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

[Rynjin]

Yeah, unfortunately it seems like shelf life is limited unless you're willing to shell out for packs. My Big Green Pickle team seems effective enough to just steamroll the game, and I don't have any other good synergies (no Murlocs, I lack any beasts except Mukla and Blink Fox, so the Anacondra team I was thinking of doesn't quite work, I don't care about Alliance humans, no demons except Mannoroth, no dragons though I do have Voone, etc.) so I'm pretty much done playing it mid-Felwood for the most part, at least for doing more than maybe a Bounty a day if that.

[Amechra]

I guess I got lucky when I started — I can build Orcs (because Rokara is kinda silly), Nature, and Murlocs (I opened Old Murkeye and then lucked into being able to craft Morgl), with the start of an Arcane team. Then again, I've been approaching this with the mindset that all of my builds are going to be imperfect (because I'm sure as sugar not going to give Blizzard my money), so if I can get any synergy going I'm happy.

So far, I appreciate that it isn't anywhere near as random as Hearthstone tends to be, but I wish that they hadn't made upgrading your team Gacha nonsense. I also wish that there were some way to make sure that the weenie you took along to get some levels isn't given Treasures, but that's a relatively minor complaint.

(Does anyone know about any "party composition" games like Mercenaries that don't have microtransactions?)

[Rodin]

(Does anyone know about any "party composition" games like Mercenaries that don't have microtransactions?)

Darkest Dungeon is the one that immediately springs to mind. Tons of synergies between the various heroes along with solid positional based combat. And tons of mods that add additional characters for even more options.


On the Gacha side of things, as I understand it things aren't quite as bad as all that. Winning a bounty gives guaranteed coins for the mercs in your party plus another, and the "another" is one of three listed on the treasure chest at the start. In theory if you have three mercs you want to level up you can guarantee getting coins that matter to you by grinding the dungeon that gives that set of three coins. And of course, the Mysterious Stranger will always give a task for a member of your party, and you can pick who needs it most out of the random choice of three of them.

It's not brain taxing stuff, but I'm finding it a good timekiller at work where I can play between calls and put it down at a moment's notice.

My biggest complaint really is that there aren't enough Mercs for some of the synergies. Demons have some options but can't fill an entire team. Murlocs have exactly 3 of them, meaning your team breaks the instant one drops. There are a ton of Holy champions, but getting together Frost or Fel synergies is pretty rough. And some synergies are too focused in one champion type - there aren't any Arcane warriors that I've seen, for example. That leaves you hard pressed to put together an Arcane team that can tank a hit.

[Amechra]

I meant to say "other than Darkest Dungeon", because it's one of my favorite games — I hardly need a recommendation there! :p

That being said, I've noticed that Rokara feels really good because she only really needs one other Orc to fire up her synergies, and there are a lot of champions of all three types that like attacking things. I can't think of any other champions I've seen so far that are that broad.

[The Glyphstone]

Are the Legendary grade mercs really that much better than others? I haven't seen any yet so I can't judge.

[Rodin]

Are the Legendary grade mercs really that much better than others? I haven't seen any yet so I can't judge.

Depends on the Legendary from what I've seen so far. In my humans comp the key players are Varian, Tirion, and Cornelius - none of whom are Legendary. Antonidas is handy for his high early damage against low health minions, but once the rest of the comp starts stacking bonuses his pre-set damage falls off quickly in comparison. Uther has similar issues. Jaraxxus on the other hand is an absolute beast, able to dish out epic amounts of damage if you can get some Demon summoning going on. Despite that, the most key Demon is probably Mannoroth, since he gives a big health bonus every time he attacks.

I'm sure there probably is a power gap when you do the math, but I haven't had too many issues playing comps that don't utilize Legendaries.

[Rynjin]

Thrall seems good, but he's definitely 3rd strongest of my 4 Orcs (behind Samuro and Grommash, ahead of Rokara, though I did just now unlock and upgrade her Orc synergy finisher move).

...Wait I have 5 Orcs. Saurfang is so useless I forgot about him.

[Zevox]

Are the Legendary grade mercs really that much better than others? I haven't seen any yet so I can't judge.

Well, the only legendary I have is Ragnaros, who doesn't exactly blow me away. His first ability is speed 5 and deals low damage but deals twice as much (base) damage if an ally used a fire attack before he attacked. And the only way I know of to trigger that, after searching online for listings of options, is Antonidas' Fireball ability, which is speed 4. Every other fire ability in the game is slower than that. Well, except for one character's Flame Trap, which is speed 2, but that doesn't trigger unless he's attacked, so I don't know if it would count.

