Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic: Truth is Found in Death

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm 3 - 0 now and have played at least one Scourgelord in each game. I've drawn them both in the same game twice.
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https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/21098848

So excited for synergy picks going away. Could even get a free arena run too actually, which is neat.
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no more flappy bird in arena
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https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/21098847

When you start an Arena run during Hallows End, youll choose a Hero, then a Hero Power, and the cards offered in your picks will feature cards from BOTH of those classes, in addition to neutral cards. And dont forget, youll get a free Arena ticket just for logging in each week, so theres no excuse not to attend the party!

Oh man that's pretty cool.
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Flappy Bird being removed from arena is one of the best pieces of news ever from hearthstone.
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I imagine Mage + Rogue combined would be pretty silly tbh

Actually how do the tri class cards weigh in on that
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Mana-cost reductions on cards such as Dragons Breath, Solemn Vigil, Everyfin is Awesome, and Obsidian Shard will now apply after all other mana cost changes, such as the effects from cards like Naga Sea Witch.

Sigh. Just what we need are even more sea witch/giants combos. I can't wait. At least it would be hard for them to be as stupidly broken as filling your board with 8/8's on turn 5.
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Unlicensed Apothecary now reads: After you summon a minion, deal 5 damage to your hero.

So, I'm still not 100% sure how this is going to work with DK Warlock. The minions are summoned from it in a random order so do you just get a random number of 5 damage potions chucked at your face?

As far as the other news, the new arena mode is probably the most hyped I've been for a long time. Love arena, but hate what it's been lately. I imagine my gold total is going to suffer.
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my comments on arena changes

vicious fledgling gone: this is very good, and should have been the initial solution to get rid of him. appearance rate adjustments essentially do nothing to fix the problem while just slightly hiding it.

synergy picks gone: too little too late. if this had been done months ago maybe I'd still be playing arena right now.

"small appearance adjustments": very stupid and fixes nothing. exacerbates the existing problems in arena further.
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broken DK cards still in the arena pool: LOL
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Also, RIP finally to all of those arena runs from before it went standard. No more random mech decks popping up every so often.
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oh yeah I saw that they would be retiring all of the wild decks at the point when the halloween festival starts. that has probably been a long time coming, honestly.
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I assume they'll be doing the same thing at the opposite end of the event, too, so people can't carry their multi-class arena decks out of this time period.

Still kinda sad, though. It's kinda awesome that you could have held onto a GVG era arena that long. Like the WoW hunters who had the snake pet that gradually, slowly starved because they took away the ability to feed it.
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yeah I do kinda agree there in a weird way. my personal belief is they should have these cutoff points every time the arena meta changes. but because they've gone so long without doing it, there is now a ton of value (even just nostalgia or novelty) for having these wild arena decks still sitting around unused after so long. like, I don't think they should exist, but the fact that they do exist now is kinda cool and so it's a bit of a bummer that they'll kill those decks. it's a weird ambivalence.
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holy shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4zSn3Vsm5A

"WOW! WELL PLAYED!"
"D'awww, thank you!"

these are some top tier BMing emotes
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I don't think there's anything more satisfying than Counterspelling a UI
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Dear Lord, Ulti, you never experienced the evolution most MtG players go through.
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that feeling when you feed a dummy spell into their secret to test counterspell but can't play the main spell this turn

and they play another secret
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VeryInsane posted...

I don't think there's anything more satisfying than Counterspelling a UI

Mana binding a UI?
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Conversely

had a match versus a hunter. He passed turn 1 and I coined Prince 2 on my 1. He goes "Well played" and then conceded.

Welp.
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I have yet to lose to P2 played on curve, or even P2 shadowstep P2.

I did lose to a double shadowstepped P2, but that's it.
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UltimaterializerX posted...

I of course did all this with skill and in no way was handed a charity RNG win.

Please be quiet. I already have you down to just the one account under the assumption that you would continue to make most of your awful posts on your alts. This nonsense is beyond played out so please do everyone a favor and stop.
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IMO among the best 4 cards you can have opening is Firefly, Prince 2, Captain, and one of the following - Backstab, Shadowstep, Deckhand.

