Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic: MONSTER HUNT

(+) Yeah! (+)

Having just finally saw Infinity War a couple days ago, I realized something. <Infinity War spoilers obv>

Thanos believes randomness is good balance.
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holy hell Cave Hydra is an insanely underrated card. I played 4 matches with my Hunter deck tonight after adding it, and Cave Hydra was an essential card to winning in 3 of those 4 matches.

the other game was a loss.

I basically added it just to mess with Paladin, and it helped a lot with that against them in the Heroic Brawl, but tonight I didn't face any Paladin opponents and it was still huge against all other types of decks.
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Camden posted...

Now that Priest can't steal them all the time, is silence the only real punish to running Loot Hoarder over Engineer? Engineer is better if you're topdecking and desperately need a card asap, but I feel like I should be safe running Loot Hoarders for the most part.

Yeah, unless you need the draw/are Quest Rogue
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dowolf posted...

LiquidOshawott posted...

Also Geist is ok but you dont necessarily need it in the Warlock matchup, but you do need weapon removal or maybe even death to deal with early giants

porque no los tres?

as in literally, you should be running deaths, geist, and an ooze + maybe Harrison imho. Geist is also great against Baku Rogues to get rid of Cold Bloods, and getting rid of Arcane Missiles against Tempo Mage certainly isn't bad. And against Taunt Druid, getting rid of Naturalize destroys their deck.

Well the deck is already favored against Cubelock regardless, you have solid resources and removal and a lot of solid early to mid game minions that can pressure them and make them use removal inefficiently. Twilight Drake alone is difficult for them to break through, and in Paladin its a nilla 4/6

That said, One of the better matchups for it might be Warrior? The odd ones rely a lot on shield slam and getting rid of that is huge
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Man as someone who hasnt really played wild that Togwaggle/Azalina combo deck looks pretty stupid and fun
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UltimaterializerX posted...

Worth noting is dowolf was the guy who originally told me Geist was bad!~

Geist was a bad counter to Jade Idol, unless you were literally trying to fatigue your opponent.

Control Priest goes to fatigue a lot~

LiquidOshawott posted...

Well the deck is already favored against Cubelock regardless, you have solid resources and removal and a lot of solid early to mid game minions that can pressure them and make them use removal inefficiently. Twilight Drake alone is difficult for them to break through, and in Paladin its a nilla 4/6

That said, One of the better matchups for it might be Warrior? The odd ones rely a lot on shield slam and getting rid of that is huge

We're not that favored without it, though, because DK Gul'dan is stupid. And in this meta, you don't want your winning matchups to be e.g. 60/40 -- you want 80/20.

Tank Up warrior is generally a losing matchup period, since Control Priest will literally run out of damage, but you are right -- it does help.
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Blizzard announced balance changes will happen after HCT finals at the end of May. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20764026353

Iksar commented yesterday that they were looking at a subset of cards from these options.

We would not change all of these cards, but these are the cards weve discussed. Sunkeeper, Call to Arms, Baku Paladin Hero Power, Spiteful, Lackey, Guldan, Dark Pact, Librarian, Quest Rogue, and Doomguard

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/8hnw1z/iksar_responded_last_night_clarifying_his_tweets/

I think Naga Sea Witch was another card they were looking at for wild.
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I kinda figured, I cant remember the last when nerfs didnt happen after a HCT

Or during qualifiers, at least. (Probably Undertaker?)
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Sunkeeper Tarim - eh
Call to Arms - yes, nerf
Baku Paladin Hero Power - yes nerf
Spiteful - eh
Lackey - yes, fix the mana cheating already
Gul'dan - not so sure about this one, Warlock was basically unplayable before KnC, so Gul'dan itself is not a problem. though, granted, I think nerfing Raza instead of Anduin was also the right move and Raza was unplayable before DK Anduin
Dark Pact - nerf it into the fucking ground
Librarian - eh
Rogue Quest - eh
Doomguard - eh, card has existed for a long time and never been a problem. the mana cheating is obviously the problem and blizzard refuses to acknowledge this.
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with doomguard specifically it's an even bigger problem because you get to mana cheat and you circumvent the two card discard penalty, which is huge.
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Spiteful and Doomguard are the two I'd like to see nerfed the most out of that bunch.
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Things I can see happening with the cards

Tarim - Stats reduced to 2/6 or mana to 7
-this really depends what they do with Baku paladin. I think Tarim in odd paladin would be pretty scary even at 7. The 2/6 Stat line means it no longer gets three trades without removal.

C2A - mana to 5
Basically hits both Murloc and even paladin and odd paladin can only get 1 drops. This is almost 100% the nerf if this card is hit, but Id argue in a vacuum as strong as the card is, paladin needs it to be viable right now and should not he hit until other cards from other classes are.

