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CursedParrot

Joined 05/29/2019 Achieve Points 640 Posts 720

CursedParrot's Comments

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    The random Landmark seems kind of bad at the moment, but in a Frozen Thralls deck "Advance 4" could be really valuable. Also, in Mono-Shurima this can advance your Sun Disc 8 rounds!

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    I remember reading somewhere that DH was developed with the same amount of time and resources as an expansion, which is probably why it doesn't feel like something that was intended to be added to the game since the start (I think Ben Brode even stated at one point that they weren't going to add any more classes). In the videos that they showed about DH's development, the design team said that they initially wanted to have a "Fury" resource that was unique to DH, but later in development they decided it was too complicated and changed the HP to first "Gain 1 Attack. You can use this one more time this turn" and eventually just the 1 Mana Hero Power we know today. From that history, it seems like they initially had some ideas for how to make DH feel unique and necessary, but they ultimately scaled back the complexity and made it more similar to the existing classes. Honestly I think it's kind of sad that they went in the direction of making it simple and somewhat redundant, but I can understand the choice as fitting HS's design philosophy of simplicity and being new-player friendly. As for what they've done with DH since its release, I think the most promising aspect is Token DH, but they haven't really supported it and the cards that they've made to synergize with it are all currently unplayable, so this unique identity isn't really expressed in actual games.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    The Vines are coming from the magic of the Field Musicians. Each mini-set has exactly 3 champions so Zyra is definitely not coming

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    I agree with OldManSanns, it's actually kind of sad because Lissandra can't really pair with any champion other than Trundle because the synergy is just so much better than anything else. SI also lets the deck copy the Watcher tons of times, which is when it starts to feel unfair.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    Great idea, I think there's a lot of value in trying to translate aspects of a card into another card game and seeing how the differences between those games impact your design decisions. My one piece of advice is that you should probably make a "Level Up" keyword to shorten text. For example, an Ezreal level up would go from:

    "Once you've targetted enemy minions 6 times this game, transform me into Level 2 Ezreal"

    to

    "Level Up: You've targetted 6 enemy minions"

    I can see on Shyvana you actually ran into this problem and just wrote "transform" instead of the convention of "transform into X" due to space restrictions, so I think it would be a helpful keyword. There's already precedent in HS from Quests, so I think it would make sense to add this as a kewyord, especially if you want to make Legendaries that Level Up (I understand not all your legendaries will or should have a level up).

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    Wait how was "rally the troops" ever considered balanced? Doubling Battlecries is already pretty good, casting what would likely be a 5 Mana spell instead seems way better. Now it just casts Far Sight, which should make it good but not ridiculously OP.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    The spellshield update is the best out of these, I had gotten used to it but seeing this version I'm reminded of how weird it looks. Also, the fact that they're giving sharpsight a visual indication might imply that they're going to make "can block elusives" a keyword!

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    Oh yeah that part felt uncomfortable to read. It was kind of relevant to him being a bad boyfriend, but it really wasn't necessary to add

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    It seems very unlikely that this would lead to an arrest, Rini seems like she wants to avoid the situation as much as possible (going to trial for something like this is very stressful and I don't think she'd want it). Also, I looked it up and domestic abuse for a first-time offender only carries a jail time of 1 year or a $5,000 dollar fine, so it's not like it would ruin his life. Also generally speaking false accusations don't happen that often so it's not worth worrying too much about (most people aren't cruel and sadistic enough to falsely accuse someone of rape and maintain the facade through a full trial. At that point I'd be more worried about someone murdering me for revenge than them accusing me of rape). Overall, although "believe women" is definitely an abusable social norm, most people are moral enough to not do that and statistics show it's not a widespread issue. If you're really scared about it, just don't piss anyone off so much that they would do that to you.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    What? She didn't get him arrested and she specifically said that she didn't want any negative career consequences for him. The ban is entirely a PR move by Blizzard, not part of Rini's "evil scheme."

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    Yeah, the issue with abuse as a crime (especially nonphysical abuse) is that it can't ever be really proven or disproven. In terms of this specific case, I don't think Rini really has any motive to lie (her allegations are not as extreme as they could be, and she specifically asks for him not to be punished), so I'm inclined to believe her even without proof. There almost definitely isn't any proof out there (unless someone installs a security camera in Zalae's apartment or he's recorded admitting to it) and Rini isn't pressing charges, so the full extent of this seems to just be a temporary ban on Zalae (which hopefully motivates him to seek help, though it's unlikely) and now future women that Zalae dates will be more watchful of abusive behavior, so I think it turned out fairly well. I'm not sure if temporarily banning Zalae is exactly the best solution (Rini explicitly stated that she didn't want vengeance), but given that Blizzard can't really force him to go into therapy there's nothing else they can do except punish the alleged bad behavior.

    EDIT: Why am I being downvoted? Did I say anything offensive or harmful? I'm earnestly trying to understand because it seems very strange to me that everyone hates this specific comment and I don't know what I did wrong.

