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Hearthstone |OT8| Elise's Extremely Irresponsible Field Trip To Un'Goro

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joelseph

Member
Yep. If you think a card could be good and you're wrong then maybe the meta just didn't break right (see Finja for a recent example of both sides of this) but if you think a card is bad and it becomes meta-defining you look like a perma-noob.

It's okay to make bold predictions during previews as long as you frame it right. That's part of the spoiler fun!
 

scarlet

Member
I actually like that ozruk card lol. Could get 5/20 playing 4 cheap elementals card.

Edit: Oh, last turn. Okay. Thought the whole game.
 

wiibomb

Member
gotta say.. I though finja was really bad and now every time I find it the deck, it just destroys me.

I think that card was the one I mostly failed on my expectations of the set.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Oh hey, look what just happened

Opponent is dead next turn, 0 cards in hand. I have 7 health left. I also have 7 minions on the board. He top decks Ragnaros, I already put my cursor on "concede" because I know what's about to happen. Opponent well plays me and his Rag hits my face.

This happens more often than I can understand. It's actually quite funny.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
Oh hey, look what just happened

Opponent is dead next turn, 0 cards in hand. I have 7 health left. I also have 7 minions on the board. He top decks Ragnaros, I already put my cursor on "concede" because I know what's about to happen. Opponent well plays me and his Rag hits my face.

This happens more often than I can understand. It's actually quite funny.

You should be thrilled that Rag is moving to the Hall of Fame and out of Standard. Sylvannas too so you won't get RNG'd by her stealing your Rag for lethal either. ;)
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
You should be thrilled that Rag is moving to the Hall of Fame and out of Standard. Sylvannas too so you won't get RNG'd by her stealing your Rag for lethal either. ;)
It's a shame the entire "game" isn't moving to the Hall of Fame so we could get some quality products from Blizzard. It would be nice to see a good game from this company for once. When was the last time, now again? Not counting Heroes, I think I can count all the way back to 2006.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
The paladin leg seems anti synergy with the hand buff shit.

But it has huge synergy with the spam cheap dudes on the field and then play Divine Favor to refill your hand paladin that so many people "loved" to play and play against haha.

Not sure about how that dude will work out. He has utility in weird scenarios that I can see being infrequent, but since I missed the boat on Keeper of Uldaman I'm hesitiant to say that effect on a wider scale isn't good.
 
It's okay to make bold predictions during previews as long as you frame it right. That's part of the spoiler fun!

Yeah, I think in general people are better off making individual, carefully-chosen called shots knowing they'll get the props or slops on it. If you just go through and bag on everything you'll almost definitely get something really super wrong.

When was the last time, now again?

Overwatch, last year, the dominant GOTY choice of numerous outlets and #3 on the NeoGAF ballot?
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Overwatch, last year, the dominant GOTY choice of numerous outlets and #3 on the NeoGAF ballot?
It's too late to get into that nowadays though, isn't it?
 

wiibomb

Member
It's too late to get into that nowadays though, isn't it?

what? no... you can play it now and it is a very accessible game.

Now, I just know you will become salty the moment you get a headshot by a Hanzo.

...

...

or the moment you open a legendary skin and it is shit
 

Dahbomb

Member
Have we talked about Arcanologist yet?
636253543640512143.png


How is this card not getting more attention? I guess all those people who hated Freeze Mage should be happy that it's getting nerfed because this card enables that deck so well.


This is a card that seems so good and is clearly there to promote an archetype (shying away from saying "forced archetype") but it seems good enough to play in something like a Reno Mage to pull you a crucial secret.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
Have we talked about Arcanologist yet?



How is this card not getting more attention? I guess all those people who hated Freeze Mage should be happy that it's getting nerfed because this card enables that deck so well.


This is a card that seems so good and is clearly there to promote an archetype (shying away from saying "forced archetype") but it seems good enough to play in something like a Reno Mage to pull you a crucial secret.

