Hearthstone's Next Adventure - One Night in Karazhan revealed

Hyperme

New member
May 19, 2011
35
0
0
BiH-Kira said:
Does that mean BRM is rotating out on August 11th? I will miss Emperor Turisomething and Flamewanker. My mage and priest decks will never be the same.
Rotations happen on a yearly basis, so BRM is still around for now. Presumably it and other 2015 sets rotate into Wild when the first 2017 set is released.


Anyhow 2/2 for 1 isn't even that amazing. It's one health up on a neutral 2/1, which is a lot like Voidwalker. But being a 1/3 is arguably better than being a 2/2, because most one mana cards played have 2 attack or three health.
 

shadowstriker86

New member
Feb 12, 2009
2,159
0
0
did anyone notice that almost every character in this has like a super pointed jaw? like you could drill for oil if you put those on a power drill
 

MoltenSilver

New member
Feb 21, 2013
248
0
0
(whitty name here) said:
MoltenSilver said:
(Massive edit)


Aaaaand I left again after being insanely let down by WotOG (yes I was one of the people stupid enough to believe that centering your expansion around a bunch of 10mana cards meant they'd actually make a set of cards that could make those 10mana cards viable, but NOPE!). But I was holding out a single last hope that maybe WotOG was a bump in the right direction that would herald the way for a better tomorrow, maybe by inches
Uhhh...what? There's plenty of viable decks that run every old god except Y'shaarj. Yogg Mage/Hunter/Druid, N'zoth Rogue/paladin/Hunter/Priest, C'thun Druid/Warlock/Warrior...and that's just off the top of my head.

The raven is perfectly in line with cards that already exist. In fact, if it didn't have the beast tribal, living roots would almost always be better. The same amount of stats for the same mana cost with the upside of being able to substitute it for 2 damage instead. We've already seen these statlines before outside of LR too. Raven has 4 stats for 1 mana, void walker has 4 stats for one mana. Possessed villager has 4 stats for 1 mana. Fiery bat, 3 stats that potentially does 1 damage, for a total of 4. Mana wyrm, 4 stats and an upside of buffing itself. Selfless Hero, 3 stats and can potentially give a divine shield, which at minimum adds 1 health to a target, for a total of 4. Vilefin Inquisitor, 4 stats and an upside. Tunnel Trogg, Dust Devil, Argent Squire, leper Gnome, Shield bearer. The list just keeps going and I can go even further if i count 3 stats+ an upside if we want to value an effect at 1 stat. This card is by no means broken. It's a vanilla 2/2 for 1. Sure, it's the only one of its kind, but it's not broken by any means of the word.

As for Kindly Grandmother: It's in the same boat as many other 2 drops that already exist. Huge toad and flame juggler potentially fill the same stat line as the grandmother. The obvious goal is to run the grandmother into something to get your 3/2, which is easily comparable to doing 1 damage to that something. In fact, when compared to flame juggler, you're exchanging speed for accuracy, since you're waiting a turn for this card to be able to even do it's 1 damage, and even then, you have to wait ANOTHER turn to do anything with the 3/2. So best case scenario without using coin, you play this one 2, attack with it on 3, then you get to use your 3/2 on 4. That's a whole 2 turns late to the party.

Also, "curve hunter?" Are we berating decks because they do well for playing on curve? Cause that's kind of the main goal of many, many decks in many, many TCGs. Even if we limit our scope to just hearthstone, EVERY deck for the most part would be more than happy to play on curve every single game. So I don't really see how this "Curve Hunter" is some sort of archetype. Control Warrior tries its best to play on curve, freeze mage tries its best to play on curve, renolock tries its best to play on curve.

If you want people to stop playing whats more often than not the most optimal play you can make with your mana base on any given turn, perhaps card games aren't your cup of tea.

