First off I understand Poison has a purpose - to hit that big stat minion you just couldn’t otherwise destroy, and is needed as a possibility in each game.
Problem is poison is too common these days: seems half the end games I reach these days aren’t a matter of tribe v tribe, or tribe v menagerie … but 2/3 tribe + poisons vs similar. People need to ditch half their tribe to tech in poisons.
Would either of these be too unbalancing in the opposite direction?
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Poison reduces a minion to 1 health. (does its attack damage, then poisons if still alive)
- A minion can’t poison while divine shielded.
Nowadays people can spend an entire BG building up a tribe with big stats, and then get demolished by someone who just happens to get reborn maexxna, or that div-s/poison amalgadon. No stats, no buffs, no long game strategy building up a board. Single or two turn swings in power to demolish someone’s 500+ stat board (not easy to get) with a few minions with single digit health. People will tech in an unbuffed SI-fin just 'cause.
It is completely demoralising to see your extremely high-roll high stat board be beaten by someone who lucked in to those couple tier5/6 cards. Sometimes there is no counter to it, except to ditch your board and copy it. Or perhaps hope you can find the selfless/baron combo. (So many games I’ve come up short, the baron always hides from me)
I understand there are counters to poison, especially if the poison deck is low stats. Not all BG’s have the minion pool to counter it. Countering it requires actually finding the right minions.
Big mech boards seems rather hard to get. I see them, but not that often. (it is satisfying to beat someone’s low-mid stat poison combo with though)
Nadina dragons also can be hard to pull off. again I see them, but not commonly.
The extremely high-roll very rare frogger board will satisfyingly deal with poisons. (assuming baron survives a few rounds)
But maexxna/si-fin/amalgadon poison combos are common. everywhere all the time.
I assume amalgadon is here to stay. (demoralising in its own way)
Would removing the ability for reborn minions (specifically maexxna, but also with lich king) to retain poison be too specific?
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this would make some hearthstone cards bad, so it will never happen
isn’t this a buff to poison?
If you attack a divine shield minion, you reduce its health to 1
Besides amalgadon which is too powerful? it reduces the effectiveness of the selfless/baron on poison combos. Would it reduce it too much?
I’ve seen people with 2 reborn maexxna’s with a selfless baron combo and ding, div shield on them, and bingo you have 6 poison attacks from 2 minions.
Ok, perhaps you’d have to adjust the effect to apply poison if it does damage. That way div shielded minions still can’t be poisoned.
Another option could be that a poisoned minion doesn’t die, but instead dies when it next takes damage, on or its next attack. (if it attacks a 0 attack minion)
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Perhaps: A minion can only poison on its first attack.
I mean that outside of battlegrounds, so in a normal hs game, making poison not active if you have divineshield would ruin man cards (there is a 3 mana 1/1 divine shield + poison).
So you can’t change how divine shield and poison works.
Also the effect of posion itself can’t really be changed.
They may make a new keyword for it with the second effect you described, otherwise it would be confusing and inconsistent between game modes
I think poison should only be on certain minions and that’s it. You shouldn’t be able to apply to all murlocs, it should only be apart of the minion and not applied. I understand we need it in the game but right now there is too many minions that can have it.
Yes, they’re both too much.
I think the core issue is here. I’d add a Pirate that has the text “Your Pirates can’t be Poisoned.” Antivenom Smuggler, maybe? Every other tribe has access to Divine Shield and/or Cleaves, so I feel pure Pirates needs the hard counter most. Could be used in Menagerie as well.
But for the most part, I don’t think big changes are needed. I definitely don’t feel sorry for Dragons here where they can get Nadina for Divine Shield and Pyrospawn to pop bubbles. I don’t feel sorry for Elementals when they have Divine Shield and pseudo-Cleave. I don’t feel sorry for Mechs or Beasts here. And everyone can Selfless and Baron.
It should be the type of thing where, if they assemble their poison Exodia, you need to find a counter card or you’re going to lose. That means you’re going to lose sometimes to it.
Really just give Pirates something, that’s all.
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Really the culprit in my opinion is the amount of easy Divine Shield AND Reborn Rattler. I think a large plurality of BGs players (myself included) agree that Poison–specifically poison scam builds–is a very deflating experience in contrast to APM Pirates, big Elementals, Kalecgos dragons, or Aggem Menagerie builds. However, really the biggest culprit to me is that Selfless Hero + Baron, or Reborn Rattler is really what enables it all.
The suggestions I’d put forth are thus:
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Remove Selfless Hero. This is to me long overdue and this minion has been frustrating for a long time due to its interaction with poisonous minions.
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Remove Maexxna. Honestly, the interactions with Rattler and other beasts are just super fun, and I like having snake around. Just curb the broken element (having 2 infinite attack minions in one body, with possibility of Selfless Hero shields).
-Consider making Sefin Avenge (4). Sefin is so easy to get online & you can just pivot into 1 or 2 sefins and selfless heroes. I would implement this LAST, as murlocs are going to need help if you get rid of Selfless Hero, and I’m not certain that they’d be competitive if their endgame was that much harder to get online.
