Good read. I never played Shirvalla decks myself, but...
First it looked frustrating even when watching streamers play it, the pain when Shirvalla was one of the last cards :D and secondly I don't have Shirvalla or Thekal in my collection atm.
But with ever increasing Wild card pool, it's crazy how multi-dimensional this deck became and how many synergies you can include in 1 deck now.
Also thought that the poll could be mentioned somewhere in the top part. Anyway, thanks for interesting article as always
I am only a casual Arena player, playing only from time to time recently.
Arena offers something unique comparing to all other game modes. Drafting and trading actually matters (which was so core to Hearthstone experience for quite some time).
Currently many people complain about crazy Combo decks in Constructed modes. I'm afraid that's just the direction HS is going, whether we like it or not.
In Arena, those Combo decks are not existent (Yes, sometimes crazy Combo happens, but not that often). So it offers something different comparing to Constructed.
Except... Arena has it's own problems, mainly - 1. Not regular enough balancing, 2. Crazy power level differences between some cards (creates unfun moments and increases the feeling of being hopeless).
So it's a real shame, I agree. Arena does not need that much workforce to maintain it and keep in reasonable balance state...
And yet, Team5 somehow can't deliver even that.
Despite many years of non-existent balancing, Arena survived, and keeps some dedicated playerbase.
After I thought about it, you are right. And I am in such situation at the moment.
I was slowly but surely completing bounties... until I came to 4th zone (Blackrock Mountain), where it got really hard and I am stuck on Highlord Omokk... (Normal difficulty)
I found Old_Guardian guide on reddit, "How to complete every Heroic Bounty" and realized, I need Malfurion to complete the Nature comp, which helps in many bounties. So I was farming Fallen Guardians on Heroic (2nd Zone - Felwood) for Malfurion coins. Just unlocked him few days ago.
On Heroic mode, I completed Felwood (2nd Zone), but I already see, Winterspring Heroic (3rd Zone) will be too hard.
I'm leveling Malfurion now, slowly upgrading him. Apart from that, I can say I am just stuck, until I max Malfurion now.
It also depends. Malfurion was available to grind coins in 2nd zone. Other Mercs can be locked ONLY in 4th zone... so what then? Casual player will not get there in any reasonable time or at all. This way he won't be competitive in PvP either (If he ever had some hope to be competitive at all).
Oh crap, you are right :D I was convinced that it is actually a level 30, but it's not.
So at least starting from Winterspring, where I felt those Bounties got significantly harder to grind, the legendary coins will appear.
Still a looong way to go, to improve Mercenaries economy overall ("dust" system, pack system with adding more and more Mercenaries to the pool and few others).
All Heroic Level 30 Bounties will now include at least one pile of Legendary Coins (chosen from the selection of Coins designated for each Bounty) as part of their Bounty completion rewards.
So after I played for more than a month, playing casually, but mostly grinding bounty to get those precious Malfurion (legendary) coins...
NOW we get the info that we can collect legendary coins little faster... I would say - "good change" but now I also feel bad for grinding Malfurion coins, you know...
I doubt I am the only one who has the feeling of lost time.
It's a joke that we have to wait for so long for simple balance re-adjustments. Especially since Team5 have shown before, that they are able to do it few days after expansion launched.
I think many people felt similarly during Stormwind meta. As for me, I had many "low moments" while playing since 2016.
I reached Legend in Standard on EU in 2019, and Standard on NA in 2020.
This year, I just lowered my expectations. I just try to reach Diamond 10 or Diamond 5 for max amount of free packs from Ladder (important for F2P). And then play whatever mode I feel like :) or sometimes other games.
In my opinion it's not worth it to torture yourself to reach Legend every season.
What I think is best is that everyone needs a break once in a while. Hopefully you can come back after Blizzard makes some more adjustments to Wild! (might take months I know)
Thanks for all your work on articles, and hopefully see you in some time! Have fun whatever you choose to play instead.
