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

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Fersis

It is illegal to Tag Fish in Tag Fishing Sanctuaries by law 38.36 of the GAF Wildlife Act
Someone on reddit posted about having rotating sets, based Iksar said:

Iksar said:
I think this is a cool idea and one we've talked about in the past. I think it's a pretty reasonable solution but we decided to go with the simplest form of this for now and see how it plays out in practice. From doing a few hundred standard arena drafts myself, I think it's a pretty fun and different draft experience. Constructed and Arena decks on average are still a good distance apart even if they are using the same cards. I mentioned this above, but unless standard only arena gets overwhelmingly positive feedback post-release, I would expect there to be continued changes over time to the format.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I'll just play a quick Arena match. What's the worst that could happen?

*gets offered only 1 card in the "Good" arena tier in the first 13 cards*

*during those same 13 cards, gets offered Wisp 3 different times*
 
Pulled a gold azure drake (thanks for the 800 dust blizzard) and a Malygos in the Tavern Brawl.

Nice, have been wanting Malygos for a while but felt a bit too niche to craft.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Have to choose between crafting tirion and MC (among a few other cards) to build a secret paladin deck, fandral and Jade idol to craft a druid deck, antonidas for just general mage play or just save all my dust for the next expansion in a few months.

Decisions decisions.
 
Hahah, I had Melchazzar as one of my clone cards so my deck was like 50 cards to start with.

I also like playing Patches and having him summon an entire board of himself. Or when Finja summons 2 of himself, that's pretty good too.
 

NBtoaster

Member
I liked the idea of arena having every card because it let some cards that were never used anywhere else have a time to shine. It might not be that much fun in practice though.

rip Ogre Brute and other unsung common arena heroes
 

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?
Welp, rank 5 in ranked and standard. I'm out for this month... holy shit, did Wild go insanely fast. Standard got me 31-12

Wild end results from rank 15 or so was 16-3. The win streak never stopped. Ridiculous.

Not quite as broken as secret paladin back in the days, but crazy nonetheless.
 

Dahbomb

Member
It should be noted that this Arena change is not coming post rotation but rather with those two card nerfs. That means that LoE and TGT will still be part of Arena for a couple of months before they are removed.

The blog post doesn't say anything about whether the occurence bonus of MSG will be removed or not in the upcoming patch. Fact that they nerfed ocurence bonus of Abyssal Enforcer specifically tells me that the MSG occurence bonus will remain but who really knows.

The guys at Heartharena with ADWCTA/MERPS are going to do a much better job come Monday of extrapolating these changes but I thought I would gives you guys a heads up on what to expect. If the exact numerical values are given then the Arena meta is exceedingly easy to predict but right now we don't have exact numbers so some guesstimation will be performed.

I am going to assume the following:

*MSG occurence bonus remains.
*Rares and Epics are at least twice as common now.
*Neutral commons from classics are at least halved in occurence.
*The spell bonus will not apply to weapons.
*The cards they banned before are still banned (like Snowchugger).


Broad predictions/guesses:

*Less 1/2 drops with GvG and Naxx removed. This will slow the game down. But not dramatically so because vanilla classic minions are going to be replaced in occurence by more efficient expansion minions (so more Evil Hecklers versus Booty Bays, more Ice Ragers versus Magma Ragers, more Pompous Thespian versus Frostwolf Grunts).

*Dragon synergy for this small period of time will be easier to achieve because no GvG/Naxx cards means more cards from other expansions and a lot of the dragons have higher rarity so you can expect to see more Azure Drakes in drafts (Azure Drake doesn't become Wild until rotation).

*Mech synergy basically gone, a lot of sticky minions gone too. This means that it will be harder to keep the board in Arena after a wipe.

*Paladin loses most with GvG/Naxx gone because of Minibot, Muster, Coghammer and Avenge. Easier to play around their secrets and they have less early game now.

