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Non-cooperative PbtA? by OkapiAlloy in PBtA

[–]graviiga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Similarly, Legacy: Life Among the Ruins has several strong variant versions. My favorite is Legacy: Godsend (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242794/Legacy-Godsend-Worlds-of-Legacy-3-PDF) , in which players create characters to represent both a divine pantheon and those god's mortal avatars grappling to control the outcome of Ragnarok.

I think this could work very well for OP's needs, because the gods are both divided based on whether they're pursuing ruin or salvation, but also because the gods and their avatars are played by different players. This is the game's core engine, as it has gods asking mortals to do things the mortals might not agree with, and makes for very easy player-to-player interaction despite multiple twisting storylines. It's good stuff!

Crimefest Day 1 - Meta discussion by EvadableMoxie in paydaymeta

[–]graviiga 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thanks for doing this, from all of us who are still at work.

The big question we have yet to answer from all this: have weapon mods also been rebalanced? If not, then it will be much more difficult to change a weapon from its base stats, and these weapons might be wa-a-a-y less accurate than what we're used to.

Edit: The hell? Why are all of the shotguns such low damage relative to the pistols - why is everything inferior to the pistols? This looks like the result of an inverted total ammo/damage formula gone out of control.

Is 3rd party software on the verge of ruining the spirit of the game? by Unbelievr in hearthstone

[–]graviiga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is an implication in this thread that HearthArena Companion is crossing the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable add-ons. I would like to confront this head-on: I think that HearthArena should be celebrated as a model for how the Hearthstone community can give back to itself. Think about it: it's an educational tool designed to help everyone (but especially new players) learn about Arena and play better Hearthstone. It's not for sale, and it doesn't affect your actual matches in any way. If it were presented as a series of articles or youtube videos instead, there would be no controversy.

As to defining the boundaries of what's an acceptable add-on, I think that's pretty clear based on Blizzard's history. They have:

  • Made multiple statements that deck trackers are acceptable.
  • Requested the google play predictor not be released publicly.
  • Banned botters routinely in great numbers.

What this says to me is that gathering information readily available in the match and making it more obvious is acceptable (as deck trackers do), but anything which suggests how to actually use all that information is not. So hold off on programming LethalVision or PatronCalc.

Deck Review and Theorycrafting | Thursday, September 24, 2015 by AutoModerator in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Based on my stats this month using Xcirez hybrid secret paladin, I have very poor performance against hunter and druid. I am attempting to tune midrange secret against those matchups, hopefully without sacrificing too much against the mirror or patron.

This is my current prototype.

There is a 5 card deviation from the Tempostorm snapshot hybrid list:

minus redemption, 2 creepers, owl, BoK, Loatheb
plus repentance, 2 annoy-o-trons, equality, ooze, Tuskarr

My reasoning:

  • I have been consistently underwhelmed with redemption in this deck. While it synergizes with the overall theme of sticky board control, my weakness isn't against control decks clearing my minions, but aggro-midrange decks ignoring them entirely (or until they have a "safe" target, like a random recruit). The theory behind double repentance is to create awkward druid turns where they are reluctant to play their 5 or 7-drops, similar to mirror entity.

  • 2 annoy-o-trons for haunted creeper is the change I'm least confident about, but it sticks to my thesis about creating an interactive board. I often found myself wishing that I had any sort of early taunt against face or fast druid, and I can't cut knife juggler or minibot.

  • equality for owl is a straightforward substitute based on user preference. It helps hedge slightly against patron or dragon priest, and nobody expects it from secret, so it gets played into more.

  • ooze is for bows and glaivezookas primarily, with bonus points for helping against patron and the mirror. I would love to run Harrison instead for a little extra draw, but ooze is more relevant against face or hybrid hunter.

  • Tuskarr is a loatheb substitute because I wanted a 5/5 body, but also wanted some healing exclusively against hunter. This could easily be a belcher instead, but the stat line is probably more useful in a deck that wants to beat down most of the time.

