw all the fire from protector-heavy teams, using Shimmering Toxin to tank all/most of the damage before yeeting herself back to the bench; while Tess provides some healing while simply having the best base stats of any merc, plus she can easily change her role to remove weaknesses. Vanessa often attacks first and returns to the bench when Maestra swaps in, so she rarely takes much damage. Maestra herself is often the only one in much danger of dying, but between gaining role advantage and helping nuke enemies faster than they can kill us back, she's normally fine.
I could go on, but it's such a weird team you're probably best off just trying it out and learning the rest of its quirks for yourself. I highly doubt it's the optimal way to beat Garrosh, but I do know it works, and most of all, it's a lot of fun.
Those suspicious minions have a little sparkle emblem beneath them (same as spellburst's I think) that goes away after the opponent makes their guess, so the devs must have coded it as an effect attached to the minion that is checked for at the start of the turn. Since silencing minions removes everything except their (base) stats, it fits that this is removed too.
Whether this should happen from a design (rather than mechanical) point of view is another question entirely. I suspect this was just their way of coding a battlecry that didn't all resolve straight away, and they didn't think silence edge cases were important enough to work around.
I has occurred to me that Preparation might be Halkias' best friend since, as others have pointed out, it would be optimistic to hope any of the 3 rogue secrets in Standard will stick around for a turn. Prep would let you just play them together and avoid that issue.
In Wild, we have Cheat Death to make him a lot more reliable while helping multiply him too.There is also Plagiarize which the opponent cannot trigger on their turn, so you can pretty much guarantee Halkias will stick around for the next turn when you can play another secret to help keep him going. So he's at least good for shenanigans in low-rank Wild.
Highly doubt the devs would let you do this in the deck construction phase. This type of experimentation is what modes like duels are for. We don't know what is coming in the next 4 expansions. Cheap paladin secrets would be very abuseable with combo cards. I also can't imagine how unfun pirate rogue in wild would be against Freezing Trap and Explosive Runes. I do not think Ice Block is that problematic nowadays.
They would probably take the safe route and make a legendary that converts your current spells in hand into secrets from other classes or just shuffle 5 random secrets into your deck.
Not knowing what's coming in the next 4 expansions doesn't worry me. If nothing stuck out as abusable in all 8 years' of secrets in Wild, it's unlikely they struggle to keep things tame for a year or so.
Rogue already has so many decent 1-mana cards I doubt the availability of paladin secrets would matter much for combo activation. Some pally secrets are quite good, but I'd be surprised if they out-competed the cards rogue can already use for anything other than secret synergies.
I'd also be a little surprised if Wild pirate rogue squeezed in Explosive and Freezing Trap, especially as they'd have to find space for the legendary that allows them to do this too. That deck is better at keeping the opponent's board clean than the usual aggro hunter decks that fit those traps in, and they could already use rogue's stall cards like Sap if they wanted that sort of effect.
I agree the devs are much more likely to take a safe route with another secret-based legendary (if that's even what it ends up being), though they were pretty brave with giving us Hanar to replicate the most notorious boss in Dungeon Run. Still, this is an expansion where they have given extra freedoms in the deck construction phase via Renathal, and Duels has already provided the technology for multi-class deck building, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
First off, I have no expectation that the idea I present below will actually happen. I just wanted to put it out there to bring in other thoughts and opinions since I find it a surprisingly interesting possibility that's worth entertaining before next week's card reveals show it (probably) won't happen.
So what's the idea? Well, we know rogue is getting some secret stuff this expansion, but we don't yet know what the secrets themselves are. The idea is that there are no new rogue secrets, but instead the second rogue legendary lets you use secrets from other classes when building the deck.
Now, normally I'd be the first person to shoot down ideas about multi-class deck construction, but in this limited case my hunch is it might actually be OK. The primary reason being that secrets are rarely that good on their own, and their real strength almost always comes from the secret synergy cards instead. There are a few exceptions to that, but even most of the good secrets wouldn't suddenly cause any big crisis because the very nature of secrets puts control over their power into the opponent's hands. So the rogue couldn't really exploit some hitherto unavailable combo that usually plagues multi-class deck-building.
Plus of course, rogue's full list of secret synergies is currently very limited, being only Shadowjeweler Hanar, Blackjack Stunner, Sparkjoy Cheat and Ghastly Gravedigger. These aren't made significantly more dangerous by having access to the other classes secrets, and introducing all-class secret access while there's no dangerous synergies around would be the best time to do it.
