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Miletius · Jan 17, 2017

charlequin said:
That would be completely pointless. The reason to do anything at all is specifically to disable decks that have been perennial in the meta and that means 10+ cards, generally at least one from each class.

I think they can do that by nerfing or removing only a few cards. Example:

1) Gadgetzan Auctioneer = removes rogue from the game (just kidding)
2) Ice Block = removes freeze mage, reno mage.
3) Firey War Axe = uh, get f'ed warrior?

The removal of these 3 cards would completely change the current metagame. I'm not advocating for these cards being removed, but being very selective is their best bet. If they removed like 10 cards from the set that's a pretty massive reduction and one that hurts casual/returning players.

thepotatoman · Jan 17, 2017

Miletius said:
I think they can do that by nerfing or removing only a few cards. Example:

1) Gadgetzan Auctioneer = removes rogue from the game (just kidding)
2) Ice Block = removes freeze mage, reno mage.
3) Firey War Axe = uh, get f'ed warrior?

The removal of these 3 cards would completely change the current metagame. I'm not advocating for these cards being removed, but being very selective is their best bet. If they removed like 10 cards from the set that's a pretty massive reduction and one that hurts casual/returning players.

That's why it should probably be at the same time as the rotation. Only thing that really needs an actual nerf before then is STB, unless they're willing to rotate that out too despite it being around for such a small amount of time.

The Mango Sentinel · Jan 17, 2017

miladesn said:
I don't think they will remove anything from paladin... because they have nothing.

paladin has 4 good cards; Tirion, Aldor, Truesilver and Equality. These always will be good.

Consec is not very good, it's just all they ever had, far too slow to matter. It was only good when you had board control.

Blessing of Kings is similarly too slow and only good if you have board control, it's just win more card.

Maybe Divine Favor, that card is only good if the meta is slow and paladin has good cards to draw... so I don't know about that any time soon.

The rest are just junk. Leave paladin alone, they have suffered enough. I don't think they can help paladin with just one set either, they're lacking so many things and losing Keeper of Uldaman soon too.

I will never have sympathy for Paladin.
Secret Paladin was a fucking nightmare.

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

I think the cards they should rotate are cards that are seen among too many classes. The main one as people pointed out is azure drake, although frankly I think that can be solved by adding stronger 5 drops instead.

So the highest on my list to be rotated are cards like ragnaros. Basically the cards that can be slotted into just about any deck.

The Mango Sentinel said:
I will never have sympathy for Paladin.
Secret Paladin was a fucking nightmare.

Only because of how many people playing the deck tbh.

Dahbomb · Jan 17, 2017

ADWCTA and MERPS went over the new Arena potential changes and had a heated discussion over the change to Standard. While ADWCTA thought it's still an improvement over the current system, he felt that Blizzard went with the simple/lazy out and has set Arena to have far less potential than it could have where as MERPS truly believes that this was the best and most elegant solution they could come up with.

I am 100% with ADWCTA on this one. I know why they might make this change but man they should have come up with a better solution than that to "fix" Arena on the grand scale.

Also their leaderboard thing is exactly like Constructed too just like the move to Standard. Arena actually needs leaderboards divided up by classes.

luoapp · Jan 17, 2017

Dahbomb said:
ADWCTA and MERPS went over the new Arena potential changes and had a heated discussion over the change to Standard. While ADWCTA thought it's still an improvement over the current system, he felt that Blizzard went with the simple/lazy out and has set Arena to have far less potential than it could have where as MERPS truly believes that this was the best and most elegant solution they could come up with.

I am 100% with ADWCTA on this one. I know why they might make this change but man they should have come up with a better solution than that to "fix" Arena on the grand scale.

Also their leaderboard thing is exactly like Constructed too just like the move to Standard. Arena actually needs leaderboards divided up by classes.

The biggest problem with Team5 is now people start to lose confidence in their ability to do a good job at playtesting after many OP expansion cards or unsatisfactory patches after releases. I am wondering, how do they conduct their playtests? Are they still rely solely on human testers? Maybe it's time to setup a PTR server now.

Blizzard · Jan 17, 2017

luoapp said:
The biggest problem with Team5 is now people start to lose confidence in their ability to do a good job at playtesting after many OP expansion cards or unsatisfactory patches after releases. I am wondering, how do they conduct their playtests? Are they still rely solely on human testers? Maybe it's time to setup a PTR server now.

