^ Buffing Grave horror to 11 would have indirect consequences on a bunch of other decks though. It probably wouldn't matter that much for Nomi priest, but any deck that runs sea giants and lackeys (zoo, water rogue, token druid, bloodlust shaman) can now evolve their sea giants into horrors (and then potentially MGs).
It wouldn't come up as often as the conjurer trick obviously, but especially with rogue it would be a pretty regular occurrence, and I assume people would just complain about that instead.
You'd need a sea giant in your deck, AND a witchy lackey you didn't immediately use. And it's changing 1 minion for another. If all CC did was convert a mountain giant into one Grave horror no one would care beyond face decks. it's having an 7/8 AND a 8/8 or having 4 of the bloody things at turn 5-6 that sets people into a rage.
Besides, right now if you witchy a sea giant it turns into another sea giant anyway so we're not exactly talking about MAJOR UNLIMITED VALUE here. Turns out I was wrong here so this would give an advantage as now hitting a sea giant doesn't let you 'heal' it so there's that. Also we're not talking about whether people complain since that always happens no matter what you do. It's about whether the combo is too strong and if it is what can be done about it and buffing Grave 1 mana would do the job without gutting the deck (you still get 2-4 giants out of a CC. You just now have the ability to die if you do it at the wrong time).
Personally I don't think it's too strong to NEED a nerf, but a proposal like the above seems like a very elegant idea to keep the overall power level while removing one of the biggest complaints that is one of the annoying elements of the deck (also eliminates a 'coin flip win/lose' RNG element).
Of course you CAN question whether such a change is even needed. But if you feel you do I feel this would do nicely for all parties involved.
I doubt they will actually change anything further after announcing the set and releasing a huge patch. They are probably hoping that they they can mitigate people's frustration with Conjurer's Calling and Mountain Giant by giving us new options in Saviors of Uldum. We know at the very least Priest has Plague of Death now.
They used to do that. They also used to say that they never buff. I don't expect anything now, especially since mages are supposed to be not that great as minion swarms and making a mass of 12 drops sounds rather..swarmy to me.
Myself I feel that we aren't going to die if mage stays as is. They aren't oppressive or polarizing. But I CAN see a change happening as well. If so I'm guessing either buffing Grave Horror to 1 mana less or HoFing Giant. Though I can also see them tearing into CC or Kadgar if they wanted to push that mage identity.
Firstly, I wouldn't disenchant cards from 'disliked classes'. The classes shift and change and what you like now won't be true later. If I had disenchanted classes I didn't like back in 2014 (Rogue) I would've been unable to play Tess rogue, one of my favorite classes. Meanwhile folks who threw away hunter cards for being 'too aggro' missed on out the slower midrangy decks they ran just last year and might've liked the mech version which is more tempo than 'do me face'.
For example, you talk about shaman overload sucking, but my favorite deck right now is Murkey Shaman:
Mucky Shaman
A Big Shaman Deck created by
Dakarian. Last updated 4 years, 10 months ago
Which uses almost jack all of overload and that overload doesn't really affect you (your key turns are around turn 5+ and you typically cast the overload cards at 3).
Personally I focus very little on class and focus more on archetype and decks. Each expansion when I get my cards, I look to see what sort of decks I can make with them and which decks I can make that I would like to try out if I just craft 1-2 more cards.
As for what to do now.. wait. We're LITERALLY going into a new set and there's no way to tell what that set is going to do. We won't know which classes will have control based decks and there's literally no point to trying to guess now when you can just wait for after the expansion and know 100% which decks you'll want to make.
Basically, just wait. Enjoy the hype train. Look at the new cards. Leave your collection, dust, and gold as is and collect all you can. Buy your packs, open them, let the folks with $2000 hearhtstone budgets buy and make all of the crappy decks. Find out what decks YOU want to do regardless of class, then make them, be happy, then start saving for the next set.
WaYYYYYY too early for us to hear about that. Last one happened in July 16th, and they announced it almost as soon as it came out. And they aren't going to glomp over this announcement with another one. Better to spread it out for MOAR HYPE over time.
Pretty sure they'll have one though so no worries.
They'll probably be all neutral minions, like their previous incarnation. Considering they're "heroes" they probably don't really have a specific class, except Elise that has "become" a Druid today after being announced as the new Druid potrait (nothing before that had ever pointed out that she may have been a Druid).
Don't see why they would be neutral. Rafaam and King were both neutral before and now they are linked to classes.
It's already been noted that the four non-E.V.I.L classes (hunter, mage, paladin, druid) are the good guys wiht Twinspell representing them defending Dalaran. And now we have Elise as a druid hero, Bran riding hunter-styled beasts and Reno wielding a crystal (paladin theme) cannon. So it makes sense to make them each one of the remaining heros while the other classes keep showing their E.V.I.L counterparts.
Note that the link between the classes are rather...iffy. Rafaam doesn't have anything to do with being a warlock and Lazul doesn't even make sense as a priest unless you want to stretch it to "she worships the old gods". Elise's staff is probably Druidic in nature, they gave Bran a dinosaur to make him fit with the hunters (even though Elise was the one who visited Un'Goru), Reno's gun is the only thing Paladin about him and Sir got a 'magical fish club' because Hagetha already grabbed the shaman spot when she was a Hero card and Finley going shaman means "MOAR MURLOC ShAMAn!" which doesn't sound as good.
In the end I think they mostly focused on the mechanics and then warped the story to fit the cards/mechanics. Which for a card game is what you want to happen.
not that them being neutral is wrong, but I'm guessing this is what's happening.
One thing that specially makes me angry is that this invalited their always used argument of 'we don't do this because will confuse our players', but they not only change art and names, but and entire card in Fesltaker without any previous announcement, something that genuinely confuse the playerbase, but really, I blame myself for being surprise of all of that.
Just about everything that's been said before, say, Boomsday, is now out of commission. New change of leadership. New rules. It's why they are making fast changes to nerfs, why we get buffs and cards midseason, why old mechanics are returning, and so on. consider everything back in play until they say otherwise in RECENT post.
As far as the overall concept; it's China. China has a VERY different culture from the West and now the big money comes from them instead of us. Expect this to be a normal thing to expect now.
