Lurker > CybrMonkey

Now I'm just imagining a 6 mana Unleash the Grandmothers.
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Lurker extraordinaire

bng_mmmk posted...

For B, so what? How is splitting up the arena into two pools bad? And I really doubt if it would be 50%, but regardless, what exactly is the drawback?

You've seen how terrible they are at balancing (or even paying attention to) arena. They never consider arena when they nerf cards and half-ass most of their arena changes. Now imagine they have to balance two arena modes. I suppose they could just abandon wild arena to its fate like they've seemingly done with wild constructed, but what's the point of creating a new mode if you're not going to support it.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Right, with wild arena the card pool is so large that you shouldn't ever play around any particular card. That drastically drops the skill level and makes it very frustrating when your opponent does have an almost never seen card like Lightbomb.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Apparently the heat is because he made the situation awkward by doing it in public instead of pulling Maroon aside and expressing his concern in private. But Maroon is a professional BSer who's been carrying water for the NFL (and now WWE) on this issue for more than 30 years. Expressing your opinion privately isn't going to make him change is tune, nor is it going to help talent know that they shouldn't listen to him. +100 respect points to Corbin.
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Lurker extraordinaire

If someone like Sascha Zverev or Shapovalov had made it through then the final could have been interesting since we'd be talking about a young guy on a crazy hot streak. But there's nothing exciting about Kevin Anderson.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Right, my point is that value vs a mage doesn't matter. If you can't finish them off right after they play the DK then you weren't playing fast enough/going face enough, or they just kept clearing your board, in which case you weren't "dominating".
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Lurker extraordinaire

The argument is that when facing mage, you should be trying to play faster than them. "Dominating" means you have a pretty good board lead and have already whittled down their heath a fair bit by turn 9. The Jaina DK is a rather large tempo loss itself and takes 2-3 turns to regain the tempo even if you have things to ping. If you've been dominating then you should just be able to capitalize on this and lethal them over the next couple turns. The lifesteal is too slow to matter in this case. Meanwhile the DK just sits in your opponent's hand, useless until turn 9. Sure, in a value match-up the DK can just win, but then you probably weren't dominating in this sense. And since so many of the cards in this set reward having the board, that should always be your number 1 priority vs mage, not value, unless you have a specific type of deck, which will just be weak to the DK by its nature.
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Lurker extraordinaire

A little over $225K
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Lurker extraordinaire

Pretty sure two Patches would completely break the game. Every deck would want to run a pirate package and aggro Druid would be unstoppable.
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Lurker extraordinaire

It also helps when you do it once a year instead of once a week
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Lurker extraordinaire

I think Tribute to the Troops was still airing on NBC until a few years ago. Still, WWE isn't going to care about the AAA rating since the only part of the show that got any mainstream pub outside of Mexico was the Sexy Star thing.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Feels like Naito should have snuck into the top 10.
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Lurker extraordinaire

VeryInsane posted...

FWIW, you don't really need Murk Eye. Warleader and Megasaur are pretty much necessary though but they are both fantastic epics so there's that!

I did it without Murk Eye or Megasaurs. Obviously it takes a bit longer but it's doable. You reset until you get a Tidecaller -> Rockpool -> Warleader/Coldlight Seer curve and hope your draws are kind. Primalfin Lookout is fine as a Megasaur replacement.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Got Arthas. I did four of them with Murlocs. The others were with Jade Druid, Patron Warrior, Evolve Shaman, Inner Fire Priest, and Giant Hyena Please No Obliterate Hunter.
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Lurker extraordinaire

CybrMonkey posted...

I just got him down to 15 as Warrior and would have won easily if my second Frothing wasn't literally the last card in my deck.

I added a ton more draw and was able to beat him. The second Frothing was still the second to last card but since I drew it on turn 10 that didn't matter.
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Lurker extraordinaire

I just got him down to 15 as Warrior and would have won easily if my second Frothing wasn't literally the last card in my deck.
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Lurker extraordinaire

bng_mmmk posted...

Assuming you get him early on.

Sure. If it's late in the draft and you already have your big cards picking him will make you too heavy.
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Lurker extraordinaire

The nice thing about him is you can draft a lot smaller and solidify your curve because he will generally provide most of your lategame on his own.
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Lurker extraordinaire

It's only at about 80% coverage here and it's cloudy so there's not much to see.
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Lurker extraordinaire

At least until the next contest. It should be the first thing every new user sees.
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Lurker extraordinaire

KokoroAkechi posted...

Don't draft Hunter in arena. Life steal basically means you are at a disadvantage almost every match now.

This isn't really true. There's only two neutral lifesteal minions and they're both pretty bad, with the murloc being trash tier. The average deck will have maybe one lifesteal card. Even the class cards are pretty bad, the exception being priest which doesn't really matter because they could heal anyways.
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Lurker extraordinaire

dowolf posted...

Is there a video/Reddit post on this, or just a raw list?

Just the list right now as far as I know but I'm sure they'll discuss it on their podcast on Sunday.
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Lurker extraordinaire

New Lightforge arena class tier list is out:

Tier 1:
Druid
Paladin
Rogue

Tier 2:
Hunter
Mage
Warlock

Tier 3:
Priest

Tier 4:
Shaman
Warrior
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Lurker extraordinaire

This is one of those brawls where if you're losing by turn 4 and your hand sucks you're better off conceding.
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Lurker extraordinaire

The worst is any sort of discover brawl. First you have to wait 20 seconds for them to decide which copy of discover-a-card they want to play first. Then you have to wait for them to read the card text because they don't know what any of the options do. Then they sit there for no reason until the end of the rope. And that's turn 1.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Druid is the most "average" class, in that it's good at everything but not great at anything. Pretty good spells, pretty good minions, pretty good value cards (until they printed Ultimate Infestation for some reason). So if you're good at knowing when to trade, how much tempo to put on the board, and other fundamentals, you should do well with Druid. The only thing it's bad at is dealing with lots of large minions, but in this meta you want to be ahead and on the board so it shouldn't be a big problem unless it's a game you'd be losing anyway.

