Unlabelled Hearthstone - Theorycrafting Thursdays Weekly Discussion

2/24/2017 01:17:00 am
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Hearthstone - Theorycrafting Thursdays Weekly Discussion

Theorycrafting Thursdays Weekly Discussion

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 04:26 PM PST

Hello members of the /r/hearthstone community,

This is a weekly thread designed for more advanced discussion regarding the intricacies of Hearthstone. Questions and answers should be focused on high-level theory crafting, such as card synergy, efficient mana drafts, and the viability of cards in certain situations.

Please keep it clean and try to add more than just a one or two word response. As the goal of this post is to increase the community's knowledge, the thought process matters as much as the answer! There is also a Newbie Tuesday weekly post, for those who wish to discuss the basics.

Note: I am a bot. Questions or feedback regarding this thread? Message the moderators.

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Combo Decks Do Not Need To Be Weaker. Cards That Disrupt Combo Decks Need to be Explored More

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 07:55 AM PST

Hey everyone,

 

As many of you know, the Hearthstone team recently did a live Q&A session where they discussed gameplay philosophies (for those of you that are out of the loop, this post contains a good summary). One part that was of particular interest of me was their philosophies regarding combo decks. In essence, the answer they gave was very similar to their previous discussions on the subject of combo decks. Their belief is that decks that are able to pull off high damage combos are bad for the game. Personally, this statement feels too far reaching for me to agree with, and in this post I hope to make a case for combo decks in hearthstone.

Before I continue, I'd like to give some background info on me as a player and why this topic holds a special place to my heart. I've been playing Hearthstone since beta and it is the first card game I've enjoyed enough to get good at. I hit legend twice during WOTOG playing a pirate warrior deck. While I don't think Legend means I'm an ultra qualified card game veteran, I'd like to think it means I have a decent grasp on core gameplay and deckbuilding concepts.

That being said, I started off as an arena player because I enjoyed Trump and Kripp's streams and, like any new player, I had a pitiful card collection. This changed when Patron warrior came out. To me, Patron Warrior was the most fun I've had playing a deck. The deck was incredibly challenging and the crazy things you were able to pull off felt incredibly rewarding. Sure, there were the rare situations where you would get nearly free wins with amazing hands but this certainly was uncommon. Certainly far less uncommon than the crazy advantage gained by drawing small time buccaneer without patches in your opening hand. Once patron was nerfed, the two remaining dominant combos were Midrange druid and Oil Rogue. The former was not an interesting deck to me, and the latter was also nerfed. I still find myself occasionally playing Mill Rogue as the next best thing.

 

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want to say that even during the height of patron warrior I never felt that it was a problem in Hearthstone. Personally, I would have loved to see more competitive decks like it. The core of the problem with combo decks in Hearthstone is that players are unable to interact on their opponent's turn, but player's have too few strong, proactive options against combo decks. The only widespread mechanic in Hearthstone that interacts with your opponent's turn is secrets. Beyond secrets, players have very few options to explicitly disrupt their opponent's turn. That being said, cards that fit this description are not unheard of. The immediate ones that come to mind are:

  • [[Mana Wraith]] – While this card will more than likely never find a home in a ladder environment due to being understatted and also negatively affecting your turn, I still think it's an interesting card that's worth thinking about. What if there was a minion with a different stat-line that affected only the cost of your opponent's minions?

  • [[Loatheb]] – Although Loatheb was a bit too ubiquitous due to it's solid stat-line, I think card's like this are a great answer to decks like freeze mage.

  • [[Deathlord]] – One of my favorite cards. I love going back to wild because of this card. Deathlord pulling out a Reno, Auctioneer, Patron, Leeroy, etc gives the card tremendous value which increases in relation to the number of interconnected combo piece minions the opposing player has.

  • [[Dirty Rat]] – Hands down my favorite card printed in Gadgetzan. The game needs more cards like this. Deathlord had an inherent risk due to it's deathrattle effect (opponent kills your Deathlord, only to pull at a Thaurrisan that discounts their large hand size filled with combo pieces for free). The introduction of dirty rat caused players to play in new ways. One might find themselves incentivized to keep a weak minion in their hand rather than playing it to reduce the chance that a combo piece is pulled. Alternatively, they might be inclined to play a portion of their combo for some impact rather than risk the card being pulled out by Dirty Rat and having no impact. I would go so far as to say this card or something very similar to it should be added into the classic set.

