One tip I would like to start seeing in articles like this is a caveat to the usual advice of 'always disenchant, its full price, so you can always make it later at no loss'. I mean, I know this article does not come out and say that, but its kind of a perception still in the Hearthstone culture from before duplicate protection was a thing. Now that its a thing, there is a caveat folks should know, to avoid a misunderstanding and disappointment.
That caveat is this: Do NOT forget that disenchanting sets a flag in the duplicate protection that says 'I do not ever want this card again until I have all the others.' That's important, because the ONLY way to easily get it back once you disenchant it is to craft it again, which can sometimes be difficult if you are low on dust and duplicates.
It is important to understand why getting it from packs again is much harder than during duplicate protection... it is because once you set a 'this was disenchanted once' flag on a card slot, you will NEVER open that card in a pack again until:
1.) there are no other cards left of that rarity that you do not have
AND
2.) only on a purely random basis after that
This is because once disenchanted, the part of dup protection that gives you cards you do not have is forever turned off for that card.
Because many folks do not have experience or understanding of this fact, I will repeat in slightly different wording:
Once the only 'missing' cards you have at a given rarity are all cards you have disenchanted, you will STILL not get ANY of those missing cards automatically, only on the old-fashioned 100% random basis.
I learned this by disenchanting a legendary in a full set, thinking 'no sweat, I will get him back next legendary I open' but NOPE, didn't get him on any of the next 4 Legendary cards opened, just duplicates of others. Contacted Blizzard and they explained the above to me, about the flag set by disenchanting, which says you never get it in a pack again, until you have all the other non-flagged cards, and then, only on a purely random basis.
Duplicate protection only works through the first time you fill any given card slot. It ignores opening cards in slots you had once but disenchanted, on the deliberate 'logic' that if you disenchanted it, you don't ever want it again, even beyond once its the only empty slot left.
I agree it was intentional. I don't think it was purely for marketing reasons. It was, of course, for that, too, but I do think it was also done in consideration that for those of us who have a full set of top leveled heroes with all the golden basic cards, not all of us are glad to have to do that over. Making the class OP for a reasonably brief time and gradually ratcheting it down to just barely be at or near the top ranked archetypes makes sense in terms of allowing long time players to quickly and easily level the hero out to all golden basics with minimum pain. For that reason, I like the approach.
Thanks! Any chance you or someone could link me to the article, or give the date so I could find it? Definitely missed it, would love to read the details.
I am curious, why in the world is this not on Twitch? I do not really recall watching these types of events on YouTube... has there been some move away from using Twitch for some reason? Haven't seen any articles or posts on this, just wondering if there is a story here?
Now that week 4 of the adventure is out, I am experimenting with Escaped Manasaber as an additional mana cheat, subbing it in for Chromaggus, which was almost impossible to usefully play due to constantly large hand sizes (unless it drops from Deathwing, Dragonlord). While its usually only going to get 1 extra mana for 1 turn before dying, that could let you get one of the other two 6 cost manacheats out on turn 5, (without the coin), or any of the other more expensive cards a turn early. It could also allow a Malygos/Nether Breath combo without having cost-reduced either (you just have to make sure you dont attack until after playing Malygos).
True! I like the nearly ringmaster look here, too, as Reno decks are always a bit of a three ring circus with all their variability.
Its a FUN fun deck, when you hit those streaks. Some match ups are really bad, and some good ones, you can definitely lose due to a bad series of draws, but sometimes it wins really fast, and other times it wins on value or attrition, or both. I have had the pleasure to get Deathwing, Dragonlord out on turn 5 off the scout, or turn 5/6 off the Utgarde Grapplesniper... those are the dream opens which CAN win against the tough matchups, too.
If you are already using Emperor and Bright Eyed Scout, there is not really any other cost cheat card with a similar effect, especially at that price point. Naga Sea Witch would have been good before it got nerfed, but not now.
