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Hearthstone |OT9| Our raid wiped in Icecrown Citadel

KuroNeeko

Member
You know, I just don't see it.

I don't know how you can justify Quest Rogue--at all.

1. It violates one of the core design principles: interactivity (according to the designers)
2. It doesn't feel fun to play against
3. It fails the Stone Boar quest

I mean, we play a game where the best deck types are the least interesting.

1. Quest Rogue: dumb and uninteractive
2. Quest Warrior: just as dumb, spam taunt minions, then mash on hero power and pray
3. Freeze Mage: dumb and uninteractive
4. Miracle Priest: Inner Fire / Divine Whatever dumb
5. Pirate Warrior

Like, oh boy, what's the point of having a board? Are we just going to be hyper aggro or combo now?

I literally have lost every single match against Quest Rogue since the expansion hit.

I have a winning record against Quest Warrior, but games are dumb. Toss out taunt. Wait for board. Brawl. Spam hero power and pray for good RNG.

Charge is a dumb mechanic.

I like the flavor of the expansion, but man, they were really sleeping with the quests. Miracle Rogue, without Conceal, is completely fine and plays more like an honest deck (outside of the huge freak Edwin on turn one or so). Control Warlock--yeah, I don't like the archtype but it's fine. Shaman? Fine. Most of the classes are either pretty good or have a fair archtype. The most prevalent decks right now are just stupid.
 
Kind of crazy that murloc Paladin of all things is a tier 1 deck.

Then again when you print cards that are as ridiculously broken as Rookpool Hunter and Gentle Megasaur I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.
 

KuroNeeko

Member
Kind of crazy that murloc Paladin of all things is a tier 1 deck.

Then again when you print cards that are as ridiculously broken as Rookpool Hunter and Gentle Megasaur I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.

I'm playing Murloc Paladin right now and just lost to an Elemental Priest running Lightspawn main deck.
 

Blizzard

Banned
You know, I just don't see it.

I don't know how you can justify Quest Rogue--at all.

1. It violates one of the core design principles: interactivity (according to the designers)
I see you touched on this later on so I'll comment below.

2. It doesn't feel fun to play against
I'm not sure what decks are fun to play against, though of course fun is very subjective. I have fun if I'm winning, but close games feel like a coin flip due to the nature of Hearthstone and card games. I'm also not sure "fun to play against" is necessarily used by the designers for balance.

3. It fails the Stone Boar quest
What is the Stone Boar quest?

I mean, we play a game where the best deck types are the least interesting.

1. Quest Rogue: dumb and uninteractive
2. Quest Warrior: just as dumb, spam taunt minions, then mash on hero power and pray
3. Freeze Mage: dumb and uninteractive
4. Miracle Priest: Inner Fire / Divine Whatever dumb
5. Pirate Warrior
I was wondering if you felt the same way about heavy auctioneer decks and quest mage decks. Quest mage is even worse about interactivity to me, with 4+ ice blocks and a strategy involving surviving as long as possible without the enemy able to do anything until you get the cards that let you win.

You don't present much of an argument for #4 and #5. Why do you feel the Priest cards are dumb? Because they can swing a game too quickly?

I literally have lost every single match against Quest Rogue since the expansion hit.
How many games have you played against them? I find this very hard to believe anywhere below rank 20 just because of how many mediocre players there are, and how many of them will try to play Quest Rogue. I've been taking notes on the games I play so I can see how many I play against which classes, for example. And what deck(s) do you play? There are at least 5 that have decent to great chances of beating Quest Rogue, if I recall correctly.

Charge is a dumb mechanic.
*edit* After consideration, I don't think there are many Charge minions in Un'Goro, so the designers may be dialing it back.
 
Wonder if a deck based around White Eyes could work. Run N'Zoth, White Eyes, two Ancestral Spirit, two Stonehill Defender, maybe a Spirit Echo and Umbra.