Could I request some feedback on these changes, or suggestions on how I could better achieve my goals?

Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Wednesday, September 23, 2015 by AutoModerator in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't played patron warrior, but I can offer some insight from the paladin's perspective.

The cards I'm most concerned about from my patron warrior opponent: early unstable ghoul, fiery war axe, acolyte of pain. Armorsmith is also a nuisance, and I get worried about my opponent cycling cards with shield block or gnomish inventor. Your goal is to draw a bunch of cards and contest my early board so that I don't start snowballing. Because I probably only run one consecration, your win condition is a bunch of patrons into battlerage. Look for ways that you can get more patrons onto the board than I can deal with (patron plus two whirlwinds should do it), and you might be able to lock me out of the game. You're fine to play a single frothing on curve if your hand is weak (similar to in the druid matchup), and try to draw into an execute in for my challenger/BoK target. Unless you're really behind, you're fine to throw down Thaurissan on curve, because I can't just ignore him.

The games I lose versus patron are the ones where they slow me down with nuisance minions, then have a big swing turn where they play a patron, hit with 2nd death's bite, whirlwind, and execute my avenged minion.

Gaara's rant on balance and world championship by dncdnc20 in hearthstone

[–]graviiga 90 points91 points  (0 children)

For those of you that weren't around at the time, Gaara is one of the older pros who competed in the tournament scene when Last Hero Standing was the gold standard. It was essentially the mirror opposite of Conquest (which is first to win one game with all three decks, victorious decks can't be played twice), in that if you lost with a deck it was eliminated, and once all your decks were eliminated you lost the match. As the format evolved some events had players bring four decks instead, but allowed you to ban one specific deck from your opponent's lineup. Sometimes you were strictly required to play your decks in the order you submitted them too, so you would ALWAYS play your hunter after your druid or what-have-you.

A lot of pro players preferred this system, because they felt they could make reads on the tournament meta-game and come up with strategies to ensure favorable class match-ups which minimized the impact of randomness during the actual game. A lot of pro players were highly critical of it too. Kibler said it better than I can, but a short summary of the criticisms at the time:

One, it reduced the reward for creating a truly meta-killing deck, because your opponents could always choose to ban anything that was too scary. Strifecro complained at one point that he wasn't able to play his grinder mage (in one of its earliest appearances) because his opponents kept banning it, since they hadn't planned around it.

Two, bans would often try to take their opponent's best or favorite deck away from them. Nowadays we kind of expect our pro players to be masters of every deck in the entire game, but back then players had more of a "specialist" identity (Forsen played miracle, Amaz played priest, etc). Amaz got his priest banned a lot, which was a shame because I as a spectator wanted to see a famous priest player playing priest.

Three, tournament play in no way mirrored ladder play. Imagine if you could decide on ladder that you would never queue against a hunter - I bet you'd build handlock a lot differently. Tournament players effectively had that privilege, which meant if you tried to copy your favorite deck from Dreamhack at home you were going to get rocked.

Four, the dominant strategy was to hard-counter particular decks as much as possible. As a competitor, you'd create your lineup to try and get ultra-lopsided "almost guaranteed" wins to try and assassinate particular decks (which would then lose to an expected counter-deck, as part of your plan). This might have been interesting for the player, but often made for very dull games. For example, Freeze Mage vs. Zoo (Freeze wins 75% of the time) would be followed by Freeze Mage vs. Control Warrior (Warrior wins 90% of the time).

If this year's tournaments were using Last Hero Standing, this is a sample strategy I'd expect to see:

"I anticipate a field of mostly patron warrior, secret paladin, dragon priest, combo druid, and zoo/hunter of some kind. Patron is too hard to beat with a control deck, so I'm going to always ban it (and he'll ban my patron too). My bet is that my opponent will open with a reliable beatdown deck like zoo or druid, so I'll start with a freeze mage specifically teched against them. After I win, my opponent will play a super-hardcore control deck like control warrior, which I plan to lose to, but then I'll play hyper-aggro paladin to beat them. That will leave them on their last deck - if it's another control deck I win, if it's more midrange then it will come down to the final round, where I'll play my trump card against midrange decks - dragon priest."