As far as the cards themselves:
I actually like Queen of Pain better. She's more dynamic in her art. The only thing going for the old one is that it's a 'mistress' which only works well in a "oo I sexy demon, wink wink" way. Sidenote: silly to say it's a sexual thing when the Queen is wearing almost nothing compared to the Mistress.
Eviserate: literally took me a few minutes to find what was changed...I think. It's that bit of blood? Literally makes no difference beyond just getting angry at the concept.
Succubus: I'lll admit I'm sad about this one for a second. Though now that I think about it, what IS the concept behind a succubus that steals YOUR card in order to be stronger. Makes more sense for her to have lifesteal or something. So beyond nostalgia, a random beast that's strong but takes your card makes more sense
Windfury Harpy: MUCH better art. She's still basically naked so again "THIS is the anti-sex version?" What has changed is that the new harpy's back isn't broken. Seriously guys LOOK at the old harpy's hip and back and realize bones don't go that way. Now that I see the comparison I REALLY don't want to see the old one around again. It's having that "broken jaw James Bond" feel now.
Secretkeeper: Going to be blunt, new girl is hot, old one always looked meh with a messed up face. You lose all ability to judge art styles if you disagree.*
(*yes I'm joking, but I do so much prefer the new art and always disliked the old one)
Bite: meh. I prefer the old one here. But it works so whatever.
Deadly Shot and Headcrack fail. Flat out. I don't mind changes for decency and morals but you have to keep the theme of the card, which is why I agree with Felstalker over succy. Deadly did the reverse. WTF is the new card demonstrating. Couldn't you..say, just do a shadow effect of an arrow going through a 'target' or..well something other than a random arrow flying through the air? headcrack artwise looks better, but the old one REALLY spelled out what the spell was doing: whacking someone and coming back to whack again.
So yeah, 3 improvements. 3 'meh' acceptables. 2 fails.
Is the next expansion even that imminent? The last wing of the solo content for the last expansion was just released a couple weeks ago. I figure we are at least 8 weeks away. Still lots of time to save. That being said, I do really like the pacing this last expansion brought. The delayed release for the solo content, the arena switch ups, the card buffs, and even the one by one opening of the wings really kept things fresh. It's actually quite amazing that we're even close to new expansion season again!
Last year the announcement for the summer expansion (Boomsday) happened at July 10th. They've been similar timings for other summer expansions.
So yes, the next expansion announcement will come between now and about a week from now or so.
And yes, that's part of the trip of this last set. The release schedule of teh Heist, the nerfs, and the buffs all resulted in us not having time to really get bored before the next expansion. I'm seeing a good few others getting surprised that we're already at the station for the HYPE TRAIN.
As far as the OP, IIRC, abtou 3600 or so gold and 6k dust. But we have another month to save which gives another 1500 gold and we typically get around 10 packs free in various places, so I'm set for getting about 60 packs, which is where I aim for in pack collecting. Also if you are F2P you can use the first month of the expansion for more packs, so that's another 1500 gold or 15 more packs.
...which is good because I just realized I'm close to the pity timer on the last set so I really should open a few more packs there to finish up.
I will say this though, if they have another big single player content like last time I'll have to bow out this time I think as i don't think I'll have the gold to get a full expansion AND enough for the fall set. Meh.
So I hear a general consensus that if the crazy stuff is not too crazy. This means either that it happens at a turn that something can be done against it, or that crazy does not immediately ends the game in one turn. And you should design your deck so it can handle crazy. That's also called teching in cards to handle certain popular craziness. For instance, when rogues where killing you with their weapons, you tech in a weapon removal since otherwise you can't cope with the crazy rogue weaponry at turn 4-5-6. Now with all the magnetic craziness people tech for silence so your magnetized minion gets a little less crazy.
And basically, when stuff is so crazy nothing can stop it reasonably we then call it OP and in need of a nerf. So in fact its an important issue for HS, since we somehow want a "fair fight" and a "balanced meta" where more than two decks can live.
And this is all about standard. In wild crazy is the norm so to speak, that's why its called wild. But even here too crazy is not funny anymore witness the big priest problem.
Maybe also related to OTK decks: if your OTK deck would be a guaranteed certified win at turn 5, this would be a problem. A certified win at turn 13, not so much.
As far as the first part, basically yes. There WILL be a point when your deck 'cant' be stopped' by the other deck, but the question is, assuming RNG was about even on both sides, was there a reasonable chance for you to turn it around before it got 'too far'.
You have to account for RNG btw. RNG WILL screw you, or them, sometimes. To not accept that is to question why you even are playing a RNG based card game. Basically, you should be able to mark a loss due to either not making the correct choice (which doesn't always mean "you made a mistake" btw, just that there WAS a choice available, even if it wasn't one you typically would've made) or simple bad luck.
Note though that this is hte MATCH being fair, not the deck. Decks SHOULD be unfair in some aspect. Removing 20 mana worth of cards with 5 mana isn't fair. Dropping 2 8/8s at turn 6 is not fair. Drawing your entire deck at turn 4 is not fair. 'Not fair' is what makes decks ..well.. what they do. What makes it fair is that I can find other unfair things to do to stand up to your unfair deck.
As far as the 'balanced meta'. I've heard a few people put it this way: a good meta will have about 3-4 Tier 1 decks, and a whole mass of tier 2 that can sometimes hold their own, and teir 3s that find niches, like countering 1 tier 1 deck but not the others. The decks should also not be polarized, nor be completely 50%. Advantages should give you a 10% bonus/weakness to your win rate, all else being equal. That tends to be enough to make deck selection worthwhile but allow for tech choices/skill/RNG to shake things up.
Lastly, timing does NOT matter as far as 'guaranteed winning' is concerned. We thought so years ago when decks won at turn 3-5. When decks 'guaranteed won' at turn 30, we realized it still sucked, AND it was dull and boring as well. Winning for sure if you just had the time means that only aggro decks can beat you. and if they do, then you have a polarized deck (lose to all aggro, win to all control. See original Quest Rogue). If they don't, you have a truly OP deck (see Patron Warrior).
