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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    GnomeWizardGuy

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Seerow View Post
    Embiggen Druid is definitely one of those coinflip decks. If they hit their curve perfectly they're unbeatable. The rest of the time it's pretty meh.

    Which makes it objectively balanced, but feels really bad any time you lose to it.
    It's worse because Strength in Numbers is such a variable card. If they pull Scalerider or Faerie Dragon or whatever, then you stand a chance. When they pull a buffed Winged Guardian, you might as well concede on the spot.

    It's not as feel-bad as Quest Rogue or the recent Deathrattle Rogue was, but it's pretty irritating.

  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Meanwhile I've been playing a Desert Obelisk Paladin I threw together on a whim and having fun with it because the current meta is good, but doesn't have a ton of decks I personally want to play (though I have fun playing AGAINST most matchups, which is a breath of fresh air).

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Update, I reached Rank 5. I feel contentment in my achievements.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    Update, I reached Rank 5. I feel contentment in my achievements.
    Congrats, you are demonstrably better than 94% of the Hearthstone community.

  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    Congrats, you are demonstrably better than 94% of the Hearthstone community.
    True story, one of the devs on twitter confirmed recently rank 3 and up is the top 1% of the community. Not sure exactly where rank 5 lands (since I am sure there are a lot of people who congregate at the rank floro and never push forward to 4), but probably significantly better than anyone would guess from looking at forums/streams.

    Which reminds me, I have not played ranked basically at all since DoD came out. Which is strange because I actually have DoD, I just have had no interest in playing. I've mostly been logging on to complete quests, then maybe a game of battlegrounds before swapping out to do something else.

    Hopefully whatever the devs have up their sleeves from this hearthstone summit is something amazing. Because my interest is lower than it has been in a long time, and I can't really say for sure why. There's nothing particularly bad about the meta, there's just no decks that are particularly grabbing me and making me want to play. It'll be the first time in a long time I did not make the rank 5 push for the free golden epic.
    If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?


  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Seerow View Post
    True story, one of the devs on twitter confirmed recently rank 3 and up is the top 1% of the community. Not sure exactly where rank 5 lands (since I am sure there are a lot of people who congregate at the rank floro and never push forward to 4), but probably significantly better than anyone would guess from looking at forums/streams.

    Which reminds me, I have not played ranked basically at all since DoD came out. Which is strange because I actually have DoD, I just have had no interest in playing. I've mostly been logging on to complete quests, then maybe a game of battlegrounds before swapping out to do something else.

    Hopefully whatever the devs have up their sleeves from this hearthstone summit is something amazing. Because my interest is lower than it has been in a long time, and I can't really say for sure why. There's nothing particularly bad about the meta, there's just no decks that are particularly grabbing me and making me want to play. It'll be the first time in a long time I did not make the rank 5 push for the free golden epic.
    Iksar (Dean Ayala) released ranked distributions for November: (with at least 1 game played) and all players above rank 25.

    Rank 25-15: 63% of players
    Rank 15-10: 19% of players
    Rank 10-5: 12% of players
    Rank 5-1: 6% of players
    Legend: 0.3% of players

    https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/1...626515457?s=20

    In his previous meta spotlight, he mentioned it was based on the top 1% of players, which he said were roughly rank 3 to legend.

  7. - Top - End - #97
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Kind of sad the forum was down when I finally got okay at Battlegrounds, went from 4k to 5k and found out that I only win with four commanders. I also only get 1st place with mech or demons, except one time as merfolk where I was playing Shudderwock and got lucky on adapting.

    Heroes I can win games with: Toki, Wartoggle, AFK, Manastorm.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Vibranium: If it was on the periodic table, its chemical symbol would be "Bs".

  8. - Top - End - #98
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    ElfRogueGirl

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

    My biggest flaw in battlegrounds is that I'm terrible at switching gears. If I'm on the demon tribe at the start of the game, I just never switch to another if it's not working, so if I don't get good draws, or if everyone jumped on demons before me, I'm likely to get wrecked sooner or later.
    Last edited by Resileaf; 2020-02-25 at 11:08 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #99
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Kind of sad the forum was down when I finally got okay at Battlegrounds, went from 4k to 5k and found out that I only win with four commanders. I also only get 1st place with mech or demons, except one time as merfolk where I was playing Shudderwock and got lucky on adapting.

