Hearthstone

nevermind, i suck at arena. Had some of the crazy shit like in first week of MSG all happen today. Shaman who coins out whirling zap-o-matic, I play sorc apprentice, he's got earth shock and spirit claws to kill.. then rolls air totem next turn to kill my followup. At 3 life I FINALLY kill the little shit when I get off a lightning storm from spellslinger, clearing his whole board, and mirror image the next turn to block potential charge minions. I start coming back, while he rolls taunt totem 3 times in a row so I can never fully clear his board, but with lethal on board, his 2/2 squire as only thing on his side with one of my mirror images left.. he drops reckless rocketeer. Squire kills 0/2, reckless for lethal.
I about broke my laptop.
I didn't expect to win, figured a burn spell at some point, but when it's shitty cards beating you it's more tilting. It's just the sequence of crazy lucky RNG combined with such all-in strats with bad cards that straight lose to commonly played cards that aggravates the hell out of me.

On a related note, awhile back I watched a hafu video she did with Mike Donais, one of the HS devs. They had some crazy RNG happen to them (got bolf off a random effect) that turned a complete loss into a win. Mike said something like 'if only those moments could happen every game.' that really pissed me off. It's like he thinks the most fun you can have is if the results are randomly determined in your favor. But, he fails to realize their opponent had such a tilting experience against that, that it's a net loss in total enjoyment. If that kind of situation happened every game, they'd lose their playerbase in no time. No one wants to play a game where their own decisions are completely irrelevant. Every other blizzard game has had a dev team that understood this. All of their games have always been easy to learn, but hard to master. You play against people with similar skill as you to create the '50% winrate'. For some reason, team5 seems to think the worst player in the world should still have a good chance at beating the best player in the world.

Can't even count the number of times a single coined Velen's Chosen on turn 3 have singlehandedly won me games.

Enzee said:

nevermind, i suck at arena. Had some of the crazy shit like in first week of MSG all happen today. Shaman who coins out whirling zap-o-matic, I play sorc apprentice, he's got earth shock and spirit claws to kill.. then rolls air totem next turn to kill my followup. At 3 life I FINALLY kill the little shit when I get off a lightning storm from spellslinger, clearing his whole board, and mirror image the next turn to block potential charge minions. I start coming back, while he rolls taunt totem 3 times in a row so I can never fully clear his board, but with lethal on board, his 2/2 squire as only thing on his side with one of my mirror images left.. he drops reckless rocketeer. Squire kills 0/2, reckless for lethal.
I about broke my laptop.
I didn't expect to win, figured a burn spell at some point, but when it's shitty cards beating you it's more tilting. It's just the sequence of crazy lucky RNG combined with such all-in strats with bad cards that straight lose to commonly played cards that aggravates the hell out of me.

On a related note, awhile back I watched a hafu video she did with Mike Donais, one of the HS devs. They had some crazy RNG happen to them (got bolf off a random effect) that turned a complete loss into a win. Mike said something like 'if only those moments could happen every game.' that really pissed me off. It's like he thinks the most fun you can have is if the results are randomly determined in your favor. But, he fails to realize their opponent had such a tilting experience against that, that it's a net loss in total enjoyment. If that kind of situation happened every game, they'd lose their playerbase in no time. No one wants to play a game where their own decisions are completely irrelevant. Every other blizzard game has had a dev team that understood this. All of their games have always been easy to learn, but hard to master. You play against people with similar skill as you to create the '50% winrate'. For some reason, team5 seems to think the worst player in the world should still have a good chance at beating the best player in the world.

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There is a legend that I remember from way back when I was 12 years old and lived at my card shop. I don't know if it's true, but players there spoke of a Magic pro tour where one of the MTG team's developers, who was actually a woman, took a really shitty deck of commons and uncommons and challenged people to beat her with their real decks. She apparently beat them all. I also beat the #2 player in the world in Star Wars CCG once, while playing a shitty deck at a regionals. I wasn't the shittiest player, I qualified for a regional, but I was 13 and used a shitty deck (was after the tournament) and the dude was ranked 2 for years. I loved SWCCG because it has the lowest RNG of any card game I've ever played, and that's why I always say it is the highest skill card game I know of. It's like 1/10th the rng level of MTG.