*This one is probably the biggest takeaway: Rare spells especially from MSG are going to be way, way more common. They essentially have a QUADRUPLE modifier bonus: One because of less cards in pools so they will naturally be more common, Rares in general will be more common, occurence bonus from MSG and more spells in general.

What does that mean exactly? Expect to see way more Volcanic Potion, Felfire Potion, Greater Healing Potions, Bloodfury Potions, Polymorph Secret, Counterfeit Coin, Devolve, Getaway Kodo, Hidden Cache, Pint Size Potion, Stolen goods.

Epic spells from MSG will also be fairly common. You can also expect to see epic spells like Dragonfire Potion in Arena.

This means that Kabals have an inherent advantage with this change, more so than before. Having occurence bonuses on Volcanic Potion and Felfire Potion is a massive buff for Warlock and Mage.

*The Rare spell bonus matters for previous expansions too including Classic. So more Blizzards, Lightning Storms, Demonwrath, Excavated Evil and Shadowflames. This generally works out to help the Kabals too along with Shaman because of LS and Maelstrom Portal.

*Common spells from previous expansions are also still relevant. You are going to see MORE Firelands Portals in Arena now because it's two multipliers versus one downgrade multiplier (less commons but more spells of non Wild variety).

*The Abyssal Enforcer and Flamestrike nerfs needed to happen or else they would have been insane with the other Mage and Warlock buffs. In reality these nerfs don't even matter much. If they keep the MSG bonus then you will see like 1 to 1.5 Abyssal Enforcer per draft versus like 2.5. You only really need 2 Enforcers, 3 is too much. Same for Flamestrike... with the spell bonus you would still see about the same number of Flamestrikes maybe slightly less depending on how less commons we get. But all of this is made up by those classes getting more clears like Volcanic Potion, Blizzard, Demonwrath, Shadowflame and Felfire Potion. Remember that Wild cards are being removed so that naturally puts a bonus on these cards anyway.


*Epics might be relevant too but at the most they would be as relevant as Rares are now. Which means epic spells from MSG might be worth playing around. Dragonfire Potion is the big one here. It's hard to talk about Epics without numbers, it might be a non factor.


As far as class specifics go:

Mage

Buffs: Ice Lance removed, more Blizzards, Fallen Hero, Volcanic Potion, Flamewaker, less sticky minions so easier to wipe boards, Babbling Book, Firelands Portal, Cult Sorceror, Kabal Courier. Some of the epics like Arcane Blast and Forbidden Flame are nice for Arena too. Kabal Courier.

Nerfs: No Flame Cannon, Polymorph Secret occurence bonus with Duplicate gone makes it a lot easier to play around Mage secrets, less Flamestrikes.


Since a ton of the good Mage cards are spells the spell buff helps them the most. They are buffed from these changes despite direct nerf on Flamestrike.



Warlock:

Buffs: Easiest access to small minions when everyone else would struggle to get them. Felfire Potion, Shadowflame, Demonwrath, Forbidden Ritual, Doomguard, Siphon Soul, Twisting Nether, Doom, Kabal Traficker.

Nerfs: Void Caller removed, Implosion removed, Bloodfury Potion, Felguard, some unwieldy epics, less Abyssals.

Buffed all around. Some of their best spells are rare. The Abyssal Enforcer nerf is going to matter less when you have more clears and removals to work with. They also don't lose much from GvG and Naxx.


Priest

Buffs: Excavated Evil, Dragonfire Potion, Cabal Shadowpriest, Forbidden Shaping, Kabal Courier, Auchenai, Shadow Madness, Shadow Horror, Shifting Shade, DrakOP, Onyx Bishop, Holy Fire,

Nerfs: Lightbomb/Velens Chosen/Dark Cultist removed, Greater Healing Potion, Pint Sized Potion, Mass Dispel.

As it turns our Priest has a lot of crap spells in higher rarities but some good ones too. But being able to get more spells is still good for Priest so I think they would be a bit better off especially with less 1/2 drops for other classes. Not sure how Kabal Talonpriest will factor in, Priest also will have less 2 drops but you have more chance to get crap like Geode into Talonpriest. The big nerf here is removal of GvG for Priest, that was a big expansion for them. Velens Chosen is the biggest loss.


