Be Excellent To Each Other

I've got every character up to level 10 now though, but I don't want to do any arena until i'm back on a proper connection

You all sound like the kind of people I like to play against. Taking it all personally and easily rattled!

I think my priest is up to level 33, as I like him. Balance in this game is pretty good. A well-played hand by any character can beat me and often does. It's frustrating to lose but I don't think my opponents are pricks because they've won, or even if they chuck down a couple of pointless cards before they kill me.

At the moment the most unbalanced card is the Frothing Beserker. Too much health and the fact it buffs attack when ANY minion is injured is far too powerful. Getting rid of them is disportionally difficult and at the very least its health needs nerfing.

So, you've met the wife?

Well, most people play with silencers, so i don't think the beserker is that powerful.

In fact i don't remember any card right now that is way too powerfull, which is a good sign.

I'd go for the Priest's (spit!) Mind Control card - even though it costs 10 mana it's still extremely annoying to have some wet Priest nick one of your good cards. But then they have other theft related cards too. Should just rename Priest to Thief.

I had an hilarious game once. I believe I had a nice, game-winningly strong Gurubashi Berseker that a Priest stole from me using a Mind Control.

"Ha!", I thought. "You think you're so clever?", and pow, I stole it right back with my own Mind Control. I chucklesomely then said 'Thank you' to indicate my smugness.

The bastard then stole it right back with a second Mind Control. I had to laugh.

Just had arguably the dream game.

I was playing my warrior against another warrior but the dude was seriously holding back so I knew he had some heavy stuff and/or specific plays coming on later in the game, he was kind of 'parrying' me more than anything else, and holding onto a lot of cards.

True enough out comes the 8 mana legendary warrior Grommash Hellscream card (decent base stats and a savage +6 enrage).

I've got my Faceless Manipulator in my hand so immediately play that and copy Hellscream, then I attack my own Hellscream with Cruel Taskmaster which adds on +2 attack at the cost of 1 health AND triggers the +6 enrage so all of a sudden I've got a 12/9 Hellscream of my own and a taunt down too.

He then replies with a fucking army of murlocs which he's been holding onto and they all buff each other too, so my Hellscream only has one turn in him, since he's missing a taunt I take 12 health off his hero and let his Hellscream live.

He then loses most of his murloc army to take out my Hellscream, and then enrages his Hellscream, ready to unload a can of whip-ass on me next turn.

Oops! He's now got an attack of 7 or better so my Big Game Hunter one shots him.

Needless to say he didn't win the game.

I'd love to watch a replay of that game, it was so perfect you could almost taste it.

And now I've just lost three on the trot and my dream of getting Rank 19 has been shattered.

Some of these legendary cards are stupidly powerful and hard to counter if you're running with pogger decks like I am.

Have you seen the image with all the basic decks builds in it? It's a good starting point for each class.

http://i.imgur.com/OmfQKEG.png

Hmmm... servers seem to be down at the moment

and back up

This is the kind of thing I get addicted to, so I must avoid it.

Honestly Curio I'm very much the obsessional type myself (as my total WoW playing time will bear testament to...) but it genuinely is easy to take this game in relatively small doses. Just 15-30 minutes if you feel like it, or a longer session if you're in the mood.

It's an exquisite piece of work, it really is. And for free, why not give it a try.....?

I don't have any legendary and i'm usually around ranks 12 and 13. I don't think they are essential at all, which is another proof of how good the game is.

Magic The Gathering was ruined by overpowered rares, which is something i hope it doesn't happen with hearthstone.

Well yes it is entirely possible I'm just a bit rubbish

Nearly hit Rank 19 before and that's the best I've managed so far

FUCK. PRIESTS.

Seriously, fuck them in their fucking eyeholes.

EDIT - Removed unnecessary pic of man being fucked in the eyehole

If i do okay this then I'm definitely going to do so as a Priest

I posted that last night when I was a drop of wine to the good and got VERY ANNOYED at the cheaty antics of a priest. I couldn't work out how to delete the attachment so re-posted it this morning minus the pic.

