“Hearthstone is not pay to win.”
I agree. Mostly. But it’s really hard at times like now. Number 1 deck is menagerie priest (T1), correct? The cost of this deck? A WHOPPING 13,880 dust. Rush Warrior (T1)? 100 more dust than priest at 13,980 dust. That’s a lost of dust. Shall we discuss?
For comparison:
Aggro hunter (T2) - 9,880 dust
Elemental shaman (T2) - 5,520 dust
Token druid (T2) - 3,000 dust
DH Demon Hunter (T2) - 8,760 dust
*numbers snagged from tempostorm and are for standard gameplay.
No its not pay to win if anything its the most free to play friendly it has ever been.
On the dust cost thats nothing my all time favorite deck Big Spell Mage was well over 20k dust and i never spend anything on Hearthstone.
Was that a standard or wild deck? Like I said, I tend to agree. Hearthstone is more accessible now than ever. However…
Standard, Control Decks are always expensive dust wise the fact that the current Priest one is only around 14k is a win for players.
Theres plenty Warrior ,Mage,Priest, Warlock control decks in the history of the game that all went above 20k dust cost.
In my opinion HS is not p2w, more like pay to play, cause for players that don’t invest in it (a lot of time or money) only cheap aggro decks are available and I would say it’s not the best thing that this game has to offer. Playing all classes and swaping decks every few matches is the best experience imho cause you never get bored with this game and you know exactly what each opponent play, which card they will play every turn and what play will throw a wrench in the works.
What decks cost in the past doesn’t matter. We’re talking about what’s in the meta now. I just see that, comparably, the two top decks, the only tier 1 decks, both cost much more than the tier 2 decks.
Not P2W but definitely more expensive than it should be and extremely stingy with handouts compared to Shadowverse or Legends of Runeterra or Duel Links.
Stop using Tempostorm. They don’t have a large player database, their reports are an opinion editorial unlike Vicious Syndicate or HSREPLAY. And of those 2 VS is slightly better.
Control Priest is Tier 3 outside of Top 1K Legend. So you would be arguing that Hearthstone is P2W for the top 0.01% of players.
But you can’t even do that, Token Druid was the only Tier 1 deck at Top 1K for VS last week.
Interesting. That pretty much takes my question and flips it on itself lol
It’s a coin flip in general, sometimes what you open in packs can be low roll and if combine that low roll with nerfs that go against you then it can be unfortunate to you then yes you can go backwards in dust. Then as to what time you started playing the game, most people who say it is f2p and they are great examples of that have all been playing for over 5 years or play for several hours a day. So in standard you can go through periods of not having a good deck at all even if all you buy is standard.
There is virtually no catch up mechanic for wild players… well other than spending, I’ve been trying to catch up slowly on older sets I’ve missed and I’ll still never have old adventures or be able to have them, I’m missing several reno pieces, loatheb. Everything in wild also pretty expensive now, largely most of the decks require several legendaries, newer cards are creeping their way into existing archetypes constantly so you might only be able to update one deck once you have it. Probably if you’ve been playing for a very long time you can survive in wild, you might even have 3-4 decks maximum.
As long as any card is behind paywall this game is “pay to win”. But it’s not as simple as that. You can be any rank without paying anything, but if you bought both whale- and standard bundles every expansion you’re much more likely to have cards for that sweet sweet top tier deck.
Asking if a CCG is P2W is also the wrong question. Buying cards IS an acceptable way foward.
Actually, let me rephrase that: In CCGs, spending real money to buy the cards IS the only way foward. It’s the expected way to play the game. You can’t go to your LGS and compete against the Guy at the counter for more MTG cards. If you want anything, you NEED to buy them.
In this market, HS differential when launched was that It was playable for free. CCGs are by Nature P2P, at the Very least. Hearthstone, not even that .
Depends really. I play wild because it’s a lot lot cheaper in the long run as the viable decks undergo just minor changes each expansion, so the number of cards you need to upkeep is very low.
Standard needs a lot more cards as you can’t use the older cards, so you need to buy more new cards in the latest expansion packs.
It used to be pretty simple:
P2W = the ability to buy items that influence gameplay
Cosmetic = the ability to buy items that have no impact on gameplay
Over the years, people (fanboy apologists) have started to shift these definitions and now argue that no game is P2W, as long as there is a way that you can get to the same level by grinding for months, which is ridiculous.
HS is p2w and always has been, those who disagree are just players with no experience of the game. If you can buy cards and play any deck or use any tech card then you have an advantage over others. For example, if your pocketmeta has only priests and you want to switch to control lock, you can only do it if you have the cards.
it is still pretty simple 
true, the only games which aren’t p2w are games like fortnite or apex, in which you can only buy skins which means a p2w player has no advantage over a f2p one.
thx for using the one word that tellsme you are trolling
thats how i know there is nothing worth reading
The number one deck is token druid.
Simply smashing your head against your keyboard would likely result in something more readable than your posts.
Hearstone is pay 2 have variety.
In Hearstone what is winning? Guess reaching legends? That you can do with cheap decks as well or just 1 deck anyway.
Or you define winning by being able to afford most of the collection?
Just my two cents here:
It mainly depends on how you define “Pay to win”. In general, I think it’s more useful to evaluate which mechanics are and are not present in the game.
This will be focussed on Constructed mode, as Arena isn’t influenced by purchases and Battlegrounds only has a minor influence.
Yes, the BG Pass arguably gives an advantage, but if you mainly play BG over constructed, it shouldn’t be too hard to save up the necessary gold and, if you are really committed to playing both BG and constructed as FTP you could easily run a constructed-focussed account on one region server and a BG-focussed account on another, thereby having two streams of gold.
On to the Constructed issues
No. By this I mean that one cannot increase the power of their deck by simply spending more money, nor are there “premium” versions of cards that are only accessible with high expenses. This contrasts with other games where you can “upgrade” your units/heroes/whatever by spending resources, thereby giving an advantage to those who can use money to gain more of those resources.
In HS, Mutanus is the same, whether you opened it, crafted it or purchased it. There is no mechanical difference between a regular, golden or diamond version of any card.
Once a player’s deck list is “complete”, they cannot invest more resources to further improve their deck’s power/win rate.
No. Aside from cosmetics and card backs (which have no in-game effect), there are no cards which cannot be acquired through opening packs and/or crafting. This was not always the case, but now even cards from the older adventures are craftable.
Yes. Cash purchases will inevitably increase the speed with which you fill your collection and allow you to potentially have the resources to build several decks, thereby more easily adapting to shifts in the meta.
In conclusion
Paying money will allow you to save time, but, once a deck list has been completed (which can be done as FTP) the paying player will not have any advantage over the FTP player in a given match.
Does this make HS P2W? As I said at the start of the wall of text, it depends on how you define P2W.
If (like me btw) you define it as “a game is P2W if the paying player has advantages unavailable to F2P players and/or will always be mechanically advantaged over the free player”, then no.
If you define it as “any game where real money purchases give any kind of benefit whatsoever”, then yes, like any game with non-cosmetic microtransactions, HS is P2W. If you’ll allow the strawman though, by this definition, basketball is P2W, since someone who can pay for sneakers has an advantage over someone who has to play barefoot.