1. I am not berating decks for trying to play a curve, I am berating the design of aggro in this game for having a ludicrously high number of "my aggro deck drew its likely 1 2 1 1, you missed one curve, you now lose automatically because of tempo' games. Card games are supposed to be a balance of resources, and right now both Card Advantage and life-losing drawbacks like Flame Imp simply don't factor at all when games end on turn 6. I am not even decrying the existence of low-curving decks, I am decrying the lack enough of viable defensive tools to punish it out of the metagame when it is everywhere

Uhhh...what? There's plenty of viable decks that run every old god except Y'shaarj. Yogg Mage/Hunter/Druid, N'zoth Rogue/paladin/Hunter/Priest, C'thun Druid/Warlock/Warrior...and that's just off the top of my head.
2. And every time I tried one of those I was in for an unpleasant day that was nothing but a series of coinflips between me, an aggro shaman, or a zoo warlock of 'who draws badly first and loses?', of which the deck that packs overstatted 1 and 2 drops out the gills tends to not miss their curve.

Or to put it another way, lets say a N'Zoth paladin is playing against zoo; the vast majority of these games aren't decided by skill, they're decided by if the Paladin draws consecration: If the Paladin doesn't draw consecration then it has 0 chance of fighting Zoo's tempo. If it does draw consecration, then it moves from 'hopeless' to slightly more of an actual game, depending on how far ahead the zoo was and how resilient their board was to consecration. So now you have a big chunk of games decided entirely by something that has no decision points.

The raven is perfectly in line with cards that already exist.
Exactly, and that line of cards is what is currently enabling Shaman and Zoo to completely give up on running card quality or card advantage and still steamroll everything. To borrow from the video I linked, imagine if you up-scaled that card so it was 5 mana instead of 1; logically its stats would then be 5mana 10/10 with beast tag? Everyone would play that card.
Let's upgrade Vilefin Inquisitor from 1 mana to 2 mana, ok so double it's stats... 2/6 and an effect. Every paladin deck would run that card even if they ran 0 other murlocks
What would Fire Imp would like as a 3 drop? 9/6 deal 9 damage to self, any aggro deck would piss themselves for that card
Let's double Totem Gole- oh wait, we don't have to, Flamewreath Faceless is a thing
And the crown jewel in this farce, How about a 2-drop version of Tunnel Trogg? 2/6 for 2 with potential to grow its damage. That would be the indisputable most broken card in the game.

Now of course there's the obvious problem with this argument that it's a narrow look at it: (theoretically)running these costs card quality and if your opponent survives they will likely run you right into top-deck mode and dominate you.

But there's the big caveat: survives. What does an aggro shaman care if they're on their last card on turn 6 if that card is more than enough to kill you. What does Zoolock care about brazenly burning off it's own health if the game will functionally be decided before there's even the slim chance of the enemy going on the offensive. Someone at Blizzard must be aware of this since that was their exact wording in their justification for changing Arcane Golem.

Also, "curve hunter?" Are we berating decks because they do well for playing on curve? Cause that's kind of the main goal of many, many decks in many, many TCGs. Even if we limit our scope to just hearthstone, EVERY deck for the most part would be more than happy to play on curve every single game. So I don't really see how this "Curve Hunter" is some sort of archetype. Control Warrior tries its best to play on curve, freeze mage tries its best to play on curve, renolock tries its best to play on curve.
Of course every deck tries to have a curve, but they have wildly different rates of successfully doing that, and you missing one card in your carve while your enemy hits it perfect tends to mean game over, 0 player decision allowed. To compare with Poker, in poker it is still very possible to win even with worst luck in existence if one is brilliant enough at social deduction and deceiving other people; In Hearthstone if I draw Stampeding kodo, Sylvanas, and Tirion in my opening had against even the unluckiest aggro shaman, I've already lost.
This is exacerbated by the fact that even in games where the outcome is not trivially obvious decks like midrange hunter do not require player input: You play your 1 drop one 1, you play your 2 drop on 2, you play a 2- and 1-drop on 3, you play a 4-drop on four, you play a three and a two drop on five, you play Highmane on 6, and then you coin Call of the Wild

