I've done some readings during my lunch break and I think I will be picking dragon priest up. Fits very well with my playstile (Im more of a midrange/control type of player) and I have nearly all the tools to make it work (missing Chillmaw). What do you guys think? (Currently Im playing an original midrange secret pally deck).
It's been my most successful deck since TGT launched (which might not be saying much if you look at the trash decks I'm posting here) by a mile. It's kinda weak vs the slower match-ups (Control Warrior/Handlock/Freezemage) but does great against pretty much everything else, with Secret Pally and Patron being basically coin tosses. It's a midrange wet dream but with an added early curve that can get you so much ahead. Getting Whelp+Wyrmrest+Guardian or Azure in your opener is a game you can't lose. The list is pretty much set in stone as well with maybe 4 or 5 slots to mess around. Thing is, Chillmaw isn't even necessary if you run something more like Kolento's build (2x Shrink 2x Cabal). I personally go 1x each and added a Lightbomb and some rotating random threat (Loatheb puts in work vs the weak match-ups) but who am I to question that build that goes 37-0 in legend... Don't run BW Techs, it's a trap. Dark Cultists everyday.
Also just won this weeks bugged brawl (supposed to be portals, it's spiders) with Dark Whispers and Moonfire. I may or may not had a Ghazrilla on the board.
Gaaaaaahhhh, this ranked grind roller coaster is just sooooo weird, funny and sad, all at once. Had a nice run yesterday, went 12-2 from rank 5 * all the way to rank 4 ****, with an incredible 11-0 consecutive wins. Im sticking to my pala hahahahahaha.
That's the time when games like this stop being fun for me. The only measure of progress is rank and rank becomes more a measure of free time than it is of skill (or even money). I wish there was a league based tournament system (in the client), as an alternate form of progression. Or even a compelling form of solo progression (a more mmrpg like campaign system).
The warm feeling when you hover on a purple and yellow in a pack. The crushing disappointment when you flip Demonheart and Mogor. Hearthstone.
That's the beauty of no trading. The relative play values of the legendaries don't matter. They are either what you want or 1/4 of what you want.
Ok, I have to say something on your point here: "Rank becomes more a measure of free time than it is of skill (or even money)". Well, even though I agree with this to an extent, in a sense that a person with a lot of free time will reach legendary rank eventually with the right deck, for example, no matter how unskilled he/she is, I don't think that rank is a measure of free time, at all. I mean, look at me: I work all day, do a lot of activities after work (monday night poker, tuesday night with babe, football/soccer day wednesday, etc. etc. etc.), and only manage to squeeze 2/3 hours a day at most playing, and there are days that I don't even play. However, since I started my goal to reach legendary rank 3 months ago, I managed to get rank 5 and above on every month, with an amount of time that I consider not mediocre, but also not good enough. Why? Because I'm skilled at this game. And no matter how arrogant I sound, it is the truth. I have 5 best friends that are also very into HS, and when they saw the success I was having with my deck they all copied it, and even though we all have the same amount of time to play (there is even one guy with a lot of time right now, he is playing 6 hours a day, I think), only one of them managed to get past rank 10 with the deck: the guy with a lot of free time. And now he says he has reached a wall at rank 7, not being able to climb further. If he was skilled enough Im sure he would be able to. So yeah, I get your point, but there are a lot of good players out there whose rank is a measure of skill indeed, and I think those numbers are very high, specially on the upper ranks. People often don't see that their ranks arent higher because of the mistakes they are making, they'd rather blame RNG, aggro "no brain" decks and not having enough time. HS is a game of high skill cap on the higher rankings, because at a certain point of the game (mostly from turn 4 onwards), micro managing your decisions becomes crucial, and one tiny mistake can lead to a chain of events that leads to a loss. This ain't a rant or anything, just my 2 cents on the subject. Well, try opening 50 packs and only opening up 1 legendary: the warm feeling of wanting to throw your computer at the wall.
After you hit rank 5 you have already established yourself as a competent player. The problem is you're in a pack of thousands of other competent players. How do you differentiate those players. That's where free time starts to matter more than skill. Sorry thought I was clear about that.
Well, I did understand that, and like I said I agree to an extent, but I don't think free time matters more than skill at all, specially at those ranks. That's what I was trying to say. Because, let's be frank here, the average HS player has a winrate of 50%, and above rank 5 it's a little above 50%, like 53-55. However, like I said, there are a lot of players with a low amount of free time that manage to have a WR waaaaaaaay above that (70 or more %), simply due to their skill. The question you asked of how you "differentiate" them is exactly with skill. Because there is a huge difference between being competent and being skilled. For me, being competent is making the most optimal play at all times, and that's what 90% of the players above rank 5 would do. You hardly see a misplay post rank 5. However, the other 10% of players don't the most optimal play, they make the one that will net them the victory in the end. My friends, for example, whenever we play together, I RARELY agree with them on the right play to make. It's quite funny, actually. There we are, all playing Arena together on the TV and one is "piloting" the pad, and said person asks: "ok, what should I do now". Then we all vote. Then they all speak first, reach a consensus, then ask me. 90% of the time my play is different, and they don't understand why, roll with what they "think" was good and we loose the match. After all this time they haven't really got a good grasp on how to play this game "right", they play thinking they are making the optimal play but miss the big picture of 2, 3 turns ahead. So yeah, skill is still a huge part of the game.
This is not for you ragic, I stumble upon this and and sharing because its a nice read: http://hearthstoneplayers.com/playing-win-part-one-defeating-scrub-mentality/
I did that recently. The Leg I got was Saraad though, so I was relatively cool with it, since he's one of the few I actually particularly wanted. Plus, a few days and 3 packs later, I got Varian, another I actually wanted, but still, a bit below average on returns here in terms of numbers. I know of some people that got much worse results though.
Yeah, you know whats funny though? I opened 1 leg on those 50 packs, and 4 since (opened roughly 15 or so more packs with gold). Only good one was Saraad, the others turned into beautiful dust. Edit: funny fact - on the pack I got the Saraad I also got a golden common, 2 rares and 1 epic. Was my best pack ever.
Actually ped I'm going to argue with you some more. There really is a 'skill cap' as far as it affects rank. Once you know how to actually build and play a deck you're still lucky to get a 60% win rate. At that point how high you go is dominated by your ability to outplay the draw wins. Yes the same people make the final tables on poker but only because they can play enough hands to compensate for the randomness. Now yes for a particular match up between two high ranked players skill can still decide the match, but it's more likely to be determined by draw. So for the skill factor to show itself, those two players would need to play many matches. That's why I say after a certain point your RANK (not the outcome of any individual pairing) is dominated by how many matches you have the time to play.
Yeah, having gotten to legend, I agree that pre-legend grind is affected by how much time you devote to it. 5 and up took a longass time and was really pretty boring (that season ramp druid and control warrior were like half the matches)
One the interesting corollaries re: RNG and Skill is that for a game with high RNG that has skill elements it basically means that minor differences in play (and results, such as 1% more WR) is actually indicative of large skill gaps. Baseball is like this, Poker is like this, etc. One thing that's kind of a "benchmark" is that if 55-60% WR is considered "good" we tend to call that game "highly random" since a "good" player can actually only win about 1 more game out of 10 than an average (50%) player.
