Plague Lords - Another Unfun, anti-HS Boss

Hello all,

Just a note that if you haven’t played through both chapters, there may be some spoilers ahead. A little about me: I play mostly single-player content within Hearthstone so when a new adventure comes out I’m usually pretty excited. I’ve completed the last couple runs on Heroic and with all classes. That being said…

I honestly don’t understand how Blizzard’s Hearthstone team can continually make the same mistakes with every last boss on adventures. The other bosses you face are generally interesting and provide mechanics for the player to work around. They also have decks and hero powers that are strong against some types of decks and weak against others. Those sort of mechanics usually end up being pretty balanced which makes the encounters fun. So then, what ends up being the one thing every single person complains about every single adventure run?

  • “I absolutely crushed the first 7 bosses then died on turn 4 to the end boss.”
  • “I built my deck differently, got through the 7 bosses then died on turn 5 at the end boss.”
  • “I did okay through the first 7 bosses, then actually just got a god draw and dumpstered the last boss due to rng.”

This adventure, of course, is no different. The first 7 bosses of each wing have decks and hero powers that can be very scary in the right circumstances (especially on Heroic). Decks the player builds can be great against certain bosses and then really struggle against others. Well done HS team! The first 7
of each chapter I find very fun and think it provides some great flavor to the experience.

The first plague lord is a bit of a joke but with the added in caveat of “but you can fight him multiple times”. Personally, I don’t see how it’s any more fun to fight a broken deck 2, 3 or 4 times rather than once. He has 5+ of all of the most powerful murloc cards to just steam roll you and will constantly turn your minions into murlocs. What does that mean? That means that most of your treasures can end up being useless. Which also means that you built this deck just to have the game turn up the anti-fun meter to 11 and delete all of your cool synergies.

Then you get to the second plague lord. Boy what a fun encounter this is rolls eyes. Not only did Blizzard employ the worst mechanic from the last expansion (minions rotate to different sides of the board) they also give him the most anti-fun and anti-hearthstone cards in the game: Vanish and Psychic Scream. It’s like they were sitting there thinking:

-“Yes, but what if the player finally get grips on this very annoying hero power and are able to start pushing damage.”
-“Oh, well then just put like three copies of Psychic Scream and Vanish into the deck so we can force them to constantly start over, lose tempo and have no cards in their hand. That will make it a lot more fun and also requires us to not use any imagination!”
-“Yeah! Great idea! Our stats show that players LOVED playing against Vanish and Psychic Scream when Cancer-Quest Rogue and Raza Priest were dominant.”

I honestly don’t understand their reasoning behind making the second plague lord that annoying and un-fun. Mainly because it’s obvious that they made this encounter un-fun intentionally.

2 Likes

I found it pretty interesting to fight the second plague-boss with the board turn. You can predict how it goes and play a single minion knowing that in two turns you’re gonna get it back. This is just a different kind of gameplay. Plus once 100 damage inflicted the enemy hero power changes so there’s no turning anymore… I think this is a relevant power considering the “madness” theme.

I agree with you that it gets easy to predict and it’s not too bad to work around as long as you have minions to ‘sacrifice.’ That’s where my complaint of Vanish and Psychic Scream comes in; you finally get it working and he plays one of two cards that have nothing to do with his mechanics or lore.

I think it’s relevant to the madness theme to a point, but I think it was very lazy of them to just reuse this old hero power. I could come up with 10 different themed ideas that would have worked that aren’t reused, so there’s no way that a team with the kind of talent and passion that the HS team has couldn’t come up with something original.

Then you get to the second plague lord. Boy what a fun encounter this is rolls eyes . Not only did Blizzard employ the worst mechanic from the last expansion (minions rotate to different sides of the board)

I could not believe it when I saw it. Seriously, they used the most annoying and unfun mechanic for a Boss (carousel gryphon) and slapped in a Last boss…?

Good Lord, at least make the thing easy when you put unfun mechanics like this, otherwise it turns into a annoying mechanic that the player don’t want to see again.

That’s where my complaint of Vanish and Psychic Scream comes in; you finally get it working and he plays one of two cards that have nothing to do with his mechanics or lore.

MAJOR PROBLEM with the Heroic Version bosses. The Normal bosses are amazing, they always use a themed deck and cards based on what they do.

Heroic bosses just drop the theme out of window just to put artificial difficulty like Vanish on this boss. In normal mode he uses all the “madness” related cards, it’s very fun.

I wish they sticked with the theme more… The problem is that Normal is too easy (very weak Boss hero powers) and Heroic is too hard (non-themed sinergy decks plus overpower hero powers).

1 Like

I am in total agreement with you, as far as your statement goes, I suck so I haven’t even veaten one run yet. Vut, that veing said, the post caught my eye vecause I kinda liked the “Merry-Go-Round” voss last time.