If you want people to stop playing whats more often than not the most optimal play you can make with your mana base on any given turn, perhaps card games aren't your cup of tea.
I am not objecting to people playing the most optimal tools provided for them, I am objecting to Blizzard providing them tools to do so in the first place. I am not objecting to people trying to play on curve, I am objecting to it's importance to the game despite no player input. What I want is for 'the most optimal thing' to require actual intellect to find. I feel like in Hearthstone today if on ladder someone hypothetically looked at both players opening hands you can instantly tell who's going to win 90% of the time, because playing out those hands has become so trivially calculated. When do I actually make decisions when playing as midrange Hunter? The most complication thing I'm doing is looking at my turn mana, the nice mana number on my card, and using that to tell what to play rather than silly things like 'board state' or 'possible enemy plays'. I'm pretty sure the computing power of my toaster could hold a bot that could play the most common Hearthstone games without much variance in outcome from a real person.

Now granted there are decks like Freeze mage that do require thinking... for the person playing them. The guy on the other side has got jack all to decide the whole game. And I think this points to one of the big things wrong with Hearthstone on a design level at the moment: Despite all of the dev team's crowing about wanting interaction all of the best decks in Hearthstone , present and past, - Freeze Mage, Miracle Rogue, pre-nerf patron, turn-6-you're-dead face decks, any combo deck for that matter all aim for the same thing: To completely lock the other player out of having any decisions. The premiere strategy for deckbuilding since the very beginning of Hearthstone has been "How can I make a road to victory that makes me acknowledge that my opponent exists as little as possible?" And that is what I object to about the game in it's current form: that I feel like 9/10 games I played I had zero decisions, that I'd have more input on a game if I were playing the slots in a casino instead. For example they've said they don't want to include force-discard mechanics; ok fair enough it's their game but then what tools INSTEAD are you Blizzard going to provide to check combo decks? the now-rotated-out Loatheb was a start but his torch seems to have gone unclaimed by a new rising star. They say they want the game to be about board trades, and then provide nowhere close to enough defensive tools or mechanics to stop an army of flame imps from completely ignoring anything I do and pounding face for three or more turns.

Final bottom-line what I want is a game where my opponent and I frequently have to actually think about what we are doing, and have that thinking be meaningful in how the game forms. I want games where I'm not going 'how can I even tell if I'm playing a human instead of a robot right now' and instead feel 'wow that guy's turn was a really clever play that required actually human insight and strategy'. And right now I feel that just doesn't happen often enough for me to enjoy Hearthstone anymore
 

MoltenSilver

New member
Feb 21, 2013
248
0
0
Kibeth41 said:
MoltenSilver said:
.

But then I saw the ads for WotOG
"Hey that's actually a neat theme"
And look at all these high-mana cards with complicated effects
"Well they wouldn't bother making those and casting all the spotlight on them unless they're actually bloody playable would they?"
And then the word came about Standard, and that garbage like Piloted Shredder was going away, and some problem cards would be nerfed
And then looking at Jackson and Elise from LoE and at Twin Emperor and the like from WotOG
"Hey, maybe it will be possible to actually play something other than a low-curve or solitaire deck

And from that, we can tell that these brainless curve decks are clearly a thing Blizzard wants to encourage instead of kill. So nope, I'm done, I feel like a moron for putting money in WotOG, and I'm not going to just blindly hope that this somehow is the expansion that makes Hearthstone a game of meaningful interactions
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.

Just because your decks were shit =\= the cards themselves were shit. I recommend Hearthpwn.com if you want to research some good deck builds. You don't have to netdeck, but it'll give you a good idea on how to make good decks with the cards you want to use.

And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.

And if you don't think there's any skill or decision making, then how do you rationalize the same players consistently hitting Legend every season? It isn't their deck lists, money, or sticking to "high tier decks". Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.

