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    Hearthstone Hearthstone Team AMA - April 14

    April 13, 2020

    Hearthstone Hearthstone Team AMA - April 14

    Hearthstone Team AMA - April 14

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 11:23 AM PDT

    Hey friends!

    On Tuesday 4/14, from 10:30 a.m. PT to 12:30 p.m. PT, members of the Hearthstone team will be around to answer questions asked in this thread. As mentioned in the initial announcement last Friday, we will get through as many questions as we can before taking a lunch break, with some team members returning to answer questions after lunch.

    Broadly represented will be game team leadership, design, production, features, UI, and art. Many of those involved worked on bringing Dragons to Battlegrounds, our Year of the Phoenix updates, the Demon Hunter, and our latest expansion—Ashes of Outland!

    When posting multiple AMA questions: Please try to post one question per comment. This will make it easier for others to read through the thread and will help the devs focus on one question at a time. However, please feel free comment as many times as you would like in order to get your questions posted. Try to make sure the question you are asking has not already been answered elsewhere.

    You can start posting your questions right now, and we'll see you tomorrow!

    submitted by /u/cmdylux
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    Solarian Prime casually casting 3 Box of Yogg Saron.

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 09:06 AM PDT

    Twin Cleaves (Battlegrounds Fanart)

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 06:52 AM PDT

    I think Antaen is imprisoned because he stole something.

    Posted: 12 Apr 2020 10:22 PM PDT

    Demon Hunter Still Have Problems: A Thesis

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 12:34 PM PDT

    Greetings, Reddit! I am Sirius Wolf, a Chinese Hearthstone player. If you visit r/CompetitiveHS regularly then you might know me as a player who enjoys creating fun and competitive decks and climb to high legend to prove them. I write deck guides and analysis for a Chinese Hearthstone website Iyingdi, and when I have the time I translate my guide into English to share with more people.

    Well, today I'm not going to bring forth another of my original decks. Instead, I'm going to explain to you why Demon Hunter as a class still have problems, and what problems are there precisely. This will not be a ranting post or rage quit post, but a post that does analyzes.

    I have played ladder ~50 games everyday since the AoO came out, and I am currently sitting at Legend ~700, CN server. The meta here is composed of 60% demon hunters, 25% Galakrond warlocks and 15% other decks, and it has been so since 2 days ago. Meanwhile, demon hunters has once again become the class with the highest win rates on HSreplay, one of the only two classes with positive win rates. (the other being warlock, the most widely recognised class to counter demon hunter.) I am saying that because I believe this is an indicator of problems. Also I believe I have played and thinked enough to be the one to write this article to show you what the problems are.

    In this article, I will mainly talk about the deck Aggro Demon Hunter. This deck has reigned top ladder for two days and is continuing to gain popularity. The deck does not run Raging Felscreamer and Priestess of Fury, instead it runs more low cost cards, mana burn, questing adventurer, Glaivebound Elite and warglaive of Azzinoth. If you haven't yet encountered this deck, treat me as a harbinger of ruin. This deck is the deck of the meta; it has proved itself in the past few days in ladder as well as in the golden series (CN's largest HS tournament) which ended yesterday. (I will post deck code in comments.)

    Before we begin, though, I would like to introduce you two concepts:

    Punishment and Counter

    When one makes less optimal plays (or simply, mistakes), or one runs less optimal cards, they are usually punished. For example, if you trade all your minions into 3 health or less and got board wiped by a Crazed Netherwing (when your opponent is very likely to have one), you are punished. If you run 2 copies of invoke cards in your Highlander Rogue deck and can't play your Zephrys when you need him, you are punished. Sometimes one can get away with them, or the results remain the same, or they work out due to surprise elements or high-rolls, but usually worse choices would have a worse outcome.

    When a deck or a card failed to function the way they should be because of opponent's card choices, the deck or card is countered. For example, Bad Luck Albatross counters Highlander decks. Silence (the card) counters Edwin Vancleef. Acidic Swamp Ooze counters high value weapons, therefore counters weapon-based aggro decks like Dragon hunter or Pirate Warrior. When you counter a card you usually gain great advantage in that game, and when you run counters in your deck, you will have a better win rate against the deck that you choose to counter.

    Punishments and Counters are the essence of Hearthstone's competitivity. Punishments encourage people to make less mistakes and improve their decks, while Counters encourages people to make changes or even create new decks to fight against the most popular decks, therefore the meta will be constantly evolving in one or two months so the game won't become stale too quickly.

    Above is the fundamental theories of this article. Now I will explain the problems of demon hunter based on them.