Probably way too ambitious though.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Technically Charged Devilsaur, the 8-mana 7/7 that has a battlecry preventing it from hitting face the first turn it comes out.
Yeah, I realized after posting that Un'goro doesn't have any charge to face. They also avoided putting Charge as an Adapt option.
 

KuroNeeko

Member
I see you touched on this later on so I'll comment below.

I'm not sure what decks are fun to play against, though of course fun is very subjective. I have fun if I'm winning, but close games feel like a coin flip due to the nature of Hearthstone and card games. I'm also not sure "fun to play against" is necessarily used by the designers for balance.

That's true. I recognize that. I guess for me, winning is not enough. I have to do it "My Way". Thing is, I don't mind losing if it's a "good" game, but the designers are not obligated to create a game that meets my specific standards of satisfaction.


What is the Stone Boar quest?

I'm sorry, this was a typo. I believe it was Dean that was talking about the Stone Boar TEST, where, during the design stage if someone started using Stone Boar to exploit a mechanic, then it was probably too dangers to include in the game. Stone Boar was like the canary in the cage--if people were using and abusing it (due to it's low cost), then they needed to be careful with it.

I can't imagine them actually sitting down with Stone Boar and playtesting the quest, or, if they did and it was OK, then there is a serious disconnect between what the designers think is "OK" and what the players do.

I was wondering if you felt the same way about heavy auctioneer decks and quest mage decks. Quest mage is even worse about interactivity to me, with 4+ ice blocks and a strategy involving surviving as long as possible without the enemy able to do anything until you get the cards that let you win.

To be honest, I haven't lost to Quest Mage so I don't know how it works. I imagine they tried to create a "D-Shift" kind of deck (from Shadowverse), but the combo in that game takes about 8-9 turns to complete. I don't like Freeze Mage, though, and if Quest Mage works like that then I don't know that it's good for the game.

I guess that comes down to a discussion of whether there is a place for Combo decks in Hearthstone. Personally, I don't like them, whether it's Freeze Mage, Leeroy → Faceless, etc.


You don't present much of an argument for #4 and #5. Why do you feel the Priest cards are dumb? Because they can swing a game too quickly?

How many games have you played against them? I find this very hard to believe anywhere below rank 20 just because of how many mediocre players there are, and how many of them will try to play Quest Rogue. I've been taking notes on the games I play so I can see how many I play against which classes, for example. And what deck(s) do you play? There are at least 5 that have decent to great chances of beating Quest Rogue, if I recall correctly.

I think the Inner Fire / Divine Spirit "combo" is not much better, but I can live with it as you're usually required to keep a minion on the board for multiple turns before you can fully buff it (not always).

Those are the only two cards I have an issue with in Priest. Priest, especially recently, has always been a gimmick class (outside of Dragon Priest) with strong deathrattles and card burgling effects. I like that gimmicky mechanic and the Control playstyle. I think them taking steps to (re)enable old archtypes like Silence Priest is nice, but I don't like how you can go from almost no board to a OTK just from a DS, DS, IF.

Pirate Warrior, at least my impression of it, isn't much better, but at least they're as honest as say...face hunter.

I still think charge is a dumb mechanic that doesn't make much sense in a game like Hearthstone (as opposed to Eternity or Magic).

As for beating Quest Rogue, I think I beat it once at Rank 14-ish when Murloc Paladin. People say the answer to beating QR is just to play aggressive decks (read, aggro), so my two choices are: play an aggro deck (which I don't like doing), or lose while Quest Rogues play with themselves (which isn't fun either).

*edit* After consideration, I don't think there are many Charge minions in Un'Goro, so the designers may be dialing it back.

Good. I think handling it more like Shadowverse (where there are two charge mechanics, one that allows face attacks and one that only allows for creature attacks) is a bit more fair, but some of the most busted / hated cards in Shadowverse also have face charge.

