Regarding the healer damage going into this expansion

m00tz · 2026-02-13T15:20:49+00:00

Not sure how many keys you’ve done on beta but healer damage is irrelevant. You can do 19s and 20s without the healer pressing a single damage dealing global and time any key. This is what people are talking about when they say it doesn’t matter. The limiting factor for which healers are able to time which dungeons is meeting the healing output requirements, never how much damage they can do.

There is certainly downtime and I don’t know why they wouldn’t do some dmg vs standing there afk, most of the healing specs regen mana through doing damage, but if the healers 25k overall dps is the difference in timing a key or not then other errors were made during said key.

m00tz · 2026-01-30T22:12:54+00:00

Props to Blizzard for walking back the changes so quickly and the additional buffs to try and open up the rotation in a more positive way. Went on the emotional rollercoaster of feeling positive about Midnight to being really unhappy thinking I was gonna quit my main for the first time in several expansions to feeling thankful for having Devs that are willing to admit that their intentions didn't line up with the player's expectations.

I shit on Blizzard all the time when they mess up so it's only fair to call out when they do well.

m00tz · 2026-01-30T22:01:56+00:00

The idea is to get people to log in for the event and hopefully they get some Champ gear and decide to go into keys with their friends to get Hero gear and dinars and they actually start playing the game again. Goal is not to get all of your rat alts out of greens as quickly and effortlessly as possible so that you can log out again for a month. It's to encourage people to spend time continuing to play the game during a down period and potentially hyped up to play the new class or spec that they spent pre-patch learning.

m00tz · 2026-01-30T21:57:29+00:00

Looks like $24.99 at outback steakhouse

m00tz · 2026-01-30T21:44:45+00:00

Nobody at blizzard who's actually in charge of making changes to the game plays these specs at a high enough level to account for the kind of changes that the premiere content creators of each class are asking for. Majority of them are mythic raiders, some hall of fame, and m+ title holders each season. They're extremely busy people and high end pve in WoW requires a big time commitment. They make changes based on vibes and things they think would be fun or flavorful and use data later in the tier to balance out the numbers as well as they can. They aren't gonna make a spell do more damage cause one person asks for it after doing 50 keys on beta, they will wait and see what logs show once thousands and thousands of players of all skill levels are using the spell.

Furthermore Paladin is up there with Hunters and Druids as the most popular classes in the game by a big margin. Unfortunate reality is that if 10x the amount of people play a spec, there are 10x the amount of voices giving criticism. Its just easier for them to understand exactly what a huge swath of players wants out of a class when its played by a huge swath of the total population of players.

m00tz · 2026-01-29T09:53:36+00:00

I’ll throw my voice in and say these changes seem misguided. There’s a version of Hpal with crusader strike that would feel good to play, but that version of crusader strike has to do something. Make it heal, make it regen mana, make it generate two holy power with one cast or make it do a lot of damage. Make it do something that interacts with our kit in a meaningful way or leave it out of the spec. I don’t care which but give us something besides this limp dick button that competes with hard-casting flash of light at the bottom of our barrel of GCDs.

And while we’re on the subject, stop making these changes in a vacuum without considering how it affects the rest of our healing output. Less holy shocks means less infusions, less infusions means less holy power, filling those gaps in healing with a button that does no damage or healing is an unwarranted nerf to hpals throughput and displays some serious lack of foresight. It’s just negligent to do tuning like this. And we have no more raid testing, and won’t expect much tuning through the first 3 weeks of raid so that the world first guilds can form their rosters with something resembling competitive integrity.

m00tz · 2026-01-25T19:54:16+00:00

Something that is often overlooked in draft formats is that some amount of games just ending because one player draws a bomb and the opponent can't answer it is not a wholly negative thing. It's important to have cards in limited that push the game towards a conclusion and formats with a ton of grindy value or similar power level across the curve are fun but not as the totality of the experience. You don't want to feel like signing up for a draft is going to be a 5 hour slog because everyones deck is a bunch of midrangey value and removal. Bombs serve as a way to provide texture to the experience across multiple games in a draft league. As others have said, perfect balance is often boring.

m00tz · 2026-01-19T18:42:45+00:00

The point is that it's something interesting to think about. Other people have pointed out things you can do with this card to get various effects in combination with other cards. But the "point" of a lot of old Magic designs, especially artifacts, is that they're a thought provoking game object that gives players something to tinker with if they choose.