In the recent interview they mentioned they did tons of testing and have simulations (I assume among other methods).

A PTR server might be nice if it doesn't fragment the playerbase too much. I wonder how many active players there are.

Dahbomb · Jan 17, 2017

I think for Constructed they do a good enough job of play testing but occasionally they let slip a few cards which is an acceptable margin of error in an expansion of 130+ cards.

They got the Pirates Package wrong in MSG because Bucaneer was made very late into the expansion and they nerfed it last second to release it. They soon realized their mistake on that. Patches has been playtested numerous times and gone through multiple iterations, I guess they really wanted to push the Pirates tribe finally.

DrakOP and Jade Idol are the other two cards that are above the curve in MSG especially based on stats. Jade Idol punishes control decks but with the existence of the Pirates the Jade Druid has not proliferated and that's probably what Blizzard predicted. Blizzard already admitted that they made DrakOP OP on purpose to push Priest up.

So 4ish cards above the power level, maybe 5 if you include Kazakus. This is not bad at all, no where near the level of GvG where you had like 10 cards that were insane (Dr Boom, Shredder, Muster for Battle, Minibot, Mech Warper, Coghammer, Implosion, Crackle, Whirlozapomatic, Unstable Portal).

Before MSG they had Old Gods as their major expansion, they got CotW, Yogg and Thing from Below wrong... MAYBE 477 and Fandral. Yogg is a card that not even the community got right the first few months, they get a pass for that for sure so getting 2-3 cards over tuned in a big expansion is not bad at all.

For every card they didn't properly balance, they properly balance like 20 other cards correctly. It's easy to focus stuff that they miss versus stuff that they didn't.

MSG is also the first time that they have gotten Arena right IMO after years of messing up on it.

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

I can support them making arena standard. But they also talked about doing other things. It's too early to judge. We need more information. They talked about having rotating formats for arena before, standard could be the first. It's simple and easy to understand. Later it could be other set combinations. The QA was a good starting point for discussions, but too little info to conclude whether their plans are good or bad.

Drkirby · Jan 17, 2017

Making Arena standard is super unappealing to me. I would like it to have every card available, and just have the drafting mechanic overhauled.

bjaelke · Jan 17, 2017

Arena was at its best right after Old Gods came out.

Tomcat · Jan 17, 2017

Arena Will always be boring. Curvestone in action.

Fersis · Jan 17, 2017

I wonder how upset would the community be if Arena had monthly pool cards, for example:
February: Classic + MSoG
March: Classic + WotG
April: GvG + WoTG + Blackrock Mountain

That way you can have a fresh Arena every month or so.
(Disclaimer: I dont play arena)

Lone_Prodigy · Jan 17, 2017

Trying to finish off this Renolock with my Pirate Warrior. I have him at 5HP with one Mortal Strike in hand and full HP. He drops Mistress of Mixtures and then Defender of Argus. I clear it but he starts dropping more Taunts.

At 9 HP, he has full board control. He attacks but holds back and leaves me at 13 HP. Smart.

Except he tapped that turn, leaving him at 7. Not smart.

I play both Mortal Strikes for lethal.

Blizzard · Jan 17, 2017

Tomcat said:
Arena Will always be boring. Curvestone in action.

To me, Arena is one of the most fun and compelling modes, so I guess it depends on the person.

Cat Party · Jan 17, 2017

Blizzard said:
To me, Arena is one of the most fun and compelling modes, so I guess it depends on the person.

Yup, I love arena. I do wish they would thin the card pool by removing the 100 or so shittiest cards, or by doing rotating card pools like someone above mentioned.

Dahbomb · Jan 17, 2017

Fersis said:
I wonder how upset would the community be if Arena had monthly pool cards, for example:
February: Classic + MSoG
March: Classic + WotG
April: GvG + WoTG + Blackrock Mountain

That way you can have a fresh Arena every month or so.
(Disclaimer: I dont play arena)

Arena community rarely gets upset over changes to Arena because they just want attention to be placed on the mode.

Arena community was god damn ECSTATIC when Blizzard announced they were banning out cards from Arena. Mechanically and design wise it's such a lame and lazy stop gap measure but the players were happy they got SOME significant Arena changes.

This new change that's coming to Arena is going to be massive and even with small hints of information it has MERPS and ADWCTA worked up. MERPS is omega hyped for the stuff coming.

QFNS · Jan 17, 2017

I like the Arena idea that Kibler proposed in his video the other day.