Sorry, I think I was just tilting and getting frustrated that the deck archtypes I like to play don't seem to be adequately represented at this time. Meta is still early, and there's probably lots to choose from, but frustrating to see so many people on ladder just go for the low-reaching fruit of Quest Rogue, Pirate Warrior, Taunt Warrior (of which I have different issues with).

edit: Don't get me wrong. I just crafted two Primordial Glyphs to try the more aggressive Secret Mage / Medievh Mage that someone posted earlier. I don't know if I'll like it, but I would have MUCH rather spent that dust on something like Shaku, Shera-chan, or some Vile-something Killer Plants.

Technically Charged Devilsaur, the 8-mana 7/7 that has a battlecry preventing it from hitting face the first turn it comes out.

The charge mechanic, when done like this, is fine...I think.
Problem is, there are still cards with "real" charge, so these new cards just get treated as garbage.
 
Even though I have wanted Charge to be nerfed in the past, outside of Patches/Pirate Warrior I feel like it's in a good place in the meta. There are only a few Charge minions that get used in Standard and Wild (Leeroy and Doomguard come to mind), and they fulfill very particular roles instead of just being facemonkey cards.

Yeah shaman is one of the few viable control decks in wild thanks to devolve and bigass taunts that reincarnate that are difficult for most aggro list with no silence to remove.
On the note of Silence: it's so nice not to see that in the meta anymore. I was playing classic Demonlock tonight, and I climbed from the bottom of rank 9 to the top of rank 7 just by playing for an hour. SO many people concede when they kill Void Caller and out pops Mal'Ganis or Doomguard.

Of course, Silence Priest silences everything I play, and I even had one rush me down and silence my taunts. -_-

I am going to look toward removing Loatheb from my current deck as well - he's not very good in the Wild meta right now.

Also, when thinking about how far the game has come: Ysera used to be in every other game I played. I haven't seen her now in months.
 

KuroNeeko

Member
Hate Hunterstone right now. What's a good counter for that tempo hunter shit in standard? :(

It's almost 75% of the games I'm playing at rank 8 and 7

I feel like Hunter comes down to two things:

1) Am I using a class with healing, life gain?
2) Did they do something obscene with Hyena within the first three turns?

If the answer to 2) is no, then it seems like gaining, and keeping, of the board is enough, though their hunter power will put you on a clock. 1) alleviates this, but I find like the only time I lose (as Priest) is due to something like Alley Cat → Hyena.
 
I feel like Hunter comes down to two things:

1) Am I using a class with healing, life gain?
2) Did they do something obscene with Hyena within the first three turns?

If the answer to 2) is no, then it seems like gaining, and keeping, of the board is enough, though their hunter power will put you on a clock. 1) alleviates this, but I find like the only time I lose (as Priest) is due to something like Alley Cat → Hyena.

Yah I saw alley cat x 2 on turn one and hyena on turn 2 a couple times. Auto win there :(
 

KuroNeeko

Member
F2P saving up dust to finally craft Bloodmage Thalnos after a few years.

Get him from tavern brawl pack. Nice.

Congrats, mayne.
I held off on BMT for a long time because of how unimpressive he looked.

Once you start using him though, mayne, he is completely worth the dust so it's even better that you managed to pull him. He's totally awesome.
 

Blizzard

Banned
To be honest, I haven't lost to Quest Mage so I don't know how it works. I imagine they tried to create a "D-Shift" kind of deck (from Shadowverse), but the combo in that game takes about 8-9 turns to complete. I don't like Freeze Mage, though, and if Quest Mage works like that then I don't know that it's good for the game.
Quest mage uses Freeze Mage mechanics to stall as long as possible (freeze all your minions 2-4 times) while preventing you from doing anything. It uses repeated ice blocks in case you manage to do something.

It also uses RNG spell discovery to get even more chances to stall/freeze along with chances to iceblock themselves (I think someone mentioned seeing ice block 4 times in a game).

Eventually, if they collect the right combination, they can play 1-2 sorcerer's apprentices, antonidas, and maybe 1-2 other cards I forget in a 2-turn combination. The other player can't do anything because the quest reward gives a double turn. If done properly, I think the combination results in infinite 0-mana fireballs to deal lethal.


