Hearth, Stone, Pals

arathain 2016-02-23 20:59:04 UTC #1981

Chillmaw is a very solid card, although my experience is all from Dragon Druid. I would hesitate to put Onxyia in a Druid deck- super slow, and at 9 mana you have enough for combo anyway. Still, it’s a win condition if they can’t deal with all the whelps for sure. Try it, but I agree with Aryan- it wants to be a ramp or even a more control deck.

Squiz 2016-02-28 14:20:22 UTC #1982

Reward cards won’t be part of the Standard format:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcRbYw1WIAEl7pL.jpg:large

(Source: Kripp’s Twitter)

Which probably means that Murlock Paladin won’t be too viable after the switch happens, at least not in the current form (with Anyfin Can Happen).

unruly 2016-03-01 05:06:53 UTC #1983

Seems a bit weird for them to pull Captain’s Parrot and Old Murk-Eye from the list, since they’re available as rewards for collecting Classic cards. I’d just as soon consider them part of the Classic set for that reason. Mekkatorque is only available through crafting or if you were a part of the beta though, so I can see why he’d be excluded.

Lethe 2016-03-01 08:38:55 UTC #1984

So another month/season has gone by. I obtained Rank 14 which apparently equates to being in the top 25% of ranked players for the season.

I’m not real fussed about rank. My only goal is to get to rank 15 each month so that I get the golden rare reward, which I’ve always attained without any particular effort. The next major step up (to a golden epic) doesn’t occur until rank 5, which is practically inconceivable to me (I’ve never hit single digits) and so I’ve never even tried. My approach is to make and play decks I find interesting, and just float to wherever the results take me. I am kind of curious as to how far I could get if I really tried to rank up with maximum efficiency netdecks over the course of a whole month … but not curious enough to actually try it.

That said, psychologically it all seems a bit off. Rank 14 may be in the top 25% of players for the season, but it really doesn’t feel that way, and I can only imagine what the feeling is like for the bulk of the playerbase stuck cycling between ranks 17 and 20. When most of your ladder system (i.e. the different ranks) is accessible only to a distinct minority of players then there is a problem I think. And Blizzard is clearly aware of this, what with the tips and posts about how “you are better than you think you are” – that’s why they started advertising the top x% of players thing in the first place. But I can’t help but feel that’s just a band-aid on a system that needs to be fundamentally reworked to be more psychologically satisfying for 90% of the playerbase.

unruly 2016-03-01 09:34:36 UTC #1985

That would help explain why I keep getting stuck maxing out at rank 15. I’ve never hit 14. As soon as I get close, I end up in a massive death spiral back to around 18 again. I’m not a terrible player. Sure, I take gambles sometimes and lose, but that’s part of the game. Most of my losses seem to be related to getting bad luck of the draw more than anything else. There are a few times where I’m very clearly outplayed, but they’re few and far between. I’ve tried netdecks, my own variants on netdecks, scratch built decks, etc, and I’ve never gotten above 15.

Of course, maybe I’m just biased to see the majority of my losses as not my fault. However, my current tempo mage is much less reliant on getting specific card draws, combos, and explicit synergies, and I’ve been winning much more consistently with it than anything else that I’ve tried. It seems to support my viewpoint at least a little bit. Although this morning’s new season has seen me only hitting around a 50% winrate.

Stenkil 2016-03-01 11:21:35 UTC #1986

I’m curious as to how legit those Blizz-percentages really are. Getting Rank 5 months ago supposedly put me in the top 2% which seems really unlikely. Could be that they pad the numbers by including inactive accounts. Of course rank is based on time played a lot of times, as well as skill, “netdecking” etc. so I dont know. Wouldnt put it past Blizzard to choose the more flattering stats.

Anyway another monthly reset, which means infinite downranked druids, secret pallys and zoolocks oh my.

unruly 2016-03-02 08:40:06 UTC #1987

Zoolocks! Zoolocks everywhere! Zoolocks have made up easily 75% of all my matches tonight, with the others being mostly secret paladins. I think I’ve played only one priest and one mage out of over 20 matches.

theTrueAryan 2016-03-04 17:20:58 UTC #1988

The “% of players” numbers are probably based on on number of unique Hearthstone players that month, and there’s a lot of people who only get the cardback, play arena or brawls or just don’t bother with constructed after getting faceshamaned at rank 20. And even these who carry on need all of: decent deck, game knowledge and time to gain more than few ranks. But even then the numbers are a bit wonky, this(link to battle.net forums) post suggests that they never display number higher than 50%. There were some more informative threads on reddit, unfortunately can’t find them now, but afair one of the points was that the numbers are fairly static, including summer months when a lot of people have more time and you’d expect relatively more players at higher ranks. Indeed, there were about 20’000 players at legend, as opposed to usual 10’000, but it still showed that legend are the top 0.25%. Although keeping this particular number hidden makes sense, since exact number of legend players isn’t hidden(you can just chain concede on the last day to get to bottom rank), which combined with exact percentage would give a very good indication of Hearthstone’s playerbase, which Blizzard understandably wants to keep secret.