Yeah we talked about it a bit a few pages back.

But I mean what's not to like about the card? It's Mad Scientist-Lite. The card is nuts in Freeze Mage and probably makes that deck even more insane in Wild. You'd run this and Mad Scientist - no brainer. 4x more chances to get the crucial defensive secret you need is easy. Or even in Reno you can use another chance to get a powerful card.

In Standard, its probably still good even with Freeze Mage probably not being a thing. Some kind of Tempo deck will run this x2, Mirror Entity x1, Potion of Polymorph x1, and whatever other secret seems good at the time and try to make a secret tempo Mage. It might even work. The 1 mana 2/1 that lets you play secrets for free seems pretty good there. Turn 3 you drop this and that guy and get whatever you just drew for nothing. Probably good enough. Dunno if that deck will be any good, but its probably something. Don't forget Medivh's Valet too.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Yeah we talked about it a bit a few pages back.

But I mean what's not to like about the card? It's Mad Scientist-Lite. The card is nuts in Freeze Mage and probably makes that deck even more insane in Wild. You'd run this and Mad Scientist - no brainer. 4x more chances to get the crucial defensive secret you need is easy. Or even in Reno you can use another chance to get a powerful card.

In Standard, its probably still good even with Freeze Mage probably not being a thing. Some kind of Tempo deck will run this x2, Mirror Entity x1, Potion of Polymorph x1, and whatever other secret seems good at the time and try to make a secret tempo Mage. It might even work. The 1 mana 2/1 that lets you play secrets for free seems pretty good there. Turn 3 you drop this and that guy and get whatever you just drew for nothing. Probably good enough. Dunno if that deck will be any good, but its probably something. Don't forget Medivh's Valet too.
I think if you are putting that many secret synergy cards in that you might as well just go all in on the Secrets Mage deck especially if there's a quest around it.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
I think if you are putting that many secret synergy cards in that you might as well just go all in on the Secrets Mage deck especially if there's a quest around it.

But what you want the deck to also be good so you have to include non-secret things? Ayyyy lmao.


I kid, but not that much. The history of secrets in Hearthstone is that they have been kinda bad since the jump-off. No who knows what the future quests will have us doing for what kind of crazy effects, but atm I don't see a reason to go that far out of line and go full secret. Just throw in the good ones like we always have and then play a standard tempo deck from there. Safe but boring I guess. I'm getting some good feels from these new cards so far though. Except that stupid anti-pirate crab. What a dumb card.
 

Dahbomb

Member
I would have liked the crab more if it was 2/2, could only target enemy Pirates and gained +2/2 with taunt. As it is, I feel that it might be feasible that Pirate Warriors include it in their deck as a one of to eat their Patches or kill the other guy's Pirates to develop a beefy 3/4 for 2. Hell Hunters can just throw this card in their deck too, it's a 2 drop beast with potential upside.

Unless it's like 10 spells, getting to activate 10 spells as Mage isn't to difficult. Hell Tempo Mage can manage that much with the addition of Cabalist's Tomes.
 

Nachos

Member
I still think the Mage Quest is going to be unique spells, secrets only be so boring.
Wasn't that originally going to be Kazakus' activation condition? Pretty sure they ditched it because they thought that in practice, it wasn't that different from a Reno deck.
 
I would have liked the crab more if it was 2/2, could only target enemy Pirates and gained +2/2 with taunt. As it is, I feel that it might be feasible that Pirate Warriors include it in their deck as a one of to eat their Patches or kill the other guy's Pirates to develop a beefy 3/4 for 2. Hell Hunters can just throw this card in their deck too, it's a 2 drop beast with potential upside.

Unless it's like 10 spells, getting to activate 10 spells as Mage isn't to difficult. Hell Tempo Mage can manage that much with the addition of Cabalist's Tomes.