I would suggest Mountain Giant, because it will have a big (if different) impact at roughly the same drop point or even a little earlier. In fact, that is probably the best one card sub recommendation for any card whose function you cant really simulate, given that you will always have trouble keeping a low card count in hand. Of course, after the first Mountain Giant, a second sub recommendation would be Abyssal Summoner, for a similar reason regarding constant large hand size.
Alternatively, as this is basically a techless deck just trying to mid and late game smash, you could sub in any one tech card you feel is one of your favorites, preferably one that is a good draw/play card on turn 3 or 4.
I hadn't thought of it, but yeah, switching to the lowest possible resolution before muting and going to sleep does improve the odds you wont wake up to 'An Error Occurred' with the screen froze and no time accumulated for the giveaways. And even if you are up and just running it in the background, yes, much less bandwidth reduced from your other activities.
I liked both modes but cannot deny I won more in the old mode. I am only a slightly good player, but a great drafter. I take it that I did better in the old system to mean the buckets minimized the impact of my drafting talents because they minimized the variability of card impact for each pick. This left drafting talent only exploitable in the overall build, lessening its impact, while overall deck strengths became much closer across the Arena meta, making play skill level more important.
That bucket system impact sounds great (and probably is for the most talented players), but everything is a trade-off and there are players like me who are not pro level players who WILL benefit from the fact that sometimes pro level players will get crap decks now, and in general, being a great drafter will carry some additional weight to shift win rates for that category of player a bit higher. This can level the field between players who are better in game mode and players who are better in draft mode.
Because pros need the rewards the least (with all their winning, sponsors, etc.), it feels potentially fairer to tier 2 and lower players to me, which comprise the bulk of players, I'd bet. I would expect it will mean complaints from most of the streamers, though (most of them are pretty good players, many of them pros), and that may cause them to revert back again since I expect more criticism in the streamer channels as a result.
While I disagree with the s*** show part of the comment (I enjoyed the older format's variability a little more, and statistically, as the developer said, multiples of the same card will actually be rarer in general than either the current or the old system now), I agree that the older, greater rewards were better in general.
The MAIN thing I HATE about the current rewards is that you often get some non-gold card you already have two to twenty of. IF they would make the rewards smart like pack openings, so that you ONLY get cards you dont have already, that would improve the Arena rewards experience quite a bit. If you have ALL of the current rarity, it should either go to gold for that rarity or up to the next rarity to check for gaps in your collection. If you have the whole set in non-gold, it should automatically level up to a gold card you dont have in the set, of at least the lowest rarity where you have a gap. Although completing gold sets would STILL be ridiculously hard, it would put completing at least some gold decks within grasp - a middle ground many collectors would enjoy.
This would make the cards actually useful to ALL players. Casual players and serious FTP players would get cards that fill collection gaps, PTP and FTP players with larger collections would enjoy the gaps filled for their collections, and even the customers who spend the most and try to collect gold cards would greatly improve their chances of filling in gold card gaps.
Octosari. As bad as it may be, it could potentially overdraw bombs out... more risky if you are not close to full handed, but it could gut bombs. Might be useful in a control deck (which are pretty vulnerable to Bomb Warrior). You might have to run in combination with Archivist Elysiana, so you can reload after a well timed deck clearing, although of course, she handles the problem herself, if you can live that long. Both cards, living that long is the issue, I suppose.
This card is just ridiculously powerful for the cost. I believe this will be so annoying it will be discussed for nerfing fairly soon after the new meta opens... 3/2 for 2 baseline, POWERFUL effect which scales with the size of your board, AND its an elemental, to feed the various elemental chains. AND its neutral. Wow. Seems like -1 would have been a more reasonable effect, and would be the nerf that is most likely suggested. We'll see, I guess. Obviously useful both in and against aggro and mid-range, with its only real plus against control being its a quick drop early. The most annoying thing is, with widespread usage, its going to be about who gets it first... a random factor.