(The pic wasn't that bad, it was just a still from A Serbian Film where Miloš beats the shit out of Raša and then kills him by jamming his erect knob into his eye socket, but the pic I took wasn't that graphic so not to be too NSFW and stuff.)

Priests bug the hell out of me - they steal cards/minions, copy and buff their own health and that of their minions and are no fun at all to play against.

Stop whining and have better tactics

A gentlemanly and noble warrior such as myself has no retort to a cassock-lifting kiddy-fiddling cheaty bastard priest!

I just conceded on Turn 3 because I made a mistake that really pissed me off AND THEN I LOST A FUCKING STAR.

Me vs pally, pally goes fist.

Turn 1:

Him - Secret
Me - Pass

Turn 2:

Him - Frostwolf Grunt
Me - Frostwolf Grunt

Turn 3:

Him - Demolisher <<<< ALERT ALERT, these things are fucking dangerous, take out ASAP!
Me - No problem I think, my Grunt can take out his Grunt (they're 2/2), then I can just Heroic Strike the Demolisher.

So my Grunt attacks his Grunt and the secret is triggered, spawns a stupid 2/1 defender as the new target so my Grunt gets killed and so does the defender, but his Grunt is still up and I can't Heroic Strike the Demolisher until the Grunt is dead because it's got taunt. (The Heroic Strike is perfect to kill the Demolisher 'cause it's 1/4 and the Heroic Strike is 4 damage.)

I can still do it though! I equip my Fiery War Axe (2 mana, primary hero attack) and kill his Grunt, play the Mana Coin card to increased my mana from 1 to 2, and then play Heroic Strike and try to nuke his Demolisher, at which point I'm told that my hero has already attacked and can't attack again this turn.

The thing that really fucked me off is I've now wasted the Heroic Strike, because it's a +4 attack on the current turn only, and it's a powerful low cost card.

I was so fucked off in fact that I just conceded in an emo rage quit stylee, to which my opponent emoted 'Thank you' and then I watched a star disappear from my ranking.

FUCK!

And while we're at it mages can fuck off with that fucking flamestrike as well.

I give up with my warrior.

IT'S ROGUE TIME - slippery bastards that they are I hate playing against them so they must have something going for them.

I've just had an interminably long game against a Warrior - I usually like long games but this arse was taking all of his allotted time each turn and often he only had 3 or 4 cards in his hand so the decision process for each turn wasn't a lengthy one.

But I won.

I haven't had any deliberate time wasters yet in that mould, but have had a few who've apparently just gone AFK when it's obvious they're going to lose and then I have to wait for them to time out on every turn whilst I finish them off.

I did very well with my rogue last night but my performance got progressively worse as the evening went on, which I can only attribute to the intake of wine, as I was starting to make mistakes and miss some pretty obvious plays as I imbibed more.

DON'T DRINK AND HEARTHSTONE!

I just went 10/3 in an Arena run and was rather handsomely rewarded. 275 Gold, an epic card, and a card pack.

Mild adrenaline rush at hidding 10 wins, really thought I might go the full 12. It was a great paledin draft, and so close! Never mind.

You have to make some assumptions and play accordingly. Don't play decent minions with <= 4 health against a mage before turn 7. Bait out a flamestrike with enough to make him use it, and then respond with some decent cards you've kept back.

Same goes against Paledins. Assume a Consecration potential (2 dmg to all) or Hammer of Wrath (3 dmg) on turn 4. Priest, Holy Nova turn 5. etc.

Sometimes you have to let stuff die, put it out there *knowing* it'll die, and prepare to eat some damage until you're ready to play your proper combo.

One of the guys in this Arena run played a polymorph against a 3/3 with Divine Shield. He regretted wasting that (it was a weak play), when I got Ysera out next turn. Keep the good stuff back unless you're utterly desperate.

