[NEW] The mobile patch launch will be delayed while the team works on the issues discovered with the desktop launch.
Whelp, I guess this at least means mobile players are not affected by the latest issues for the time being /s
EDIT: Apparently, the android patch is still out despite them claiming it would be delayed. The mobile app usually will go ahead and install the update automatically which means mobile players are going to be affected by the known issues after all, sigh.
This has indeed changed since the latest expansion launched. However, it is basically a nerf to farm XP passively since we no longer receive XP after being AFK for 30 minutes.
Also, seems to me this countermeasure is partially related to the current "being stuck" issue. Ah, such irony /s
After some more play testing, Pirate Rogue is too agressive to handle, but against Mech Mage and Pirate Warrior there is enough time to stabilize and play the combo to finish the game afterwards.
Running into an early curve Skulking Geist is an immediate autoloss by the way.
At this moment, I am piloting this special build in order to complete the It'll Be Done in No Time! core gameplay achievement. Hopefully along the way, it will take me to Legend once again as a bonus.
Apparently, having the useless Nozdormu the Eternal in this particular deck does not hurt the winrate really all that much coz it is still capable of beating the current Tier1 meta aggro decks.
I reached level 130 and I also finished ALL of the gameplay achievements except It'll Be Done in No Time! for which I still need to win 426 more games with Nozdormu the Eternal in my starting deck. Let us see how long it will take me to complete this last remaining tedious achievement using Linecracker Mecha'thun Druid in Wild and Control Warrior in Standard.
As for Mercenaries, I still have three characters yet to fully max out. I think this will progress a lot faster during the "leaked" N'Zoth special event.
@cavestuck: Diamond Drek'Thar was just way overpriced, but if it ever returns for 1500 gold or less, I might reconsider.
@Alleria: "Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom." 😄
Awesome, I managed to play the OTK combo mentioned above twice in ranked Wild already using Ice Block to stall for a few turns. Still 27 times more to go 😅
Although the setup is a bit easier, the environment is much worse compared to Standard because games are usually shorter and do not last until turn 10 unfortunately.
I am currently stuck on the latest [Hydra] Core Mage achievement Caution: Lethal May Be Hot! which is extremely difficult to complete and has to happen 30 times in order to fully complete it.
Does anyone perhaps have some great Standard or Wild deck suggestions on how to reliably destroy the opponent using Pyroblast for lethal damage?
I suppose we should either reduce the mana cost considerably or stall games long enough to reach turn 10 at least.
@Alleria, between the two of us I won the waiting game lol 😆, but more importantly thanks once again for continuing the tradition by creating the latest version of this nice thread.
Sixteen days into the year of the Hydra and I am sitting at level 93 right now. Thus, I am almost done with the cosmetic part of the current Rewards Track. I have collected the entire Voyage to the Sunken City expansion after opening 222 packs which I think is pretty decent. As for the new XP achievements, they are already 100% done. At this moment, I am steadily progressing through the new Core achievements. Personally, I am proud to say that I withstood the FOMO temptation of trading 3000 gold for the overpriced diamond Drek'Thar.
Good luck with the grind y'all 🔱
@DragonDraena: About the missing Hydra icon, Team5 is probably going to look into it lol /s
Thanks for the insight, Fluxflashor! Indeed, in that perspective I also think it is a testament/achievement that OoC is considered worth targeting by those pesky spammers.
The fact that I do notice the spam posts a bit more than others just proofs I am a (too) frequent visitor 😅
And let's be honest here, besides Reddit we all know there are really only two sites worth visiting regarding daily Hearthstone news/content. OoC being the far better one of course. Kudos!
Since I visit OoC quite often every day, I have seen a fair share of these spam posts as well. They usually appear in bulk and of course have nothing to do with Hearthstone. Sometimes they are a bit more thoroughly setup and it is a single post in an older thread and tend to be controversial, but I always notice that the user has posted very little on OoC and is merely a newly created spoof account. I even reported a few of these spam posts in the past. Also, when I click on the arrow icon to see the latest forum post and it does not show but navigates to the first page instead I instantly realize it was most likely purged by one of the moderators.
