Great read as always and some nice food-for-thought as I've mainly fooled around with Vol'jin + Malygos builds so far and need to branch out.
As an aside, I was always bummed that Blatant Decoy would summon himself if you brought it back with Nine Lives...the ordering makes sense from the card text, but there's so much wasted meme potential :\
And I know it's a little late, but any chance we could start a petition for sule to share his Tavern Brawl decks from this week? Felt like this one was right up his alley and there are a lot of fun possibilities.
A few thoughts from a longtime Control/Combo Hunter...
New Tracking is fantastic for us, though I'm sure some aggro mains won't feel the same. I loved Stitched Tracker when it was in Standard and the fact that this one doesn't add a copy makes sense for a Core set card that's not targeted like Selective Breeder.
Lock and Load gives me some hope for Spell Hunter support in the future and I like the mana reduction. However, it never felt good enough when Secrets were the cheapest viable spells so it may stay on the shelf for me unless we get another card like Rapid Fire. Though without Twinspells my standard Yogg decks will be hurting so maybe I'll be forced to run it for refill...
Biggest complaint is the loss of Unleash the Hounds as it was great for staying alive against early aggro boards. I know they wanted to get rid of charge, but making it 2-cost with Rush instead would've been cool with me (or even leave it at 3-mana if you don't want aggro decks to play it at all).
Also sad to see the loss of Animal Companion as it hurts Spell Hunter and Tundra Rhino as it takes away some OTK possibilities. I definitely understand why these two needed to be cut, companions were a little too strong and they're eliminating charge from the (non-legendary) menu, but I'll miss those guys.
As for the neutrals, I'm excited to test out the new dragons and think Taelan Fordring has meme potential. Also happy to play with Baron Rivendare in Standard again.
Biggest neutral regrets are the loss of Novice Engineer and Doomsayer as Hunter struggles with card draw and efficient board clears. (I know, I know, it's not part of their class identity)
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the changes and am looking forwad to the next year of Hearthstone!
@PopeNeia - You're right to highlight that Priests have gone more in the value direction with generating and discounting spells, so it's only fair that someone else takes up the heavy control mantle. I started running Freezing Trap in my control hunter decks this expansion mainly to combat Paladins, but a nice side-effect has been slowing down Envoy Rustwix shenanigans. But now that you mention it, maybe I'll sub in Vol'jin for some Tickatus disruption!
@iWatchUSleep - You're definitely right that Warlock still has the Zoo build with discounted 8/8s and I'm glad they haven't lost that identity. The few times I remember aggro (deathrattle?) Priests being viable it wasn't too fun, haha. And that's a good point about Warlock having an actual win condition as opposed to rolling the dice on stealing a minion or copying cards from the opponent's deck or something like that.
@clawz161 - Yeah, this is one of those nerfs where it makes less sense later down the line when the really problematic stuff has rotated (Even Paladin/Holy Wrath Pally and then not wanting to make it 3-cost to help Odd Pally).
@AngryShuckie - Yup, you're absolutely right about power creep at the end of a HS year. I sometimes find myself getting frustrated that some meme I've been working on gets a big boost in the last expansion of the year, only for it to be outclassed by even stronger boosts to meta archetypes. But then I remember that the only reason my meme got a boost was because the overall powerlevel was raised, so I go back to tanking my MMR with Quest Kael'thas Yogg Clown Hunter ;D
I don't think Warlock is currently OP, but I have come to dread these match-ups just as I did Priest because it typically means I'm going to face endless removal and healing until they can maybe pull off a win through value attrition (a la the Prime card, Envoy Rustwix, or Galakrond). I know Warlock has always had strengths in these areas, but for some reason I haven't dreaded the match-up until this expansion. Anyone else?
I think it's really the quantity of removal options that I find dispiriting as I see (2 copies of) these cards pretty much every match:
Add to this a string of Soul Fragments negating a lethal set-up and the specter of Tickatus milling your outs and you have levels of annoyance I traditionally associated with Priest. Again, it's not that I think current Warlock decks are too strong, but rather that I fear Team 5 has created another "fun and interactive" class identity. Have you had a similar experience this expansion?