    Heroes I can win games with: Toki, Wartoggle, AFK, Manastorm.
    By Win, do you mean get top 4? I find that commanders with good early game tend to do better in terms of easily hitting top 4.

    For instance, Tirion, unless you really low roll (or get D/Ced like one time, I was so tilted) is almost guaranteed top 4. You just grab neutrals, hit the hero power every turn and you'll out-stat most early to mid game. Yogg's early game is so good that you can tier up to 3 without taking much if any damage on Turn 7 and can look for win conditions without the pressure of low life totals.

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    By Win, do you mean get top 4? I find that commanders with good early game tend to do better in terms of easily hitting top 4.

    For instance, Tirion, unless you really low roll (or get D/Ced like one time, I was so tilted) is almost guaranteed top 4. You just grab neutrals, hit the hero power every turn and you'll out-stat most early to mid game. Yogg's early game is so good that you can tier up to 3 without taking much if any damage on Turn 7 and can look for win conditions without the pressure of low life totals.
    I mean 1st place. I've never really thought about early game rushing for top 4, I'm usually aiming for 1st by getting to late game early.

    I suppose that would be a better strategy for getting more points overall though.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Vibranium: If it was on the periodic table, its chemical symbol would be "Bs".

  11. - Top - End - #101
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Rank distribution numbers make me feel better about having such difficulty pushing above rank 7 even with meta decks.


    Also:

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Meanwhile I've been playing a Desert Obelisk Paladin I threw together on a whim and having fun with it because the current meta is good, but doesn't have a ton of decks I personally want to play (though I have fun playing AGAINST most matchups, which is a breath of fresh air).
    So I threw this deck together as a meme and it absolutely is, but I noticed I wasn't doing too badly with it overall (I think I have a precisely 50% win rate with it); I even managed to pull the combo off a few times and win with it, but usually the wins I got were just beating people down with Quest Hero Power value.

    But meme or no, it made me realize the Quest Paladin chassis is actually really solid right now with the new "quest lovers", particularly Sky Gen'ral Kragg (not sure if Licensed Adventurer is really worth it when I don't need coins for Desert Obelisk shenanigans). Currently tinkering with a Quest Mech Paladin variant that might be ACTUALLY good and not just a meme riding the coattails of an overall good deck shell.
    Last edited by Rynjin; 2020-02-25 at 10:13 PM.

  12. - Top - End - #102
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Battlegrounds is tilting me, I dropped a little bit below 8K. Not really sure what my issue is, maybe I'm overvaluing some card (like bomb) but yeah, not great at the moment.

    On the plus side, I had a "Play 3 Hunter games" quest and decided to craft the Aggro Dragon hunter I've seen on stream/played against. I was halfway in Rank 2 and then accidentally won 8 straight games to hit Legend. First few games I had Dragonbane on 4, which is huge and then the last couple were mirror matches where I got board advantage and just won from there.

    Edit: Huge patch update for Battlegrounds, time for Dragons.

    https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/bl...es-february-26

    I played once, got the ping dragon golden + the taunt dragon, which I then transitioned to a bog standard Mech build. Got 3rd, but was definitely weaker than Yogg who got a really good standard Goldrinn + double hydra build and Tirion, who had a standard Demon build.

    Edit 2: Just got my first win on the patch. Played Tirion, got Argent Protector and Selfless Protector in my first two taverns and methodically hero powered, bought more neutrals (glad you could bake it Bolvar), hero powered until I had a boring board of big stat sticks.
    Last edited by Joran; 2020-02-26 at 03:37 PM.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    I had a boring board of big stat sticks.
    Isn't this Battlegrounds in general? I stopped playing it a couple of weeks after it launched due to this.

  14. - Top - End - #104
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    Edit: Huge patch update for Battlegrounds, time for Dragons.

    https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/bl...es-february-26
    Damn, Blizzard has awful timing for me. This is something I'd genuinely like to drop back in and play with - but Dragon Ball FighterZ just had its huge season 3 update, and released its latest DLC character today, and I'm liking that a lot. Plus next week is the release of Granblue Fantasy Versus, which I'm looking forward to, and those two are already going to be in a rough competition for my attention. Finding time for Battlegrounds probably won't happen for a while as a result...
    Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!

    "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis

  15. - Top - End - #105
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Got another win on this patch, still not sure what I'm doing.

    Decided to play Alexastrasza (when you get to tavern tier 5, you discover 2 dragons). Picked up Kalecogos (everytime you play a battlecry minion, you get +1/+1 to all Dragons) + the 3/6 dragon which gets +2/+2 every time you drop a shield.

