The "OCD Completionist" in me had me beating the Brawl with all the heroes, but now that I've done that I'm not playing more. So in all I think I beat ~50 bosses.
1) Make Arena free - but cut the rewards in half to compensate. As someone generally f2p (sometimes pre-order expansions but that's it) I have to hoard all my gold to buy packs so I don't play Arena as I never want to risk losing gold if I have a bad run. If Arena was free I would definitely play it - probably more than the ladder - even if the rewards were scaled way back to compensate.
2) Make a true Casual mode. It gets really tiring to take a brake from the ladder to play my meme decks in Casual to run into 80% the same decks I was just playing against. My thought has always been: T5 has the metadata, so basically take the "top" (by win rate) deck or two from each class and run a check against a deck selected in Causal. If more than 20 cards in the deck matches the "top" deck(s), then it's banned. The 20-card limit gives people room to experiment on good decks, but avoids people running cookie-cutter T1 netdecks as a way to quickly farm gold at others' expense.
3) I agree with your dust economy wish, but think that's too extreme to ActBlizz's bottom line so would never happen. My tweak to your wish would be to keep the existing economy for STANDARD cards, but do as you said with the 50% value (maybe more?) for any WILD cards. T5 has shown they don't really give a damn about Wild anyway as I assume it's not a money-maker, so why should they care if people dust 4-year-old cards at a higher rate?
Upon further consideration, the thing I'd want to use the Mage quest for is straight up too slow. Like with the new Warlock quest, it feels like you're going to need specific deckbuilding and a little luck. Unless something new and specifically relevant hits the Mage pool in SoM, I don't know how useful Raid the Sky Temple is.
That's my thing with all the new quests - sine HS plans expansions what 3-4 out, I'm betting that most if not all the quests will both 1) have more supporting functions in SoM, 2) likely get even more support in the next 1-2 expansions. So a Quest that doesn't look great NOW might be meta-defining in January 2020.
C'thun Priest completely destroyed everything - finished in 33 mins. Tried the bomb warrior but Garr beat me good thanks to R(ock)NGesus - I shuffled at least 8-10 bombs into its deck and it never drew a single one...
I would cut Da Undatakah. You only have 3 deathrattles in the entire deck - you can't possibly be getting much value out of him? I would swap in a Crowd Roaster.
Agreed on the community quest! Although I would find it hilarious if the community didn't managed to hit all the rewards - we'd just get a video of one of the developers being like "Tough luck assholes, we're not revealing this legendary - in fact we're cutting it from the expansion entirely! Fight harder next time!"
Ahg! I hate timed challenges - every time I hear the "Sonic is drowning" music in my head and get freaked out! Also I usually miss the win by a matter of a few mins and then pour on the salt...
Still though that's a great lineup of stuff - love how much more single-player stuff HS is putting out when you want change things up a bit from laddering!
For anyone who's never heard the drowing Sonic music or wants to relive childhood trauma:
I really would like the Hunter reward to be a hero power Lock and Load, but I recognize it would probably be a bad idea.
I really would like the Mage reward to be Unstable Portal hero power, but I recognize it would probably be a bad idea
I really would like the Rogue reward to be a Hallucination hero power, but I recognize it would probably be a bad idea
I really would like that no quest was related to murlocs, and that is probably not a bad idea, but Blizzard might do it regardless
I really would like that the warrior quest wasn't related to rush, but I recognize it would probably be a good idea.
I think you might be onto something with Mage & Rogue.
Probably the mage would be "add random SPELL" rather than minion, but it definitely seems like they trying to get mage back into spell mode.
And I could certainly see the rogue quest being something like "Play 5 cards from another class" and getting the Hallucination power.
As others have said i think the priest power will be Resurrection-related in some way.
My guess on Paladin would be Secrets-related: like "play 6 secrets" and the reward being "Add random secret to your hand/put it into play"
I would love/hate if Warrior was bomb-related: "Shuffle 5 bombs into your opponent's deck" gets you a weaker version of Mr. Chu's power from the Heist (either shuffle only 1 mini-bomb, or shuffle 2 but they only do 1-2 dmg)
No idea on Hunter - could be spell related since they leaned into that pretty hard, but Mech-realted also not impossible.
You can potentially get two drustvar horrors, each of which can cast their double spells twice. There are some spell combinations that can just autowin the game, like [token generator] + The Storm Bringer, and now you get two rolls for it, not to mention two rolls on the horror itself. If you can afford to pay 9 mana for a 5/5 then Swamp Queen + quest will probably win the game.