Haven't commented on the last few, but just wanted to say I always look forward to your articles for some fun ideas and some even funnier writing. Keep up the great work!
Update: I've added a guide to the deck. Diamond 2 and not giving up yet ;-)
Just wanted to say thank you for adding a guide! I tried out the Wild decks listed here for a number of games and got demoralized pretty fast as I couldn't survive until the fun part against aggro (Odd Paladin brought back nightmares) and was getting out-Controlled by various Priest decks. But I'm gonna give it another go now that I learned a little more about the meta and have a better mulligan strategy in mind!
However, I've pulled off the Maxima into Darkmoon Tonk into 2x Nine Lives combo in Standard multiple times starting with Clawz's list as the base and it feels darn good when the plan comes together :D
Really enjoyed this article and love the idea for the series! You also inspired me to try making a budget deck which I haven't really done before. Been playing this DR Hunter for the past day and it's been a fun challenge :) Keep up the great work!
Really happy to hear folks have gotten Maxima and DR to work decently in standard (extra props for the Deathwing inclusion as i love that card!). And I actually have a solid Wild collection for Hunter (minus ze ol' Shredder) so I'll definitely gives those a go too!
Thanks again guys, and it's great to see some familiar faces on OOC :)
I haven't played as much the last few months and just wanted to hear what off-meta Hunter builds folks have been having (moderate) success with this expansion.
Things I've been exploring so far:
Various types of Quest Hunter which still seems viable
Have had moderate success with a taunt heavy Control deck centered around N'zoth + Jewel of N'Zoth
Failed miserably at getting Spell Hunter off the ground featuring Jepetto Joybuzz + Malygos, Yogg, and C'thun...both a highlander version and a more robust duplicate deck
Oh, and I've tried out the decks from Mark McKz on this site and they were fun combos to try to pull off :)
Has anyone had success with these archetypes or anything else off-meta like Highlander Beast Hunter, Corrupt (Y'shaaraj) Hunter, Dragon Hunter, etc.? Thanks in advance!
- Why tavern brawls don't contribute to quest completions is beyond me. If I were a new player, have few or any cards in my collection, tavern brawls would be the number 1 place I go to complete my quests. This was the case in the old system, and I can't fathom why its not in the new one.
Wholeheartedly agree with your entire post, but this really caught me off guard as a person coming back after a break from HS. Played 3 games of TB to knock out a couple quests and was shocked to see no progress at the end! Definitely made for a salty start to the season, but they brought Yogg back so it was hard to stay mad ;D
I cannot give you a real answer to this as I don't know how the program exactly resolves the discovery choices (and to my knowledge Blizzard has never said how they are doing it exactly). I would like to point out a couple of issues though:
Your conclusion (or the videos) seems to be flawed; if this would be actually resolved like you describe in the last sentence (which I don't think) the probability of getting Rotnest Drake would actually be even higher (e.g. if the first card option is the other class dragon the second option would not be 25% but already 50% as there are no duplicates offered)
Having said this based on my experience of discovery results I am pretty sure that this does not work as you described (can't give you any proof though)
But hey I'm not a statistics expert, so feel free to proof me wrong. Besides even an expert (outside Blizzard) might not be able to answer this properly without the knowledge how this is exactly resolved by the program. I guess there are multiple options.
I agree with you that the video's conclusion doesn't jive with my experience, but admittedly I haven't paid much attention to patterns in Discover cards and wanted to ask y'all.
As you said, if (my understanding of) the argument in the video was correct then you'd be guaranteed Rotnest if you got Veranus as an option already. They brought this up as a way of explaining why Astromancer Solarian is so often discovered by Mages. Again, this didn't sound right to me but I've never looked into it.
TL;DR - Does Discover give every card an equal probability of being displayed?
When the Discover effect was changed to "not favor class cards", I just naively assumed that every available card had an equal probabiltiy of being shown as an option.