I think my best in Arena so far is 5/3, however last night I went 0/3 twice in a row, which was really annoying. Not a huge amount you can do with a shit card draw though, especially if you're not that good at the game in the first place

I've gone back to Jaina for a little bit in play mode, as she is the only character that I have a legendary for, which makes a big difference in winning matches!

It was quite the run, I went from 2/2 to 10/2.

The draw is hugely important. I was a Paledin but wasn't offered Blessing of Kings once, but I was offered Ysera which made the critical difference in at least 3 or 4 of the matches. Sometimes I don't get a legendary at all.

I think a run of 3/3 is where you start being profitable doing Arena vs. buying packs with gold. I've played a bunch and have acquired many decks, but even now I rarely have much excess to disenchant - there are just too many cards.

Highly enjoyable and I'll keep playing for some time to come. My constructed decks are rather nice but I only have a couple of legendaries.

For some hilarious nonsense, watch TotalBiscuit's 'Lord of the Legendaries' series. He plays constructed entirely with decks of Legendary cards.

The Jaina legendary I have gives me an extra fireball spell every time I cast a spell. If you save your initial fireballs till after you play it, it is devastating

I've had that played against me a few times of late - it always gets turned into a sheep right away.



As an aside, I'm so very tired of playing against rush decks (mine is more control). They're such brainless decks and aren't at all challenging to play against (I beat most of them). Give me a good long battle of wits against another control deck any day.

I think I dislike Murloc rush decks the most. If you're not set up specifically to put them down, they can be a right pain.

I played as a Shaman in the last arena I did. The last match I pulled all the shaman buff cards at the start, and didn't even get a single minion card to play until about round 4 or 5. I had so many cards in my hand, none of which I could do anything with, and by the time I got a minion card they came out one at a time, so they got killed as soon as I dropped them.

Incredibly frustrating game to play.

On the flip side, my last Jaina match I was down to 1 health at round 7 or so, yet still won in the end due to flamestrike, legendary, and fireball chaining. I suspect the guy I was playing against wasn't happy

It depends - if you manage to stop the initial rush in the first four turns then they are usually screwed. I play as a control Mage (hardly any spells!) and the Fireblast hero power is invaluable for that.

I always run on the assumption that a mage will have a flamestrike, but you can't necessarily assume that they have two, and sooner or later you're going to have to get some minions out there - depending on how your cards are dealt and how the game is going there's no choice sometimes but to simply take a risk and hope he isn't packing two.

It's like when playing a priest I'll assume he has mind control and try to bait him into using it with a decent minion when I still have a better one in my deck, but if he's got two mind controls AND has had them both dealt into his deck, what are you going to do about that?

Don't get me wrong I'm sure all of my games probably contain several sub-optimal plays and the situations could be handled more elegantly by a better player than myself, but some of the sucker punch moves can sting nonetheless.

Don't know about anyone else but I'd getting really tired of the current rush of ...... well, Rush Decks! There's so many of the damn things (mostly hunter, but not exclusively), and for sombody like me who loves a long drawn-out game of skill and talent against a like-minded player the rush decks are a real bore.



BTW, anyone seen this:

It's kind of Hearthstone mixed with The Banner Saga. Looks bloody nice too - think I might back it.

Oh, and it's a game that you pay for up front - none of this "pay to win" nonsense.

I watched two hours of those videos last night and I'll probably do the same tonight, fantastic entertainment and really interesting to see how he plays with the mechanics of the game as well

Used to love his WoW videos too.

Just goes to show how easy it is to win when playing an aggro style, even with a non aggro deck - my Mage deck is is a control deck, yet if I just go for the opponent's face I can win most of the time (although I don't like to play like that - control is much for fun as it makes me think and work out strategies).

This of course explains why there are so many aggro decks out there, particularly when playing as Rexxar - there's simply no brain power involved, a trained monkey could win - just go for the face all of the time.