Maybe they could add an option similar to Conquest mode banning, where you choose a class that either gets banned from your matchups (for that game only) or does not quite get banned, but gets the probability of a matchup lowered by some significant percentage, say 25%, and the choices are a random three classes (so you cant ALWAYs choose priest). They could also make it so you can never ban the mirror class (maybe the percentage decrease applied to the chosen class is added to the mirror class to avoid queue issues (let Big Priests play other Big Priests more often... get a taste of their own medicine, lol, though I am not sure that it would really even cause queue issues). I realize this is a pretty fundamental change, so maybe its not active except in Casual, or in a mode of its own?
Strikes me that this could be a way that would not only reduce the impact of runaway archetypes like Big Priest in Wild, but would do so without card nerfing, and would open up design space overall somewhat, as it could be applied against other problem matchups by people who enjoy playing decks which lack various answers to other bad matchups. I think this would allow a broader range of deck types to be played across classes.
This sort of approach could be the type of change (in general, not specifically) he refers to when they mention doing something other than nerfs and buffs to deal with issues/refresh the meta.
I do fundamentally agree with this argument. I believe they could conceivably apply it selectively, to cases specifically like the ones above, but that would require them to recognize which buffs also have nerf qualities in some cases, and it would be easier to apply across the board.
I am also curious, if a buffed card later has to be nerfed back to its original state, are they going to use the argument that no value was lost from the original state to avoid refunding dust? I suppose that question can wait for the bridge to be crossed to get burned, but I would hate to see that precedent as much as I dislike them not even considering offering dust for buffs (at least the ones which have nerf qualities, as described above).
Seems like mana cost changes of any kind should pretty universally be treated like nerfs. I could see why attack/health buffs alone might never be. I would prefer an approach like that over one where they change the language to cover this oversight, as that really does not address the issue described above at all, just 'clarifies' why they might ignore it entirely.
All that said, I would not want to overly limit their design space for buffs, either. Would suck if they chose not to make mana cost buffs out of fear of paying too much dust out.
One tip I would like to start seeing in articles like this is a caveat to the usual advice of 'always disenchant, its full price, so you can always make it later at no loss'. I mean, I know this article does not come out and say that, but its kind of a perception still in the Hearthstone culture from before duplicate protection was a thing. Now that its a thing, there is a caveat folks should know, to avoid a misunderstanding and disappointment.
That caveat is this: Do NOT forget that disenchanting sets a flag in the duplicate protection that says 'I do not ever want this card again until I have all the others.' That's important, because the ONLY way to easily get it back once you disenchant it is to craft it again, which can sometimes be difficult if you are low on dust and duplicates.
It is important to understand why getting it from packs again is much harder than during duplicate protection... it is because once you set a 'this was disenchanted once' flag on a card slot, you will NEVER open that card in a pack again until:
1.) there are no other cards left of that rarity that you do not have
AND
2.) only on a purely random basis after that
This is because once disenchanted, the part of dup protection that gives you cards you do not have is forever turned off for that card.
Because many folks do not have experience or understanding of this fact, I will repeat in slightly different wording:
Once the only 'missing' cards you have at a given rarity are all cards you have disenchanted, you will STILL not get ANY of those missing cards automatically, only on the old-fashioned 100% random basis.
I learned this by disenchanting a legendary in a full set, thinking 'no sweat, I will get him back next legendary I open' but NOPE, didn't get him on any of the next 4 Legendary cards opened, just duplicates of others. Contacted Blizzard and they explained the above to me, about the flag set by disenchanting, which says you never get it in a pack again, until you have all the other non-flagged cards, and then, only on a purely random basis.
Duplicate protection only works through the first time you fill any given card slot. It ignores opening cards in slots you had once but disenchanted, on the deliberate 'logic' that if you disenchanted it, you don't ever want it again, even beyond once its the only empty slot left.
I agree it was intentional. I don't think it was purely for marketing reasons. It was, of course, for that, too, but I do think it was also done in consideration that for those of us who have a full set of top leveled heroes with all the golden basic cards, not all of us are glad to have to do that over. Making the class OP for a reasonably brief time and gradually ratcheting it down to just barely be at or near the top ranked archetypes makes sense in terms of allowing long time players to quickly and easily level the hero out to all golden basics with minimum pain. For that reason, I like the approach.
