Psycho? That is slanderous! I'll have you know that it's perfectly reasonable to keep a shirtless, sculpted, slab of a man locked up for only yourself to watch over because he's been a bad, bad, boy ! And if somebody steals your man, you have get him back because he's M I N E. Perfectly. Reasonable.
Combine that with a record of each pack's contents so you can enter them in a tracker to get an idea of what you should buy in the future and the result is perfect.
The problem is that the devs don't want to eliminate the animation entirely because it engenders addiction, but if you make them sufficiently fast, I can be okay enough with them. My emphasis would still be on that report.
Sire Denathrius being free just straight-up saved me 1600 dust. Glad for that. That would've been a day-one craft.
This might be the first pass I try to hold some quests for, because getting Murlocula for free is worth. Though I still have no idea what to take out for it -- but it absolutely has to be broken. Anyway, I don't want to draw it, and 4 ranks at the start of the pass should be, at worst, several Battlegrounds games.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Findley was calved-off to a post-track pack for non-Tavern-Pass-Buyers, this would be an absolutely perfect patch for Nature players. As it stands, it’s still very good.
Anacondra has felt like she was missing a third of her kit the whole time; her numbers never looked right. This is a massive change to not only PvP (where she goes from just sad to suddenly possibly viable) but a gargantuan change to PvE where Nature had a hard time with Fighters. This is likely going to be utterly nuts due to Nature’s Bite already being the most-sought treasure; now it’ll spawn additional minions even as it spams out extra damage and Malf heals. Multiple characters with Nature’s Bite guarantees a full board of characters every round. Actually, with just two such characters and Chi-Ji with the right equipment, the vipers will constantly go up in Health (and therefore attack). Just heal your characters over and over and let inflatable immortal snakes beat the crap out of your enemies.
Mak’Gora will likely be taken as a slight downgrade by some, but at least it no longer feels bad to max out Garrosh.
The lack of a red Holy Damager has been irritating for some time and the excessive blues in that comp is another source of irritation. Like with Anacondra, this feels a like a should-have-always-been change.
Mass-buffing underplayed characters seems like a sloppy patch when ability changes are called for. For example, Kurtrus is still bad. Still, it’s literally better than nothing and might be the remedy for a few of them (but I doubt it).
The Onyxia Fire damage issue was legit confusing: glad it turns out that I wasn’t taking crazy pills and that the text was simply wrong.
It isn’t 100% clear what the Findley Discover ability does (it seems like it needs something more than it indicates lest it be rendered worthless due to the action economy loss) and it isn’t clear that the Reno Deathrattle is a wording or functional change, so we’ll have to wait to evaluate that.
For the billionth time, the way HS handles announcements is terrible. Well, I came to this site because it was the only way to catch announcements and you all announced, so good on you for that one.
Seemed like you were attacking the thousands upon thousands of people who want the game to be clearer not just for themselves, but for new players and casual players. And those players deserve the best they can be given; I think you reduced the issue to "me and you" but it's really about more than just the aesthetics you favor. Nevertheless, I'm hopeful that feedback will encourage better results in the future and we've seen good results before, both with hero cards and even pricing. I sincerely do hope you enjoy the game and don't get yourself bent out of shape by people who are working towards giving the game good feedback. Not everyone's trying to make you unhappy just because they're making the game better for others!
Now I have to set up several decks to play on day 1 before it becomes a Druid/DH/Hunter extravaganza. I'm almost scared by how good my non-jank DH decks are going to be and I have to give weenie DH another go. Later.
Their job isn't to communicate clearly - their job is to create a fun experience.
That's an utterly bizarre formulation. Clear communication makes for a fun experience. Board games have been made sources of acrimony because of ambiguity. There are several decades of imperfect experiences due to poor writing in games -- you can check a D&D forum or M:tG forum right now and find that out, instantly. Clarity in language is like clear pricing or good art -- just another element of making a good experience. Declaring them opposites is like saying good health is the opposite of a fun vacation.
Quote From davidwizard
It doesn't for you, because I guess you dislike doing research or testing something to see how it works?
What? I have no idea where you're coming from, like, at all, or how you got there from what I wrote. First of, experimentation doesn't solve all information problems and sometimes cannot solve them and isn't truly possible. Second, poor communication can interfere with otherwise really good games where both players are having fun engaging with known rules. By your logic, bugs are good because they're unexpected and can be experimented with. I literally pointed out that many people were concerned about communication since beta, including concerned about even cards like Ysera, and impressed with cards like the modern hero cards. How would your anti-experimentation thesis apply to the multitudes who were thereby concerned? I'm just really confused by that.
