Brakara
2843
Firebat played a deck like that yesterday, which probably propagated it. It’s showed in this VOD around the 50 seconds mark:
Some video I watched said Blizzard weren’t all that happy with how silence was implemented as it’s not “fun” to cancel creatures abilities and so silence effects weren’t going to be coming in. Not sure if that was based on an official post or anything, but it certainly seems like they would have added one in TGT if they wanted to keep silencing common.
If silences aren’t coming I’m going to be very interested in how they implement removal for the various classes that don’t have much in the future.
Squee
2845
No kidding. I guess they’re trying to keep it an arms race, where you keep playing more wildly powerful and outlandish minions each turn (Getting increasingly powerful each set) until the other player has an off turn and you steamroll. Which feels a bit gross since it’s more reliant on having a smooth curve in your opening hand and draws than it was with just the base cards. With each individual minion being deadlier you’ve got less of a grace period for having bad turns in a single game.
There is a silence effect in TGT, but it only silences demons. Fencing Coach is quite good imo. You play it the turn before you play the big inspire guy and he immediately gets the value of the inspire even if they kill him right away. Normally you would have to wait two extra turns to play then inspire.
Yeah but you also have to keep the Fencing Coach alive for that turn. Which isn’t so easy for a 2 health minion that is an obvious threat.
Squee
2848
Do you? Since it’s a battlecry I’m fairly sure you’d still have the 0 mana hero power if he died before you used it.
Oh hmm…I guess that is true. I didn’t realize it only worked once though, I thought it was as long as he was alive. But I was wrong.
I get that the value of Fencing Coach is to allow you to use inspire effects early. But, you’re really sacrificing a lot. Turn 3 is a critical round and you’re putting out a really weak minion.
Kvaldir raider is another incredibly high pressure cheap minion that can run away with a game and demands an answer.
5 mana is cheap?
Squee
2851
For the amount of “Oh holy shit I need to kill that RIGHT NOW” you get out of it, yeah.
Spock
2852
Just had a 4-win run as a Shaman with a mediocre deck. I didn’t draft very well. I was so worried about early game that I ended up with a very low curve. My only lategame was a Bomb Lobber, a Stormwind Champ, and a Drakonid Crusher. I was offered no Fire Elementals. I also had several choices among three bad cards, so I wound up with mediocre cards like Murloc Raider and Dragonling Mechanic. I had no synergy or card draw. As I predicted, I won the games in which I grabbed the board early, and I lost every game that dragged on into the late game. Thus I lost against control-ish decks (a Paladin, a Druid, a Rogue) and won against more early-game decks (two Mages, a Druid, a Rogue).
As usual, at least one loss was probably avoidable. Against the Paladin, I was winning unti he dropped down his Murloc Knight. I never managed to kill that damned thing. In fact, I brewed back an injured Tadzingo instead of just running it into the Knight to damage it (and, with luck, kill it the following turn). He managed to protect it from there on, and the Knight won the game for him singlehanded, spewing out synergizing Murlocs every turn. I learned a hard lesson there. Killing that Knight has to be a top priority. It’s a great card; almost overpowered. Now I’m wondering if predictions of the Paladin’s demise in Arena are off-base.
Not sure I could’ve done much about the other two losses, which were late-game losses. I just didn’t have the big cards to compete.
I should be satisfied with a 4-win run, as I average about 4.2 runs in Arena, but even though this deck was mediocre, I feel disappointed. And, truth be told, a bit stressed out. I love Arena, but it does get my nerves on edge. Sometimes I wonder if, long-term, I’d be happier playing something else.
Do you guys stress out when you play Hearthstone?
It’s a ridiculous card, to be sure, but Paladins that don’t get offered the Murloc Knight (or don’t draw one that they draft) are a lot weaker than they were before TGT due to less opportunity to get the older good stuff. I think it’s not that Paladins haven’t gotten weaker overall - they have - but a Paladin with a good draft selection will be really good, and one with a bad draft selection will be really bad.
Sure, like any game, it can be stressful. At the point that I’m not enjoying it any more, I shut it down and come back another day. Hearthstone is good like that, you don’t miss out on anything by not playing right now. (Other than possibly end-of-month ladder stuff, but I don’t play that anyway.)
Spock
2854
Thanks for the reply Ineffablebob. You’d think we Vulcans would handle stress better. :P I do find it helpful to walk away and go outside.
Now that you mention it, the Paladin I played didn’t play any of the traditional stuff: the sword, Consecrate, Kings, etc. He just kept that Murloc Knight alive (behind Taunts, etc) and Inspired it every turn. What a snowball.
Yea, that murloc knight has been responsible for several arena losses already, and a couple wins. I think the primary thing that hurt paladins is that they don’t have the stupid shielded minibot on turn 2 every stinking time like they used to. I can actually coin out a 3/2 and not be seemingly guaranteed to lose it for free.
That’s been my experience with the paladin in arena thus far, getting on the board is more difficult. Once I’m there, I can generally stick but it’s not as easy getting control.