The burgle rogue side of things is probably where real problems arise, though I'm not sure they matter much. Secrets are often quite good to get for Tess and Contraband Stash because you can guarantee they will be useful when re-played, but they do lose their secrecy in the process so they don't cause massive trouble. It's also already super easy to get cards from other classes into your hand for burgle synergies, so you don't really need to add out-of-class cards into the deck to make that easier (especially with Maestra around).
Currently the biggest issue I can think of is that Ice Block exists, and Wild won't be thankful for two of these being added alongside Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Valeera the Hollow, especially as the Ice Blocks could be replayed a couple of times with things like Contraband Stash. That's really not fun to play against. At least anti-secret tech and Ashen Elemental exist for when that gets too obnoxious.
So what do you think? Have I missed something or is it a surprisingly plausible idea?
I think the responses so far are a bit unhelpful because they assume people want to always use the same old teams to solve every problem. And yeah, those teams can handle more or less everything, but stopping there makes the game so much less interesting and misses the fact there are LOTS of viable teams that can do much more diverse stuff than just spamming the same AoE spells over and over.
When you build whole teams around the plan for the boss, like I do, then the question posed by OP becomes completely legitimate. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to answer because it depends a lot on which zone you are in and what weaknesses the core of your team has. There are a couple of general purpose answers that can be used, like bringing Gruul with his fire resistance equipment whenever you go to Blackrock or being prepared to get punched a lot in Winterspring (taunts and attack debuffs are very useful here).
To get tailored answers though, you really need to identify what is messing your teams up. Most synergistic teams should be able to get to the boss with max 2 casualties along the way if the mercs involved are mostly upgraded, and planning a route that has a resurrection point near the end can often mean you reach the boss at full power. If you are losing more than that on the way, then you should really consider switching in a merc or two that are strong against whatever is causing the problem.
In short, refining your team, including their equipment, should usually solve the problem (and do so without having to resort to anything super optimised). It is fine to bring mercs that have not had enough coins to be maxed out, but it matters quite a lot how you choose to upgrade them. It helps to know what you want to use them for and recognise which abilities and equipment need the coins most. That way they won't be maxed out, but they can be strong enough to carry their weight.
It's cute she has the same statline as her husband's angry mode (Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred). Someone should let him know she's still going strong... albeit dead.
Mercenaries uses only existing art. Like the Cookie fish.
The mercs themselves don't. Most of them have skins that aren't used anywhere else, and quite often they make no sense lore-wise (e.g. lots of baby versions of the characters, such as Deathwing, N'Zoth and Azshara).
She may be on an exploration mission like Finley. I don't know how she could fit there though, but the background of one of her Mercenaries portraits ("Baroness Elise") is a strong hint
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Hmm, the Baroness art is a good point, though that would require her to have died and been sent there, and not just exploring. Unless Revendreth is appointing living mortals as Barons now, which would be very weird, especially as it would have had to have happened while Denathrius was in charge. That all seems very contrived. It also wouldn't be the first Mercs artwork to put a character in a position disconnected from any existing stories.
Elise Staarseeker will be a legendary in the upcoming expansion.
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Elise?! She's a complete dweeb and a do-gooder. She's the last person I'd expect to find in Revendreth (the place where sinners are sent to repent), even after death.
A member or two of the League of EVIL would be more plausible, though it doesn't feel like the right time for them since they have no link to the place and there's plenty of dead WoW villains to use instead.
There is - as is apparent by how quickly you'll open all the new rares when they come out - but it doesn't apply when coins luckily(?) get replaced by portraits. When this happens for a legendary that you already own it can look like duplicate protection isn't present, but that's a bit misrepresentative since it is using the wrong information. In the (admittedly unofficial) flowchart @NebuchadnezzarHS shared, duplicate protection applies only to the left column, but it is present.
I think the bigger problem in @Pezman's case is that there is no pity timer. So you can go 50+ packs without seeing any legendaries that obey duplicate protection (or any legendaries at all!). And that feels pretty damn awful. Honestly, their removal of the pity timer in Mercs is probably the most concerning aspect of the game's design because there was absolutely no reason to do it other than to make the packs less valuable. And unlike the other concerning aspects of the game, this one was actively made worse than the existing precedent.
Has anyone else noticed that AI characters NEVER make attacks that will kill them unless they have no other option, UNLESS you are working on a task where you need to kill them with a specific ability, then they gleefully commit suicide at every opportunity to deny you your task progress?
