Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic: Back to School Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

UltimaterializerX posted...

Every single class has an answer for it. Thats the problem with Hearthstone; it actively stifles [...] counterplay.

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Man I finally got Omu

He rules.

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Turn 6 in battlegrounds, aka the turn you usually buy something and level up to 4, I faced a Maiev with an Amalgadon and Djinn. How do you power level to 5 and still find 2 triples while you're doing that? I swear shit like this happens every game now.

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I mean, you find early doubles and then you power level *because* you hit the trips, in order to get a better tier reward.

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GildedFool posted...

I mean, you find early doubles and then you power level *because* you hit the trips, in order to get a better tier reward.

I mean leveling that early means you're skipping whole turns so IDK how she was even buying things.

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Yeah theres been turn 7s where I have gotten double Kaly or Kaly/Nadina and its gg. Its battlegrounds now, you either go for fives (Lil Rag/Brann/Nomi/Mama Bear in particular, Barons cool if you got a golden spawn/bomb) or if you are really ahead you could maybe go for a 6.

and Maeiv can freeze pairs, or get tokens, or freeze money pirate for value

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Turn 6 seems almost mathematically impossible, though.

T1 tokens, sell, imprison more tokens
T2 go to 2, sell, imprison more tokens
T3 play tokens, double sell, level to 3
T4 buy two Shifter Zerus
T5 profit?

or with no Zerus
T4 play tokens, buy the same tokens, imprison the same tokens
T5 level to 4
T6 receive your third token, level to 5, play to receive triple 1, sell golden token, buy basic token, triple the bonus minion, play to receive triple 2

Not sure if the numbers even work out right on the end because I don't have the base gold costs of leveling memorized.

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Well I think the way he posted he meant turn 7. Because buy + level is the 9 gold turn usually unless you have a good start/hero

the new elemental 1 drop is amazing at getting triples btw

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Yeah it was the 9 gold turn, so it was turn 7. I wish I'd taken a screenshot of his board but I was in shock considering the state of my board was crappy 2 drops and 3 drops.

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https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23537436/18-4-2-patch-notes

Nerfing Rag and Maeiv, buffing Chenvaala, Patchwerk, and Sindy, removing Pogo to hurt Jandice, bumping Lil Rag to 6 and genie to 5, buffing some pirates and early eles, selfless to 2

good patch


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Interesting changes. My initial take:

Rag: On average one turn later, and less impactful. My first reaction was wow, they nerfed him twice. This is probably not unreasonable if Rag has a good early game, though. If he doesn't, well, guess you die. Badly.
Maiev: Dunno a change was really needed, but it's minor. The stat boost isn't the appeal of Maiev's ability.
Chenvaala: Is still probably trash, but if you can save 12 gold and not have an awful board in the process, this might actually resemble value. That now takes 6 fewer minions. Plus there's some early elemental buffs.
Patchwerk: Oh go put him back to 60 like he began with. It's not like that was ever really overpowered, anyway.
Sindragosa: Is going to be dominant in the early game. The old version was always good for winning turns 3-5. Now those minions might carry over a pinch longer, letting the player tier up faster.
Mukla: We'll need to see how often the big bananas come down, but it's probably not enough to make a bad hero anything other than less bad.

Whirlwind Tempest: On one hand, I'm surprised they removed a minion so early. On the other, the stat buffing capabilities of elementals did make this guy ridiculous. No divine shield in ele's makes them very vulnerable to poison.
Pogo: Rip the memes. Obviously this was meant to hit Jandice, but it does hurt other heroes who are pretty junk otherwise...Shudderwock, Brann 2.0, Aranna.