What matters is if the decks can, and must be flexible. If RNG isn't on your side, or if both people are doing well in their strategy, or you make one move when you should've done another, you shouldn't instantly lose, but you should be forced to change your strategy to secure your win, or find a new win condition. Whether that happens at turn 3 or 13, it should be a 'thing'.
How FAST that happens really isn't THAT big of an issue. A 5 turn game where both sides are hustling like crazy to get their win condition met while stopping the other is MUCH better than a 30 turn game where one side is able to just run through a script and the other is just hoping they get VERY lucky to have a chance.
They took a step back from "infinite" value but added very persistent value options with twinspells, elysiana, togwaggle's plan, mechs, to the point a single card is not worth anything anymore. In many scenarios you are virtually guaranteed to never run out of value at least for what concerns the duration of the game. Might aswell be infinite. Also dk's made exception for post ww rexxar, were infinite value but a very slow trickle of infinite value. They would grind you in the end, but they wouldnt have "hard" resources like a twinspell would give you. Drboom sure mech generation is gated between an 1 in 5 roll, but as i said, the card generates value simply because the current mech pool is extremely high quality, omega assembly is staple x2, and even if you don't roll delivery drone, most of the other options are pretty versatile board control tools.
Dr Boom is a quasi relic of an older mentalty of pushing infinite value. He's acceptable enough that he can exist purely because he will go away next year and because he won't be replaced with similar cards. If he was classic he would be a definate 'nuke'. For now he's strong enough to be big in the meta but we should be OK leaving him alone for now.
Conjure's Calling IS a Tempo issue that you are talking about while 'slow trickle' is a Value situation. But that's nitpicking definitions. I will note that the card actually works against Blizzard's desire for mage to NOT be a minion spammer. I'm guessing this is not going to be repeated later on.
Rafaam is actually a bad card, because while in theory he 'generates value' by turning your bad cards into legendaries, the end result is a very anti-synergetic deck. There's a reason why, even after we had slow metas that goes to late game, we STILL don't have 10+ legendaries in our decks, and that's when we get to choose the legendaries. Random ones are far worse. He's a meme. That's all. And I think it's intended to be that way.
You ARE correct that thinking ideas can lead to people focusing on how bad the ideas are rather than the issues. I think at this point though what we need is an overall theme of what the acceptable should be. That is, if you dislike all of these mechanics then what sort of mechanics ARE you looking for?
or a better question: What sort of decks or matchups do you like past or present, and why? That may help contrast what you see as wrong. It also helps remove the feeling of "I hate everything!" element. (note that it doesn't feel like you hate everything. I'm getting a feel of what you are against. But a few 'why can't it be more like (deck/hearthstone era/so on) would help.
I think power creep largely killed jaraxxus. I hadn't even considered him because I haven't seen one around in *ages*. There's just too many decks that can kill you from 15 hp.
I really wouldn't mind if he was reworked to be more in line with a regular hero card because I really like mistah J, but boy does it feel bad to have you max health capped at 15. If he worked more like Alexstrasza , where you could heal back up to 30 afterwards and retained your armour, he'd be a lot better in 2019 Hearthstone.
One big reason why you can't: classic. Hero cards were acceptable because they were going out in a few years. We can live with Dr. Boom for one more year, but after that we'll be done with him.
Jaraxxus isn't leaving if he gets buffed. A buffed Jaraxxus in an expansion would be cool. A reliable Jaraxxus in Classic is a No No and would get HoFed anyway.
Simply put: if it's in the HoF, it's either going to be weaker than a typical expansion card or be HoFed and replaced with something VERY much weaker.
Minions have all the fun! I want to be able to line up a couple of spells and then get a reward like a combo or magnetic effect for spells. Say if you manage to cast a fireball and a frostbolt after one another they melt to become a frostfire bolt doing extra damage. For instance. Only rogues have that atm. Or each consecutive spell in the same turn gets mana reduction. Stuff like that. Or being able to enhance a card in your hand with a spell without the opponent seeing which card you buffed. Some crazy stuff with spells. A spell to revive a spell you cast earlier that game (aka resurrect on spells). A pyroblast! when you have 2 crits in a row would also be nice to have.
We're getting into that with things like Twinspell. Being able to merge spells together will come with time I think, though simply 'more damage' I don't think will be in teh cards. It'll probably be completely different spells in an expansion that can combine together to do something unique or will go off if it's pair went off first.
That's probably largely down to hearthstone's interface and design philosophy of simplicity. There are loads of cards that power-up spells but they're almost all minions: spellpower +x, manacost reduction, "whenever you play a spell" triggers, mana cyclone, etc. etc. Hell there's Swampqueen Hagatha and Kazakus that arguably do merge spells together(in some fashion), but they're both battlecry minions. Oh and Fandral/Stalladris and Choose one spells.
I do expect Blizzard to keep printing cards like Kazakus in the future simply because the mechanic is immensely popular, but I'd be really surprised if such complexity and power were not restricted to legendaries. I doubt we'll see things more finnicky than twinspell or echo printed on non-legendary spell cards for the foreseeable future.
I don't think any of those philosophies are sacred anymore. Not buffing was sacred. Careful nerfing was sacred. HoFing only on rotations was sacred.
When they changed the head staff, they killed the sacred cows. I'm pretty sure everything is on the table now, including 'simplicity'.
I doubt they'll go MTG in complexity still, but otherwise, anything that's been said while..say.. Ben Brode was still on the team is no longer a locked concept. I'd want to hear them make a recent statement about simplicity before saying that Twinspell is the most complex we'll get.
So instead of the bomb immediately going off it would make a minion on the opponent's side that, when it blows up, does 5 damage to the hero holding it.
Ok firstly it took me writing about 3 pages of text before realizing WHY this would affect Big Priest. The idea is that the bombs would mess with their res mechanics. I can see that but.
1. There's literally only one deck that can use that. If big Priest is a problem (I'm not wild so I can't assume, but given that it's using Barnes I'm betting it is) then forcing everone to play ONE specific deck in WILD of all places to counter it seems..not a good solution.
