Hearthstone General: Dragon our feet on a new thread to an Outlandish degre

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Hearthstone General: Dragon our feet on a new thread to an Outlandish degre

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Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I'm bored in quarantine and just found Grandmasters on Youtube. Watching this glory guy misplay and get bailed out by RNG every game is pretty cool. Across two separate series against Alutemu. Haven't seen anything like it from a top player from a long time.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2020 14:45

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:02

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

MinionOfCthulhu posted:

Holy crap, this week�s Brawl is awful

I had two Barista Lynchens in my opening hand. My opponent played Three 'The Darkness's. By Turn 4 I had an infinite loop of 0 cost Barista to fill my hand and board over and over. Good brawl.

Also what's up with not being able to pay with in-game gold right now? Just felt like playing an Arena and I can't pay with gold.

# ¿ May 21, 2020 20:04

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

It's kinda sad that I have almost 6000 wins in Arena and no Golden or Portrait anything because for whatever reason they didn't make tracking retroactive. Yet I almost have 500 wins on Priest because I played a bunch of stupid Priest nonsense on ladder like 4-5 years ago even though it's one of my least played classes in Arena.

Ah well. I really hope the new mode they talked up will be like Arena but less ruined.

# ¿ May 26, 2020 21:04

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Anybody watch how SamuelTsao just got eliminated from GM through the most crushing misplay? Holy poo poo. You could see his soul leave his body.

# ¿ May 31, 2020 14:05

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

peer posted:

I don't see how he could have won regardless but yeah

He could have risked Overflow into Savage Roar + Ironbark, but I guess more importantly, he could have ordered the trades to kill both Amets assuming one of the 3 spines hit one of them iirc. He just straight up forgot that the Reborn minion would come back with full Amet health. oof.

# ¿ May 31, 2020 14:15

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Regalingualius posted:

Wait, what? AFAIK, the only change to him was removing the 400% increased chance to offer a class card.

That's all I remember. Poison Hunter dragon can discover itself over and over right now. Arguably as strong or stronger.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2020 10:27

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I watched as SilverName sealed BunnyHoppor in a concrete coffin with a coin + Dragoncaster into Box, and it was funny.

Honestly though, HS is still very much a skill based game. Your brain will always hyperfocus on the times you got messed up by RNG, and mostly ignore when you didn't. Over a reasonable sample size of games, it's just variance. It's no better or worse than drawing your deck backwards, discarding the one necessary card and so on.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2020 12:36

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

No Wave posted:

The point of RNG was never to let "bad players win". Outside of arena matchmaking is enforced with an iron fist in HS, even more so after the ranked rework. Cards have random effects a.) so that matchups are less polarized, b.) so that late game between decks isn't completely solved, c.) so that you often have some obscure out to play for when you're behind, and d.) highrolling feels good. I play Runeterra over HS these days but I tend to go straight to the RNG cards in that game (I do the same for other CCGs).

Very much this.

Also, the reason for the decline of 'pure' 1v1 games (proportionally at least) I would go as far to say has almost nothing to do with seeking games where skill matters less. That sounds more like a personal gripe.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2020 15:32

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Fenarisk posted:

True, but at their core all card games are 90% RNG and 10% skill. Poker is no different.

Maybe you're not expressing exactly what you mean, but to me this outlook is completely wrongheaded. This would only be the case in a 1v1 environment over a short time span in which both players are near identical skill. Identical skill is also something of a misnomer, because two players who are roughly equally skilled against the world at large might have different odds against one another due to differences in technique/style, but regardless.

Poker is not 90% luck and 10% skill at any point, not even in a single hand, because every hand has multifarious decision points at each stage. You control your actions at every stage and adapt to the cards dealt and come up on the flop etcetc.

Just as the role of luck is much higher in the short term against a player of similar skill, you should conceive of luck in the same way. Over a longer time span, game dependent, every player's luck balances out. And in fact, it balances it out far more equally than a player can be identical to another in terms of skill. Play the same stakes over and over for a year and your results at the end when tallied up will be almost 100% based on skill, not luck.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2020 11:21

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Breezed through the adventure without losing once, except to the loving Mecha Ogre where I died three times lmao. I dunno, he just kept insanely bullshitting me with that hero power. That 5 mana draw three and summon all minions, except in actuality it was "Oops, all 8 mana taunts" without fail. The final fight is like a mega anti-climax compared to some of the others, at least it was for me.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 23:08

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Yeah, Dungeon Runs were a lot of fun, so I hope they come back. Did they say what the 'challenges' are next week?