Baku hero power - summon a 2/2 silver hand knight
This was suggest by someone else but I think this is probably the best change. It stops win more cards like level up from snowballing with the flooding but you still get the benefit from an upgraded hero power.

Spiteful summoner - mana to 7 or summon consumes the spell

Spiteful summon I think is a card that has some uses in more control like decks (mainly mage) that want to have some more mid game push in mirrors or other control matchups. But I think at 7 mana the card is just bad in those decks but Maybe not bad in ones specifically made around them. I can also see them simply nefing the stats of spiteful itself. Maybe all the way down to 1/1

Lackey - mana to 6
Probably the most cut and dry scenario.

Guldan - hero power deals two heals two. Or summon one of each type of demon that died. Maybe both.

Guldan is busted. Its probably going to be one of the nerfed cards honestly the second change helps a lot of issues with both decks

Dark pact - a lot of stuff
I dont tnink theyll hit this and lackey at the same time so Ill be going as if they are not hitting lackey. The first would be just a mana to 2. This is even more significant than lackey to 6 because it means you cant umbra cube and pact or voidlord has pact.

The next would be to reduce the healing, maybe even as far as to three. But I think that this is a petty bad change as it just makes its polarizing matchups even worse and doesnt change its favorables that much

I could also see them changing it so it heals equal to the health or attack of the minion that is sacrificed.

Librarian - mana to 2
This is probably what it should have been in the first place. The only other could be to make it a 0/1.

Quest rogue - completely changing or killing the card

Right now I dont think theyll do a small tweak for this card. I can see stuff like all minions you play are silenced, destroying all non minion in your hand and deck, etc.

Doomguard - charge is on the battlecry or giving it rush and reducing the discard to 1

Basically the first means you can still play it from your hand at the cost now that most discard synergy is gone. The next is more board control but is a card worth about 3 health on the minion
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Definitely think itll be a Warlock card, CTA, Caverns again, and Spiteful. Maybe an additional warlock card or Pally card.

Only card Im surprised wasnt listed was Cube
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watching Kibler's stream. I didn't know until it just happened that if Tess casts psychic scream, the rest of the cards she plays after that are played by the opponent, since Tess is in their deck now. It nearly got him killed. Funny stuff.

KokoroAkechi posted...

C2A - mana to 5
Basically hits both Murloc and even paladin and odd paladin can only get 1 drops. This is almost 100% the nerf if this card is hit, but Id argue in a vacuum as strong as the card is, paladin needs it to be viable right now and should not he hit until other cards from other classes are.

this was suggested by Kripp and I think it's a fairly decent solution because of how it interacts with the main paladin decks right now. also nerfing it from 4 to 5 doesn't make it totally unplayable if someone wanted to run a non baku non genn paladin deck which I do agree is important.

KokoroAkechi posted...

Dark pact - a lot of stuff
I dont tnink theyll hit this and lackey at the same time so Ill be going as if they are not hitting lackey. The first would be just a mana to 2. This is even more significant than lackey to 6 because it means you cant umbra cube and pact or voidlord has pact.

The next would be to reduce the healing, maybe even as far as to three. But I think that this is a petty bad change as it just makes its polarizing matchups even worse and doesnt change its favorables that much

I could also see them changing it so it heals equal to the health or attack of the minion that is sacrificed.

the last solution sounds like the best one. the amount of healing it provides is INSANE. for reference, paladin has a card that heals 6 health for 2 mana. why is healing 8 health for 1 mana a thing???? Forbidden Healing was a 2:1 ratio. why is this card an 8:1 ratio? how does this even seem remotely fair? it blows my mind that anyone at Blizzard thought this was anywhere close to balanced.

then you add on the fact that it's an activator for some insane cards (lackey, cube, voodoo doll) and could be used for other archetypes like eggs or god knows what else... it kinda underlines the fundamental problem behind Hearthstone design with class cards being a thing. when ONLY warlock has access to this kinda of power level on an 'activator' card, it means an entire deck archetype comes into play that ONLY warlock is allowed to play, and they shut everything else out.

similarly, ONLY paladin has access to the 1/1 taunt with divine shield, which gives them a huge earlygame advantage over every other class in the game, and is the main reason why they are shutting out so much of the rest of the meta.
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I would also rather see Voidlord get looked at than Doomguard

Think the cheating package is strong and will ultimately be what gets hit but the 3/9 is way more troublesome, especially since if you Silence it it becomes Cubed and two more pop out with taunt
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Voidlord and Doomguard are fine as cards, its the way Guldan can cheat them thats annoying. Lackey and skull are both frustrating as HELL.