2. It's an unstable one. You have to draw your bomb making card, use it, then the priest has to draw THEIR bomb card, then you have to kill the 1/1. Then and ONLY then does Big Priest have a chance of having their res messed up.
That's not much of a solution.
The other thing you bring up are the interactions. But your idea doesn't actually CHANGE any of them. It's still an 'on drawn' card that does something, so Reno/Pyro/ext will still act the same way towards it. It WILL make a major change to mirror matches as the bombs are now mechs that can interact via Rush when you're in your Hero mode. Which isn't exactly better or worse, just different in a matchup that doesn't sound like it needs anything different.
So it's really only there to change/nerf Bomb Warrior. Which first goes to the question of 'why does it need nerfing?' You admit it's not top tier. VS shows it's not overplayed. It doesn't seem to have highly polarized counters. Are we really proposing a very major mechanical change just to make them slightly less annoying?
Sidenote Dr. Boom wont' need to be changed. He doesn't interact with the explosions, just the 'on drawn' cards and your proposal doesn't change THAT part, just what they do when drawn.
second sidenote: 3 damage bombs would basically be 'delete the mechanic' at that point. ARE we trying to get RID of the deck?
Yes. They wrote such a lengthy explanation (full of obvious well known facts and partial lies) just to justify them removing mind blast and vanish. Two wonderful, perfect fitting cards that they obviously can't balance.The hilarious thing is that the cards are going into wild (standard's dumpster) where apparently all this class identity importance does not apply :)
That's my take on it. They just wanted to justify the decision to smack those two cards. As Agon says, this description of the classes along with their strengths and weaknesses, if we truly are talking about "class identity," should apply to the entire game, not just in Standard. Also, they basically affirmed that they treat Wild like a dumpster where all the broken stuff goes. If they had been smarter about it, they would have just said, "We're removing these cards from Standard because we want to develop other cards for Priest and Rogue" and not bothered with the class description nonsense.
I don't think this is just for those two cards. I think this is to start a trend. They already broke with many of their old ways by buffing cards and HoFing outside of rotation. I'm thinking they will be doing A LOT more of this stuff as we go on, and some of those changes will not be explainable by It's OP/not fun/messes with design.
Mind Blast was aimed at for a HoF already. They flat out said last time they were going to hit it and just barely decided to just not do it this year. Vanish was the surprise though. If it was a design decision, they would've said so as you suggest as they've done it before. If it was due to future cards, they've just done that earlier with Hex. The literally have no reason to make some fakey excuse when they've already used many of the other reasons for doing this without audience madness.
There IS a chance that this is Activision Corporate Speak sneaking in, which loves to oversugarcoat things. But I don't see a reason to assume that's the case. If it is, we'll find out sure enough anyway in the next sets of cards and nerfs.
But assuming they are correct, I'm betting that the next set of mage cards will not work with the conjure mindset, and they just gave themselves an opening to nerf Conjure or Mountain Giant without the deck being OP or unfun.
Guys, it's an element going forward. As is, this is where they want the classes to be. Not where they are now.
Yes, Mage can swarm like crazy. No they don't WANT them to swarm like crazy. That means from here on they won't let mage swarm like crazy so easily and they will be more likely to go after cards that do.
So the real question should be: Do you WANT the classes to act this way?
Myself I do have a few concerns:
Priest. I'm not really sure I figure what their win condition actually is beyond Revive priest. You can't heal your way into a win unless you go fatigue and I'm not sure we really want Fatigue Priest going around in tier 1. "copying" sounds almost like THEY should be the ones Conjuring mountain giants. If so then...alright I guess but I wnat to know that's what they aim for.
Warrior: They destroy things and rush/taunt. Ok Control mindset. But what's the win condition? Right now they have it in Dr. Boom and that's fine, but their story doesn't suggest that this will be a big priority. Which means they'll push more for "kill minions, Rush to kill more minions, Taunt to not die, ???, Win". They need ot makre sure Warrior has a clear goal in mind when stalling the game.
Otherwise, it sounds like fine plans. We'll need a few years to get the classes INTO that state, but.. sure.
I'm guessing that they targeted vanish and mind blast because, while they have worked against the grain of the class, they weren't currently in use so it wouldn't rock the meta or the class to take them down now.
Mountain giant.. that's goint to REALLY off balance an otherwise very interesting meta. I'd personally peg it for next year and watch it to see if the deck overstays its welcome past the next set.
And note that we're already getting the first hints of the next expansion, so we can barely get out the first reports of the new meta and discussions of it before it's time to GET ON THE HYPE TRAIN!
Do you think this time around the hype train can maybe derail a little and maybe people can "theorycraft" quietly and alone, isolated from the world
That's easy to do. Just don't look at the front page (myself I link to the forum so I have to purposely click there, which I usually forget) and don't watch all of those card reviews that go around which is easy given that those reviewers also put out normal content AND there's 1000000 other videos put up every day to watch instead.
But the thing is that people don't theorycraft alone because they don't really want to. People love hype and love previewing things like cards. They want to learn strategies as soon as they can and apply them. Most aren't innovators or theorycrafters: that's just not what they do. So they'll group together and get on the train. Individuals don't have to. They can join the hype or derail.. You can do whatever you want but you can't really demand the public to follow your faith. You do what you do but they do what they do. And in the end:
GET READY FOR THE HYPE, TONY! THE HYPE TRAIN IS COMIN'! WOO WOO!
it's fine. People are already big on thinking of themselves as a particular class player. This just encourages it. If you like going face you are a hunter player. That sort of thing. I would think that it would make it harder to make cards over time as the class ends up locked to an archetype that you cant' really experiment away from. But that's a matter of the design teams to worry about, not me.
Not sure what you mean by laughing at warlock's 'weaknesses'. They don't have good healing or great ways to burn an opponent from the hand anymore and the past has shown that they REALLY go off the rails whenever they have either. That's the point of the 'weaknesses': it's a reminder for the team that a class should NOT have everything at once. Don't let a warrior be able to zoo out or they go Pirate Warrior on you. Jaina DK shows why mage shouldn't have reliable healing. That sort of thing. This is them deciding to remember that decks shouldn't be able to do everything well.