If you're playing Paladin and the game gets to this situtation, you can get lucky and do Eye for an Eye just after they get to 1 HP, but before they trigger the combo. There's nothing they can do after that.
 
I am loving this Brawl. I get to play all of the quests without spending my dust.

I've learned that the Warrior Taunt Quest deck is extremely boring. I wouldn't craft it unless people gave me a way to do something like Sludge Belcher + Blood Warrior synergy into N'Zoth in a kind of Control Warrior deck.

I've learned that the Warlock Quest is absolute goddamn trash. I know everyone here says so, but now I got to experience it myself.

I've learned that the Priest Quest is a blast to play with the card thief synergies. I am inclined to craft that one.

Anyone else have enlightening experiences as a result of the Brawl? The Quest Rogue is also clearly not my kind of deck, but I knew that already. I still want to perfect N'Zoth Mill Rogue and learn to play Miracle Rogue.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Kind of crazy that murloc Paladin of all things is a tier 1 deck.

Then again when you print cards that are as ridiculously broken as Rookpool Hunter and Gentle Megasaur I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.

It's hilarious that Gentle Megasaur is a neutral and so much better than their class card adapt card in the same slot.
 

wiibomb

Member
I remember I got thlanos on one of my first packs and I was just so angry about getting him...

now I am just incredibly glad, thalnos is just one perfect legendary, it is good enough to make a significant impact on board but not so big to make it a threat by himself to polymorph or hex him, the value of the card is almost always going through except if the opponent is a priest and has potion of polymorph.

One of my favorite legendaries, not because I like him, but because of his many applications.
 

scarlet

Member
I remember I got thlanos on one of my first packs and I was just so angry about getting him...

now I am just incredibly glad, thalnos is just one perfect legendary, it is good enough to make a significant impact on board but not so big to make it a threat by himself to polymorph or hex him, the value of the card is almost always going through except if the opponent is a priest and has potion of polymorph.

One of my favorite legendaries, not because I like him, but because of his many applications.

IIRC someone said in this thread that he's actually the card that has been used a lot in this meta? I really can't remember it, but it's something like that.

I crafted him and had no regret. Especially since there's no more azure drake.
 

Fewr

Member
Is there a reason for this game not having async multiplayer?
I'm not asking for much, I'd be happy with max 1 async game allowed even with a friends only restriction. I could then play normal live games, and play my turn in async in between.
 
I am loving this Brawl. I get to play all of the quests without spending my dust.

I've learned that the Warrior Taunt Quest deck is extremely boring. I wouldn't craft it unless people gave me a way to do something like Sludge Belcher + Blood Warrior synergy into N'Zoth in a kind of Control Warrior deck.

I've learned that the Warlock Quest is absolute goddamn trash. I know everyone here says so, but now I got to experience it myself.

I've learned that the Priest Quest is a blast to play with the card thief synergies. I am inclined to craft that one.

Anyone else have enlightening experiences as a result of the Brawl? The Quest Rogue is also clearly not my kind of deck, but I knew that already. I still want to perfect N'Zoth Mill Rogue and learn to play Miracle Rogue.
The Warrior Quest is absolute trash compared to all the others, in this brawl deck against other quest decks at least. I'm 0/8 now and it's not like you can really play the deck wrong. Play taunts on curve and they just kill it while flooding their board with as much as they can to render hero power useless when I get it.
 

wiibomb

Member
IIRC someone said in this thread that he's actually the card that has been used a lot in this meta? I really can't remember it, but it's something like that.

I crafted him and had no regret. Especially since there's no more azure drake.

it was widely used in gatgetzan meta, in fact I don't think any shaman or mage didn't run one.

right now I think it is less used, but just because there isn't a spell focus on the decks. (I think rogues run it most of the time)

The Warrior Quest is absolute trash compared to all the others, in this brawl deck against other quest decks at least. I'm 0/8 now and it's not like you can really play the deck wrong. Play taunts on curve and they just kill it while flooding their board with as much as they can to render hero power useless when I get it.

the warrior deck is really badly made and it does not reflect the actual quality of that quest in the current meta
 

Interfectum

Member
Quest Rogue is such a horrible design. It's like you aren't even playing against them. They are just playing their own game of solitaire before going for your face.
 