Selfless Hero to 2: Why? To help everyone pick up tokens on turn 2? I guess in some cases this reduces the likelihood of naturally tripling it, but it's not really that much less likely to get in the late game if you're using it as tech. If the goal is to limit divine shields (see: Whirlwind Tempest) then this doesn't change much.
Deadly Spore to 5: Um, k. Aside from making tier 4 that much more worthless as a landing point, this is actually a bonus. Getting these in your store early on was a pain.
Pirate buffs: pretty minor. If pirates need help, I can't imagine that a buff that is subtly "buff when playing pirates including this one" and giving a throwaway battlecry minion one health really does much.
Party Elemental: Didn't really need help imo. I've heard elementals are weak pre-5, but the 2's and 3's aren't actually bad.
Arcane Assistant: comes closer to being in line with the murloc 4/4.
Executus: basically gets an extra +1/+1. Strangely, this might actually make him playable without elementals. It's very hard to get a controlled buff on an untyped minion. If Iron Sensei exists, I can't imagine this is actually that much worse. Executus was typically the odd man out from the elemental pool, but this makes him a card to actually value, even in a splash build.
Lil Rag to 6: Duh, we knew this was coming.
Gentle Djinni to 5: And obviously one of the 6's was coming down to match. I'm surprised they went with Djinni and not Garr. Djinni is very good at generating value, and is a pretty desirable 5, even with yeti stats.

Elementals overall: Got early game help. Don't think they really needed it. Rag will create ridiculous boards less often, but Nomi was just as bad, and went untouched. I won't be shocked if something is done to limit Nomi. Elementals *might* be less oppressive in the late game, now, or at least not a build you insta-pivot to from picking up a single Rag, but giving them help in the middle turns just means people won't eschew them as a starting build.

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Out of all the bugs Hearthstone has had over the years, I'm amazed that they still haven't fixed the one where random cards appear as new in your collection. Opened the four packs today from the quest and Hunter solo content and cleared the new status off of the two new cards I got, go and play the necessary games to unlock those golden Transfer Students, and all of a sudden I have four 'new' cards again.

And to top it off, more golden cards I can't dust...

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azuarc posted...

Maiev: Dunno a change was really needed, but it's minor. The stat boost isn't the appeal of Maiev's ability.

It's not the appeal of the ability, which is why it's a good thing to change. Honestly, I think they could have even just removed the buff altogether (that was the change I was expecting them to make). A 1 mana buy should be enough of an appeal for the hero.

azuarc posted...

Patchwerk: Oh go put him back to 60 like he began with. It's not like that was ever really overpowered, anyway.

He was actually the highest winrate hero when he was at 60. That was a long time ago, though. (There was also a point when he was also a top 10 winrate hero at 50 health, but yeah there's been some powercreep since then).

55 health combined with nerfs to the top 3 heroes probably gets his average placement somewhere around 4.5...which is fine. (4.5 is average, he's currently like 4.98).

azuarc posted...

Whirlwind Tempest: On one hand, I'm surprised they removed a minion so early. On the other, the stat buffing capabilities of elementals did make this guy ridiculous. No divine shield in ele's makes them very vulnerable to poison.

Whirlwind Tempest isn't the divine shield one. It's the "your minions with windfury have mega windfury" one.

azuarc posted...

Pogo: Rip the memes. Obviously this was meant to hit Jandice, but it does hurt other heroes who are pretty junk otherwise...Shudderwock, Brann 2.0, Aranna.

Pogo was pretty memey with all of those heroes (other than Jandice) and not actually a good plan, to be fair.

azuarc posted...

Selfless Hero to 2: Why? To help everyone pick up tokens on turn 2? I guess in some cases this reduces the likelihood of naturally tripling it, but it's not really that much less likely to get in the late game if you're using it as tech.

Yeah, hard to say. Like...if they really wanted to limit how many of them were in the pool, they could have made it tier 4. People would still pick it up on tier 4, but the number in the pool would be cut in half.

If they had brought back OG Tirion at the same time they moved Selfless to 2, then the move would make sense. It would make it really bad for Tirion to stay on tier 1, which is something Tirion used to do a lot. But as-is...doesn't seem like it changes much? Tier 2 minion pool size is 15, tier 1 minion pool size is 16, so there's one less in the pool?