Hearthstone is bad in the ways you mentioned, but not as bad as you say. The worst player can never beat the best player in any meaningful way. The shit bad players do astounds me. Even my gf who averages rank 12 makes mistakes that make me cry. That's rank 12, that's apparently top 70%ish! So no I don't think the worst player can ever beat the best player. But it is stupid that rng can decide games as often as it can (basically all card games allow for rng to save you or fuck you, but Hearthstone does it 3x worse than any other). And it's hilarious that that dev said that. hafu must have mentally facepalmed while awkwardly smiling.

Its pretty funny last friday I was watching brian kibler try to play buffadin and I watched him go through all the same mistakes I did before just hailing our pirate overlords and putting them in the deck.

I feel dirty after playing aggro shaman this morning for a quest, shit is broken.

Are any cards out of standard now?

Morrow said:

Can't even count the number of times a single coined Velen's Chosen on turn 3 have singlehandedly won me games.


There is a legend that I remember from way back when I was 12 years old and lived at my card shop. I don't know if it's true, but players there spoke of a Magic pro tour where one of the MTG team's developers, who was actually a woman, took a really shitty deck of commons and uncommons and challenged people to beat her with their real decks. She apparently beat them all. I also beat the #2 player in the world in Star Wars CCG once, while playing a shitty deck at a regionals. I wasn't the shittiest player, I qualified for a regional, but I was 13 and used a shitty deck (was after the tournament) and the dude was ranked 2 for years. I loved SWCCG because it has the lowest RNG of any card game I've ever played, and that's why I always say it is the highest skill card game I know of. It's like 1/10th the rng level of MTG.

Hearthstone is bad in the ways you mentioned, but not as bad as you say. The worst player can never beat the best player in any meaningful way. The shit bad players do astounds me. Even my gf who averages rank 12 makes mistakes that make me cry. That's rank 12, that's apparently top 70%ish! So no I don't think the worst player can ever beat the best player. But it is stupid that rng can decide games as often as it can (basically all card games allow for rng to save you or fuck you, but Hearthstone does it 3x worse than any other). And it's hilarious that that dev said that. hafu must have mentally facepalmed while awkwardly smiling.

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I've played magic heavily, and paid attention to the pro scene even when I didn't, since before the Pro Tour was created. I've never heard a story like that. Devs used to do a lot of 'gun slinging' where they bring weird and/or fun decks to play people on the side. It's possible some dev did that, but with a pauper (all common/uncommons) deck. I highly doubt she was beating the real pros with the top decks, but probably beat a bunch of the average players. Or, it was some combo/all-in deck that got lucky against the real decks. If this happened at an early Pro Tour, the best players were worse then an average Pro Tour participant is now. They knew a lot less about the game early on.

Anyway, I do think the worst player has a chance to beat the best player, if given the right deck. Fill it with more RNG effects then normal and they could just high roll it occasionally. I don't think they'd win very often in current hearthstone, but my statement was that team5 seems to THINK they should have a chance. i.e. they keep designing cards that even the playing field with RNG instead of creating more micro-decisions that should give better players an edge.

I was obviously tilted after a bad day of arena, that game I mentioned was just the one that stood out the most but I had tons of other similarly tilting things happen. A guy who kept his 4/2 panther stealthed rather then trade it into my sunwalker + ping (shield was gone) for two turns, letting me almost get lethal and clear it with a flamestrike I drew, but then he top decked a bog creeper to stabilize anyway. Now, that play could be argued to have been fine depending on circumstances, but he had made a bunch of other mistakes on board and it looked like they were trying to attack through taunts multiple times or ping stealthed minions. So, I really think they were just a new player (think I was at 1-2 at this point) and either didn't see the play or was trying to 'save' it for face damage. I believe I did end up winning the game, think I got bailed out by drawing into a fireball a turn before they would have killed me.. getting some of the games mixed up now, but the fact that I almost lost to one of the worst players I've seen in forever, simply because they kept high rolling every possible situation was crazy.

