Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

[zlefin]

Yeah, the power creep in general is annoying, but that windfury card should never have been made. Windfury is a potent ability; surprise windfury on two creatures has far too much damage potential, especially at such an affordable cost which lets it work with other creature pump effects. The synergy with conviction really brings it up to stupidly good. Imagine how bad it would be if there were still neutral charge minions.

[The Glyphstone]

So the preview spotlight for the new upcoming Mercenary Mode came out today. Does anyone feel any interest in it?

[Rynjin]

I lost interest when I read you needed to pay like $50 for it.

On the flipside, enjoying Standard ATM. Quest Facelock is hella fun.

[The Glyphstone]

Eh? I didn't see anything about needing to pay for it, any more than you pay for Battlegrounds? Buying a pre-order pack gets you a shiny portrait though.

[Rynjin]

"Mercenaries packs" tells me you still need to build a collection for Mercenaries, and it's even more money-grubby than Duels, which at least let players who kept their Wild collection participate.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm still not sure where you are getting a massive entry price tag from? Everyone gets a set of starter mercs free, and you unlock new mercs/gear/coins from packs that you earn by doing bounty quests. I suppose you could whale your way to a full collection, but its hardly required unless you only care about the PvP mode.

Its Slay The Spire in Hearthstone with persistent upgrades over time. I'm wondering if you've seen info I haven't, or if I'm the one with info you lack...

[Rynjin]

It's more that I refuse to spend money on Blizzard products for the foreseeable future, and also have no interest in trying to build a new collection for a game mode that might be completely abandoned like Duels was from scratch as a F2P player. I have enough Dust and cards to play every Standard deck I want to play until the end of time, in part due to past purchases, but I don't see myself ever getting to that point with Mercenaries.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, I don't plan to spend a penny on it, but it still looks like Team 5 has brought something genuinely fresh to HS. Battlegrounds was entertaining but you can only do so many auto-battles before they become the same, and Duels was just PvP Dungeon Runs where deckbuilding strategy was dwarfed by scoring an OP treasure. I'll have to play it to see if I like it but I'll at least give it a try.

[Rodin]

Well, I don't plan to spend a penny on it, but it still looks like Team 5 has brought something genuinely fresh to HS. Battlegrounds was entertaining but you can only do so many auto-battles before they become the same, and Duels was just PvP Dungeon Runs where deckbuilding strategy was dwarfed by scoring an OP treasure. I'll have to play it to see if I like it but I'll at least give it a try.

This.

Dungeon Run was a fun idea but was too locked into "Standard Hearthstone". It was a freebie side mode so they didn't put the effort into expanding it out to being an entirely separate game.

Duels failed due to fundamental flaws of trying to introduce PvP to a Roguelike format that is defined by how lucky you are. Making the matchmaking rank-based rather than how you were doing on that particular run was also a spectacularly bad idea.

Mercenaries appears to be a fully separate game clad in a Hearthstone skin. My spending on regular Hearthstone has been steadily dropping as I lose interest in Standard. If they've done right by this game mode and made it a full game (rather than a gimmicky game mode) they may get some money out of me. I doubt I'll pre-order though.

[Zevox]

So the preview spotlight for the new upcoming Mercenary Mode came out today. Does anyone feel any interest in it?

Kinda skimming over the announcement for it, not really. The fact that there's a collecting aspect to it immediately dampens any interest I could've had, as I no longer have any patience for the whole "free-to-play" model of making you either play a whole lot or pay regularly to maintain such a collection in order to play.

If I play any more Hearthstone, it'll be Battlegrounds only, unless they come out with another mode that doesn't use that kind of model. And perhaps not even then, I haven't felt any desire to even touch Battlegrounds in months.

[zlefin]

You should try a bit of battlegrounds. They did a major rework, and alot of the cards are different; many of the old ones no longer there, with plenty of all new ones to enjoy.

It's different enough to at least be interesting for awhile.

[Rynjin]

I've been having fun with it, yeah. Interesting addition of "value builds" to the meta.