Dude, Hagatha the 7 mana 5/5 is too slow to play in any competitive shaman right now, including control ones. Make it cost +2 with the hero power and it's even worse
What deck is going to let you pass a 9 mana turn? Control warrior? They can just brawl your storm bringer board while you draw bombs
This is the equivalent of saying Tak Nozwhisker is broken with Academic Espionage. You can spend your entire turn getting insane value but it doesn't really matter when even the slowest of opponents is going to punish your for it
Irrespective of the discussion here but worth noting as someone who plays a lot of Burgle Rogue: every single time I've been able to pull off the vaunted turn 10 Tak + Prep + Espionage I have won - probably half the time from auto-concedes. I think some combos that, frankly, are almost instant-game-winners SHOULD BE risky/tough to pull off. Otherwise we have a return to pre-nerf Shudderwock Shaman where everyone is just playing Solitaire until their OTK combo hits and it's game over.
I think it will be very deck-specific AND depend heavily on the Reborn cards. You'll need to have both to be effective - basically I'm betting it's another Echo that has maybe 2 or 3 cards that see regular play, 1 or 2 that are deck-situational, and the other dozen are never heard from again after launch.
The mummy they revealed probably won't see much play for example because Rush Warrior isn't really a thing. Now if there are Reborn mechs I can see that being good for Mech Warrior/Hunter since it will leave a body to magnetize on after the first death and retain board presence. I could also see it being very good for Res Priest if they get minions that fit into the Res pool effectively. Ditto for Mage if they get heavy targets for Conjurer's Calling. Mainly, however, I'm really hoping for some big neutral/Warlock minions as this keyword seems like exactly what would help push Shuffle Warlock out of meme status. Fel Lord Betrug pulling out Reborn minions who can attack and be retained on-board (more or less) after drawing would definitely help the archetype.
Restless mummy is a more flexible Militia Commander, a card which is in virtually every warrior list out there. The vast majority of warriors run a 5 card rush package of Zilliax, 2 Militia commander 2 Town Crier.
Just because people aren't playing that godawful warrior loa or Akali the Rhino doesn't mean Warriors won't be all over Restless Mummy, that's just silly.
Maybe my local meta is different than yours because I RARELY see any Warriors that aren't 1) Bomb or 2) Pure Mech. The mummy fits in neither and - I would argue though just my opinion - the Reborn doesn't do enough to make it any better than Rabid Worgen which sees no play despite having +1 HP and costing -1 mana.
I think it will be very deck-specific AND depend heavily on the Reborn cards. You'll need to have both to be effective - basically I'm betting it's another Echo that has maybe 2 or 3 cards that see regular play, 1 or 2 that are deck-situational, and the other dozen are never heard from again after launch.
The mummy they revealed probably won't see much play for example because Rush Warrior isn't really a thing. Now if there are Reborn mechs I can see that being good for Mech Warrior/Hunter since it will leave a body to magnetize on after the first death and retain board presence. I could also see it being very good for Res Priest if they get minions that fit into the Res pool effectively. Ditto for Mage if they get heavy targets for Conjurer's Calling. Mainly, however, I'm really hoping for some big neutral/Warlock minions as this keyword seems like exactly what would help push Shuffle Warlock out of meme status. Fel Lord Betrug pulling out Reborn minions who can attack and be retained on-board (more or less) after drawing would definitely help the archetype.
I get that it's not "the point" (censorship), but the main reason this isn't bothering me is that in practical effect, it's like the tree falling in the forest: If HS changes the art on cards that are never played, does anyone ever notice? Aside from Deadly Shot & Eviscerate, I never see ANY of these cards being played (well Secretkeeper once maybe every 100 games against a Secret Paladin/Hunter). So really I wasn't ever seeing the old art and will likely never see the new art except when going through the collection so whatever...
Perhaps a dumb question but I didn't start playing HS until Witchwood so never played any quests: Does "control" a quest still count if you've completed the quest, or only while working towards completion? Just curious if this will retain its value mid/late game.
This is very fun! I've played ~10 games with it and you can tell people don't know what to do with it. Only change is I don't have Solarium, so I swapped in a Portal Keeper for a cheaper body that can help build presence and play on the shuffle/draw effects. Seems to be working okay.
