Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic: Thrall vs. Morgl, the endless cycle

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh I'm only at 7

I haven't hit legend since June of last year, just too much effort haha
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Really dislike the fact that, as someone who mainly plays arena I can now only play standard.
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As someone who also mainly plays Arena I'm glad to get a breath of fresh air. What part of only having standard cards is upsetting to you?
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https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20753189941

Oh it's these changes

I don't really mind, explains the three expansions logic

Lowering Flamestrike and Abyssal is definitely good, more variety is solid and could lead to goofy runs but yeah just a standard Arena isn't great just because of variety

More spells is iffy just because the spells aren't always good in Arena

On switching to standard, I'm sympathetic to the argument that this unfortunately just retires a whole bunch of cards, since they'll never be seen in the wild constructed meta. But card dilution was beginning to become a problem, which will only get worse and worse, and this was the simplest way to fix it. It's getting to the point where playing around any cards (other than OP ones with the offering rate bonus) isn't worth it, since there are so many to play around and the chance the opponent has a particular one is low. This, along with the spell bonus, should increase the skill cap.
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Actually I just realized with Arena rotating Paladin is finally getting good cards again as all of their silly stuff (Minibot/Muster/Keeper) is rotating and their spells suck

Do it Blizzard

To be honest, as a primarily Arena player, I would rather Arena be a single year instead of all of Standard. That would make it easier to actually get synergies in your deck. Still, this is a step in the right direction.
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skull_bonek23 posted...

As someone who also mainly plays Arena I'm glad to get a breath of fresh air. What part of only having standard cards is upsetting to you?

I wrote up an answer to this about ten different ways now and each time I read it over before posting it just doesn't sound like what I'm trying to say. After reading about all of the changes, all of which I like outside of the switch to standard, the first thought that comes to mind is creating a fun arena deck and immediately queuing into Jade Shaman, or Mech Mage, or whatever the deck du juor of the next expansion is.

We’ll be monitoring using the Standard format in Arena carefully, and we may add additional changes or formats in the future if it doesn’t meet our goals of having Arena feel interesting and different with each set release.

And I think the major reason I don't like it is because I'm not sure it's ever possible for a wild arena to exist next to the standard one like it does on ladder.
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I think the likely solution to most of these problems is the rotation of different sets into Arena every couple of months. It doesn't work right now because we only have a few different sets but eventually I think it'll solve both problems of bringing back bad/old cards that got rotated to wild and don't see any play, and changing up the arena meta.

With all of the possible combinations it'll be easy to keep things fresh even if they only bring in two sets at a time.
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As someone who only plays arena sparingly, I like these changes.

I find arena to always feel the same - pick the highest value minion curve you can with board clears and removal. I think these changes will make decks feel more fun and unique, without becoming constructed.


Personally I think they should go the "draft 40 cards, then pick 30 for your deck" route, but this will do for now.
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I think that's where I'm disagreeing with most peoples opinions, here and elsewhere, in that I don't think it won't start resembling constructed.

ClyTheCool posted...

Personally I think they should go the "draft 40 cards, then pick 30 for your deck" route,

I'd be 100% for this. Or something like giving you 75 cards overall and let you build the best deck possible out of what you get. Or all three of them, which would never happen for the same reasons a wild arena would never happen next to the standard one.

Honestly I'm all for including any game mode as long as it doesn't remove one already there.
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Well I hit 5 earlier today with Aggro Rogue. This is probably my favorite of the aggro decks just because of Swashburglar/Shaku/Xaril shenanigans as well as Shadowstep to either make a giant Edwin or to do about 20 Burst Damage with Leeroy.

Now it's wait for nerfs.

Giant Edwin is basically the one thing I can't stand about playing other rogues. Well, that and vanish->vanish. My primary deck doesn't run the hard removal to deal with Edwin if he gets big enough. Matches against other rogues generally have me winning slightly throughout, and then either giant Edwin or gadgetzan -> questing -> vanish, and then I die. I used to think my winrate was worst against priest, but in retrospect, it's probably actually rogue.

azuarc posted...

vanish

Do you mean conceal?
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Vanish, conceal...close enough. One's 1 mana and makes your whole board stealth. The other costs 6 and returns your board to your hand. Same diff. =p

one's a completely broken card, the other is completely unplayable, you know. Whatever.
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yeah, like I said. Same thing.

I hope rotating conceal means they'll give Rogue new toys (Drake too)

Replaced Paladin as my favorite class

I know I sound like a broken record here, but I'm so tired of the same decks over and over again, and that includes me playing them.