I'm going to pretty upset if Voidlord gets nerfed. Poor guy, not his fault at all Warlock has a high tier bullshit package at the moment. I'm probably the only person playing the game that actually plays it from hand for the normal cost or the card.
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as someone who despises the idea of a 3/9 taunt that spawns 3 additional 1/3 taunts

I'd actually be totally fine if the opponent had to pay 9 mana for it every time

that is a pace at which I could actually win games
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The mana cheating didnt really get bad until Voidlord though, you used to be able to cheat out Doomguard and even MalGanis in the past without it being extremely oppressive (looking at you, Voidcaller)

I mean it was but we were too busy being distracted by a bunch of other BS cards to Care >_>
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er, lackey and voidlord were released at the same time

it's literally just as valid to say 'mana cheating didn't get bad until voidlord' as 'mana cheating didn't get bad until lackey'
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same with dark pact

all three cards were released together
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Yeah but voidcaller was released years earlier than all of those cards and Demon Warlock never became scourge of the meta

Theres been times where its been like, the third best deck but that arguably was more cause of Molten and Zoo package than it
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and nobody is saying voidcaller should be nerfed, they're saying lackey should be nerfed
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And my point is nobody would care for it to be nerfed if it wasnt for Voidlord

Im comparing it to Doomguard, not to Lackey
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you think nobody would care about a card that tutors a 5/7 charger out of your deck and plays it for you

voidlord is not a problem if you can't cheat it out with lackey
doomguard is not a problem if you can't cheat it out with lackey

lackey is still a problem even if doomguard alone is nerfed (control warlock still gets infinite taunts)
lackey is still a problem even if voidlord alone is nerfed (cubelock still gets infinite chargers)

it's pretty obvious which card is the problem here
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The common problem with these cards is that you can heavily restrict what they target. If they couldn't target what they wanted so easily they wouldn't be as busted.

there is zero problem with doomguard

it's subverting doomguard's downsides on demand that's the problem

that's why skull and lackey+pact are bad, while voidcaller was okay
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back in formats when zoo was especially strong doomguard from hand was often an extremely strong play. Blizzard is not going to change something without considering what its going to impact in future sets/rotations

Also a lot of players are saying that voidlord should be hit. Its more because of the ripple effect of decks being forced to run silence for it makes. A nerf to voidlord would need to be more elaborate though.

And if voidcaller was in stardard now with cube and umbra, etc around it would 100% be complained about. Warlock currently has some of the strongest control tools it has ever had and giving it an okay statted minion with huge upside a turn earlier than lackey is very strong.
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Just got a free win from a warrior who threw the game trying to BM.

All he had to do was punch my face for lethal, but he played out his hand first. Played two whirlwinds, which killed my Kathrena, who pulled a dire frenzied Misha from my deck. He couldn't remove the taunt, and I won a couple turns later.

turbopuns2 posted...

Just got a free win from a warrior who threw the game trying to BM.

All he had to do was punch my face for lethal, but he played out his hand first. Played two whirlwinds, which killed my Kathrena, who pulled a dire frenzied Misha from my deck. He couldn't remove the taunt, and I won a couple turns later.

I had a priest who had me all the way to fatigue and like I was a mage. I was a card up but both our hands were empty and its like he wins because he can just heal faster than a 1 dmg ping.

Well I rope my entire turn and stuff and then he ropes his entire turn and its like your opponent left and Im like huh
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KokoroAkechi posted...

And if voidcaller was in stardard now with cube and umbra, etc around it would 100% be complained about. Warlock currently has some of the strongest control tools it has ever had and giving it an okay statted minion with huge upside a turn earlier than lackey is very strong.

Wild Cubelock plays Voidcaller. Lackey is still the stronger card because of the tutor effect.
Skull and Lackey are what make that deck work in both formats. Voidcaller is good, but the old zoo decks weren't built around mana cheating, it was just an occasionally strong upside that your opponent had to respect. The critical mass of demon summoning effects is what makes Voidcaller less fair. It's like how Rez Priest was a dumb meme deck until they printed too many rezzes and clones and it became Big Priest. This kind of thing is fine in moderation but too much of it makes the game degenerate.
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Unless something has changed a lot of top wild players consider voidcaller to be the better card. It was not too long ago when lackeys were only at like 1 in wild cube.
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I'd be happier with making the recruit a 2/1 or even 3/1 rather than 2/2. making them 2/2 will just exacerbate the issue by allowing the paladin to spam recruits which are more difficult to remove. considering the deck relies on effects which buff the recruits you have on the board, buffing the health of the paladin recruits would be a buff to the deck archetype, not a nerf.
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Face Infinite Toki for the first time today. Managed to bring her down on my first go, but the restart really threw me off. Luckily I had a pretty solid deck and got lucky with some draws to get a lot of burn damage in.