Allow Arena players to select expansions before drafting. So you get to draft which expansions your cards will be from. I think you'd leave the Basic and Classic in there all the time and then you get a couple rounds of picking adventures & expansions. You pick 2 or 3 of those and then all the cards presented to you later come from what you've chosen.

Cool idea and it shakes up the available card pool a lot.

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

QFNS said:
I like the Arena idea that Kibler proposed in his video the other day.

Allow Arena players to select expansions before drafting. So you get to draft which expansions your cards will be from. I think you'd leave the Basic and Classic in there all the time and then you get a couple rounds of picking adventures & expansions. You pick 2 or 3 of those and then all the cards presented to you later come from what you've chosen.

Cool idea and it shakes up the available card pool a lot.

it might be dangerous supposing we always get the same options, that is because some expansions benefit a class better than others, for example, I would for sure chose Kharazan for shaman

QFNS · Jan 17, 2017

wiibomb said:
it might be dangerous supposing we always get the same options, that is because some expansions benefit a class better than others, for example, I would for sure chose Kharazan for shaman

Randomly select the available options the same way you randomly get cards to choose from. Knowing that X expansion/adventure is better for one class vs another is a skillful choice and will make arena better IMO.

Dahbomb · Jan 17, 2017

QFNS said:
I like the Arena idea that Kibler proposed in his video the other day.

Allow Arena players to select expansions before drafting. So you get to draft which expansions your cards will be from. I think you'd leave the Basic and Classic in there all the time and then you get a couple rounds of picking adventures & expansions. You pick 2 or 3 of those and then all the cards presented to you later come from what you've chosen.

Cool idea and it shakes up the available card pool a lot.

That's a bad idea because people are going to pick the best class with their best expansion.

Imagine picking Mage with huge occurrence bonuses on Firelands Portal with Karazhan. Or Paladin with occurrence bonuses on Minibot, Muster for Battle and Coghammer (and they are balancing out rarities too so you get less commons).

I like Kibler and all but I wouldn't take his word for Arena to be honest. But he's right in two points that Arena needs to be less curvestone and more synergy oriented.

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

QFNS said:
Randomly select the available options the same way you randomly get cards to choose from. Knowing that X expansion/adventure is better for one class vs another is a skillful choice and will make arena better IMO.

yeah giving the choose 1 out of 3 option (just like in normal arena) would be optimal.. I mean, it would also play into a different mind game: if I see my opponent play a totem golem, I will know for sure he chose TGT.

I don't know if it should be 1 or 2 expansions per play, though... may be just 1

butts · Jan 17, 2017

Dragon priest is carried SO fucking hard by Operative. Holy shit. One card win condition.

slightconfuse · Jan 17, 2017

TIL ice block doesn't block fatigue death

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

butts said:
Dragon priest is carried SO fucking hard by Operative. Holy shit. One card win condition.

it does have more than that, it is just that OP is so good that it launched it to a top tier. (may be not so top tier, though).

Other cards made it where it is now, like Dragonfire Potion, it is godsend for a deck with no good AoE

QFNS · Jan 17, 2017

slightconfuse said:
TIL ice block doesn't block fatigue death

Secrets don't activate on your own turn so they can't prevent fatigue! Mill decks used to work quite well against Freeze Mage back in the day.

butts · Jan 17, 2017

wiibomb said:
it does have more than that, it is just that OP is so good that it launched it to a top tier. (may be not so top tier, though).

Other cards like Dragonfire Potion is godsend for a deck with no good AoE

I'm playing non-Reno control decks and I don't think I've played against a dragon priest that hasn't dropped at least 4-5 operatives, win or lose. Dragonfire definitely helps too but my god, so many operatives is unbelievably frustrating.

CelticKnight · Jan 17, 2017

butts said:
Dragon priest is carried SO fucking hard by Operative. Holy shit. One card win condition.

And don't forget that Netherspite Historian has a really annoying tendency to discover more. I've seen 3 Drakonid Operative's played on a fair few occasions, and I see 4 too. Doesn't have to be a Priest mirror, either.

butts said:
I'm playing non-Reno control decks and I don't think I've played against a dragon priest that hasn't dropped at least 4-5 operatives, win or lose. Dragonfire definitely helps too but my god, so many operatives is unbelievably frustrating.

Yea, like that lol.

