Tombs of terror is overtuned

Singleplayer Discussion
1

LONG AND LOGICAL RANT AHEAD

I played mostly Reno and so far he has really non- synergistic decks while the opponent bosses always have such a deck complimenting their hero power.
Also card choices between bosses are mostly terrible in my opinion.

I will preface with a bit of information : I play on Heroic and this is for the Second Plague wing/zone ; I am not a noob or smth ,I have done Dalaran Heist Heroic with all heroes on all wings ( F the hero power completion thought).

So lets GET STARTED :

  • I don’t find it fun to lose numerous times to second or third boss on heroic only because their crazy hero power and their synergistic decks completely wreck the bad minions + spell deck I get.

  • I can’t deal with a boss with a hero power which summons a 2/3 beetle with deathrattle 3 armour ,his cards in the deck are ALL Taunts and BUFFS.

  • LAlso almost the same with Boss - Weird looking tree ,that fills his hand to 10 by turn 3 and slams down a mountain giant. Also buffs its minions.

People were complaining about the Dalaran Heist first boss the kid Rogue ,but those new ones are just plain insane.

All because of BAD DECK RECIPES AND BAD TREASURES.

Not only I am losing to the final boss almost mandatory ,but I can be completely one-side stomped after first boss.
All in all ,not a fun experience.

I was elated to pick in one of the tries the VIP treasure ,only to lose to the second boss.
I tried the Jr. Tomb Diver and never managed to trigger it once.

Magical torch is the best ,but all others are just plain bad and heavily -RNG to make good use of.

I try to reach the second plague boss for 3 time ( I have him left on 27 hp).
How did that happen? I am on my sixth try total to complete the run on the second plague boss all because the DECK RECIPES ARE BAD.

The two times I reached the FINAL BOSS SO FAR are with FIRST BEING OFFERED THIS TREASURE - "Secret : After taking a fatal amount of dmg ,prevent that and deal 20 dmg to enemy hero ". Yes ,this cheat treasure lets me skip 30/70 winrate bosses between 2-5

I want deck recipes and minion and spell choices after first boss to have atleast Synergy.
You get bad minions because their effect are supposed to be synergistic ,which is hardly the case.

I am straight up not having fun.

19 Likes
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I haven’t played the second part yet, and I wouldn’t put things quite as starkly as you do (possibly because of that), but I have to agree in principle with what you are saying.
I have played and cleared all the previous single player modes on hard mode as well (Except some of the Lich King fights because I have a very spotty collection).
The difference between Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror struck me immediately: The buckets from which you pick cards are just much worse. I’m not sure if this is a result of the dual-classing, or if they were deliberately tuned down on top of that. It’s certainly striking that Rogue and Mage for Reno don’t have terribly strong synergy with each other, so chances are that you won’t be able to build a very synergistic deck.
I also concur with your point about the Tomb Diver. I’ve tried multiple times to pull her effect off, but it never worked. There just are very few secrets on offer throughout the run, you then have to pull them, play them and then play her. Once I had nine or so secrets in my deck reasonably early in the run, but then the Sinkhole decided to mill them all and burst me down with a few Murloc Warleaders and Old Murk-Eyes.

Having these epic giant-sized end-bosses probably sounded cool on paper, and I liked it a lot the first time. But after having done it once on heroic, it became daunting for the rest of my attempts. Here I was, doing my best to pull through seven tough battles, with a healthy dose of luck, knowing full well that I would probably not finish the run. And against the Murloc Plague Lord even the best deck can just be obliterated by bad luck from the Murloc pulls. For example I had to use two attempts to kill him from 50 or so health, because on my first one I was just completely overrun by turn two.

I’d also like to note that C’thun seems to have been short-changed a bit. I do like to pick the Old God bucket if it is offered early on, because it suits my general playstyle. But due to the higher number of buckets for each hero (22 vs 12), the chances to actually build a good C’thun deck are miniscule.