    Before this I was half Demons, half Mechs and just transitioned smoothly to all Dragons (plus a pretty beefy Hydra) and was just hitting people for 15-22 to kill them until I swept the lobby.

  16. - Top - End - #106
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    DwarfClericGuy

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

    I just managed to hit legend for the first time. I bounced between Warrior and (non-highlander) Rogue Galokrond to get to rank 5 then just ran into a brick wall of highlander Rogue, embiggen druids, and the varieties of hunter I couldn't get past just as the expansion dropped. I swapped to embiggen druid but couldn't seem to push past mid 3. Freaking rez priest, I think I had about a 10% win rate against that deck. I swapped to mech Paladin and ground my way up from there. Ironically my best match up was probably the mirror, I had about a 90% win rate. I'm really starting to hate Zephyrs and 'created by'. Rogues feel so bad to play against, either they high roll and get exactly what they need from their random lackeys/ reborn minions/stolen class cards or they don't. I had to play games in small doses as the sheer random BS was incredibly frustrating to me.

    I played a few games of battlegrounds. I got Galokrond once, who was fun but I think I under used his hero power. I didn't think about chain freezing to get a super early high teir minion until after. I got first in 2 games, one was just high roll murlocs. The other was carried by a turn 4 triple that gave me Hangry Dragon who just straight snowballed. The new dragons are fun and having another tribe really seems to help everyone get more consistent decks. Granted I don't play much and am only around 6k ish MMR. Just

  17. - Top - End - #107
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Thomas Cardew View Post
    I just managed to hit legend for the first time. I bounced between Warrior and (non-highlander) Rogue Galokrond to get to rank 5 then just ran into a brick wall of highlander Rogue, embiggen druids, and the varieties of hunter I couldn't get past just as the expansion dropped. I swapped to embiggen druid but couldn't seem to push past mid 3. Freaking rez priest, I think I had about a 10% win rate against that deck. I swapped to mech Paladin and ground my way up from there. Ironically my best match up was probably the mirror, I had about a 90% win rate. I'm really starting to hate Zephyrs and 'created by'. Rogues feel so bad to play against, either they high roll and get exactly what they need from their random lackeys/ reborn minions/stolen class cards or they don't. I had to play games in small doses as the sheer random BS was incredibly frustrating to me.

    I played a few games of battlegrounds. I got Galokrond once, who was fun but I think I under used his hero power. I didn't think about chain freezing to get a super early high teir minion until after. I got first in 2 games, one was just high roll murlocs. The other was carried by a turn 4 triple that gave me Hangry Dragon who just straight snowballed. The new dragons are fun and having another tribe really seems to help everyone get more consistent decks. Granted I don't play much and am only around 6k ish MMR. Just
    Congrats! I have never gotten above rank 3 so I envy you your success :)

    Battlegrounds the new Razorgore seems OP. I got a 100/100 with very little investment, unlike other giant minions which cost life or finding tons of pogo hoppers. Easily the fastest 1st place I have ever taken.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Vibranium: If it was on the periodic table, its chemical symbol would be "Bs".

  18. - Top - End - #108
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    in Battlegrounds, Drakonid Enforcer is basically a superior Bolvar, had a Deathwing game (ALL minions have +3 Attack), which won handily, with only 1 loss and 2-3 draws, via starting out as a Kadgar/Tokens Generation, transitioning into a combined Divine Shield/Menagerie (got early Golden Lightfang enforcer)

    EDIT: just had an intriquing game again featuring Drakonid Enforcer ... Did you know that if it, the same tick as it would otherwise have gone to 0 health, buffs (say due to cleave and one of the neighbours losing divine shield), out of it, it doesn't actually die?
    Last edited by Sian; 2020-02-27 at 04:43 PM.

  19. - Top - End - #109
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    DwarfClericGuy

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Congrats! I have never gotten above rank 3 so I envy you your success :)

    Battlegrounds the new Razorgore seems OP. I got a 100/100 with very little investment, unlike other giant minions which cost life or finding tons of pogo hoppers. Easily the fastest 1st place I have ever taken.
    Thanks! It was mostly a numbers game but this is the first time I actually seriously tried to grind it out. Normally I just get to a few ranks for the card back and dust rewards. Of course I had to pick the shortest months to try it in...