His other abilities are better, but have their own problems - mostly being very slow at speed 10 and 8. They do high damage, but one shoots a random target, and the other has a cooldown of 2. So yeah, he's not the most reliable beatstick out there. And for some reason even though he's categorized as a Protector, he plays like a Caster, doing all indirect damage and doing nothing to protect the rest of the team.

[Seerow]

Well, the only legendary I have is Ragnaros, who doesn't exactly blow me away. His first ability is speed 5 and deals low damage but deals twice as much (base) damage if an ally used a fire attack before he attacked. And the only way I know of to trigger that, after searching online for listings of options, is Antonidas' Fireball ability, which is speed 4. Every other fire ability in the game is slower than that. Well, except for one character's Flame Trap, which is speed 2, but that doesn't trigger unless he's attacked, so I don't know if it would count.

His other abilities are better, but have their own problems - mostly being very slow at speed 10 and 8. They do high damage, but one shoots a random target, and the other has a cooldown of 2. So yeah, he's not the most reliable beatstick out there. And for some reason even though he's categorized as a Protector, he plays like a Caster, doing all indirect damage and doing nothing to protect the rest of the team.

For what it's worth Rag is my favorite for speed clearing low level bounties.

Like when I'm farming coins, the first 2-3 missions I can just set him, cast his second ability (the one that is deal 20 damage to a random enemy, do it again if it kills them) and kill the whole board. Mid missions I may need to have faster units soften up 1-2 targets.


But I don't think he has much use in PVP or harder missions. The core fire synergy as far as I know is Diablo, Cairne, Geddon. By that point Rag's biggest thing going for him is his +3 fire damage equipment, which means he takes up a slot to deal okay but slow damage, while giving the whole team a pretty solid buff.

[Resileaf]

Well, the only legendary I have is Ragnaros, who doesn't exactly blow me away. His first ability is speed 5 and deals low damage but deals twice as much (base) damage if an ally used a fire attack before he attacked. And the only way I know of to trigger that, after searching online for listings of options, is Antonidas' Fireball ability, which is speed 4. Every other fire ability in the game is slower than that. Well, except for one character's Flame Trap, which is speed 2, but that doesn't trigger unless he's attacked, so I don't know if it would count.

That's similar to the situation with Blink Fox, who has an arcane attack that has its damage doubled with an arcane attack used before it, but the only arcane attack that can reliably attack before it is Millhouse's AoE. But you basically have no reason to make that combo happen when Millhouse's single-target attack is stronger and makes future arcane attacks stronger.

Really, most combo attacks seem to be too speedy to reliably combo with other mercenaries and I can only assume that it is by design to prevent them from being the meta.

[Rodin]

For what it's worth Rag is my favorite for speed clearing low level bounties.

Like when I'm farming coins, the first 2-3 missions I can just set him, cast his second ability (the one that is deal 20 damage to a random enemy, do it again if it kills them) and kill the whole board. Mid missions I may need to have faster units soften up 1-2 targets.


But I don't think he has much use in PVP or harder missions. The core fire synergy as far as I know is Diablo, Cairne, Geddon. By that point Rag's biggest thing going for him is his +3 fire damage equipment, which means he takes up a slot to deal okay but slow damage, while giving the whole team a pretty solid buff.

Wait, how does Cairne synergize with fire? He doesn't have any Fire skills or ways to boost fire. Is it just making your guys go faster so Diablo procs his ability first? That combination is useful on its own, but doesn't have inherent Fire synergy. Geddon then doesn't combo well with Diablo - his abilities are the same speed, meaning you only have a 50% chance to proc Geddon's Fire Combo...and even then, you can't do it turn 1 since Diablo's fire skills both start on cooldown.

It seems to be like you'd be better off including Antonidas or Ragnaros, both of whom have guaranteed attacks that beat Geddon's combo.

[Rynjin]

If you queue one character's atracks first, they'll go faster in ties with their own party.

Combo abilities do mostly seem to suck though. Nature combo seems aight at least.

[Amechra]

If you queue one character's atracks first, they'll go faster in ties with their own party.

Combo abilities do mostly seem to suck though. Nature combo seems aight at least.

A big part of that is that Ruff's combo is actually two separate hits. That's actually a huge difference, since Ruff gets double the normal benefit from +Nature boosts.