As for the adventure deck, yeah it was pretty bland. But it changed frequently throughout the run as far as I could see. It turned more and more Demon Hunter-y as time went on, I guess fitting with the theme. It just so happens that there isn't an interesting variety of Demon Hunter cards in the game right now, they're all pretty...functional, I guess.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 00:48

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I haven't played BGs since the win % addon came in, but whenever I see a streamer with it on, I can't help but wonder - is it actually fully accurate? Especially for some of the complex endgame states, it seems like the probability trees would be absolutely immense. And it seems to just poop out the answer instantly.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 01:58

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

That 4/9 common Spellburst dragon is already making me Arena-sad.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 13:59

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I like the design of Glide, honestly, well the hand disruption aspect of it. What I'm less of a fan out is how it seems every expansion just further and further counterfeits the value of all previous draw cards. Does DH really need even more absurd draw engines? I know it won't always be 4 cards for 4 mana, but even for 3 cards it's still pretty good.

In a low curve aggro DH, this card can be pretty gross. Like, 7 mana empty hand DH vs Control topdecks Skull. Get a couple of free cheapos to play out, play 1 mana draw 4 more cards outcasted and minus 4 cards from your opponent's hand, including probably the answers they were saving up. That's not even a particularly difficult scenario to envision. Draw 7 while tempoing out and loving up your opponent's hand.

On the other hand, I will say that in Aggro vs Aggro, or any kind of deck that empties their hand somewhat, this card is loving dogshit. Which is...balance I guess. It will be the first(?) time that Outcast is actively bad, and if you think about it, avoiding Outcast with this card is not easy at all. You need a minimum of 3 cards to do it, placed correctly in the hand which is not guaranteed, and you can afford to throw both of them, and only then is it a 4 mana Arcane Intellect.

As more and more strong DH cards come out though, the eventuality of a murderously powerful Highlander Demon Hunter is coming to light.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 15:14

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

The Orb seems strong, at least for non-weapon using classes. Probably real good if you have it on T1. Cards that address draw inconsistency are neat.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 19:14

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Well, it might be good against this Big Warrior archetype they seem to be pushing out at least.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2020 18:24

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Soul Fragments have a nice upside of running counter to Highlander decks, so contrary to the usual gimmick of no duplicates get cool stuff, now you're shuffling positive bombs into your deck which enable strong cards but disable Highlander cards. 5 Mana 7/8 Taunt looks pretty, uh, strong.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2020 00:34

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

This expansion is probably the nail in the coffin for the Arena. Still waiting to see what their Phase 2 'New Game Mode' will be, and if it can be a worthwhile replacement.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2020 00:11

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

gandlethorpe posted:

Few days late, but here's another reason Trump shouldn't be considered too boring to do a reveal stream:

https://twitter.com/TrumpSC/status/1182887804931629057?s=19

lol

whenever I see that guy, it's like watching a less charismatic and charming professor frink. his continued existence literally proves in a single stroke that the 'foot in the door' phenomenon for streaming games is 100% real. in a fair world with a just God, he would have streamed for no more than 20 viewers for several years before wandering off to do an MBA in accounting.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2020 01:57

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

RatHat posted:

Huh? Normally if you have an arena run going when the expansion hits it'll end your run but give you a free ticket. It didn't this time.

Only when cards rotate out, I think.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2020 19:32

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Squashing Machine posted:

I played a couple rounds of Arena after being away for about a year and I just can't stand it. Every card generates more cards. Half of the base-level commons are built-in 2-for-1s and so many on-cost creatures poo poo out extra spells and dragons that playing a value game is impossible. The power creep in this game has become absolutely insane and it turns the entire experience into a lovely game of Yahtzee where you race to see who can chain-discover the most broken crap. Since when did every single card have to be Dr. Boom to be playable? Jeese

It's turbofucked and this expansion will do little to help that. Blizzard don't care though, and honestly, I think they never liked the idea that players could print infinite in-game money with enough skill. You can actually track the decline pretty well through their own leaderboard system.

Back in July 2017 (not cherrypicked, just a random one from Google), the 150th rank player in EU had 7.63 wins average, which back then was the bottom of the list. That's 30 consecutive runs in one month, and for most non-streamers, most rarely hit beyond even 40 runs in a month anyway.