For example, Primordial Explorer gives you the option of 3 dragons and there are currently 20 Neutral Dragons and 2 Hunter class Dragons in Standard (not counting Primoridal Explorer itself given the recent change). Without thinking about it, I just assumed that the probability of getting say Rotnest Drake was 1/22 for the 1st discover option, 1/21 for the 2nd discover option, and 1/20 for the 3rd discover option (I don't remember ever getting the same Dragon shown twice, but if that's possible then the probability would be 1/22 for each option).
However, this video was randomly recommended to me on YouTube today (had never heard of them before) and I gave it a listen. The hyperlink skips to the 43:45 mark where an argument is made that Discover instead works as a 2-stage gamble so-to-speak. For each of the 3 options there's a 1/2 probability that the card will be drawn from the Neutral Pool or the Class Pool. After this, another die is rolled where every card in the respective pool has an equal probability of being displayed (without replacement).
So in the example above the probability of Rotnest Drake would be 25% for each of the 3 discover options (50% to be a class card and then 50% to be Rotnest Drake given that it's a class card). Is this really the case??
Thanks for sharing; I'm happy to see Quest Hunter alive and doing well on the ladder!
What would think about running Ramkahen Wildtamer instead of 1 or both Nine Lives? I found some success with it in a Zixor heavy deck last season and you're not running expensive beasts that would make it hard to isolate Zixor. Just thinking it may be a little better in aggro matches and not too much worse against control.
And is it safe to say that Shu'ma is too slow in the higher ranks? Or does Nine Lives just make that unnecessary?
Mindrender Illucia is just no fun. Having key cards stripped away from hand is just abominable, and doing it for (2) is dirty cheap. This card should cost (3) or even (4).
I just wanted to echo how bad this feels to play against…and the emoting that comes after makes it all the saltier, haha
But beyond the gut punch, I just don't believe that a single card should be able to completely disrupt an entire archetype (Combo/OTK), especially when that archetype is a counter to what the class typically likes to do (play Control). I'm not against disruption cards in general, but this one seems too strong/guaranteed.
Thinking of nerfs, I agree that an increase in cost is most likely, but personally I'd like something different. I feel that there needs to be more of a way to play around this card as an opponent. So maybe the nerf could be that you only swap 4 or 5 cards from hand, randomly chosen, along with swapping decks. This way Combo decks could at least add some RNG into the equation by keeping their hand full, but it would come at a cost that would benefit Priests (in terms of losing tempo and/or having to add more card draw to the deck). Alternatively, you could add restrictions on the other end such as swapping only the number of cards that the Priest has in hand.
The problem is that cards like this are necessary unless we want T5 to just lay the nerf/ban hammer hard on combo/otk decks. Even if a combo isn't T0 or even T1 there usually ends up being a lot of uproar that eventually rises from the community. If T5 hasn't already produced a semi-consistent counter card to fight against it then T5 usually will cave to the vocal minority and severely weaken, or even kill, the combo (e.g. Grim Patron, Raging Worgen, Star Aligner, etc). At least with allowing these cards to exist it means T5 is less likely to kill modern combo decks. You have to carefully pick your poison if you want to be able to play the decks you enjoy (this is coming from a heavy wild combo/otk main btw).
Also, in wild otks are a bit ridiculous with 2 decks able to consistently kill you on turns 8 or 9 if you're a control main. While I always stand by the holy trinity of rock-paper-scissors I don't feel us otk players should consistently be able to win against control before turn 10. OTKs aren't meant to function that way. So in wild Illucia actually makes it possible to not insta concede as control if you go against Quest Mage or Mech'athun Lock.
Problem is Mindrender Illucia does much more than giving Control a tip against Combo, as you can steal finishers or key cards from ANY deck you find.
Also, at the moment Illucia is not just giving a chance, she's granting you the power to tear apart any deck based on some key cards, given the right moment to play her.
Mechathunlock almost out of cards > Mindrender Illucia > game over. That's more than just a chance at it.
You could even counter QMage, either stealing their reward, or, in case they are holding the completion, stealing their spell turn right before they are ready to resolve.
Same goes against Druid (steal spells) or any other deck with key cards in hand. Including Aggro, just to say. That's Dirty Rat on steroids.
All of a sudden a Control deck has virtually no vulnerability in the metagame.
