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Hearthstone |OT3| Preparing for the Ball of Spiders Meta

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Gotchaye

Member
I think random arena pack is better than just gvg. Is it better than picking your reward? Probably not. But better than 1 set only as well.

I mean, it's better than a GvG pack because GvG packs aren't very valuable anymore to people who have been playing a while, but that's probably not the right baseline to compare to. GvG packs as Arena rewards from now to forever would be awful, but it's not like Arena has always rewarded GvG packs. It used to reward Classic packs. Used to be that if you were playing Arena when some kind of pack was new you'd be getting exactly the kind of pack you wanted every time. I think almost everyone who's been playing for a long time would prefer that Arena move to rewarding Argent Tournament packs, even if six months from now people would prefer to get Classic packs again. Even now the preference for Classic over GvG packs is pretty weak - Classic packs aren't worth that much either. Changing to random packs also suggests that going forward it'll be even worse - next month I'll have a 1 in 3 chance to get a pack from a worthwhile set, but next year I'll have a 1 in 4 chance.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Nah, it's more "Fuck you Mage", the card.

Remember who's the best at dealing precisely 7 damage using a combination of spells and hero power.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Apparently the right legendary has been spoiled, Reynad just showed it on stream: 7 mana, 7/7, opponent can't use hero power
I kinda like this card as a concept but not at 7 mana. I would've liked it more if it was like a Loatheb.

I don't know how I feel about it... my knee jerk reaction is that it sucks and this will just get BGH'd without doing anything but locking a Handlock out of not tapping is pretty significant. Plus this card is a ready made meta card if some Inspire deck gets too out of control.
 

Opiate

Member
My control warrior needs a 3 drop. I hope there are good control oriented 3 drops.

I don't really feel that control needs more good 6/7/whatever drops -- that's not the problem. The problem are turns 2/3 when you can just fall too far behind too quickly so that you can't make it to late game without being hopelessly far behind.
 
I mean, it's better than a GvG pack because GvG packs aren't very valuable anymore to people who have been playing a while, but that's probably not the right baseline to compare to. GvG packs as Arena rewards from now to forever would be awful, but it's not like Arena has always rewarded GvG packs. It used to reward Classic packs. Used to be that if you were playing Arena when some kind of pack was new you'd be getting exactly the kind of pack you wanted every time. I think almost everyone who's been playing for a long time would prefer that Arena move to rewarding Argent Tournament packs, even if six months from now people would prefer to get Classic packs again. Even now the preference for Classic over GvG packs is pretty weak - Classic packs aren't worth that much either. Changing to random packs also suggests that going forward it'll be even worse - next month I'll have a 1 in 3 chance to get a pack from a worthwhile set, but next year I'll have a 1 in 4 chance.

I see your point about wanting gt more now (when the set comes out), but I think in the long run random is even better than that. After all, once you get most of the commons and rares, which will probably happen really fast again like with gvg (what was it like 20 packs it felt like?) you start getting mostly dust again anyway. For that reason I am okay with random.

I would prefer they give us the choice, but I think random among the three is okay.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
Fuck you Hunter: The card

Hunters Mark. Then it dies. Then nothing changed. The fact that it dies to BGH and doesnt do something the turn it is played makes it very hard to see it being played. Just a War Golem too often.
 

JesseZao

Member
My control warrior needs a 3 drop. I hope there are good control oriented 3 drops.

I don't really feel that control needs more good 6/7/whatever drops -- that's not the problem. The problem are turns 2/3 when you can just fall too far behind too quickly so that you can't make it to late game without being hopelessly far behind.

(Fake)
fe2b09d4.png

0/5 since it's more thematic to not have attack and 5 health will at least eat valuable burn at worst. Zoo has owls.
 

Opiate

Member
That's not real, right? It's broken because some classes or decks would literally be incapable of doing anything about that. Some Zoo decks, for instance, might have one card in their entire deck capable of handling that.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
There's no way that could be real. Because it would be the dumbest card design in the history of ever.
 