[Rodin]

I wish they would do a balance patch for it though. There are a few builds (Demons, Beasts, early high-roll Elementals) that just stomp the hell out of everything. The only reason people don't die in droves in the early game is because of the damage cap, and it can be pretty disheartening to run into an opponent with +40/+40 on all their units when you haven't even hit Tavern 6 yet. Or when every single player in the top 4 is going for the same archetype because going for a less valuable archetype isn't even worth bothering with compared to the guy with the 4th worst Beast build.

[Gandariel]

Hi, haven't posted in a while.

Pretty much never play regular Hearthstone any more, but I see the new card reveals. How is the new Varian not op? I guess people on Reddit complain that games end on turn 5-6, so that's certainly a way :P


Play mostly Battlegrounds, which is always good. Except beasts and demons are just way too OP and feel pretty unfair. Demons I guess are easier to counter, because they are just large dudes; poison and d shield can manage to go 2 for 1.

But beasts are just too good, and once you've assembled the combo it's pretty impossible to stop.
It's also pretty relevant that all of the combo is tier 2-3 minions + Rivendare, so it comes online super quickly and you can start early refreshing for triples. (Yeah reanimating cobra and hydra are tier 4, but they're not essential).

Other lategame comps need way more tier 5s and 6s to have comparable scaling.

And there's no real way to "counter" it either; technically there's Zapp Slywick, but it's a tier 6 minion that is otherwise garbage, and there's ways to buff Rivendare out of its range (notably, Quilboars).

Most people have to just try with a big cleave or a mega-windfury to hopefully hit pack rat and Rivendare.


How to nerf beasts... I'd personally move the macaw and reanimating cobra up 1 or 2 tiers, and remove pack rat altogether.

For Demons, the big demon strategy is too much better than the soul jugglers. Maybe there could be a tier 6 soul jugglers upgrade?
As for nerfs to demons overall, well it's obviously the tier 3 guy that gives you 2-3 cards per turn. That needs to be nerfed massively. Either a bump to tier 5, or make it Avenge 5.

It's so strong that I pick it with Beasts or mechs just to generate gold (1 per card, occasionally 3 with that one tier 3 guy)

[Rynjin]

To illustrate how silly Beasts can get, I had a golden Macaw that frogged itself so many times by the end of the round that it was a 5416/544.

...I still took 2nd place to Demons because I never found my third Rivendare.

[Hamste]

I do like how crazy these things can get now a days when beasts aren't killing everything. I wish I had screenshot it but just has a gallywix run with 3 gold amalgadons all with divine shield and poison and 2 with reborn, the murloc that gives poisonous, a maexna with reborn, brann and then a throw away murloc everything with about 60 health and the only thing not taunted the throw away and the murloc poisoner. The poor enemies would have had to essentially get through three waves of poisonous to win.

Absolutely max there was effectively 12 poisonous hits there.

[Rodin]

It's fun when you get it and less fun when your opponents do. The difference between a high roll build and a normal build is so high right now that it feels like its not worth bothering a lot of the time. I would love to see a big round of nerfs along with some buffs for the crappy builds (like Pirates) and the older midrange builds to make it so you don't need multiple 80/80 champions by turn 10 to avoid getting facerolled.

[The Glyphstone]

So Mercenaries is out, and as a purely PVE experience I'm not displeased. Grinding out coins for my favorite mercs is going to take a long time, but it does appear that leveling can be done easy by carrying new mercs on your bench. I might lose interest once the novelty wears off, but its new and shiny and the tactical interaction between speed and abilities is just complex enough to not frustrate or bore me.

[Rynjin]

What I've learned so far from Mercenaries is that Orcs Together Strong.

[Rodin]

What I've learned so far from Mercenaries is that Orcs Together Strong.

My A team is Alliance Humans. The treasures giving big stat buffs means I can just bulldoze most groups.

I do wish that the progression was a bit less linear. You need to replay the completed ones with your weaker heroes if you want to get them leveled up properly. I suppose you could take on a high level dungeon with a couple of weak heroes just sat gaining experience, but I'd have preferred if there was a variety of low level dungeons that you could send weak heroes into. For example, Kurtrus gets bonuses when fighting against Demons when Demons don't start showing up in numbers until Felwood at level 20.

[Rynjin]

My A team is Alliance Humans. The treasures giving big stat buffs means I can just bulldoze most groups.

