@ravelle: Since the ladder reset the people that spent a ridiculous amount or played a ridiculous amount will be at the bottom as well so best idea is just to wait a few days at least before playing ranked.

@ravelle: Yeah, just toggle out of ranked matchmaking and play unranked for like a week. They just added ranked, so EVERYONE is at the bottom of the ladder, and yeah, you WILL NOT get a fair fight. Or like, I got one fair fight after 4-5 complete bullshit losses against decks with tons of rares.

Loving it!

Aha, that makes sense. I was really wondering how he got so many rares at that rank.

I think mages should not be allowed to get 4 flamestrikes in arena. Fuck that shit to all hell god damn.

I played a Priest that drew 3 copies of Mind Control in the top half of his deck. I was Druid o_O

@turambar: Big thing with mages is they've always been a top 3 class, just Rogues were the best and Druids were comparable but they both got nerfed a whole bunch and nothing happened to mages; then Warriors and Priests got buffed so they were the best or comparable and now they've both been nerfed; but Mages just keep on chilling with all of that ridiculous removal and direct damage potential. I guess since no one else got buffed this patch mages will maybe get looked at? Paladin and Shaman are becoming the next tier just due to attrition, though they've always been solid.

I hate playing against mages, you can't get a minion on the field because they get to constantly spam fireballs,strikes and frost blasts. Either the damage needs to be nerved or the cost needs to be higher.

Well, you got half your wish with the latest patch.

Honestly though, the issue isn't that their spells don't cost enough or does too much damage, etc. The problem is they simply have access to far more sweeper/delay/burn spells than any other class, which allows for far more immediate damage than any minion dependent classes. It's definitely not an easy thing to balance.

I disenchanted all of my other expert class specific cards and built an aggro/midrange Warlock deck, I actually like battling mages and priests now. Blood Imps, Shattered Sun Clerics and Defender of Argus help keep key threats alive, they're bound to get overrun if they one-for-one everything, no obvious Mind Control targets and big & cheap burst damage potential with Power Overwhelming and Soulfire. It was so satisfying closing a game against a Druid with two 5/10 Ancient of War on the field with a Hellfire-Soulfire combo. Right now I only play the 1 mana demons with a single Sense Demons, I love being able to draw and play two of them on turn 5.

I haven't spent any money on the game but still prefer ladder to Arena, did not see that happening.

I'm finding playing against other people kinda frustrating. People are so slow. I played one guy who literally went down to the timer fuse thing nearly burning up completely every turn.

It crashes consistently on startup. Ive tried all the solutions in the Hearthstone Blizzard support forum, and when those didnt work I created my own topic. No one ever responded to that so....

Some people do that deliberately to try and frustrate people into quitting. It's a pretty shitty way to troll people to be sure.

Playing against mages is just plain frustrating and not fun.

They can nuke your early minions the moment they pop on on board, and when you do get some strong minions on board they usually get frozen, poly-morphed or fireblasted/striked. The fact that heroes can ignore taunted minions and hit the creature next to it is also dumb.

Mages got nerfed but not by enough so they're still the best in arena and one of the best classes in constructed; blitz warlock is probably the best for constructed now. Pyro/flamestrike/fireball are still 3 of the most overpowered cards in the game and water elemental isn't too far behind.

My thoughts?

I love the game.

Unfortunately, the game hates me.

It teases me at ranks 19/20. At 20, it gives me the perfect starting hand every time and keeps giving me the cards I need to counter everything my opponent plays. At 19 the game keeps giving me everything in my deck that is 4+ mana, so by the time I can play anything it's a taunt card just to try and survive.... Rinse and repeat.

@budwyzer: I share your pain of feeling like the game is decided by your opening hand, in that if you happen to mulligan away some cards and get equally expensive cards in their place, there is just no recovering from it. Unless your deck is phenomenally better than theirs in the first place.

Actual attacks are still restricted by taunt minions. However, hero abilities like the mage's fireball isn't a normal attack.

http://hearthstats.net/dec#.Ury6lfRDt1A

The data say otherwise. They're middling in constructed and not that much ahead of either shaman or paladin in arena.