    EDIT 2: Is it because I said "I believe Rini without proof"? Because I meant that in a casual way of me thinking that her story makes sense (I generally expect most people to not lie), not in the sense that I think it has been proven.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    What kind of proof could you even have for this? It's not like she was going to whip out her phone and record him during the abuse. Also, the extent of her allegations are pretty minor, just "Zalae was a shitty boyfriend and made me feel unsafe in our relationship," if she wanted to actually end his career or create a better narrative around herself she would have come up with a far more extreme story (maybe alleging physical abuse and giving herself bruises as proof). Rini mentions multiple times that she doesn't want this to affect Zalae's career and that she's mainly doing this to protect other potential girlfriends from being abused (or maybe helping them see Zalae's abusive behavior). I know that it's hard to accept information about someone that conflicts with what you previously thought of them, but it seems far more likely that Zalae's a bad boyfriend than that Rini decided to lie to maliciously mess with Zalae's career with relatively mild accusations while calling for him to not be punished.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    Good for you! In that case the mono-deck should be perfect :)

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    You should try ASol+Dreadway+Skies Descend for the damage quests, the doubling damage makes some quests super quick.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    This guide works for most of the quests, but the best way to complete all the damage quests is to use an ASol Celestials plus Triple Dreadway. A few Dreadways and some 7+ cost celestials deal insane damage that quickly finish all the unit damage quests. Then you can use Dreadway+Skies Descend to deal noncombat damage.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 2 years, 11 months ago

    I think you and Riot actually don't disagree as much as you think you do. Riot has already confirmed that TF is a problem and will be nerfed, so they understand that TF is the real issue. The only reason he's bringing up TF's playrate is to show that the issue is less with his playrate and more with how long he's been top tier (if this were the first time TF was viable, I think fewer people would be annoyed). Also, to be fair I don't think most people knew that TF was fundamentally broken before the TF/Fizz and TF/Aphelios meta, previously most people thought TF/Swain and TF/Go Hard might just be flukes (and lots of people resisted the idea of a TF nerf, such as Mogwai). Because of that, I think that it made sense for them to wait a bit longer to nerf TF, although I think it could have been nerfed at the launch of Shurima along with the Aphelios nerf. 

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 3 years ago

    I think you’re misunderstanding the issue people have with this idea. I think it’s fair to say that this change would lead to better game balance and deck variety, but it comes at a tremendous cost. A mechanic like this is literally the most unintuitive thing I’ve heard, on par with maybe manipulating matchmaking to reduce winrate. Imagine that you really like playing one specific deck, and you learn how probable each card is to be drawn. Then the next week you play the deck again, but you have to look up the new probabilities to play the deck well. Rather than being able to play HS as a casual game whenever you have time, you instead have to either constantly look up stats or end up frustrated because certain cards don’t show up when they should. A lot of people play HS casually and enjoy coming back to the same deck again and again without having to put in tons of effort to relearn the deck every time. For that kind of player, a perfectly balanced meta and deck diversity don’t really matter because they only play a few games a week. By making this change you’d help the 1% of heavily invested players while alienating the 99% who just want to play a decently balanced game. From a player satisfaction standpoint this change has huge downsides with an upside that isn’t actually that impactful for most players.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 3 years ago

    The only feasible way to implement something close to this would be to add a “prevalence: X” stat to cards (like health and attack) that increases its odds to be drawn by X times. That honestly might not even be a bad idea because it would allow for Blizzard to make cards that are integral to their archetype more likely to be drawn (for example, Lucentbar could have a very high prevalence to make Druid Heal decks actually functional ). Given that players only get 1 copy of Legendaries, that might actually be a good way to make niche payoff Legendaries a little better. A high prevalence 1 drop would also be able to help control decks reliably get a turn 1 play without sacrificing their deck quality too much. That being said, all this seems like it would be better as an Expansion keyword instead of a rule change to every single card. 

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 3 years ago

    Yeah, I considered that too which is why I think it's not an objectively bad design, just kind of disappointing. Hopefully they'll add more nonbinary characters instead of just making this one and calling it a day. Maybe I'm too cynical, but the design seems like all the potential subversiveness has been sanded off to avoid controversy (just like how some old HS art was replaced to make censors happy). Also, "elf in mage robes" has been done so many times that I think they could have used the nonbinary aspect to make it slightly more interesting, without necessarily having it be the main feature.

  • CursedParrot's Avatar
    640 720 Posts Joined 05/29/2019
    Posted 3 years ago

    TBH, I kind of feel like they didn't do a good job of communicating the nonbinary aspect of this character, especially when compared to something like The Traveler in LoR. Maybe it's just that elves as a fantasy species are already androgynous, but nothing about this character design makes me think that it's anything other than another generic elf. Although I think it's nice that they're adding a nonbinary character, this seems on the same level as hypothetically declaring Sludge Belcher is gay. I think if they wanted to really get the nonbinary element across, they should have made a nonbinary human character and given them more nonbinary features or outfits. That being said, I think it's fine to have a nonbinary character that passes as cisgender, but for a design that they're declaring "HS's first nonbinary character" it's incredibly boring and they could have done better.

    (btw, this isn't meant to be a "cancel HS" post, I'm just explaining why I think their design doesn't communicate what it's intended to).

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