Hearthstone (and battlenet desktop)

[Cree]

The new shaman deck makes me miss the bullsh*t of year of the mammoth, which this animation beautifully sums up (the first part is a little slow, but the cube-lock sequence starting about 3:45 is genius):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPF3MoaVMF0

[Snique]

You talking about the super-broken Shudderwock? I saw Toast's highlights on the weekly WTF already and this is the whole shebang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Zjj-3iN6E

[Snique]

The new solo adventure dropped this week - if you haven't updated it's probably best to be on wireless rather than cellular for it.

It's a similar-themed rogue-like where you pick a hero and build a deck as you defeat increasingly hard bosses. The heroes this time are four Gilneas-themed specials, each with its own "nemesis" among the bosses. My experience is still limited but it appears that each run you face your nemesis boss; the others are random. This is significantly harder than the last dungeon thing, but you get quests to win 10 battles with each of the 4 new heroes and completing that gives you a free pack.

I've gotten all 4 packs, usually taking 2 tries per hero. I got as far as the 8th challenge on one before losing. It appears that you have to beat the challenge with all 4 to unlock a special solo encounter; I'm not sure I have the fortitude for that.

[Cree]

I kind of liked how the new hero powers made me think.

[Snique]

I kind of liked how the new hero powers made me think.

I sort of agree but the nemesis boss is really frustrating. The hound master special is creating a 1/1 with rush. Except you have to face a boss that every time a minion dies it auto-creates a 1/3 explosive. That leads to some hilarious chain reactions but it also completely neutralizes your hero power and makes many of the unavoidable cards in your starting deck become liabilities. If you happen to get the treasure reward for +health then great, otherwise you're screwed.

[Piralyn]

I kind of liked how the new hero powers made me think.

I sort of agree but the nemesis boss is really frustrating. The hound master special is creating a 1/1 with rush. Except you have to face a boss that every time a minion dies it auto-creates a 1/3 explosive. That leads to some hilarious chain reactions but it also completely neutralizes your hero power and makes many of the unavoidable cards in your starting deck become liabilities. If you happen to get the treasure reward for +health then great, otherwise you're screwed.

Yeah, there definitely seems to be a lot more hard counters in this than there were in the dungeon runs. Like, sure, it sucked running into the lava boss that dealt damage to minions when played if you'd built up a small minion swarm or the Trogg that summons a guy every time you cast a spell if you're spell-heavy, but there's definitely been much stronger "Well what the hell am i supposed to do against that?" feelings in this.

That said, I did a run with the Cannoneer for the quest, and somehow plowed straight through to a full clear on my first run. Bonus cannon damage and the minion that summons an extra cannon probably made that a breeze. Might be similar treasures for the other folks, but I haven't seen them if there are.

[Marco]

The hound master special is creating a 1/1 with rush. Except you have to face a boss that every time a minion dies it auto-creates a 1/3 explosive.

That's Groddo the Bogwarden.  He's not the hound master nemesis, just one of the random bosses.  He was the one I lost to as Toki on my first and only run.  (Not because of any deep anti-synergy, but because I was banking on getting a free 3x pyroblast and the card didn't come up in time.  And I guess because I didn't have a way to neutralize his Anub'arak.)

[Snique]

I got a complete clear with the first new hero yesterday. The spell-grabbing power is super useful in combination with jades and I got lucky on the final boss. It was the Kingsbane boss and he spawned a Fel Reaver while the Kingsbane was in his deck. Oops. With that burned he basically had nothing.

[Cree]

Yes, I just beat that boss too, same thing happened.  It was very unsatisfying.   Either he has it and he just heals and dominates, or you burn it and he is trivial.  I don't like games that feel like a drawn out coin flip.

[Jenilea]

Same also happened to me. Once the Kingsbane got burned, the boss pretty much just passed every turn till he died.