There are also some under-the-radar decks that aren't on VS that are a lot of fun and viable. For example, the play rate of Big Shaman dropped low enough that they aren't mentioning it on there, yet I'm having a blast and having a positive win rate with the deck at rank 5.
Overall, this meta has taken longer to get stale than any other. Blizz did a good job so far this year. Hopefully they keep it up.
it's a good thing to remember that the report isn't so much reporting the best decks as they are the most popular and how strong THOSE are against the rest. It's basically a mark of what you'll face in the meta and how they stand against each other.
This meta, though, has a LOT of room for counterdecks and counter meta play. Though it's very bad for folks that want to win 100% of the time and for folks with dedicated decks they MUST play for their own sakes.
So it's not that great as a Johnny unless you are Legend, but Spikes should be having a wonderful time at any point in the ladder.
As far as staleness, the single player, nerf and buff runs did a great job with that. By the time people got bored of things the nerfs were in. We didn't even have time to start complaining a before the buffs came in, and many were playing the single player (or grumbling while waiting for each wing) too much to worry about either.
And note that we're already getting the first hints of the next expansion, so we can barely get out the first reports of the new meta and discussions of it before it's time to GET ON THE HYPE TRAIN!
So Hunter confirmed as the most popular class in the meta, yet Rogue seems to be able to resist, despite the nerfs. But I guess Rogue players knew that already.
What do you think? Do you see more margin of development after the mid-term buffs? Or are we approaching staleness already, no matter what?
One thing to note is that in the Legend rank we have a very close race here with Hunter and Warrior in a dead heat, Mage and Rogue right next to them, and Shaman close enough to matter as well. The "hunter wins!" is mostly in the lower ranks. It suggests that Hunter is being seen as the cheapest/easiest class to rank up with but it's NOT the strongest.
I think there's still room to build off of this meta over at that top end. Many of these decks are still being figured out as far as who beats who and tech options. We're at the point we would normally be at 1 month into the expansion, where most of the tiers are set though their cards aren't solid and there may still be a few surprises coming later on.
For the majority of the playerbase, staleness should be just now creeping in. For those more dedicated and professional, this is probably a very interesting time, especially since the decks themselves aren't easy to master.
A few things to note:
1. At the moment, it looks like I might be eating crow about the buffs. I feared it would either be worthless or game breaking and so far they've done neither. Some of those cards have made new decks and those decks have mixed in to make a pretty diverse meta.
2. While I'm sure a lot of folks hate Hunter right now, the Midrange hunter variant is extremely cheap using only Zul'jin and two Master's Call: the rest is literally common cards. So we not only have a meta that gets complex and mixed at the upper end, but there's a cheap deck for new players to grab and go.
3. We're a few weeks before the announcement of the next expansion. Boomsday was announceed on the 10th of July. So we literally have 2 weeks of this meta before its' time to look at new cards.
So yeah, the meta itself isn't stale but it will be for the majority in the lower ranks. But there won't be much time for everyone to get bothered. Between the single player content and the buffs I think Blizzard figured out how to basically nuke the stale period of an expansion while increasing revenue, without the playerbase going into a riot.
Got to admit, the new guard did well this run. Now to see how well they handle non-rotation expansions and how they'll mix up the single player content (because I think the Dungeon Run cow has been milked dry at this point)
You'd need a sea giant in your deck, AND a witchy lackey you didn't immediately use. And it's changing 1 minion for another. If all CC did was convert a mountain giant into one Grave horror no one would care beyond face decks. it's having an 7/8 AND a 8/8 or having 4 of the bloody things at turn 5-6 that sets people into a rage.
Besides, right now if you witchy a sea giant it turns into another sea giant anyway so we're not exactly talking about MAJOR UNLIMITED VALUE here. Turns out I was wrong here so this would give an advantage as now hitting a sea giant doesn't let you 'heal' it so there's that. Also we're not talking about whether people complain since that always happens no matter what you do. It's about whether the combo is too strong and if it is what can be done about it and buffing Grave 1 mana would do the job without gutting the deck (you still get 2-4 giants out of a CC. You just now have the ability to die if you do it at the wrong time).
Personally I don't think it's too strong to NEED a nerf, but a proposal like the above seems like a very elegant idea to keep the overall power level while removing one of the biggest complaints that is one of the annoying elements of the deck (also eliminates a 'coin flip win/lose' RNG element).
Of course you CAN question whether such a change is even needed. But if you feel you do I feel this would do nicely for all parties involved.
They used to do that. They also used to say that they never buff. I don't expect anything now, especially since mages are supposed to be not that great as minion swarms and making a mass of 12 drops sounds rather..swarmy to me.
Myself I feel that we aren't going to die if mage stays as is. They aren't oppressive or polarizing. But I CAN see a change happening as well. If so I'm guessing either buffing Grave Horror to 1 mana less or HoFing Giant. Though I can also see them tearing into CC or Kadgar if they wanted to push that mage identity.
I'm fine with any of these or none of them.
Firstly, I wouldn't disenchant cards from 'disliked classes'. The classes shift and change and what you like now won't be true later. If I had disenchanted classes I didn't like back in 2014 (Rogue) I would've been unable to play Tess rogue, one of my favorite classes. Meanwhile folks who threw away hunter cards for being 'too aggro' missed on out the slower midrangy decks they ran just last year and might've liked the mech version which is more tempo than 'do me face'.
For example, you talk about shaman overload sucking, but my favorite deck right now is Murkey Shaman:
Which uses almost jack all of overload and that overload doesn't really affect you (your key turns are around turn 5+ and you typically cast the overload cards at 3).
Personally I focus very little on class and focus more on archetype and decks. Each expansion when I get my cards, I look to see what sort of decks I can make with them and which decks I can make that I would like to try out if I just craft 1-2 more cards.
As for what to do now.. wait. We're LITERALLY going into a new set and there's no way to tell what that set is going to do. We won't know which classes will have control based decks and there's literally no point to trying to guess now when you can just wait for after the expansion and know 100% which decks you'll want to make.
