Regis and Kibler are much more constructed than BG players, so it makes complete sense to give others a chance. And I think especially for invitational tournaments it's important to mix familiar faces with new ones to prevent the 'old-boys club/'Blizzard sweethearts' effect. I would certainly feel that way if they were actually invited for a mode they hardly play.
About the 50/50 - I agree that it wouldn't make sense to always be adamant about this. But I think that they're doing it this time to give a signal. And let's not forget that the balance has been severely tilting towards the other end for a long time.
Hoping they'll invite Chump for the next constructed event!
Yeah, even though I play both BG and ranked (so seldom any problems completing the quests) I wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that on the one hand, weekly quests cost too much time to be spending in modes that you don't enjoy, but on the other hand, simply offer too much XP to ignore.
It would be great if you could select a 'primary mode': Ranked, Casual, Battlegrounds, Arena, or Duels and got your weekly quests from a pool that at least can be completed in that mode.
With that being said, rerolling 5 wins in BG, Duels, or TB (and Arena is in there too now) means that you willingly take a risk. Certainly not the best quest if you prefer constructed, but at the same time you know that the current system is what it is. So if you are rerolling a flexible quest you could end up with one of the 2 strictly-BG quests.
Just logged in (EU, after the new patch) and 2 packs were granted from outside of the game (even got a playable epic in Mo'arg Artificer). So they finally arrived for me.
I personally never auto-concede on Std ranked ladder, because well, for your rank it's obviously bad (The sole exception being at one of the rank floors and having lost your previous game). Every game you lose instead of winning requires a net of 2 more wins to get in a similar position again, which often is 10-20 more games even with a decent win rate. So why not give even the worst match-up a go for a few turns? Even in heavily unfavored matchups you often still have a 25% chance of winning if you draw the nuts or your opponent draws dead. (I do concede during the game if I am absolutely convinced that I can't win, to save time and move on.)
But if you don't care at all about your rank or play non-ranked, then there is definitely a case for it. You play for fun after all... for me, the fun in ranked std is to play my best and see how far I get, no matter how much I like/dislike my opponent's deck. But I play funky decks on wild ladder every now and then. There I auto-concede against Priest (sorry to the 3 people out there who look for a fun game with priest and don't play Rez/Raza).
@IksarHS Can you talk a little about the theory behind Freeze Shaman back in the day?
Quote From <em>IksarHS</em>
We made the call it had fairly negative gameplay too late to redesign the archetype. How weak we ended up making it was overkill but to make it weak at all was intentional.
IMO it was reasonably fun to play (when the cards were pushed in power level) but could feel pretty miserable to be on the opposite end.
Soooooo.... here are some more freeze effects for y'all to enjoy!
Too low impact for Standard (let alone for wild)... but looks like a pretty good arena card: mediocre but playable on 2, great tempo if you can combine it with something else on 5-6, and certainly better than any other 2-drop when up in topdecking mode.
Isn't that what alt-accounts are for? ;) I actually like coop-brawls as they feel more rewarding when you manage to complete them with a partner who understands what they are doing. But I admit that when you get a few in a row that don't (want to) get it, frustration can boil over and I just challenge my alt on my phone for a win.
While I see your point, there are a few things we should add to the equation here:
Tavern brawl will no longer reward classic packs, so you'll now get an additional 50 useful packs per year, possibly reducing the tax on your wallet by a full pre-order - or maybe reducing the need to buy additional packs in addition to the preorder.
I (and many other old players who don't really care for Wild/Classic) now have the option to dust massive amounts of classic cards. With the regular rewards track easily making it possible to get 80-odd packs and the mini-expac, the extra dust would be enough to craft pretty much everything most players would want for the coming year.
As far as I see, it's not Blizzard who said that they'd be "giving old players who have spent a great deal of money on the game a little break from opening their wallets." but the author of the article. Not even in the interview that the article references to do the Blizzard guys say anything along those lines. Even though I despise corporate PR from most companies, using this statement as an example of Activision's PR propaganda isn't fair.
Yeah, I wonder if the draw of the legendary minions is scripted. I only played it once and got them neatly spread out, but I can imagine that if you get 2 or 3 early on it becomes a walk in the park.
Difficulty level is probably a tough nut to crack for the design team. With a very diverse audience to cater for, they're probably looking at a level that gives casuals a chance while not making it a complete pushover for better players.
I just finished the Sylvanas fight (final boss in Anduin's chapter in the Book of Heroes) and I was absolutely blown away by it. It felt like I was raiding in WoW again, progressing to various stages of the fight with each requiring different strategies. And because of the 1 mana draw 2, you actually seem to get the resources that you need to do that pretty reliably. Very good design. Lore-wise it felt very accurate too and the whole experience of your growing army of legendaries made it just feel like an epic fight.