All this being said, I cannot help but wonder if these spam posts are completely random or somehow targeted because it seems to happen very regularly. Does someone have a personal vendetta or any other bad motive against this wonderful community site? I certainly hope not, but since you hinted at the other HS site it only further fuels my train of thought that something more is going on here.
I would totally understand if you do not want to airdirty laundry over here by the way.
Hi AngryShuckie, I wondered the same thing and asked a similar question a few months ago in the Rewards Track 4.0 thread. A helpful community member DragonDraena responded with the information that the addition to the electricity bill should be about $2 per year. Since I mostly play HS on my mobile device anyways, chasing XP this way I consider to be okay. From a more philosophical or puristic view, I can imagine that this way of XP farming can be considered the contrary though.
As for the XP calculation, I too consider (in my case) 144 XP to be not a lot. However, performing this about eleven times a day would result in a level increase (or 50 gold) by doing almost nothing. Since they removed this strategy, it is no longer possible and I can only fallback on active XP farming which would net me a maximum of 202 XP each game (or 30 minutes).
Honestly, it feels kind of weird that XP is tied to time spent in any mode in HS (especially time spent in PvE modes), but since this is what Team 5 implemented, I just use it to my advantage as efficient as I see possibly fit to my needs.
Fair enough, it sounds a sensible approach monetarily. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have a massive surplus of gold and/or dust that you don't know what to do with? If so, I wonder whether the extra gold it gets you is actually worth anything, and that it might be beneficial all around to cut out that grind? (If not, then obviously ignore me.)
I remember Iksar said he wondered if it was a mistake tying XP to time, but it makes great sense in PvP: it feels much nicer knowing you've at least gained something from a loss than the old system. When only the winner gained gold, it disincentivised trying janky things just for fun. In PvE, win rates must be much higher, so I guess you could attach it to wins directly without drastic changes, but it is simplest to be consistent across game modes.
Lowkey flex aside, I do indeed currently have massive surplus amounts of convertible arcane dust (445K) and gold (23K) lying around. That is also the main reason why I stopped buying both expansion prerelease bundles and only purchase the mega bundle for Voyage to the Sunken City. I usually craft one or two legendaries at most per expansion cycle, but the latest two times I was lucky to have an above average pack opening rate and thus my arcane dust level only increased further. The XP grind is most likely not necessary, but you never know what else that extra gold might be good for in the future. I have already decided against spending it on useless diamond cards like Drek'Thar, but I would still spend it on the missing cardbacks (I think). Another reason for the grind is my (general) collector's drift/addiction to Hearthstone (which actually even goes beyond this game).
Hi AngryShuckie, I wondered the same thing and asked a similar question a few months ago in the Rewards Track 4.0 thread. A helpful community member DragonDraena responded with the information that the addition to the electricity bill should be about $2 per year. Since I mostly play HS on my mobile device anyways, chasing XP this way I consider to be okay. From a more philosophical or puristic view, I can imagine that this way of XP farming can be considered the contrary though.
As for the XP calculation, I too consider (in my case) 144 XP to be not a lot. However, performing this about eleven times a day would result in a level increase (or 50 gold) by doing almost nothing. Since they removed this strategy, it is no longer possible and I can only fallback on active XP farming which would net me a maximum of 202 XP each game (or 30 minutes).
Honestly, it feels kind of weird that XP is tied to time spent in any mode in HS (especially time spent in PvE modes), but since this is what Team 5 implemented, I just use it to my advantage as efficient as I see possibly fit to my needs.
Thank you YourPrivateNightmare, as always for the comprehensive write-up. I have been XP achievement hunting since launch day as well and I am currently at 70% done. All Paladin, Priest, Shaman and Neutral achievements have been fully completed.
The difficult Druid, Warlock and Warrior achievements are probably the worst still left to complete for me as their conditions are the hardest to meet. They should really have pointed Gigafin's butt to the left instead to make the achievement easier to complete when the opponent does an AoE boardwipe. I wonder if I am correct about the order of how the fatalities would be resolved in this case.