Other than that the question of the day seems to be “How do I get all this zoo off my board?” and the answer obviously is “With more zoo of your own! Including Sea giants!” And if Lethe(or any Onyxia owner) is feeling particularly evil they could put her into the Enhance-O Mechano/Sea Giant version and let the hilarity ensue. Sample list here http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/chakkis-na-winter-prelims-2016-warlock-zoo/ I’d probably swap Leeroy or BGH for her, you can also replace 2nd dire wolf, for say another 1-drop.

postinternetsyndrome 2016-03-11 08:45:55 UTC #1989

Randomonium again… I hate this brawl.

Squiz 2016-03-11 17:02:13 UTC #1990

I LOVE it. Makes completing dailies on my alt accounts with almost no card collection a breeze.

unruly 2016-03-11 18:37:13 UTC #1991

I love and hate it. T
It’s awesome to get great cards out on turn 1 or 2 and they can’t counter them. It’s absolutely horrible when your opponent does that.

postinternetsyndrome 2016-03-11 21:20:59 UTC #1992

That’s the thing. It’s never a breeze because you can’t consistently win by playing well. You just have to hope that you get a turn 3 legendary and your opponent doesn’t.

In other news, the rumor from a week back that the next expansion is the chtulu-themed Whispers of the Old Gods turned out to be true. They haven’t shown a lot of cards yet, but the ones they have shows some promise. The main thing seems to be a whole bunch of general minions that all buff the legendary C’Thun in various ways. It’d be nice if the class cards did radically different stuff, so the same card in different decks could play a variety of roles. The ones shown so far just seem to give straight +X/+X buffs though.

And new card slots on monday! Woohoo!

Lethe 2016-03-12 11:46:18 UTC #1993

Whispers of the Old Gods expansion looks interesting, I like the theme and the stylistic take on it as communicated in the trailer. Should go well thematically with my budding Priest too! (in the upcoming WoW expansion, Blizzard is retconning Shadow Priests to being agents of or tapping into the powers of the Old Gods).

Course I still don’t have all the TGT cards I wanted: Eydis Darkbane (I opened Fjola Lightbane a while back), Master of Ceremonies, Crowd Favourite… mostly thematic and/or fun stuff with great emotes.

Yeah; there is an degree of randomness that keeps things interesting, and then there is a greater and uninteresting degree of randomness where you (the player) might as well not be present, such is the influence of the dice. Randamonium crosses that line and keeps going. Fortunately it’s only around for a few days, so it’s no big deal.

@Squiz: why do you have multiple HS accounts? To play with friends from other regions? I can see how that would make sense (if I had friends…) but to be honest I am slightly horrified by the very prospect – not only because my collection seems perpetually inadequate even without having to spread my attention between multiple accounts, but there is also a more fundamental preference for cognitive simplicity that I’m not sure the prospect of mere human contact could overcome!

Squiz 2016-03-12 22:04:50 UTC #1994

My idea was to start up accounts in both Asia and Americas do some quick dailies and get extra money for Arena runs. Right now I’ll probably save up some money and see how the new expansion turns out. I don’t really care too much about my collections there and might skip some quests here and there if it turns out that I get stressed out too much.

unruly 2016-03-13 07:40:33 UTC #1995

I’m looking forward to the new expansion. I think C’Thun is going to be an interesting card to play around. But I certainly hope that he doesn’t become the new card that’s in literally every deck for the next 2 years. I know he’s not as universally good as something like Dr. Boom, since he needs other cards to build him up, but I just don’t want 3/4 of all decks turning into C’Thun decks until he cycles out. And I think that’s going to hinge on how good or useful the other cards that boost him are.

postinternetsyndrome 2016-03-13 11:07:34 UTC #1996

It all depends on what the rest of the expansion turns out to be of course, but so far the support cards have been quality minions, but nothing special. Compared to the kind of specialized minions constructed decks normally run, they do very little in a match in which you don’t draw C’Thun. Which is a real possibility because it’s a one-of. On The Angry Chicken they mentioned Warlock or a freeze Mage variant being likely candidates for a C’Thun deck, since those can more consistently draw most of your deck. I don’t think all decks will want to include this, unless some of the support cards turns out to be extremely good on their own as well.

Squiz 2016-03-13 11:24:51 UTC #1997

Let’s hope the overall card quality improves from what we’ve seen so far. The Old Gods support cards seem fun, but both Validated Doomsayer and Stand Against the Darkness (short SAD) look very weak.

unruly 2016-03-13 13:41:13 UTC #1998

Agreed. A 0/7 on turn 5 doesn’t have a lot of chance of surviving to become a 7/7. They’ll just spend a turn not hitting your face and smack it down with no return damage. And SAD is just that, IMO.

DevinSmoth 2016-03-13 15:06:20 UTC #1999

But now we have a new Hogger, which is pretty cool looking… and that giant sandbug, which has a new mechanic that I would love to see explored more.

Aerothorn 2016-03-13 20:41:09 UTC #2000

So can someone who is more plugged in explain this? Again, Mekkatorque makes since since you have to craft him - but why Murk-Eye and Captain’s Parrot? It’s not like Murloc decks are dominating the meta (and certainly not pirates!) so I guess I don’t see the reasoning behind this.