So the pirate deck kills one of their own pirates to gain a mere 1/1 in strength? You realize they can never actually gain tempo out of a move right? Even when they eat the 1/1 patches they get for free, they still haven't increased the size of their board and sometimes the crab is dead in hand. Why is it dead in hand? Because you have a 3/3 or bigger pirate on board and crab must kill it to be played because the battlecry must be triggered when there is a valid target.

Yes, hunters might run it. But who cares? They're countering pirates at the cost of strength against other decks. That is okay.
 

Cat Party

Member
Have we talked about Arcanologist yet?



How is this card not getting more attention? I guess all those people who hated Freeze Mage should be happy that it's getting nerfed because this card enables that deck so well.


This is a card that seems so good and is clearly there to promote an archetype (shying away from saying "forced archetype") but it seems good enough to play in something like a Reno Mage to pull you a crucial secret.

It doesn't even need to promote a secret mage archetype. Any Mage deck with two or more secrets should run this.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
Have we talked about Arcanologist yet?

How is this card not getting more attention? I guess all those people who hated Freeze Mage should be happy that it's getting nerfed because this card enables that deck so well.

This is a card that seems so good and is clearly there to promote an archetype (shying away from saying "forced archetype") but it seems good enough to play in something like a Reno Mage to pull you a crucial secret.

I said it was broken and it was DrakOP tier.

People told me "but secrets are baaaaad" like we haven't heard that one before.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I think Arcanologist is good, but its not that exciting IMO. Its likely going to be an auto include in a number of mage decks though. Turn 2 Arcanologist, Turn 3 secret (Or you could wombo combo with Turn 3 Kabal Lackey + Secret + Medivh's Valet)
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
I think Arcanologist is good, but its not that exciting IMO. Its likely going to be an auto include in a number of mage decks though. Turn 2 Arcanologist, Turn 3 secret (Or you could wombo combo with Turn 3 Kabal Lackey + Secret + Medivh's Valet)


Turn 2 arcanologist turn 3 secret just seems like a bad curve in a whole lot of matchups.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
I don't know about DrakOP/broken tier though.

It's card draw on a body with zero stat loss. That's only happened once before. Drakonid Operative.

Oh. Did I also mention it's mostly unconditional on an early game minion? It might actually be worse than Drakonid Operative.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
It's card draw on a body with zero stat loss. That's only happened once before. Drakonid Operative.

Oh. Did I also mention it's mostly unconditional on an early game minion? It might actually be worse than Drakonid Operative.

Doesn't DrakOP actually have above average stats for its cost? I dunno what the avg values for a 5 mana card, but 5/6 has got to be the topmost end right?

So not only does DrakOP have good stats it has the draw also. It seems like it GAINED stats for the draw rather than losing them. If it was released as a 5/5 I think it would still probably be really good.

By comparison a card that said 2 mana 2/3 draw a card would see play in every deck ever. So certainly this card is good. Definitely good. But do you want to include secrets enough to include them for this? Probably. I just don't know the answer to that until we see more cards.
 
Claiming a card is top tier simply because it draws a card and it has "vanilla" stats is not good analysis, it's superficial. First, you have to add secrets to your deck to use it and it can only draw secrets. It's not the same as simply drawing a card. If you draw said secrets first, you're playing a 2/3 does nothing minion.

I still think secrets are not that good. They are strong in certain match ups and very weak in others. But the sum total of all the secret cards mage got could make this shine brighter than it would have without them.

I think it's clearly a good card. Probably a solid 4. We've seen tempo mage with secrets in the past. But, with the loss of flamewaker we're probably looking at a very different tempo mage. Probably a faster, even more burn oriented.

I remember in the past I argued slower tempo mages aren't good enough. I think this could change with this set. Secrets are pretty slow but they also got pyros which is a lot of value in one card. A midrangey/tempo mage deck running secrets and antonidas is possible. I don't think this new minion makes a huge difference, but it definitely contributes somewhat substantially.
 

Pooya

Member
See the reason I don't think it makes sense to completely bag on every new mechanic the moment they start revealing it is this.