So this was just a roller coaster of emotion. Questions you might have:
1. How are you on fatigue on turn 8?
2. How do you have 2 Super Simians?
3. What the shit, guy? (this is more an internal question).
So: Had the Book of Wonders passive, which on turn two pulls Myra's Unstable Element. Well it was a nice run but I've lost, I think. However, in my hand I had the Super Simian, Blessing of the Ancients, Flappy Bird and EVIL Propaganda when the deck starts flying. This is important, because another Scroll of Wonders comes off before I burn out and it's Dead Man's Hand, so all of those cards get shuffled back to me. I ALSO have Robe of Gaudiness, so wait, can I SMOrc this dude quickly enough to win? Yes, surprisingly enough. This is, without hyperbole, the most insane RNG clownfiesta I've ever experienced and I can't believe it worked.
p.s. in case you've never tried it, TIL giving Taunt to the Super Simians doesn't work. The AI is able to just ignore the Taunt and hit wherever.
Nearly 20 years later (wow, how time flies...) Valkyrie Profile remains one of the best games I've ever played. Also as a I found out later, the mythological Arngrim was apparently a badass with a magic sword, so that's always nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arngrim
The "OCD Completionist" in me had me beating the Brawl with all the heroes, but now that I've done that I'm not playing more. So in all I think I beat ~50 bosses.
1) Make Arena free - but cut the rewards in half to compensate. As someone generally f2p (sometimes pre-order expansions but that's it) I have to hoard all my gold to buy packs so I don't play Arena as I never want to risk losing gold if I have a bad run. If Arena was free I would definitely play it - probably more than the ladder - even if the rewards were scaled way back to compensate.
2) Make a true Casual mode. It gets really tiring to take a brake from the ladder to play my meme decks in Casual to run into 80% the same decks I was just playing against. My thought has always been: T5 has the metadata, so basically take the "top" (by win rate) deck or two from each class and run a check against a deck selected in Causal. If more than 20 cards in the deck matches the "top" deck(s), then it's banned. The 20-card limit gives people room to experiment on good decks, but avoids people running cookie-cutter T1 netdecks as a way to quickly farm gold at others' expense.
3) I agree with your dust economy wish, but think that's too extreme to ActBlizz's bottom line so would never happen. My tweak to your wish would be to keep the existing economy for STANDARD cards, but do as you said with the 50% value (maybe more?) for any WILD cards. T5 has shown they don't really give a damn about Wild anyway as I assume it's not a money-maker, so why should they care if people dust 4-year-old cards at a higher rate?
That's my thing with all the new quests - sine HS plans expansions what 3-4 out, I'm betting that most if not all the quests will both 1) have more supporting functions in SoM, 2) likely get even more support in the next 1-2 expansions. So a Quest that doesn't look great NOW might be meta-defining in January 2020.
C'thun Priest completely destroyed everything - finished in 33 mins. Tried the bomb warrior but Garr beat me good thanks to R(ock)NGesus - I shuffled at least 8-10 bombs into its deck and it never drew a single one...
Yeah I run Bloodhoof and definitely get a ton of value from him
I would cut Da Undatakah. You only have 3 deathrattles in the entire deck - you can't possibly be getting much value out of him? I would swap in a Crowd Roaster.
Otherwise seems fairly solid!
Agreed on the community quest! Although I would find it hilarious if the community didn't managed to hit all the rewards - we'd just get a video of one of the developers being like "Tough luck assholes, we're not revealing this legendary - in fact we're cutting it from the expansion entirely! Fight harder next time!"
Ahg! I hate timed challenges - every time I hear the "Sonic is drowning" music in my head and get freaked out! Also I usually miss the win by a matter of a few mins and then pour on the salt...
Still though that's a great lineup of stuff - love how much more single-player stuff HS is putting out when you want change things up a bit from laddering!
For anyone who's never heard the drowing Sonic music or wants to relive childhood trauma:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yw5jkAHgME
This is very similar to this deck from a few weeks ago that has a guide - most general principals apply:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/2311-deathrattle-warlock
I think you might be onto something with Mage & Rogue.
Probably the mage would be "add random SPELL" rather than minion, but it definitely seems like they trying to get mage back into spell mode.
And I could certainly see the rogue quest being something like "Play 5 cards from another class" and getting the Hallucination power.
As others have said i think the priest power will be Resurrection-related in some way.