And I absolutely stress in this game, I’ve taken to writing rants into my heartharena arena notes section. When I look over them on occasion there are a lot of expletive filled rants about losing to legendaries and crazy RNG. Sometimes there’s actually a good tip in there for me to avoid repeating an error, but usually it’s just a rant.
I just went 3-3 on a Shaman arena run, which was a disappointment with this deck.
I was ahead in all three losses, with board control and not too far down in life or card advantage, but every time the opponent had exactly the cards he needed to wipe me out. First it was a Warlock with Tiny Knight of Evil followed by Doomguard, followed the next turn by a Shadowflame to wipe out the guys I’d just played, followed the turn after by a second Doomguard to kill me. Then a Priest, who had both Shadow Words right when he needed them to kill my best cards, and wiped out my board twice with Holy Nova and Lightbomb. Then another Warlock, again with Shadowflame at just the right time to reverse tempo. It’s hard to play around that kind of stuff, as more often than not you’ll lose if you try because it gives the other guy a chance to recover tempo, so you just have to push forward and hope he’s not holding the right cards.
Never anymore. I used to, but now I just shrug and try not to over think it. My play style has become make my move (in windowed mode) and then just tab over to the browser, when I see my cards light up I know its my turn again.
Because I mute everyone I play in effect they just become bots which also helps eliminates stress for me.
Spock
2858
I’ve also started muting everyone I play. I greet and then mute. I used to hate when someone said “sorry” just before wrecking me. No more of that!
Ineffablebob, sounds like there wasn’t much you could do. How do the 12-win streamers make it look so easy? When I watch their games, I sometimes pause and guess what play they’ll make, and usually I guess right. But my best is 9 wins, and I average 4.2. Then again, I know I make more misplays then they do in the heat of battle; the rope is a thing. Plus, when I record my games and watch them later, sometimes I spot more misplays still.
Rod, your comments about windowed mode remind me: I want to see my decklist while I play. As it happens, yesterday I experimented with Hearthstone Deck Tracker, which I think we’ve talked about here before. I could never get it to work properly for me; it mis-identified what cards had been played, and it never “knew” what cards I had in my hand. Plus it lagged me noticeably. I tried the various fixes the author proposes, and none of them helped, so I uninstalled. Really all I want is a deck list on the side of my HS window. Right now I play full screen and I rarely want to alt-tab out mid-game, but I’m thinking of trying HS in windowed mode. What do you guys do?
Deck Tracker is here. Apparently Blizzard is OK with it. https://github.com/Epix37/Hearthstone-Deck-Tracker/releases
I use Deck Tracker, and I never have any lag or other trouble with it. I run all my games in windowed mode, so trying that is a good idea.
pyrhic
2860
Personally, i don’t think paladins have gotten any weaker than any other class in arena - but more, that every class got weaker. The way I’m looking at it is that the incoming cards just dilute the base and so for classes that really depend on certain cards to be effective, they’re particularly hard hit.
So, you could argue that for paladin, the chance to get a consecrate/equality now is very low - but i’d argue that combo wasn’t essential to the class performing well. Even consecrate, the paladin’s only clear, is low - but again, i’d argue that consecrate isn’t the typical key to a paladin victory. What is typical is keeping minions alive (minibots, argent protectors) and buffing them (blessings etc) and access to those cards, while diluted, is still pretty good.
For me, the classes that take a real hit are those that depend on already rare cards. Rogue typically needs a bunch of things to go right for it to be effective - draw to fuel combos. Blade flurry/spell damage/weapon damage to fuel clears. Healing/taunts to fuel dagger. Getting bits and pieces of that now doesn’t help rogue at all. I just had back to back rogue games that each went 1/3…in the first, i had great dagger buffs, but was offered only 1 draw card(fan), in the second i had some great draw, and board clears, but had no dagger buffs.
Spock
2861
I’m in the midst of a Rogue run right now, standing at 5-2. The MVP so far has been my twin Deadly Poisons, but Buccaneer, Pit Fighter and Spiteful Smith have also made big contributions. One weakness of the deck is that I’m a little light on 2- and 3-drop minions. In Rogue, I often want to dagger up on turn 2 anyway, especially with all these nice dagger buffs. (I have one Barber too.) The other weakness is a lack of direct damage spells (apart from dagger): I have no Eviscerate, SI7, anything.
If I can survive to the late game, I’ve got two Pit Lords, the new Captured 5-9 thing, an Assassinate, Sap, and a couple other big critters.
One loss was to back-to-back Fire Elementals, on turns 6/7. Ouch. Just couldn’t recover from 6 free damage to my board. The other loss was to a Druid who wrecked me with a Knife Juggler and lots of little summoned stuff. As I mentioned, I had no Evisc/SI7, just a backstab, and it never showed up.
Still and all, I’m thrilled with a five-win run. Maybe it’ll grow bigger! We’ll see after dinner.
I actually like watching Trump play, a lot more than I like playing the game. I find it really stressful. Playing with my Brother via Skype and drinking a lot is awesome though, as we are both F2P and haven’t spent money. Those games are a hoot.
