Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic #5: The Generated By Meta

(+) Yeah! (+)

It didn't seem to happen all that often before. Obviously Priests would do it but not many others did. Now it seems like every deck is running oodles of healing. I had never seen anyone play Alexstrasza this month until last night. I've seen it played in 8 games in the last 24 hours. Also seen more people use the +8 heal off Zephyrs in the last 24 hours than the rest of the month combined.

Then there's the usual lifesteals, DR heals and healing cards that I had seen previously but just seeing them more often now. Although I had never seen the Druid decks with the lifesteal minions in, I've seen it 3 times today.

Like I guess people maybe switched to more counter aggro decks since it's the end of the month?

Now this is the quality content I'm subscribed to Dane for.



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Just got 7th place with Rafaam in a game in which I won 1 fight total. 1 triple the entire game. That hero is actual garbage.

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Followed VI's Battlegrounds guide to the letter and came second with Queen Togwaggle. I did get some decent rolls from the store. Time to try again. This time I have Galakrond.

Rafaam is like top three!

You just have to get used to his unique tavern-up order.

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FFDragon posted...

Rafaam is like top three!

You just have to get used to his unique tavern-up order.

I'm following the suggestions/order of probably the best Auto-Chess player on the planet (bebe)! I'm just crazy unlucky with Rafaam. He's overall top tier, but I'd probably take him 5th or 6th if I was offered every hero.

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I'm almost 9k now somehow

I'm starting to find out that against Saurlisk builds just open you up to power leveling to 6 and finding KalyNadinas/Megasaurs that crush them. So thanks Saurlisk gamers.

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same thing if you are facing derryl when he's on 3. Just level up and take the relatively low damage.

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Well, he beat his old record.



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Nearly 20/20 Bronze Warden, Poison Mackeral, 16/16 Razorgore, Brann, and a couple other useful units is an 8th place comp. Bolvar, Poison Mackeral, 30/30 Golden Selfless, 10/40 Battlemaster, Ghastcoiler, Sneeds (after having Lightfang for quite a while) isn't top 4. This high-roll, take 20 damage on the 9 gold turn meta is trash. I see why bebe quit for TFT. TFT changes the meta every 2 weeks. The last meta-changing patch for Battlegrounds was in March. Imagine asking people for $20 for a few months worth of perks and then nearly ignoring the game mode.

On another note, going to have 2 Legends walk me through a couple Arena runs. Any fun builds to look out for?

Ok sure. Just finished another game. On the 9 gold turn this guy has Lightfang AND buffed Foe Reaper. I take 16 damage. 3 turns later I hit the same FUCKING guy and die. How is this the only auto-battler that can't seem to figure out match-up RNG?

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Just had a game where a Priest dropped a Fate Weaver T4 and then 2 more Fate Weavers, a Sethekk Wellweaver and some spells on T5. Like I'm not sure there was anything whatsoever I could have done about that even if I got to handpick the cards from my deck each turn.

The one nice thing about the star bonus is that if you're in an unfavorable match and not on a win streak, you can just concede if things don't roll well early. Like just had a match with a priest where he likely was going to win but the match would take forever so just conceded on like Turn 5 when it was clear chances of winning were low.

Wow, I felt like I was doing awful in standard last season, at best 50-50 with all my decks, worse with some, didn't even use up all my star bonus (ended in like plat 10 or something).

Kept the 10x multiplier. I'm actually fairly relieved, I was expecting like 7x or 8x.

Meanwhile in wild...11x multiplier (!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I streaked pretty hard on the way back to rank 5, so I can see how it happened, but I'm still flattered that I apparently have high legend MMR. Figured 11x was just never going to happen for me. Most of that streak happened with a budget deck missing multiple epics and legendaries too. Guess that means I can get to legend for free this month, 1 extra pack, woo.

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ESY16 posted...

I see why bebe quit for TFT. TFT changes the meta every 2 weeks. The last meta-changing patch for Battlegrounds was in March. Imagine asking people for $20 for a few months worth of perks and then nearly ignoring the game mode.

Even if BGs was getting patches every 2 weeks, TFT is also just better. It's deeper and more complex, has more expression of skill and far more viable compositions.

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Actually now that I think about it, isn't the system worse than the old system reset by a long way?

Didn't you used to lose 4 ranks at reset? So in my instance, my high was Diamond 6 so at reset I'd have gone to Diamond 10. Even if we say you lose stars instead of ranks, I'd have lost 20 stars in the old system and dropped to Platinum 3 at season start.