    Demon Hunter Punishes You For No Reason

    The first card stepping into the spotlight is [Altruis the Outcast]. It is a card that is capable of removing a great board, especially combined with [Twin Slice] and/or [Skull of Gul'dan]. Just before I begin my writing, I survived to turn 9 with 20+ health when facing an Aggro Demon Hunter, and played a Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. He played Altruis, Skull of Gul'dan and many other cards including two pairs of twin slice. Of course he destroyed my entire board. And by the way he dealt exact lethal damage to my face (20+ damage! And he is an aggro deck, not the inner demon combo deck). I didn't even had the chance to play the Zephrys in my hand to find healings.

    Looking back, using my hearthstone sense for 5 years, I drew the conclusion that I was punished because I played minions into a board swipe.

    The problem is: Alturis has too big a board swipe. I can't play around it because (1) I can't calculate how much damage it can deal; (2) It deals too much damage that if I want to play around it, I should play no minions at all. And hearthstone is a minion based game, there are few decks that does not run minions, and those few decks usually run minion-summoning spells.

    Another card that worth mentioning is [Mana Burn]. This card is frequently used in Combo demon hunters, and recently has also been a 2-of in aggro demon hunters in top legend, CN server. (I am not too sure about other servers.) Here comes another case from another game I played today:

    I used highlander priest and encountered an aggro demon hunter. He was on the play and I was on the coin. I kept a pretty good hand, with a disciple of galakrond (1 mana minion), a breath of infinite and a holy nova, both card are great against demon hunters because most of their minions have 2 health.

    Turn 1 he played a Battlefiend. I played a disciple of galakrond. Turn 2 he played another battlefiend, a pair of twin slice to remove my disciple of galakrond, and played mana burn. With 0 mana on my second turn, I could do nothing but pass the turn. Next turn I am down to ~15, and my opponent played a frenzied felwing, a 3 health minion that is out of reach of breath of the infinite, and the game is practically finished before I have the chance to play my second card. (I did play it but still died on turn 6.)

    Another case is against a combo demon hunter. As a priest I managed to kept my health at 30 throughout the game. Turn 6 he played Skull of Gul'dan and Turn 7 he began his combo. When he passed his turn I have only 1 health left. Well that shouldn't be too big a problem because he has played his full combo (apart from Zephrys), so he have little damage left in his deck. I only need to heal to 10+ before he draws his duplicates and plays Zephrys to find pyroblast. As a priest who has healing written in his class identity, it shouldn't be difficult, not to mention I have a Zephrys in my hand. Well, the problem was, he played 2 copies of mana burn as part of his combo, so I only have 4 mana left in my turn 8. I couldn't even get a card to remove his Kael'thas.

    What am I punished for in the two cases above? Well, apparently I am punished for having mana. Whatever I was planning to play, mana burns punish me for that -- I haven't even made any play yet!

    Hence the subheading: demon hunter punishes you for no reason.

    Demon Hunter is difficult to be countered

    You can tell by the fact that demon hunter still having a very high popularity, even though the next popular class is warlock, the class that theoretically counters demon hunter by sacrificial pact and a ton of both healing and removal. In fact, the win rate of demon hunter is still growing, even though more and more people are actively trying to counter demon hunter.

    The meta has failed to counter demon hunter.

    And that's because demon hunter has too much raw power to be countered.

    Every piece of damage in aggro demon hunter can be used as a removal, to out-tempo any tempo you may gain by playing a counter. Skull of Gul'dan is a ridiculous card even when nerfed which provides huge tempo when exiled, and in aggro demon hunter it's always exiled because all your cards have low mana-cost so you can play them to move your skull to the left-most. Taunt minions can't counter demon hunter like it usually does to aggro decks because of Kayn Sunfury and all other cheap removal tools. Minions with special effects like water elemental has also failed, because you are always out-tempoed by demon hunter when you play it and he can simply remove it with his board.

    And more importantly, with the card draw of demon hunter, he is more likely to draw a card that need to be countered than you to draw your counter. So no matter how many counters you run, you still lose plenty of times simply because you don't draw them. And here comes the next point:

    Demon hunter draw their entire deck

    Exile has the potential to be a great mechanic, but not when the most frequent exile effects are "draw a card". In practice, aggro demon hunter can go to 20-cards deep when other decks are only at 10-cards deep.

    Some may think the examples I provided above are high-rolls that does not occur often. But that's not the case. With this much card draw and [Sightless Watcher] on top of it, demon hunter will have the card they need most of the times. They almost always have Skull of Gul'dan and Altruis the Outcast on time.

    This brings forth two problems. First, playing or playing against demon hunters can quickly become boring, because with their entire deck drawn, most games looks alike. There is always the turn-6 skull, always a big board swipe by Altruis, always Metamorphosis to close the game.

    Second, it makes demon hunter very difficult to counter. If you can't draw your acidic swamp ooze before the opponent always draw their warglaives of azzinoth, you can't counter him. If you draw one piece of healing when your opponent draws 3 pieces of damage, you can't counter him.