Quote From davidwizard
The fact that other people are pedantic about Ysera doesn't mean they're RIGHT about it…
What are you on about? No one's being pedantic about Ysera. This is a communication issue that even Ben Brode admitted was a problem! Y'know, the original lead designer? They were toying with solutions for years on this. The term "pedantry" doesn't even make sense in this context. No one is fighting over mere word choice here, but discussing forseeable behaviors in complex game states. Pedantry just seems like an inflammatory thowaway term.
Quote From davidwizard
just that they want the game to be as boring as you do.
Oh. It was inflammatory because you were doing your best to be mean-spirited and uncivil.
Quote From davidwizard
You're entitled to your opinion
You don't believe that, otherwise you wouldn't have lashed out because we had a difference of opinion. It's clear you didn't want to read what I wrote and became upset. Just keep in mind that just because people have a different experience from you doesn't mean they're attacking you. Hopefully you have a better day.
If your job is to communicate clearly and you don't do that job, but you produce a beautiful painting, you may be a good painter, but you're a crap communicator and didn't do your job. It isn't creative that they did their job badly; they may have been creative doing something other than their job (I don't agree, but ymmv) but still, the job didn't get done.
The card literally doesn't explain itself and is so ambiguous that the designers had to give it a FAQ before it's even released. Its entire outcome is "surprising and unprecedented" because no one knew even remotely what it must do just from card text. The fact that you guessed it correctly is of no moment -- good for you I guess? I've guessed HS cards correctly and that doesn't make ambiguity better. Further, the point here is that this card and cards like it don't solve their issues with mouseover text. Ysera is a bizarre example to use because people criticized that card even in beta and still do, so you're undermining your own case, and people have been satisfied with Hero cards that use mouseover text appropriately, so the job can be done correctly. HS has done better in the past and is now commiting to doing worst going forward.
a) The wording isn't creative imo and b) people have complained about this since beta, noting freeze and windfury. They have solutions to this problem (mouseover) and creative use of that solution has been praised. They're doing a deliberately bad job here where they could do better by the team's own past standards.
This doesn't even need murloc synergies to justify a slot -- dude pally (which will likely be bad), could run this, for example. Demon Hunter could, conceivably, run this in an aggro package because it has an ultra-earlygame card that summons small minions. Maybe weenie DH gives it a go. Hunter could slot this in, but doesn't need it.
I think the real stand-out here might be Mage. Mage hits harder midgame and the cusp of late and can have health problems along the way. Even if the Murloc doesn't get to swing, a free +4 Health buffer might be worth Mage's time so it can get to a pop-off with skeles, and said skeles will activate Murlocula.
Warlock Murlock will already run this, but there's enough Warlock-flood effects that an Imp/Shadow/Shade/Voidwalker token deck could justifiably try this, lose to Druid, and give up, but it might work for the first two days, so that's something.
When an expansion lets you do the same thing you were doing more cheaply, your class gains relative strength against the others. Druid and, to a lesser but notable extent, Hunter get exactly that this expansion but are already meta at the moment. On day 1, if you want to climb and have no regard for the opponent having fun, craft Druid.
Its not really about us hating disruption. Its more on team5's design decisions making one sided metas, filled with uninteractive bs.
Indeed, and Ayala missing that the titanic amount of self-developing mana cheat is what drives the game is either deliberate or foolish to the point of absurdity. Here's the thing: the most horrific decks that everyone hates facing can also use disruption and they do it better than the decks meant to stop them. The most anti-Druid Priest deck you can build will not be able to use Blademaster Okani as well as the Druid it is meant to face because the latter can flood the board forcing a response that costs more mana than the Priest has to play both said response and Okani. And the why is simple: Druid has more cost-reduced/free crap than Priest so the former is objectively better.
Free stuff seems to be Team 5's meal ticket as the power escalation is a driver for sales, so this may be a case of willful blindness: bringing the game to a point of fairness would be a burden on design resources and might even require re-designing existing assets. Regardless of why it happens, with the attitude we see here, things can only get worse. This wouldn't be the first game where the silver bullet card worked better for the werewolf than against it.
but I guess we'll be stealing their stuff too with our own Theotar, so who knows?
I know. The strongest decks will be the least affected, while the weakest ones will be worst affected, aggravating pre-existing balance problems and creating even less deck diversity because a) concepts vulnerable to Theotar, the Mad Duke will be disfavored, narrowing the field, and b) Theotar, the Mad Duke will itself become a commonplace. This also has a synergetic effect with Blademaster Okani as both of them are ultra-strong denial effects fueled by Brann Bronzebeard, making the entire trio more common.