You did nail the problem, if I didn't word it well, is that it just happens in hearthstone TOO much. We all understand there is inherently some amount of variance in any card game. The WOW tcg was supposedly such low variance that it slowly died as a result (the best player won like 95% of the time, so the worse players didn't stick with the game). I'm guessing they wanted to avoid this problem when adapting the rules of that game for hearthstone, adding in more randomness, but they have slowly over done it since the game's inception. I don't know if they released official player numbers, but all the podcast talk I've heard suggests the player base has been shrinking for the last year or so, and I think these are the root issues causing it.

In MTG, the very best players do attain 70+% winrates, even against the other best players, for extended periods of time, even for an entire year in some cases. That's basically unheard of for HS. You are killing it if you get over 60% on the tournament scene consistently. Even with mana screw/flood, which HS doesn't have, it's still possible to win more consistently in MTG then HS, just very hard.

Deathwing said:

gvg and naxx

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So when are the next sets rotating out? Do we know which ones?

Rotation is when the spring expansion hits (probably April) and Blackrock Mountain, Grand Tournament and League of Explorers goes to wild.

Enzee said:

I've played magic heavily, and paid attention to the pro scene even when I didn't, since before the Pro Tour was created. I've never heard a story like that. Devs used to do a lot of 'gun slinging' where they bring weird and/or fun decks to play people on the side. It's possible some dev did that, but with a pauper (all common/uncommons) deck. I highly doubt she was beating the real pros with the top decks, but probably beat a bunch of the average players. Or, it was some combo/all-in deck that got lucky against the real decks. If this happened at an early Pro Tour, the best players were worse then an average Pro Tour participant is now. They knew a lot less about the game early on.

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That story is easily believable if you go back to the era of land destruction, or hand destruction...All the core cards were common and uncommon. Knights, Mishras, sinkholes, strip mines, hymns, spectres, racks...You didn't even need a necro...That just made it really degenerate. As a long time Pro Tour person, you are one hundred percent correct about the average quality of the player. The proliferation of information changed things as well...During the early years, knowledge was closely held and shared only with teammates, usually regionally based...That is something that HS never had to deal with...Netdecks and all the info are all out there to gathered, playing it correctly is up to you.

MTG and HS have a large skill component...There is a huge difference between playing a deck well and playing a deck well with insight and correct anticipation. It is all too easy to be staring at your cards and thinking what is your best play, but it is something different to be taking in the big picture and understanding your correct decisions in a shared game. MTG and HS are barely comparable though, the nature of lands vs mana and instants vs no active interaction make them completely different beasts.

Can anyone explain why stealth persists through taking damage off AOEs? It makes flavor sense and logical sense that it should break, im tired of shit getting to sit on the board for whatever OTK bullshit they have.

Brand said:

That story is easily believable if you go back to the era of land destruction, or hand destruction...All the core cards were common and uncommon. Knights, Mishras, sinkholes, strip mines, hymns, spectres, racks...You didn't even need a necro.

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Oh yea, thats a good point too. i had a feeling there was a busted deck without rares, just couldnt remember what it was. i mean, force of will is an uncommon techically. they used to put a lot of power outside rare.

Brand and when you say 'Pro Tour person', you mean a fan or you have played on thr PT?

OK, so I got to Rank 5 last season with Handbuff Hunter - I've tried to do it again this season, but I'm hitting a fairly hard wall around Rank 10.

So, I'm deciding to jump all in on the cancer and make a #1 netdeck.

I've been thinking I'd go with aggro shaman, and I'm looking around at different versions. I'm seeing some that are more jade-y than others. I'd tend to favor a deck with less Jade in it because I haven't crafted Aya, and I don't plan to unless I need to spend that extra 1600 dust. I'm not sure what ones are better....

So I'm 2.2k dust away from a non-jade shaman aggro deck (need Patches & Doom Hammers), but I'm 3.6k away from a more Jade one with Aya.

Am I wasting my time doing a non-Jade aggro deck? If I'm going to go aggro, should I just suck it up and go with a Jade deck?

This is off Tempostorm:



and this is off of Metabomb:



Thoughts?