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Drafted a pretty terrible arena deck, but Polkelt and what little late game I have is single-handedly saving it. Last game I played it and my opponent responded a turn later with Antaen. My next two cards were two Bonechewer Vanguards.

Edit: Run ends at 4-2, literally all six games were decided by whether I had Polkelt on curve or not.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Zephrys, Polkelt, Tarim, pre nerf Dragon Queen Alexstrasza, and Turalyon is probably the list. I could maybe consider pre nerf Antaen or Spikeridge Steed.

What about Octodad?

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Do we count Death Knights and Fledgling on that list

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So...for a quest threw together a Galakrond Quest Shaman with Transfer Students.

It's been winning a lot in Casual, which is interesting. I assume as soon as I take it on ladder it'll just get rushed down by aggro, but its top end is a lot higher than the top end of most of the decks in the meta, so if it doesn't die in the early turns it does have a lot of staying power.

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I got PTSD from remembering Flappy Bird in arena just now

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Ok, well, just faced a Paladin with my attempt at quest Galakrond Shaman. I guess I see now why nobody is playing this deck. 2/1 rushes don't do much against 10/10s.

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https://twitter.com/PlayHearthstone/status/1316817701201821697

Nerfs coming to mage next week

Evocation goes to 2 mana

Solarian Prime goes to 9 mana.

Looking forward to people not generating extra evocations off of wandmakers.

Solarian Prime could be 10 mana and still be really good, but sure, maybe this helps a little?

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I didn't think I could like this meta any less, but here we are.

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Well, casual is still okay when I finally get past the new players I've inflicted upon myself. Nothing like a game where both players go from fatigue to maximum deck size in one turn.

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metroid composite posted...

https://twitter.com/PlayHearthstone/status/1316817701201821697

Nerfs coming to mage next week

Evocation goes to 2 mana

Solarian Prime goes to 9 mana.

Looking forward to people not generating extra evocations off of wandmakers.

Solarian Prime could be 10 mana and still be really good, but sure, maybe this helps a little?

Good,

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For some reason I've just been having an urge to play shaman in casual, and not like the one semi-viable shaman deck (totem shaman) but full on trash shaman. Currently messing around with highlander quest shaman (not even running a bunch of stuff this deck is supposed to run just cause I don't have it; don't have lurker below, DQ Alex, Instructor Fireheart).

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I know it's been said before but the meta in BG right now is literally play elementals or don't bother. I don't even remember murlocs being this bad when they were on top.

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I have seen elementals get wrecked, but usually by divine shield poison builds. It's basically Amalgadon and Selfless Hero or bust.

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I mean yeah but how are you going to survive long enough to get poison builds if you take 25 damage on turn 10?

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Djinni is just busted tbh

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Re-swap Djinni and Rag.
Change Rag so it buffs on purchases instead of plays.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Okay this game 100% has assisted draw tools to force 50-50 results. There is no way Druid can go Ysera and then 7 portals all in a row with 10 non-portal cards in library otherwise. That is legitimately impossible math.

7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1
-----------------------------
17 * 16 * 15 * 14 * 13 * 12 * 11

Or

5040 / 98,017,920

Or

1 chance out of 19,448

.

Since I apparently just accomplished impossible maths, when should I expect to receive my Nobel prize?

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As someone who dusts pretty much all of their wild cards this new game mode is a little annoying but whatever. Zephyrs in BG seems like a really good hero.

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Duels looks pretty fun!

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skullbone posted...

As someone who dusts pretty much all of their wild cards this new game mode is a little annoying but whatever.

I mean, they've been hinting for over a year that they didn't want people dusting all their wild cards, and that there was a new game mode coming that would make use of your entire collection.

(I speculated at the time that it would be a rotating set format, but I was assuming it would just be normal constructed other than that).

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