If OTK are ridiculous because they can kick in too soon (ie QMage or Druid), then they do deserve a nerf, not a card that can counter anything consistently enough.
I get what you're saying. The issue though is how counter cards are designed in the first place. Hearthstone in general is very bad about creating counter tech cards because in probably over 80% of cards the tech is a coin flip that just wins a game when you play it if you win the coin flip of drawing it. For example, Geist just wins the game against Jade Druid and a handful of OTK decks if the opponent wins the coin flip of drawing it. Dirty Rat (often claimed as a well designed tech by some) is actually just at terrible coin flip 'I-win button'. You either hit 1-2 minions (if comboed with Brann) and you win, or you don't and you lose. Sure, hand reading and timing created a type of skill ceiling for the tech card where more experienced players had higher frequencies of using it to win against OTK, but at the end of the day it still was a polarizing tech where you win with result A and lose with result B. Other techs, not against OTK, could include the anti-murloc/pirate crabs. You drew them early against a murloc or pirate deck and significantly skyrocketed whether you won, or didn't draw them and your chance of winning was significantly plummeted. I do agree that Illucia is also one of these types of coin flip/polarizing 'I-win button' cards.
The problem lies with T5 not creating what I would call 'smart' tech cards, counters that don't instantly win or lose you the game based on a coin flip or good hit and instead create a temporary disruption or extra time that could influence a win/loss for either play across multiple turns. A great example of a smart tech card is Mojomaster Zihi. Zihi, when played against something like Mecha'Thun Lock, is not an instant win for the opponent while also still allowing the warlock a chance to fight for the win, assuming they didn't expend removal or healing that they may have otherwise been able to save in their hand until they got back up to 10 mana. Glide or the new DH legendary are also smart tech cards. They do not destroy anything in the hand, but require the opponent to delay combo setup and to draw the card(s) again. Sadly though T5 mainly prints cards that are niche specific against one or two decks and that essentially make a win or loss for or against the combo player based on the result of a random outcome (like Rat or drawing Mindrender Illucia vs not drawing her).
Although, like I said in my previous post, if strong tech cards against combo don't exist in a meta then T5 is very likely to just kill the deck, which I find is even worse than having an OP tech card against my favorite combo/OTK deck. While I don't like wins & loses turned into a coin toss of polarizing tech cards I'd rather at least be able to play my combo/OTK deck without it getting the Grim Patron/Raging Worgen/Star Aligner treatment.
Hi Lyra, sorry for the long delay as I'm not used to getting responses ;P and haven't been on OOC as much the past couple months since getting burnt out on HS (and Destiny 2). But I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to write such thoughtful responses while also engaging with RavenSun.
When it comes to general philosophies, I think we're on the same page in terms of the need for good combo disruption tools and a preference for the sorts of "smart" tech cards that you outlined (I really liked this distinction!). I just think that, in the specific case of Mindrender Illucia, the card either needs to be nerfed or converted into a "smart" option that doesn't win or lose the game if drawn/not drawn. And again, my claim isn't coming from a place of "Illucia is too meta-defining!" but rather that, for me personally, "Illucia is too feelsbadman" for an entire archetype that counters Control Priest.
We may still disagree, but my best guess is that that's due to: 1) Me coming from the perspective of Standard as opposed to WIld; and/or 2) The fact that I don't play T1 OTK decks so I'm more in favor of both the OP OTK decks getting weakened and the OP counter cards getting weakened (as RavenSun preferred).
Regarding #1 - I hadn't considered your arguments about how strong Wild OTK decks are at the moment, but this leads me to wanting separate balancing for both Standard and Wild as opposed to allowing cards that are balanced in Wild to dominate in Standard. So when you unpack Illucia, why not give 2 versions of the card that only work in their respective mode with the Standard version being retired/folded into the Wild version when it rotates? I know this would be harder in terms of coding and player confusion, but from a game balancing perspective I don't see why we don't have separate sandboxes.