I suspect that there are different levels of enemy AI in the game. In barrens 1, the enemies dont tend to be smart, they will always attack where their damage will do the most, and the boss AI is pathetic, the third move is always to attack into the highest damage merc.
But at higher levels, the enemy AI is enhanced seemingly, moving in manners I would not expect them to, almost like they're making moves according to my merc composition. Like how in holy teams, the usual strat from the AI is to target anduin. But sometimes whenever I have the ring equipped they'd go for another merc instead. Its weirdly inconsistent.
I've stopped relying on the AI ages ago. In some cases I would farm at higher levels just so they cant suicide into my mercs.
Maiev's equipment to reduce damage from attacks to your left- and right-most characters has taught me the AI does take equipment into account. With that equipped they'll usually attack my middle merc if they aren't blocked by taunt, even if they would be much better off attacking one of the outer mercs normally.
From my experience, the higher level AI is actually pretty clever all things considered, taking account of all effects active at the start of the turn when assessing how quickly they can bring mercs down. I doubt they know enough to counter potential actions by the player though. Tbh, I don't think they should be that clever in PvE since it is good game design to let players actually enact their plans there. So it's better to increase difficulty in 'dumb' ways (like more health and/or damage) than with super-smart AI.
Nope. I got to something like 21 doing the 3 runs, then refused to look for the rest. I know some missions have multiple lore books, sometimes appearing after you could have had lethal, so you could take every fight as slow as possible and see if that helps (assuming you haven't already done that).
It doesn't help that they can't be predicted if you don't know they're coming, so I do my actions and end the turn immediately like usual, only to see the damn things appear and disappear before my eyes. It's too much mental strain to play slowly enough to make sure I don't miss the ones I do find lol.
Tongue-in-cheek doesn't really work without facial expressions or vocal intonations, unless you use something to replace them. For obvious reasons emojis are the most efficient option, but whatever you use, you've gotta give us plebs a hand if you want us to interpret things correctly :P
Yeah, there's definitely plenty of fun little things you can do in Mercs if you look for them rather than staying with the same team the whole time to grind coins efficiently. Personally I find it more interesting than the things you can do in normal HS, with the added benefit that you aren't always dealing with powerful meta decks suppressing janky combos.
- I've dealt with the bomb so many times, but never once thought to insta-kill it with C'thun. I guess I just never gave that equipment much attention because bosses don't generally start with minions, so you're usually better off using one of his other equipments.
- I had used the infinite-Garonas and Chromie+Scabbs before though. They are certainly very effective for very little effort, though unfortunately the duplicate Garonas don't work with her 3rd ability so they can't discover anything fancy and are limited to a speed 8 attack to deal damage with... which is tough when you only have 1 health to survive with.
- I'm sure Nemsy against the rabbit works well, but Aranna and Xyrella trivially setting it's attack to 0 seems simpler to me. There is a related way to fight Maestra though: she can only attack once a turn at speed 4, so Kazakus can just keep summoning a taunt golem (also speed 4) and she's stuck.
Here's a couple of neat things I've been doing recently:
- Still on Nemsy: have you ever wanted that +12 attack bonus Cariel can have while in taunt but didn't want to waste a turn gaining taunt (and only temporarily at that!)? Well our little gnome warlock friend has us covered. By the same method, anyone and everyone can have taunt, giving Vanndar taunt teams much more freedom than they had before.
- Maiev's Warden's Shroud equipment is a great way to direct attacks towards your middle merc. A good use is with Bwonsamdi who can make himself take 0 damage for the turn them bounce everyone back to the bench, giving you a free turn against attack-based teams. This is particularly useful against Dragonbone Golem who starts as 2 protectors + 1 fighter and quickly summons a lot more protector mercs. So Malchezaar can turn the fighter into a protector, then when Bwonsamdi clears the board only 3 mercs will be replayed, so this process forces the 3 mercs summoned on turn 1 onto the bench. With everything now a protector and half their team sidelined, you can safely send out 3 casters to mop up the fight relatively easily.
Iirc the issue comes from using the equipment that starts his buff ability upgraded. Take that off and it will probably complete fine (just a little slower than you had hoped).
Why has this bug not been fixed yet when it has been known for nearly 2 months? I wish I knew.
Nope. I've still been getting mine, but the quests for the Hallow's End event disappeared once I finished that track, so maybe they have now coded it so it won't bother giving quests to people who have finished the rewards track?
