The differences in gold between the current rewards track and the original rewards track are stunning. I think that I am a C1 player on the new rewards chart. Most of the time I don't care enough to reroll dailies, and I make sure to do whatever I get plus I reroll weekly quests until I have a set that can be completed in ranked standard play. If I had the C2 level of gold when the next expansion came out, I would have quit the game.
It's not fun to reach the point where you're only going to gain a level if you do like all three of your weekly quests on the day you get them, and then you won't gain another level for ~4 days worth of daily quests after that. If Blizzard is planning to make that change to "same experience spread over twice the number levels with the same total rewards" I think that is a plus relative to the current system.
My favorite deck of all time is Murloc Shaman, Rise of Shadows vintage. My reason for that is that it's the first deck where I was lucky enough to be able to play it with minimal crafting (I pulled Scargil in a pack and only needed to use dust for some of the less rare cards) and then when I did play it, it was also the first deck where I felt like, "Holy shit, I get it!"
Up to that point, I had never gotten above like, rank 11 in the old rank system. I played this game, did my quests every day, but it wasn't any more serious than that. Then one Saturday I sat down, having left off my last session somewhere in the realm of rank 12, and said to myself, "I'm just going to play this shaman deck until I lose a game, and then I'll do something else." Within a few games I had blown up into rank 10, higher than I had ever been before, and hours later, I had exploded all the way up to rank 2 without having lost a game. It felt like I was existing in a dream. It just all fell in place - my understanding what kind of counters each class might have and how to play around them, when to go face and when not, that kind of stuff.
Every month ever since then I've been able to get to at least rank 5 in the old system and now in the new one, Diamond 5. I even hit legend once this summer with Dragon Hunter, something that I never, for years of playing the game, believed I could ever achieve. So that's a special deck for me too, but it was Murloc Shaman that really got me going on that path. Mrrrrggggrrrrggggl!
You can get to 16 attack with a demon hunter, if you can get in hand and then have mana for up enough of Marrowslicer, Soulshard Lapidary, Twin Slice, Chaos Strike, and Relentless Pursuit to get to 16. I'm not sure if that is supposed to work or not, but that's how I got that one.
I think it's bad that it took a month of uproar to make these changes happen - if Blizzard had done a good job with the design this would have been Plan A rather than Plan C (counting Plan B as the first small change where they adjusted later-level old pack rewards to gold) but at least it seems like they're going in the right direction. 500 gold and 5 packs is definitely not the worst olive branch to hand out. This is the first time since the concept of the battle pass came up months ago that I've felt like Blizzard might actually live up to the claim that people will not end up with less gold.
I felt the bad weekly quest mix a lot last week. I had one quest slot I had to reroll daily from Monday to Saturday until it rolled in to one that was relevant to how I actually play the game (Standard ladder, not running DMF Old Gods). Seems like I can still get stuck with BG quests now but at least there are fewer dead weight ones for me in the rotation.
If you're good enough to hit Diamond 3, you're good enough to hit legend. One night you will log in and play and the match finder will not send you many, or any secret mages, and you will roll your way up to legend.
My tip for laddering, YMMV obviously, is to plan to play until you lose twice. After I lose twice I start getting annoyed and I don't play as well.
I wish they had enough brawl ideas for no repeats in a calendar year. I guess getting a gap from January to November is not so bad, but Jan. 2018 to Feb. 2019 is better.
I got the 1000 win portrait for hunter last month, my first ever, so I have wanted to try to pick up wins with other classes since, but facerolling face hunter is always going to be there as a temptation for the early parts of the climb.
Ever since the battle pass stuff was first talked about I've been concerned that it will reduce the amount of packs a reasonably dedicated F2P player can bank per expansion. Still feeling nervous about that after reading about this progression system announcement until they put out some real details about the level rewards.
The expansion launches nov 17 we get the pre patch nov 12.
And the 35 cards are not something we get, they are added to the newest expansions card pool.
Got to say I'm not very excited about the idea of a mid-expansion change to the card pack pool. I guess we'll see how it works out. Maybe it will end up feeling more interesting than the current "hoard gold for a whole expansion then drop it all on new packs on day 1, then hoard for four more months."
Still pretty nervous about the battle pass business after that trial balloon a while ago. Hoping that what is revealed next week alleviates the concerns.
Libram paladin bugs me the most right now but I sure won't say no to that coming Evocation change. It feels like every rogue I play against discovers it when they combo Wand Thief.
This sounds like it would really suck. I built up about 8500 gold for Scholomance after plowing every bit of gold into Ashes of Outland packs on day 1 and not spending any after that. So I got 85 packs on day 1 of Scholomance. This thing, if I am understanding it right, proposes to give me enough gold for 39 packs on launch and then slowly trickle out another 18 packs over 4 months.
Some real "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" stuff if Blizzard goes through with this and acts like they've improved the experience for the F2P player.
I learned my lesson after the last expansion and am just sitting on all of my dust from extra cards for when there's the early rounds of nerfs. Druid's definitely given me the most headaches very early on, though Enrage Warrior has helped me pull off some fun wins even against a couple of crazy druid decks.
Rattlegore is the one card in this whole set that gave me strong flashbacks to some bad Scholomance runs way back in the day. How many times did I die in that little basement? So many. The main thing that I remember when I think back to vanilla WOW is that everyone was a lot worse at the game.
I haven't spent any money on HS since beta when they gave you a golden Mekkatorque for testing out the shop by buying something. This bundle is tempting. Two legendaries... would be a real nice start on the set.