Will do other 6 classes later on but I think Shaman and Hunters are buffed from getting more Rares. Warrior and Paladin feels nerfed but I would have to go through all the cards first.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
Consecration will become the most common board clear in arena after the change. Paladin will be pretty strong.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
We have the exact percentages:

Iksar said:
For context, the numbers are around 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks. The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate. Flamestrike is 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type. For Flamestrike, its definition in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet. Meaning cards that share that definition will show up around 50% more often. Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet, so it will show up ~50% less than cards in that bucket.

As a further note, rares and commons specifically have a very similar chance to show up on a card by card basis. What I mean by this is Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs. This is a little strange so I'm curious what the feedback will be on it.

Talking about the exact chances to get any particular card could be a blog on its own. Each of the classes vary slightly because of the differences in #cards available and minion/spell ratio within each rarity. I recently asked a bunch of friends (who very, very heavily play arena) if they had an idea what the current ratio of commons/rares was and they had no idea. Makes me wonder how necessary a full report on that kind of thing is. In any case, I'm happy to clear up any outstanding questions you all have of the new system. The blog post for this was not the place to go over 100's of numeric details.
Commons were 78% previously.
 

Dahbomb

Member
You get as many Fireballs now as Blizzards? That can't be right based on the percentages unless I am interpreting what he said incorrectly which is likely.

The Rares upgrade isn't a lot, it used to be roughly 15% before but the Epic and Legendary change is a big bump relatively.

But if what he said about Fireballs/Blizzard is true then my guesstimations were right on the money. Expect to see class with good rare spells rise up.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
You get as many Fireballs now as Blizzards? That can't be right based on the percentages unless I am interpreting what he said incorrectly which is likely.

The Rares upgrade isn't a lot, it used to be roughly 15% before but the Epic and Legendary change is a big bump relatively.

But if what he said about Fireballs/Blizzard is true then my guesstimations were right on the money. Expect to see class with good rare spells rise up.



There are more Commons than rares. So rares show up less often but there are fewer to choose from so fireballs and blizzards will be offered around the same frequency.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
I hope Blizzard announces the expansion around the same time that we get the new patch next week, and that they don't wait until PAX East or something. Otherwise we'll probably have the same preorder issue that we had with MSG where it was online only. I want to use my Amazon coins on my preorder. =/

You get as many Fireballs now as Blizzards? That can't be right based on the percentages unless I am interpreting what he said incorrectly which is likely.

The Rares upgrade isn't a lot, it used to be roughly 15% before but the Epic and Legendary change is a big bump relatively.

Basically the pool of rares is much smaller than the pool of commons. So even though you see more commons total, the occurrence rate of any individual common is the same as the occurrence rate of any individual rare.

But if what he said about Fireballs/Blizzard is true then my guesstimations were right on the money. Expect to see class with good rare spells rise up.

I guess people should be happy that arena is going Standard with this change, otherwise Muster for Battle would be in every Paladin deck, lol.
 

Dahbomb

Member
That has to be a new change (rarity rebalance be cause plus spells) previously it wasn't like that.

Let's say if that's true... does that also apply to cards with occurence bonuses? So is Warlock as likely to get Blastcrystal Potion as Felfire Potion in drafts now? That's a big deal right there and goes back to what I was saying where now you might start playing around Rare spells with occurence bonuses.
 
Moving Arena to standard eliminates half the fun of the format.

Which half would that be, the gratuitous curve decks or the complete lack of synergy-driven strategies?

It would be cool if in the future they can have combinations of cards like: Standard + GvG or Classic + LoE, etc.
So that way you could have a new "arena meta" every month.

I think it's almost inevitable that arena "cubes" start showing up eventually, there's way too much possibility to create new and different environments a la Tavern Brawls and give a lot more cards chances to be played as a result.

The only way i would play Arena is if that you could draft like 50 cards and then choose 30 of those to make up your deck.