I understand if you dislike the game. But don't try pinning it for faults which it ultimately does not have.
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.
Neither Elise Starseeker nor Reno Jackson do a damn thing to counter board tempo; playing Reno into an enemy board means you've bought maybe two turns of being swatted across the face until you're dead again

And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.
My definition of a 'brainless' curve deck
a) is a deck loaded with just low-cost minions and thus almost always has turns 1-4 covered, and therefore auto-wins against any mid-range/heavy deck that happens to stumble at any of the early mana turns. You don't make any decisions when playing the deck, you just spew out the things with the biggest tempo and either you win from overwhelming your opponent or your opponent gets lucky, draws their board clear, and you then lose or just spew out more overstatted low-drops until someone wins. For an advanced demonstration of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu5D71PBOXc

and

b) is a deck with an entirely unflinching, nonreactive game-plan, basically the kind of deck where I could put a piece of paper of over my opponent's side of the board and do just as well since the entirely plan of the deck is to not give a shit what my opponent does.

as for 'how can I say they take little skill', simple: Would we all agree that Freeze Mage(Despite having my own other severe issues with this deck's place in the game) is harder to play than Midrange Hunter?
If so, that demonstrates it is possible for there to be a differential between skill required to play certain decks. Since we've now established that there are some decks easier to play than others, I would posit that the main factor in how hard it is to play a deck comes down to how many meaningful choices are required to play it; in other words, how easy it is to 'solve' a deck, such as how easy would it be to teach a computer to play it optimally?
The fewer meaningful choices a player has while playing a deck, the less variance the deck has in how it plays out, and the more static to game-play of the deck is. It becomes more about just rote-performing the correct thing to do than puzzling it out and thinking ahead. The more static the deck is, the more luck plays a factor in whether the player wins or loses because they are no longer exerting an influence in the game

Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.
You're right that it isn't luck, but what it really is is time
(*first as a caveat I'm going to address what I say below only to F2P Legend climbs that don't involve arena; when some smurfing account plays arena to build up resources I feel it destroys the entire demonstration since they will on average make fantastically more out of a few arena runs than a real newbie would)

The reason a professional can get from ftp to legend is because they can literally sit there all day because it's their job, which matters a lot for 2 reason: 1)because given a long enough stretch the system will buoy you to legend, as streaks produce more stars than are removed by losses, it's a net-upwards system (It takes astronomically long, but it does trend up and eventually variance will carry there) and 2)Because sitting there playing all day means they have a much better grasp of the meta and due to their professional experience are much better at making 1-2 card adjustments to feed on it.

If anything I'd say I can turn that to prove my point: How many losses do the professional players incur while climbing? Why are they losing these matches while they climb? Are they losing because they actually ran into someone as good as them, or are they losing because it was mathematically impossible to win the match?
Yes, I understand Hearthstone is a game of margins, but Hearthstone doesn't exist in a state where there's the occasional super-rare exodia game, it it exists in a state where the matches that aren't mathematically pre-determined are in a minority

It isn't their deck lists
Actually yes it is their decklists that make them consistent. Hearthstone tournaments are decided far, far more by who had the most insight into what the meta will be and prepared accordingly than by in-game play. On ladder the guy who is able to play as a job has a much much better pulse on what the meta is than the person playing this on a bus, and thus is playing a deck-list that preys on that meta; this is what keeps the pros consistently high-ranking above any other factor. And that's before how we factor in the massive difference between tournament meta and ladder meta. In a tournament you usually must bring a minimum variety of deck, and that's what cracks open the way for "b"-tier decks beyond zoo and face shaman to see the light of day, some of which might actually be worth watching past the opening hand. But that does shit-all to help a filthy casual like me; on ladder you are ruthlessly incentivized to play whatever generates wins fast, it doesn't matter what your win-rate is, it doesn't matter how you do it, just play games fast with a deck that by its nature can instantly-win against an opponent with a bungled opening.

Are there deck matchups and moments in Hearthstone that do reward skill? Absolutely. But those moments come so rarely that you need a sample size of hundreds of games to see the benefits of those margins, and every single thing I've said above does jack shit to improve the game experience of someone like me who would like to play for an hour or two a day and would like a choice beyond 'play the netdeck that requires the IQ of a doughnut to follow the simple directions', or 'play something that has aspirations to live beyond turn 6 only to instantly be reminded why that's a bad idea.'
 

MoltenSilver

New member
Feb 21, 2013
248
0
0
Kibeth41 said:
MoltenSilver said:
Kibeth41 said:
MoltenSilver said:
.