Same with Orcs. I can get stuff like +5/+10 to all Horde units on Thrall, and if I get another similar stat boost on Grommash it's basically GG. Or if Grommash and/or Samuro get +stats and Windfury.

Rokara is there as a backup unit to peg people for 21 ranged damage sometimes.

Guff and Bru'Kan are there as Mages but they rarely see play.

[Zevox]

I gave Mercenaries a try this weekend. For a single-player mode, it's not bad, though I can only imagine that for multiplayer people will just find one team that performs best consistently, and everyone will play it. With relatively few moving parts in battle and (thankfully) little RNG, it seems like the kind of mode that can be "solved," if you will. Plus, well, with how the token system for powering up abilities and equipment seems designed, people who throw money at the mode will probably have a huge edge for a long time in terms of just raw power of their team. So I haven't even bothered building the structure that lets you fight other players.

I just sort of decided on a first team to bring up from what seemed like the best characters I unlocked early on, ending up picking two of each type:
- Protectors: Cariel Roam, Ragnaros.
- Fighters: Blademaster Samuro, Rokarra.
- Casters: Xyrella, Tamsin Roam.

Xyrella and Samuro are a crazy potent duo. Xyrella's first attack is fast enough to set up Samuro's multi-attack, and it reduces the enemy's attack score, which keeps him from committing suicide due to attacking so much. Plus I've picked up his equipment item that buffs his attack every time he swings, so he gets out of control fast. Best third with them typically seems to be either Cariel (to keep the other two alive via taunt and healing support) or Rokarra (to pass even more buffs to Samuro so he gets even crazier, faster).

Tamsin's just kind of a solid caster - good damage on her first ability, and spawning taunt minions on her second. Her third seems like crap, though; I never use it, and it doesn't even look like it's worth upgrading.

Ragnaros is probably the least synergistic with the rest of the team, but I was hoping I'd build him up now and later find some other characters that do fire damage to synergize with him. So far, no dice there; but at least his second and third abilities hit hard, even if they're slow as molasses. And one of his treasure options is a pretty nuts speed 3 triple-shot move with only 1 cooldown, so that's very effective when I find it.

Managed to get that team up to level 30 yesterday, which it appears is the cap. So I guess from here all powering up comes from gaining tokens to level up their abilities... which looks likely to be an extremely slow process, given how random gaining tokens is. So we'll see how much longer I have a stomach that.

[Rodin]

Managed to get that team up to level 30 yesterday, which it appears is the cap. So I guess from here all powering up comes from gaining tokens to level up their abilities... which looks likely to be an extremely slow process, given how random gaining tokens is. So we'll see how much longer I have a stomach that.

The secret to grinding tokens is to always go for the Mysterious Stranger event. It immediately gives you a Task for one of the mercaneries in your current party, and the later tasks give you a ton of guaranteed coins for them.

The other thing I've noticed is that there are harsh diminishing returns on the ability levels. You'll start out getting +4 damage, maybe extra speed, etc. By about rank 4 or so you're getting only +1 damage. For example, Antonidas's Fireball ability:

Fireball Tier One: Deal four damage
Fireball Tier Two: Deal seven damage
Fireball Tier Three: Deal 10 damage
Fireball Tier Four: Deal 11 damage
Fireball Tier Five: Deal 12 damage

That 2 damage is unlikely to matter most of the time, so getting level 3 on all your abilities should be high priority. Level 1 only costs 50 coins per, which makes it even easier.

Equipment seems to be similar. You get one pretty decent boost from unlocking the equipment, which is done through tasks, leveling, and achievements rather than coins. Then the upgrades to the equipment are a point here, a point there, etc. It might make a difference, but generally speaking by the time you're that high level the health pools are high enough that it will only come into play at specific break points.

[Zevox]

The secret to grinding tokens is to always go for the Mysterious Stranger event. It immediately gives you a Task for one of the mercaneries in your current party, and the later tasks give you a ton of guaranteed coins for them.

I've been doing that, actually, but those mystery events usually turn out to be something else - feels like the common ones are the worthless ones like the bomb and the "sabotage" event.