What probably helped too was that I killed her with no card left in my deck and when her HP started to feel overwhelming - a bit similar to downing a WoW raid boss with everyone running out-of-mana and half the raid dead when you land this final hit.
So for me, yes, it was the best PvE content that I have played in HS. What are your experiences?
I second that completely. The idea of riding him to victory doesn't work, there is just too much hard removal out there and that will most likely always be the case. He seems best at home in decks that run threats the demand hard removal to be forced early and run a few buffs or heals anyway in case he sticks, but that aren't wasted when he doesn't. Priest is best in the sense that if someone doesn't have hard removal for the first turn, then even a simple HP heal is enough to cause problems in subsequent turns.
Grats to everyone who made it to the leaderboard, and especially for being such great sports while you were at it! With 1504 snowflakes left, protected by the patent-pending N0-M3LT, I'm all set for next year! (Or maybe, I'll use them to give someone a real good peppering!)
Flux, maybe you could have a look at the 'clues gathered' for next year? There are just 20 places, so sometimes we show up, and sometimes we fall off again. Not a big thing though, it's been an awesome event!
I used to be kind-of intimidated by Legend card backs, or at least impressed... until I hit legend myself. Now it's the opposite effect: I am convinced that players with a legend card back are generally from the weaker quarter of the legend players who use it in the hope to intimidate their opponents.
That's about it - the spell damage thing is a trap - avoid it. The Fight trainer is also a decent keep, it's one of the few cards in your deck that actually is a decent tempo card and tempo is what you need. Don't focus too much on getting value out of it, though if you can with double air-raid on T4 it's great.
You need to get a bit of luck that the portal doesn't curve out perfectly with his better cards but it's certainly doable. Definitely the worst fight of them all though.
Yup, the packs should contain new cards, as this is considered part of DMF, not a separate set - at least, if you don't but the bundle. If you buy the bundle, you will already have all the cards and duplicate protection should protect you from getting any more until you have all cards from a given rarity. Then you may get more.
So if you have all the commons, rares, and epics from DMF already and don't buy the bundle, then yes: all the packs you open should contain new cards - that is, until you have all the new commons (which should be after a few packs already). Then you'll get duplicate commons again, but any rares and epics should still be new until you have collected them all too (rares should also happen rather quickly).
Still getting all the legendaries from the mini-set would probably require ~80 packs even if you already have all the regular legendaries from DMF. So if the leak is correct, it looks much more attractive to get the bundle.
I'm more bothered by how many players use them. Not everyone, but in general:
'Wow/well played' seems to mean: I'm salty because of your lucky topdecks/RNG
'Thanks' seems only to be used at the end of the game in a 'thanks, for the free win noob'
'Greetings' seems to mean: I drew the nuts and will crush you
Strangely enough, 'threaten' seems the funniest, mostly used by players who are about to lose as a way to say "I'll get you next time!''
Regis and Kibler are much more constructed than BG players, so it makes complete sense to give others a chance. And I think especially for invitational tournaments it's important to mix familiar faces with new ones to prevent the 'old-boys club/'Blizzard sweethearts' effect. I would certainly feel that way if they were actually invited for a mode they hardly play.
About the 50/50 - I agree that it wouldn't make sense to always be adamant about this. But I think that they're doing it this time to give a signal. And let's not forget that the balance has been severely tilting towards the other end for a long time.
Hoping they'll invite Chump for the next constructed event!
Yeah, even though I play both BG and ranked (so seldom any problems completing the quests) I wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that on the one hand, weekly quests cost too much time to be spending in modes that you don't enjoy, but on the other hand, simply offer too much XP to ignore.
It would be great if you could select a 'primary mode': Ranked, Casual, Battlegrounds, Arena, or Duels and got your weekly quests from a pool that at least can be completed in that mode.
With that being said, rerolling 5 wins in BG, Duels, or TB (and Arena is in there too now) means that you willingly take a risk. Certainly not the best quest if you prefer constructed, but at the same time you know that the current system is what it is. So if you are rerolling a flexible quest you could end up with one of the 2 strictly-BG quests.
Just logged in (EU, after the new patch) and 2 packs were granted from outside of the game (even got a playable epic in Mo'arg Artificer). So they finally arrived for me.
Still nothing on my EU account despite having watched 2x8 hours (and double-checked account settings on both days). I had fun watching btw
I personally never auto-concede on Std ranked ladder, because well, for your rank it's obviously bad (The sole exception being at one of the rank floors and having lost your previous game). Every game you lose instead of winning requires a net of 2 more wins to get in a similar position again, which often is 10-20 more games even with a decent win rate. So why not give even the worst match-up a go for a few turns? Even in heavily unfavored matchups you often still have a 25% chance of winning if you draw the nuts or your opponent draws dead. (I do concede during the game if I am absolutely convinced that I can't win, to save time and move on.)