Knowing that they put vanish and scream in, that _is_disheartening. I loath those cards with a passion. Personal thing, ya know… Vut your lil dialogue, lol, was pretty spot on and quite amusing.

If they would have allowed us the option for and/or access to spells that can actually counter some of the craziness, that would have veen vetter… I think. I mean, I am missing spells in the last two Dungeons. I’m not gettin’ em. A counterspell? Never gonna happen. Destroy secret… (Just minions cackling laughter from the vackground.) Copy spell… Something man!

Also, I don’t think I have gotten ANY of the sweet passives yet…
Sighs

I have veaten over 200 vosses now, so far. I have yet to complete one run with Reno. I am vad. I cannot ve that vad, or I wouldn’t pay for this stuff.

P.S. I have no key for the second letter of the alphavet. :-)__

Ive beaten the first run 2 times already, its actually quite easy once you realize every boss is literally a rehashed version of Zoolock, just play hundreds of minions and trade stupidly for useless value.

However I’m on the edge of even buying this expansion on the basis of how little creativity you can employ with the bucket system. The bosses are so egregiously busted, you physically can’t take certain treasures or cards because they just suck, so lots of the deck building revolves around whats the best option not the most creative.

*edit
Who ever voice acted Vesh, I want to punch you in the throat, the VA was horrific.

That has not veen my experience at all. I wish it was. I get ship every time and no zoo no hope no nothint just, oh look… you get to give up on the 4th voss vcause you got NOTHING to play with. Have fun with that 1/1 murloc. It’s gonna ve amazing!

Now that I read about that carousel thing, I am sure I’m not spending gold on this adventure. I still have 2 wings to get from DH, and the 3rd I haven’t beaten yet with all classes so I still have plenty to do from that.
Another rehash of dungeon run, I did the 1st wing and I see no reason how Tombs is going to be better than Heist.

You have to try extra hard to beat these bosses like the first wing last boss. So, you have to practice enough and don’t rush. To learn the pattern. I understand it can be tedious at times but that’s part of learning. You want to beat it quick with little learning of the bosses but that’s not how this game works as well for life. There’s enough cards and power ups to choose from to help on the quest even the traven upgrade.

They want players to last long enough to enjoy this run. If the run is so quick and weak most players will be burn out. Blizzard know this from experiments as well being a player. They know if they make it too hard and too long only some players will remain. They have to find the middle ground. For players who’re young it will be a challenge and more tedious to learn new things this is to be expected that’s why there’s guides to show how to beat it from players who are more experience.

1 Like

Like, I get where you’re coming from here, but this is something I really dislike about the design of these draft adventures.

Look at Dark Souls. With some annoying exceptions, you’re a few minutes from each difficult boss. You can go in, get curb-stomped, develop a strategy, and come back, maybe 20 times in the time it would take you to get to a Plague Lord here.

That just IS tedium. Not repetition for the sake of learning. Facing the same bunch of relatively easy bosses so you can “practice” the last two rounds (or wherever your wall tends to be) isn’t teaching you anything.

And, y’know, you find that fun, and so do other players, and I don’t want to question that; these things are quite subjective. But I feel like (and the OP can certainly correct me here if I’m wrong) it’s not just getting #REKT by a nut hand or mediocre draw that frustrates people. It’s getting #REKT, then having to go back and play through the SAME increasingly boring content, over and over again.

Basically, yes, this is challenge, but challenge isn’t just win%. There are good and bad ways to implement challenge, and I feel like many of Blizzard’s decisions in that context are questionable.

Bro,

I read your post in a “dracula” accent in my head.

Classic.

1 Like

I thought the exact same thing when I first saw these. You mean that thick, vaguely Eastern European accent you’d see in a bad monster film?

1 Like

Exactly


1 Like

I dont get it.

Not only have i enjoyed both bosses, but i consider them the most fun part of the run. In the 8 runs ive been through, 7 were full clears. My one loss was on a regular boss, not even the final. All 7 cleared the final boss completely the first time from full HP.

Im not saying this to pat myself on the back. Im going through heroics now too, and there’s a lot more risky rng stuff there. But if these bosses are really causing you problems it stands that maybe you need to reevaluate your deck and plays.

Also, the carousel phase of boss #2 is probably the kindest of all boss phases. The boss has no benefit at all of you plan around it. Just skip a turn or two early so you can play put 2 or 3 minions down. The boss will refuse to do anything usually until you play one first.

To me, at least, this solo content has felt the least “spikey”. Some dungeon run bosses (og run) just outright hard countered you or could high roll one hero power and leave you nothing. Even the last chapter of Dalaran Heist had sections that could totally blow you out and demanded you have insane decks.

This one had more knobs you fullu control, so it seems a lot easier to stick some synergy.

To added with that is no matter the game or in life people have to try again until they get it right. This is how we learn and for younger folks it can be very difficult to the point the game itself isn’t fun anymore. This is where breaks is needed.