The other thing I've noticed is that there are harsh diminishing returns on the ability levels. You'll start out getting +4 damage, maybe extra speed, etc. By about rank 4 or so you're getting only +1 damage. For example, Antonidas's Fireball ability:

Fireball Tier One: Deal four damage
Fireball Tier Two: Deal seven damage
Fireball Tier Three: Deal 10 damage
Fireball Tier Four: Deal 11 damage
Fireball Tier Five: Deal 12 damage

That 2 damage is unlikely to matter most of the time, so getting level 3 on all your abilities should be high priority. Level 1 only costs 50 coins per, which makes it even easier.

Interesting. I've only gotten a couple of abilities to rank three so far, so I wasn't aware. (I did notice that rank four only gave Tamsin +1 damage to her main attack, but that's the only one I've seen like that so far. Cariel's taunt is my other rank 3, and rank 4 gives it an extra turn of duration, which is much more appealing than +1 damage on an already 11 damage attack.) That does make the higher tiers seem much less essential - though even getting to tier 3 is taking a long while.

Equipment seems to be similar. You get one pretty decent boost from unlocking the equipment, which is done through tasks, leveling, and achievements rather than coins. Then the upgrades to the equipment are a point here, a point there, etc. It might make a difference, but generally speaking by the time you're that high level the health pools are high enough that it will only come into play at specific break points.

Equipment will depend on the item, I think. Samuro's sword gives him additional stats each time he swings, so every point on that is pretty impactful, for instance. Something like the equipment pieces I've seen a couple of characters get that give them a small health boost, though? Yeah, probably not as good a use of your coins.

[The Glyphstone]

I haven't gotten any legendaries myself yet. My leading team is Cariel and Cornelius as red, Trion and Tyrande as green, then Millhouse and Xyrella as blue. Millhouse and Tyrande make for a very solid powerhouse pair stacking Arcane damage.

[Amechra]

Is it worth reinstalling Hearthstone for Mercenaries? I always did prefer Hearthstone's PvE modes...

[The Glyphstone]

If you weren't playing anyways, at the very least having to start a fresh 'collection' costs you nothing in terms of lost value. I'd say reinstall and give it a try, because it's free to play unless you whale out for the PvP mode.

[Seerow]

The trick to grinding is to play like you're in Diablo.

Basically find an efficient loop, and grind it endlessly. Specifically the go-to loop right now is Heroic Air Elemental (the level 8 heroic barrens adventure).

It's a run with 5 nodes total that is guaranteed to spawn one of the portals. You hit it after 1-2 battles normally. If you get stranger, go ahead. If not, abandon run and try again. During those combats, do your best to complete the challenges for your mercs. If you get to the point where you have 3 mercs back at camp and haven't completed any yet, swap to a longer course for extra exp/rewards while you grind out the challenge. After the challenge is done, go back to grinding mysterious stranger.

This is probably the most efficient thing to do until your whole core team has all 3 equipments unlocked. But I hear that even past that, higher challenges (in the 13-15 range) give even more coins, and even pack rewards, so it may end up being the most efficient thing to just grind that endlessly.

The other place I expect grinding to kick in is for unlocking heroes. Since each loop gives coin rewards for a different mercenary, you can start grinding out that specific level to get coins for the merc you want. So if you want to unlock Diablo, you go to Blackrock Mountain and grind the Emperor Thaurissan loop until you get enough coins to unlock him, at which point you go back to the low level loop and grind that to get his coins farmed from challenges.

[Zevox]

The trick to grinding is to play like you're in Diablo.

Note to self: never play Diablo. Because what you described sounds like a very boring way to play a game to me.

Which I expected; hence my "we'll see how much longer I have a stomach for that" remark about gaining coins earlier.

[Resileaf]

I'll admit that, mercenary mode has been pretty fun, but I imagine it's been most fun because I've been saving gold for a long time and was able to buy 30 packs right out the gate and that gave me a lot of different combos to try out.

Orc parties work relatively well, I've found. Demons are fun as well. Tried a beast party, but I'm missing Mukla to get a good protector. Some tribes could use additional mercs to synergize more easily, like murlocs (only 3) or arcane users (also 3).

I'm hoping to find out where you can farm Varian tokens soon, he seems to be vital for human parties, who seem like they could be unkillable when synergized well.