But then I saw the ads for WotOG
"Hey that's actually a neat theme"
And look at all these high-mana cards with complicated effects
"Well they wouldn't bother making those and casting all the spotlight on them unless they're actually bloody playable would they?"
And then the word came about Standard, and that garbage like Piloted Shredder was going away, and some problem cards would be nerfed
And then looking at Jackson and Elise from LoE and at Twin Emperor and the like from WotOG
"Hey, maybe it will be possible to actually play something other than a low-curve or solitaire deck

And from that, we can tell that these brainless curve decks are clearly a thing Blizzard wants to encourage instead of kill. So nope, I'm done, I feel like a moron for putting money in WotOG, and I'm not going to just blindly hope that this somehow is the expansion that makes Hearthstone a game of meaningful interactions
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.

Just because your decks were shit =\= the cards themselves were shit. I recommend Hearthpwn.com if you want to research some good deck builds. You don't have to netdeck, but it'll give you a good idea on how to make good decks with the cards you want to use.

And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.

And if you don't think there's any skill or decision making, then how do you rationalize the same players consistently hitting Legend every season? It isn't their deck lists, money, or sticking to "high tier decks". Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.

I understand if you dislike the game. But don't try pinning it for faults which it ultimately does not have.
You do realize that the Old Gods, Reno Jackson and Elise were the strongest cards in the expansions, right? People have been able to hit Legend with decks built around those specific cards, easily.
Neither Elise Starseeker nor Reno Jackson do a damn thing to counter board tempo; playing Reno into an enemy board means you've bought maybe two turns of being swatted across the face until you're dead again

And what the hell is a "brainless curve deck"? All decks are supposed to follow a curve... Hell, in almost all card games you're expected to have a deck that follows a curve in order for it to be viable. It's a standard TCG mechanic.
My definition of a 'brainless' curve deck
a) is a deck loaded with just low-cost minions and thus almost always has turns 1-4 covered, and therefore auto-wins against any mid-range/heavy deck that happens to stumble at any of the early mana turns. You don't make any decisions when playing the deck, you just spew out the things with the biggest tempo and either you win from overwhelming your opponent or your opponent gets lucky, draws their board clear, and you then lose or just spew out more overstatted low-drops until someone wins. For an advanced demonstration of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu5D71PBOXc

and

b) is a deck with an entirely unflinching, nonreactive game-plan, basically the kind of deck where I could put a piece of paper of over my opponent's side of the board and do just as well since the entirely plan of the deck is to not give a shit what my opponent does.

as for 'how can I say they take little skill', simple: Would we all agree that Freeze Mage(Despite having my own other severe issues with this deck's place in the game) is harder to play than Midrange Hunter?
If so, that demonstrates it is possible for there to be a differential between skill required to play certain decks. Since we've now established that there are some decks easier to play than others, I would posit that the main factor in how hard it is to play a deck comes down to how many meaningful choices are required to play it; in other words, how easy it is to 'solve' a deck, such as how easy would it be to teach a computer to play it optimally?
The fewer meaningful choices a player has while playing a deck, the less variance the deck has in how it plays out, and the more static to game-play of the deck is. It becomes more about just rote-performing the correct thing to do than puzzling it out and thinking ahead. The more static the deck is, the more luck plays a factor in whether the player wins or loses because they are no longer exerting an influence in the game

Sometimes the players challenge themselves by hitting Legend with F2P accounts. And you can't claim it's luck, since they do it repeatedly and consistency.
You're right that it isn't luck, but what it really is is time
(*first as a caveat I'm going to address what I say below only to F2P Legend climbs that don't involve arena; when some smurfing account plays arena to build up resources I feel it destroys the entire demonstration since they will on average make fantastically more out of a few arena runs than a real newbie would)

The reason a professional can get from ftp to legend is because they can literally sit there all day because it's their job, which matters a lot for 2 reason: 1)because given a long enough stretch the system will buoy you to legend, as streaks produce more stars than are removed by losses, it's a net-upwards system (It takes astronomically long, but it does trend up and eventually variance will carry there) and 2)Because sitting there playing all day means they have a much better grasp of the meta and due to their professional experience are much better at making 1-2 card adjustments to feed on it.