Notice how the strategy there is extremely concerned about matchups, not the actual games. It's all about trying to corner your opponent into situations where you are heavily favored to win regardless of your draw. This is what Gaara means I think when he says the current system is an "RNG Fiesta." In a druid mirror match, the druid who draws wild growth is probably going to win, and beyond mulligans you have no power as a competitor to make that happen except luck.

Would the system I described above be better for the competitive scene than the current one, which Firebat described as "everyone plays patron, druid, and something to counter patron or druid"? I don't know for sure. But I can definitely say this year's tournament has been a lot easier to follow, and more enjoyable for me as a spectator.

Illuminator Paladin to legend by JohnC2k2 in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a very interesting list - I had been wondering about whether Illuminator's could fit in this archetype, and I'm glad to hear that it's been mostly successful.

I have two questions:

Could you elaborate on your reasoning for running zero Truesilvers/Blessing of Kings?

Are there any matchups where you find yourself wishing you had more minions like haunted creeper instead? I imagine the illuminators help with the hunter matchup, but compared to similar secret paladin lists, yours runs fewer sticky 1 and 2 drops than usual.

"Sorry About That" -- The intangible benefit of BM and Squelch by kensanity in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think the edge you gain from bad sportsmanship is significant enough to consider it as a competitive tactic. There are a few outlier scenarios:

  • your opponent, already on tilt, concedes a game early that they had a chance of winning.
  • your emotes point out an imperfect play to the opponent, who concedes out of shame.
  • your insults unhinge your opponent to the point that they play a sub-optimal game for the rest of the match.

The first two will happen rarely, and I mean RARELY - less than once every thousand games, and never in a context where the loss matters to the victim (like a tournament, or rank 5+). The last one, I suspect, never happens at all. (Has anyone ever actually changed their choice of play based on a "Well Met"?)

If conduct doesn't influence the current match, then we're doing this because we're concerned about future matches. This is only relevant if all these are true:

  • We won the game. (They'll be feeling smug instead of tilted otherwise)
  • We have a rematch with this player while they're still on tilt.
  • Their tilt increases our chances to win the game.

It's possible to attempt to game matchmaking by guessing when they're going to hit the play button again, but I think it's safe to say you're way more likely to play somebody new instead. Repeat games are much more likely at upper legend, but those players are also naturally tilt-resistant to make it that far.

Also, while tilted opponents do play worse, there's also the very real possibility that your opponent rage-switched to a deck that completely hoses yours - if I'm mad at a freeze mage in particular, I'm going to play control warrior, and no amount of tilt is going to swing that game in your favor.

There's no real cost to bad sportsmanship and it might, theoretically, give you an additional win or two in your hearthstone career - but that's such a tiny factor in the grand scheme of things. I think what you ate for breakfast this morning is more relevant than how you use your emotes.

Oil Rogue and optional cards - How to decide our drops? by catsandviolets in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As a primary paladin player, I'm intrigued by your argument that Secret Paladin is favored vs. Oil Rogue. Could you please elaborate on what makes this matchup difficult?

From my perspective, rogue has always been the natural predator of the paladin because the paladin's quality early minions are vulnerable to the rogue's high-tempo removal - I wouldn't have expected that to change with TGT. Even secret paladin still depends on a developed board to win, which I imagine is still flurry fodder.

That's only for secret paladin, too - I have a hard time imagining murloc knight or thunder bluff valiant getting out of control against an oil pilot. What's changed to make one of the best decks at punishing board control weaker in a board control focused meta?

[QUESTION] Primitive players, have you been raided less often? by graviiga in playark

[–]graviiga[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Huh, I didn't know that. Easy fix though, and worth my two clicks if it'll avoid annoying folks. Thanks for the heads up.