 

That being said, I still feel like there is very little design space that is explored to countering combo pieces, especially in relation to the frequency and volume that combos and synergies are introduced to the game. My main reason for creating this post is I would like to see more ideas around cards that can disrupt combo decks rather than having the Hearthstone team continue down the path of having weak or uninspired combos and synergies. I've created a few example cards below to hopefully get more people thinking about this, as well as generating discussion. By no means do I want to give the impression that these cards would be perfectly balanced or maybe they ultimately wouldn't fit with Hearthstone's design, but please focus on overarching concepts rather than hard numbers. Think about how these cards or similar card designs would have impacted past combo decks that were nerfed. Here are a few ideas:

 

  • Violet Hold Arcanist – 4 Mana 3/4. Battlecry: Look at 3 cards from your opponent's deck. Choose one and increase it's mana cost by (2), but no more than (10).

This card is meant to disrupt key combo pieces or combo enablers such as Thaurissan, Gadgetzan, Leeroy, or perhaps even the old Warsong Commander.

 

  • Infinite Defiler – 5 Mana 5/6 Dragon. The first card your opponent plays costs (1) less. Each card played afterwards on that turn has its cost increased by (1).

Not only would a card like this disrupt decks such as freeze mage, it would continue to disrupt them from bursting you down until they used some of their burn or otherwise dealt with this minion. It is worth mentioning that if your opponent does answer this card with a single card, such as fireball, they will be saving one mana which I feel creates an interesting risk to this card.

 

  • Ninja Looter – 3 Mana 4/2. Your opponent discards two cards, and then draws three cards.

While I'm fairly certain that cards that interact with your opponent's hand have been shut down by the dev team in the past, I'd still like to make the case for a card like this. Since this card's effect is a deathrattle, it would not take effect immediately. This would allow the opposing player to either play combo pieces for less payoff for fear of having them discarded, or there is the risk that your opponent only has cheap cards and is able to dump their hand and potentially even avoid discarding cards. It's worth noting that the person who plays this card could spend an additional card, such as Backstab, to trigger the effect immediately, But then they are spending 2 cards while their opponent gains 1 card. A net loss of 3 cards in order to get your opponent to immediately discard combo pieces. It's also worth noting that a card like this could be used in a fatigue-oriented gameplan.

 

  • Lord Kazzak – 8 Mana 4/8. Taunt Demon. Whenever your opponent plays a card, this minion gains +2 health.

Fairly straight forward card. This is meant to force removal and excel at stalling charge combo shenanigans.

 

Just to reiterate, I don't mean to claim that the cards I've suggested are balanced, but rather I wish to encourage more discussion and exploration on anti-combo design space rather than making combo decks weaker across the board.

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose had similar feelings and I would love to see other people's thoughts and ideas on this topic.

submitted by /u/Weaslelord
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Golden Cards will show up in Arena in the next patch

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 06:21 PM PST

Ben Brode as game director already seems to show a huge difference

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 03:25 AM PST

Ben Brode is glorified quite a bit on here already, but how can you not like him? He is really passionate about this game and I think I don't have to mention his infectious laugh. But since he is game director the communication greatly improved. It seems like these Q&A's will become a regular thing, which would be awesome. Also having different devs on there is really nice. Also, arena will finally get a fresh touch, which many of us doubted will ever happen. They will experiment with formats and openly say if it doesn't work out they will revert it. It just seems he is really trying to shape hearthstone in a better direction and keep it dynamic instead of the staleness we got so used to over time. I hope he keeps on improving the game.

Edit: It seems like Brode's position didn't really change with his new title soooo... I guess now it's on you Ben to follow through with this new handling of the game to not make me look bad. I'm counting on you!

submitted by /u/skuFFFace
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Hafu shares her thoughts on the arena changes

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 08:17 AM PST

Kripp finds out who's in charge

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 08:54 PM PST

Shadow Beast (possessed villager spawn) Should be a Demon

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 06:29 AM PST

I know I'm the only person in the world who plays demonlock, not because it's secretly amazing, but because it's fun. However, the shadow beast that spawns out of possessed villager should be a Demon,not only would it fit thematically, but it also offers great new and clever game play options with the demon buff cards. It would also give the struggling archetype a little more backbone. That is all I have to say.