If so, hopefully they built in a mechanism so they return shortly before the expansion launches so you can store up quests like the rest of us.
In a word, yes. See my answer here for how I did it: https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/game-modes/mercenaries/18130-beat-that-bounty-boss?page=7#comment-233804
Since the final fight forces everything to be casters (kinda), you don't need to worry too much about your own role balance, so long as you have a team able to reach the end. Having ways to switch to fighters will help though (I used Garona and Tess for this).
Otherwise, having a team that can cast every spell school (Arcane, Fel, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature and Shadow) will obviously harm your ability to make an especially synergistic team. I started by looking at the naga, since they have a whole 'use lots of spell schools' sub-theme, but couldn't get everything in it. An even bigger problem is actually that you need a way to switch your mercs in and out - or otherwise wait for them to be killed - to use all the spell schools. Again, Garona helped since she can bounce out at the end of each turn.
In the end, I used the following mercs, each listed with the spell schools they provide:
That gave me multiple options for every spell school except Fel, so I had to make sure Vashj didn't die on the way there. In the end, I only used Garona, Tess, Khadgar and Vashj in the final fight. Tess was mainly helpful because she can become a fighter like Garona, meaning I could get through the fight pretty efficiently, but Natalie would be 'safer' to fill in the Holy school in case Garona doesn't discover one. Either way, just make sure Vashj gets the Fel ability off and you shouldn't have too much trouble filling in the rest. Thankfully the fight itself doesn't require any super specific plan to win.
I'm glad they did their job so effectively :)
I find that team to be a perfect counter-example against the people who talk like Mercs (PvE) only encourages a few optimised teams. In reality you can find success throwing together all sorts of mercs, even in max-level heroic bounties, so there is nothing stopping us just messing around with what we find fun, rather than what's efficient.
That said, there were some refinements along the way, with Maiev and Hooktusk being left out for a reason. Maiev's issue was that she was a bit too slow, since Maestra and Valeera really wanted someone to have a speed 3 attack to avoid tripping over each other. Hence why Vanessa + Dreadblades was so important. Also, while Maiev does have some of the usual rogue role changing and bench bouncing to fit that theme, hers are are a bit awkward to make good use of in PvE.
As for Hooktusk, she's all about role changing, which is redundant in a team that already changes its own roles so much. So she just never felt needed, and Aranna took her place. Ending with a nice balance of 2 protectors, 2 fighters and 2 casters, with 1 of each being able to change roles on a whim.
It had been a while since I last went against Garrosh, so I just went and did this bounty (heroic) to remind myself of what he's all about. Clearly, he's teched pretty hard against most spell-heavy teams, so I understand picking something attack-heavy like orcs, especially since Maestra is herself an orc.
The good news is, I beat the bounty and can legitimately give you a winning strategy. The bad news is I took my favourite meme team of the female rogue characters:
The team is very... shananigans-y. There's lots of bouncing around and changing positions, not to mention tons of role changing. It also has stealth, speed changing, attack debuffs and discovering abilities. Frankly, it's a lot of fun, and avoids the usual problem of becoming boring by just using the same abilities over and over because it's so damn janky you have to change plans on the fly. I finish so many fights with this team thinking "well that was a scrappy mess, but somehow it worked" :P
As for how well it fared against Garrosh... well, both Maestra and Valeera managed to pick up Assassinate 2 along the way, so I insta-killed 2 enemies before the fight began. That trivialised it somewhat, and means I don't really know how well they'd fare normally. But it's worth noting the team can actually do that, and usually getting just a single Assassinate 2 will make things much, much easier. So it's definitely a real advantage. It does mean you'll want to brave the elite encounters to get it though.
Otherwise, you'd be surprised how effective this team ends up being when you get used to using it. Every merc is independently good, and while there isn't lots of obvious synergy, they do work well together. The attack debuffs help with survival as you quickly punch the enemy. Also, by being an attack-based team, it should be OK against Garrosh.
Defensively, the team is weirdly tanky. Valeera hides in stealth; Aranna can bounce out of there, obliterate the enemies' attack stats and switch places to redirect attacks; Garona can draw all the fire from protector-heavy teams, using Shimmering Toxin to tank all/most of the damage before yeeting herself back to the bench; while Tess provides some healing while simply having the best base stats of any merc, plus she can easily change her role to remove weaknesses. Vanessa often attacks first and returns to the bench when Maestra swaps in, so she rarely takes much damage. Maestra herself is often the only one in much danger of dying, but between gaining role advantage and helping nuke enemies faster than they can kill us back, she's normally fine.