In the new system I was Diamond 6 so get 8 bonus stars. My bonus stars will wear off at Platinum 5. So not only do my bonus stars wear off before I reach where the old system would have put me. I am also going to have to play like 50 games to even get to Plat 5

Like I get that it is now far easier to get from Rank 5 to Legend since you're only staring at 15 stars with no win streak instead of 25 but in all other areas it seems worse?

ShatteredElysium posted...

Actually now that I think about it, isn't the system worse than the old system reset by a long way?

Didn't you used to lose 4 ranks at reset? So in my instance, my high was Diamond 6 so at reset I'd have gone to Diamond 10. Even if we say you lose stars instead of ranks, I'd have lost 20 stars in the old system and dropped to Platinum 3 at season start.

In the new system I was Diamond 6 so get 8 bonus stars. My bonus stars will wear off at Platinum 5. So not only do my bonus stars wear off before I reach where the old system would have put me. I am also going to have to play like 50 games to even get to Plat 5

Like I get that it is now far easier to get from Rank 5 to Legend since you're only staring at 15 stars with no win streak instead of 25 but in all other areas it seems worse?

It really depends what your winrate is. If you go pure 50% winrate, it gets you back to where you would have been about as fast. (Since you didn't move much under the old system with that winrate).

But yeah, in general "use up your star bonus" is just an extra hoop to jump through before it drops you off a few ranks below where you finished last season. (Probably about 7 ranks lower instead of 4 ranks lower like before, but there's only 3 stars per rank so 7x3 = 21 vs 4x5 = 20, so about the same number of stars lower on average).

Still, the added step of using up bonus stars is time consuming; I used to get rank 5 in both standard and wild each month, but didn't hit diamond 5 in both standard and wild last month.

On the other hand, it doesn't really punish you for skipping a season. Like I barely played standard last month, didn't use up my star bonus, kept the 10x mult. If I barely played one of standard or wild for a few seasons under the old system I would fall all the way down to rank 20 in that format.

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I don't understand how the stars get you back as fast? Like me running out my bonus stars will put me below where I would have been in the old system.

So now I have to play out matches to get to a rank that would be lower than me playing zero matches in the old system.

One neat thing is when you win streak, you get double stars. So 9x or 8x becomes 18x or 16x.

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I play exclusively on mobile and I'm not sure what issue you are describing there?

ShatteredElysium posted...

but in all other areas it seems worse?

It's definitely worse. I didn't play wild until the last couple days of the month, when I realized I was sitting on a x8 multiplier and hadn't played at all. I played a little, got to the point where it was only x4, but kept getting shelled by really obnoxious wild decks and bailed. I will now have effectively regressed more than halfway down the ladder.

I tend to skip out on standard more frequently than I do on wild. Any kind of hiatus from the game basically makes you start from scratch.

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It took me 39 matches (26-13) for my bonus stars to wear off. Assuming I follow a similar trend to last month, it's going to be like 80-90 matches total to get to Diamond 10 where I would have started in the old drop 4 ranks system.

If I had the same winrate as last months P5 > D10 combined with what I already have done this month that would put me at 39-30. So by the time I get to D10, I would have probably been D5 under the old system.

9043 mmr, hit the big number finally

last game was pretty epic too, I was murlocs pyramad and the opponent was Yogg beasts. I couldnt get a Brann at all, and I couldnt get Divine Shield off of five attempts at Megasaur, but I got double mackeral and a righteous protector to bounce them. One had windfury though(thought it helped against beasts, seemed neutralish though) but I got really lucky that a ghoul popped out of my opponents ghastcoiler and that reset the shield on the windfuried Macks turn. Sniped his Golden Mama and Baron and was able to just get the victory.

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Pushed from the 4k the game gives you to 5.5k in BGs and honestly... I just don't see a reason to continue.

TFT is just a better game in every respect bar one. Battlegrounds has a stronger concept of transitioning and more precisely transitional units - this does however have the side effect of making 70% of the cards useless in the late game.

While you'd never play a Mecharoo in the late game of a BG, in TFT the 1 cost Xayah can either be tripled twice (9x of the unit) to make it powerful enough on it's own or maintain it's place as the celestial and blademaster traits it gives are valuable.

The ability to scout in TFT lets you more accurately react to what the other players are doing and respond to them.

The positioning aspect of up to 9 units TFT on a 28 hex board rather than BGs 7 units in a line is significantly more complex and interesting allowing far more counterplay.

I just... don't see a reason to play it unless you're already entrenched with a big streaming audience and/or tournament entries.

