Hearthstone 22: Evening the Odds

[Zevox]

Well, might as well add me to the list (Thrantar#1416, North America).
I've got both the play a friend and watch a friend quests pending, and there's only one thing I lack.

Sure. BTW guys, I'm thinking I should do something about how bloated that list has become. Probably not until tomorrow, but I'd like to set the current list in a separate spoiler block and have another list that only contains currently-active players, if we can manage that.

The weird thing to me about that article is that, for sake of example, somehow Fireball is considered to be a card with specific strengths and weaknesses, but Wild Growth isn't.

Which is hilariously wrong. Fireball is so good that it only doesn't get run in decks that have cards which specifically disincentivize you from running it (aka Book of Spectres or Dragon's Wrath). Meanwhile, like Zevox said, Wild Growth didn't get run in a few Druid decks not because of other cards, but because of its natural weakness of giving up early-game tempo and card advantage.

Hm, I can mostly agree with your overall thrust there, but I think you're off about Fireball. It's not an example of a card that only doesn't get run due to other cards requiring you to build around them and leave it out. More Control-oriented Mages have long left Fireball out of their decks because Polymorph is better for single-target removal of big things, and they don't value the option to go face with Fireball so much. Back in the early days they ran both, but as we've gotten more cards, there's generally been better things for them to do with the deck space than run an extra set of mid-cost removal.

A better example of what you mean would be Frostbolt. That thing is a staple removal card that gets run in all Mages by default, from Aggro to Control and Combo alike, except when there's build-around conditions that preclude it but provide a big enough benefit to be worth cutting it. Which, for the moment, happens to be the case, with Big Spell Mage not wanting a spell that cheap and Odd Mage not being able to use it because it's even. But for most of Hearthstone's history it's been in every single Mage deck. And you can point to other removal cards in other classes that are in a similar situation, like Swipe, Kill Command, Consecration, or Eviscerate. Wrath is another one that I'd have included in the past, but they actually outdid that one with the Druid Spellstone to the point where everyone has run that instead for a while - I'd expect it to be back post-rotation though (if Druid is at all played post-rotation).

*rolls eyes*

Fine, swap whatever rotating cards you feel fit better. Or don't. My point is that Mecha'thun isn't going anywhere for a whole year, so it's better to just figure out ways to deal with it like everyone else is doing. (Or don't.)

The problem is that for some decks there presently isn't a way to deal with it without completely changing the type of deck that you're playing. Mojomaster Zihi is the only thing like neutral combo disruption that exists in standard at this point in time, and for a Control deck buying just a few turns often won't be enough to change the outcome. If you're trying to play a value deck, basically you're either playing Warlock and running Demonic Project, or you're screwed against Mecha'thun decks.

Also, I literally pointed out right after that line that current Odd Warrior is losing fairly little in the rotation, so "swap whatever rotating cards you feel fit better" is a bit disingenuous when, if you read what I wrote, you know that there are hardly any to speak of. Hopefully that's enough to keep it overshadowing Mecha'thun Warrior - but that will depend in no small part on the next set's cards, too.

Not ragequitting just because they think a loss is likely is a valuable lesson to learn. Especially if they're playing a control deck (the most likely to lose to combo) and were expecting the game to run long anyway. It's a card game, surely they don't have appointments that urgent.

First, that's not a "lesson" that this will teach them, since they won't know that it happened. It just gives the troll and his viewers something to sneer at. Nothing likable or positive there. Second, even if they did learn about it due to running across the video at some point, that doesn't change that it's trollish behavior on his part.

Also, conceding when you're sure you've lost isn't a rage-quit. Rage-quitting is pulling the plug on a game outside of any options the game provides you in an attempt to null the game's effect on your rank - which I'm pretty sure doesn't work in Hearthstone anyway, quitting mid-match in any way hands the win to your opponent.

But that's the whole point - there's lots of Mage decks that don't run fireball, despite how good it is. The mere fact that they could disincentivize its use despite it being so good is what makes it fine. Wild Growth was in literally every Druid deck.

I just pointed out a few posts ago that it was not - extremely aggressive Token Druids that didn't run it very much have existed in the past. It's been common, since more often than not Druid decks have been Control ones, or in recent times Combo ones, but not completely ubiquitous. There are deck archetypes that wouldn't want it, Druid just doesn't support them very often.