    The razorgore is ridiculous if it gets going. I also think it's weird that dragon growth minion (+2/2 when friendly dragons kill something) is rank 2 while beast and mech are either tiers higher or grow slower.

    Drakonid enforcer will survive even if it goes negative I had one go from -1 after being hit to +1 as the other minion lost its shield. Small indie game company after all.

  20. - Top - End - #110
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    ElfRogueGirl

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Thomas Cardew View Post
    Drakonid enforcer will survive even if it goes negative I had one go from -1 after being hit to +1 as the other minion lost its shield. Small indie game company after all.
    It's always worked like that. If a stat boost happens that makes the minion survive, it will survive even if it got to negative health first.

  21. - Top - End - #111
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Thomas Cardew View Post

    The razorgore is ridiculous if it gets going. I also think it's weird that dragon growth minion (+2/2 when friendly dragons kill something) is rank 2 while beast and mech are either tiers higher or grow slower.
    I think they wanted to start Dragon power level high and leave room to adjust downward if needed. They wanted it to be a big exciting event and make a splash in the meta. If everyone just shrugged and said "These dragons are weak I'm gonna keep playing demons" it woulda been a flop. It'll take a week or two for people to get bored of the new dragons and the meta to settle (and from what I'm seeing Demons are still the generally a winning strat despite dragon power level if only because everyone is trying to force dragons, so demons are easier to draft), by which time Team 5 will come in with a series of balance adjustments to shake things up again.
    If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?


  22. - Top - End - #112
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Thomas Cardew View Post
    I just managed to hit legend for the first time. I bounced between Warrior and (non-highlander) Rogue Galokrond to get to rank 5 then just ran into a brick wall of highlander Rogue, embiggen druids, and the varieties of hunter I couldn't get past just as the expansion dropped. I swapped to embiggen druid but couldn't seem to push past mid 3. Freaking rez priest, I think I had about a 10% win rate against that deck. I swapped to mech Paladin and ground my way up from there. Ironically my best match up was probably the mirror, I had about a 90% win rate. I'm really starting to hate Zephyrs and 'created by'. Rogues feel so bad to play against, either they high roll and get exactly what they need from their random lackeys/ reborn minions/stolen class cards or they don't. I had to play games in small doses as the sheer random BS was incredibly frustrating to me.
    Congrats! First legend always feels amazing. That perseverance even when Rogue bullshirts their way with Lackeys and a pretty hard counter to Mech Paladin is a lot of the challenge.

  23. - Top - End - #113
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    DwarfClericGuy

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    Congrats! First legend always feels amazing. That perseverance even when Rogue bullshirts their way with Lackeys and a pretty hard counter to Mech Paladin is a lot of the challenge.
    Thanks! I've a feeling it will be a lot easier if I try this month, starting at rank 4.1 should trim a decent chunk of time off, of course that will make it feeling less meaningful but c'est la vie.

    I just had a super interesting battlegrounds game. Did you know that herald of flame's overkill triggers on itself? At least I think that's what happened when it single-handedly wiped my full board of spawned rats left to right. Ended up getting first though. I had a triple and basic mama bear with two golden hydras against murlocs, a lucky unstable ghoul in the final tavern to guarantee the shields came off took it over the top.

  24. - Top - End - #114
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Snuck some Battlegrounds time in this weekend when I wasn't playing Dragonball. I rather like the Dragons update so far - new comp possibilities with Dragons themselves are rather cool, and I absolutely love that their addition has made Menagerie a lot more viable again. Especially with the stealth-buff of Lightfang Enforcer so it that now added Dragons to the types it hits without removing any of the original four, so it can now buff five things at once. Managed a first-place finish with a menagerie comp that started with Lightfang buffs and transitioned a bit later into Brann for faster buffing - haven't seen a composition like that take first at least since Amalgam was removed, if not since Lightfang was nerfed.

    I haven't gotten to try all of the new heroes, but I mostly like the ones that I have. Nozdormu seems strong, albeit not exciting - a free refresh per turn makes it a lot easier to build a coherent comp, and helps in the early game since you get a re-roll even on turn 1 if you're offered crap. Ysera is nice, makes it a lot easier to build a Dragons-focused comp, but I'm not sure how strong that makes her. Reno is kind of cool, hit the right thing with his hero power and it can be a big deal. My one time with him I took a crappy mechs comp that had no Cobalt Guardian into top 4 by grabbing a Junkbot off a triple and turning it gold. Ideally I think Reno really wants to hit something like a Brann or Baron Rivendare, though - or maybe Kalecgos or Razorgore if he's running dragons - I was just in bad shape in that match and needed the power spike to not finish in the bottom.