[Amechra]

Is it just me, or is there a massive difficulty spike in the third area? I went from stomping on enemies to being gut-punched by anything and everything I ran into.

[Zevox]

Is it just me, or is there a massive difficulty spike in the third area? I went from stomping on enemies to being gut-punched by anything and everything I ran into.

Depends. Do you mean normal, or heroic?

For normal, eh, there's some, but mostly with the bosses, I felt. And even there it was only the final boss of the area that wound up requiring me to do multiple runs and choose my treasures around knowing how it worked to finally beat it - though I did have a couple of close calls along the way.

For heroic though, yeah, definitely. When I tried to do the first of the area 3 heroics, I found that enemies were all just straight-up stronger than level 30 mercenaries are, often with several additional points of attack, always with like +20 health. That level of unfairness makes me wonder whether I'll even bother with heroic for areas 3 and 4, honestly.

[Amechra]

Not on heroic, no.

Granted, I somehow managed to get through Felwood with a group that was 5+ levels below the expected level (it was actually pretty smooth sailing), so it was probably just me.

[Rodin]

Depends. Do you mean normal, or heroic?

For normal, eh, there's some, but mostly with the bosses, I felt. And even there it was only the final boss of the area that wound up requiring me to do multiple runs and choose my treasures around knowing how it worked to finally beat it - though I did have a couple of close calls along the way.

For heroic though, yeah, definitely. When I tried to do the first of the area 3 heroics, I found that enemies were all just straight-up stronger than level 30 mercenaries are, often with several additional points of attack, always with like +20 health. That level of unfairness makes me wonder whether I'll even bother with heroic for areas 3 and 4, honestly.

It's Heroic. That's always meant unfair battles that must be beaten by cheating right back at them. That was true for adventures, it was true for Dungeon Runs, and its true here. Some of the Heroic battles are almost certainly going to require building specific parties that aren't just generally good but specifically good at beating the tar out of that specific bounty. The battles may change each round but they're built off certain subgroups. I've noticed Winterspring tends to be very attack based, for example. Lots of "attacks at end of turn" effects that you can exploit by debuffing their attack and taunting up someone with very high attack. Etc.

I'm not trying to say that's a specific strategy for beating a Heroic, just making up an example. For the Heroics it may be that you need a particular Legendary to do the job. Again, not without precedent. The Adventures were designed so that people without a collection could be them on Normal, while challenging them on Heroic would need a very specific build that might include Legendaries.

I'm looking forward to trying to beat Heroic as the "end-game" for Mercanaries. I was very pleased when I finally beat the Heroic Dungeon Runs with every character, hopefully I'll be able to do the same here. Lots of grinding before I get to that point though.

[Zevox]

It's Heroic. That's always meant unfair battles that must be beaten by cheating right back at them. That was true for adventures, it was true for Dungeon Runs, and its true here. Some of the Heroic battles are almost certainly going to require building specific parties that aren't just generally good but specifically good at beating the tar out of that specific bounty. The battles may change each round but they're built off certain subgroups. I've noticed Winterspring tends to be very attack based, for example. Lots of "attacks at end of turn" effects that you can exploit by debuffing their attack and taunting up someone with very high attack. Etc.

I'm not trying to say that's a specific strategy for beating a Heroic, just making up an example. For the Heroics it may be that you need a particular Legendary to do the job. Again, not without precedent. The Adventures were designed so that people without a collection could be them on Normal, while challenging them on Heroic would need a very specific build that might include Legendaries.

I'm looking forward to trying to beat Heroic as the "end-game" for Mercanaries. I was very pleased when I finally beat the Heroic Dungeon Runs with every character, hopefully I'll be able to do the same here. Lots of grinding before I get to that point though.

Dungeon Run had a heroic mode? Do you mean later modes that were based off it? I don't remember the original having any such thing, but I stopped playing modes based on it rather quickly, so maybe I just didn't notice when they started doing that with those?

And anyway, I suppose that's true - but your last remark hits on why that may be a problem for me here. This mode is absurdly grindy, so if I need to build specific teams to take on heroic, I probably just won't do it because it would take forever. And well, I've only got two Blackrock Mountain normal mode missions left to beat, and I'm not interested in PvP for this mode at all, so... yeah, if Heroic areas 3 and 4 are really like that, this mode might be rapidly approaching its shelf life with me. Which is a pity, I am enjoying it as it stands, but oh well, I should know better than to expect another Battlegrounds at this point.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, looks like they nerfed the Mysterious Stranger into uselessness.