If anything I'd say I can turn that to prove my point: How many losses do the professional players incur while climbing? Why are they losing these matches while they climb? Are they losing because they actually ran into someone as good as them, or are they losing because it was mathematically impossible to win the match?
Yes, I understand Hearthstone is a game of margins, but Hearthstone doesn't exist in a state where there's the occasional super-rare exodia game, it it exists in a state where the matches that aren't mathematically pre-determined are in a minority

It isn't their deck lists
Actually yes it is their decklists that make them consistent. Hearthstone tournaments are decided far, far more by who had the most insight into what the meta will be and prepared accordingly than by in-game play. On ladder the guy who is able to play as a job has a much much better pulse on what the meta is than the person playing this on a bus, and thus is playing a deck-list that preys on that meta; this is what keeps the pros consistently high-ranking above any other factor. And that's before how we factor in the massive difference between tournament meta and ladder meta. In a tournament you usually must bring a minimum variety of deck, and that's what cracks open the way for "b"-tier decks beyond zoo and face shaman to see the light of day, some of which might actually be worth watching past the opening hand. But that does shit-all to help a filthy casual like me; on ladder you are ruthlessly incentivized to play whatever generates wins fast, it doesn't matter what your win-rate is, it doesn't matter how you do it, just play games fast with a deck that by its nature can instantly-win against an opponent with a bungled opening.

Are there deck matchups and moments in Hearthstone that do reward skill? Absolutely. But those moments come so rarely that you need a sample size of hundreds of games to see the benefits of those margins, and every single thing I've said above does jack shit to improve the game experience of someone like me who would like to play for an hour or two a day and would like a choice beyond 'play the netdeck that requires the IQ of a doughnut to follow the simple directions', or 'play something that has aspirations to live beyond turn 6 only to instantly be reminded why that's a bad idea.'
You're preaching all of this to the wrong person.

You wrote such a large wall I'm just going to summarize a few points. Because I REALLY can't be arsed to put the effort in.

-Trump climbed the ladder using nothing but the FREE Arena run. So don't try telling me that's invalid.
-Speaking of Arena. Unskilled players struggle with getting many wins. Skilled players are able to consistently get 12 wins, and infinite Arena runs.
-I assure you, time is not the factor in climbing the ladder. Skilled players are able to hit Legend within the first few days of a season. Unskilled players get stuck in the lower ranks by the END of the season.
-No, it's not dependent on decklists. So many skilled players stream their climbs to Legend, and even share their deck builds. Considering that a large quantity of players netdeck, your statement would imply that most netdeckers would be Legend rank. Good decks help, but skill and decision making is the major factor.

If anything I'd say I can turn that to prove my point: How many losses do the professional players incur while climbing? Why are they losing these matches while they climb? Are they losing because they actually ran into someone as good as them, or are they losing because it was mathematically impossible to win the match?
Fuck man, this isn't something specific to Hearthstone. This is a statement that applies to ALL TRADING CARD GAMES. The entire genre includes a certain level of RNG that is unavoidable. But the whole skill of any trading card game is being able to manipulate the RNG in order to largely increase the likelihood of your win.

The amount of games lost due to bad luck is very slim. And even then, having a good deck LARGELY decreases the chance of you having an unlucky game.

Neither Elise Starseeker nor Reno Jackson do a damn thing to counter board tempo; playing Reno into an enemy board means you've bought maybe two turns of being swatted across the face until you're dead again
.....Please just stop.....

I can only assume that you're playing fuck all for the entire game, and then you're expecting a singular card to solve all of your problems. You really have no clue about this particular topic if you think that your statement is true.

If you play Reno vs an Aggro deck, then the probability is that you're going to force them to concede. Aggro and face decks don't run card draw, and due to the fact that they run low costing cards, their strength is pretty much depleted after the initial surge of cards. If an aggro deck doesn't manage to kill you by the time they're down to 1 card, then they've lost. If you use Reno to replenish your health by that stage, then you win. Unless you're playing badly

Elise Starseeker is mostly a counter to control decks, but she's good in any deck which can stall for a long time, and/or bypass the early turns of an aggro deck (e.g. Priest/Warrior). She secures you wins by giving you a near unstoppable hand. She's a win condition.

streaks produce more stars than are removed by losses
This statement is only true till Rank 5. That's why you find so many players stuck at this rank (regardless of how much time they spend). While Legend players consistently hit Legend.