No-counterplay hard counters have never been good for any game; they're simply, at best, less bad than the worst parts of the game, much like amputating a limb to stop gangrene. I've played games where my denial effects stole my opponent's denial effects: I get a dull chuckle, my opponent doesn't get to play at all, and it stops being funny in the slightest within a minute.
Not good, but better than Against the Odds in Quest Priest, which is also not good. This also doesn't answer any problems Priest has, which is either how to out-health an inevitability kill from Warlock or how to play for board as opposed to simply wiping the latter (since playing for board gives you a win condition -- the other thing that Priest doesn't have). At this point, Druid has more wincons than Priest, so many so that the former doesn't even use them all.
I expect this will become part of the obnoxious omniclear potential of Priest in Wild and that's about it unless Control Priest has a lot more to be revealed.
When I loaded up the main page with the thumbnail I thought I'd somehow hit a spoof site for a second because that image contains a very suggestive head.
I'm looking at the bare minimum you need for Totem synergy and Infuse jumpstarting and it produces no consistent threat on board and no board speed (rush) in a world where Druid gets several dozen mana's worth of minions for free without similar hoop-jumping.
Given the current reveals, if this worked, it would be better fodder for evolve than totem.
But it doesn't really work. You really need that infuse to make it worthwile but there's nothing you can cheaply feed it. Aggro might feel the need to kill these spawns because of eventual Taunt manufacture, but control, or even tempo, will just let you have it.
The last time evolve effects were in Standard, the only reason they worked was when a minimum 3-cost set of a minimum of 3 minions was evolved at once. The Shaman location Muck Pools won't cut it, but Primordial Wave will -- but you have no mana cheat, so that's on 6/5+coin. For 3 4 mana cards. I'll grant you one 5 mana card from the location. Convincing Disguise is effectively gatekeeped until turn 5 as well.
Druid has half a dozen free 3/3s with Rush one turn after that -- and you don't have Rush in general, so they can afford to wait an extra turn to match you.
The fact that Toplor is a permanent effect is being overlooked and people are underselling how violently toxic this card is. This combination of free board presence plus face threat wouldn't be tolerated in many other classes. Not a day ago people were criticizing mana cheats and asking why they exist: witness the positive reception of what is one of the most comprehensive mana cheats in the game and you answer that question.
Also: you can re-immune Raid Boss Onyxia with the shrubs, because Druid didn't have enough free advantages.
Psycho? That is slanderous! I'll have you know that it's perfectly reasonable to keep a shirtless, sculpted, slab of a man locked up for only yourself to watch over because he's been a bad, bad, boy ! And if somebody steals your man, you have get him back because he's M I N E. Perfectly. Reasonable.
Combine that with a record of each pack's contents so you can enter them in a tracker to get an idea of what you should buy in the future and the result is perfect.
The problem is that the devs don't want to eliminate the animation entirely because it engenders addiction, but if you make them sufficiently fast, I can be okay enough with them. My emphasis would still be on that report.
Sire Denathrius being free just straight-up saved me 1600 dust. Glad for that. That would've been a day-one craft.
This might be the first pass I try to hold some quests for, because getting Murlocula for free is worth. Though I still have no idea what to take out for it -- but it absolutely has to be broken. Anyway, I don't want to draw it, and 4 ranks at the start of the pass should be, at worst, several Battlegrounds games.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Findley was calved-off to a post-track pack for non-Tavern-Pass-Buyers, this would be an absolutely perfect patch for Nature players. As it stands, it’s still very good.
Anacondra has felt like she was missing a third of her kit the whole time; her numbers never looked right. This is a massive change to not only PvP (where she goes from just sad to suddenly possibly viable) but a gargantuan change to PvE where Nature had a hard time with Fighters. This is likely going to be utterly nuts due to Nature’s Bite already being the most-sought treasure; now it’ll spawn additional minions even as it spams out extra damage and Malf heals. Multiple characters with Nature’s Bite guarantees a full board of characters every round. Actually, with just two such characters and Chi-Ji with the right equipment, the vipers will constantly go up in Health (and therefore attack). Just heal your characters over and over and let inflatable immortal snakes beat the crap out of your enemies.
Mak’Gora will likely be taken as a slight downgrade by some, but at least it no longer feels bad to max out Garrosh.
The lack of a red Holy Damager has been irritating for some time and the excessive blues in that comp is another source of irritation. Like with Anacondra, this feels a like a should-have-always-been change.