I know the nerfs aren't going to do much, but I'm hoping the changes to the ladder at least encourage some variety.
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I have hope the rotation will help a lot.
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I'm hoping that, after all is said and done, I'll one day be able to play against a Rogue deck that doesn't run Auctioneer. I don't hate that card like I do a few others, but damn am I tired of seeing it.
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Camden posted...

I'm hoping that, after all is said and done, I'll one day be able to play against a Rogue deck that doesn't run Auctioneer. I don't hate that card like I do a few others, but damn am I tired of seeing it.

That might actually be the case with Conceal and Tomb Pillager rotating!

There was also Oil Rogue once upon a time. Man that deck was fun

My rogue deck doesn't use auctioneer.

It does use Patches, but the primary mechanic is jade.

VeryInsane posted...

There was also Oil Rogue once upon a time. Man that deck was fun

All I remember from those days is a haze of taking 7 to the face, and then my opponent spending 2 mana to deal another 7 to my face and to every one of my minions.
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Lifecoach is quitting competitive Hearthstone. This is after he recently visited Blizzard to have a discussion about the state of the game.

That's not worrisome at all.
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https://twitter.com/bdbrode/status/835558239416692736

You ready boys?
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I was ready about two months ago.
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davidponte posted...

Lifecoach is quitting competitive Hearthstone. This is after he recently visited Blizzard to have a discussion about the state of the game.

That's not worrisome at all.

Did he elaborate at all or was he just, "I quit."
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redrocket_pub posted...

davidponte posted...

Lifecoach is quitting competitive Hearthstone. This is after he recently visited Blizzard to have a discussion about the state of the game.

That's not worrisome at all.

Did he elaborate at all or was he just, "I quit."

He goes into depth on his latest vlog on Youtube, but essentially he's tired of practicing longer and playing better than his opponents only for every game to come down to a coin flip, and he feels as if the devs either don't care or are incapable of making a balanced competitive scene.

He's moved on to Gwent, which, according to him, is a game where the more skilled player will win 90% of the time.

Overall, he feels the RNG in Hearthstone has made it no longer be a mentally challenging game.
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It means something for competitive HS but it's more of a casual game to just mess around with. RNG can be annoying at times but if it didn't have that the game would be extremely boring cause there's just not enough depth in it

Mistakes were made.

https://clips.twitch.tv/mryagut/AggressiveSkunkHassaanChop
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Killing Jaraxxus like that is already pretty amazing. That's just on another level.
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It also feeds into why Lifecoach is quitting competitive Hearthstone!
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I honestly don't care if Lifecoach leaves the game. This is a guy who clearly tries to view Hearthstone as a variation on chess, considering how far ahead he's trying to contemplate every permutation and theoretical line of play. He's better off playing some kind of perfect information game where he doesn't annoy everyone by roping on turn 2.

It's bad news for Hearthstone as a competitive game though - Lifecoach is a true pro. If he sees no depth in the future future, then it's likely true there's no depth.


I don't really care that much about Hearthstone as a competitive game, since I just always play bad decks and have fun losing with bad decks. but it's a pretty lazy design philosophy to say "more of a casual game to just mess around with". You can create a game that's fun and accessible for casuals but has depth for the pros too.

I also don't think Lifecoach is necessarily talking about RNG when he mentions the coinflip winrate. I think the problem is that Hearthstone basically plays itself. In most cases and most decks, there aren't a lot of skillful or interesting plays you make - you just do the most on curve and value plays possible every time. And if the game is that streamlined, it doesn't matter if you are more skilled than your opponent - you are both doing pretty much the same plays anyway. Which means win rates won't stray too far from 50% based on skill. I very much agree with Lifecoach on this.

I remember watching FD stream Hearthstone a couple years ago and something really bugged me about what was happening. He was calling out the card the opponent would play before they would do it. While this certainly indicated insight on FD's part, it meant that the motions of the game was basically preordained. The players are just going through the motions while the game resolves itself. That put me off of Hearthstone for a very long time. I really only played adventures until recently, when I finally invested more into the game so I could make more varied decks.

I do have fun playing this game, but I exist in the Rank 10 - Rank 17 range in both Standard and Wild. I play decks I think are fun and have interesting things happen like Egg Druid, Charge Djinni, Shadow Priest, or Thief Priest. But I really do not care about winning. I just enjoy playing the game. If I actually cared about winning, I would actually not care too much for this game because of what I've described about the game somewhat being on rails, and what Lifecoach says about how skill really doesn't play into it.
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CoolCly posted...

I remember watching FD stream Hearthstone a couple years ago and something really bugged me about what was happening. He was calling out the card the opponent would play before they would do it. While this certainly indicated insight on FD's part, it meant that the motions of the game was basically preordained.