Edit: one thing to clear up (1)I am not under the impression that Shadow beast is mislabeled as a non demon (at least, not anymore). I'm saying that the spawn from possessed villager should be a Demon, at least thats the point that should be discussed, under this post. As for the art and lore, it is not my area of expertise. And if there is some lore that possessed villagers are explicitly possessed by Sha, then I'm sorry.

submitted by /u/Crobie21
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How do the new rank changes affect the number of games required to reach legend? (Lots of numbers inside)

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 06:20 AM PST

This is my spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eX5obgv4lGX3Vz0xg0kTJVPL1wJtipoJy-q0_uS1DEY/edit#gid=0

(So for example it used to take ~1383 games to get to legend at 50% win rate before starting from rank 25 with 0 stars. Now it will take ~1019 games. At rank 5 it used to take ~933 games to get to legend, now it takes ~663 games.)

Some observations:

1 The less your win rate the more this change affects you. The change at 90% win rate is almost negligible (less than .5% in every case). However at 50/50 win rate it's as high as 29% in some ranks.

2 Looks like people at the ranks 10-15 with a 50% win rate will benefit the most. The guys with a smaller win rate will probably have an even bigger change in time required. But if you are below 50% it takes a very long time.

IMPORTANT NOTE. The numbers are not exact. They are based on 100,000 simulations. In some cases you will see a negative percent. This is actually incorrect, in no case do the changes affect the rate of climb negatively. This occurs because the % change is within the margin of error.

I wrote my own c++ script to simulate the games.

I wanted to thank the author of this thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/24prpt/expected_number_of_games_to_reach_legendary/

I used his thread to help me format my spreadsheet and to verify my numbers were correct.

If you need help reading the spreadsheet let me know I can explain.

submitted by /u/barbodelli
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Ben Brode "Changing Arena to Standard is a big experiment. If players play it for a while and don't enjoy it, we're happy to revert it."

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 11:43 AM PST

Reynad: The Beauty of Hearthstone

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 07:05 PM PST

Brode confirms golden cards coming to arena!

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 08:06 PM PST

vS Data Reaper Report #39

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 08:58 AM PST

Greetings!

The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 39th edition of the Data Reaper Report.

As always, we would like to thank all those who contribute their game data to the project. This project could not succeed without your support. The entire vS Team is eternally grateful for your assistance.

This week our data is based off of over 2,300 contributors and over 69,000 games! In this week's report you will find:

  • Deck Library - Decklists & Class/Archetype Radars

  • Class/Archetype Distribution Over All Games

  • Class/Archetype Distribution "By Rank" Games (Including Legend Ranks)

  • Class Frequency over previous 39 Weeks

  • Class Frequency by Day

  • Interactive Matchup Win-Rate Chart

  • vS Power Rankings

  • Meta Breaker of the Week

The full article can be found at: vS Data Reaper Report #39

Data Reaper Live (Beta) - After you're done with the Report, you can keep an eye on this up-to-date live Meta Tracker throughout the week!

As always, thank you all for your fantastic feedback and support. We are looking forward to all the additional content we can provide everyone.

Reminder

  • If you haven't already, please sign up to contribute your game data! The more contributors we have the more accurate our data! More data will allow us to answer some more interesting questions. Track-o-Bot runs in the background, so you can use it in conjunction with any other tracker you prefer. Sign up here, and follow the instructions.

Thank you,

The Vicious Syndicate Team

submitted by /u/ViciousSyndicate
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High Legend Rogue Decks: “So many options…”

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 08:00 AM PST

Greetings /r/Hearthstone

 

Are you missing the "fun" factor lately while playing ladder ?