    The only one I've played and don't really like is Galakrond. His power is okay I guess, but hard to leverage right. I tried using it repeatedly and freezing to get an early tier 5 or 6 minion, but I took a lot of damage trying to set that up, and whiffed on getting anything crazy enough to make up for it. Getting to tier 4/5 and just using it to fish for good minions from the next tier up might be the better way to play him, but then isn't he just slightly different Toki?

    Haven't gotten to try Deathwing, Malygos, or Alexstraza. From playing against Deathwing, he seems strong if built right; hard to say about the other two.
    Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!

    "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis

  25. - Top - End - #115
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Snuck some Battlegrounds time in this weekend when I wasn't playing Dragonball. I rather like the Dragons update so far - new comp possibilities with Dragons themselves are rather cool, and I absolutely love that their addition has made Menagerie a lot more viable again. Especially with the stealth-buff of Lightfang Enforcer so it that now added Dragons to the types it hits without removing any of the original four, so it can now buff five things at once. Managed a first-place finish with a menagerie comp that started with Lightfang buffs and transitioned a bit later into Brann for faster buffing - haven't seen a composition like that take first at least since Amalgam was removed, if not since Lightfang was nerfed.

    I haven't gotten to try all of the new heroes, but I mostly like the ones that I have. Nozdormu seems strong, albeit not exciting - a free refresh per turn makes it a lot easier to build a coherent comp, and helps in the early game since you get a re-roll even on turn 1 if you're offered crap. Ysera is nice, makes it a lot easier to build a Dragons-focused comp, but I'm not sure how strong that makes her. Reno is kind of cool, hit the right thing with his hero power and it can be a big deal. My one time with him I took a crappy mechs comp that had no Cobalt Guardian into top 4 by grabbing a Junkbot off a triple and turning it gold. Ideally I think Reno really wants to hit something like a Brann or Baron Rivendare, though - or maybe Kalecgos or Razorgore if he's running dragons - I was just in bad shape in that match and needed the power spike to not finish in the bottom.

    The only one I've played and don't really like is Galakrond. His power is okay I guess, but hard to leverage right. I tried using it repeatedly and freezing to get an early tier 5 or 6 minion, but I took a lot of damage trying to set that up, and whiffed on getting anything crazy enough to make up for it. Getting to tier 4/5 and just using it to fish for good minions from the next tier up might be the better way to play him, but then isn't he just slightly different Toki?

    Haven't gotten to try Deathwing, Malygos, or Alexstraza. From playing against Deathwing, he seems strong if built right; hard to say about the other two.
    Deathwing is absolutely broken. Grab a rat pack early and it just carries you all the way to late game, so you can tier up faster than anyone else and cruise into victory. Any time I've seen a deathwing who got tokens in the first 3 turns, they basically won the lobby.

    Alexstraza seems inconsistent. I haven't played with her myself yet, but I see a lot of times her dying before hitting Tier 5 making her HP useless. Of the T5 alexstrazas I've seen, one was completely bonkers and just blew me away, the other two were very much 'meh'.

    On Galakrond, you're not wrong that the best way to play him is to fish for Tier 5/6 minions, but just being a weird Toki isn't a bad thing. Also he's much more flexible than Toki, since if you are getting good early tempo minions, you have the option to freeze and push a single minion up a few extra tiers for huge highroll potential. Then when you hit the actual late game, you're not stuck always getting tier 6, if you really want some more Tier 4 or 5 minions, you can target those specifically which is really handy. I got 1st with him doing a Murloc build, I kept on using the HP to hit t4 minions to fish for Bran/Bagurgle. Yes I could have gone for Megasaur instead, but 2 potentially good hits vs 1 seemed a good deal to me.

    I have not had good luck yet with Ysera. Dragons in general I have had a hard time with, I suspect I am just playing them wrong. I have done good late game dragon transitions, but any time I try to start dragons in the early/mid game, I end up getting stomped even when I have what looks like a good comp. Until Razorgore and Kalecgos come online, they just don't have the sort of scaling necessary to keep up it feels like. Though cherry picking stronger dragons and slotting them into menagerie comps has seemed really successful, that's not really what Ysera's specialized at doing.