MariaTaylor posted...

I honestly think that the reputation of playing a face/aggro deck has a sort of negative stigma attached to it. there's probably a lot of Arena Mastery players who see themselves as being "above" playing Hunter and this could explain why it gets picked less frequently. that is just speculation though, I really have no idea.

I'm not sure that's it. If you really understand the game you understand how hard it is to play aggro, especially in arena. I think dowolf is on the right track that all of the good taunts in Un'goro dissuaded all but a few people from figuring out how to best play hunter, when they could otherwise just play classes that didn't change much and were just as good.
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Lurker extraordinaire

MariaTaylor posted...

hunter way less often

This is the really interesting one. Hunter is probably the hardest class to play perfectly because every single point of damage matters and it's hard to time when to flip the switch and go face. And there are some very good arena hunter players - Merps had the best average in NA the past month and Hunter ended up his highest average class. Hunter is also generally a counter to rogue and mage, which dominate the high win brackets. So you'd think good players would be picking it.
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Lurker extraordinaire

MariaTaylor posted...

Kazakus isn't even a synergy card but for some reason blizzard's favorite class gets Kazakus while the others don't get Aya.

It seems like they're using "synergy" as a short hand for cards that change how you build your deck around it. So Kazakus forces you to skip duplicates just the like the Princes force you to skip their respective drops. The problem is that by this definition every card should be a synergy card, because you should always be drafting based on what you've already picked. Divine Favor a "synergy" card because it pushes you to draft cheap cards, but it doesn't make the cut. The whole thing is poorly done. Including your complaint that Aya somehow doesn't get synergy status.

MariaTaylor posted...

according to this thread it is one of the cards that was thought to not be appearing due to a bug. however, one of the top upvoted post is someone saying that they were offered sindragosa. so it may actually be appearing.

Yep, they patch all of the missing cards back in yesterday.
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Lurker extraordinaire

VeryInsane posted...

It's also tough to make an algorithm at the start of the expansion, a lot of the cards are new to the pool so it's not like we know the true value of them yet

Unless there is a new mechanic, though, you've already seen what everything is worth. Almost every card is just a variation on a card we've seen before, so all you need to do is plug in the specifics of the new cards into the existing algorithm. And unlike constructed, it's pretty easy to predict the meta in arena because it will always be based on neutral commons and rares as well as how easy it will be to curve out.
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Lurker extraordinaire

MariaTaylor posted...

From LightForge's own website

The key part in what you quoted is "data gathered from average players". Hearth Arena basically has people value a card and then adjust it for how well it performs for people using the app. The Lightforge has built an algorithm that determines how valuable every aspect of a card is based on the meta (what is freeze worth? 4 attack on a 3 drop? Doing one damage all minions?). There is no player valuation of cards with the rare exception of when the algorithm spits out something that seems very wrong and they either find a bug or adjust the card (there are maybe 20 cards they've done this for, and often it turns out the algorithm was more correct than they were).

So the difference is that, whereas Hearth Arena tries to evaluate how well the average player uses a card, the Lightforge evaluates how good the card is objectively if it were used perfectly. That's why Hearth Arena is better for average players, because the card values will be closer to how well they will be able to use them. Once you hit a 4-5 win average and understand arena fundamentals and how you should be using each card, you should be looking at the Lightforge (technically the audience they target is 7+ win players, but if you have a 5 win average and are looking to improve it will be much more useful).
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Lurker extraordinaire

Jakyl25 posted...

The (serious) replies to this tweet trying to name them are sad

The same thing happens whenever he talks about top draws. Then he has to remind people that wrestling exists beyond the US post 1985.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Maryland
Virginia
Delaware
West Virginia
Pennsylvania
New York
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont
New Hampshire
Florida
Ohio
Tennessee
Wisconsin
Iowa
Illinois
Louisiana
Texas
Colorado
Arizona
Nevada
Washington
California
Alaska

Also DC and Puerto Rico
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Lurker extraordinaire

Another card for evolve decks.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Jakyl25 posted...

They've just decided to roll with the idea that the third hour is the least viewed

Isn't it only a difference of 250K or so? If that's the planned quality of the third hour going forward why would anyone continue watching it?
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Lurker extraordinaire

I opened a Ysera with my saved packs, so I'm happy. Also opened an Ozruk, but they can't all be winners.
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Lurker extraordinaire

I sure love getting 2 common cards as a reward for 8 wins in arena. Thanks, Blizzard.
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Lurker extraordinaire

I think this still explains why Wyatt is so boring:
https://twitter.com/MrBrandonStroud/status/869355685091397632

Also, I get the feeling someone accidentally switched the second and third hour in the Raw script and nobody caught it.
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Lurker extraordinaire

The thing with Prophets is that if you hold them in your hand you can drop them for free and get an extra 7 drop on your Doppel Evolve turn. Maybe still not good enough but it might be worth trying.
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Lurker extraordinaire

Camden posted...

When Evolve first came out I ran Spiders, Racketeers and Moat Lurkers in addition to the usual suspects. Moat Lurkers seemed to work out the best of those three choices, though obviously Doppelgangster was the stand out.

Nerubian Prophet and Bomb Squad are also possibilities.
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Lurker extraordinaire

It's so bad I just had a golden shaman coin hero power against me on turn 1.
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Lurker extraordinaire