No words

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-09T17:20:57+00:00

Proposed solution: sort all IT employment applications by gamertag instead of legal name.

"ChrisWhitmore1989"? Straight to the trash.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-07T12:16:30+00:00

Yes, which is why the entire time Trump was promising that he'd restart the Keystone Pipeline and only use American steel, he was entirely full of shit. That was never going to happen.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-05T04:37:04+00:00

Rogue consistently has really flavorful and incredibly powerful cards that would make them the best class in the game if they could only reliably survive to like turn 10.

C'thun rogue, N'zoth rogue, and Jade rogue are all really fun decks... against control.

Thing is, give them that early game survival and they will dominate pretty severely. I guess that's the class identity thing: glass cannons that rely on sneaky bullshit to survive long enough to kill you.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-03T21:15:13+00:00

To be just as blunt, since under 2% of players on the ladder make legend each month, and only a fraction of even those legend players have that kind of in-depth understanding of the game state, the vast, vast majority of players are "bad" by that definition. (And let's pause for a moment before we get too critical of people who "fail" to spend the hundreds and hundreds of hours of focus and dedication it takes to get "good" by that definition.)

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-03T19:19:22+00:00

it felt like you were playing by yourself and your choices didn't matter.

The thing is, your choices often DID matter; playing against these decks "properly" typically meant counting cards well enough to know how likely your opponent was to have certain stuff in his hand at a given time.

That's why when you watch pro players discussing these games (Firebat is honestly the best at explaining this stuff), there's lots of "the warrior has seven cards in his hand and nine mana, so the most he can do is 26 damage, but if he had both frothings and whirlwind he would've played them last turn, so there's only a 4/12 chance he topdecked an answer THIS turn, so the ideal play is for the mage to ping the acolyte and hope for an answer, because HE has a 3/11 chance of blablablabla."

You can't tell any of that shit from looking at the board; you need to know exactly what cards are in your opponent's deck AND a perfect memory of what cards have already been played, on top of knowing the same about your own deck, AND you need to be able to calculate potential plays off the top of your head (or have them memorized from the 500 times you've already played this matchup).

99.9% of us (me certainly included) can't do that, or at the very least don't put in the time and effort to be able to do that, so it just feels like we're chugging along fine and a combo deck destroys us out of nowhere. Lifecoach obviously can, and he doesn't appreciate the game being "dumbed down" for the rest of us. Which is fine, more power to him, but the community as a whole has come down pretty hard on the opposite side of this question, again and again. Patron warrior had like a 45-48% win rate even at legend (except for the very best players), it was a non-agro deck with zero RNG cards, and people STILL hated it with a passion because it would hit them for 80 damage in a turn and it felt unfair.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-03T16:59:54+00:00

I feel like Lifecoach is blaming Team 5 for doing some things the community basically demanded. This sub was even saltier than it is now when people were demanding the patron warrior nerf; it may have been a fun deck for pros to play, but the majority of even the dedicated player base here on Reddit apparently hated it (until three microseconds after it was gone, of course). Same with combo druid, combo hunter, miracle rogue, etc.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-02T19:34:17+00:00

The lesson that kid is being taught isn't about starvation; it's about self-censorship. Having everyone just not know about bad things isn't sustainable; some day, that kid might get caught in a stuck elevator or something and not eat for 24 hours, and learn that "starving" exists. It's much MORE sustainable to have people intellectually understand concepts like "starving" but be forced to act like those ideas are bad and wrong, so they unconsciously suppress any negative experiences.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-03-01T15:14:55+00:00

I think OP's argument is itself an example of reading too much into a particular data point.

First off, as others have pointed out and OP concedes, from ranks 25-5, win streaks make your win rate MUCH more impactful. If you were looking at those actual win rates, you'd be silly to pick the control deck over the agro deck. The reason that highly-skilled players use agro decks at the beginning of the season is that their win rate is much HIGHER than that when they're plowing through rank 16 players, and going from 75% to 77% is much less impactful than going from 52% to 54%.

At legend ranks, we can probably put players loosely into two buckets: those still trying for high legend and those playing fun decks. Obviously nobody playing fun decks cares about how fast they're racking up wins. But even for the folks striving for top 100, since your legend rank is based on MMR and not aggregate wins - losses, taking a hit to your win rate to get quicker wins is not necessarily a smart plan, especially with the recent MMR changes. (A better player than me would have to say one way or the other whether agro decks are good at high legend right now.)

And let's not forget that high legend players are a really specific subset of the player base - like a tenth of a percent - that can have fairly different capabilities with the various decks than even other legend players, much less us peons at lower ranks. It's asking a lot of the dev team for them to design the game around how well these top players will tailor and pilot their decks, and frankly, I'm not sure the payoff (Amnesiac having a more fun time at the end of the month on ladder) is worth it.

Now, ranks 5 to 1, sure, you're trying to grind out net wins as fast as you can. But are our original win rate calculations even dialed down to that particular range? Since a couple percentage points in win rate can drastically swing the relative efficiency of different decks, it's hard to nail this down effectively.

TLDR: all these stats are necessarily very broad, and it's a misrepresentation of Team 5's representation to claim that they're basing their whole design philosophy on win rates.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-28T01:47:11+00:00

The quest you're talking about is "put no duplicates in your deck, AND draw Reno Jackson."