Regarding #2 - This is just my opinion and I don't believe it should be imposed on others, but my ideal meta always includes OTK decks as a viable strategy, but they rarely rise to the ranks of T1 or T0 given how tilting they can be for the vocal minority that you mentioned in your original post (I feel the same way about Casino builds). So I've been on board with the nerfs, in Standard, to some of the old Malygos Druid decks that seemed OP, but I would've pushed back against nerfs to slower or less consistent OTK decks like when some of the Shirvallah OTK Pallys were meta-viable.
Lastly, I just wanted to leave a comment about Neutral Legendaries. It's obvious that neutral cards can only be as strong as they perform in the classes for which they have the most synergies. However, I find it frustrating when a card like Kael'thas Sunstrider performs so much better in certain classes that when it's nerfed it's no longer viable in any other classes than the originally OP ones. E.g., I'd argue that Kael'thas is extremetely fair at 7-mana in Hunter, and was borderline fair at 6-mana, but going any higher will kill it completely. So instead of a one-size-fits-all nerf to Kael'thas again, why not print multiple versions with different mana costs or abilities (e.g., only one 0-cost spell vs. a new 0-cost spell every 3 spells) like they did with all of the different versions of Galakrond? Or you could make it simpler with 3 versions (1 quad-class and 2 tri-class)...
Mindrender Illucia is just no fun. Having key cards stripped away from hand is just abominable, and doing it for (2) is dirty cheap. This card should cost (3) or even (4).
I just wanted to echo how bad this feels to play against...and the emoting that comes after makes it all the saltier, haha
But beyond the gut punch, I just don't believe that a single card should be able to completely disrupt an entire archetype (Combo/OTK), especially when that archetype is a counter to what the class typically likes to do (play Control). I'm not against disruption cards in general, but this one seems too strong/guaranteed.
Thinking of nerfs, I agree that an increase in cost is most likely, but personally I'd like something different. I feel that there needs to be more of a way to play around this card as an opponent. So maybe the nerf could be that you only swap 4 or 5 cards from hand, randomly chosen, along with swapping decks. This way Combo decks could at least add some RNG into the equation by keeping their hand full, but it would come at a cost that would benefit Priests (in terms of losing tempo and/or having to add more card draw to the deck). Alternatively, you could add restrictions on the other end such as swapping only the number of cards that the Priest has in hand.
I'm not a Legend player, but does it bother you folks that they suddenly kick back on a pure MMR system once you break legend? I always thought a cool part of legend was that you could then "play your way" and tank your rank to meme it up in the 1000s without hurting next season's rank.
This is all based around the premise that even those with a 10x Star Bonus lose it by the time they reach Diamond 5, which I can't confirm personally...
From the Blizzard FAQ:
Q: How does matchmaking work for each season?
A: There are two matchmaking pools: matchmaking by rating (aka. MMR) and by rank.
When your star bonus multiplier is bigger than 1, or you are in Legend rank, you are (generally) in the first matchmaking pool; when your star bonus drops to 1, you are in the second pool.
Well, part of the problem is that you are using murlocs, but not murloc synergy (well, I'm lying, you are using Toxfin, which has murloc synergy); you are using only dragon synergy. You can use Skyfin and Tasty Flyfish without any other murlocs and use good Rogue tempo cards instead, or remove some dragons/dragon synergy and put some murloc synergy (Coldlight Seer and Murloc Warleader, for example).
By the way, in my opinion Tasty Flyfish is best used if you have some dragons you can play on turn 3, maybe Faerie Dragon.
Thanks for your response as well drfelip!
I agree that murlocs were more of an afterthought in my first build and I should definitely include some more synergy cards to go full menagerie. I loaded up on the dragons first to maximize value from Frizz Kindleroost, but I'll test out a more midrange deck that thins a couple dragons + synergy cards (Frizz & Scalerider) and replaces them with Warleaders and the like.
And I hear ya regarding Tasty Flyfish; I'd definitely like to get that value immediately and it's just a shame that there aren't better options like Nightmare Amalgam in Standard. But if I make the deck more midrange I could run Faerie Dragon and Brightwing for the instant impact.
Although, the more I think about it, I should probably just move away from Dragons in Rogue because they have such little support for the archetype at the moment.
Great read as always and some nice food-for-thought as I've mainly fooled around with Vol'jin + Malygos builds so far and need to branch out.