With certain decks, and provided they have the according cards in their hand, yes. However, it's impossible to consistently make that call unless you've got massively good reads on your opponent's other moves, like which trades they make and set up for.

And if it were any other pro besides Lifecoach, yes, I would be concerned for what it means for the game. But not him. He always had a very rigid view on how the game was meant to be played, and it's obvious that Hearthstone has diverged from that view. I don't deny that it plays differently than it did back in the beta days, but that isn't strictly speaking to its detriment.

Pirate warrior isn't really any more unhealthy for the game than secret paladin was, and certainly better than undertaker hunter. The current meta is a little disheartening, sure, but I don't expect the game to remain extreme aggro or extreme control with very little in-between. And if one thinks there are no decisions to be made at either end, you're naive. The only time you have no choices are when you have no playable cards in your hand.

Is there a site out there that will, essentially, pick a random card for me? Not where I give it choices to pick from, but just a single card from the game at random? I thought out of the hundreds of card database sites out there, maybe there was one that had a button that would do so, but if there is I'm not seeing it. Obviously searching for 'random Hearthstone card' gives me an entirely different topic of results.
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Blizzard does tend to kill decks that have more complex decision trees, but I don't think they're trying to remove things that aren't autopilot. For example, combo decks get killed all the time, but that's because what's a complex series of decisions from one player is 0 decisions for the other play, which they don't like. But stuff like Reno is rarely autopilot, and midrange decks only feel that way because decks like Midrange Shaman just have very powerful and versatile cards. I think that problem can be fixed.

The coin flip aspect can be frustrating but the game needs to make up for its lack of variance somehow. I still think in a game like this you don't want to have low variance all the time, but it's not really balanced currently. Ragnaros and Sylvanas will take care of the biggest and most consistent offenders, at least in Standard. But then it's on to the next worst card.

I'm not really surprised Lifecoach left because he seemed frustrated with competitive play for a while. It's more concerning if more pros follow his example, which we'll have to see. But I also don't think most pros are in such a good position to do that as Lifecoach is, so it might not amount to anything.
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Haven't a handful of 'pro' players already tried quitting Hearthstone, only to come back when their viewers didn't follow them?
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HS is in a really bad place right now though, I think we can all agree.

Like, it is pretty unfun in all aspects right now. If I didn't have to get back to 20 to keep my CARD BACK streak alive, I wouldn't have played at all the past two months.
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Yeah, yesterday I played for the first time this month just to do that.
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Yeah I haven't even done 20 this month. I try to log in once a week for brawl and quests but I don't even manage that all the time.

I love Reno decks so you'd think I'd be happy with that outcome, but turns out I hate the mirror and how long games tend to go with that. Basically I miss when it was just an extremely greedy midrange deck and not THE control archetype.
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Hearthstone just gets stale too quick. The game is fun when adventures or new expansions come out, but once people figure out the meta you're just playing the same few decks over and over and it just gets so repetitive.
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I was so excited for this expansion, too. I made it to Rank 3 during the month it was released playing mostly Renolock and Dragon Priest, and haven't gotten anywhere close since, mostly due to spending less time playing.
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BlackDra90n posted...

Hearthstone just gets stale too quick. The game is fun when adventures or new expansions come out, but once people figure out the meta you're just playing the same few decks over and over and it just gets so repetitive.

This is why I prefer Arena way more than any other mode. I'd play a lot more if Arena wasn't gated (even if they removed/lowered rewards for arena)

Arena's even worse to me, there's zero synergy between cards at all so it comes down to slow value trading forever and who picked the better cards
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Playing Hunter on ladder because why the hell not, and I'm off to a solid 5-1 start today. No one ever expects to queue into a Hunter. Even less people expect to queue into a control Hunter.
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Yea, I used to be a mostly arena player but starting playing ladder more the last two expansions or so. Probably gonna go back to arena for a bit though I think.

I'm really hoping the new expansion really shakes things up a bit. The rotations alone gut half of my Reno deck so hopefully there's some nice stuff to fill the gaps.
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Camden posted...

Playing Hunter on ladder because why the hell not, and I'm off to a solid 5-1 start today. No one ever expects to queue into a Hunter. Even less people expect to queue into a control Hunter.

Honestly if I queue into a hunter I ONLY expect control Hunter. Anybody bothering to play Hunter is going to be doing something off the wall.
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No one I played today did, at least. I am only at rank 15, though.

Also, I'm just now remembering Mad Scientist exists. Probably should have been running that card.
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