Mass-buffing underplayed characters seems like a sloppy patch when ability changes are called for. For example, Kurtrus is still bad. Still, it’s literally better than nothing and might be the remedy for a few of them (but I doubt it).
The Onyxia Fire damage issue was legit confusing: glad it turns out that I wasn’t taking crazy pills and that the text was simply wrong.
It isn’t 100% clear what the Findley Discover ability does (it seems like it needs something more than it indicates lest it be rendered worthless due to the action economy loss) and it isn’t clear that the Reno Deathrattle is a wording or functional change, so we’ll have to wait to evaluate that.
This is an excellent review of recent history.
For the billionth time, the way HS handles announcements is terrible. Well, I came to this site because it was the only way to catch announcements and you all announced, so good on you for that one.
Seemed like you were attacking the thousands upon thousands of people who want the game to be clearer not just for themselves, but for new players and casual players. And those players deserve the best they can be given; I think you reduced the issue to "me and you" but it's really about more than just the aesthetics you favor. Nevertheless, I'm hopeful that feedback will encourage better results in the future and we've seen good results before, both with hero cards and even pricing. I sincerely do hope you enjoy the game and don't get yourself bent out of shape by people who are working towards giving the game good feedback. Not everyone's trying to make you unhappy just because they're making the game better for others!
Now I have to set up several decks to play on day 1 before it becomes a Druid/DH/Hunter extravaganza. I'm almost scared by how good my non-jank DH decks are going to be and I have to give weenie DH another go. Later.
That's an utterly bizarre formulation. Clear communication makes for a fun experience. Board games have been made sources of acrimony because of ambiguity. There are several decades of imperfect experiences due to poor writing in games -- you can check a D&D forum or M:tG forum right now and find that out, instantly. Clarity in language is like clear pricing or good art -- just another element of making a good experience. Declaring them opposites is like saying good health is the opposite of a fun vacation.
What? I have no idea where you're coming from, like, at all, or how you got there from what I wrote. First of, experimentation doesn't solve all information problems and sometimes cannot solve them and isn't truly possible. Second, poor communication can interfere with otherwise really good games where both players are having fun engaging with known rules. By your logic, bugs are good because they're unexpected and can be experimented with. I literally pointed out that many people were concerned about communication since beta, including concerned about even cards like Ysera, and impressed with cards like the modern hero cards. How would your anti-experimentation thesis apply to the multitudes who were thereby concerned? I'm just really confused by that.
What are you on about? No one's being pedantic about Ysera. This is a communication issue that even Ben Brode admitted was a problem! Y'know, the original lead designer? They were toying with solutions for years on this. The term "pedantry" doesn't even make sense in this context. No one is fighting over mere word choice here, but discussing forseeable behaviors in complex game states. Pedantry just seems like an inflammatory thowaway term.
Oh. It was inflammatory because you were doing your best to be mean-spirited and uncivil.
You don't believe that, otherwise you wouldn't have lashed out because we had a difference of opinion. It's clear you didn't want to read what I wrote and became upset. Just keep in mind that just because people have a different experience from you doesn't mean they're attacking you. Hopefully you have a better day.
If your job is to communicate clearly and you don't do that job, but you produce a beautiful painting, you may be a good painter, but you're a crap communicator and didn't do your job. It isn't creative that they did their job badly; they may have been creative doing something other than their job (I don't agree, but ymmv) but still, the job didn't get done.
The card literally doesn't explain itself and is so ambiguous that the designers had to give it a FAQ before it's even released. Its entire outcome is "surprising and unprecedented" because no one knew even remotely what it must do just from card text. The fact that you guessed it correctly is of no moment -- good for you I guess? I've guessed HS cards correctly and that doesn't make ambiguity better. Further, the point here is that this card and cards like it don't solve their issues with mouseover text. Ysera is a bizarre example to use because people criticized that card even in beta and still do, so you're undermining your own case, and people have been satisfied with Hero cards that use mouseover text appropriately, so the job can be done correctly. HS has done better in the past and is now commiting to doing worst going forward.
a) The wording isn't creative imo and b) people have complained about this since beta, noting freeze and windfury. They have solutions to this problem (mouseover) and creative use of that solution has been praised. They're doing a deliberately bad job here where they could do better by the team's own past standards.
This doesn't even need murloc synergies to justify a slot -- dude pally (which will likely be bad), could run this, for example. Demon Hunter could, conceivably, run this in an aggro package because it has an ultra-earlygame card that summons small minions. Maybe weenie DH gives it a go. Hunter could slot this in, but doesn't need it.