Thank you for Shadowburst Priest decklist, I wanted to try something similar lately! Not sure how it stands in current meta, but I wanted to play it anyway :)
Thanks for nice guide. Have not played it, but after I read most of the article, it looks really good with fun synergies. Cheaty Snobold increasing damage with freezes seems strong.
I might go as far as to say that it might become a meta breaker maybe?
Reading how many freezes it can output, it can stop maaany board based decks, maybe even Pirate Warrior? (Pirate Warrior lacks burst damage, so if it gets frozen... it cant do much, unless it completed the quest)
Well that sucks. I truly enjoyed the bits of statistical data from Tian, as an official source. We didn't have such official insight into data for years.
Team5 improved communication lately, so lets hope that other dev takes his place to engage and communicate with community.
I wish Good luck for Tian, SecondDinner can be less stressful place to be right now, far away from Activision Blizzard recent shit-show.
I see that he joined Blizzard around when I started playing HS, somewhere at the start of 2016... interesting.
That's what I heard in Rarran's YT video interview with a Mercs dev - they plan plan to add new Mercs roughly every month or so...
And as you said, there are other common concerns at the moment. Personally for me, it's another "feel bad" thing.
I know that Mercenaries might (and probably will) get better in some months... but will I still be interested to keep playing it, even casually? I'm not sure, and right now I'm pretty disappointed.
Whether it is strongest set, hard to say, but... I am pretty sure it might be one of the few strongest sets ever for sure.
Just quickly checked, how many cards with word "costs" are in this set (because it's usually written as "Costs (X) less", where X - amount of mana).
There are 20 cards with mana discounts ("cheating mana") !!! Arguably, some other cards cheat mana too, but without word "costs".
20 mana discounts is highest EVER from all expansions. 2nd highest (15) was... Scholomance Academy - and that set made a BIG impact for maaany months, just look out how many good (and nerfed) cards are there.
Before checking this, I had observation "there is suspiciously many mana discounts in this set". After checking, that's just a confirmation.
Even if those cards don't make impact immediately (because of Questlines...), then after set rotation in April 2022 they might reveal their potential, or even be broken. We shall see...
New Mercenaries are very nice but... If they keep adding new ones every 1-2 months, I am afraid, F2P players, or people that don't play Mercenaries too much (just some here and there) - can't expect to ever be competitive in PvP mode. Kind of sad to be honest.
I don't have any interest in PvP, but I feel for other F2P players. Even tho you don't need all Mercenaries to be competitive... it still takes shit ton of time.
And you don't know if, in some future - some Mercenary might suddenly become good in PvP meta, because of strong synergies.
As a F2P myself, I thought that maaaybe in 6-12 months I will try some PvP more. But now I know - I won't ever be able to keep up with the grind, lol.
It's good to know, when to stop. Seeing how opening more packs isn't worth it (as in, later it's possible that you don't get Mercenary in maaany packs), I decided to not invest gold in it. PvP might be ok'ish, but getting to PvP takes too much time to be worth it in my opinion.
Currently I "play" or rather use Mercenaries mostly as an additional XP grind towards Reward Track. As in - I do something on my PC, and leave HS client with Mercenaries "in-battle" in the background... and it gives me 168 xp every 30 minutes. I collect some coins for Mercenaries that I want to, I still have to click few times every 30 minutes...
You can do this if you want to get some of your gold back. And you should not feel bad about it, you do not ruin PvP experience for others, you do not use bot or other 3rd party program to do this.
I'm just happy - Blizzard finally does not miss on giving content creators an opportunity to showcase new NON-Constructed stuff !!!
Good read. I never played Shirvalla decks myself, but...
First it looked frustrating even when watching streamers play it, the pain when Shirvalla was one of the last cards :D and secondly I don't have Shirvalla or Thekal in my collection atm.
But with ever increasing Wild card pool, it's crazy how multi-dimensional this deck became and how many synergies you can include in 1 deck now.