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

butts said:
I'm playing non-Reno control decks and I don't think I've played against a dragon priest that hasn't dropped at least 4-5 operatives, win or lose. Dragonfire definitely helps too but my god, so many operatives is unbelievably frustrating.

having 4 or 5 operatives certainly helps, and specially since the "random" card will have an certain quality that your opponent chose, it is certainly better than all the other discovers around

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

Dragon operative doesn't really bother me any more. I can't say it really did to begin with. It's obviously a great card, but I don't have a problem with blizzard printing some great cards. It would probably have been a big issue if it was printed in OG set, where the power curve of the game was a lot lower. And once rotation hits and the power curve drops quite a big, drakonid operative drops a whole lot.

I think it's okay that classes get some "OP" cards. I think the amount of times it has been problematic hasn't been that worrisome. MC is one where they probably crossed the line a bit too much. But I think drakOP is one where they actually pushed the strength of a single card without it actually breaking the game. I'll admit the copy card effect it has isn't exactly the most fun card text to play against. But the overall power of the card I think is okay.

If you think about it, it's a card that requires another card to draw a card. In exchange it gets extra stats over azure drake. Is it that bad that a class 5 drop has better stats than azure drake? It's maybe 1 stat higher than it ought to be, but I don't think that 1 stat is worth fussing over.

I'd imagine I might have been okay with thing from below too, had shaman not had tunnel trogg and totem golem for this long. It becomes a problem when there are too many drakOP power level cards in a deck. But a sole drakOP power level card? In priest of all classes. I am okay with that.

Yaboosh · Jan 17, 2017

Discovering a card from your opponent's deck is better than discovering a card from your own deck in many cases and is far better than drawing a card.

thepotatoman · Jan 17, 2017

I used to be pretty upset about dragon priest, but i'm much less so now. Playing arround Dragon operative and Dragonfire potion is still difficult, but it does seem like the rest of the deck isn't neccessarily so great, and that gives you opportunities to prepare for those two OP cards. Just took some getting used to for me.

Still a teir 1 deck, but not a completely unfair one.

Yaboosh · Jan 17, 2017

One way to play around drakop is to just fill your deck with complete garbage.

Fersis · Jan 17, 2017

Yaboosh said:
One way to play around drakop is to just fill your deck with complete garbage.

Got' em

The Magma Rager meta is here.

Lone_Prodigy · Jan 17, 2017

Operative is balanced somewhat by being useless against aggro decks, but you wouldn't be playing it on Turn 5 versus aggro anyway.

Against synergy decks (Jade) it's not too useful since you might get something that just summons a 1/1 golem, or you might get a card that lacks an activator (Kill Command, Thing from Below).

And since your opponent knows what they have in their deck, it's predictable (as opposed to say, Kabal Courier where you could have anything from 3 classes).

But on the other hand you may discover a burn card giving you the finisher your deck lacks, a second legendary, or a strong class card that provides removal/card draw/AoE.

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

Yaboosh said:
Discovering a card from your opponent's deck is better than discovering a card from your own deck in many cases and is far better than drawing a card.

I would pick discover my own card over opponent's card. Not even close imo.

Yaboosh said:
One way to play around drakop is to just fill your deck with complete garbage.

Or you know... play around the card they stole. It's not like babbling book where it can be any mage spell in the game. It's fairly limited pool of cards.

BananasWithGuns · Jan 17, 2017

Operative being a 5/6 and having a dragon tag will forever be one of the more puzzling things introduced in Hearthstone in my opinion. It's gotta be like, what, top 3 cards ever?

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

Mobius and pet octopus said:
I would pick discover my own card over opponent's card. Not even close imo.

it does have a different purpose, discover in my opponents deck can work to spy on what the opponent has, what it doesn't have yet on hand and what should I be saving for a hard removal or an AoE.

choosing my opponent over my own does have a point

Familienoberhauptvogel · Jan 17, 2017

Mobius and pet octopus said:
I would pick discover my own card over opponent's card. Not even close imo.

Generally yeah but when your deck doesn't run any win conditions of its own the former might be better.

FeD.nL · Jan 17, 2017

wiibomb said:
it does have a different purpose, discover in my opponents deck can work to spy on what the opponent has, what it doesn't have yet on hand and what should I be saving for a hard removal or an AoE.

choosing my opponent over my own does have a point

Yup, this is what makes it insane for me. Play a premium statted minion, see 10% of your opponents deck and pick the best of those. It's just bonkers.