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I 100% agree, and it's why I was so bitter when they took away features and put them behind a paywall. Any other auto-battler has more depth and everything they offer for money is purely cosmetic.

In other news, I just had a Hunter save a 0-cost Murozond to, at one point, clear my board with the Soul Mirror I had just used, except for my 2/4 Mo'Arg Artificer. Then he tried to coin flip me 4 times with Nagrand Slam for lethal, since I was at 11.



.... Except he forgot what two Artificers do to Explosive Traps.

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It's actually worse than just cosmetics - the difference between discovering 2 and 4 heroes is legitimately a competitive advantage given their imbalanced power levels.

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That's what I meant. Other auto-battlers don't offer any kind of advantage for money, whereas Battlegrounds does, and it's also one of the weakest auto-battlers out there. It's not a good combo.

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How else is a small indie company like Blizzard supposed to make any money, though?

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azuarc posted...

It's definitely worse. I didn't play wild until the last couple days of the month, when I realized I was sitting on a x8 multiplier and hadn't played at all. I played a little, got to the point where it was only x4, but kept getting shelled by really obnoxious wild decks and bailed. I will now have effectively regressed more than halfway down the ladder.

I tend to skip out on standard more frequently than I do on wild. Any kind of hiatus from the game basically makes you start from scratch.

I want to append this by saying that I looked at my stars when June began and it doesn't work like I presumed. Both my standard and wild have stars reflecting my position on the standard ladder. Either that, or the game remembers where I would have gotten to on wild if I had played things out.

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Ill try TFT one day, mostly just behind and battlegrounds is super stale.

Mecharoo actually has some use in the late game so its a poor example of a bad tier 1 (Micro Machine is a better example). Its a guaranteed reset for Deflecto builds. Theres obviously better (Egg) but the fact that it counters ghoul and is almost 100% gonna proc is bigger than most think.

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Mecharoo can also counter Zapp with certain builds but yeah I get what you're saying.

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azuarc posted...

Either that, or the game remembers where I would have gotten to on wild if I had played things out.

It does remember where you would have gotten yes.

I didn't get back to legend last month in standard (didn't even get above plat) but Hearthstone remembered that I got to legend recently and gave me 10 stars anyway.

You can skip one month without playing a format at all and not slide. If you skip multiple months in a row there is gradual MMR decay (this is true in most Blizzard games like Starcraft and HotS, it assumes you are out of practice if you've been gone for 6 months), but that's still probably small, like going from 9 stars to 7 or 8 stars.

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Remember when someone said something shitty before?

But now they are saying something NOT shitty?

Fuck them for improving.

That's you.

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Not surprised but wow at Ulti calling out people for hypocrisy after getting clowned on reddit for quitting the game and coming back.

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Just had me a game that really exemplifies this topic title.



My first two Skeletal Dragons were created by a Soul Mirror that I got from a Renew that I got from a Lazul that I got from my Galakrond hero power. I had another Lazul earlier from a Thoughtsteal that I used to get a Psyche Split, and then my own Lazul got another Psyche Split, which turned those dragons into the ones you see here, which then generated 9 out of the 10 cards in my hand, plus the Veranus on the board.

This meta is stupid.

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https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/gvmuot/getting_the_66_golden_finkle_einhorn_in/

This video is pretty great.

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At what rank does wild become mostly batshit OP decks that random fun decks have no business playing against?

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Wild feels like that at any rank imo
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Further evidence that Priest mirrors are ridiculous.



That was my 3rd Soul Mirror of the matchup. And then I ended up using three Thoughtstolen fully-invoked Galakronds to wack him repeatedly with the weapon charges to win.

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Was in the final two in a game of battlegrounds with a shielded mech build but only with bad mechs along with a random Maexxna and Battlemaster to rounds things out, against Milhouse with the shielded Saurolisk and avoid taverning up build. We were both in single digits so any win was lethal, even for his one star minions as I was at one health.

Deck Tracker literally gave us the exact same percentage chance to win, I believe it was 44.7%? The entire battle literally came down to him eventually having two Saurolisks on board, one with a shield and one without, and which one my Maexxna decided to attack.

I lost.

But wow, don't think I've seen deck tracker toss out a split percentage like that outside of early game 50/50s.

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I did Zerus on AFK for the first time, the other 3 drop was Crowd Favorite so I was still doing ok in fights for the first couple of turns

Then I got an Imp Mama on my 8 gold turn. Tripled into a Brann turn after.

Needless to say I did pretty well that game. (Power Leveled to 6 then transitioned to Murlocs)

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