It's funny, because you correctly put "Flamewaker" up earlier. Anyway... personally I'm leaning towards Mirror Entity. Sure, it can be really cool, but it's not consistent, and you can easily get burned by it if the opponent plays around it. Plus, without Flamewaker you have less "need" for spells. EDIT: Missed Jib's post earlier, seems we're on the same page here.
I have been playing Dragon Warrior over the last couple of days. Pretty fun. Only game I have lost only one game so far is to what looked like Druid mid-range. He just had answers to pretty much everything I was doing, unfortunately, and I did not get the right draw to finish the game out. I am also almost to level 20 in WoW. Looking forward to playing more tonight and then never touching it again.
I'm curious if the Forbidden cards will be a full set for all 9 classes, and, if so, what they'd do with them. I'd imagine so, but it wouldn't really surprise me if they skipped a class. For example, would the Warlock "forbidden" card be an X/X Demon? Draw x / 2 cards? What would you give Druid? Self-heal? Attack? Then what does Hunter get? I don't see them giving Hunter a Face-only Pyroblast though it'd fit thematically. *shrug* Interesting to think about, I look forward to finding out what they came up with.
From reddit, this generally is my perspective: "I ended up getting annoyed with the card analysis of Forbidden Flame on the main reddit and going off on a rant, so I thought I'd post here, get some feed back and see if I'm being completely insane. First off for those of you who wish to TL;DR I think the card is reasonable and gives a ton of flexibility and this makes up for the fact it can't hit face and will find it harder to deal with above the curve health minions. Ok, to start off with this card is a reasonable keep in a mulligan. It's always going to find some use (with the proviso that you have Antonidas or some way to make use of free spells in your deck which most mage decks do, but I'll come back to this) and while above the curve health minions are an issue you'll, Mage has a lot of mop up damage spells and the ping so even in the most awkward situations with this spell there's still going to be something you can do. At the same time the decks that you most want to have early removal against (aggro) are x/1s on turn one and x/2s on turn two. This gives you some game in the early game which is much better than having cards that are too expensive to play. This is where people who keep comparing the card to Flame Lance are missing the point, which is that expensive removal isn't good. Lance sits in your hand doing bugger all until turn 5 and against quicker decks you don't have that luxury and fact there are exactly 4 turns where Lance could be considered better that Forbidden Flame (Turns 5 - 9 as when topdecking Lance and ping at Turn 7 is slightly better and then when you're drawing 1 card a turn at T10 Forbidden becomes better again) and even during those turns Forbidden Flame is allowing you the flexibity of playing it with any other creature or spell in a way that Lance doesn't. And there are other reason it's better too... So the obvious one first of all, Forbidden works really well with Antonidas. If it really matters to you that it can't damage face you can just hold onto it till turn 7+ to trade it for a Fireball and unlike Lance you can both play it on the same turn as the Archmage and also play it without your opponent having to have a creature on the board as long as you can use up some of the mana available (partly because on Turn 7 you can target your own Antoniadas to do no damage to him, Turn 9 you can Play Tony and ping to soak up some mana and playing it on T8 + T10 will only do one damage to Tony) . I can already see some sequencing issues, but this is really just a skill testing exercise and not an issue with the card. This is also the case to a lesser degree with Mana Wyrm and Flame Walker as you may just end up using it for Wyrm buffs or Walkers pings as a free/cheap spell but again, that's another part of it's flexibility. My last point about this card is that it becomes better with the use of spell damage minions like Thalnos and Malygos and could often be used in the same way that Rogues play Backstab in MalyRogue varients with a couple of trade offs (some damage for flexibility and not being conditional), this also lends itself to the same type of deck as Arcane Blast and makes it better against the above curve health minions. I'm not saying this card is the best card ever, but it seems reasonable in a lot of situations and often thats the making of a good card. Am I being crazy? "
Grand Crusader Best All Time! So I suspect that I am losing to stupid mistakes I am not even aware of. Should I just play a lot more, or do you guys recommend something else for improving my play?