 

Valeera has your back (this time)…

 

Nerfs are imminent and most of us are just looking to have some fun right now on ladder. This is why we're changing things up a bit and we're bringing you a "Rogue Special" of the high legend series. We've brought you four competitive Rogue decks to try out on ladder. All of these decks aren't your traditional cookie cutter "meta decks", they are innovative and high legend viable.

 

 

Article: https://sectorone.eu/high-legend-rogue-decks-many-options/

 

Featured decks:

 

 

We hope you enjoy the read and encourage you to leave your feedback (both positive and negative)

submitted by /u/xam34
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Tired of pirates? Ready to kick the next shaman right in the green testicles? Do you like sweet combos and getting hatemail from raging opponents? Interested in Wild but don't know what to play? Well here's a deck for you.

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 01:59 AM PST

I've been playing this deck and it's really fucking fun and really goddamned strong.

Wild Nzoth-Mill Rogue - Savj was running this deck a few weeks ago, and it completely revitalized my interest in the archetype. It's a Mill Rogue that runs the two best taunts in the game and lets you bring them back as many times as you want.

Want to get a million fucking murlocs and fatigue your opponent? You can do that.

Want to shadowstep and gang up Nzoth until your opponent is lying on the floor in the fetal position, helpless before your virile display of dominance? You can do that too.

Definitely one of the most skill-testing decks I've ever played, but it's a mill rogue list that can beat aggressive decks - which is fucking refreshing. More importantly, this deck is balls to the walls fun, because nothing says fuck you like dropping your fourth Nzoth after your opponent has just finished clearing all your goddamned belchers and the little shitters they leave behind.

Fuck you dude, my belchers are going to live forever.

submitted by /u/HegelianHermit
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I'm sorry

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 09:52 PM PST

Hearthstone should allow user to stack up to 5 quest

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 04:15 AM PST

Hearthstone should allow user to stack up to 5 quest due to some of the quest criteria is very stupid. Play 75 murlocs is quite dumb, it would take a few days to clear this quest unless you put in your decks all 30 cards is murlocs, but even this, it will still take you quite long to clear this quest.

There is also other quest that would take you quite some time to clear unless you put in all the cards of that specific class.

Blizzard should give player 5 stack quest, 3 stack is not enough

submitted by /u/__rebellious
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80.3 tierscore zoolock arena deck with insane synergy

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 05:46 AM PST

Just wanted to show off the best arena deck I've ever drafted :D

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/0snv8p

This isn't the highest rated deck ever but I it's still probably one of the best arena decks ever because of its early game consistency and how fast it will out-tempo its opponents in a tempo driven arena meta.

edit: Deck absolutely steamrolled everyone except 1 lucky warrior who managed to buff his fool's bane twice with grimestreet pawnbrokers :(((

submitted by /u/Deoxik
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Theory: Reynad is Kripparians alter ego.

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 07:19 AM PST

I'm not a conspiracy nut or anything, but have you ever seen both of them in the same room at once? Do I need more proof?

submitted by /u/Nilmor
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I see your perfect tavern brawl start, and raise you.

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 02:13 AM PST

http://imgur.com/a/EbsNc

T1: Coin+spell+loatheb

T2: Loatheb

T3: Loatheb

submitted by /u/Rag_H_Neqaj
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CroKnows: The Future of the Gadgetzan Meta

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 08:09 AM PST

With devolve being at 2 mana, mass dispel seems a bit overcosted, doesn't it?

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 03:22 PM PST

I think it would be ok at 3 mana since it draws you a card and has a probably worse effect than devolve.

submitted by /u/UmBoiSimpatico
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More DoTs...

Posted: 23 Feb 2017 03:48 AM PST

Warlocks should have more spells like Curse of Raafem (ms?) It is a DoT that forces the player to choose play this worthless card or stick with my cards. This is a interesting concept in a card game. It is super flavorful for the Warlock (they are known for the their DoTs in WoW) but the problem is this is the only card of this type. For this interesting concept to even be considered for a deck it need more DoTs and some support card for the DoTs.

I'm looking at you Brode we need more DoTs.

Edit: DoT = Damage over Time

submitted by /u/Helix1322
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I got a pretty nice Renounce

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 10:05 AM PST

Bet you can't say that 5 times fast

Posted: 22 Feb 2017 02:47 PM PST

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