Like if I see firefly in my hand and I also see Captain I keep both because captain on 3 will pull a 2/2 patches. So a Captain after a Prince 2 pulling a 3/3 patches is just incredibly insane.
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Somehow ended up at 4

I got to 5 with Priest and then I played some Control Mage/Evolve Shaman to get to 4. Maybe I'm ranking this month after all, wasn't planning on it!
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UltimaterializerX posted...

trdl23 posted...

Dear Lord, Ulti, you never experienced the evolution most MtG players go through.

Which is...?

1. Start playing. Think blue is trash because it keeps losing among your casual buddies.
2. Find a good blue control player and you can never stick anything on the board. Starting hating blue.
3. Continue hating blue for 1-2 years, grumbling when your opponent plays an Island turn 1.
4. Start playing blue yourself. Trip over yourself when you realize it's different from anything else and hard to do.
5. Get better with blue. Suddenly realize you have very few if any "unwinnable" matchups.
6. Get familiar enough with blue that you learn how other decks can take it down. (It usually involves hitting early and often or just outvaluing them)
7. Appreciate that blue often punishes decks trying to be all-in on degeneracy.
8. Become the blue player that causes some other poor soul to enter stage 2. Or don't, but you know you could be if you wanted to.

It's not true of every player, but it's true of the vast majority that compete at more than a local level.
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In the past 8 games where I've drawn Prince by turn 2... I've also drawn patches before I've played a pirate (next turn or the turn after that one) in half of them.

I've lost all 4 of those games.
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My record in priest mirrors is still fucking bad. Mainly because I never draw the combo before they do.

Current match up versus another priest. He played Raza/Shadowreaper/Velen/Mind Blast... ALL ON CURVE.

Basically how hearthstone goes for me

For 3 days win like 60% of my games and climb
In a period of 2 hours lose all my games and erase all the progress I made in the past 3 days.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

I of course did all this with skill and in no way was handed a charity RNG win.

Please be quiet. I already have you down to just the one account under the assumption that you would continue to make most of your awful posts on your alts. This nonsense is beyond played out so please do everyone a favor and stop.

Fuck off and pull the bug out of your ass. RNG has zero skill aspect and the entire player base knows it. It isnt a running joke for no reason.
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trdl23 posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

trdl23 posted...

Dear Lord, Ulti, you never experienced the evolution most MtG players go through.

Which is...?

1. Start playing. Think blue is trash because it keeps losing among your casual buddies.
2. Find a good blue control player and you can never stick anything on the board. Starting hating blue.
3. Continue hating blue for 1-2 years, grumbling when your opponent plays an Island turn 1.
4. Start playing blue yourself. Trip over yourself when you realize it's different from anything else and hard to do.
5. Get better with blue. Suddenly realize you have very few if any "unwinnable" matchups.
6. Get familiar enough with blue that you learn how other decks can take it down. (It usually involves hitting early and often or just outvaluing them)
7. Appreciate that blue often punishes decks trying to be all-in on degeneracy.
8. Become the blue player that causes some other poor soul to enter stage 2. Or don't, but you know you could be if you wanted to.

It's not true of every player, but it's true of the vast majority that compete at more than a local level.

I like playing blue and pretty much loathe playing against it. Esper control is my jam. But if I had a choice between piloting a control deck to pro tours or blue being terrible, Id rather blue be terrible.

Only very recently have they figured out blue is cancer for the game and makes people not play in large numbers.
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UItimaterializer posted...

Forceful_Dragon posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

I of course did all this with skill and in no way was handed a charity RNG win.

Please be quiet. I already have you down to just the one account under the assumption that you would continue to make most of your awful posts on your alts. This nonsense is beyond played out so please do everyone a favor and stop.

Fuck off and pull the bug out of your ass. RNG has zero skill aspect and the entire player base knows it. It isnt a running joke for no reason.