Basically, just wait. Enjoy the hype train. Look at the new cards. Leave your collection, dust, and gold as is and collect all you can. Buy your packs, open them, let the folks with $2000 hearhtstone budgets buy and make all of the crappy decks. Find out what decks YOU want to do regardless of class, then make them, be happy, then start saving for the next set.
WaYYYYYY too early for us to hear about that. Last one happened in July 16th, and they announced it almost as soon as it came out. And they aren't going to glomp over this announcement with another one. Better to spread it out for MOAR HYPE over time.
Pretty sure they'll have one though so no worries.
Don't see why they would be neutral. Rafaam and King were both neutral before and now they are linked to classes.
It's already been noted that the four non-E.V.I.L classes (hunter, mage, paladin, druid) are the good guys wiht Twinspell representing them defending Dalaran. And now we have Elise as a druid hero, Bran riding hunter-styled beasts and Reno wielding a crystal (paladin theme) cannon. So it makes sense to make them each one of the remaining heros while the other classes keep showing their E.V.I.L counterparts.
Note that the link between the classes are rather...iffy. Rafaam doesn't have anything to do with being a warlock and Lazul doesn't even make sense as a priest unless you want to stretch it to "she worships the old gods". Elise's staff is probably Druidic in nature, they gave Bran a dinosaur to make him fit with the hunters (even though Elise was the one who visited Un'Goru), Reno's gun is the only thing Paladin about him and Sir got a 'magical fish club' because Hagetha already grabbed the shaman spot when she was a Hero card and Finley going shaman means "MOAR MURLOC ShAMAn!" which doesn't sound as good.
In the end I think they mostly focused on the mechanics and then warped the story to fit the cards/mechanics. Which for a card game is what you want to happen.
not that them being neutral is wrong, but I'm guessing this is what's happening.
Just about everything that's been said before, say, Boomsday, is now out of commission. New change of leadership. New rules. It's why they are making fast changes to nerfs, why we get buffs and cards midseason, why old mechanics are returning, and so on. consider everything back in play until they say otherwise in RECENT post.
As far as the overall concept; it's China. China has a VERY different culture from the West and now the big money comes from them instead of us. Expect this to be a normal thing to expect now.
As far as the cards themselves:
I actually like Queen of Pain better. She's more dynamic in her art. The only thing going for the old one is that it's a 'mistress' which only works well in a "oo I sexy demon, wink wink" way. Sidenote: silly to say it's a sexual thing when the Queen is wearing almost nothing compared to the Mistress.
Eviserate: literally took me a few minutes to find what was changed...I think. It's that bit of blood? Literally makes no difference beyond just getting angry at the concept.
Succubus: I'lll admit I'm sad about this one for a second. Though now that I think about it, what IS the concept behind a succubus that steals YOUR card in order to be stronger. Makes more sense for her to have lifesteal or something. So beyond nostalgia, a random beast that's strong but takes your card makes more sense
Windfury Harpy: MUCH better art. She's still basically naked so again "THIS is the anti-sex version?" What has changed is that the new harpy's back isn't broken. Seriously guys LOOK at the old harpy's hip and back and realize bones don't go that way. Now that I see the comparison I REALLY don't want to see the old one around again. It's having that "broken jaw James Bond" feel now.
Secretkeeper: Going to be blunt, new girl is hot, old one always looked meh with a messed up face. You lose all ability to judge art styles if you disagree.*
(*yes I'm joking, but I do so much prefer the new art and always disliked the old one)
Bite: meh. I prefer the old one here. But it works so whatever.
Deadly Shot and Headcrack fail. Flat out. I don't mind changes for decency and morals but you have to keep the theme of the card, which is why I agree with Felstalker over succy. Deadly did the reverse. WTF is the new card demonstrating. Couldn't you..say, just do a shadow effect of an arrow going through a 'target' or..well something other than a random arrow flying through the air? headcrack artwise looks better, but the old one REALLY spelled out what the spell was doing: whacking someone and coming back to whack again.
So yeah, 3 improvements. 3 'meh' acceptables. 2 fails.
Last year the announcement for the summer expansion (Boomsday) happened at July 10th. They've been similar timings for other summer expansions.
So yes, the next expansion announcement will come between now and about a week from now or so.
And yes, that's part of the trip of this last set. The release schedule of teh Heist, the nerfs, and the buffs all resulted in us not having time to really get bored before the next expansion. I'm seeing a good few others getting surprised that we're already at the station for the HYPE TRAIN.
As far as the OP, IIRC, abtou 3600 or so gold and 6k dust. But we have another month to save which gives another 1500 gold and we typically get around 10 packs free in various places, so I'm set for getting about 60 packs, which is where I aim for in pack collecting. Also if you are F2P you can use the first month of the expansion for more packs, so that's another 1500 gold or 15 more packs.
...which is good because I just realized I'm close to the pity timer on the last set so I really should open a few more packs there to finish up.
I will say this though, if they have another big single player content like last time I'll have to bow out this time I think as i don't think I'll have the gold to get a full expansion AND enough for the fall set. Meh.
As far as the first part, basically yes. There WILL be a point when your deck 'cant' be stopped' by the other deck, but the question is, assuming RNG was about even on both sides, was there a reasonable chance for you to turn it around before it got 'too far'.
You have to account for RNG btw. RNG WILL screw you, or them, sometimes. To not accept that is to question why you even are playing a RNG based card game. Basically, you should be able to mark a loss due to either not making the correct choice (which doesn't always mean "you made a mistake" btw, just that there WAS a choice available, even if it wasn't one you typically would've made) or simple bad luck.
Note though that this is hte MATCH being fair, not the deck. Decks SHOULD be unfair in some aspect. Removing 20 mana worth of cards with 5 mana isn't fair. Dropping 2 8/8s at turn 6 is not fair. Drawing your entire deck at turn 4 is not fair. 'Not fair' is what makes decks ..well.. what they do. What makes it fair is that I can find other unfair things to do to stand up to your unfair deck.
As far as the 'balanced meta'. I've heard a few people put it this way: a good meta will have about 3-4 Tier 1 decks, and a whole mass of tier 2 that can sometimes hold their own, and teir 3s that find niches, like countering 1 tier 1 deck but not the others. The decks should also not be polarized, nor be completely 50%. Advantages should give you a 10% bonus/weakness to your win rate, all else being equal. That tends to be enough to make deck selection worthwhile but allow for tech choices/skill/RNG to shake things up.