We are adjusting the appearance rate of Mysterious Stangers to be based on the relative level of the strongest Mercenary in your party compared to the suggested level of the Bounty. This move is to encourage people towards more engaging gameplay instead of repeatedly taking on low-level Heroic Bounties with highly over-leveled Parties.

[Amechra]

I mean... maybe you should just not have such a grind-y progression system, Blizzard? I know they're trying to pressure people into buying packs, but still.

I'm probably going to be dropping Mercenaries, honestly, for the following reasons:

• I'm getting bored with the handful of "competitive" synergies I have access to. It's fun to go off, sure, but it gets really repetitive when you have to do it 6-7 times per run. It doesn't help that, for example, Xyrella + Samuro is incredibly repetitive.
• I've hit the point where the minimum coin "cost" to unlock a new Mercenary is 300, meaning that I either have to grind pretty heavily to unlock someone new or buy some packs. And neither of those options is particularly appetizing.
• Even if I did cave and buy a bunch of packs, that's not a guarantee that I'll get anything fun out of them. It doesn't help that I got insanely lucky and pulled a Legendary at some point, so now packs aren't actually guaranteed to give me a new merc.
• When I do get a new merc... they're level 1. So that's more grinding to look forward to. Yay.

I think the game would be way less aggravating if you had some way to directly unlock mercenaries that wasn't "find a level that maybe gives you their coins and grind it over and over again".

[Zevox]

I mean... maybe you should just not have such a grind-y progression system, Blizzard? I know they're trying to pressure people into buying packs, but still.

Seems pretty obvious that's very intentional. Mercenaries basically seems to the Hearthstone devs deciding they want a mode that works like an exploitative mobile game - try to get people hooked with addicting gameplay, make the grind ridiculously slow, incentivize playing every day (note how many more quests you get per day in Mercenaries as opposed to the one per day for other modes), and try to make the cumulative psychological impact of all that sell your paid "get stuff faster" options.

Which, yeah, I decided years ago that whatever was good in mobile games of that sort was not worth putting up with all that BS, and I don't see why I should think differently of Mercenaries. Wrapped up the non-Heroic single player stuff yesterday, and with nothing left to do but grind or try to throw my guys at the wall that is Heroic for the third and fourth areas, I'm pretty much done I think. Back to occasionally playing Battlegrounds when I feel like it and otherwise ignoring Hearthstone for me.

[Grytorm]

Not coming back. But decided to take the existence of Diablo in battlegrounds to generate an odd list of dual class combinations

Warlock/Warrior. Diablo.
Warrior/Shaman. Relatively sane.
Shaman/Demon Hunter. Okay.
Demon Hunter/Paladin. I like the mixture but nothing specific comes to mind.
Paladin/Mage. Nothing too specific comes to mind for me but it has potential.
Mage/Hunter. Some sort of fireworks themed character? Circus animals?
Hunter/Priest. Tyrande?
Priest/Rogue. Steal all the things.
Rogue/Druid. Catform! Or whatever that is actually called.
Druid/Warlock. Makes me think of that Malfurion skin from Heroes of the Storm.

[The Glyphstone]

This little promotional video game out a few days ago, and its weirdly...I don't know what word fits here. Not heartwarming or amusing but something that's sort of orthogonal to both of them? You're never too old to learn something new.

[Spore]

The word you are looking for is humanizing. The video is making apparent that even the best in their respective niches are just humans in every other aspecr of their lives.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, that's a good word for it.

I do wonder how long it took Garry to figure out he wasn't actually playing an A.I., though. He had to have encountered Hearthstone's actual AI at some point, and Deep Blue it most certainly is not...

[Rynjin]

I need to watch that video at some point. Saw that interview a few weeks ago where he mentioned he was trying to hit Legend and I found it kinda funny.

[Rynjin]

This is by far the fastest TTHM (Time to Hate Meta) I've ever experienced in Hearthstone. Way too many OTK decks floating around.

[Resileaf]

I've actually decided to quit the game myself. Been playing since release, and just uninstalled it earlier this week.

[Rynjin]

I'm not to the point of quitting, but I stopped paying any money for the game over a year ago (...almost 2 years now I think) and nothing is changing my mind on that ATM, even if part of the reason I cut off buying stuff was moral reasons, and all of that had changed (which it hasn't).

[The Glyphstone]

I do quests and Mercenaries and that's it. 5 ranked matches per month for my card.