375 Gold
This is my highest Gold prize received, for posterity, posting it here!
Hearthstone Theorycraft
A blog about Hearthstone!
A blog about Hearthstone!
This is my highest Gold prize received, for posterity, posting it here!
I hate discussions about The Coin, I think it’s beatned to death, but I did make one post about it I want to preserve for my own writing samples.
From this Reddit thread.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/9948104957
It’s good to know the devs have heard the complaints and are monitoring the situation, but a bird’s eye view of the entire format via win percentages isn’t going to do the specific problem any justice.
It’s a little shortsighted to assume all Masters Rogue decks are optimized to abuse the Coin, but I assume that the ones that do have a much bigger advantage than 1-2%.
How many of these decks have 2 Defias Ringleader, 2 Twilight Drake and other powerful cards with strong Coin interaction? How often are they aggressively mulliganing to cards that have this interaction, especially after seeing they have ‘lost’ the flip to go first?
My constructed rank is GM but I haven’t even crafted a card yet, so I am missing most of these cards that would make the optimal Rogue deck to abuse The Coin. Many people’s decks are suboptimal right now.
I’m also concerned with how much having The Coin in it’s current state affects FUTURE card design. I think cards that get more powerful when casting spells or playing cards are a great addition to the game, but if you have to balance them with The Coin in mind, it will restrict future design possibilities based on power level.
I still think The Coin generates too much of an advantage with the following cards:
-Major offenders: Defias Ringleader, Twilight Drake, Gadgetzhan Auctioneer, Questing Adventurer
-Minor offenders: Mana Addict, Mana Wyrm, Wild Pyromancer, Violet Teacher.
If mana and tempo is the problem, why is a card that helps alleviate the problem also giving mana/tempo/card/spell interactions as well?
My post from this Reddit thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1mkafl/lets_talk_balance/
1) Silence is not overpowered. It is an effective answer to many threats, but not all of them and not usually even able to generate card advantage. If your opponent drops a 9/9 Twilight drake on turn 4 and you don’t have a silence in your hand, you’re going to have a bad time. If cards like Twilight Drake are going to remain in the game, a cheap answer at least needs to be a possibility for deck construction. Deckbuilders still have to respect dangerous threats like this when deckbuilding, and the people who don’t run that risk. This is classic Threat/Answer risk/reward analysis.
2) Everyone seems to agree the Coin is too powerful. We’ll have to see if Blizzard feels it is appropriate for balancing going second or not in it’s current incarnation.
3) The Priest Hero Ability is actually very good in a properly constructed deck where you have strong minions worth healing. Consider that the Priest ability does everything the Warrior’s ability does (2 Mana for 2 life) but can also generate value with creatures.
If you are comparing it to other classes’ Hero Ability on turn 2 and 3, of course it looks weak. Mages, Hunters and Druids get to deal damage. Shaman and Paladins start building their board. Rogue sets up a weapon and start dealing some damage. Warriors effectively heal 2 life. Warlocks draw a card! Every class has something to do turn 2 except Priest. But a turn 2 Hero ability isn’t exactly the most gamebreaking opening for any deck so I don’t think this is where the game is won or lost. The most effective turn 2 plays for any deck are generally aggressive creatures, Secrets or replacement cards (Novice Engineer or Loot Hoarder) as they impact the board.
Additionally, the Priest Hero Ability completely trumps Hunter, Druid, Rogue and Mage pure damage race. These class decks are often built with the idea they are going to burn you out to win the game. If you can keep the board clear and Mind Control any serious threats, they’ll have a hard time closing out the game.
I think the problem is the Priest has a hard time surviving the midgame to reach a stale board state where the Hero Ability can take over. What might be lackluster is the Priest class cards in general (which hurts Priest Arenas mostly).
I feel the Priest needs more solid, consistent spells or minions that don’t need other cards to be great. It really wants something like a Priest-only 3cc 2/4 like Dalaran Mage or the Mage’s 4cc 3/6 Water Elemental. I guess it can use Neutral cards in constructed but in Arena you often get stuck with cards that are simply situational, which means only good sometimes. I repeat these aren’t bad, just situationally good.
Inner Fire, Mind Vision, Divine Spirit, Mind Blast, Power Word Shield, Silence, Lightspawn, Circle of Healing, Greater Heal, Mass Dispel,
We can all think of ways where each of these cards is amazing, but individually they are pretty weak compared to other classes. Look at Druids for an extreme example of powerful class cards. Comes into play abilities, fat Taunts, mass removal, card drawing, AoE removal.
My post from this reddit thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1mrps4/new_to_tcgs_and_have_some_questions_on_some/
‘Tempo’ is time. Tempo decks prioritizes making efficient use of your mana while forcing your opponent to make inefficient use of theirs. It wins by playing efficient threats, building your board, denying their board and winning in a short amount of time.
It differs from Control because while it aims to control the board, it does not necessarily need to gain card advantage while doing so.