My guess on Paladin would be Secrets-related: like "play 6 secrets" and the reward being "Add random secret to your hand/put it into play"
I would love/hate if Warrior was bomb-related: "Shuffle 5 bombs into your opponent's deck" gets you a weaker version of Mr. Chu's power from the Heist (either shuffle only 1 mini-bomb, or shuffle 2 but they only do 1-2 dmg)
No idea on Hunter - could be spell related since they leaned into that pretty hard, but Mech-realted also not impossible.
Irrespective of the discussion here but worth noting as someone who plays a lot of Burgle Rogue: every single time I've been able to pull off the vaunted turn 10 Tak + Prep + Espionage I have won - probably half the time from auto-concedes. I think some combos that, frankly, are almost instant-game-winners SHOULD BE risky/tough to pull off. Otherwise we have a return to pre-nerf Shudderwock Shaman where everyone is just playing Solitaire until their OTK combo hits and it's game over.
Maybe my local meta is different than yours because I RARELY see any Warriors that aren't 1) Bomb or 2) Pure Mech. The mummy fits in neither and - I would argue though just my opinion - the Reborn doesn't do enough to make it any better than Rabid Worgen which sees no play despite having +1 HP and costing -1 mana.
I think it will be very deck-specific AND depend heavily on the Reborn cards. You'll need to have both to be effective - basically I'm betting it's another Echo that has maybe 2 or 3 cards that see regular play, 1 or 2 that are deck-situational, and the other dozen are never heard from again after launch.
The mummy they revealed probably won't see much play for example because Rush Warrior isn't really a thing. Now if there are Reborn mechs I can see that being good for Mech Warrior/Hunter since it will leave a body to magnetize on after the first death and retain board presence. I could also see it being very good for Res Priest if they get minions that fit into the Res pool effectively. Ditto for Mage if they get heavy targets for Conjurer's Calling. Mainly, however, I'm really hoping for some big neutral/Warlock minions as this keyword seems like exactly what would help push Shuffle Warlock out of meme status. Fel Lord Betrug pulling out Reborn minions who can attack and be retained on-board (more or less) after drawing would definitely help the archetype.
I get that it's not "the point" (censorship), but the main reason this isn't bothering me is that in practical effect, it's like the tree falling in the forest: If HS changes the art on cards that are never played, does anyone ever notice? Aside from Deadly Shot & Eviscerate, I never see ANY of these cards being played (well Secretkeeper once maybe every 100 games against a Secret Paladin/Hunter). So really I wasn't ever seeing the old art and will likely never see the new art except when going through the collection so whatever...
Perhaps a dumb question but I didn't start playing HS until Witchwood so never played any quests: Does "control" a quest still count if you've completed the quest, or only while working towards completion? Just curious if this will retain its value mid/late game.
Well lucky you because you can buy that new bundle and get 16 decks that can be used in this brawl! Isn't that a convenient coincidence?! /s
Fun brawl though - handbuff dragon warrior is working out fairly well for me.
This is very fun! I've played ~10 games with it and you can tell people don't know what to do with it. Only change is I don't have Solarium, so I swapped in a Portal Keeper for a cheaper body that can help build presence and play on the shuffle/draw effects. Seems to be working okay.
Skaterbot
"See you later bot"
- Jaina
It's funny how that song was everywhere in the early 2000s and then you never thought about it again until HS did this 16 years later.
So this was just a roller coaster of emotion. Questions you might have:
1. How are you on fatigue on turn 8?
2. How do you have 2 Super Simians?
3. What the shit, guy? (this is more an internal question).
So: Had the Book of Wonders passive, which on turn two pulls Myra's Unstable Element. Well it was a nice run but I've lost, I think. However, in my hand I had the Super Simian, Blessing of the Ancients, Flappy Bird and EVIL Propaganda when the deck starts flying. This is important, because another Scroll of Wonders comes off before I burn out and it's Dead Man's Hand, so all of those cards get shuffled back to me. I ALSO have Robe of Gaudiness, so wait, can I SMOrc this dude quickly enough to win? Yes, surprisingly enough. This is, without hyperbole, the most insane RNG clownfiesta I've ever experienced and I can't believe it worked.
p.s. in case you've never tried it, TIL giving Taunt to the Super Simians doesn't work. The AI is able to just ignore the Taunt and hit wherever.
Nearly 20 years later (wow, how time flies...) Valkyrie Profile remains one of the best games I've ever played. Also as a I found out later, the mythological Arngrim was apparently a badass with a magic sword, so that's always nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arngrim