Seems that Hearthstone is a tad flawed .......

Blizz will balance it out, they'll be gathering a HUGE amount of data from the open beta and I'd be amazed if there wasn't a pretty serious rebalancing before it goes live, despite them saying they'd prefer not to do another big rebalance like they did before the closed beta went to open.

EDIT - And we do have to remember that it is still a beta!

I'm not sure what your complaint is Four_Candles. If you can easily destroy rush decks, then you have superior tactics by being a control mage. Why even stop to worry about it? You win and move on to the next guy.

Unless you're actually getting continuously annihilated by gimmicky Hunter rushes that you can't stop, and it's pissing you off. Come on, you can be honest with us

The Hunter rush decks just annoy me - there's no strategy involved, they're incredibly predictable and very boring to play against because of this.

For example, this Hunter rush deck is a damn joke:

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/33878-perfect-rush-hunter-deck-rank-5

Just played a few games with it to check it out, won all of them. It's almost impossible to lose a game. Doesn't require any brain-power to play either. It's borderline cheating.

And no, I won't be using it again. Just doesn't feel right somehow.

With the latest patch (just applied to US servers, applied to EU in the early hours tomorrow) the game will be out of Beta. And reading the patch notes there is no sign of anything that would stop the proliferation of Hunter rush decks.

Patch notes here:

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blo ... -3-11-2014

Hmmm, from looking at the bug report area on Blizzard's Hearthstone forum this 'Launch' release is strewn with reports of bugs, some old, some new. For example, you can no longer ALT-TAB out of the game if playing in fullscreen mode.

Do they actually TEST the game before releasing new patches? I can only think not.

Bug Report Forum:

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/10591462/

List of bugs we they have so far acknowledged:

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/for ... 9677847863

Still a beta

Interesting patches/fixes/changes though, much of it looks to the good. Changing behaviour of Nat Pagle was a must.

I know you're joking, but it's now a Launch release.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blo ... -3-11-2014


A more comprehensive list of the bugs on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/com ... h_1004944/

I can only conclude that either:

a) The suits at Blizzard don't giving a flying fuck about quality and will release it in any form (are they taking lessons from EA?)

or:

b) Their game testing team sucks. Badly.

There are lots of ways to look at this, and I'm more sympathetic.

Isolated play-testing simply cannot produce as many bugs as putting it global can. The reconnect bug listed there, for example, was only really testable under a real-world load. Even in a large dev team you cannot account for every permutation of player experience, configuration, play-style and test it exhaustively. You just can't.

The other way to look at it is this: they could either release an imperfect patch to address as much as they can, as fast as they can, OR they can sit on the patch for yet more months while their player base suffers from the problems currently in the build. Meanwhile they'd still be ignorant to big problems that only 'real' play will uncover.

Anything very severe will be hotfixed I would think, and all other feedback will go on the pile to be worked on. It's still a developing game, 1.0 or not. And, y'know. FREE.

Gah, just came across the Warlock Fucking Murloc Rush Deck (known as 'cunt' for short) with my mage in ranked mode, very very nearly controlled the fucker down to a defeat but he played two power overwhelmings on his last turn to give one of the fuckers a 10 attack which finished me off.

I'm honestly hard pushed to think of anything I did wrong and still fucking lost, I'd love to watch a replay of the game to see what if any mistakes I made.

My card draws could have been nicer and maybe I didn't play it quite right, but sometimes you just get the feeling that your deck simply can't beat their deck, especially in constructed where you can't go in with the specific 'BEAT THE FUCKING CHEAP WARLOCK RUSH MURLOC DECK' deck, because it'll be shit against everything else.

Well, you can even be the best player in the world, playing with a good deck, and still lose against specifics decks. Metagaming is very important in this kind of card based games.

So, this is quite fun. Still playing the unlocking game, but at the moment trampling everything with consulate ease and looking forward to a bit more complexity once I start to unlock shit.