I could go on, but it's such a weird team you're probably best off just trying it out and learning the rest of its quirks for yourself. I highly doubt it's the optimal way to beat Garrosh, but I do know it works, and most of all, it's a lot of fun.
Those suspicious minions have a little sparkle emblem beneath them (same as spellburst's I think) that goes away after the opponent makes their guess, so the devs must have coded it as an effect attached to the minion that is checked for at the start of the turn. Since silencing minions removes everything except their (base) stats, it fits that this is removed too.
Whether this should happen from a design (rather than mechanical) point of view is another question entirely. I suspect this was just their way of coding a battlecry that didn't all resolve straight away, and they didn't think silence edge cases were important enough to work around.
I has occurred to me that Preparation might be Halkias' best friend since, as others have pointed out, it would be optimistic to hope any of the 3 rogue secrets in Standard will stick around for a turn. Prep would let you just play them together and avoid that issue.
In Wild, we have Cheat Death to make him a lot more reliable while helping multiply him too.There is also Plagiarize which the opponent cannot trigger on their turn, so you can pretty much guarantee Halkias will stick around for the next turn when you can play another secret to help keep him going. So he's at least good for shenanigans in low-rank Wild.
Not knowing what's coming in the next 4 expansions doesn't worry me. If nothing stuck out as abusable in all 8 years' of secrets in Wild, it's unlikely they struggle to keep things tame for a year or so.
Rogue already has so many decent 1-mana cards I doubt the availability of paladin secrets would matter much for combo activation. Some pally secrets are quite good, but I'd be surprised if they out-competed the cards rogue can already use for anything other than secret synergies.
I'd also be a little surprised if Wild pirate rogue squeezed in Explosive and Freezing Trap, especially as they'd have to find space for the legendary that allows them to do this too. That deck is better at keeping the opponent's board clean than the usual aggro hunter decks that fit those traps in, and they could already use rogue's stall cards like Sap if they wanted that sort of effect.
I agree the devs are much more likely to take a safe route with another secret-based legendary (if that's even what it ends up being), though they were pretty brave with giving us Hanar to replicate the most notorious boss in Dungeon Run. Still, this is an expansion where they have given extra freedoms in the deck construction phase via Renathal, and Duels has already provided the technology for multi-class deck building, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
First off, I have no expectation that the idea I present below will actually happen. I just wanted to put it out there to bring in other thoughts and opinions since I find it a surprisingly interesting possibility that's worth entertaining before next week's card reveals show it (probably) won't happen.
So what's the idea? Well, we know rogue is getting some secret stuff this expansion, but we don't yet know what the secrets themselves are. The idea is that there are no new rogue secrets, but instead the second rogue legendary lets you use secrets from other classes when building the deck.
Now, normally I'd be the first person to shoot down ideas about multi-class deck construction, but in this limited case my hunch is it might actually be OK. The primary reason being that secrets are rarely that good on their own, and their real strength almost always comes from the secret synergy cards instead. There are a few exceptions to that, but even most of the good secrets wouldn't suddenly cause any big crisis because the very nature of secrets puts control over their power into the opponent's hands. So the rogue couldn't really exploit some hitherto unavailable combo that usually plagues multi-class deck-building.
Plus of course, rogue's full list of secret synergies is currently very limited, being only Shadowjeweler Hanar, Blackjack Stunner, Sparkjoy Cheat and Ghastly Gravedigger. These aren't made significantly more dangerous by having access to the other classes secrets, and introducing all-class secret access while there's no dangerous synergies around would be the best time to do it.
The burgle rogue side of things is probably where real problems arise, though I'm not sure they matter much. Secrets are often quite good to get for Tess and Contraband Stash because you can guarantee they will be useful when re-played, but they do lose their secrecy in the process so they don't cause massive trouble. It's also already super easy to get cards from other classes into your hand for burgle synergies, so you don't really need to add out-of-class cards into the deck to make that easier (especially with Maestra around).
Currently the biggest issue I can think of is that Ice Block exists, and Wild won't be thankful for two of these being added alongside Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Valeera the Hollow, especially as the Ice Blocks could be replayed a couple of times with things like Contraband Stash. That's really not fun to play against. At least anti-secret tech and Ashen Elemental exist for when that gets too obnoxious.