    Malygos is actually pretty cool because his hero power can target minions on your own board. I used it a few times to refresh a minion that I used for a battlecry into something stronger as a temp fix until I could get something more desirable the next turn. But much like Galakrond being able to target the tier you are wanting to hunt for is so flexible that it's hard to pass up.
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  26. - Top - End - #116
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Seerow View Post
    I have not had good luck yet with Ysera. Dragons in general I have had a hard time with, I suspect I am just playing them wrong. I have done good late game dragon transitions, but any time I try to start dragons in the early/mid game, I end up getting stomped even when I have what looks like a good comp. Until Razorgore and Kalecgos come online, they just don't have the sort of scaling necessary to keep up it feels like. Though cherry picking stronger dragons and slotting them into menagerie comps has seemed really successful, that's not really what Ysera's specialized at doing.
    My impressions so far (with limited play time, to be fair) is that Dragons are a bit like a less extreme version of Murlocs. They're good in the early game, when Red Whelp and Waxrider Toggwaggle are crazy good; and have a very strong late game, propelled by Kalecgos, Razorgore, and Nadina (the deathrattle: give your Dragons divine shield minion); but they're a bit more lackluster in the mid-game in between those two periods, due to a lack of buff options (only Menagerie Magician and Zoobot can hit them before the tier 5 Dragon buffer) and the mid-game Dragons really needing buffs to shine (the Divine Shield + Reborn one, the overkill: deal damage one). Also, one of the better mid-game Dragons is the one that gets buffed when your Divine Shields drop, but in the mid-game there's only one Dragon with Divine Shield, and it starts small and, as mentioned, is hard to buff at first; otherwise, only Mechs have Divine Shields (unless you're playing George, anyway). Which pushes it more into the Menagerie comp at that period.

    Starting Dragons, transitioning to a part-mech Menagerie-type strategy in the mid-game, and transitioning back to full Dragons if/when you find their late-game power cards might be the way to handle them at this point.
    Last edited by Zevox; 2020-03-02 at 01:15 AM.
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Update: Iksar says there's going to be a balance patch for BGs in 2 weeks, but they're going to remove Tirion from the pool later this week.

    He says currently Standard and Wild are fine balance and meta wise and will wait until after Expansion.

    More BGs: Back up to 8250 and feeling a little better about my read of the meta.

    Reno when I aggressively leveled + held onto my pairs until I hit a triple on Level 5 and picked up a Rivendare was super fun. The thing I tripled was a Bomb, so sometimes BGs just wants you to win ;)

    That made up for the one where I tried to play the broken Deathwing, got 2 rat packs, 2 mama bears, Infested Wolf, Grandma, and Goldrin and got turbostomped by someone who got the Dragon Divine Shield + Dragons which got buffed by Divine Shields and I finished 6th. Some lobbies are insane.

    Edit: Coolest build at the moment is all over Reddit. Unlike Hearthstone where Deathrattles resolve by play order, BG deathrattles resolve Left To Right. So, the combo is to put a Unstable Ghoul first, Bomb, something that generates Beast Tokens, then buffers (Goldrin / Spawn) then Golden Rivendare.

    So, it'll end up Unstable Ghoul clearing your board other than Rivendare, Beast tokens getting generated, then them getting super buffed, while clearing your opponent's divine shields and dealing damage.

    It looks something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone...battlegrounds/
    Last edited by Joran; 2020-03-03 at 12:07 PM.

  28. - Top - End - #118
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    So, has Silver Hand 1 become the new Burndown champion by day 2 again?

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

    Iksar has posted more Battlegrounds goodies.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iksar
    10 Battlegrounds Fun Facts!

    1. Murloc Tidehunter is the most picked Tier 1 Minion. Spawn of N'Zoth for Tier 2, Cobalt Guardian for Tier 3, Defender of Argus for Tier 4, Brann Bronzebeard for tier 5, and Ghastcoiler for Tier 6.

    2. Dancin' Deryl is the 2nd most played hero on the NA, EU, and Asia servers. He is the 11th most played hero on the Chinese server.

    3. Reno Jackson is the 4th most picked hero, but has the 24th highest placement ranking among all heroes. Ragnaros is 23rd place and Pyramad is 25th.

    4. Among 5k+ rated players, Jaraxxus has the 28th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, Jaraxxus is the 5th highest average placement. Among <5k rated players, he has the 2nd highest top 4 rate (69.5%), only behind Deathwing.