Seems good to me. It's less efficient than Holy Light, but you can go big with it, like against Combo or Aggro, bam, 12-20 more health (pending when/how you use it), or you can use it to help win the trade wars against Control (and aggro) as a micro-heal for your minions.
Sometimes playing more doesn't help, but rather reinforces the "bad" habits you started with/are developing. Honestly though, it's not like we've seen you play. Or I haven't at least. So I'm not really sure what kind of advice you're hoping to get from us. One tip I can give though is watching other (good) players. Looking at what decisions they make, then figuring out if you would make the same decision. Especially if you wouldn't, think about why that decision was made, and what it's merits and detriments are. Even if the option the other person makes isn't actually "better" than yours, it might give you an idea about how different people approach the game or what all they think about. The other important advice I can give is this: Don't worry about being great immediately. While this game is largely simpler than Pox on many levels, it still takes time to learn the best way to play, and the meta shifts much more (as do the styles of deck you'll go against, at least in my experience). Take it slow and steady and look forward to gradual improvement.
So I shouldn't expect to be consistently hitting higher ranks after caring about it for a week? Damn. I was mostly looking for general advice, yeah.
Every time you lose it's easy to focus on the "so Firking lucky he topdecked exactly what he needed" rather than the "I guess that turn I should've done this instead of that". Start recognizing your mistakes, learn from them, mentally note what you should play around and more importantly, accept that there isn't always a perfect play. They either have it or they don't.
I have low patience, moderate intelligence, bad luck and a drinking problem. Is hearthstone the right game for me? Should I finally buckle and get it?
Yeah, years of competitive play of various games has pretty much killed my desire to focus on luck. I have had friends in the past complain that I focus too little on RNG, because my first response was always to focus on play improvement. For some reason I am just having more difficulty than normal identifying the combination of deck changes/play improvement I need to do. I probably should just play a lot more and see if I can identify it better.
I can only vouch for the drinking problem. It's a fine way to go on a tear in ranked games. Patience might hurt. Intelligence is almost a non-factor, secret pally is still a thing. Luck you will blame but ultimately it doesn't matter. Do it.
Seems to me like you already got the game and its basic principles figured out. Now what's left is the interactions of the cards themselves, which you either get by playing a lot or watching people play a lot. Hop on Twitch, watch a couple of games of high ranked players. Grind it out. Magic.
Yeah, this is the best advice to give, actually: watch a pro streamer who explain his moves. It's the thing that will help you the most as of now. I started HS with 4 buds of mine (we meet every Wednesday for gaming sessions), and I'm the only one who has reached Legend rank and the one who has gotten 12 wins in arena the most. And what I do that they don't is watching pro streamers play. It will improve your gameplay sooooo much, specially when you start to realize that you must think ahead every turn. Also helped the fact that I play every hero, gets you a much better feel on what the opponent can do against you. HS is a game that will punish you the most for tiny mistakes that you took for granted on say, turn 1. Every non optimal play counts. Ultimately, though, it can also be a matter of meta. As I told you before, Dragon Warrior is a deck that you will struggle against the one we have atm, so if you are fighting an uphill battle, you might as well bring your A game, otherwise the loss is certain. Having someone to watch your game and tell you what you did wrong also works a lot. There are some texts on the internet that also say that you must be able to identify when you are fighting for board control and when its time to hit the gas and go face (although I feel that, when in doubt, control the board). Also, just dont get frustrated by the losses, it will take the fun out of the game and that cant happen. Most of the games dont get past the 10min mark, so just queue again and play another one. I'd highly recommend it, it goes much better with MJ than Pox hehehehe. Edit: regarding the Paladin card, I like it a lot - not too strong, not too weak. Pulling a 20HP heal on the later turns of the game is pretty darn strong, although at 10 mana if you are being rushed you are already dead. The auchenai dream is real, though.