    This is the problem that is the most difficult to fix, because apparently card draw has become a class identity for demon hunter. But having high efficiency card draw in too many cards like we now have will produce a deck with very consistent card draw that results in them drawing an entire deck, which always causes the two problems above.

    Conclusion

    Demon hunter still needs some tuning. Alturis the outcast and mana burn are two very powerful cards that all decks can't play around, which destroys games and offers terrible experience on top of it. These two cards can't be fixed by adding some mana, instead they need reworks.

    Many of demon hunter's cards are overpowered, so even when the meta does try its best to counter demon hunter, it has failed as of know. Some cards should be nerfed, but I can't tell exactly which. The data should be handy here.

    Too many card draw effects will bring problems. Some card draw of demon hunter has too much efficiency and should be tuned down. When making future designs, do not make most of the exile effects "draw a card".

    That's all I have to say on demon hunter. English is not my first language, so hope I've made my points clear. And I do hope that the meta becomes better.

    Thank you for your reading. Any sort of discussion is welcome!

    submitted by /u/SiriusWolfHS
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    My Netherspite Historian has some friends in very high places

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 12:55 PM PDT

    Some Positivity for Dean and the Dev Team

    Posted: 12 Apr 2020 05:15 PM PDT

    Some of you you may have seen a twitter post from Dean Ayala about negativity and toxicity in the hearthstone community. (https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/1249466208308453377). It's clearly affected him quite badly and probably quite a few others too. Hearthstone may not be perfect (what game is) but I want to just talk about some of the best things that have happened over the last year in Hearthstone and please post your own positive comments below. Dean I hope you see this.

    In the last year the dev team has worked so hard and have honestly listened to feedback. We've had really quick balance changes, both buffs and nerfs, a whole new game mode, more cards than ever before, a whole new class, big changes to ranked and smaller changes to arena, lots of single player content, lots of free rewards and lots of new ways to get new and returning players into the game So many great new things have happened. They have experimented a lot and I say go for it. It may not always work but experimentation, failing, correcting and learning are way better than nothing at all. What I see though is that everything they do in this game comes out of pure love and passion. They clearly want to make a game they are proud in and it shows.

    We have had a standard year with a fully interlinked story that has really brought the lore of hearthstone and pushed it further than before. It honestly makes the game have its own unique and fun law which transcends the lore of world of warcraft. I've loved the lackeys being continued throughout the year. I've really enjoyed this story and hope they try it again.

    The new class I think was such a big and bold move, it must have been so hard to create and I love it. I've always wanted a new class and I love demon hunter. It feels very distinct to the other classes but also fits right at home. It had a few teething problems but blizzard wanted us to be able to play this and then immediately fixed the issue and are looking to continue working on it, exactly what I want. I don't expect a new class to be perfect out of the bat but they put their effort in and I love it and I really hope they do more in the future. Seriously, Monk and Death Knight here we come I hope.

    This past year I have been fortunate to play so many amazing decks. To name a few I've personally really enjoyed: All the quest decks from Uldum (I love quests so much), dragon hunter, highlander hunter, evolve shaman, reborn paladin, handbuff beast hunter and elemental mage. I have had so many decks I've wanted to try this expansion and they are all a lot of fun.

    I could say so much more but don't want to get too long so please post your own positive comments about hearthstone. It has come so much and honestly Dean and the dev team have pushed the game so much more in this last year, it is better than it has ever been. Please keep it up. Love to you all.

    submitted by /u/Munrot07
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    It's a shame Holy Nova no longer goes face. I get it, but still...

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 06:55 AM PDT

    Constructive Criticism: Power and Responsibility

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 03:47 AM PDT

    After seeing Dean's recent tweet, I wanted to re-post some advice I made a while back about constructive criticism:

    So it is becoming increasingly clear that members of the Blizzard hearthstone community come here to get feedback about the game. That is great, but I feel like we as a community can do a better job of meeting them half way and making r/hearthstone a force for positive change in the game. Or, to go all Uncle Ben, now that we have Power to change the game we have a Responsibility to behave well.

    I also get that a lot of people don't have a ton of experience with constructive criticism, but I think that it is a really important skill to learn in all walks of life. So I've provided a few tips that have helped me up my interpersonal relationship game. I've provided an example of what I consider constructive criticism and one of (all too common) toxic criticism, along with some tips in making your comments fit in the former category. We are a passionate, intelligent community and I think that a global improvement in our communication game will make us a real force for good in the future of this game:

    Constructive Criticism: "I really enjoyed watching the Last Call Qualifier this weekend. I did have one recommendation, though: I'd like to see the commentators focus more on the high level decisions that these guys are making. Like when commentator X pointed out the difference between Druid variant Y and Z. I'd never thought about that, and it really opened my eyes. I found the stuff that commentator X said in game A less helpful, since I feel like most players watching..."