As for the Fishing Minigame Rogue achievement, you could add more cards to hit for with Academic Espionage and play more copies of Gone Fishin' using Educated Elekk and find/discover a few more using either Wandmaker, Venomous Scorpid or Vulpera Scoundrel. Though I am not sure this setup is more efficient than just queuing up more Rogue games.
Sure Riffraff, the biggest change they made is quite impactful and affects the passive XP farmer in Mercenaries. Nowadays, leaving a game unfinished will no longer result in an autoloss after 30 minutes and award 120 XP + the paid rewards track % bonus. Instead, the game will be resumed and completing it afterwards does not award any XP whatsoever.
This behavior was obviously changed to counteract passive XP farming in Mercenaries. I just hope they will not implement even more countermeasures.
In terms of what as of now is overtuned from Wild's perspective:
Switcheroo is going to get nerfed, 100%. Don't craft high health legendaries - this combo is going to go away once Team5 realizes that due to lack of playtesting in Wild an ''''''''oversight'''''''' they never intended that combo to be so prevalent, let alone easy to pull off
Mecha-Shark might take a hit as well, down to 2 instead of 3 damage per Mech card summoned. Just a guess though; I do not know how oppressive Mech Mage is in Standard. If it is, this will tank a hit, in Wild Mech Mage is really tame.
Kael'thas Sunstrider. Fuck. This. Card. While I am it, fuck Team 5 for refusing to do anything about Ultimate Infestation. You leave UI alone doing 20 mana worth of stuff for 0-1 mana, it is going to keep causing problems. Address the elephant in the room already.
Filletfighter feels a tad strong with that battlecry and 3 attack. I sincerely hope they don't just hit Druid and don't nerf the other archetypes that will fill in the power vacuum and Pirate Rogue could very easily do it.
nothing else really feels oppressive or un-fun to play against barring Freeze Shaman (which I will omit for brevity's sake; I could go on for quite a bit about the rather unfair package they bring to the table).
Perfect analysis, I could not agree more.
Switcheroo and Kael'thas Sunstrider in particular are the two main culprit cards holding everyone hostage now in ranked Wild. You either play them or have a bad time running into them. I do not care about my Wild rank at all, but since I am required to play on the ranked ladder to progress my XP achievements the average of four turns is nowhere near enough to complete these efficiently.
By the way, is it really an oversight or plain intentional? In a recent interview with former HS game director Ben Lee it was made clear that they want to keep games short because that apparently is what most HS players like. However, games being over within four turns is certainly overkill though. That is almost like promoting autoconcede which will lead to even shorter games, ironically.
I opened 222 packs in total of the latest expansion (mega bundle + packs bought with gold + free packs) and I only miss 1 single legendary which I will receive automatically at level 50 of the rewards track.
Currently, trying to complete the new XP achievements which seem less RNG related overall.
By the way, did anyone else notice that farming Mercenaries for XP has been stealth fixed?
Whelp, I guess this at least means mobile players are not affected by the latest issues for the time being /s
EDIT: Apparently, the android patch is still out despite them claiming it would be delayed. The mobile app usually will go ahead and install the update automatically which means mobile players are going to be affected by the known issues after all, sigh.
Those murloc portraits should be right up your alley, I reckon? 😄
This has indeed changed since the latest expansion launched. However, it is basically a nerf to farm XP passively since we no longer receive XP after being AFK for 30 minutes.
Also, seems to me this countermeasure is partially related to the current "being stuck" issue. Ah, such irony /s
After some more play testing, Pirate Rogue is too agressive to handle, but against Mech Mage and Pirate Warrior there is enough time to stabilize and play the combo to finish the game afterwards.
Running into an early curve Skulking Geist is an immediate autoloss by the way.
EDIT: Just highrolled a Pirate Rogue with Oaken Summons into Archmage Vargoth who recasted Oaken Summons into Injured Marauder, lol 😂
Sure Ataturk, I used this specific build to complete the achievement:
Good luck and have fun! 👍🏻
At this moment, I am piloting this special build in order to complete the It'll Be Done in No Time! core gameplay achievement. Hopefully along the way, it will take me to Legend once again as a bonus.