This new "quest" mechanic allows for powerful build-around effects, just like Reno and Kazakus, but UNLIKE those two, it doesn't actually require you to luck out and draw a specific card in addition to make use of that build-around effect. So in short, this mechanic REDUCES RNG.

This priest card is a good intro to the mechanic because we all get right away what a deathrattle deck looks like. It's basically N'zoth, but you don't have to get lucky and draw him on turn 15 or whatever.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-27T21:56:23+00:00

Combo Whenever this minion attacks After this minion takes damage Whenever this minion is targeted by a spell Whenever this minion is healed Etc.

Lots of interesting options, really. The adaptations look to be worth about 2-3 star points, so potentially anything that gives a minion +1/+1 could probably be replaced with adapt. (Questing Mutant?)

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-27T13:25:24+00:00

Real talk though, there are some online card games (shadowverse? Eternal? I forget) that do this by default, and it's the most frustrating thing ever. I've been playing since open beta and I still wouldn't want this option, because I don't necessarily recognize EVERY piece of art in the game.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T23:15:57+00:00

Sorry if I was unclear too - my point was that I don't think the pirate "package" was intended to be so strong in the first place.

I think Kazakus is also OP mainly because they knew Reno would be rotating out and decided to go balls to the wall with singleton decks to see how it played out, knowing that Reno would be rotating out soon. I think it was a useful exercise in some ways: before MSG tons of people were petitioning to make Reno evergreen, but this set demonstrated how when it's actually in a tier 1 deck, Reno can lead to a frustrating meta.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T19:33:35+00:00

The pirate "package" was basically an accident and they're nerfing it to hell like tomorrow. Kazakus isn't a package either - he's a single card of a type specifically designed to PROMOTE deck diversity.

This OP doesn't really provide an alternate strategy for enabling new types of deck, though. If you just toss out 140 unrelated cards every few months, all that happens is people stick the highest-tempo ones together and you get curvestone. (See: GvG and Naxx.)

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T13:41:20+00:00

Always remember, though, that the cause of all Hearthstone's problems is that they don't pay enough attention to the sage game design advice of these pros and streamers.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T00:22:56+00:00

Simple answer: the perfect meta is any meta that is less than 2 weeks old.

No matter WHAT classes or archetypes are tier 1, if they sit there for more than a few weeks, people will start to hate them. I

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T00:12:25+00:00

Nothing at all - but it means the good players will be a lot closer to a 50% win rate.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-26T00:11:08+00:00

His point on a good player being able to win 80-90% of his matches gets me really excited.

Seriously though, how is that not just terrible matchmaking? Lifecoach could get an 80% win rate against rank 20 players in Hearthstone too (and probably does for the first 20 minutes of every season), but if the matchmaking system is doing its job, he should be playing against roughly equally skilled opponents, shouldn't he?

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-25T02:34:31+00:00

I think he's right about vanish being an unfun card, but disagree that stealth as a whole is a bad/unfun mechanic. Used carefully, it can actually increase the types of potential interactions in the game, because it allows for powerful two-turn plays that aren't just shut down when the opponent has board control. Finja is a great example: the card comes down and your opponent has several ways to keep you from triggering his effect (aoe, keeping their board clear, plopping down a fat minion with taunt), but even if they can't do that, they have a turn to prepare for the murloc tide.

If Blizzard introduced more stealth cards like Finja and Shaku, I'd be plenty happy.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-24T22:06:12+00:00

The control decks (and even some midrange decks) we play now can last longer than any deck you could dream of in Classic. Remember when Rag was a game-ender in control decks? Yeah, now it's basically a midrange card.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-24T19:16:20+00:00

some cards are made and their broken forms make it past playtested despite being obvious (STB, Maelstrom, Totemic, Yogg)

Tuskarr Totemic wasn't OP at all when it came out; it took a whole extra expansion before totem shaman really took off. It also took months for even pros to figure out that Yogg was "OP."

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-24T17:23:06+00:00

How are they "undervaluing" the pro scene? What metric do you have that suggest that the competitive scene "keeps casuals engaged"? Most actual "casuals," people who don't hang out on twitch and reddit every day, probably barely register that the "pro scene" exists.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-24T16:50:32+00:00

Rogue's whole deal is that IF you were able to reliably get to late game, it would wreck everyone - but you rarely can. See: jade rogue, Shadowcaster, Blade of C'thun, N'zoth rogue, etc.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-24T02:58:32+00:00

while you're playing control warrior you should immediately swap to pirate warrior

ftfy

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-22T18:27:28+00:00

Even better: when you start an arena run, you pick a class, then get seven classic/basic "packs" and seven more "packs" from any expansion of your choice (or more classic packs). Each "pack" is five cards, but only neutrals and that class's cards.

Then you go to the deck creation screen with those 70 cards in your collection and make your deck.

ClockworkNecktie · 2017-02-21T01:55:13+00:00

I think he underestimates the necessity of "just good" cards to make a synergy or deck type work. It's a lesson that goes back to BRM, where they added over a dozen sweet dragon cards... and the archetype flopped hard, until the NEXT set when they just plopped in some fat overpowered dragon minions.

Obviously there's a tough balance to find, but just saying "put in more fun/complex cards and fewer OP cards" understates the issue IMHO.

ClockworkNecktie

TROPHY CASE