I really kind of wonder why they haven't experimented with something like this. It's not like the interface would be all that difficult.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
I wonder how many of the people complaining about arena going standard even play wild in constructed?


Moaning about changes when the impact of those changes is so unclear is ridiculous.
 

Dahbomb

Member
It's less about the implications of changes for those people versus the flavor of Arena for them.

If you have an objective discussion on the topic then you can't really argue that keeping all the cards from Wild would be better for Arena in terms of playability especially when it comes to skill. It's a very basic solution to a problem that requires more nuance changes but it's still better than doing nothing in the long run.

I see where they are coming from. Arena has that flavor of "anything can happen" because any card can get played. Lesser, unknown cards can get played that would never even dream of being played in constructed. It appeals to the inner Timmy of a person, the low tier hero in them. There's value in that I feel.


But if you are going to have Arena leaderboards and have win percentages mean anything in Arena... then you can't have that card pool anymore unless there's a more sophisticated drafting system. We don't have a more sophisticated drafting system so this is the next solution that comes into play.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Wild aggro decks are starting to use the finja murloc package. Old murkeye and warleader getting drawn from finja into everyfin is pretty gross in aggro shaman.
 
The only way i would play Arena is if that you could draft like 50 cards and then choose 30 of those to make up your deck.

people have been asking for this for 4 years

i've given up on expecting anything from them

i wouldn't mind too much, except the problem is every hearthstone "clone" ends up with the same shitty limited format as HS arena
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
I just want to take this moment to reiterate that fatigue decks should fucking die in a goddamn fire.

10 Goddamn Sludge Belchers. Fucking hell.
 

Fixed1979

Member
people have been asking for this for 4 years

i've given up on expecting anything from them

i wouldn't mind too much, except the problem is every hearthstone "clone" ends up with the same shitty limited format as HS arena

I say this primarily as a HS player, Eternal got their draft right. It's definitely worth a try.

Picking from 1 of 3 cards at a time will forever limit deck cohesiveness. Getting rid of wild might put a bandaid on the problem with wild but it's far from a fix I suspect it will mostly remain play by the numbers (curve) game.

Had quite a bit of fun playing a secret Mage deck in wild that I quickly cobbled together went from around from 23 to around 13 until I started running into aggro and pirates. Kinda reminded me what I liked about this game. Maybe it was that I was seeing new decks or possibly getting to play something outside the meta without getting crushed. I really wish this was the experience I got more often.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I'm on a 10-game win streak with this silly pauper zoo deck and I'm scared to keep going
Is it a wild deck? If not, is there a list online?

For myself, I made it to level 14 with no Fandral last month. This month I never broke 18 even WITH Fandral, which is pretty sad. I'm not sure if I forgot how to play or what. I suspect I need to relearn basics and also learn what to mulligan.

However, I hit 17 tonight (thanks to one instant surrender while on a streak) when a priest did a funny move: They played Paletress, who then summoned Majordomo Executs, who I then killed. This brought them from like 20 HP to 8 HP. They had a Kazakus potion for +10 armor, but it wasn't enough since I had a bunch of face damage and 6-7 jade minions.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Was bored doing some work, which meant my theory craft juices got flowing and I devised a Reno Jade Druid deck for Standard:

Innervate
Jade Idol
Living Roots
Raven Idol
Ooze
Thalnos
Dirty Rat
Doomsayer
Wild Growth
Wrath
Brann
Feral Rage
Jade Blossom
MCT
Mulch
Fandral
Jade Spirit
Swipe
Azure Drake
Druid of the Claw
Lotus Agents
Nourish
Second Rate Bruiser
Aya Blackpaw
Dark Arrokoa
Jade Behemoth
Moonglade Portal
Reno Jackson
Ancient of War
Arcane Giant


Lacking on the board clears that the Kabal classes have (only the one Swipe, considering throwing in Starfall in there) but ramps into the big dudes quickly and has a lot of anti aggro tools to get to that stage unlike normal Jade decks. Also threw in the MC + Rat + Brann combo in there.
 