Opiate

Member
There's no way that could be real. Because it would be the dumbest card design in the history of ever.

With that said, it does seem to be hard to design control cards for 2/3 mana. There are lots of different ways to apply pressure, but very few 2 or 3 drops which just delay the game.

Armorsmith is a good example of a solid control drop on turn 2; picks off small minions and forces the opponent to deal with it because nobody wants to give you endless armor. Something like that for 3 mana -- some card with a nasty defensive effect that force rush decks to deal with it and delays their onslaught.
 

tylerf

Member
A Priest opponent Cabal Shadowed my Doomsayer and Recombobulated it only to have it transform into another Doomsayer. Just when you think you've seen it all with this game.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
With that said, it does seem to be hard to design control cards for 2/3 mana. There are lots of different ways to apply pressure, but very few 2 or 3 drops which just delay the game.

Armorsmith is a good example of a solid control drop on turn 2; picks off small minions and forces the opponent to deal with it because nobody wants to give you endless armor. Something like that for 3 mana -- some card with a nasty defensive effect that makes rush decks say "Okay that has to die right now."

Zombie Chow is another good example as a 1 mana card. The trick comes in designing a card that can't also be abused by fatigue decks. Which are the dumbest decks ever.
 

Opiate

Member
Zombie Chow is another good example as a 1 mana card. The trick comes in designing a card that can't also be abused by fatigue decks. Which are the dumbest decks ever.

Yes, definitely.

Most control decks start having real meat to play by turn 4 (Death's Bites, Shredders, Auchenai, Truesilver, etc), so really it feels to me that turn 3 is the weakest spot by far. I can't tell you how often my control decks end up with 1 unused mana on turn 3 (e.g. Warrior equips fiery war axe or Priest uses Shadow Word: Pain or Handlock just taps, etc.)
 
Fake leak or not, I could see a card that stops Hero Powers getting made. It'd just sucks that it has to have 7 attack(allegedly) which just gets easily picked off.

Granted, if you run one 7 attack minion, you're probably running more.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Assuming you scale up the Zombie Chow card to say 3 mana...

What would be the implication of a 3 mana 4/5 that heals your opponent for 8 health when it dies?
 

Opiate

Member
Serious question: does anyone play a 3 drop in a control deck? Now that I"m on the topic, I'm honestly curious. I can think of so few.

The closest I can think of for my control decks (priest, handlock, warrior) is a BGH, which isn't really a 3 drop by any practical measure. My Warrior and Priest run Shield Block / Thoughsteal, which are perfectly good cards but are tempo black holes. Handlock sometimes uses earthen ring farseer, which is the closest I can think of.
 
If that card is real, I'm not playing a War Golem just so my opponent can't use hero power. Outside of a heavy Inspire meta (which nothing that has been shown suggests is coming) the card would be garbage

Serious question: does anyone play a 3 drop in a control deck? Now that I"m on the topic, I'm honestly curious. I can think of so few.

The closest I can think of for my control decks (priest, handlock, warrior) is a BGH, which isn't really a 3 drop by any practical measure. My Warrior and Priest run Shield Block / Thoughsteal, which are perfectly good cards but are tempo black holes. Handlock sometimes uses earthen ring farseer, which is the closest I can think of.

Dark Cultist and Injured Blademaster in Priest. Imp Gang Boss in Demonlock
 

Gotchaye

Member
I see your point about wanting gt more now (when the set comes out), but I think in the long run random is even better than that. After all, once you get most of the commons and rares, which will probably happen really fast again like with gvg (what was it like 20 packs it felt like?) you start getting mostly dust again anyway. For that reason I am okay with random.

I would prefer they give us the choice, but I think random among the three is okay.

