Stonekeep's Comments
Arena Leaderboards Update: May โ July 2021
I know some of the players from EU and NA (dreads, ShtanUdachi, SilentStorm to name a few), but yeah, for the most part its a separate community. It’s quite similar to Duels, which has some very consistent players who constantly get 12 wins runs but you don’t hear about them much, since neither format is very popular. But some people really love them.
Tavern Brawl - Ragnaros' Fire Festival
Thanks for posting, I just added your list ๐
Iksar's Twitter Q&A #20 Summary - Wailing Caverns Design, Return of Hero Cards, Undead Minion Type, Card Generation in Priest, "Hearthstone 2" And More!
Oh, that might be what he meant. I thought that he’s talking about Heroes and not players and was really confused.
I would love some more social features. If guilds come out, I’ll create one for HSTD ๐
Shop Update: (Last Chance) Eternal Flame Bundle (Three Alternate Hero Skins + Card Back) Now Available For $19.99 / โฌ19.99 (Expires July 20)
I took a closer look and indeed, it is similar to Blackrock Mountain pre-order card back, but it’s more… “molten”? It makes sense that its similar, since Ragnaros was summoned in BRM, he ruled BRM and his fight in WoW happened in BRM.
Fire Festival 2021's Week 1 Starts Now With Free Packs & Druid of the Flame Malfurion Hero Skin + Event Tavern Brawl!
I need to start complaining that I don’t earn enough money now, maybe I’ll win a lottery or something, haha.
Fire Festival 2021's Week 1 Starts Now With Free Packs & Druid of the Flame Malfurion Hero Skin + Event Tavern Brawl!
At least Shaman is viable now, it would be a nightmare to do it when the class was in the dumpster :p
Shop Update: (Last Chance) Eternal Flame Bundle (Three Alternate Hero Skins + Card Back) Now Available For $19.99 / โฌ19.99 (Expires July 20)
To be fair, Ragnaros doesn’t really “represent” any class, but since this is Hearthstone and Blizzard doesn’t actually have to follow the lore, I think that Shaman works best. Shaman is the master of elements, and Ragnaros is one of the four original Elemental Lords. Two other Elemental Lords – Al’akir and Neptulon – are Shaman cards too. Sulfuras is a mace, and maces are more of a Shaman (and Paladin) weapon than Warrior weapon in Warcraft lore too (Warrios are more about axes and swords). And when it comes to Warlock and flames, I’d say that Warlock focuses more on Fel flames (the green ones) – yes, the class can use regular ones too, but not more than Shaman (and Mage is the class using them most anyway).
So overall, I’d say that if I had to pick a class for Ragnaros, Shaman would be my first pick.
Shop Update: (Last Chance) Eternal Flame Bundle (Three Alternate Hero Skins + Card Back) Now Available For $19.99 / โฌ19.99 (Expires July 20)
“Only idiots pay for nice looking clothes, you just look better but clothes are clothes.”
“Only idiots pay for high quality food, it just tastes different while providing the same nutrients.”
“Only idiots buy decorations for their house, it’s a waste of money, they don’t do anything other than looking good.”
Or even:
“Only idiots pay for games since you can just download them from torrents.”
Yeah, no.
Is Core Set Successful? Which Cards Are the Best and How Many See Play?
We won’t necessarily be back to the problem, because from now on they can design random card generation with taking a better card pool into account. For example, Jandice Barov would most likely cost 6 from the get go if it was released after Core Set got introduced.
And yeah, I would love to see Death Knights back in action. They weren’t balanced very well (most of them were OP), but heck, they were incredibly fun to play with.
Is Core Set Successful? Which Cards Are the Best and How Many See Play?
I actually checked other expansions before writing it, and ~40% is the average number if we use similar criteria. So 28% was definitely below average. Probably should have mentioned it in the post itself.
But like I’ve said, I expect the number to rise by the end of this year – of course assuming that Blizzard knows what they’re doing and put those specific cards into Core Set for a reason (since they plan to explore those synergies).
Is Core Set Successful? Which Cards Are the Best and How Many See Play?