    5. Among 5k+ rated players, The Great Akazamzarak has the 8th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, The Great Akazamzarak is the 20th highest average placement.

    6. Lich Baz'hial has the 4th lowest average placement, but the 9th highest rate of 1st place finishes.

    7. The least powerful hero in all regions at all levels is Millhouse Manastorm. He has the lowest average placement and lowest rate of top 4 and top 1. He could use a buff :).

    8. Among 11k+ rated players. Nozdormu has the highest average placement.

    9. Deathwing is the most powerful hero in all regions at all levels outside the very, very top rated players. We're playtesting him internally at +2 attack and will likely nerf him to that soon (tm).

    10. The most powerful hero in all regions at all levels was Tirion. We playtested with his hero power at (2) mana and it felt like too big of a detriment. We also thought about changing the minion pool but opted to take some more time to playtest internally while we deactivate.
    To see where you line up for MMR in Battlegrounds:

    Only includes players that have completed at least 5 games of Battlegrounds in the last 20 days. Iksar said that 6.5K is about where Legend would be in Ladder.

    <5000: 62% of Players
    5500: Top 20%
    6000: Top 10%
    6500: Top 3%
    7000: Top 1%
    8000: Top 0.1%
    8700: Top 0.01%

  30. - Top - End - #120
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    Default Re: Hearthstone 24: Don't tell the others, but I'm rooting for you!

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar
    10 Battlegrounds Fun Facts!

    1. Murloc Tidehunter is the most picked Tier 1 Minion. Spawn of N'Zoth for Tier 2, Cobalt Guardian for Tier 3, Defender of Argus for Tier 4, Brann Bronzebeard for tier 5, and Ghastcoiler for Tier 6.
    Makes sense for the most part, though Defender of Argus surprises me quite a bit. I don't feel like I grab that one too often - every now and then, but not consistently with any particular build, and it's certainly not a "grab it whenever you see it" type like the others on the list can be IMO. I would've expected Mechano-Egg to be the most picked 4-star myself.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar
    3. Reno Jackson is the 4th most picked hero, but has the 24th highest placement ranking among all heroes. Ragnaros is 23rd place and Pyramad is 25th.
    Wow. I mean, I knew he probably wasn't one of the better heroes, but I really think he should be better than Ragnaros. Then again, I think Pyramad should be better than Ragnaros too, honestly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar
    4. Among 5k+ rated players, Jaraxxus has the 28th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, Jaraxxus is the 5th highest average placement. Among <5k rated players, he has the 2nd highest top 4 rate (69.5%), only behind Deathwing.
    Huh. I didn't expect there wouldn't be differences between lower and higher level play of course, but I can't imagine why Jaraxxus would be that good at low-level play.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar
    5. Among 5k+ rated players, The Great Akazamzarak has the 8th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, The Great Akazamzarak is the 20th highest average placement.
    Hm, makes sense that he's better in the hands of more skilled players, that hero power of his can do some strong things, but isn't as easy to figure out how to make work as most others. Not a fan of him myself, personally, so I just tend to avoid him.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar
    7. The least powerful hero in all regions at all levels is Millhouse Manastorm. He has the lowest average placement and lowest rate of top 4 and top 1. He could use a buff :).
    Sadly unsurprising, and I hope they do buff him. He has an interesting play style, but oh boy paying double for refreshes just hurts way too much.

    Quote Originally Posted by Joran View Post
    To see where you line up for MMR in Battlegrounds:

    Only includes players that have completed at least 5 games of Battlegrounds in the last 20 days. Iksar said that 6.5K is about where Legend would be in Ladder.

    <5000: 62% of Players
    5500: Top 20%
    6000: Top 10%
    6500: Top 3%
    7000: Top 1%
    8000: Top 0.1%
    8700: Top 0.01%
    Huh, cool to know. Guess I'm technically higher ranked in Battlegrounds than I ever was in standard, since I think rank 2 was my highest there, but I'm about 7.5k in Battlegrounds. Then again, it's a lot easier to reach higher ranks when your rank doesn't reset every month, so that's a definitely a major contributor. I've long thought that the only thing keeping me from reaching Legend was just that I don't play enough in a given month, even during periods when I was really into the game. Lack of winstreaks at rank 5+ slows down ranking up so much once you're there that you need to play a lot to get to Legend.
    Last edited by Zevox; 2020-03-09 at 04:42 PM.
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