Here is a reaction from when they started showing Jades:





And here is the same person weighing in now:



This is why I usually favor evaluating if the cards make sense in the supposed archetype, and then evaluating the full archetype at the end based on what the complete deck (as informed by the previous archetype-fit evaluations) would look like.

Going through this, I think the 9 drop is a harder fit than the 7 drop, because the 9 drop primarily favors fighting off aggro, and turn 9 is somewhat late for that.

However, it does let you potentially go face for another turn if your board is consistently better due to the mechanic, so that might make a lot of sense as a cover for your finisher. It's hard to say without seeing how many board flood Elementals there are. I agree it's the most questionable Elemental card thus far (along with Pyros, covered later).

The 7 drop let's you usually survive turn 7, which against aggressive decks, is much better timing. If you're playing it after Fire Elemental, you're getting a lot of board control to boot.

Pyros I feel I can't evaluate without seeing what Mages can use at turns 3 and 6, since you want to be comboing with a pretty powerful card to play something that substandard on curve.

The 1 drop seems to trivially fit with every Elemental deck as you can guarantee an activation for 1 mana while playing something else, like if you cast Fireball and the one drop (or the generated one drop) on Turn 5 to get a big Turn 6. The Priest Elemental is trivially good in an Elemental deck for the same reason.

Removal that buffs your mechanic has long been favored, so I can't imagine you wouldn't consider that Mage card unless everyone just runs 3 health and up minions early game. If we assume Jades exist (or other Elemental decks), there should definitely be two health minions on the board regularly.

Inherently you run anything that you were running before like Water Elemental and Fire Elemental.

Al'Akir might be a reasonable precursor to the 9 drop if you find yourself needing three Taunt plays in a row, though obviously it's hard to pull two legendaries by then.

nice cherry picking . If you actually go back, I changed my stance on jades well before expansion was released when they showed more cards.

I guess if you don't even try you win all these internet contests by default, good for you.
 

fertygo

Member
your stance changing doesn't matter to the fact you made that initial prediction tho

its fine tho, I thought Shaku and Finja is meme card
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
Doesn't DrakOP actually have above average stats for its cost? I dunno what the avg values for a 5 mana card, but 5/6 has got to be the topmost end right?

So not only does DrakOP have good stats it has the draw also. It seems like it GAINED stats for the draw rather than losing them. If it was released as a 5/5 I think it would still probably be really good.

Cards in Hearthstone follow a model for what counts as solid vanilla stats. A 5/6 for 5 mana fits the model for a solid vanilla minion at that cost. It's a Pit Fighter, a card that's effectively the same as a yeti at its cost. If Drakonid Operative was a 6/6 or a 5/7, that would be considered overstatted. There are a lot of 5/5's for 5 mana but that would be a weak vanilla minion. Sort of like a 3 mana 3/3 or a 4 mana 4/4.

Claiming a card is top tier simply because it draws a card and it has "vanilla" stats is not good analysis, it's superficial.

It's not a sophisticated analysis, but it doesn't have to be. Vanilla stats have value. Card generation/draw has value. Hearthstone at its very core is essentially a math game. If you understand the average value of certain effects, you can crunch the numbers and figure out whether you are overpaying or underpaying for the card's effect. In the case of Arcanologist, you are effectively underpaying 1 to 1.5 mana for that card. Underpaying to that extent puts the card in the pantheon of overpowered Hearthstone cards.

The math model works. If you crunch the numbers, Babbling Book is a good card. I knew that before Karazhan came out. "Sophisticated" analysis from other people told me I was wrong. They said that you didn't want a random card in your deck. They said they you should put in any other spell because a random spell was so bad. They said a 1/1 wasn't a big deal. They said it was a tempo loss. Yet the card is now in pretty much every single mage deck except freeze mage.