So what do you think? Have I missed something or is it a surprisingly plausible idea?
I think the responses so far are a bit unhelpful because they assume people want to always use the same old teams to solve every problem. And yeah, those teams can handle more or less everything, but stopping there makes the game so much less interesting and misses the fact there are LOTS of viable teams that can do much more diverse stuff than just spamming the same AoE spells over and over.
When you build whole teams around the plan for the boss, like I do, then the question posed by OP becomes completely legitimate. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to answer because it depends a lot on which zone you are in and what weaknesses the core of your team has. There are a couple of general purpose answers that can be used, like bringing Gruul with his fire resistance equipment whenever you go to Blackrock or being prepared to get punched a lot in Winterspring (taunts and attack debuffs are very useful here).
To get tailored answers though, you really need to identify what is messing your teams up. Most synergistic teams should be able to get to the boss with max 2 casualties along the way if the mercs involved are mostly upgraded, and planning a route that has a resurrection point near the end can often mean you reach the boss at full power. If you are losing more than that on the way, then you should really consider switching in a merc or two that are strong against whatever is causing the problem.
In short, refining your team, including their equipment, should usually solve the problem (and do so without having to resort to anything super optimised). It is fine to bring mercs that have not had enough coins to be maxed out, but it matters quite a lot how you choose to upgrade them. It helps to know what you want to use them for and recognise which abilities and equipment need the coins most. That way they won't be maxed out, but they can be strong enough to carry their weight.
It's cute she has the same statline as her husband's angry mode (Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred). Someone should let him know she's still going strong... albeit dead.
The mercs themselves don't. Most of them have skins that aren't used anywhere else, and quite often they make no sense lore-wise (e.g. lots of baby versions of the characters, such as Deathwing, N'Zoth and Azshara).
Hmm, the Baroness art is a good point, though that would require her to have died and been sent there, and not just exploring. Unless Revendreth is appointing living mortals as Barons now, which would be very weird, especially as it would have had to have happened while Denathrius was in charge. That all seems very contrived. It also wouldn't be the first Mercs artwork to put a character in a position disconnected from any existing stories.
I'm sure we'll find out soon.
A member or two of the League of EVIL would be more plausible, though it doesn't feel like the right time for them since they have no link to the place and there's plenty of dead WoW villains to use instead.
There is - as is apparent by how quickly you'll open all the new rares when they come out - but it doesn't apply when coins luckily(?) get replaced by portraits. When this happens for a legendary that you already own it can look like duplicate protection isn't present, but that's a bit misrepresentative since it is using the wrong information. In the (admittedly unofficial) flowchart @NebuchadnezzarHS shared, duplicate protection applies only to the left column, but it is present.
I think the bigger problem in @Pezman's case is that there is no pity timer. So you can go 50+ packs without seeing any legendaries that obey duplicate protection (or any legendaries at all!). And that feels pretty damn awful. Honestly, their removal of the pity timer in Mercs is probably the most concerning aspect of the game's design because there was absolutely no reason to do it other than to make the packs less valuable. And unlike the other concerning aspects of the game, this one was actively made worse than the existing precedent.
Maiev's equipment to reduce damage from attacks to your left- and right-most characters has taught me the AI does take equipment into account. With that equipped they'll usually attack my middle merc if they aren't blocked by taunt, even if they would be much better off attacking one of the outer mercs normally.
From my experience, the higher level AI is actually pretty clever all things considered, taking account of all effects active at the start of the turn when assessing how quickly they can bring mercs down. I doubt they know enough to counter potential actions by the player though. Tbh, I don't think they should be that clever in PvE since it is good game design to let players actually enact their plans there. So it's better to increase difficulty in 'dumb' ways (like more health and/or damage) than with super-smart AI.
Nope. I got to something like 21 doing the 3 runs, then refused to look for the rest. I know some missions have multiple lore books, sometimes appearing after you could have had lethal, so you could take every fight as slow as possible and see if that helps (assuming you haven't already done that).
It doesn't help that they can't be predicted if you don't know they're coming, so I do my actions and end the turn immediately like usual, only to see the damn things appear and disappear before my eyes. It's too much mental strain to play slowly enough to make sure I don't miss the ones I do find lol.
Tongue-in-cheek doesn't really work without facial expressions or vocal intonations, unless you use something to replace them. For obvious reasons emojis are the most efficient option, but whatever you use, you've gotta give us plebs a hand if you want us to interpret things correctly :P