Politely asks Ulti to please be quiet because he's ruining this topic with his "running joke". Get's told to fuck off.

Ulti really needs to grow up
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Ah, and see I never would have even seen that post had you not quoted it since he had switched to his alt for the insult, as is his MO.

But I will try just one more thing for Ulti's edification.

@UltimaterializerX

You said the fact that you got a "charity win" from your Elise Un'Goro Pack was proof of Hearthstone being RNG garbage. I shall present the counter arguments.

Argument the first: Elise is in your deck for specifically that purpose. To give you the chance of a strong late game play that can either save the game or close the game out. Your experience is one of that card working as intended which is to say that on occasion it will give you the nuts.

Argument the second: It's probable that with perfect play on your part from start to finish in that game you could have won before even having to rely on an Elise Pack. Your scenario involves a game that went very very very late. Unless I'm misunderstanding you played Guldan as the 29th draw from your deck so you only had 1 card left in your deck. Hearthstone being skill based isn't the fact that random things can happen, but is the fact that people who make optimal plays are going to be more likely to win over the course of many games. This is backed up by professional and tournament results of many top players. How does this relate to your situation? Well I think it's fair to say that in that specific match up you probably did not play optimally on every single one of the 20+ turns. And so - just to generalize some numbers for the situation - if you were to replay that exact scenario 1000 times then perhaps elise would account for 10 or so perfect results that swing the match in your favor. But of those 10 elise-responsible-results perhaps half of them could have been avoided entirely by playing optimally the whole way through and winning the game earlier before it reached that late point.

-Hearthstone isn't about being blessed by the RNG gods. It's about playing the different match up's in the correct way to optimize your chances. For the sake of argument let's say Pirate Warrior vs Taunt Druid is a 80/20 match up on average in favor of druid. It's essentially druid's match to lose most of the time. And so Pirate Warrior being piloted by a perfect player will win MORE than 20% of the time. They will win all 20% of the matches that were theirs to win and they will grab an additional few percent as a result of opponent misplays. Conversely Pirate Warrior being piloted by a sub-optimal player will win LESS than 20% of the time. Because they are making as many if not more mistakes than their opponents they will not be able to "steal" any wins from their opponents 80% and because they are making mistakes they will on some occasions throw a portion of the games that should have been theirs if they had played without mistake. This works across the board against all the other decks in circulation. You accept that there are match ups that you are incredibly unlikely to win, but you play in such as way to make sure that you at least get the wins that are your due.

tl;dr

RNG has an effect on the individual game and situation, but skill is what determines the overarching trends and it has a very tangible and measurable effect on results.

And this is not remotely up for debate.

If I see another rng whine from your main then you can consider this post goodbye forever in advance.
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dude I've tried to explain to him many times that playing to your outs isn't rng and he persists nonetheless

but I too only have his main unignored, which I think is the best way to handle things
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And i've tried before as well, but I figured since he seems to be back sliding even worse than usual with his rhetoric that I'd give it one final shot.
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Convinced Razakus Priest is best with circle package, it's just too strong between board clear and card draw

Now to test Auctioneer vs Lyra
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Anyone know the answer to this for sure?

If you have an Azure Drake on board, or any spell power minion, and you have a Kazakus Potion that does 4 to all and 5 to a single target, buffed to 5/6 through the spell power, does the single target take 6? I assume it does, but wasn't sure if the AOE killing the Drake unbuffed it back to 5 or not. I was going to do science but the Drake didn't live until the next turn so I wasn't able to.
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I know that with tainted zealot, when she dies, the next charge of Defile deals 1 damage instead of 2

I would ASSUME Azure Drake works the same way,

but I can't guarantee that a Kazakus Potion would work the same way as Defile
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I would actually guess the opposite. Defile is constantly checking board state to determine what to do. When you use a Kazakus potion that deals AoE then direct damage, it still does the animation for the direct damage before everything actually dies.
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I think it does it same time a la Wrath with Fandral kinda

May try it out though Thalnos and Kazakus are never both in my hand
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