#361 - The Angry Chicken: “Fifty Shades of Green”
04/15/2020
• Garrett • Jocelyn
Tracking Link:
https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/
Sponsors:
Thanks to the Patrons over at Patreon.com/TAC
The Angry Chicken is directly supported by listeners like you via Patreon.com/TAC
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Intro: Welcome to The Angry Chicken!
On this week’s episode of The Angry Chicken much of Hearthstone’s future has been teased in Team 5’s latest Reddit AMA. More Demon Hunter nerfs are brewing as well as nerfs aimed at Sacrificial Pact, Albatross, Frenzied Felwing, and Kael’Thas.
Top of the Show Topic: How’s Post-Nerf Life?
- Went on a losing streak after doing pretty well sticking with Demon Hunter. Have since switched to Galakrond Warlock.
Patreon Thanks
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- Michael Wadden
- Parker Bailey
- Gikon
- Also a big thanks to Daniel Stewart and Pi for upping their pledges in the last week
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News
Reddit AMA
The Hearthstone team took to Reddit for an AMA yesterday. Here are the highlights!
Upcoming changes
- DH
- Expect 1 or 2 cards to see a change
- Still monitoring the data as it comes in
- Illidan is getting more voice lines to reduce the attack repetition, and a hero overlay for Metamorphosis but it wasn’t ready in time for the expansion because other classes can steal it
- Other standard cards
- Sacrificial Pact (too prevalent), Bad Luck Albatross, Frenzied Felwing (too strong), and Kael'Thas (too swingy). -Alex (Game Designer)
- Wild
- Quest Mage and Darkest Hour Warlock
- Play in a one-player fashion similar to other decks nerfed in the past
- There's going to be crazy combos in Wild, but these two decks in particular aren’t healthy
- Changes coming to Open the Waygate and Bloodbloom -Alex (Game Designer)
- Arena
- A full microadjust patch alongside these changes or shortly after
- DH is still a little too strong here and we want to bring up the other classes to close this gap
General
- Class identity/weaknesses - Are DH’s included in this type of design, are there any changes on the horizon for classes with card draw as a weakness?
- Will be amending, want it to be obvious through Year of the Phoenix
- They’re happy with Druid’s mana gen identity right now, for example
- Card draw will be revisited as a weakness. They want classes to all be able to draw some, but others be able to draw a lot. None of the classes should have zero card draw
- Demon Hunter classic set is not yet decided. It will be made up of Initiate, Phoenix, and still to come cards, but it’s up in the air to see how things play out. Will be solidified at a later date
- UI
- Long term, looking at Collection Manager updates, mostly for mobile
- Not going to give us an auto-squelch
- They’re open to new resources like different mana, or fury (something they experimented with for DH) but want to make sure it’s fun
- Larger team size/diversity of skills and ideas
- Unity engine upgrades
- Changed the “rules” around VFX, added more physical effects not just particles
- Added effects to cards outside of Legendaries
- Communication - where is it?
- It would be nice if the communication from devs was consolidated in one place, possibly weekly, whether that’s Reddit or the Hearthstone blog
- Yes, the new game mode coming later this year will pull from your collection and allow you to use all cards
- Also there will be achievements linked to old expansions
- This was part of the reason they added duplicate protection, they want to make sure you can get the whole expansion for a reasonable price
- Work From Home - has this impacted the team?
- No delays as of yet, though mobile testing has been a huge challenge
- Dealing with all the same issues the rest of us are
- Build around cards - Are you worried some are too strong and being played outside their intended build around condition?
- Alex and Zeph are okay in decks with duplicates because you’re still building around them by adding heavy card draw
- Adding a caveat to the card that mentions the start of the game offers no counterplay like bombs or albatross
- Apparently the cutoff for 11 stars vs 10 stars in legend is 3.0 MMR.
- “the exact Legend rank cutoff varies based on the season, number of players in the region, MMR distribution within the region, and Standard vs. Wild.” -John Yang
- Garrett: This is basically useless information since “3.0 MMR” is relative to a scale we don’t know.