[Snique]

That mirrors my experience playing Kingsbane decks on ladder. As soon as they get the Lifesteal buff it's over. Either you rush them down before that, or you hope they have really bad draws somehow. Recent versions of the deck have been draw-heavy just to prevent that.

I hate that I'm going to have to craft Baku to get out of Rank 18 but nothing else seems to work.

[Snique]

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/5541-hct-americas-summer-playoffs-2018-full-decklists

Summer pro deck lists are up. Several surprises to me. One is the absence of odd decks. I'd though odd paladin superior to even but apparently not. I assume the lack of Shudderwock decks is because they're too slow.

I'm also surprised that Spiteful Druid is vastly more popular than tauntwall. I have a very hard time beating tauntwall. Actually I have a hard time beating anything this month. I'm 2-8 ranked. Ugh.

Five classes with significant representation is also a bit of a surprise. I'd've expected fewer, given how narrow ladder is. That tends to happen a lot early in a season. I am sure that as more sets are issued new deck types will emerge.

Quest rogue (which also seems to be called "crystal core rogue" arbitrarily) is another really annoying tier 1 deck. Particularly with rushing lifesteals it can be stupid hard to beat.

[Snique]

Blizzard has finally announced the first round of balance changes for this season. They've been talking about doing it for a while but waiting until the HCT was over to roll them out.

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/21758133

Sea Witch gets a heavy nerf. I don't recall ever seeing her in play but I understand that as more powerful big cards have been rolled out she needed a nerf to open up that space.

Spiteful Summoner goes to 7, a fairly reasonable nerf. I've been slowly regrouping from my early-month losses by playing a consistently good big-spells druid deck. The thing is that deck is quite competitive even if I don't draw my Summoners and I took the Librarian out because it's a dead draw too often and I don't think it combos well with UI. I'll probably keep playing it after this nerf.

Dark Pact restores 4 health now instead of 8. A much-needed nerf but I don't think it goes far enough. One suggestion I saw that I liked was that you'd get back the health of the minion it was used on. This card will still be in almost every non-zoo warlock deck.

Possessed Lackey goes to 6 mana, also a very necessary change. It'll slow down many warlock decks by a turn, giving rush decks more advantage. I don't think it'll help my beloved midrange style much, though. This will still be in every warlock deck.

Call to Arms goes to 5 mana. This is HUGE, much more than your typical one-mana nerf because it pushes the card out of the dominant Even Paladin decks. Theoretically you could use it in Odd Paladin but since it can only pull 1-cost minions there, who cares? It may still see some limited use in "dude" decks but largely this card is dead now. I will probably dust mine assuming they give full dust value when the nerf rolls out.

Crystal Core now sets minions to 4/4 rather than 5/5. I still think of this as something of a fringe deck but it was definitely frustrating to play against. Like Kingsbane, you had to hope that the opponent didn't draw the key cards; otherwise, anything you did was futile. Likely a good nerf and I'm glad I didn't craft this one.

Powering down Even Paladin, Cubelock, and Big Spells will certainly shake up the meta. I'm not sure how much, though.

[Snique]

I had one of my worst months ever last month, ending at 10-11. I just wasn't motivated to play, fell down to rank 17. Conversely, I had some really good arena runs, including the arena brawl (5 wins) and then back-to-back 7-win draft arenas. Kripp plays a lot of arena and I'm generally in agreement with his analysis that Blizzard has tuned arena now so that almost all decks are at least somewhat competitive and so are all heroes. A few still do better, as they do in ranked, but not hugely better.

I've started using the Overwolf on-screen overlay for desktop Hearthstone, which makes drafting faster and which automatically records my results in Heartharena - it's a lot quicker and easier than doing it manually as I had in the past.

One advantage of falling to rank 21 is apparently easier opponents. I'm already something like 7-5 this month. Not sure how much time I'll have to climb back up but my main WoW raiding group is on summer hiatus so there's that...

[Snique]

Anniversary event is live. Free arena run and some easy quests (like, "take X turns" and "draw Y cards") that include dust as well as gold for rewards.