It differs from Aggro because it doesn’t play fragile, aggressive creatures or overcommit too many creatures to the board and risk getting swept.
Good Tempo cards are cards that efficient at what they do for the mana cost. To find efficient cards, compare them to others at the same or similar costs.
Sap is a perfect example. It costs 2 and you are likely going to use it on something that costs much more. We have all lost to a Rogue player with a few creatures on the board and we played a big, fat Lord of the Arena to stop the bleeding, only to have it Sapped back to our hand while they deal more damage in the process.
Note: Sap isn’t card advantage. It’s actually card disadvantage as it doesn’t even trade with anything on it’s own. It buys TIME.
One of the reasons Twilight Drake is one of the best cards in the game is because it is insanely efficient. If you are on the play and only use your hero Power until turn 4 and play it, it is a 7/7 for 4. If you are on the draw, it is a 9/9 (the to The Coin).
After two weeks of beta, my win percentage is 85%. I feel that I still miss a lot of opportunities to win games and have had some luck in winning many games as well, so it’s hard to say. I think I can reach 90%.
Here’s my current spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asz3d5Y1s-g6dHAyNlpDTmFJRjBHdWppVWZOQUxRdHc#gid=0
Card advantage is the determining factor for success in Hearthstone. To generate card advantage, you have to know how long you can hold onto a particular card to get the greatest value out of it. This sounds simple, but most streamers I have watched have very little true understanding about how to create value.
On my next streams, I am going to focus a bit more on explaining this during the game as it is a complicated discussion, but here is the concept boiled down to it’s purest form:
Never play a card just because you have enough mana.
I got into the beta last week during the first Facebook promotion. I decided to play the “refresh game” leading into the final minutes of Blizzard’s first announcement, and I sent them a very quick message after skimming their post asking us to message them. I got lucky, I got in.
I started streaming some games last night to have them for learning and comparison purposes.
They can be found here:
http://www.twitch.tv/scrapstation/profile/pastBroadcasts
I have a long weekend coming up but I plan to clean up my stream a bit more, add a better overlay and name and manage my Twtch.tv clips a bit better.
Crafting in Hearthstone allows players to disenchant the cards they do not want into Arcane Dust. The dust can then be used to craft new cards.
Common (White) Cards – Disenchant for 5 Arcane Dust / Craft a Common card for 40 Arcane Dust
Rare (Blue) Cards – Disenchant for 20 Arcane Dust / Craft a Rare card for 100 Arcane Dust
Epic (Purple) Cards – Disenchant for 100 Arcane Dust / Craft an Epic card for 400 Arcane Dust
Legendary (Orange) Cards – Disenchant for 400 Arcane Dust / Craft a Legendary card for 1600 Arcane Dust Common Golden Cards – Disenchant for 50 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Common card for 400 Arcane Dust Rare Golden Cards – Disenchant for 100 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Rare card for 800 Arcane Dust Epic Golden Cards – Disenchant for 400 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Epic card for 1600 Arcane Dust Legendary Golden Cards – Disenchant for 1600 Arcane Dust / Craft a Legendary Golden card for 3200 Arcane DustPriest - Hero ability
One way to create synergy with the priest is to ensure every card you have has at least 3 toughness. This allows you to be able to use your heal effectively on all your minions when they take a few hits.
This is important because it combos nicely with Northshire Cleric, which should be a staple card in every priest deck:
It can generate card advantage simply by having creatures that would normally trade end up surviving.
The Priest’s starting Hero Power is Lesser Heal:
This means that you’ll want to build the deck so it has a strong number of early 1, 2 and 3 casting cost drops so you can start building value by attacking their early drops and healing them.
The healing Priest deck should focus on taking control of the board early and to force your opponent to commit larger creatures or multiple buffs to a single creature that you can deal with easily with large, single spells.
Acolyte of Pain is a great card in this deck as it fits the theme of an early, healable drop that buys you time to the midgame and digs through your deck.
Avoid x/1 and x/2 creatures - if you are looking for taunt or silence, try to find those on larger creatures in the 3-5 cost range.
Priest spells
Holy nova is one of the most important spells because Priest does not have a lot of sweepers. It also combos well with the Northshire Cleric.
Because this build involves having a lot of early drops, you will want to make sure your endgame is robust. Other than some solid fat taunts (Senjin Shieldmate [3/5 Taunt] is strong), you also need to have some topend bombs.
I recommend Mind control as it has no easy counter from most opponents and it effectively serves as removal for their bombs as well as a bomb for you. It’s a big card that every opposing deck should fear.
Typically only Mages and Hunters might not be playing large endgame fatties so you might end up taking a 5/5 or so. It is still going to be at least a 2 for 1 (his fatty and his answer to it, for your 1x Mind Control).
To make effective use of each classes hero ability and class-specific cards, every card in the deck should compliment the overall strategy. This might sound obvious but having watched about 15 hours of HS so far, lots of players will seeming pick cards at random because ‘they like them’ rather than fit a strategy.
If you want to win or be able to come back from a losing position, you need synergy.