Apparently, having the useless Nozdormu the Eternal in this particular deck does not hurt the winrate really all that much coz it is still capable of beating the current Tier1 meta aggro decks.
I reached level 130 and I also finished ALL of the gameplay achievements except It'll Be Done in No Time! for which I still need to win 426 more games with Nozdormu the Eternal in my starting deck. Let us see how long it will take me to complete this last remaining tedious achievement using Linecracker Mecha'thun Druid in Wild and Control Warrior in Standard.
As for Mercenaries, I still have three characters yet to fully max out. I think this will progress a lot faster during the "leaked" N'Zoth special event.
@cavestuck: Diamond Drek'Thar was just way overpriced, but if it ever returns for 1500 gold or less, I might reconsider.
@Alleria: "Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom." 😄
Yeah, completing this in Classic mode is indeed much more consistent compared to playing the earlier suggested meme-y OTK combo in Wild or Standard.
I still have 26 lethal procs left to go, so I better crack on with it before Team5 decides to add other sets to Classic.
EDIT: Done! 😋
Awesome, I managed to play the OTK combo mentioned above twice in ranked Wild already using Ice Block to stall for a few turns. Still 27 times more to go 😅
Although the setup is a bit easier, the environment is much worse compared to Standard because games are usually shorter and do not last until turn 10 unfortunately.
Also, having to restart Hearthstone each game caused by the Brann Bronzebeard + Queen Azshara bug is feelsbadman.
Great idea, Queen Azshara combined with Brann Bronzebeard and either Hot Streak or a random reduction from Celestial Ink Set on Pyroblast and we have ourselves an OTK combo. We just have to avoid armor gain classes like Druid and Warrior.
Thanks, dapperdog!
I am currently stuck on the latest [Hydra] Core Mage achievement Caution: Lethal May Be Hot! which is extremely difficult to complete and has to happen 30 times in order to fully complete it.
Does anyone perhaps have some great Standard or Wild deck suggestions on how to reliably destroy the opponent using Pyroblast for lethal damage?
I suppose we should either reduce the mana cost considerably or stall games long enough to reach turn 10 at least.
@Alleria, between the two of us I won the waiting game lol 😆, but more importantly thanks once again for continuing the tradition by creating the latest version of this nice thread.
Sixteen days into the year of the Hydra and I am sitting at level 93 right now. Thus, I am almost done with the cosmetic part of the current Rewards Track. I have collected the entire Voyage to the Sunken City expansion after opening 222 packs which I think is pretty decent. As for the new XP achievements, they are already 100% done. At this moment, I am steadily progressing through the new Core achievements. Personally, I am proud to say that I withstood the FOMO temptation of trading 3000 gold for the overpriced diamond Drek'Thar.
Good luck with the grind y'all 🔱
@DragonDraena: About the missing Hydra icon, Team5 is probably going to look into it lol /s
Thanks for the insight, Fluxflashor! Indeed, in that perspective I also think it is a testament/achievement that OoC is considered worth targeting by those pesky spammers.
The fact that I do notice the spam posts a bit more than others just proofs I am a (too) frequent visitor 😅
And let's be honest here, besides Reddit we all know there are really only two sites worth visiting regarding daily Hearthstone news/content. OoC being the far better one of course. Kudos!
Since I visit OoC quite often every day, I have seen a fair share of these spam posts as well. They usually appear in bulk and of course have nothing to do with Hearthstone. Sometimes they are a bit more thoroughly setup and it is a single post in an older thread and tend to be controversial, but I always notice that the user has posted very little on OoC and is merely a newly created spoof account. I even reported a few of these spam posts in the past. Also, when I click on the arrow icon to see the latest forum post and it does not show but navigates to the first page instead I instantly realize it was most likely purged by one of the moderators.
All this being said, I cannot help but wonder if these spam posts are completely random or somehow targeted because it seems to happen very regularly. Does someone have a personal vendetta or any other bad motive against this wonderful community site? I certainly hope not, but since you hinted at the other HS site it only further fuels my train of thought that something more is going on here.