Time to face Hagatha.
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I mean, I'm comparing Voidlord to Doomguard, not to Lackey as it's a different type but it's the taunt inclusion to the package that makes it strong. Everyone seems to be focusing on Doomguard's part of the package and saying that's the "problem" but it's Voidlord that's stronger (Hence why Control Warlock is just about, if not as good as Cube and Wild Cube is around the same as Giantslock in strength. Voidlord and the minions to cheat it out are in both while Doomguard isn't in the second of each one)

I wouldn't be surprised to see both Lackey and Dark Pact get hit in the end though, if not at least Lackey. Skull still exists to cheat those minions out but the only real way to deal with that is to just make the weapon classes better or maybe bump the cost of that along with Lackey. Like the best weapons out there are

Vinecleaver - Strong card but the dudes are already there
Garrosh's Weapon - Insane but it's hard for Warrior there.
Aluneth - Already Drew 3 Cards
Rhok'delar - Already gets a battlecry.
Valany'r - Impossible to really remove.

That's probably the top 5 right now outside of Skull. I guess there's Ashbringer but we're in a meta full of silences and where Tirion may be too slow to include in Paladin decks.

I don't think Odd Paladin is that good but it's probably just because ladder is loaded with Warlocks right now. But I honestly haven't lost to it since the first week of the expansion, Even and Murloc both feel a lot stronger.
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After playing a bit more on ladder, yeah its lackey thats definitely the main issue

Also starting to face a lot more controllocks, might have to either just stick to Quest Rogue or build a Taunt Druid
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Cleared Hagatha on my second go. Got pretty lucky and managed to use Blingtron to remove her lifesteal weapon and give her Aluneth, essentially just milling her. The fatigue damage ended up not being necessary but getting rid of the lifesteal was pretty key.

Overall pretty alright, I like how each hero has their own playstyle. I think the bosses in the original dungeon run were more fun though.
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Oh goodness, I just about lost a game from making a silly mistake for the first time. Counting on Wandering Monster to stop a Doomguard when I had 7 minions. Luckily my opponent was just short of lethal. Lesson learned there.

went 4-2 tonight, although that second loss almost doesn't count. I've played 50 games with this deck by now and that was far away the WORST draw I've had the entire time... and I still ended the game just 1 point off lethal.
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though just in case that post gave the wrong impression I'm actually having a lot of fun. I was pretty down on this expansion at first, but ever since I tech'd my decklist to bully paladins I've been really enjoying myself.

hunter is just naturally good against most slow decks. the only bad match up I find myself queue into sometimes is warrior, when I immediately see it's a warrior and I know I'm going to lose. everything else I feel favored or at least it's even. and the only real aggro decks running around right now are paladin. and I tweaked my decklist to destroy those paladins. although I wouldn't say that just winning is fun, I think the idea of winning against a class that dominates standard, wild, AND arena with top tier broken cards... using a tier 50 dumpster class which got almost no support the last three expansions... brings an added sense of enjoyment.

so yeah I guess the purpose of that last post wasn't really about 'oh my draw was so bad and I'm frustrated' but actually my point was 'my winrate with this deck is really good, although it looks slightly off tonight because I had one loss due to a bad draw'

edit: I don't know what you consider mage right now, actually. some people are calling it 'tempo mage' while others are saying it's basically just a face/aggro deck that uses spells. either way they don't seem to run many taunts or even many minions that can contest the board on turns 3-5... I don't think I've lost against a mage in a while. they pretty much have to race me, but I have minions on the board hitting them, and if they use their spells to clear those minions then they are giving up burn.
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Except if ulti was capable of reading hed know they took them out of drafts, not discover pools.

Be asking too much from a middle aged gamefaqs blogger I guess lol

Constructed feels even worse to play now, its satisfying to see how many people are gonna be SOL on ladder once Spiteful Summoner (please god) gets nerfed. Card is still sooooo dumb.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Wait, you can still RNG a death knight in arena?

correct

UltimaterializerX posted...

As in Blizzard said they were removed but didn't actually remove them in arena from all RNG things like discover or thief abilities?

incorrect

they did at the time mention that the death knights would still be in discover pools and such, so it's not like we were deceived. it was just a GOD AWFUL decision. I specifically remember because at the time I couldn't even wrap my head around how dumb it was.
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apparently it's time to start dabbling again

what have I missed since uh

halfway through the magic dude's party expansion when I hit a wall on the single player stuff

also, why is this game so dang huge
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