The differences in gold between the current rewards track and the original rewards track are stunning. I think that I am a C1 player on the new rewards chart. Most of the time I don't care enough to reroll dailies, and I make sure to do whatever I get plus I reroll weekly quests until I have a set that can be completed in ranked standard play. If I had the C2 level of gold when the next expansion came out, I would have quit the game.
It's not fun to reach the point where you're only going to gain a level if you do like all three of your weekly quests on the day you get them, and then you won't gain another level for ~4 days worth of daily quests after that. If Blizzard is planning to make that change to "same experience spread over twice the number levels with the same total rewards" I think that is a plus relative to the current system.
My favorite deck of all time is Murloc Shaman, Rise of Shadows vintage. My reason for that is that it's the first deck where I was lucky enough to be able to play it with minimal crafting (I pulled Scargil in a pack and only needed to use dust for some of the less rare cards) and then when I did play it, it was also the first deck where I felt like, "Holy shit, I get it!"
Up to that point, I had never gotten above like, rank 11 in the old rank system. I played this game, did my quests every day, but it wasn't any more serious than that. Then one Saturday I sat down, having left off my last session somewhere in the realm of rank 12, and said to myself, "I'm just going to play this shaman deck until I lose a game, and then I'll do something else." Within a few games I had blown up into rank 10, higher than I had ever been before, and hours later, I had exploded all the way up to rank 2 without having lost a game. It felt like I was existing in a dream. It just all fell in place - my understanding what kind of counters each class might have and how to play around them, when to go face and when not, that kind of stuff.
Every month ever since then I've been able to get to at least rank 5 in the old system and now in the new one, Diamond 5. I even hit legend once this summer with Dragon Hunter, something that I never, for years of playing the game, believed I could ever achieve. So that's a special deck for me too, but it was Murloc Shaman that really got me going on that path. Mrrrrggggrrrrggggl!
You can get to 16 attack with a demon hunter, if you can get in hand and then have mana for up enough of Marrowslicer, Soulshard Lapidary, Twin Slice, Chaos Strike, and Relentless Pursuit to get to 16. I'm not sure if that is supposed to work or not, but that's how I got that one.
The sixth battle (Theramore) is the toughest one of these yet for me.
If a person was to wait to open these packs until after the mini-expansion comes along, would the packs contain the newly released cards?
I think it's bad that it took a month of uproar to make these changes happen - if Blizzard had done a good job with the design this would have been Plan A rather than Plan C (counting Plan B as the first small change where they adjusted later-level old pack rewards to gold) but at least it seems like they're going in the right direction. 500 gold and 5 packs is definitely not the worst olive branch to hand out. This is the first time since the concept of the battle pass came up months ago that I've felt like Blizzard might actually live up to the claim that people will not end up with less gold.
I felt the bad weekly quest mix a lot last week. I had one quest slot I had to reroll daily from Monday to Saturday until it rolled in to one that was relevant to how I actually play the game (Standard ladder, not running DMF Old Gods). Seems like I can still get stuck with BG quests now but at least there are fewer dead weight ones for me in the rotation.
If you're good enough to hit Diamond 3, you're good enough to hit legend. One night you will log in and play and the match finder will not send you many, or any secret mages, and you will roll your way up to legend.
My tip for laddering, YMMV obviously, is to plan to play until you lose twice. After I lose twice I start getting annoyed and I don't play as well.
I wish they had enough brawl ideas for no repeats in a calendar year. I guess getting a gap from January to November is not so bad, but Jan. 2018 to Feb. 2019 is better.
Thanks for posting this. Il'gynoth is the only new legendary I pulled from any of these lists, so... guess I'm running DH on day 1.
I got the 1000 win portrait for hunter last month, my first ever, so I have wanted to try to pick up wins with other classes since, but facerolling face hunter is always going to be there as a temptation for the early parts of the climb.
Ever since the battle pass stuff was first talked about I've been concerned that it will reduce the amount of packs a reasonably dedicated F2P player can bank per expansion. Still feeling nervous about that after reading about this progression system announcement until they put out some real details about the level rewards.
Got to say I'm not very excited about the idea of a mid-expansion change to the card pack pool. I guess we'll see how it works out. Maybe it will end up feeling more interesting than the current "hoard gold for a whole expansion then drop it all on new packs on day 1, then hoard for four more months."
This looks so totally not for me. But so is Battlegrounds and people seem to like that well enough so I hope Duels works out the same.
Still pretty nervous about the battle pass business after that trial balloon a while ago. Hoping that what is revealed next week alleviates the concerns.
Libram paladin bugs me the most right now but I sure won't say no to that coming Evocation change. It feels like every rogue I play against discovers it when they combo Wand Thief.
This sounds like it would really suck. I built up about 8500 gold for Scholomance after plowing every bit of gold into Ashes of Outland packs on day 1 and not spending any after that. So I got 85 packs on day 1 of Scholomance. This thing, if I am understanding it right, proposes to give me enough gold for 39 packs on launch and then slowly trickle out another 18 packs over 4 months.
Some real "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" stuff if Blizzard goes through with this and acts like they've improved the experience for the F2P player.
I learned my lesson after the last expansion and am just sitting on all of my dust from extra cards for when there's the early rounds of nerfs. Druid's definitely given me the most headaches very early on, though Enrage Warrior has helped me pull off some fun wins even against a couple of crazy druid decks.
Rattlegore is the one card in this whole set that gave me strong flashbacks to some bad Scholomance runs way back in the day. How many times did I die in that little basement? So many. The main thing that I remember when I think back to vanilla WOW is that everyone was a lot worse at the game.
I haven't spent any money on HS since beta when they gave you a golden Mekkatorque for testing out the shop by buying something. This bundle is tempting. Two legendaries... would be a real nice start on the set.