As an aside, I was always bummed that Blatant Decoy would summon himself if you brought it back with Nine Lives...the ordering makes sense from the card text, but there's so much wasted meme potential :\
And I know it's a little late, but any chance we could start a petition for sule to share his Tavern Brawl decks from this week? Felt like this one was right up his alley and there are a lot of fun possibilities.
A few thoughts from a longtime Control/Combo Hunter...
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the changes and am looking forwad to the next year of Hearthstone!
Good points all around!
@PopeNeia - You're right to highlight that Priests have gone more in the value direction with generating and discounting spells, so it's only fair that someone else takes up the heavy control mantle. I started running Freezing Trap in my control hunter decks this expansion mainly to combat Paladins, but a nice side-effect has been slowing down Envoy Rustwix shenanigans. But now that you mention it, maybe I'll sub in Vol'jin for some Tickatus disruption!
@iWatchUSleep - You're definitely right that Warlock still has the Zoo build with discounted 8/8s and I'm glad they haven't lost that identity. The few times I remember aggro (deathrattle?) Priests being viable it wasn't too fun, haha. And that's a good point about Warlock having an actual win condition as opposed to rolling the dice on stealing a minion or copying cards from the opponent's deck or something like that.
@clawz161 - Yeah, this is one of those nerfs where it makes less sense later down the line when the really problematic stuff has rotated (Even Paladin/Holy Wrath Pally and then not wanting to make it 3-cost to help Odd Pally).
@AngryShuckie - Yup, you're absolutely right about power creep at the end of a HS year. I sometimes find myself getting frustrated that some meme I've been working on gets a big boost in the last expansion of the year, only for it to be outclassed by even stronger boosts to meta archetypes. But then I remember that the only reason my meme got a boost was because the overall powerlevel was raised, so I go back to tanking my MMR with Quest Kael'thas Yogg Clown Hunter ;D
I don't think Warlock is currently OP, but I have come to dread these match-ups just as I did Priest because it typically means I'm going to face endless removal and healing until they can maybe pull off a win through value attrition (a la the Prime card, Envoy Rustwix, or Galakrond). I know Warlock has always had strengths in these areas, but for some reason I haven't dreaded the match-up until this expansion. Anyone else?
I think it's really the quantity of removal options that I find dispiriting as I see (2 copies of) these cards pretty much every match:
And then sometimes these ones:
Add to this a string of Soul Fragments negating a lethal set-up and the specter of Tickatus milling your outs and you have levels of annoyance I traditionally associated with Priest. Again, it's not that I think current Warlock decks are too strong, but rather that I fear Team 5 has created another "fun and interactive" class identity. Have you had a similar experience this expansion?
Haven't commented on the last few, but just wanted to say I always look forward to your articles for some fun ideas and some even funnier writing. Keep up the great work!
Just wanted to say thank you for adding a guide! I tried out the Wild decks listed here for a number of games and got demoralized pretty fast as I couldn't survive until the fun part against aggro (Odd Paladin brought back nightmares) and was getting out-Controlled by various Priest decks. But I'm gonna give it another go now that I learned a little more about the meta and have a better mulligan strategy in mind!
However, I've pulled off the Maxima into Darkmoon Tonk into 2x Nine Lives combo in Standard multiple times starting with Clawz's list as the base and it feels darn good when the plan comes together :D
Thanks again for the suggestions and the guide!
Really enjoyed this article and love the idea for the series! You also inspired me to try making a budget deck which I haven't really done before. Been playing this DR Hunter for the past day and it's been a fun challenge :) Keep up the great work!
Oh wow, thanks a lot everyone!!
Really happy to hear folks have gotten Maxima and DR to work decently in standard (extra props for the Deathwing inclusion as i love that card!). And I actually have a solid Wild collection for Hunter (minus ze ol' Shredder) so I'll definitely gives those a go too!
Thanks again guys, and it's great to see some familiar faces on OOC :)
I haven't played as much the last few months and just wanted to hear what off-meta Hunter builds folks have been having (moderate) success with this expansion.