I would totally understand if you do not want to air dirty laundry over here by the way.
Lowkey flex aside, I do indeed currently have massive surplus amounts of convertible arcane dust (445K) and gold (23K) lying around. That is also the main reason why I stopped buying both expansion prerelease bundles and only purchase the mega bundle for Voyage to the Sunken City. I usually craft one or two legendaries at most per expansion cycle, but the latest two times I was lucky to have an above average pack opening rate and thus my arcane dust level only increased further. The XP grind is most likely not necessary, but you never know what else that extra gold might be good for in the future. I have already decided against spending it on useless diamond cards like Drek'Thar, but I would still spend it on the missing cardbacks (I think). Another reason for the grind is my (general) collector's drift/addiction to Hearthstone (which actually even goes beyond this game).
Hi AngryShuckie, I wondered the same thing and asked a similar question a few months ago in the Rewards Track 4.0 thread. A helpful community member DragonDraena responded with the information that the addition to the electricity bill should be about $2 per year. Since I mostly play HS on my mobile device anyways, chasing XP this way I consider to be okay. From a more philosophical or puristic view, I can imagine that this way of XP farming can be considered the contrary though.
As for the XP calculation, I too consider (in my case) 144 XP to be not a lot. However, performing this about eleven times a day would result in a level increase (or 50 gold) by doing almost nothing. Since they removed this strategy, it is no longer possible and I can only fallback on active XP farming which would net me a maximum of 202 XP each game (or 30 minutes).
Honestly, it feels kind of weird that XP is tied to time spent in any mode in HS (especially time spent in PvE modes), but since this is what Team 5 implemented, I just use it to my advantage as efficient as I see possibly fit to my needs.
Thank you YourPrivateNightmare, as always for the comprehensive write-up. I have been XP achievement hunting since launch day as well and I am currently at 70% done. All Paladin, Priest, Shaman and Neutral achievements have been fully completed.
The difficult Druid, Warlock and Warrior achievements are probably the worst still left to complete for me as their conditions are the hardest to meet. They should really have pointed Gigafin's butt to the left instead to make the achievement easier to complete when the opponent does an AoE boardwipe. I wonder if I am correct about the order of how the fatalities would be resolved in this case.
As for the Fishing Minigame Rogue achievement, you could add more cards to hit for with Academic Espionage and play more copies of Gone Fishin' using Educated Elekk and find/discover a few more using either Wandmaker, Venomous Scorpid or Vulpera Scoundrel. Though I am not sure this setup is more efficient than just queuing up more Rogue games.
Good luck!
Sure Riffraff, the biggest change they made is quite impactful and affects the passive XP farmer in Mercenaries. Nowadays, leaving a game unfinished will no longer result in an autoloss after 30 minutes and award 120 XP + the paid rewards track % bonus. Instead, the game will be resumed and completing it afterwards does not award any XP whatsoever.
This behavior was obviously changed to counteract passive XP farming in Mercenaries. I just hope they will not implement even more countermeasures.
Perfect analysis, I could not agree more.
Switcheroo and Kael'thas Sunstrider in particular are the two main culprit cards holding everyone hostage now in ranked Wild. You either play them or have a bad time running into them. I do not care about my Wild rank at all, but since I am required to play on the ranked ladder to progress my XP achievements the average of four turns is nowhere near enough to complete these efficiently.
By the way, is it really an oversight or plain intentional? In a recent interview with former HS game director Ben Lee it was made clear that they want to keep games short because that apparently is what most HS players like. However, games being over within four turns is certainly overkill though. That is almost like promoting autoconcede which will lead to even shorter games, ironically.
I opened 222 packs in total of the latest expansion (mega bundle + packs bought with gold + free packs) and I only miss 1 single legendary which I will receive automatically at level 50 of the rewards track.
Currently, trying to complete the new XP achievements which seem less RNG related overall.
By the way, did anyone else notice that farming Mercenaries for XP has been stealth fixed?