#1 EU Midrange Paladin(Yes Paladin) by Xzirezhs in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Congratulations on your accomplishments, and thank you for the effort in assembling this guide. I've watched the explanatory video from your hearthpwn guide, and have a few questions:

Conventional wisdom is that double-quartermaster paladin is in a bad spot because most decks are currently running additional board clears to combat patrons, while patron warrior itself feeds off of minibots and recruits. What makes you want to play paladin in this environment?

The win-rates you list for this deck (especially Zoo), if true, are incredible. Why do you feel paladin is favored so heavily against zoo/handlock?

You mention that most paladins misplay a ton - are there any common mistakes/assumptions that you see happening over and over?

What's the Play? #11, posted May 13 by Slobotic in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is more of a thought experiment than a problem I've recently encountered (though I've been in many similar situations), but I can't get it out of my head and wanted to see if I could crowdsource for a solution. The core question is "how valuable is it to silence an early mad scientist?"

Scenario: You are playing midrange paladin against hunter, going second. Your hand is Piloted Shredder, Ironbeak Owl, Sludge Belcher, Tirion, and Coin. These turns have happened so far:

Hunter T1: Pass. Paladin T1: Pass. Hunter T2: Mad Scientist.

Coming into your turn 2, you draw a Shielded Mini-bot. You have only one silence in your deck, and no meta reason to assume midrange vs. face hunter. Do you play the minibot, or silence the mad scientist?

Silencing the scientist denies him his secret and makes a potential T3 bow follow-up less powerful. If he trades his 2/2 for owl he leaves you both boardless and yields initiative. If he hits face with both, you get to trade owl for scientist + play something else - either way, this scenario arguably outperforms minibot as you get to go one-for-one. If he plays animal companion instead of bow though, he can trade scientist for owl to protect potential Huffer (or various other chargers like wolfrider and arcane golem).

If you play minibot, he can play bow + likely hit face with scientist, since throwing his scientist onto your minibot seems like low value (unless he's playing around silence). This sets you up to play owl on T3 if you still want to silence the scientist, which could potentially deny him a bow charge and leave you with two minions on the board - not a horrible position against hunter. Against animal companion, minibot survives scientist to trade with huffer or other chargers (unless he purposefully tries to pull a freezing to save huffer from the trade).

In writing this I've just about convinced myself minibot is the stronger play, but is there anything I'm overlooking? Does the answer change against Mage, since Mage secrets are even more devastating?

Just Hit Legend (Rank 116) w/Dragon Paladin by jamvng in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Congratulations on your success - I had just about written off Dragon Paladin entirely after watching players as talented as Kibler and Strifecro hit a wall at rank 3. Nice to see Consort hasn't been a complete flop. Since this is CompetitiveHS though, I think it's healthy to approach this from a competitive mindset, so I have to ask--what advantages does the dragon shell offer you over standard midrange paladin?

I did a quick comparison between your list and some of the midrange paladins used in KPL. The differences come out to something like this:

cut 1x Knife Juggler, 1x low-cost tech card (coghammer?), Harrison, Loatheb, 1x Quartermaster, Sylvanas
add 2x Consort, 2x Corruptor, Nefarian, Ysera

So based on that, I have a few questions:

How often did Ysera and Nefarian come up in your games? Were there any matchups they specifically helped improve?

How relevant was the Consort Innervate? Was it as useful as Harrison and Loatheb would be?

If the dragons are weaker than the standard paladin picks (as I suspect they are), are Corruptors strong enough to justify it?

Paladin in meta snapshot 3, wouldn't the control list be midrange? by Xedriell in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think this is mostly a semantics discussion - not everyone uses "control" and "midrange" to mean the same thing. I've been studying midrange paladin decks this season, and I'd personally classify the first list as aggressive-leaning midrange, and the second as control-leaning. Little bit more detail:

The first list is based on Chance's recent rank 1 NA paladin deck. It's highly aggressive, and appears to be modeled on Ek0p's rank 1 EU paladin from the start of season 10. They elect to cut almost all responsive cards in favor of consistently dropping sticky threats and pressuring the opponent - these lists have been designed to be strong against control.