Also thought that the poll could be mentioned somewhere in the top part. Anyway, thanks for interesting article as always
In all honesty, seeing over the years that they don't want to dedicate any people to Arena, feels very sad.
The only reasonable solution in this situation is to introduce some kind of auto-balancing mechanism.
Set some rules, set timelines for balancing (to have some time to collect data).
For example, after 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days of an expansion, auto balancing happens.
And then, just let someone check from time to time, if there are no bugs, if something isn't broken.
I am only a casual Arena player, playing only from time to time recently.
Arena offers something unique comparing to all other game modes. Drafting and trading actually matters (which was so core to Hearthstone experience for quite some time).
Currently many people complain about crazy Combo decks in Constructed modes. I'm afraid that's just the direction HS is going, whether we like it or not.
In Arena, those Combo decks are not existent (Yes, sometimes crazy Combo happens, but not that often). So it offers something different comparing to Constructed.
Except... Arena has it's own problems, mainly - 1. Not regular enough balancing, 2. Crazy power level differences between some cards (creates unfun moments and increases the feeling of being hopeless).
So it's a real shame, I agree. Arena does not need that much workforce to maintain it and keep in reasonable balance state...
And yet, Team5 somehow can't deliver even that.
Despite many years of non-existent balancing, Arena survived, and keeps some dedicated playerbase.
After I thought about it, you are right. And I am in such situation at the moment.
I was slowly but surely completing bounties... until I came to 4th zone (Blackrock Mountain), where it got really hard and I am stuck on Highlord Omokk... (Normal difficulty)
I found Old_Guardian guide on reddit, "How to complete every Heroic Bounty" and realized, I need Malfurion to complete the Nature comp, which helps in many bounties. So I was farming Fallen Guardians on Heroic (2nd Zone - Felwood) for Malfurion coins. Just unlocked him few days ago.
On Heroic mode, I completed Felwood (2nd Zone), but I already see, Winterspring Heroic (3rd Zone) will be too hard.
I'm leveling Malfurion now, slowly upgrading him. Apart from that, I can say I am just stuck, until I max Malfurion now.
It also depends. Malfurion was available to grind coins in 2nd zone. Other Mercs can be locked ONLY in 4th zone... so what then? Casual player will not get there in any reasonable time or at all. This way he won't be competitive in PvP either (If he ever had some hope to be competitive at all).
Oh crap, you are right :D I was convinced that it is actually a level 30, but it's not.
So at least starting from Winterspring, where I felt those Bounties got significantly harder to grind, the legendary coins will appear.
Still a looong way to go, to improve Mercenaries economy overall ("dust" system, pack system with adding more and more Mercenaries to the pool and few others).
Thanks, I never paid attention to that, since updates always (somehow) happened automatically for me :D thanks for pointing that out
So after I played for more than a month, playing casually, but mostly grinding bounty to get those precious Malfurion (legendary) coins...
NOW we get the info that we can collect legendary coins little faster... I would say - "good change" but now I also feel bad for grinding Malfurion coins, you know...
I doubt I am the only one who has the feeling of lost time.
I hope so!
It's a joke that we have to wait for so long for simple balance re-adjustments. Especially since Team5 have shown before, that they are able to do it few days after expansion launched.
Nerfs are already in the game :)
In order to see it, just exit HS, then wait until Battle Net hopefully updates it automatically for you and you are good to go!
Sad to see you go, we will miss your articles!
I think many people felt similarly during Stormwind meta. As for me, I had many "low moments" while playing since 2016.
I reached Legend in Standard on EU in 2019, and Standard on NA in 2020.
This year, I just lowered my expectations. I just try to reach Diamond 10 or Diamond 5 for max amount of free packs from Ladder (important for F2P). And then play whatever mode I feel like :) or sometimes other games.
In my opinion it's not worth it to torture yourself to reach Legend every season.
What I think is best is that everyone needs a break once in a while. Hopefully you can come back after Blizzard makes some more adjustments to Wild! (might take months I know)
Thanks for all your work on articles, and hopefully see you in some time! Have fun whatever you choose to play instead.
