Hearthstone Impressions

I’ve played a little bit of Hearthstone now and I want to drop a little feedback. Keep in mind, it’s still in beta, but it plays like a pretty complete game. For that, I’d say they’re doing a good job with it so far. It’s fun, but it’s far too simple. I have a decent win/loss ratio (I think) but games are nearly always one sided. Either I wreck them or they wreck me – it’s hard to be much fun on either side of that. This is because of the simplicity. Bad draw early on can create a deficit that can never be recovered from. However, it’s the lack of countering that is my real complaint. I played a game where on turn 3 or 4, the opponent played a card to “steal” one of mine, used that to kill my taunt creature and (clearing my side of the board) and dealt 10 damage. Prior to that turn we were equal with full health but I had 2 strong(ish) cards in play and he had one weak one. At the end of the turn I’m down 1/3 of my health and he had 5 minions to my 0. No way to stop it. No way to counter. What I’d love to see is a Magic the Gathering style counter spell mechanic. The ability to cast certain types of spells during the opponents turn would be such a huge improvement. It would at a little complexity. Do I save this burn spell to see what my opponent does or use it now? I’ve seen many games where either side could have stopped a loss by simply being able to stop one spell or one minion during a key fight. It just needs a little more. (more…)

From the Web: Conan O’Brien Plays World of Warcraft

For any mutual fans of Conan O’Brien and WoW… this is pretty much a must watch. Conan goes to Blizzcon ’13, plays a little bit of WoW and brings his special brand of humor to cast the 3v3 tournament.

 

Yes, I know I’m a little late with finding this video. So sue me. (Actually, don’t sue me).

Hunter PVP & Rated Battlegrounds

I’ve PVP’d on my hunter a bit in the past, but it’s always been just random battlegrounds or pretty casual arenas. Recently however, my friend Sixin has convinced me to start trying things a little more seriously. So I joined his PVP guild in a few rated battlegrounds. Well… it was awesome. We won several matches, lost very few, and I was near the top of the charts each time. I decided to move that character over to the guild and did some more with them (even landed on one of their rated teams). A handful more matches in and I find myself sitting at 1600 rating with the Stone Guard title and think maybe it’s time to take this a little more seriously. Then I started looking at where I can improve and found some horrible things. (more…)

Patch 5.3: Crazy Changes for PVP

Blizzard has really been doing an awesome job this expansion bringing us consistent, frequent, and meaningful patches. Upcoming patch 5.3 appears to be no exception so far. While, there are a lot of strange data mining discoveries so far (such as a spell for a third talent specialization) the biggest changes I’m seeing are to PVP. First off… hunters – gone! Second, resilience is being removed from gear. Finally, PVP will now feature gear scaling similar to challenge modes. Okay, so only two of those things is true. Follow after the break to see which and also the rest of the patch notes relating to PVP.

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