@colorbrandon: That site is terrifying, dude just copy the best deck and play it. Then copy the next best deck a week later, and so on. Or you know, don't play constructed.

Like the game but think i find myself watching other people play it more often than I actually play it.

Hm, needed 5 Rogue wins, ran my budget Rogue deck from a month ago that apparently is still meta-relevant, won 5 in a row... this game is getting stagnant.

I think this only gets people talking cause it is Blizzard making it. I don't see anything special besides that it is a Warcraft themed ccg. It's not bad, but also nothing special.

@starvinggamer said:

This is the dark secret of CCGs. They have to release (a lot of) new cards every few months, because it really only takes that long to figure out the metagame if you pay attention to online communities. Magic: The Gathering releases multiple large sets per year because if they didn't, Constructed would be somewhat stagnant in a rather short amount of time.

Also it helps that their Standard format actively cycles out all but the past 2 years' worth of sets, meaning you can't keep relying on old favourites. Since digital CCGs allow you to use all released cards, unless you see a bunch of power creep in the newer cards, the newer cards won't be particularly better than the older ones, and a lot of your old decks will continue to keep working.

@bisonhero: Yeah, I've been around a Standard block or ten. I'll be interested to see what sort of release schedule Blizzard chooses to adopt for Hearthstone once it actually comes out. Cryptozoic seem to be the only ones really on top of it, as they are already working on set 2 and the game is still in alpha. I'm particularly curious to see how they handle older sets and whether or not cards will ever go "out of print". Since there's no trading in Hearthstone, clearly that won't be the case, but SolForge and Hex are still big question marks.

It's incredibly accessible, and easily the most polished DCG out there by leaps and bounds. Players just getting into the burgeoning DCG genre would be flocking towards Hearthstone regardless of the fact that it's a Blizzard game.

@starvinggamer: Yup, Blizzard game counts for a lot but so do really high production values, there's a reason the brand is incredibly strong despite the occasional misstep (D3, which is still a perfectly serviceable Diablo clone just handled all the auxiliary stuff extremely poorly) aside. Note that argument doesn't hold up for a lot of games/companies but in the case of Blizzard (or dare I say Square Eidos Enix) there's always something to come back for.

@starvinggamer said:

I still think it's kind of unfortunate that even among the rarer cards, there aren't a ton of unique, interesting abilities. It's still mostly "When this comes into play [make some 2/2 tokens or deal some damage or something]". There are a few interesting gimmicks like whatever that card is that removes all instances of Divine Shield from your minions and gains a bonus for each one, but I wish there were more rares that actually did something a little clever like that. Many of the rares are efficient, but I find few of them very interesting to build decks that support them.

Then again, I'm used to building Johnny decks in Magic that seldom work but are fun anyways, and I feel like that is not the target demo of most of the digital CCGs out there.

@bisonhero: There are a fair number of stupid cards, though granted they're all very expensive; Lorewalker Cho, Mukla, Millhouse, and Mekkatorque foremost; granted none of them are viable in the copied deck marathon but if you're playing against a friend then why not. In the old ranked system I had an anti mage priest deck that had nothing but legendaries and priest cards; like 22 spells and 8 minions or something and it went something like 60-2 against mages. Queued into something that wasn't a priest or mage? Thoughtsteal, if it sucked then concede, play mage for the rematch. I can't play the deck anymore but it was a lot of fun at the time and I'm sure you could run a similar gimmick if you wanted. The new Hunter Unleash the Hounds is an extremely weird card that you can do dozens of different things with.

Thanks, Arena. These are absolutely the sort of cards I'd like to waste a rare slot on in a Mage deck. Fantastic.

@bisonhero: I probably would have grabbed the Ancient Watcher and tried to stupid my way into some Silence/Sunfury Protector/Defender of Argus.