Thanks! Any chance you or someone could link me to the article, or give the date so I could find it? Definitely missed it, would love to read the details.
I am curious, why in the world is this not on Twitch? I do not really recall watching these types of events on YouTube... has there been some move away from using Twitch for some reason? Haven't seen any articles or posts on this, just wondering if there is a story here?
Now that week 4 of the adventure is out, I am experimenting with Escaped Manasaber as an additional mana cheat, subbing it in for Chromaggus, which was almost impossible to usefully play due to constantly large hand sizes (unless it drops from Deathwing, Dragonlord). While its usually only going to get 1 extra mana for 1 turn before dying, that could let you get one of the other two 6 cost manacheats out on turn 5, (without the coin), or any of the other more expensive cards a turn early. It could also allow a Malygos/Nether Breath combo without having cost-reduced either (you just have to make sure you dont attack until after playing Malygos).
True! I like the nearly ringmaster look here, too, as Reno decks are always a bit of a three ring circus with all their variability.
Its a FUN fun deck, when you hit those streaks. Some match ups are really bad, and some good ones, you can definitely lose due to a bad series of draws, but sometimes it wins really fast, and other times it wins on value or attrition, or both. I have had the pleasure to get Deathwing, Dragonlord out on turn 5 off the scout, or turn 5/6 off the Utgarde Grapplesniper... those are the dream opens which CAN win against the tough matchups, too.
If you are already using Emperor and Bright Eyed Scout, there is not really any other cost cheat card with a similar effect, especially at that price point. Naga Sea Witch would have been good before it got nerfed, but not now.
I would suggest Mountain Giant, because it will have a big (if different) impact at roughly the same drop point or even a little earlier. In fact, that is probably the best one card sub recommendation for any card whose function you cant really simulate, given that you will always have trouble keeping a low card count in hand. Of course, after the first Mountain Giant, a second sub recommendation would be Abyssal Summoner, for a similar reason regarding constant large hand size.
Alternatively, as this is basically a techless deck just trying to mid and late game smash, you could sub in any one tech card you feel is one of your favorites, preferably one that is a good draw/play card on turn 3 or 4.
This was as close as I could find:
Lol, I tried and tried to think of a good image to use and couldn't. That's as good as any!
I hadn't thought of it, but yeah, switching to the lowest possible resolution before muting and going to sleep does improve the odds you wont wake up to 'An Error Occurred' with the screen froze and no time accumulated for the giveaways. And even if you are up and just running it in the background, yes, much less bandwidth reduced from your other activities.
Brilliant! You get an upvote!
I liked both modes but cannot deny I won more in the old mode. I am only a slightly good player, but a great drafter. I take it that I did better in the old system to mean the buckets minimized the impact of my drafting talents because they minimized the variability of card impact for each pick. This left drafting talent only exploitable in the overall build, lessening its impact, while overall deck strengths became much closer across the Arena meta, making play skill level more important.
That bucket system impact sounds great (and probably is for the most talented players), but everything is a trade-off and there are players like me who are not pro level players who WILL benefit from the fact that sometimes pro level players will get crap decks now, and in general, being a great drafter will carry some additional weight to shift win rates for that category of player a bit higher. This can level the field between players who are better in game mode and players who are better in draft mode.
Because pros need the rewards the least (with all their winning, sponsors, etc.), it feels potentially fairer to tier 2 and lower players to me, which comprise the bulk of players, I'd bet. I would expect it will mean complaints from most of the streamers, though (most of them are pretty good players, many of them pros), and that may cause them to revert back again since I expect more criticism in the streamer channels as a result.
While I disagree with the s*** show part of the comment (I enjoyed the older format's variability a little more, and statistically, as the developer said, multiples of the same card will actually be rarer in general than either the current or the old system now), I agree that the older, greater rewards were better in general.