You crunch the numbers, and Arcanologist is better than Babbling Book. The stats are better at its cost. The effect on the text is better. The card is 5 stars and OP. No question from me.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Who fucking cares when people are wrong. Discussing this is fun and people shouldn't be worried about people digging into their post history to show that they were super wrong.

Some of it is done as good natured ribbing and some of it just comes across super jerky with people acting all high and mighty. Shit's annoying.
 

Pooya

Member
Have we talked about Arcanologist yet?

How is this card not getting more attention? I guess all those people who hated Freeze Mage should be happy that it's getting nerfed because this card enables that deck so well.
.

Card is obviously good, not much else to say about it, you can play it in a control mage as it is, it's fine, you still need to like have 3 secrets for this to be consistent value. Iceblock and something else which is hard to come by, ice barrier is just not very good. I guess Reno mage can live with it but I don't think reno mage is going to be around anymore.

I have doubts if secret mage is any good still. Secret synergy cards are actually quite good, like valet and even the 5/5 one that goes down in cost, are good enough. Hell, I've lost games to ethereal guy back in the day, that card is must remove or lose. You need some new good secrets. One problem with the deck is running out of gas, specially minions. Duplicate would have been pretty good to have again, for control and secret mage. They need to add something like that back and secrets with board impact, like a more powerful explosive trap could be fun. Good secrets is all holding the deck from being a thing. Current mage secrets are quite a bit worse than hunter when it comes to board even though they cost one more, which makes sense for hunter. Iceblock is really powerful but other than that the rest are annoyances at best. Look at ice barrier, feral rage is the same card but better, secrets are supposed to do more than their mana cost and stuff like counter spell aren't all that impactful on average when you pay a card and 3 mana for it.
 
It's not a sophisticated analysis, but it doesn't have to be. Vanilla stats have value. Card generation/draw has value. Hearthstone at its very core is essentially a math game. If you understand the average value of certain effects, you can crunch the numbers and figure out whether you are overpaying or underpaying for the card's effect. In the case of Arcanologist, you are effectively underpaying 1 to 1.5 mana for that card. Underpaying to that extent puts the card in the pantheon of overpowered Hearthstone cards.

The math model works. If you crunch the numbers, Babbling Book is a good card. I knew that before Karazhan came out. "Sophisticated" analysis from other people told me I was wrong. They said that you didn't want a random card in your deck. They said they you should put in any other spell because a random spell was so bad. They said a 1/1 wasn't a big deal. They said it was a tempo loss. Yet the card is now in pretty much every single mage deck except freeze mage.

You crunch the numbers, and Arcanologist is better than Babbling Book. The stats are better at its cost. The effect on the text is better. The card is 5 stars and OP. No question from me.

I never said valuating the card based on the math is bad. But any analysis that gives zero consideration to the card's requirements and downsides is not considering the whole picture. It's not sophisticated to consider factors that impact the math either. That is just being thorough and critical, which is important in math based analysis to begin with.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
I never said valuating the card based on the math is bad. But any analysis that gives zero consideration to the card's requirements and downsides is not considering the whole picture. It's not sophisticated to consider factors that impact the math either. That is just being thorough and critical, which is important in math based analysis to begin with.

I have given consideration to those downsides. But the impact of those downsides is minimal or negligible in terms of downgrading my evaluation of the card. We know exactly what the downsides are because they're essentially the exact same "downsides" that existed for a Mage that ran Mad Scientists. You have to put secrets in your deck. You might draw your secrets before you draw your minion. We've been here before. And we know from Mad Scientist that the downsides are tiny. In fact, there might actually be FEWER downsides to Arcanologist. If you do draw it late, it has better stats than Mad Scientist. Also unlike Mad Scientist, the effect can't be blocked if the only secret in your deck is exactly the same as the secret you might already have in play.

Now, I'm not saying that Arcanologist is better than Mad Scientist (there's probably only one card in the game that is) but I am saying that we should know from experience how powerful a card like this is in the game of Hearthstone, and all of that past experience should tell us it is OP.
 
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