doombotmecha

ik this is a bit late but I missed this commentar and it's awesome.

HotS was never meant to be a competitive game, the matches are just too scripted. Also a lot of tactical gameplay options that are in mobas aren't in HotS, specifically to make the game more newbie-accessible. The flip side of this is that it took me up until today to actually find good advice on game flow and team composition, b/c I keep getting "oh there's no meta".

Hearthstone is just too rng-heavy and strategy-light for a competitive game. I mean, people talk about getting mana screwed in other games, but in HS a good chunk of a lot of meta decks is "this card will probably do something good for me, and the other guy probably doesn't have a counter to it". 

The only HS face that I care about is Trump, but I don't even play the game any more. The massive time investment to even get a good budget deck, let alone a meta deck or god forbid, a control deck, is just silly. I could play hearthstone and maybe have fun in six months, or I could load up warframe and have fun right now. I just watch Trump's matches and live vicariously through him. 

I went and watched a bit of grubby's stream, he seems great. I also watched a bit of MF Pallytime (Utube) to get an overview of how a few heroes feel in combat.

I also feel like competitive OW is the same way, despite how popular it is. There REALLY should have been more of a wait between the game launching and esports being a thing on it IMO. Just a few more months before we get to "everyone plays what the pros do despite not having the skills to make it work"

also (this is getting kinda ranty, isn't it), the subreddit (for Hots) was really terribly managed. imo all the hearthstone 2.0 discussion should have had its own flair so I could blacklist it, stuff was taking up most of the front page.

At least League could separate out its forums, so you had a mix of memes and gameplay concerns. blizzard has 3 subforums, one for competitive, one for bug reports, and a "general discussion" aka salt mining.

I'm really saddened by what's happened to SC2. It seems like its scene has dwindled down to a few hyperpros, and then.....nobody else. I want to like the game (i love the setting+characters) but there's so much to learn to even get to a vaguely competent skill level that I just....no way.

@doombotmecha I'm going to tell you now Control is actually straight up aren't viable in Hearthstone anymore. Like it's... not possible to play it without just losing due to the fact that Aggro and Midrange decks are too powerful and impossible for it to control down. Jade decks just have infinite value at least Jade Druid does for sure as they just get free scaling minions with cards and Jade Idol, making it impossible to control them down and further, Pirate Aggro is the most disgusting thing in the universe.

more or less gaining a free 1/1 with charge as it is played from your deck onto the board jsut for playing a pirate is BANANAS. Aggro already has an advantage in Hearthstone due to the fact that you CHOOSE your targets with your minions attacks. As this is the case Aggro already has an edge. They have more tools then ever now to generate free value while control doesn't really get much to help them survive. And, if they tech to beat aggro, they will have a lot of dead cards into the Jade match-up. Basically... control is nigh impossible to pull off these days due to the overwhelming disgusting power of these archetypes.

For SC2, ye RTS is stupid difficult. The main thing though is it never caught on in South Korea. So, while a lot of the pros are from there, very little of the viewer base is. As a result the scene has jsust been dying and it's cause that game has a learning cliff of which your expected to climb. Worse is with the Brood Wars remaster coming out most are jumping back to Starcraft 1. ((and that's weird as heck to say. A game's predecessor is probably going to kill it's comp scene completely.)) but ye, to learn SC2 or... really a lot of RTS you nearly have to dedicate your entire life to it they are just that hard to master and learn.

yeah, I've heard of the horrors of Pirate Warrior. They're literally releasing a card in the new set with the effect "eat a pirate". It didn't help that all the taunt cards bliz releases are either niche, locked to warrior, or trash.

People HOWLED after whispers of the old gods, about "C'thun this" and "Yogg that" but frankly that was the healthiest the game's been in a while, and might be for a while yet. we had a reprieve from secret paladin at last. I remember getting bodied by that deck at rank 20, if the pally curves out then there's just nothing you can do.....

HS just generally has a lot of wonky balance descisions. Purify is literal actual trash, whereas Flamewalker just made mage broken for like 90% of tavern brawls.

what I've heard about high-level starcraft 2 is that one early attack generally decides the game, and brood war wasn't like that as much. Like, you either scout the whatever-whatever timing attack, or it kills your worker line and you lose.