Things I've been exploring so far:
Has anyone had success with these archetypes or anything else off-meta like Highlander Beast Hunter, Corrupt (Y'shaaraj) Hunter, Dragon Hunter, etc.? Thanks in advance!
Wholeheartedly agree with your entire post, but this really caught me off guard as a person coming back after a break from HS. Played 3 games of TB to knock out a couple quests and was shocked to see no progress at the end! Definitely made for a salty start to the season, but they brought Yogg back so it was hard to stay mad ;D
I agree with you that the video's conclusion doesn't jive with my experience, but admittedly I haven't paid much attention to patterns in Discover cards and wanted to ask y'all.
As you said, if (my understanding of) the argument in the video was correct then you'd be guaranteed Rotnest if you got Veranus as an option already. They brought this up as a way of explaining why Astromancer Solarian is so often discovered by Mages. Again, this didn't sound right to me but I've never looked into it.
TL;DR - Does Discover give every card an equal probability of being displayed?
When the Discover effect was changed to "not favor class cards", I just naively assumed that every available card had an equal probabiltiy of being shown as an option.
For example, Primordial Explorer gives you the option of 3 dragons and there are currently 20 Neutral Dragons and 2 Hunter class Dragons in Standard (not counting Primoridal Explorer itself given the recent change). Without thinking about it, I just assumed that the probability of getting say Rotnest Drake was 1/22 for the 1st discover option, 1/21 for the 2nd discover option, and 1/20 for the 3rd discover option (I don't remember ever getting the same Dragon shown twice, but if that's possible then the probability would be 1/22 for each option).
However, this video was randomly recommended to me on YouTube today (had never heard of them before) and I gave it a listen. The hyperlink skips to the 43:45 mark where an argument is made that Discover instead works as a 2-stage gamble so-to-speak. For each of the 3 options there's a 1/2 probability that the card will be drawn from the Neutral Pool or the Class Pool. After this, another die is rolled where every card in the respective pool has an equal probability of being displayed (without replacement).
So in the example above the probability of Rotnest Drake would be 25% for each of the 3 discover options (50% to be a class card and then 50% to be Rotnest Drake given that it's a class card). Is this really the case??
Thanks for sharing; I'm happy to see Quest Hunter alive and doing well on the ladder!
What would think about running Ramkahen Wildtamer instead of 1 or both Nine Lives? I found some success with it in a Zixor heavy deck last season and you're not running expensive beasts that would make it hard to isolate Zixor. Just thinking it may be a little better in aggro matches and not too much worse against control.
And is it safe to say that Shu'ma is too slow in the higher ranks? Or does Nine Lives just make that unnecessary?
Hi Lyra, sorry for the long delay as I'm not used to getting responses ;P and haven't been on OOC as much the past couple months since getting burnt out on HS (and Destiny 2). But I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to write such thoughtful responses while also engaging with RavenSun.
When it comes to general philosophies, I think we're on the same page in terms of the need for good combo disruption tools and a preference for the sorts of "smart" tech cards that you outlined (I really liked this distinction!). I just think that, in the specific case of Mindrender Illucia, the card either needs to be nerfed or converted into a "smart" option that doesn't win or lose the game if drawn/not drawn. And again, my claim isn't coming from a place of "Illucia is too meta-defining!" but rather that, for me personally, "Illucia is too feelsbadman" for an entire archetype that counters Control Priest.
We may still disagree, but my best guess is that that's due to: 1) Me coming from the perspective of Standard as opposed to WIld; and/or 2) The fact that I don't play T1 OTK decks so I'm more in favor of both the OP OTK decks getting weakened and the OP counter cards getting weakened (as RavenSun preferred).
Regarding #1 - I hadn't considered your arguments about how strong Wild OTK decks are at the moment, but this leads me to wanting separate balancing for both Standard and Wild as opposed to allowing cards that are balanced in Wild to dominate in Standard. So when you unpack Illucia, why not give 2 versions of the card that only work in their respective mode with the Standard version being retired/folded into the Wild version when it rotates? I know this would be harder in terms of coding and player confusion, but from a game balancing perspective I don't see why we don't have separate sandboxes.