I think the real stand-out here might be Mage. Mage hits harder midgame and the cusp of late and can have health problems along the way. Even if the Murloc doesn't get to swing, a free +4 Health buffer might be worth Mage's time so it can get to a pop-off with skeles, and said skeles will activate Murlocula.
Warlock Murlock will already run this, but there's enough Warlock-flood effects that an Imp/Shadow/Shade/Voidwalker token deck could justifiably try this, lose to Druid, and give up, but it might work for the first two days, so that's something.
Every rule of this card should be available both in the deckbuilder and in-game.
I enjoy knowing what cards do. Hearthstone has gone from making that difficult to actively hating it.
When an expansion lets you do the same thing you were doing more cheaply, your class gains relative strength against the others. Druid and, to a lesser but notable extent, Hunter get exactly that this expansion but are already meta at the moment. On day 1, if you want to climb and have no regard for the opponent having fun, craft Druid.
Indeed, and Ayala missing that the titanic amount of self-developing mana cheat is what drives the game is either deliberate or foolish to the point of absurdity. Here's the thing: the most horrific decks that everyone hates facing can also use disruption and they do it better than the decks meant to stop them. The most anti-Druid Priest deck you can build will not be able to use Blademaster Okani as well as the Druid it is meant to face because the latter can flood the board forcing a response that costs more mana than the Priest has to play both said response and Okani. And the why is simple: Druid has more cost-reduced/free crap than Priest so the former is objectively better.
Free stuff seems to be Team 5's meal ticket as the power escalation is a driver for sales, so this may be a case of willful blindness: bringing the game to a point of fairness would be a burden on design resources and might even require re-designing existing assets. Regardless of why it happens, with the attitude we see here, things can only get worse. This wouldn't be the first game where the silver bullet card worked better for the werewolf than against it.
I know. The strongest decks will be the least affected, while the weakest ones will be worst affected, aggravating pre-existing balance problems and creating even less deck diversity because a) concepts vulnerable to Theotar, the Mad Duke will be disfavored, narrowing the field, and b) Theotar, the Mad Duke will itself become a commonplace. This also has a synergetic effect with Blademaster Okani as both of them are ultra-strong denial effects fueled by Brann Bronzebeard, making the entire trio more common.
No-counterplay hard counters have never been good for any game; they're simply, at best, less bad than the worst parts of the game, much like amputating a limb to stop gangrene. I've played games where my denial effects stole my opponent's denial effects: I get a dull chuckle, my opponent doesn't get to play at all, and it stops being funny in the slightest within a minute.
So, not a fan.
Not good, but better than Against the Odds in Quest Priest, which is also not good. This also doesn't answer any problems Priest has, which is either how to out-health an inevitability kill from Warlock or how to play for board as opposed to simply wiping the latter (since playing for board gives you a win condition -- the other thing that Priest doesn't have). At this point, Druid has more wincons than Priest, so many so that the former doesn't even use them all.
I expect this will become part of the obnoxious omniclear potential of Priest in Wild and that's about it unless Control Priest has a lot more to be revealed.
When I loaded up the main page with the thumbnail I thought I'd somehow hit a spoof site for a second because that image contains a very suggestive head.
shrug
I'm looking at the bare minimum you need for Totem synergy and Infuse jumpstarting and it produces no consistent threat on board and no board speed (rush) in a world where Druid gets several dozen mana's worth of minions for free without similar hoop-jumping.
Given the current reveals, if this worked, it would be better fodder for evolve than totem.
But it doesn't really work. You really need that infuse to make it worthwile but there's nothing you can cheaply feed it. Aggro might feel the need to kill these spawns because of eventual Taunt manufacture, but control, or even tempo, will just let you have it.
The last time evolve effects were in Standard, the only reason they worked was when a minimum 3-cost set of a minimum of 3 minions was evolved at once. The Shaman location Muck Pools won't cut it, but Primordial Wave will -- but you have no mana cheat, so that's on 6/5+coin. For 3 4 mana cards. I'll grant you one 5 mana card from the location. Convincing Disguise is effectively gatekeeped until turn 5 as well.
Druid has half a dozen free 3/3s with Rush one turn after that -- and you don't have Rush in general, so they can afford to wait an extra turn to match you.
The fact that Toplor is a permanent effect is being overlooked and people are underselling how violently toxic this card is. This combination of free board presence plus face threat wouldn't be tolerated in many other classes. Not a day ago people were criticizing mana cheats and asking why they exist: witness the positive reception of what is one of the most comprehensive mana cheats in the game and you answer that question.
Also: you can re-immune Raid Boss Onyxia with the shrubs, because Druid didn't have enough free advantages.