I've played a shameful amount of Hearthstone. I've seen enough of this game that I can promise you that you're wrong. Skill is a major factor of this game, regardless of whether or not you believe it.

There's nothing wrong with being shit at the game, but you need to stop blaming it on "luck" and trying to rationalize it as someone else's fault. When all evidence points to the fact that there is a good level of skill that's used in the game.

The only place where "time" is a factor in this game is where practice is required.

EDIT: Ended up writing a wall myself. Oops.
Firstly, stop condescending to me and especially stop putting words in my mouth; I never said there's 0 skill in this game, I said that the ladder is flooded with decks that lack meaningful player input, and having little player influence means them winning or losing is basically just determined by draw order. I'm not pissed because I can't beat face shaman or zoo or linear hunter, I'm pissed because they make up over two-thirds the games I play and they are boring as shit to play against for the reasons I've outlined and choke out any other archetypes; you either join them, play just to counter them, or try to play something actually fun and lose.

Secondly, I've gotten 12 wins in arena which means at least one of two things is true: Either I know this game damn well too or there's so much variance in the game an idiot can stumble to 12 wins. Hell, I managed to get that 12-win key from abusing the very thing I've been decrying here: it was a hunter deck loaded with high-quality 2-4 drops; every single game I won I hit a perfect curve, my opponent would miss somewhere along the way, I won the board handily, and then did so much damage in just a handful of turns that my hero power could carry the rest and made any board comeback meaningless.



(Cut off in the image are:
Bomb Lobber
Spectral Knight
Stranglethorn Tiger
Drakanoid Crusher
Savanah Highmane x2)


Thirdly, good job completely ignoring the line where I acknowledged variance as part of Hearthstone and card games. I am not arguing variance is entirely bad, I am arguing that hearthstone has far too much of it. "Variance" is not a binary aspect here, it is a spectrum, it is possible to say that this game has too much rng without also claiming rng as a whole is bad. I still remember that cringe-worthy post by Ben Brode claiming that Hearthstone deserved to be mentioned alongside Poker as a game that expertly balances rng and skill.
( http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/16421344/fireside-chat-developer-panel-recap-11-7-2014 )

Fourthly
I can only assume that you're playing fuck all for the entire game, and then you're expecting a singular card to solve all of your problems. You really have no clue about this particular topic if you think that your statement is true.
When playing a Reno deck what about that is uncommon? Most Reno decks don't run anywhere close to the same number of low mana cards as an aggro deck and, shockingly, therefore tend to miss their early curve against decks that almost never don't have 1-2-3-4. From there the tempo snowballs with maaaaaybe a lucky Reno player getting the board clears (of which drawing those then decides the game) As a result, aggro vs Reno is basically determined by whether the Reno misses few enough of it's early game turns, draws their Reno or not, and draws their board clears or not.
I'm going to post this again because I feel it does an incredible job explaining the problem much better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu5D71PBOXc

-Speaking of Arena. Unskilled players struggle with getting many wins. Skilled players are able to consistently get 12 wins, and infinite Arena runs.
And yet not consistently avoiding going 0-3.
I better clarify this so that you don't run wild out of context with it again: Yes, it is possible to achieve skill in the arena, largely because people have to actually think about drafting and can't spam the same brainless thing over and over (Not for a lack of trying though, given the way most arena advice I've read seems to worship the idea of Tempo as if it's Jesus-Dalai Lama-Christ, and with good reason) but at the same time does it not seem absurd that it is possible for even the best players to crash that hard? And this hardly seems a rare thing given I can go to youtube, look up any of the big names, and see them loudly advertising those times they went 0-3 because they know it's a view-grabber
 

Zulnam

New member
Feb 22, 2010
481
0
0
Wow! Look at those cards!

What else can you say except...
... One night in Karazhan makes the hard man humble.