Hearthstone

What Blizz fanboy ranked my post as butthurt? I guess you can't wait to play your Priest of the Feast! Have a retard vote, you bean eater~

 

Metro the Vengeful.

 

Surprisingly, the adventure itself is quite fun and wacky. Shame the AI is retarded.

 

Only waiting for Barnes, basically. I play nothing but Paladin N'zoth Control

Also Beast Druid. Tier 1 deck now

 

So I can freely disenchant all of this shit and just wait for menagerie warden? I guess that's some value.

 

Looks like blizzard has been tampering with the daily quests

Reddit found out that everyone has been getting only 40g quests plus a tavern brawl quest since the last update.

Now I am forced to play this shitty tavern brawl

 

If it's intentional, it's quite the sneaky change.

 

First adventure wing was pretty amusing. Hyped to see some Barnes shenanigans later this month. But until then, back to wrecking Standard with Token Druid.

 

I got 60g+ quests so if it was an issue it's been fixed. I do hope they keep the 80g friend quest -- that was a lot of easy gold.

 

Finally got myself to spend some dust out of my dust hoard.
Crafted a Yogg, 2x call of the wild, 2x lock and load

And I'm playing Yog and Load hunter. It's beautiful. Just... beautiful.

Terribly inconsistent ofc, but once the deck list becomes stable, it's prolly gonna be decent at worst.. Arcane giant is bound to help, also. Still, even if it remains a niche deck, its so fucking awesome i dont care.

PRAISE THE YOGG!

 

Welp just played through the Opera. Very easy encounters this time -- I think I beat the Big Bad Wolf on like turn four. Notable pickups include:

Kindly Grandmother, which definitely sees play, even over something like King's Elekk. Though I dread playing against this Deathrattle shit again.
Barnes, which people will definitely try to build some sweet combo decks out of.
Moat Lurker, which has a really powerful effect. Though it's hard to judge -- this is the first Faceless Butcher effect Hearthstone has gotten.
And Arcane Giant, which seems like a great finisher in spell-heavy control decks (if only those existed right now).

 

I'm trying the Giant in N'zoth Rogue as a one-of and it's working decently.

 

Sort of disappointed in the bland design of the Opera encounters. Ah well, Barnes is a fun card. Kindly Grandmother is as strong as a I thought it would be. Arcane Giant is decent-ish in the right decks.

 

This brawl really makes you realize how retarded the playerbase of this game is.

 

You have to remember that most of the people playing Hearthstone are underprivileged and/or stupid little kids playing on their parents' iPads. Smash to the upper ranks in Standard play and you will not have this issue.

 

Ah yes, the fabled upper ranks of Standard play, where people play such sophisticated decks as Aggro Shaman or Dragon Warrior and distinguish themselves through ingenious plays.

 

A smart player who wants to win plays a deck that wins.

 

It's true, but don't pretend that you need a functional brain to be successful in this meta.

 

I won't argue with the fact that none of the tier one decks right now are particularly skill-intensive or reward making big plays. And honestly, with cards like Barnes on deck and Menagerie Warden in the pipe, things don't look to be improving in this respect. Patron Warrior was the last seriously skill-intensive deck that was tier one.

But the Spike in me cannot blame somebody for being smart enough to learn the meta, evaluate win rates, and play what wins.

 

By that you probably mean opening the Tempostorm meta snapshot and copying the highest rated deck.

I know what you are getting at, I'm just saying that the experience doesn't get better in the "higher ranks of Standard", laddering at the moment is not much more than coinflipping with a weighted coin.
The players are not to blame for it and I realize that I might be SLIGHTLY hyperbolic when I rant about sending Shaman players to the gas chambers. Blizzard is the culprit here because they have no real vision for their game. On the one hand they want it to be brainless casual fun that is easily accessible when you are bored while taking a shit and on the other hand the game unexpectedly took off as an "esport", so they scramble (unsuccessfully) to satisfy that crowd from time to time. This coupled with the awful "RANDOM™" design of many high powered cards makes it just a mess at the moment. On top of that, Standard removed the best counter/comeback cards against aggressive strategies, incentivizing the coinflip gameplay even more.

If you really want to experience the mentioned "learn the meta, evaluate win rates, and play what wins", I encourage you to try out Wild, it's the only game mode right now that's even remotely fun and that's because of the diverse, open and relatively unexplored meta. Here you still have to do the work yourself and can get Legend with some homebrewn deck that one ups the meta. Only downside is less ESPORTS credits (lul).

 

I'd play Wild, but after fucking and getting fucked by Piloted Shredders etc for over a year, I just can't bear to pull the trigger yet.

 

Sure feels better to get your wins stolen by awesome Yogg RNG or get knife juggled in Standard. The RNG is honestly alright when you compare it to the diverse meta you face and the ability to play decks that are fun and still win. It's in every mode of the game anyway.

The ladder dynamics are really interesting and reward good meta calls.
For example playing secrets is one of the most degenerate strategies in Wild because of Mad Scientist and Mysterius Challenger. Last season I ranked to 2 with a Tempo Mage variant until I stalled because there were multiple Flare hunters and ever other deck played Eater of Secrets (!!!). Suddenly it became very unrewarding to play the best strategy, because the whole thing revolved around blowing up the secret decks with Eater. I decided to switch to my homebrewn N'Zoth Tempo Warrior and don't even bother with the whole secret shit, not diluting my deck with playing Eater myself and prey on the Eater decks who on the other hand pushed the strong secret decks out of the meta. Worked like a charm and allowed me to climb to Legend quickly.
On the other hand the moment where more people omit the counters, the secrets rise again and stuff like Freeze Mage rules supreme against all the board centric strategies.

It felt SERIOUSLY rewarding compared to flipping a coin 200 times with a Standard deck.

And funnily enough, Control Priest is one of the strongest decks, so if you like playing Priest AND winning, Wild is the place to be.

 

Perhaps I shall pull the trigger than. I, like most Spikes, have an unreasonable hard-on for Anduin.

 

Yea, Priest is fun when it works (at least for the person playing it ). N'Zoth version is really strong because of Lightbomb and Belcher.

But isn't playing Priest more of a Johnny trait? Playing some underdog shit and trying to make it work. Spike would probably rather continue to flip some coins with Aggro Shaman and enjoy the 5% higher winrate.
Priest has that oldschool MtG control feeling tho, just sitting around and tightening the stranglehold around your opponent until he runs out of options.