Regarding #2 - This is just my opinion and I don't believe it should be imposed on others, but my ideal meta always includes OTK decks as a viable strategy, but they rarely rise to the ranks of T1 or T0 given how tilting they can be for the vocal minority that you mentioned in your original post (I feel the same way about Casino builds). So I've been on board with the nerfs, in Standard, to some of the old Malygos Druid decks that seemed OP, but I would've pushed back against nerfs to slower or less consistent OTK decks like when some of the Shirvallah OTK Pallys were meta-viable.
Lastly, I just wanted to leave a comment about Neutral Legendaries. It's obvious that neutral cards can only be as strong as they perform in the classes for which they have the most synergies. However, I find it frustrating when a card like Kael'thas Sunstrider performs so much better in certain classes that when it's nerfed it's no longer viable in any other classes than the originally OP ones. E.g., I'd argue that Kael'thas is extremetely fair at 7-mana in Hunter, and was borderline fair at 6-mana, but going any higher will kill it completely. So instead of a one-size-fits-all nerf to Kael'thas again, why not print multiple versions with different mana costs or abilities (e.g., only one 0-cost spell vs. a new 0-cost spell every 3 spells) like they did with all of the different versions of Galakrond? Or you could make it simpler with 3 versions (1 quad-class and 2 tri-class)...
I just wanted to echo how bad this feels to play against...and the emoting that comes after makes it all the saltier, haha
But beyond the gut punch, I just don't believe that a single card should be able to completely disrupt an entire archetype (Combo/OTK), especially when that archetype is a counter to what the class typically likes to do (play Control). I'm not against disruption cards in general, but this one seems too strong/guaranteed.
Thinking of nerfs, I agree that an increase in cost is most likely, but personally I'd like something different. I feel that there needs to be more of a way to play around this card as an opponent. So maybe the nerf could be that you only swap 4 or 5 cards from hand, randomly chosen, along with swapping decks. This way Combo decks could at least add some RNG into the equation by keeping their hand full, but it would come at a cost that would benefit Priests (in terms of losing tempo and/or having to add more card draw to the deck). Alternatively, you could add restrictions on the other end such as swapping only the number of cards that the Priest has in hand.
I'd cast a vote for Phantasy Star Online 2 if you're up for an MMO. I never played on the JP servers and have been really digging it.
I'm not a Legend player, but does it bother you folks that they suddenly kick back on a pure MMR system once you break legend? I always thought a cool part of legend was that you could then "play your way" and tank your rank to meme it up in the 1000s without hurting next season's rank.
This is all based around the premise that even those with a 10x Star Bonus lose it by the time they reach Diamond 5, which I can't confirm personally...
From the Blizzard FAQ:
Q: How does matchmaking work for each season?
A: There are two matchmaking pools: matchmaking by rating (aka. MMR) and by rank.
When your star bonus multiplier is bigger than 1, or you are in Legend rank, you are (generally) in the first matchmaking pool; when your star bonus drops to 1, you are in the second pool.
My dear dear Emeriss,
Oh where oh where did we go amiss?
For it was clearly impossible to foresee,
That playing an 8/8 do-nothing on 10 would result in your own death subsequently...
Blizzard, could you stop killing my control decks for the sins of the aggro masses?
Oh, what's that?
(Skip ahead to 0:23...couldn't figure out embedding with a timestamp so I'll blame Blizzard for that too ;D )
Thanks for your response as well drfelip!
I agree that murlocs were more of an afterthought in my first build and I should definitely include some more synergy cards to go full menagerie. I loaded up on the dragons first to maximize value from Frizz Kindleroost, but I'll test out a more midrange deck that thins a couple dragons + synergy cards (Frizz & Scalerider) and replaces them with Warleaders and the like.
And I hear ya regarding Tasty Flyfish; I'd definitely like to get that value immediately and it's just a shame that there aren't better options like Nightmare Amalgam in Standard. But if I make the deck more midrange I could run Faerie Dragon and Brightwing for the instant impact.
Although, the more I think about it, I should probably just move away from Dragons in Rogue because they have such little support for the archetype at the moment.