That’s definitely true – removing so many of the “filler” cards from Basic/Classic has bumped up the power level on random card generation by quite a huge margin. But I feel like it’s only a temporary problem, as the number of cards that generate other cards has went down significantly recently. In Barrens we have just a few of them – in particular Venomous Scorpid and Runed Orb are the only two that see common play. That’s almost nothing compared to some older sets.
If they keep things that way (less discovering or adding to hand from a random pool of cards), once 2020 sets rotate out, we should have a meta that’s not very focused on random card generation. In fact, right now the only deck that really takes advantage of those effects is Control Priest (and people hate it for that). Most of the other popular meta decks are nearly free of those effects.
Is Core Set Successful? Which Cards Are the Best and How Many See Play?
To be fair, the basic Demon Hunter deck was way more powerful than it should be. Especially before all the nerfs – you could run a free DH deck and it was better than most of the full meta decks. Demon Hunter balance was a mess in general, but now they more or less fixed it.
And I’m not sure why would you need to play the basic deck specifically? If you want a cheap option to finish the weekly 5 wins, there are some you can pick from (like Elemental Shaman or Face Hunter). Yes, they are not completely F2P, but if you play the game at all you should get enough free packs / gold to build them. I just feel like I’m missing something.
Nozdormu Day is Getting A "Monthly" Quest! Play 3 Games With Nozdormu In Your Deck For 1500 XP
Datamining didn’t say anything about ranked, so I would guess so. But we’ll see in ~2 weeks, can’t be sure yet.
Nozdormu Day is Getting A "Monthly" Quest! Play 3 Games With Nozdormu In Your Deck For 1500 XP
No idea yet since it’s just datamining. I hope they use Legendary Quest slot, but from the patch notes it sounded like everyone will get 2 Daily Quests (normal + Nozdormu).
3 months is still very quickly by Hearthstone standards, haha ๐
Fire Festival Coming July 6 - Battlegrounds Cosmetics, Legendary Quests, Druid of the Flame Malfurion Skin, Major Battlegrounds Rework In Future Patch
Yeah, I’m not sure why they still keep pumping “alternative” version of basic Heroes when there’s so many more they could pick. Like Fandral would be much better for this theme than Malfurion.
It still looks great, don’t get me wrong, but Fandral would be even better.
July 1 Reveal Stream Live Recap - New Expansion (United in Stormwind), Battlegrounds Cosmetics & Rework, Fire Festival
Yeah I think that Shadow Priest will be an Aggro deck itself for it to work, since a lot of the reactive spells are Holy. But it still needs some more support, we’ll see what other cards they reveal later.
PSA: Last Chance to Buy Emerald Malfurion Bundle and Disenchant Stealer of Souls For Full Dust
Sorry to hear that, I disenchanted it on the patch day and it was all fine. I’d just send a support ticket if I were you (if you care enough about it, of course, haha).
All Hearthstone Alternate Heroes - List of Cosmetic Hero Portraits And How To Get Them - November 2021
I think that some variations on a “main character” from a class is good, but I’d also like more diversity. E.g. Warrior is really cool – they have Garrosh, Magni, Deathwing, Annhylde and Rokara. A lot to pick from and design of each of them is quite different. Shaman is also good, for example. But Valeera is the biggest offender –
I think that having multiples of the same character mostly comes from the fact that recently they introduced Rewards Track portraits, Tavern Regular portraits and Book of Heroes portraits, all depicting same characters and all piling up. Hopefully things will get more diverse again soon.
Chains of Domination - World of Warcraft Patch 9.1 Wowhead Coverage
Definitely, I know a lot of people who play Hearthstone but never played or don’t like WoW.
I LOVED WoW, it was one of my favorite games in the history. Played it between 2007 and 2015, with breaks. I usually started the expansion, played for a year or so and then quit until next set. Sadly I no longer have time for an MMO (back in the day I could spend hours every day playing it, right now it’s no longer possible), but I still get tempted to get back from time to time.
It is with XP boost from Tavern Pass, bu the base XP is 1500 ๐