@starvinggamer: I think I did end up with the 2/1 Silence guy, but that was it, so I'm glad I didn't go the Ancient Watcher route. That card pool ended up giving me 2 Polymorphs, but in all 90 cards I wasn't offered a single Flamestrike, and my actual damage-based removal was pretty thin. It was a terrible card pool. I was also offered one of the rarer "every time you play a secret, get some effect" Mage minions, which I didn't pick because they're super unreliable, and sure enough the 90 card pool didn't contain a single secret, even though Mage totally has like at least 2 common secrets.

@bisonhero: Watcher is okay; lightwarden is decent enough if you get an earthen ring farseer; any 1 drop is good with dark iron dwarf/shattered sun cleric. I've actually won a match due to Bloodsail corsair before; a lot of the time the effect is the same as an ooze.

Hearthstone's been the first game in awhile to make me want to keep playing video games until 3 in the morning.

I got into it yesterday. Played through the tutorial, did 2 practice matches then played a matchmade match that I won. What fun! Really great design, I particularly love how satisfying each turn is. At the start of a turn your enemy typically has a bit more than you do. Then you make a few moves and suddenly you have the edge. Then you hit the end turn button and he tries to do the same to you. It's fantastic.

I really like it so far. Not only is it fun but it's also kinda charming.

Every time they wipe the rankings, I have to push myself extra hard to play it again.

I really like the way the game is brought down to the basics but it does mean that minor differences in cards can be what separates, "mostly useless" to "too powerful to have fun using". Also, it needs more synergy going on. I love theme decks in games and it takes a long time to build any in this that aren't just "use the best cards I have for this hero". I think the Arena section is a lot of fun, though I've started to give up on playing semi-frequently to earn gold for Arena.

It's a bit of mindless fun for me at this point - and I don't think that's what I'm looking for in games right now.

This is a LOT of fun. Like Brad, everything about it just tickles my addiction bone. It's not the deepest game ever, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I could definitely see myself playing this regularly for a long while.

I play magic weekly and I have to disagree it is a distilled version of magic for sure but I wouldn't describe it as dumbed down, for me in brings a lot of the concepts of magic into a situation where the rules matter a little bit more I find you hold back a lot in magic in HS it is about holding back Just the right amount and keeping creatures completely off the other players side, I feel like magic can be a little bit slower and has so many rules going on even us who play it constantly forget stuff so we play it a little more casual (AKA miss a land drop just put the damn land down we are trying to have fun)

HS on the other hand is fast, and the tweaks to the rule set make every fight interesting (Creatures keep damage, the "player" can attack, the Hero Abilities) I like it.

I think its awesome, been playing it for a few hours a days since the beta launch.

The more I play it the less I like it. It has a decent base mechanics, but every deck feels gimmicky and losing rarely feels fair. I figure it comes from the game's lack of depth, options and stale meta. They almost need to add new cards with some regularity like magic does to keep things interesting.

@digiwth: They do need new cards, but it's fine and not extremely random in constructed. Wins/Losses are about 95% unfair in arena though.

Eh, I find constructed kind of random. The meta is so the meta and as long as you don't make silly plays it all comes down to top-decking.

I'd really like to see a side-deck mechanic. I think that'd help a lot.

@digiwth: Can you explain what you mean by a side-deck mechanic? This is more or less my first ccg.

@mb: It's a small deck of cards kept off to the side and its used to switch out/add cards to your deck between matches with somebody, its so you can adapt to an opponents deck if they have cards that neutralize you really bad.

@mb said:

In like, officially organized Magic: The Gathering tournaments, when you enter the tournament, the deck you enter can be the following:

• the usual 60 card deck (generally 24 lands, 36 actual cards). You can go over 60 if you want, most people don't.
• a "side deck", which is a pool of 15 situational cards.

You are allowed to sub out any number of cards from your "main deck" and replace them from cards in the "side deck". Sometimes there are situational cards that are a hard counter to an opponent's deck, but against most other decks they are not even remotely worth playing. It's rare that you would ever have a reason to sub in all 15 cards, or even 10 cards.