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No love for demons? maybe impulsive trickster has soured everyone on demons being weak.
I think you demonstrate the problem.
Selfless is not a problem, because you’re sacrificing on board stats to get random div shield. Golden selfless + baron, ok well done. It’s combo with poison that is bad.
Maexnna was never a problem until reborn. Never thought it was overpowering. If someone got div shield on it, well ok then, some luck. (or sacrificing another minion spot with baron)
ItsBen321 just posted a video demonstrating how demoralising everything is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avbd-Gy6bPo
Transitions from APM pirates to poison, because you have to, in high-roll div/posion amalgadons combo. Gets beat by lich with unbuffed basic poisons with reborn/div shield.
Not sure how much of the meta has been screwed up by battle buddies - have they accelerated the push to poison?
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This is the only change that I would support, although I say the damage cap did more to screw over pirates than poison does. They used to wipe out the people trying to poison scam before they could get it going properly.
Your observations about counters to poison are spot on. Sometimes you don’t get them, and that’s part of the game, but the answers are in the mode for every class that isn’t pirates.
2 Likes
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why poison is so bad and the bridge people are dying on. Someone please explain. I’ll give you George’s divine shield murloc poisons can be a bit frustrating - beyond that, really does require a good high roll to make use of it.
Only time it really comes problematic is late game for me. At that point, what other options are there? I see you playing 100/100+ pirates, 200/200+ dragons with Tavish, or some ilidan cheese - what am I supposed to do? End all planning as there is nothing to do, and concede? Only option is to use poison to counter play… and even then it’s dicey.
To me it sounds like short sightedness. Removal of poison opens the door to the next thread complaining about how quickly pirates can stat up, or how dragons have an unfair advantage. Your removing options instead of adding them. Game is simplistic enough.
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The question becomes one of fairness and balance.
The fact that in 2 turns you can - fairly easily - go from an extremely crappy board to one that can defeat an extremely high roll pirate board is worse.
If you get those good rolls/boards all game, spend 12 turns building a fantastic board with a few high stat minions, should someone with a crappy board be able to have a single good turn which effectively neutralises your board?
IMO someone with 4x 100/100+ minions should be nearly GG vs someone with barely 50/50 between all 7 minions, no matter what single turn RNG your opponent gets.
I like poison as tech to remove one card, not as a mechanic whereby you ditch all your minions you’ve built up, and replace with low stat minions to defeat 500/500 of your opponents stats with.
Why build up stats? Just go for poison with divine shield.
It’s mostly amalgadons. Rather than supplementing your build, they tend to become your build.
Spores are pretty much trade minions, Maexxna with reborn is a bit cheesy, but nothing like divine shield poisonous Amalgadons that can refresh their shields. Murlocs can get pretty beefy, but so can anything really.
If there’s no poison then what the hell do you do in the lategame? Just continue scaling? That’s even more lame than losing to poison.
You obviously have not read my OP or what is in this thread.
This is not about removing poison, it is about rebalancing the late game to make non-murloc all poison builds less dominant…
… more particularly I’d like to see it where certain tribes can build up during the game and still be competitive vs someone with who lucked into a poison/ds amalagadon & those other minions.
you know, where 12 great turns can be ruined by someone who had 2 good turns.
RNG should not be that impactful.
You say non-murloc, but you really mean “all the good ones” because Murlocs can’t get DS or Reborn.
There is LESS luck to getting Amalgadons or Maexnas than there is to getting the key scaling pieces in other builds in a timely manner.
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If there is easy poison divine shield late game if you high roll, why have 8 pointless rounds?
Amalgadeons are 100% luck. There is no skill in it. Having Brann to double your rolls isn’t skill. If you don’t get poison or divine shield, it’s failed minion. Sell it. Why are you keeping it? (Especially if mechs aren’t in the game)
This is exactly my point.
Why spend a whole game building a highroll pirate or demon or some other board which takes very good RNG … when it can be outclassed by a relatively easier to get late game poison build, that can quite often be achieved in two turns.
I just saw a game earlier, where someone had a big pirate board (a couple over 100), and ditched two 40/50 stat minions for two 2/6 SI-fins, so they might possibly have a chance of hanging on … vs poison/ds
As opposed to dumping a big unit for a selfless, or a Zapp, or the AoE Deathrattle?
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Zapp /selfless/ghoul are tech cards that are used situationally - and are only useful with the right board to back it up.
As opposed to dumping your multiple big stat units you’ve spend many turns building up, for some poison/ds or poison/reborn - which is good against most late game boards you’ll encounter.
A great frogger board will pwn a low stat poison board most days - but good frogger boards are extraordinarily difficult to set up - and require finding in the order of 14-15 specific cards. (eg 4x frogger, 3x mccaw, 3x baron, 2x snake - 1-2 taunters, rat pack and sewer rat)
5 cards - brann + 2x amalgadon + maexxna + snake = effectively 5 poisons on board with 3 minions. yes they’re all tier 5/6 … but that frogger board wants 5 x tier 5, 1 of which is a highly competitive unit and used in multiple comps (thus harder to find than most Tier 5’s)