I think this is probably a bad way to think about packs. I'd guess that about half of the expected dust value of a pack comes from epics and legendaries. And because you fill out your commons and rares really quickly the main determinant of pack value to an individual player is each set's percentage of unowned but desirable epics and legendaries. Like, that's why people value Classic packs over GvG packs now, right? They've got all the commons and rares from both sets and they're missing more of the useful Classic legendaries. There's a reason that people wanted to be able to choose which kind of pack they get as an Arena reward even before this set was announced. They're not indifferent as to which kind they get.

Even if people were indifferent as to which kind of pack they get after opening 20 of each kind, now it takes 60 Arena runs (not counting good runs that yield 2 packs) to get the Argent Tournament packs that they want instead of 20. This is a lot of Arena runs even for people who play a lot of Arena.

Obviously if you don't play much Arena, this isn't a huge deal. You can accommodate whatever the reward system is by changing up the mix of packs you buy with gold. What's really annoying about this is that if you do play a lot of Arena, as well as some Constructed, it's much harder to obtain a good number of AT packs through Arena in a relatively short time after release than people were expecting it to be. Presumably that's the point. Now you've got a lot more reason to spend a bunch up front on AT packs. People complain about Arena rewards now because they don't feel like they're getting anything very valuable, and this is true because they're pretty much just dusting every pack. Random pack rewards from now on mean that this is basically going to be true forever, since it's not worth waiting months to get a decent number of new packs through Arena and since future sets just dilute the reward pool.
 

zoukka

Member
Serious question: does anyone play a 3 drop in a control deck? Now that I"m on the topic, I'm honestly curious. I can think of so few.

The closest I can think of for my control decks (priest, handlock, warrior) is a BGH, which isn't really a 3 drop by any practical measure. My Warrior and Priest run Shield Block / Thoughsteal, which are perfectly good cards but are tempo black holes. Handlock sometimes uses earthen ring farseer, which is the closest I can think of.

2 acolyte of pains in every warrior deck since always. Beyond that control warrior doesn't really play 3 drops. You hope for a coin or just play a 2-drop and maybe a 1-mana spell.

Priest often plays Blademaster but rarely on turn 3 unless you have circle or coin+naaru.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Serious question: does anyone play a 3 drop in a control deck? Now that I"m on the topic, I'm honestly curious. I can think of so few.

The closest I can think of for my control decks (priest, handlock, warrior) is a BGH, which isn't really a 3 drop by any practical measure. My Warrior and Priest run Shield Block / Thoughsteal, which are perfectly good cards but are tempo black holes. Handlock sometimes uses earthen ring farseer, which is the closest I can think of.
Acolyte?

Priest uses 3 drops the most commonly between Injured Blademaster and Dark Cultist.

Rogue always uses SI7.

Druid uses Shade.

Malylock uses either the Blacking Technician or Imp Gang Boss.
 

Opiate

Member
Acolyte isn't a control card. I mean, it is played in control decks, but it's not a card which notably slows tempo or anything the way zombie chow can. It's a card draw engine (which is why it's also used in combo decks like Freeze Mage and Patron Warrior) not an anti-tempo play.
 

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
Serious question: does anyone play a 3 drop in a control deck? Now that I"m on the topic, I'm honestly curious. I can think of so few.
Control Warriors run Acolyte of Pain in a three slot. It's not heavy tempo but Warriors have other tools in play that usually work with it to hold the board.
 

Opiate

Member
It's not a tempo card but most definitely a control card. Control decks need card draw.

We're disagreeing on semantics here.

Saying Acolyte is a control card is like saying Azure Drake is a control card; yes, both are used in some control decks, but they aren't the control part of the deck. The control parts of the deck are the big drops (obviously) along with things like Zombie chow which slow the game down and are anti-tempo.

Pally runs Aldor Peacekeeper as well.

Aldor definitely counts. I just don't play Pally control (And it's out of the meta right now).

Control Warriors run Acolyte of Pain in a three slot. It's not heavy tempo but Warriors have other tools in play that usually work with it to hold the board.

What other three drops did you have in mind for that?
 
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