I would sincerely suggest the following changes:

  • Heavily weight the odds of certain buckets after every pick. Many of them rely on internal synergy to be good, so it feels unfair to be denied that just by sheer luck. It feels like one is getting punished for picking them. These are in my estimation: Old God, Kingsbane, Elementals, Dragons, Mechs, Pirates, and Mighty Minions. If any of these is picked early on, it should be favoured later on, and any of them should have diminishing chances to show up otherwise as the run proceeds. Who would even think about picking their first C’thun bucket just before the last boss?
  • Old Murk-Eye should not be in the pool for Surprise! Murlocs! Seriously, this can just be an insane swing that you can’t reasonably prepare for. Especially on the Murloc Plague Lord. You think you are safe? Nope, here’s a burst for 15.
  • Quite a few of the bosses need tuning. There are some that are just impossible for certain decks to beat, or are just very luck-dependant. I’ve brought it up already, but the Sinkhole just sticks out like a sore thumb. Any board-centric deck will have an insanely hard time here. And every other deck still just has to get lucky with what is being discarded. I was genuinely about to post in a different thread that I had found a sure-fire way of beating it by just staying at a full hand and waiting the game out. But then Surprise! Murlocs! just killed me on the next turn. And since I had to keep a full hand from early on I couldn’t respond quick enough. Oh well!
    But there are other bosses, like the one with the passive Flame Waker effect. Or the guy who swaps minions from the board with the hand. There is no way of beating that one with some decks even with insanely good starts.

Overall, it is just very frustrating to have to finish this gauntlet multiple times before getting a complete run. If any of these things were addressed, it would probably be much more enjoyable.

And yes, I realise that you can kill the Plague Lords in one shot. I’ve done it. But let’s not pretend that it is even remotely all skill. There is a large amount of RNG along the way AND in the final boss, all of which could be addressed.

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At risk of inciting the fanboys, the bucket system is BAD. I’m not saying I agree 100% with the OP (I don’t plan on buying this or playing Heroic), and I’m not just talking about ToT.

The buckets for each of these adventures, seem like the devs wrote down generic and class-specific keywords, big minions, small minions, and Legends, on slips of paper, threw them in a hat, and that was the end of their design session for the buckets.

The important point is that the buckets have almost no synergy BETWEEN each other. Taking more time to plan these out so that the player is rarely offered 3 picks that each make their deck worse, so that there are usually at least 2 good picks, so that picks have interesting synergies, would have made the game much better.

And this is not a difficulty argument. I don’t agree that the opponent’s decks are “overtuned”. Compare them to the pre-draft adventures (Naxx, BM, etc…), and they’re weak. I think that if the devs took the time to significantly increase the average power of the player’s deck, that they could increase the power of the boss’s decks, and that the game would have been much better.

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Just a quick reply to say “Thank you”. I was afraid it was just me but when I started playing Tombs of Terror I was like, “This is just a bunch of RNG BS!”. I lost my VERY FIRST ENCOUNTER, not game, the first fight, because the boss got free murlocs and was able to fill the board by turn 3 and mob me. I was playing Rogue/Mage Reno and had no AOE’s and for every 1 minion I would kill, the boss would get out 3 more.
I’ve made it to the second to last boss and I’ve died on the second boss and it’s all based on what random choices you get between bosses and the luck of your draws vs. the boss’s draws, but of course as noted by others, the boss decks are heavily synergized so even if they get a less than perfect draw they can still put up a good fight and have a decent chance to win. While, if you can’t manage to kill that one minion that synergizes with their hero power, you’re screwed. This is NOT fun, it doesn’t feel like a game of skill as much as playing a slot machine and hoping it comes up 3 cherries.
All in all I’ve been extremely disappointed with the quality of Hearthstone releases in general lately. It seems like play-testing/balance has gone out the window in the rush to squeeze every last dime out of the player base, and I, for one, have about had enough.

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this heroic dungeon run is broken and stupid. i literally just ran the first wing, and died 3/4 times to the FIRST boss because he would have a full board by turn 4. and then summon a 6/6 which as a sham/pally starter deck literally has no cards to kill that. the ONE time i beat him was because the ONE time i had minions on the field i RNGd the murloc to give my other murlocs +1. i wasted two hours of my time for no progress what so ever.

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Whoever is defending this system is out of their heads. The ideal is great but if it’s just going to offer you trash it makes the point of it feel more like a punishment for those who don’t have a big card pool but want to play the adventures as well.

I thought they changed the adventures to this random bucket list so anyone can enjoy them and not worry about having the right cards to survive encounters.

Like it offered me two of the same Minions that works with discover cards but the 3rd card wasn’t even a discover card WTf? One of those 3 cards could have been a discover card to work with the minion so sometimes the buckets don’t synergize within itself that makes me sad.

I stop trying to make my deck work like a deck and just pick buckets with minions to balance out my early and late game summons while avoiding anything that is super poop that would give my opponent a leg up on me. That’s really all you can do and hope to get lucky with buckets and for me it just makes me wish I could build my own deck

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Yeah, I wouldn’t say they’re out of their minds, but I have started to wonder exactly how far Blizzard can go with stuff like this before people who have an unpleasant time, can complain and not be met with “You’re wrong because I like it go home”.