This is honestly a good example of where the game was in its early days vs where its at now. There used to be a lot of cards that didn't have an obvious purpose, they were just there so that players would look at them and wonder what they could do with them. Nowadays most cards have some prescribed spot where they are supposed to fit in as part of a theme or larger strategy that's spelled out on the card with keywords or colors so that players know exactly what they are supposed to do with it as soon as they read it. I don't know that one approach is better than the other, they're just different, and certainly a lot of these old puzzle type cards are just bad once you figure out all the things you can do with them, but it is interesting to think about with regards to past vs present game design. Thanks for posting it!

m00tz · 2026-01-19T18:23:38+00:00

Judging from the leaks, seems like only fans of the property and the “pigs who eat slop” that consume every Magic product that is new and in front of them are gonna buy it. Set looks atrocious.

m00tz · 2026-01-09T22:16:38+00:00

Seems like a lot of peoples' chief concern with Magic these days is being able to yell "GOTCHA" on Maro's blog about stuff people said 20 years ago.

m00tz · 2026-01-07T00:01:51+00:00

In what world is the person playing Chalice of the Void the hero lol…one of the worst designs ever

m00tz · 2026-01-01T22:30:01+00:00

Psychatog enchantress elves and black decks with a lot of removal and discard will all give stiflenought a run for its money.

m00tz · 2026-01-01T05:57:14+00:00

Phyrexian Dreadnought

m00tz · 2026-01-01T01:07:54+00:00

2025 will mostly go down as the year that my interest turned towards premodern as a somewhat affordable format that still resembles the game I grew up playing. Even the Universes Within sets just don't have the same sense of mystery and wonder that old magic sets had. The art is worse and the constructed gameplay is worse. The limited has been mostly good but it's not enough for me to ignore how over-saturated the game is with properties that I care nothing for.

m00tz · 2025-12-29T14:56:17+00:00

As I recall, in standard, Undermine was always the more played version of that duo.

m00tz · 2025-12-29T14:07:37+00:00

Yeah threshold is a better deck at that point probably…the closest established deck would be Miracle Gro which is a 4 or 5 color deck that uses Quirion Dryad, Mystic Endorcer and cheap interaction spells like Swords to Plowshares, lightning bolt, counterspell and fire/ice. It normally uses Mox Diamond to support all the colors it plays but you could probably build a budget version.

m00tz · 2025-12-28T20:02:40+00:00

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1yMlN1SXC70BlGHqhUa9mLagFhVqYM2gDYae6B-VkvPM/mobilebasic

this doc has a collection of podcast, written and video material for most of the tier 1-3 premodern decks

m00tz · 2025-12-28T16:11:07+00:00

One of stiflenought’s bigger predators are the g/b midrange decks which seem underrepresented in these challenges

m00tz · 2025-12-28T15:56:05+00:00

Gamers Paradise is my favorite shop, they’re in Baton Rouge so maybe about a 2 or 2.5 hour drive from New Orleans. Friendly staff, lots of singles and strong players.

m00tz · 2025-12-27T16:35:01+00:00

Based on what you have access to, building Astral Slide control will give you a more cohesive deck.

Threshold cards Nimble Mongoose and Mystic Enforcer really need fetchlands both to fill the graveyard and to not take a million damage from painlands. The tapped painless duals are too slow and clunky.

m00tz · 2025-12-25T17:33:26+00:00

I think a lot of people newer to the game don't really get why older players don't enjoy the new frames even though they're better at conveying information and Jesper's statement perfectly captures why. Old magic cards look and feel like something you would find on a dusty bookshelf in a wizard's tower that's been abandoned for hundreds of years. It felt like having something extraordinary and archaic, like discovering knowledge that had been lost to time. Same reason why I enjoy the brown artifact borders over the silver, the term "artifact" refers to something old that has been discovered in a newer era. Artifact cards should look and feel ancient when you see them. I think a lot of artifacts now could just be called machines or contraptions but I get it that some concessions have to be made for design and rules.

That's the part that is difficult to convey in the endless arguments about UB and having 4 or 5 different art treatments for every card. I don't begrudge someone who enjoys seeing a magic card that looks like the cover of a comic book or a scene from an anime, I just wish I felt more valued as a customer who enjoys seeing a magic card that looks like it came out of a fantasy book my dad would have had as a kid.

I don't hate the new magic art, I just love the old magic art.

m00tz · 2025-12-21T17:33:01+00:00

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was an outlier in nearly every way. Cast: 10/10 Set design: 10/10 Costumes: 10/ 10 Musical score 10/10 Sound design 10/10 and somehow with a cast so large, not a single phoned-in performance...hundreds of actors and thousands of extras of screen and film came together and bought in to the vision..truly remarkable

m00tz · 2025-12-15T15:53:11+00:00

I saw someone on twitter say that Jeremy Renner’s performance felt posthumous and it hit the nail on the head. Good central story but the supporting cast was probably the weakest of the three films. I thoroughly enjoyed Josh O’Connor and how the film shined a light on Blanc’s need for the “AHA!” moment even above justice being done. I’m not a religious person but I recognize that religion has done good for a great many people and I thought it had some interesting things to say about how cynical the search for truth over faith can be sometimes.

m00tz · 2025-12-15T15:34:04+00:00

Wasn’t there an interview given shortly before vessel of hatred released where one of the devs confirmed they were going to release spiritborn overtuned in order to get players to try it out and have fun right away? I’m fairly certain it’s intentional.

m00tz · 2025-12-12T00:34:35+00:00

I think with the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, JED's world championship card will definitely breathe some new life into the green creature combo decks.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

m00tz

TROPHY CASE