Compare that to now, where the February-April ranking, the 150th best player in EU was down to 6.33 wins. Over about 1.5 months. December-February, which was almost 3 months worth of runs, the same story of 6.6 win average in 150th.

Even with so much more time to gather a better 30 consecutive runs, average wins have fallen massively. More than a 1 win drop despite having more time to polish your average is actually kind of nuts.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2020 11:08

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Just lost an Arena game at 11-2 because I just auto-piloted a random Metamorphosis I pulled and fired it to do 5 but it does 4 now apparently? That's what I get for never playing Constructed I guess.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2020 21:10

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I was in an Arena stream earlier and some people were talking about their total wins and there were several people who claimed to have 50-60k Arena wins. What's the most amount of wins a goon has in any format (or total)?

# ¿ Aug 13, 2020 13:36

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Firebert posted:

https://twitter.com/GW_Alec/status/1294026796325715968

I'd like to take personal credit for this from my probably unread comment about it from the Reddit AMA.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2020 23:59

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Julio Cruz posted:

I wonder if this means Conjurer's Calling can no longer generate the same minion as one of the two new ones

Doubtful, I imagine they work pretty differently behind the scenes.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2020 00:01

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

It is actually really exploitative for a multi-billion dollar company to give players contracts that require them to be ready both 3 hours before and 3 hours after their allotted time, then to fine them $1000 if they aren't. Literally, if it's early, just put it on delay until the allotted time. This tournament is streaming to a few thousand people max.

What makes it especially stupid is that Firebat was tweeting about being DQ'd before it went live. Like, show a minimum of flexibility. Give a one game penalty. Pretending to be the big leagues and rules-lawyering players achieves nothing but bad optics. Although honestly, that's seems to be the only thing Blizzard are good at when it comes to running anything 'competitive'.

Even if you agree with the DQ, the fine is just...why. The point/game loss is already enough. These people are more or less playing for love of the game, and people watch for the same reasons. Blizz just can't resist looking like out of touch shitheels whenever the opportunity presents itself.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 21:03

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

It's a completely pointless stick. All players already know the importance of being GM and the value of games. If anything, I've played in higher stakes than Hearthstone where there is more incentive not to bother to turn up because things like pointless dead games exist (and no per match win cash prize) that have nothing beyond a forfeit for being late.

I'd contest it has zero to do with players, and everything to do with Blizzard not wanting to lose whatever pittance they were hoping to receive from streaming.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 21:46

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

What's even dumber is that Firebat played insanely later than schedule yesterday and played last which probably explains the late night. Eddie himself tweeted that he was 2 mins off being DQ'd alongside Firebat. So then Blizzard would have fantastically rules lawyered themselves into the biggest joke of a GM Top 4 where Americas was just one game. People just want to watch the games.

e: yah, beaten

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 22:15

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Well, anyway, here's a cool site that has pretty much all the card sound effects in one place. Honestly kinda wanted this for ages for whenever I have a random minion sound in my head due to brain worms.

https://hearthsfx.github.io/

Also I've learned by proxy that all the Galakrond cards and The Amazing Reno had special voicelines when they were picked in Arena, but in the end they were never made draftable.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 01:58

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Just discovered to my misfortune that Mo'arg Artificer basically doesn't work with Rolling Fireball. Each roll does double damage as it were, but it seemingly pre-calculates the damage roll in advance of that. So unlike having, say, +2 Spellpower and it rolls across 10 damage, it applies each double damage tick separately. Just hosed myself casting it on a 3/5 beside a 2/3 expecting it to roll further as if were 16 damage. But instead it just does 10 and 6 damage (2x5 and 2x3 from the original 8).

Shame, cos otherwise it was a really close game. I guess that prevents it from snowballing damage ludicrously, but it's still kinda counter-intuitive.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 21:15

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Acerbatus posted:

Not really. It says "spells do double damage to minions", not "your spells have double damage" or something.

I dunno man, it's pretty drat confusing. Like, I don't think it's possible to know what exactly what will happen without seeing the interaction once. The spell appears to function as a 'rolling' fireball, applying damage step by step, but in reality the damage is apportioned immediately to all the targets and the 'rolling' is just a trick.

