Is there a reason to be worried about the difficulty already? I would assume the first wing is the easiest, and they get harder as you go.
slantz
1624
That isn’t at all my assumption. I assume they are all similar difficulty levels.
Regardless, on Heroic, they have scary messages warning you about the difficulty. Which may be true for newer players with small card pools, but seemingly not for more advanced players.
It seems like they spent a lot of time on cosmetics: backgrounds, music, really fancy menus, lots of ambient animations, etc. Yet even just having some ‘trash mob’ battles between bosses would have given it a lot more longevity. Quantity of game design (various theme decks, for example) is a cheap way to fill content. Instead, they chose to provide very little actual gameplay content and just tons of ambiance around the gameplay.
From the pre-release statements I saw, it seemed they were making quite a big deal out of the difficulty, so it will be disappointing if they’re all on the easy side.
That being said, I haven’t had a chance to play it so I’ll have to see for myself how it feels. I don’t know that I trust you to judge the difficulty :)
Difficulty can vary from person to person. I got to play Anub’rikahn once on heroic and he trashed me. Normal mode took me too tries for him, but I beat the other two in one go. I’m looking forward to the heroic challenge.
I beat the first boss and I hardly ever play, do not know/remember what all the types are (like deathrattle etc). I played with the only deck I own that has a couple of extra cards so maybe that helped. I look forward to seeing how I do with my others (that are basically the starter decks).
One thing: It feels like the game plays a lot SLOWER - I felt like I was playing an actual person with the amount of time the AI would take to move etc. Anyone else notice that?
I have to say it is a very enjoyable game especially if one does not play it all the time.
It’s lagging due to server load. On EU servers we can’t even log in… :(
Quaro
1629
Yeah it’s super laggy at the moment, that AI lag is not normal.
It seems like they could have come up with a lot more interesting single player stuff given the time and resources. Single Player doesn’t have to be balanced, just have a bunch of wacky and weird challenges, restrictions, puzzles, whatever. I feel I’ll be paying 7 dollars for 4 or 5 cards now.
Spect
1630
Same for me. Heroic Anub kicked my ass. His heroic power is to summon a 4/4 for 2 mana. That’s insane! And he has 45 HP.
I’m guessing we’ll start seeing net decks soon for what people are using to beat the heroics.
I’d recommend a Mage deck with as much freezing as you can find. Ideally you keep the 4/4s frozen solid, until you melt them all with a Flamestrike.
Kadath
1632
I beat it with Josh Augustine’s Happy Hearthstone free Druid deck on my first attempt.
Funnily enough he just told me he’s 0-5 for beating Anub himself!
Squee
1633
Similar to what Zero suggested, I cakewalked all the normals (And took a few runs to Anub beat heroic) using a mage freeze/burn deck. Card draw out the ass, direct damage, minimal minions, double ice block/frost nova/cone of cold/blizzard. For the cultist lady just play an aggro deck. Her hero power doesn’t do her much good if you clear your hand out. Then back to mage freeze/burn for the giant spider, editing the deck to remove all non-charge non-earthen ring farseer minions. Spider always uses web before acting, so you can rely on constantly bounced back earthen ring for healing and minions with charge for constant damage. I normally don’t run ice barrier but it’s useful in that fight.
Heroic Anub was the only one that took me a few tries, the other two heroics croaked the first time. Unfortunately I didn’t get any gold cards or goodies for beating all the heroics. Not sure if you don’t get the golds until you beat all the heroics in all the wings or what.
I think that the heroic victories will, in the end, earn you a card back.
slantz
1635
My “survival paladin” deck was undefeated against the normal bosses, and got the first Heroic boss on its first try. I’ll try to remember to post the deck list later in case anyone’s interested. It’s also the deck featured in the next Happy Hearthstone episode, if Josh would ever get around to posting it!
slantz
1636
You have to craft the gold versions.
Jab
1637
Does anyone have any links or suggestions for good deck building strategies? I keep trying to get into Hearthstone and I keep getting frustrated at it. I’ve tried building a deck with every class except for priest and rogue. So far my top three are paladin, shaman and druid.
Jab. A couple of easy approaches.
1.) Value. Just select common cards that are known to be good value. Cards like swamp ooze or yeti for example. There are lots of sites out there that list cards generally regarded as good value. Then pick a nice mana curve and go for it. Trump has just put out a video on this. His old ones are good as well.
2.) Build around a class. Class specific cards are usually very good and can often suggest an easy theme deck. For example warriors have a lot of nice cards that fit together very well. Pick the class cards you want first then build around them.
3.) Combo. Build around a very good combo theme. For example minions which give a benefit when taking damage. Well now you can fill your deck with minions that do this and also spells / minions that inflict damage on your own side. Win/win.
4.) Fun. My favored style Just imagine a wacky idea and implement it. For example I wanted a deck based entirely around secrets, I had a ton of fun with a mage deck I made around this theme. It won’t win any rankings any time soon but I had a blast and completed my daily mage quests with it. Thats good enough.
ANyway, hope that helps!
On pricing:
I agree it might be steep, but it works for me. I can’t justify paying for a random deck of cards myself (I already goy into magic when I was young, thanks) and I have been playing without expending anything. I see this content as Blizzard giving me an excuse to give them money fora game I like, in a way I feel comfortable with (paying for a known amount of content).
Jab
1640
Not really. Every deck I’ve built never works out. I’ve watched a few hours worth of Trump’s videos but nothing seems to be sticking. Even the few times that I do win, I don’t feel like I’m learning anything about whether or not my deck is good. I think I’m may just quit before I get anymore frustrated.
Squee
1641
I actually checked the crafting list for that and didn’t see them. Dunno if they’re not doing it yet or they weren’t showing up due to the servers getting pounded or what. Just checked now and they’re still not in there for me.
Jab, if you wanna pick my brain about Hearthstone cards you’re more than welcome to. I’m already on your Steam friends list (MHC name, king Rrat avatar). Haven’t laddered in a while and I’m not up to snuff on the current meta since I can barely bring myself to do my dailies any more, but I’ve made a whole hell of a lot of decks and got reasonably decent at it. If you don’t wanna pick my brain, best thing I can tell you is look up a good netdeck and instead of just playing it to win, consider WHY it wins. What cards work, what cards don’t, especially keep track of when a card feels like a liability when it’s in your hand, etc. Learning theory by picking apart an already successful deck is a bit easier than just reading it.
'course if you want you can just play netdecks entirely. Just depends on if you get enjoyment out of making decks or not. Some do, some don’t. I do to the point where I don’t really play arena simply because I like making stupid stuff in constructed more than drafting.
garin
1642
It’s working for me. Even the cards from later wings show up, although you can’t craft them without unlocking the normal version first.