Thank you for Shadowburst Priest decklist, I wanted to try something similar lately! Not sure how it stands in current meta, but I wanted to play it anyway :)
Thanks for nice guide. Have not played it, but after I read most of the article, it looks really good with fun synergies. Cheaty Snobold increasing damage with freezes seems strong.
I might go as far as to say that it might become a meta breaker maybe?
Reading how many freezes it can output, it can stop maaany board based decks, maybe even Pirate Warrior? (Pirate Warrior lacks burst damage, so if it gets frozen... it cant do much, unless it completed the quest)
Well that sucks. I truly enjoyed the bits of statistical data from Tian, as an official source. We didn't have such official insight into data for years.
Team5 improved communication lately, so lets hope that other dev takes his place to engage and communicate with community.
I wish Good luck for Tian, SecondDinner can be less stressful place to be right now, far away from Activision Blizzard recent shit-show.
I see that he joined Blizzard around when I started playing HS, somewhere at the start of 2016... interesting.
That's what I heard in Rarran's YT video interview with a Mercs dev - they plan plan to add new Mercs roughly every month or so...
And as you said, there are other common concerns at the moment. Personally for me, it's another "feel bad" thing.
I know that Mercenaries might (and probably will) get better in some months... but will I still be interested to keep playing it, even casually? I'm not sure, and right now I'm pretty disappointed.
Whether it is strongest set, hard to say, but... I am pretty sure it might be one of the few strongest sets ever for sure.
Just quickly checked, how many cards with word "costs" are in this set (because it's usually written as "Costs (X) less", where X - amount of mana).
There are 20 cards with mana discounts ("cheating mana") !!! Arguably, some other cards cheat mana too, but without word "costs".
20 mana discounts is highest EVER from all expansions. 2nd highest (15) was... Scholomance Academy - and that set made a BIG impact for maaany months, just look out how many good (and nerfed) cards are there.
Before checking this, I had observation "there is suspiciously many mana discounts in this set". After checking, that's just a confirmation.
Even if those cards don't make impact immediately (because of Questlines...), then after set rotation in April 2022 they might reveal their potential, or even be broken. We shall see...
Thanks as always, this time I really forgot it, after I said to myself, 2 weeks ago "fine, I will do it later" :)
New Mercenaries are very nice but... If they keep adding new ones every 1-2 months, I am afraid, F2P players, or people that don't play Mercenaries too much (just some here and there) - can't expect to ever be competitive in PvP mode. Kind of sad to be honest.
I don't have any interest in PvP, but I feel for other F2P players. Even tho you don't need all Mercenaries to be competitive... it still takes shit ton of time.
And you don't know if, in some future - some Mercenary might suddenly become good in PvP meta, because of strong synergies.
As a F2P myself, I thought that maaaybe in 6-12 months I will try some PvP more. But now I know - I won't ever be able to keep up with the grind, lol.
It's good to know, when to stop. Seeing how opening more packs isn't worth it (as in, later it's possible that you don't get Mercenary in maaany packs), I decided to not invest gold in it. PvP might be ok'ish, but getting to PvP takes too much time to be worth it in my opinion.
Currently I "play" or rather use Mercenaries mostly as an additional XP grind towards Reward Track. As in - I do something on my PC, and leave HS client with Mercenaries "in-battle" in the background... and it gives me 168 xp every 30 minutes. I collect some coins for Mercenaries that I want to, I still have to click few times every 30 minutes...
You can do this if you want to get some of your gold back. And you should not feel bad about it, you do not ruin PvP experience for others, you do not use bot or other 3rd party program to do this.
Very happy that Dreads and RedBeard, the Arena guys, finally got some attention!
I was not around since HS started (I started playing in 2016), but it possibly is first time ever, that pure Arena streamers got some card reveals?
For sure it will be funny and entertaining, I will watch it, can't wait :D