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Until wing 3 I really wouldn’t call the adventure bad.

I did both wings on heroic with both intial heroes.

Wing 3 takes the cake tho. That final boss is the most unfair thing I have ever seen in this game. Yea sure, you can win - if you literally crafted the most insane mana-cheating loop somehow. If you face him with anything less, you lost.

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Yeah, I only played briefly on wing 1 (NOT giving them money for this after I felt so cheated by DH), but the power level of the Treasures and Buckets really seems all over the place, and there aren’t enough synergistic picks to make up for it.

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maybe there are some synergies youy didnt notice

like the monocle and faldorei strider

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How can you possibly know if you’re haven’t played them yourself ?You said you hadn’t bought them or plan on doing Heroic.

I can tell you right now that I’ve had decent bucket picks that maybe weren’t always synergistic, but certainly helped the deck along. I know this because I actually bought all chapters and I’ve done all chapters on Normal and completed Heroic chapter 1.

1 Like
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Oh, no doubt. I didn’t even play enough to see everything, and it could have been bad luck

This is just an impression, and I’d love to see a breakdown, but it SEEMED like most picks were obvious, either because there was one pick that worked with the theme of my deck, or none.

Also, to be VERY clear here: I am not saying that there is NO synergy, or the game is unbeatable, or that synergy doesn’t count unless it’s OP, or anything that extreme. I’m saying that I would like my picks to be more interesting, and in my admittedly brief experience with it, they weren’t. I remember one pick with a Reno spells deck where I was offered two buckets that worked with my deck, and that’s it.

Edit: For better or worse, I also went in suspicious, because this was one of my biggest gripes with DH, which I DO have a lot of experience with.

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That’s quite true.

I had the awesome treasure that if you played an even cost card, your hero power is free. I then didn’t care so much as the card in the bucket, but more so the mana cost. If you have a free Sir Finely’s hero power with Windfury and Divine Shield…well, it gets a lot easier.

I also picked lower cost minions on purpose if I had the treasure that gave them poison (great for Chapter 1 guys, the free murloc summons come with poisonous).

In those scenarios, it didn’t really matter if they were taunt, or mechs, etc.

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i lost when i got the tabern vip card

did you get to the tabern with it ? what does it change

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Ah damn, I saw that and skipped it. I was on a Heroic run when I first saw it and I was like: “I bet for some reason, I never make it to the first tavern.”

I really want to know what it does too. I’ll try and pick it next time and let you know if I see you in the forums.

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When you go to the Tavern you get more coins and much more choices to use those coins on, as well as a bigger minion board. For example, you have an option that can reduce all the cards in your deck to 1, not just your starter cards. Another card gives you a huge mana and card advantage for your next fight (Only that fight though). With the bigger minion board it’s much easier to buff cards you want or get rid of the more useless ones in your deck.

The best thing you can get from a VIP visit though is the chance to get one of Bob’s decks. I’ve done that twice and so far I’ve gotten the Pogo Hopper deck and the Kadgar (Not sure of the actual name) deck. The Kadgar deck had some OP boss minions that Kadgar uses in Dalarian Heist. Like…put a copy of a spell you cast into your deck minion. All spells are free this turn card. Draw until your hand is full card. Lots more to it but you get the idea.

I always choose VIP Tavern when I see it because while it does make your run a bit harder if you can make it to the Tavern then you are put into a really good position. Makes the Hearthstone treasure even more valuable too.

1 Like
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Thanks for some clarification around that treasure. I’ll definitely give it a go when I see it.

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haven’t bought this adventure and won’t buy this or next one to come.
There is no fun, when ure side is randomized and theirs pretty tuned out.
I get enough stress at work, why should i stress myself out when I play a dam digital card game…

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The problem with the bucket system is:

If there is a low amount of buckets and minions it ends like Dalaran Heist, you always get the same minions and cards over and over.

They need to balance it more. The amount of buckets now are interesting, I really think about what I will pick, but they need to increase the Bias of the buckets based on the treasures you pick.

If you pick Spell related treasures, they need to increase buckets with spells, otherwise the player will not be able to use his strategy. You can see that they currently do it, but it still too low.

It just needs more variety to create new strategies instead of picking the buckets with the highest quality individual cards.

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Thanks for pinpointing the issue - picking a hero power and synergy treasure and all you get are different buckets and thus making your gameplan irrelevant compared to the 100% thought out synergistic boss decks.

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