Salex_

Member
Quest Rogue is such a horrible design. It's like you aren't even playing against them. They are just playing their own game of solitaire before going for your face.

All that talk about interactive but they keep making these autopilot single player decks. If you compare the current state of the game compared to pre-Yogg nerf, it's like they took 5 steps backwards. Amazing accomplishment. Warrior had like 5-6 viable decks and everyone else besides Priest had at least 2. You had more opportunities to outplay those decks as well.

I just tried Quest Rogue for the first time after playing against it so much on the way to rank 5 and i can't believe this is in the game. It's way too easy to complete the quest. All the opponent can do is "hope" they draw a curve to kill them in 4-5 turns. Or if you're using Mage, hope the opponent is dumb enough to not check for counter spell.

Taunt Warrior is almost as bad. Feels like these games are decided before the match even starts.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"

Crystal Rogue all the way down to Tier 3.

Pretty easy to guess which deck is going to fall in popularity in the next couple of weeks.

Gonna see a lot of Murloc Paladins soon enough. HSReplay stats were already hinting that the deck was extremely good. Being in the VS report will make it popular.

Edit: I think I said in the initial review that if you want to know what will be good in the next expansion, you just look for the most broken early game cards.

The most broken early game cards in this set are Crackling Razormaw, Rockpull Hunter, and Arcanologist. And here we are. The first two are in Tier 1 decks. Arcanologist is in every mage deck.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
it's refreshing to see that many decks being played.

most used class is warrior, of course, but most used deck is midrange hunter, that is interesting.

also, hunters are on the rise this week, they have been getting a huge boost in play %


Hunter being the most used deck becomes super obvious when you look at the deck lists they run.

You rarely even see epics. You can make a deck high legend players are using with less than 2000 dust.
 

IceMarker

Member
Paladin in Tier 1 again finally and it's my favorite archetype mid-range.

hrqayZG.gif
 

Pooya

Member
bu but tempo storm said rogue is tier 1 and miracle is so good, yeah... if you played it you know how mediocre that deck is. Tier 3 seems about right.

I've been rocking mid paly since day 1, yeah it's good. eating crow on that one. TBF, paladin is good not because of their new class cards but because of murlocs, stonehill defender and Gentle Megasaur. I actually theory crafted mid paly the very day that card was announced lol. it's amusing how that card is way better than paladin's class card for adapting SHR.

Haven't seen a secret mage yet. they probably don't have enough data for it anyway.
 

Nachos

Member
bu but tempo storm said rogue is tier 1 and miracle is so good, yeah... if you played it you know how mediocre that deck is. Tier 3 seems about right.

I've been rocking mid paly since day 1, yeah it's good. eating crow on that one. TBF, paladin is good not because of their new class cards but because of murlocs and stonehill defender and Gentle Megasaur. I actually theory crafted mid paly the very day that card was announced lol. it's amusing how that card is way better than paladin's class card for adapting SHR.

Haven't seen a secret mage yet. they probably don't have enough data for it anyway.
Miracle's still hanging on in tier 2; it's Crystal that's in tier 3.

EDIT: Whoops, completely misread the data. You're right.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Not surprised at all to see the statistics work out like that. Quest rogue gets dumpstered by a lot of stuff and it mostly stands out in how annoying it is when you get highrolled by it, but pirate warrior can also do that and is actually consistently strong. I don't think the quest deck will last longterm which doesn't surprise me, even if it initially was better than I expected.

Really happy that paladin is doing so well as it was always my favorite class. Midrange anyway, though like Zealous says it just shows how important early game is. The new murlocs are pretty blatantly pushing the powerlevel of their mana cost and Pally is lucky Vilefin exists, along with Tidecaller being really strong curved into the 2 drop.
 
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