Lyng

Member
I wish blizzard would learn from Shadowverse and dial down on the random bullshit. Loosing to aggro as reno mage due to sheer coinflips feels very bad.
 

Pooya

Member
you mean it's not ok when you kill the trogg but they get another one from portal anyway? but it increases skill, or so I heard. When they get pit snake from portal which blocks you playing ancient of war your skill will increase by 9000.
 

Lyng

Member
you mean it's not ok when you kill the trogg but they get another one from portal anyway? but it increases skill, or so I heard. When they get pit snake from portal which blocks you playing ancient of war your skill will increase by 9000.

Pretty much exactly that haha
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
Golden cards in arena. THEY FINALLY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. /sarcasm

This seems like the kind of thing that should have been done.... lets say a year and a half ago to be generous. Silly that it took so long to get the defining cosmetic thing in the game into one of its modes.
 

butts

Member
Was bored doing some work, which meant my theory craft juices got flowing and I devised a Reno Jade Druid deck for Standard:

Innervate
Jade Idol
Living Roots
Raven Idol
Ooze
Thalnos
Dirty Rat
Doomsayer
Wild Growth
Wrath
Brann
Feral Rage
Jade Blossom
MCT
Mulch
Fandral
Jade Spirit
Swipe
Azure Drake
Druid of the Claw
Lotus Agents
Nourish
Second Rate Bruiser
Aya Blackpaw
Dark Arrokoa
Jade Behemoth
Moonglade Portal
Reno Jackson
Ancient of War
Arcane Giant


Lacking on the board clears that the Kabal classes have (only the one Swipe, considering throwing in Starfall in there) but ramps into the big dudes quickly and has a lot of anti aggro tools to get to that stage unlike normal Jade decks. Also threw in the MC + Rat + Brann combo in there.

This looks sweet, I might give it a shot later. Lotus Agents is underrated IMO
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
Was bored doing some work, which meant my theory craft juices got flowing and I devised a Reno Jade Druid deck for Standard:

--snipped the deck, scroll up for the card list--

Lacking on the board clears that the Kabal classes have (only the one Swipe, considering throwing in Starfall in there) but ramps into the big dudes quickly and has a lot of anti aggro tools to get to that stage unlike normal Jade decks. Also threw in the MC + Rat + Brann combo in there.

Something like this is what I think Wild will eventually become for every class. The power of getting the Reno heal is too good to pass up and over time redundancies will show up for every class. This doesn't look like a bad deck either and (for now) it's Standard legal. After the rotation it falls apart, but then so will lots of decks. I think this has potential in Wild as well since no one will ever see this coming. Reno Druid AFAIK has not ever really been a thing. Imagine if Ancient of Lore was still a decent card!
 

Dahbomb

Member
The deck sucks for sure lol. Main issue is the lack of tempo reversals. Even after a Reno Jackson heal you don't have a way to flip the board as Druid.


Also the more I think about it the more I feel that the spell bonus in Arena needs to apply to weapons too. Hunters and Warriors definitely need that bump.


Against Druid I try to tempo them out with the bigger minions. If you are seeing enough Druids then definitely throw in Mountain Giant and Faceless Shambler. I just put stuff on board and lethal with the combo while clearing their board. They usually give enough time to set something up. Twisting Nether and Shadowflame usage is key. Stealing one of their big Jade minions with Sylvanas while flipping their board can be back breaking. You can also try to steal Jades with MCT. Druids just has trouble with giant minions and defending against the comho.
 

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Something like this is what I think Wild will eventually become for every class. The power of getting the Reno heal is too good to pass up and over time redundancies will show up for every class. This doesn't look like a bad deck either and (for now) it's Standard legal. After the rotation it falls apart, but then so will lots of decks. I think this has potential in Wild as well since no one will ever see this coming. Reno Druid AFAIK has not ever really been a thing. Imagine if Ancient of Lore was still a decent card!


This assumes no power creep in future sets.
 
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