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

wiibomb said:
it does have a different purpose, discover in my opponents deck can work to spy on what the opponent has, what it doesn't have yet on hand and what should I be saving for a hard removal or an AoE.

choosing my opponent over my own does have a point

The primary purpose is to draw a card. Create value. Gain a card advantage. The spy part is good too, of course. But it's secondary to card advantage. I'd give up the spy part to discover a card from my own deck without hesitation.

Familienoberhauptvogel said:
Generally yeah but when your deck doesn't run any win conditions of its own the former might be better.

It's a big problem that priest doesn't have enough reach. But relying on your opponent's deck to give you one isn't good either. You could probably build a dragon combo deck if you could fish with drakOP from your own deck though, or at least some reliable amount of reach.

Even if that isn't possible, I still think it's better on average to fish from your own deck.

QFNS · Jan 17, 2017

BananasWithGuns said:
Operative being a 5/6 and having a dragon tag will forever be one of the more puzzling things introduced in Hearthstone in my opinion. It's gotta be like, what, top 3 cards ever?

Top 3 ever? I dunno about that.
Original Undertaker
Sludge Belcher
Dr. Boom

I think those 3 are easily better cards and are all neutrals.
If you want to throw in class cards, I might say Mysterious Challenger and Shielded Minibot are both better also.
Drakonid Operative is pretty close after that though, so top 10 if not top 5. It's a really good card for sure.

Familienoberhauptvogel · Jan 17, 2017

Mobius and pet octopus said:
It's a big problem that priest doesn't have enough reach. But relying on your opponent's deck to give you one isn't good either. You could probably build a dragon combo deck if you could fish with drakOP from your own deck though, or at least some reliable amount of reach.

Even if that isn't possible, I still think it's better on average to fish from your own deck.

It's not so much that priest doesn't have reach but that the class doesn't require it and rather goes for more consistency.

psyfi · Jan 17, 2017

I've been playing HS for almost six months and I still haven't touched the Arena, haha. Should I give it a shot? I've barely touched the Tavern Brawls, either.

Karsticles · Jan 17, 2017

psyfi said:
I've been playing HS for almost six months and I still haven't touched the Arena, haha. Should I give it a shot? I've barely touched the Tavern Brawls, either.

Woah. Tavern Brawls are a free pack every week - touch them!

wiibomb · Jan 17, 2017

psyfi said:
I've been playing HS for almost six months and I still haven't touched the Arena, haha. Should I give it a shot? I've barely touched the Tavern Brawls, either.

omg, you have missed so many free packs! get on every tavern brawl at least once, winning only once will give you a free classic pack.

BTW, I supose you also lost the card back they gave with the last 2 weeks brawl

Blizzard · Jan 17, 2017

psyfi said:
I've been playing HS for almost six months and I still haven't touched the Arena, haha. Should I give it a shot? I've barely touched the Tavern Brawls, either.

Arena always gets you a free pack but you have to win a few games to break even with the 150 coin cost. Tastes differ -- I like it but others don't.

But as people said above, definitely do the tavern brawl. You usually get a free pack once a week.

psyfi · Jan 17, 2017

Whoops. Thanks for the info! I've been slowly (so so slowly) building a solid deck, I have a kind of sort of decent Dragon Priest deck now. An extra two packs a week would be great though. I'm giving it a shot right now.

Mobius and pet octopus · Jan 17, 2017

Familienoberhauptvogel said:
It's not so much that priest doesn't have reach but that the class doesn't require it and rather goes for more consistency.

I meant dragon priest decks don't have reach, but they could.

thepotatoman · Jan 17, 2017

Blizzard said:
Arena always gets you a free pack but you have to win a few games to break even with the 150 coin cost. Tastes differ -- I like it but others don't.

But as people said above, definitely do the tavern brawl. You usually get a free pack once a week.

Even at 0 wins, you have a chance at coming out ahead if you get lucky with the pack and a 30 or 40 dust drop. 50 Gold is certainly worth exchanging for that, since a 100 gold pack is an average of something like 60 dust.

Of course you can also be screwed at 3 wins with a 25 gold and 5 dust drop, but that's pretty rare, and the very low risk is certainly worth the rewards if you can average 3 wins. Even averaging 1 win is probably worth the small loss in value for the good practice arena gives you.

The biggest reason not to play arena is it can take a lot of time to go through all your gold with it, which is bad if you don't find it as fun as constructed. Even a 3 win arena run could take nearly an hour to play.

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