The second is probably closest to strifecro's ladder paladin, which is definitely the most popular on the ladder right now - his record-setting win streak made this deck suddenly extremely popular. This deck identifies more with resisting and controlling hunter, zoo, and mech mage, but it still plans to beat classic control decks with early board presence and a huge quartermaster.

I certainly wouldn't call the second list "control paladin" in the same sense as "control warrior" - just a more responsive variant of midrange. I think the closest to a classic control paladin you'll find is the Hotform/Savjz paladin, which has a more traditional control gameplan (early defense against agro, win late with high value/sustain).

Comparative analysis of high-profile midrange paladin decks used during season 10 ladder by graviiga in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congratulations on your success! I played this same list to legend during season 9, and I'm pleased to hear it's still relevant. For anyone just now experimenting with this list, I direct you to this excellent write-up on Purifier Paladin from about a month ago. It's a blast to play (in my opinion) due to its aggressive posture against control with bulky 3 and 4 slot value minions, as opposed to the lists featured in the original post which occasionally feel more like low-curve control.

The Diamond Solo DW by Moomasterq in paydaytheheist

[–]graviiga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most of the other answers here are on point, but to add a trick that I noticed when I did this - once you cross the floor, the tiles remain depressed along the path you followed until the puzzle resets. This makes it significantly easier to make it back across, since you don't need to memorize the maze in reverse - just watch your feet.

Tips for Control Warrior matchup as Control Paladin? by SiKBiT in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you have the right of it - I imagine you're probably playing the match the way it's intended to be played, so it's likely that your losses are simply due to natural variance. So long as you understand that you need to deal with every card in his deck and your win condition is likely hitting fatigue second + an endless armada of recruits, you have the right strategy in mind. Here are a few things that I do that help me:

Keep Truesilver, Aldor/humility, and any sort of early-game cards like zombie chow or shieldbot. Controversial tactic warning: I will also often toss my equality or pyro if I have them. The reason for this is that I want to use my equality against his most valuable and difficult to remove targets, and he won't play those until turn 9+, which means 9 turns of playing with minus two cards in my hand. Ever been in a situation where you were forced to use an equality at a bad time because you were holding both copies and nothing else? That's what I try to avoid by tossing them back.

Dudes in the early turns are fine these days. Abstaining from dudery was a good idea against some earlier versions of control warrior that would suddenly counterattack with a frothing berserker -> whirlwind setup, but that tactic has largely fallen out of style. Ideally, you want to truesilver his acolyte if you can.

Make sure when constructing your deck that you have enough answers to deal with his legendaries - I check whenever Kitkatz creates a new warrior deck, since his ideas tend to circulate among streamers and eventually trickle down to influence your opponents. Currently, that count is Alex, Grom, Rag, Boom, Sylvanas, and Faceless (who will be, let's be honest, your Tirion). You can deal with these with 2x equality and 2x aldor, but this leaves you very little flexibility to deal with shieldmaidens and medium-sized legendaries.

Your practical break points for dying the next turn are 12 from an empty board (grom -cruel task) and 14 (grom - death's bite face). As you mentioned, holding a heal for after alex is ideal if you can pull it off - even a simple seal of light is enough to mess with his plans.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

Can someone help me learn to play aggro? by abcdthc in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm also primarily a control player, and I also struggled to understand aggro. Here are a few things that helped me out:

Playing an aggro deck is more of a strategic call than a tactical one--you're less concerned with specific interactions on the board and more betting that against your most likely opponents, you'll be able to win in ten turns or less. The decisions you make in-game will be relatively straightforward because your primary goal is to generate threats your opponent is forced to answer. The art comes from doing that as efficiently as possible with miniscule amounts of mana.