Lastly, timing does NOT matter as far as 'guaranteed winning' is concerned. We thought so years ago when decks won at turn 3-5. When decks 'guaranteed won' at turn 30, we realized it still sucked, AND it was dull and boring as well. Winning for sure if you just had the time means that only aggro decks can beat you. and if they do, then you have a polarized deck (lose to all aggro, win to all control. See original Quest Rogue). If they don't, you have a truly OP deck (see Patron Warrior).
What matters is if the decks can, and must be flexible. If RNG isn't on your side, or if both people are doing well in their strategy, or you make one move when you should've done another, you shouldn't instantly lose, but you should be forced to change your strategy to secure your win, or find a new win condition. Whether that happens at turn 3 or 13, it should be a 'thing'.
How FAST that happens really isn't THAT big of an issue. A 5 turn game where both sides are hustling like crazy to get their win condition met while stopping the other is MUCH better than a 30 turn game where one side is able to just run through a script and the other is just hoping they get VERY lucky to have a chance.
Dr Boom is a quasi relic of an older mentalty of pushing infinite value. He's acceptable enough that he can exist purely because he will go away next year and because he won't be replaced with similar cards. If he was classic he would be a definate 'nuke'. For now he's strong enough to be big in the meta but we should be OK leaving him alone for now.
Conjure's Calling IS a Tempo issue that you are talking about while 'slow trickle' is a Value situation. But that's nitpicking definitions. I will note that the card actually works against Blizzard's desire for mage to NOT be a minion spammer. I'm guessing this is not going to be repeated later on.
Rafaam is actually a bad card, because while in theory he 'generates value' by turning your bad cards into legendaries, the end result is a very anti-synergetic deck. There's a reason why, even after we had slow metas that goes to late game, we STILL don't have 10+ legendaries in our decks, and that's when we get to choose the legendaries. Random ones are far worse. He's a meme. That's all. And I think it's intended to be that way.
You ARE correct that thinking ideas can lead to people focusing on how bad the ideas are rather than the issues. I think at this point though what we need is an overall theme of what the acceptable should be. That is, if you dislike all of these mechanics then what sort of mechanics ARE you looking for?
or a better question: What sort of decks or matchups do you like past or present, and why? That may help contrast what you see as wrong. It also helps remove the feeling of "I hate everything!" element. (note that it doesn't feel like you hate everything. I'm getting a feel of what you are against. But a few 'why can't it be more like (deck/hearthstone era/so on) would help.
One big reason why you can't: classic. Hero cards were acceptable because they were going out in a few years. We can live with Dr. Boom for one more year, but after that we'll be done with him.
Jaraxxus isn't leaving if he gets buffed. A buffed Jaraxxus in an expansion would be cool. A reliable Jaraxxus in Classic is a No No and would get HoFed anyway.
Simply put: if it's in the HoF, it's either going to be weaker than a typical expansion card or be HoFed and replaced with something VERY much weaker.
We're getting into that with things like Twinspell. Being able to merge spells together will come with time I think, though simply 'more damage' I don't think will be in teh cards. It'll probably be completely different spells in an expansion that can combine together to do something unique or will go off if it's pair went off first.
I don't think any of those philosophies are sacred anymore. Not buffing was sacred. Careful nerfing was sacred. HoFing only on rotations was sacred.
When they changed the head staff, they killed the sacred cows. I'm pretty sure everything is on the table now, including 'simplicity'.
I doubt they'll go MTG in complexity still, but otherwise, anything that's been said while..say.. Ben Brode was still on the team is no longer a locked concept. I'd want to hear them make a recent statement about simplicity before saying that Twinspell is the most complex we'll get.
So instead of the bomb immediately going off it would make a minion on the opponent's side that, when it blows up, does 5 damage to the hero holding it.
Ok firstly it took me writing about 3 pages of text before realizing WHY this would affect Big Priest. The idea is that the bombs would mess with their res mechanics. I can see that but.
1. There's literally only one deck that can use that. If big Priest is a problem (I'm not wild so I can't assume, but given that it's using Barnes I'm betting it is) then forcing everone to play ONE specific deck in WILD of all places to counter it seems..not a good solution.
2. It's an unstable one. You have to draw your bomb making card, use it, then the priest has to draw THEIR bomb card, then you have to kill the 1/1. Then and ONLY then does Big Priest have a chance of having their res messed up.
That's not much of a solution.
The other thing you bring up are the interactions. But your idea doesn't actually CHANGE any of them. It's still an 'on drawn' card that does something, so Reno/Pyro/ext will still act the same way towards it. It WILL make a major change to mirror matches as the bombs are now mechs that can interact via Rush when you're in your Hero mode. Which isn't exactly better or worse, just different in a matchup that doesn't sound like it needs anything different.
So it's really only there to change/nerf Bomb Warrior. Which first goes to the question of 'why does it need nerfing?' You admit it's not top tier. VS shows it's not overplayed. It doesn't seem to have highly polarized counters. Are we really proposing a very major mechanical change just to make them slightly less annoying?
Sidenote Dr. Boom wont' need to be changed. He doesn't interact with the explosions, just the 'on drawn' cards and your proposal doesn't change THAT part, just what they do when drawn.
second sidenote: 3 damage bombs would basically be 'delete the mechanic' at that point. ARE we trying to get RID of the deck?
I don't think this is just for those two cards. I think this is to start a trend. They already broke with many of their old ways by buffing cards and HoFing outside of rotation. I'm thinking they will be doing A LOT more of this stuff as we go on, and some of those changes will not be explainable by It's OP/not fun/messes with design.
Mind Blast was aimed at for a HoF already. They flat out said last time they were going to hit it and just barely decided to just not do it this year. Vanish was the surprise though. If it was a design decision, they would've said so as you suggest as they've done it before. If it was due to future cards, they've just done that earlier with Hex. The literally have no reason to make some fakey excuse when they've already used many of the other reasons for doing this without audience madness.