    Toxic Criticism: "What a fucking joke. Another tournament ruined by shithead commentators who obviously have no idea what they are doing. Epsorts lol. Fucking devs ruining this game again."

    Some takeaways:

    -Write as if you are looking the person you are talking about in the eye. Would you say this to their face? If not, think very carefully before posting. We want members of the Blizzard community to come here for feedback... lets meet them half way and treat them with respect.

    -Provide specific examples where possible. Talking in generalities leads to people talking past each other. Example: Presidential Debates.

    -Grownups don't swear. Not because it is offensive or anything like that, but because it sends clear cues that the speaker isn't to be taken seriously.

    -Use the first person. Your opinion is not gospel. If you thought the Qualifier was bad, say "I didn't enjoy the Qualifier because X". Don't say "The Qualifier was bad." You don't weaken your argument by speaking precisely.

    -Realize that you might be wrong, and argue so that you won't look like a monster if someone points this out.

    -Call jerks out, but try to do so in a respectful way. This works surprisingly well. If people are mean to you be nice to them, and they will pay it forward. Break the cycle.

    and probably the most important tip:

    -You don't win an argument by making someone else lose. This is the internet, and people don't win arguments on the internet. What you can do is meet people in the middle and 'get to yes'.

    Now go forth and be good.

    submitted by /u/Archenteronhs3
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    Lots of draw and SMOrc!

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 01:42 PM PDT

    Got leoroxx today and already he’s my fav card out of ashes of outland

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 04:01 AM PDT

    Bringing back the sorry emote

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 04:04 AM PDT

    Getting mad when someone wins a game that you feel they don't deserve is something I see happen all the time in Hearthstone. Honestly, I think it kind of just comes with the territory for some people. Usually, you get over it in 30 seconds but still, that sorry emote made things so much better. I remember a specific time during good ol' vanilla hearthstone. It was me vs a mage and the game was over. Mage had no hand, no board, nothing. Meanwhile, I had a full board with lethal on the next turn, I had won...or I would have won if they hadn't topdecked the pyroblast. It was a loss that would have definitely frustrated me, but for some reason, hearing that genuine "I'm sorry" from Jaina made it much better. Just that recognition of "Hey...I know you had me, but luck said otherwise." I really feel like bringing it back would be great.

    submitted by /u/ADVENTM
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    Oh no I’m gonna burn a card

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 04:40 AM PDT

    The greatest Bamboozle of all time

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 05:02 AM PDT

    What has been the most badly predicated card in Hearthstone history?

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 10:40 AM PDT

    My vote goes for either Deathknight uther where people thought he would be an unstoppable or juggernaut or Skull of Manari where people said it would be worse than trash.

    submitted by /u/Tacitly200
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    Power creep, power creep never changes

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 08:03 AM PDT

    Bamboozled into dormant(imprisoned antaen)

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 04:14 AM PDT

    This is the best Arena card for Demon Hunter, change my mind.

    Posted: 12 Apr 2020 05:22 PM PDT

    Been playing since Naxx and I finally made it to Legend. Thanks quarantine.

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 08:59 AM PDT

    After a lot of changes. Big hunter is approved.

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 07:19 AM PDT

    Golden Cobalt Scalebane change needed?

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 07:45 AM PDT

    Cobalt Scalebane is currently suffering from the same issue that plagued Soul Juggler for quite a while. Generally, when you're playing Cobalt Scalebane, you're not trying to buff one thing by tons of attack (unless you're somehow lucky enough to have it always land on a cleave minion), you're usually trying to buff a specific minion to either make it less health-heavy with low attack (if you're playing Pyramad, or more commonly with Annihilan Battlemaster), or to prevent it from getting sniped by an opposing Zapp Slywick. In either case, having golden Scalebane giving +6 attack rather than +3 attack twice makes it worse than having 2 regular Scalebanes as it halves the chance of the buff landing on the intended minion.

    Feel free to disagree with me if you think it giving +6 attack is better, I'd like to hear other people's opinions!

    ​

    Edit: removed something that didn't need to be there because I copied and pasted my own post without reading it before I clicked "post" I am an astronomical imbecile.

    submitted by /u/SpongebabeTwitch
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    I love this expansion

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 11:02 AM PDT

    503 DH Wins only reached level 54 [BUG stucked at 499 wins, Please Help]

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 04:28 AM PDT

    This is so sad, please Blizzard just add him to standard

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 10:59 AM PDT

    First Solarian Prime, and it really didn't hold back on face damage

    Posted: 13 Apr 2020 02:33 PM PDT
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