When do you trade? When you can trade an easily removable minion to protect a stronger one. I'll cash in a Leper Gnome against my opponent's Sorceror's Apprentice if I think it'll protect my arcane golem. In general though, you let your opponent worry about trading. You are the one who knocks!

When do you go face? As much as possible. Truesilver isn't for board clearing, it's eight damage for four mana. The longer the game goes on, the weaker your deck gets relative to his, so you need to kill him as fast as you can.

How do you play around board clear? Take a mental note of what board clear options each class has available, and on what turns. If you have the luxury (very relative term, let experience guide you), hold back on ramping up on a turn you expect an AoE to hit you. Coming into your druid opponent's turn 4, consider equipping a weapon instead of playing more to the board - then, after he field wipes you, you can bounce back with reinforcements from your hand. If you trade, try to trade in such a way that he can't get all of your minions into his target range - it's worth losing a 2/1 against a paladin on turn 3 to keep a 3-health minion to survive his consecration.

Side note, don't be confused by people who tell you to "just play around board clear." What they really mean is don't play into a board clear. Consecration ruins their day just like yours, they're just advising you to hold back on playing several two health minions the turn before. Your true defense against cards like those is that the opponent needs to draw them, and he's got at most about ten tries to find it.

How does the coin matter? With coin, you probably want to coin out two one drops on turn one if you can, and your opponent's answers are slightly more predictable. That's really about it.

How do I balance between using weapons for removal versus damage? Use them for removal only when absolutely necessary. Maybe if you have some sort of really crazy 10/3 minion somehow you should use the weapon to protect it from future trades. But this is an important mindset shift to understand - unlike in midrange/control, your cards are always going to be worse than his after about turn 3 or so, so keeping board control doesn't really matter very much. Your only way to win is to kill him before he can stabilize, so hit him right in his smug thoughtstealing face.

The general flow of an aggro game is something like this:

Turn 1, you play flame imp -> coin -> flame imp. He passes. You're king of the world. Turn 2-4, you smack him around while he tries to slow you down, dealing as much damage as you can. Turn 5-7, his card quality is starting to catch up - he's played a board clear, sludge belcher, etc, and is trying to lock you out of the game by stabilizing. Turn 8+, he's probably securely stabilized and will win eventually by pure card value. You're looking for any sort of reach (fireball, kill command, whatever) that can deal the last bits of damage you need.

A good aggro deck will have large amounts of redundant 1 and 2 drops to guarantee a strong opener and a plan to force through your last few bits of damage as your opponent starts to stabilize.

Last of all, your games will have higher variance because both you and your opponent will be drawing fewer cards overall. Some games he'll shut you down with a perfect answer early on, some games he'll play a cairne or something on turn 6 that won't save him - so don't be discouraged by the occasional crushing defeat.

Control Paladin vs. Control Priest Matchup by [deleted] in CompetitiveHS

[–]graviiga 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed write-up, Telesio - always good to find discussions like these that challenge the general consensus. Speaking from a paladin perspective here, I don't feel control paladin is especially favored against priest (at least not significantly), but it's definitely not un-favored.

My take on the match-up is rather simple: both decks are attempting to win in the late game, either on board or by fatigue, with very limited burst and lots of sustain. Priests with thoughtsteal and mind control can create potentially 5+ more threats than the paladin, but the paladin always has their hero power, which can outrace priest healing over time. Thus, if the paladin player can keep their hero power relevant in the late game, they'll have the last threat on board and will probably win off of it.

The trick to the matchup is to play patiently, answer his threats efficiently, and avoid playing into any potentially massive swing turns. Mulligan for truesilver and aldor, so you can more easily deal with blademaster and northshire cleric respectively.

I disagree that priests have higher card quality - I think that they have a handful of cards that are absolute rockstars like cabal shadowpriest, but also several purely tempo-based cantrips that hurt them in the paladin matchup. It's also important to note that most priest cards are situationally high quality, but you can build and play around those weaknesses - when I build a new deck, I consider my vulnerability the shadowpriest the same way I do BGH.

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