There IS a chance that this is Activision Corporate Speak sneaking in, which loves to oversugarcoat things. But I don't see a reason to assume that's the case. If it is, we'll find out sure enough anyway in the next sets of cards and nerfs.
But assuming they are correct, I'm betting that the next set of mage cards will not work with the conjure mindset, and they just gave themselves an opening to nerf Conjure or Mountain Giant without the deck being OP or unfun.
We'll know sure enough
Guys, it's an element going forward. As is, this is where they want the classes to be. Not where they are now.
Yes, Mage can swarm like crazy. No they don't WANT them to swarm like crazy. That means from here on they won't let mage swarm like crazy so easily and they will be more likely to go after cards that do.
So the real question should be: Do you WANT the classes to act this way?
Myself I do have a few concerns:
Priest. I'm not really sure I figure what their win condition actually is beyond Revive priest. You can't heal your way into a win unless you go fatigue and I'm not sure we really want Fatigue Priest going around in tier 1. "copying" sounds almost like THEY should be the ones Conjuring mountain giants. If so then...alright I guess but I wnat to know that's what they aim for.
Warrior: They destroy things and rush/taunt. Ok Control mindset. But what's the win condition? Right now they have it in Dr. Boom and that's fine, but their story doesn't suggest that this will be a big priority. Which means they'll push more for "kill minions, Rush to kill more minions, Taunt to not die, ???, Win". They need ot makre sure Warrior has a clear goal in mind when stalling the game.
Otherwise, it sounds like fine plans. We'll need a few years to get the classes INTO that state, but.. sure.
I'm guessing that they targeted vanish and mind blast because, while they have worked against the grain of the class, they weren't currently in use so it wouldn't rock the meta or the class to take them down now.
Mountain giant.. that's goint to REALLY off balance an otherwise very interesting meta. I'd personally peg it for next year and watch it to see if the deck overstays its welcome past the next set.
It goes in order of played. So the first 3 minions that were placed on the field get put back to the hand, and all of the others get destroyed.
That's easy to do. Just don't look at the front page (myself I link to the forum so I have to purposely click there, which I usually forget) and don't watch all of those card reviews that go around which is easy given that those reviewers also put out normal content AND there's 1000000 other videos put up every day to watch instead.
But the thing is that people don't theorycraft alone because they don't really want to. People love hype and love previewing things like cards. They want to learn strategies as soon as they can and apply them. Most aren't innovators or theorycrafters: that's just not what they do. So they'll group together and get on the train. Individuals don't have to. They can join the hype or derail.. You can do whatever you want but you can't really demand the public to follow your faith. You do what you do but they do what they do. And in the end:
GET READY FOR THE HYPE, TONY! THE HYPE TRAIN IS COMIN'! WOO WOO!
it's fine. People are already big on thinking of themselves as a particular class player. This just encourages it. If you like going face you are a hunter player. That sort of thing. I would think that it would make it harder to make cards over time as the class ends up locked to an archetype that you cant' really experiment away from. But that's a matter of the design teams to worry about, not me.
Not sure what you mean by laughing at warlock's 'weaknesses'. They don't have good healing or great ways to burn an opponent from the hand anymore and the past has shown that they REALLY go off the rails whenever they have either. That's the point of the 'weaknesses': it's a reminder for the team that a class should NOT have everything at once. Don't let a warrior be able to zoo out or they go Pirate Warrior on you. Jaina DK shows why mage shouldn't have reliable healing. That sort of thing. This is them deciding to remember that decks shouldn't be able to do everything well.
it's a good thing to remember that the report isn't so much reporting the best decks as they are the most popular and how strong THOSE are against the rest. It's basically a mark of what you'll face in the meta and how they stand against each other.
This meta, though, has a LOT of room for counterdecks and counter meta play. Though it's very bad for folks that want to win 100% of the time and for folks with dedicated decks they MUST play for their own sakes.
So it's not that great as a Johnny unless you are Legend, but Spikes should be having a wonderful time at any point in the ladder.
As far as staleness, the single player, nerf and buff runs did a great job with that. By the time people got bored of things the nerfs were in. We didn't even have time to start complaining a before the buffs came in, and many were playing the single player (or grumbling while waiting for each wing) too much to worry about either.
And note that we're already getting the first hints of the next expansion, so we can barely get out the first reports of the new meta and discussions of it before it's time to GET ON THE HYPE TRAIN!
One thing to note is that in the Legend rank we have a very close race here with Hunter and Warrior in a dead heat, Mage and Rogue right next to them, and Shaman close enough to matter as well. The "hunter wins!" is mostly in the lower ranks. It suggests that Hunter is being seen as the cheapest/easiest class to rank up with but it's NOT the strongest.
I think there's still room to build off of this meta over at that top end. Many of these decks are still being figured out as far as who beats who and tech options. We're at the point we would normally be at 1 month into the expansion, where most of the tiers are set though their cards aren't solid and there may still be a few surprises coming later on.
For the majority of the playerbase, staleness should be just now creeping in. For those more dedicated and professional, this is probably a very interesting time, especially since the decks themselves aren't easy to master.
A few things to note:
1. At the moment, it looks like I might be eating crow about the buffs. I feared it would either be worthless or game breaking and so far they've done neither. Some of those cards have made new decks and those decks have mixed in to make a pretty diverse meta.
2. While I'm sure a lot of folks hate Hunter right now, the Midrange hunter variant is extremely cheap using only Zul'jin and two Master's Call: the rest is literally common cards. So we not only have a meta that gets complex and mixed at the upper end, but there's a cheap deck for new players to grab and go.
3. We're a few weeks before the announcement of the next expansion. Boomsday was announceed on the 10th of July. So we literally have 2 weeks of this meta before its' time to look at new cards.
So yeah, the meta itself isn't stale but it will be for the majority in the lower ranks. But there won't be much time for everyone to get bothered. Between the single player content and the buffs I think Blizzard figured out how to basically nuke the stale period of an expansion while increasing revenue, without the playerbase going into a riot.
Got to admit, the new guard did well this run. Now to see how well they handle non-rotation expansions and how they'll mix up the single player content (because I think the Dungeon Run cow has been milked dry at this point)