I can't remember, but I don't think you get to see your opponent's decklist in MtG tournaments? But most tournament games are best 2 out of 3, so once you play him the first time, you probably have a sense of the cards in his deck, and know which counters you could put in for the next 1-2 games against that guy.

So I don't really see how it applies to Hearthstone, since every game is a one-off. The game would have to let you look over their deck list before the match begins, which would really slow down the pace. Or it would need a tournament mode of some sort.

@bisonhero: That may be what a Side Deck is in Magic the Gathering, but I don't think that's the sort of thing that @digiwth meant in this case (although I may be completely wrong - just want to bring up the interpretation I got). In TCGs such as Yu-Gi-Oh, the Side Deck is a separate deck of cards that you can play at specific times, like cards that are formed when specific sets of cards are in play. Sort of how Ysera works in Hearthestone, taking a random card from the Dream set of cards. These are alternate sets of cards that can be played at specific times, but you have to pick which ones beforehand you want to allow in this small pool of cards. Basically, it's an added mechanic.

In the Pokémon TCG, the side deck (more commonly called the Prize Set - though not originally) are Six Cards taken from your deck at the start of the game. When you defeat an opponents Pokémon, you take one of your Prize Cards into your hand - getting all of your Prize Cards is the normal way to win the game. In Hearthestone, I don't see why they can't have a set of Uber Cards (maybe 3 you pick before you start the game) that you unlock during play (maybe after reducing the opponents health to a set amount - or in a risk reward tactic of sacrificing a set number of cards on your side of the field/in your hand or maybe at the cost of 10 Mana Crystals or something). I think this would be the use of a side deck that would fix the most annoying problem in Hearthestone, getting the high-cost cards early or top-decking them late in the game. Having a Side Deck that allowed for a more structured arc of a game where it feels more like you earned those plays.

That said, I do like the way the game is right now. I love how most Legendaries are so specific in when they are useful so someone with a bunch of legendaries isn't going to automatically win - though I think it would better to have legendaries under a limited side deck (say 3 legendaries - but you can only play one per game at the cost of 10 mana) would be a better way of implementing them.

Just my take from the TCG's I play of what a Side Deck could be used for in Hearthestone.

@dixavd: Yeah, if that's what he meant by side deck, and we're going to get into "Hearthstone is light on mechanics", then I have a list a mile long of complaints. There just aren't enough cards that do anything particularly interesting other than "That does pretty good damage" or "That creature has pretty good stats for its cost" or "Freeze sure is bullshit". Very few cards actually have some crazy effect that's really clever or unique. It's nigh impossible to make any sort of combo deck (which, granted, in most CCGs are fun to build but not fun to play against).

In general, I think Hearthstone is fun to play in a mindless sort of way, but I don't find deck building very interesting because none of the cards are interesting.

I think I though I was gonna stomp noobs when the open beta started, but I've been getting stomped instead...

@koolaid said:

Did you just get in and assumed you'd be facing a bunch of noobs who were your equal, or have you been in for a while? I'll assume the former. Even using just the starter cards you're given, I think a lot of people who play this game for more than 90 minutes end up being assholes who just "netdeck" and look up the most efficient handful of decks you can make with the starter cards.

Though on the other hand, at low levels everyone's decks are largely full of the same pool of pretty meh cards, so maybe you're making slight mistakes here and there that ultimately put you slightly behind a deck that is more or less even with yours? No idea what you experience with CCGs is, but it can be a big deal if someone can gain even a small card advantage on you (1 of their cards for 2 of yours), or just gains enough momentum on you (more creatures on the board than you have) and you don't happen to have a "destroy everything" card or a really big Taunt creature to slow them down.

For what it's worth, when I got a closed beta invite, it must've been the same day a bunch of people got invites, because I went and did an Arena run, making (in retrospect) one of the absolute worst Shaman Arena decks I've ever made, yet I went 8 wins to 3 losses with it because everyone I played was apparently somehow even more terrible. I have yet to get 8 wins in the Arena since, even though I am making much, much better decks. You may have just gotten unlucky, because I did encounter some noobs when I first got in.