The MAIN thing I HATE about the current rewards is that you often get some non-gold card you already have two to twenty of. IF they would make the rewards smart like pack openings, so that you ONLY get cards you dont have already, that would improve the Arena rewards experience quite a bit. If you have ALL of the current rarity, it should either go to gold for that rarity or up to the next rarity to check for gaps in your collection. If you have the whole set in non-gold, it should automatically level up to a gold card you dont have in the set, of at least the lowest rarity where you have a gap. Although completing gold sets would STILL be ridiculously hard, it would put completing at least some gold decks within grasp - a middle ground many collectors would enjoy.
This would make the cards actually useful to ALL players. Casual players and serious FTP players would get cards that fill collection gaps, PTP and FTP players with larger collections would enjoy the gaps filled for their collections, and even the customers who spend the most and try to collect gold cards would greatly improve their chances of filling in gold card gaps.
Octosari. As bad as it may be, it could potentially overdraw bombs out... more risky if you are not close to full handed, but it could gut bombs. Might be useful in a control deck (which are pretty vulnerable to Bomb Warrior). You might have to run in combination with Archivist Elysiana, so you can reload after a well timed deck clearing, although of course, she handles the problem herself, if you can live that long. Both cards, living that long is the issue, I suppose.
This is definitely a 'buff' for the site to me! Thank you to both groups!
Was always a fan of Baleful Banker, and this adds another way to have that effect without requiring a creature in play. Nice!
This card is just ridiculously powerful for the cost. I believe this will be so annoying it will be discussed for nerfing fairly soon after the new meta opens... 3/2 for 2 baseline, POWERFUL effect which scales with the size of your board, AND its an elemental, to feed the various elemental chains. AND its neutral. Wow. Seems like -1 would have been a more reasonable effect, and would be the nerf that is most likely suggested. We'll see, I guess. Obviously useful both in and against aggro and mid-range, with its only real plus against control being its a quick drop early. The most annoying thing is, with widespread usage, its going to be about who gets it first... a random factor.
Maybe they could add an option similar to Conquest mode banning, where you choose a class that either gets banned from your matchups (for that game only) or does not quite get banned, but gets the probability of a matchup lowered by some significant percentage, say 25%, and the choices are a random three classes (so you cant ALWAYs choose priest). They could also make it so you can never ban the mirror class (maybe the percentage decrease applied to the chosen class is added to the mirror class to avoid queue issues (let Big Priests play other Big Priests more often... get a taste of their own medicine, lol, though I am not sure that it would really even cause queue issues). I realize this is a pretty fundamental change, so maybe its not active except in Casual, or in a mode of its own?
Strikes me that this could be a way that would not only reduce the impact of runaway archetypes like Big Priest in Wild, but would do so without card nerfing, and would open up design space overall somewhat, as it could be applied against other problem matchups by people who enjoy playing decks which lack various answers to other bad matchups. I think this would allow a broader range of deck types to be played across classes.
This sort of approach could be the type of change (in general, not specifically) he refers to when they mention doing something other than nerfs and buffs to deal with issues/refresh the meta.
I do fundamentally agree with this argument. I believe they could conceivably apply it selectively, to cases specifically like the ones above, but that would require them to recognize which buffs also have nerf qualities in some cases, and it would be easier to apply across the board.
I am also curious, if a buffed card later has to be nerfed back to its original state, are they going to use the argument that no value was lost from the original state to avoid refunding dust? I suppose that question can wait for the bridge to be crossed to get burned, but I would hate to see that precedent as much as I dislike them not even considering offering dust for buffs (at least the ones which have nerf qualities, as described above).
Seems like mana cost changes of any kind should pretty universally be treated like nerfs. I could see why attack/health buffs alone might never be. I would prefer an approach like that over one where they change the language to cover this oversight, as that really does not address the issue described above at all, just 'clarifies' why they might ignore it entirely.
All that said, I would not want to overly limit their design space for buffs, either. Would suck if they chose not to make mana cost buffs out of fear of paying too much dust out.