But if you don't care at all about your rank or play non-ranked, then there is definitely a case for it. You play for fun after all... for me, the fun in ranked std is to play my best and see how far I get, no matter how much I like/dislike my opponent's deck. But I play funky decks on wild ladder every now and then. There I auto-concede against Priest (sorry to the 3 people out there who look for a fun game with priest and don't play Rez/Raza).
Q&A from 2 days ago
Soooooo.... here are some more freeze effects for y'all to enjoy!
Fun with Dark Skies on an otherwise empty board. Decent in Arena. But I don't see it in Standard.
Too bad that Stowaway won't be able to help Mankrik out in Standard.
Too low impact for Standard (let alone for wild)... but looks like a pretty good arena card: mediocre but playable on 2, great tempo if you can combine it with something else on 5-6, and certainly better than any other 2-drop when up in topdecking mode.
Explosive Sheep being back in the core set somehow makes me inexplicably feel warm and fuzzy inside!
Isn't that what alt-accounts are for? ;) I actually like coop-brawls as they feel more rewarding when you manage to complete them with a partner who understands what they are doing. But I admit that when you get a few in a row that don't (want to) get it, frustration can boil over and I just challenge my alt on my phone for a win.
While I see your point, there are a few things we should add to the equation here:
Yeah, I wonder if the draw of the legendary minions is scripted. I only played it once and got them neatly spread out, but I can imagine that if you get 2 or 3 early on it becomes a walk in the park.
Difficulty level is probably a tough nut to crack for the design team. With a very diverse audience to cater for, they're probably looking at a level that gives casuals a chance while not making it a complete pushover for better players.
I just finished the Sylvanas fight (final boss in Anduin's chapter in the Book of Heroes) and I was absolutely blown away by it. It felt like I was raiding in WoW again, progressing to various stages of the fight with each requiring different strategies. And because of the 1 mana draw 2, you actually seem to get the resources that you need to do that pretty reliably. Very good design. Lore-wise it felt very accurate too and the whole experience of your growing army of legendaries made it just feel like an epic fight.
What probably helped too was that I killed her with no card left in my deck and when her HP started to feel overwhelming - a bit similar to downing a WoW raid boss with everyone running out-of-mana and half the raid dead when you land this final hit.
So for me, yes, it was the best PvE content that I have played in HS. What are your experiences?
I second that completely. The idea of riding him to victory doesn't work, there is just too much hard removal out there and that will most likely always be the case. He seems best at home in decks that run threats the demand hard removal to be forced early and run a few buffs or heals anyway in case he sticks, but that aren't wasted when he doesn't. Priest is best in the sense that if someone doesn't have hard removal for the first turn, then even a simple HP heal is enough to cause problems in subsequent turns.
So when Tempo priest ever comes a thing...
Grats to everyone who made it to the leaderboard, and especially for being such great sports while you were at it! With 1504 snowflakes left, protected by the patent-pending N0-M3LT, I'm all set for next year! (Or maybe, I'll use them to give someone a real good peppering!)
Flux, maybe you could have a look at the 'clues gathered' for next year? There are just 20 places, so sometimes we show up, and sometimes we fall off again. Not a big thing though, it's been an awesome event!
I used to be kind-of intimidated by Legend card backs, or at least impressed... until I hit legend myself. Now it's the opposite effect: I am convinced that players with a legend card back are generally from the weaker quarter of the legend players who use it in the hope to intimidate their opponents.
That's about it - the spell damage thing is a trap - avoid it. The Fight trainer is also a decent keep, it's one of the few cards in your deck that actually is a decent tempo card and tempo is what you need. Don't focus too much on getting value out of it, though if you can with double air-raid on T4 it's great.
You need to get a bit of luck that the portal doesn't curve out perfectly with his better cards but it's certainly doable. Definitely the worst fight of them all though.
Yup, the packs should contain new cards, as this is considered part of DMF, not a separate set - at least, if you don't but the bundle. If you buy the bundle, you will already have all the cards and duplicate protection should protect you from getting any more until you have all cards from a given rarity. Then you may get more.
So if you have all the commons, rares, and epics from DMF already and don't buy the bundle, then yes: all the packs you open should contain new cards - that is, until you have all the new commons (which should be after a few packs already). Then you'll get duplicate commons again, but any rares and epics should still be new until you have collected them all too (rares should also happen rather quickly).
Still getting all the legendaries from the mini-set would probably require ~80 packs even if you already have all the regular legendaries from DMF. So if the leak is correct, it looks much more attractive to get the bundle.