Imagine you are facing down a board of one 4/4 and 6 1/1s (in that order). The natural move is to use it on the 4/4 and it leaves two 1/1s left in play. However, if you play it with Mo'arg, if you cast it on the 4/4, the result is identical to as if you didn't have Mo'arg at all. But if you cast it on the 1/1 on the far right, you'll actually clear the whole board.

e:

adamarama posted:

I noticed a bug with spell burst, in particular paladin. You can get minions that increase health at end of turn from first day of school (imp and priestess). When this ticks at end of turn, it activates spellburst. I've only seen it on goody two shoes, as I've only been playing spellburst in paladin.

I thought this was a visual bug and that the Spellburst was still active. Might be wrong though?

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 22:49

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Just had an opponent chain Messenger Raven into Messenger Raven in Arena - I thought self-discover was now out of the game?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 22:21

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

RatHat posted:

So with turtle mage are you just screwed if you draw both potions before turtle?

Well, yes, but also sometimes no?

Here's Eddie in Game 3 of the Grand Final of week 3 America's Grandmasters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcr843Li-Q&t=2274s

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 22:16

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Are the Masters Tour Swiss results available to see online anywhere?

# ¿ Sep 12, 2020 12:24

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

A major problem with Evo as a 1 mana spell is that it also made the Mage 1-mana spell pool even more powerful. Wandmaker and Cobalt Spellkin which are otherwise pretty shrugworthy cards are run simply on the basis that you can generate some seriously bonkers value off of them, or even double dip with Magic Trick. I completely agree that Apprentice is the real reason for the problem, but nerfing Apprentice to never reduce to zero will absolutely gut most Mage decks. As is, these two nerfs represent a more moderate approach. Personally I did enjoy watching a lot of the Tempo Mage games - obviously Solarian was clown town, but the intricacy of early pop-off turns is really fun. It only really got silly broken when 0 mana Evocation generated a bunch more 0 cost spells. This delays that by at least a turn which is obviously super relevant.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2020 23:37

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Big Coffin Hunter posted:

Then Mage as a class has a huge fundamental problem. With the effects of mages low cost spells being so good, there is no way they should be 0 mana. I agree with keeping these effects at 1 or 2 is cool while keeping class identitiy.

Also some effects happening over and over again. For example, board freezing is fine, but infinite freezes is why Turtle Mage was insufferable.

It's a concatenation of several things. An extremely strong 1 mana spell pool, greater access to the 1 mana pool through targeted generation, and payoff cards like Mana Giant and Chenvaala that are fueled primarily by said cheap spells. Obviously they wanted to push small spells on Mage as an archetype, and well, it really worked. But by nerfing Sorc like that, they will erase that archetype completely. It's probably(?) better to just tweak the most problematic cards rather than remove the lynchpin of the archetype, because it will leave the class helpless and strand all the cards they printed to support it. I wouldn't say Apprentice is causing a fundamental problem because for it to be relevant, there needs to be nutty powerful 1 mana spells on top of cards that reward playing lots of spells in one turn (or in general). It's not like it's been an auto-include in previous iterations of powerful Mage decks in Standard, far from it.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2020 02:28

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

I hope the new gamemode is good. I figure it will be some kind of drafting mode, but I guess it could be something really out there.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2020 18:34

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Why is there a "progression and rewards revamp" date set? Does that literally exist so they can head off criticism of the rewards system off at the pass by or what? If so, that's pretty smart/funny. Otherwise why not release it with the revamped system if you already know what the revamp is going to be??

# ¿ Oct 22, 2020 19:59

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

So I have to pre-purchase packs in order to play EA Duels? Welp, hard pass. Should at least have let people play Casual to try it out or offered it as a side-cost. Literally no interest in forking out for packs.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2020 21:12

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:02

Jeza: Feb 13, 2011; The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

Mr Beens posted:

To play now before it fully launches yes.
When the expansion comes out everyone can play it.

Yeah, sucks balls for people like me. Got to play BG in EA just idling Twitch, this time seems like you have to pay for packs. I don't play Constructed so it's just a waste of money to drop the price of a full game, the value of which is pretty much entirely wrapped up in packs I have no use for.

Mr Beens posted:

What? I cannot understand what you are trying to say, it makes no sense.
There is a date for the progression and rewards revamp because that is the date it goes live.
All of the details are here - https://playhearthstone.com/en-gb/news/23534414/revamping-progression-and-rewards-in-hearthstone

I was thinking it was related to the new mode rather than in general. My mistake.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2020 23:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Hearthstone General: Dragon our feet on a new thread to an Outlandish degre

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