Further down the line/Future plans
- Upgrade a card to golden (no timeline)
- Rearrange decks in Collection (this expansion cycle)
- Addressing classic set across the board, including Legendary minions
- Favorite upcoming archetype in one word -> Cats/Meow
- Buffs are on the table but nothing like Rise of the Mechs in the works right now
- Guilds/Clans. Not being worked on right now because of the progression, achievements, and new game mode being the focus of 2020, but it’s being talked about and will be reassessed later
- Reintroducing old card backs to be earned through events. No plans right now but the Rag card back was a test that went well
Links
1:03:27
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Grandmasters Returns this Weekend
2020’s first of two seasons kicks off this Friday.
- The first 3 weeks are Swiss Rounds
- At the end of the Swiss Rounds the top 8 point earners will go to Division A.
- The bottom 8 with form Division B
- Week 4 - 7 will be a 4-week Round Robin
- Week 8 Playoffs
- The winner of Playoffs from each region will qualify to the Hearthstone World Championships later this year.
- Top 6 from Division A automatically make it into the Playoffs.
- Top 4 from Division B compete in a play-in round to determine who will join the top 6 from Division A in a dual tournament bracket for Playoffs.
- Relegations
- Final relegation will be determined via a 3-match Play-In involving the 7th- and 8th-placed from Division A, and 5th- and 6th-placed from Division B.
- The winner of Playoffs from each region will qualify to the Hearthstone World Championships later this year.
Multi-Format
- Week 1: Conquest with 1 Ban
- Week 2: Four Deck Last Hero Standing with 1 Ban
- Week 3: Ten Deck Conquest with 6 Bans
- Players bring a deck for all 10 classes. Those decks will get banned down to 4 to be played.
- Everything else is standard Bo5 Conquest
Outland Inn-vitational Announced
April 21, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. PT, 20 players, $100,000 on the line
- Format: Demon Hunter Duel-fest
- Both teams play against each other through 4 rounds of best-of-three matches
- Each player will represent one of the ten classes and play as that same class in every match
- However, on rounds 2 and 4, one full team will play as the Demon Hunter!
- Scoring
- The winner of each best-of-three match will earn points for their team.
- Winning a match earns a team 2 points.
- At the end of four rounds, the team with the highest point total wins.
- Each member of the winning team will take home a cool US $6,500 while everyone else will still walk away with US $3,500.
- Additionally, the three players with the highest game score will get a US $1,000 kicker!
- All participants will stream their own perspective of the competition on their own channels from the comfort of their home, with the official Hearthstone Twitch and YouTube channels providing match commentary and big-picture updates.
- April 21 from 9:00 a.m. PT - 6:00 p.m. PT, watch 2 total hours of any Hearthstone stream on Twitch to get 1 Ashes of Outland card pack. Watch for 4 hours (consecutive or non-consecutive) to get another one! Watch time accumulates across the entire Hearthstone category, so long as your Battle.net and Twitch accounts are linked
Links
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Lead into interview here
Enjoy our interview with Hadidjah and Puffin
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Crazy Game Stories
You can send your Crazy Game Stories to TACpodcast@gmail.com.
Rob
Hello mayors of Chickenopolis!
Have you tried YOLO Alex in Battlegrounds yet? I just gave it a whirl and got first! So... 100% win rate confirmed! 😜
Here’s how it went for me:
T1: Bought token murloc
T2: Leveled up to **
T3: Sold token, leveled up to ***
T4: Sold Tidehunter, leveled up to ****
T5: Bought another Tidehunter and Kindly Grandmother
At this point, I’m at 11 heath and it’s finally time to see if I should have left this meme a dream. I upgrade to ***** and pick my dragons. I managed to pick up a Herald of Flame and (more importantly) a Razorgore!
I eeked out a tie the next round before starting my big climb! Not once, but twice I killed the first place player who had over 30 health. I bet they didn’t see that coming... I feel a little sorry for them.
I’ve attached a screenshot of my final board. I’m sure you’ve seen bigger, but it’s how quickly they came together that made it fun.
Emails
You can send your emails to TACpodcast@gmail.com
Rakkamar
Would you prefer monk or death knight added to the game in the next expansion?
Occularus
I have been playing since the beginning, never got higher than rank 10 in the old system. Partly due to lack of skill, but also significant ladder anxiety. I find my ladder anxiety has greatly decreased with the changes in Year of the Phoenix. Are there other changes you want them to make to the ladder experience, and how quickly would you want those changes made?
Outro
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Personal Stuff
Joce where can you be found?
Follow Jocelyn @JocePlays
The Gamers’ Inn
Follow Garrett @GarrettArt
NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.
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