PvE player here. Some hopefully constructive criticism on Frostheart.

    • PvE player here. Some hopefully constructive criticism on Frostheart.

      As an entirely PvE focused player, Frostheart is the first set so far that I haven't been excited for. I've been thinking about it a lot since the launch and have come up with some reasons why:

      1. New mechanics fatigue. Frostheart has several new mechanics that require a bunch of new synergy cards that don't play with the cards I already have. I'm not as interested in starting a new Illuminate, Fateweave, Gladiator, Deathcry deck from scratch when my collection is filled with Conscript and Mobilize cards that don't see play. Maybe if it was only one or two new mechanics, but nearly every card is for a new deck type except for mill.

      2. PvE card power level. Many PvE cards are overpowered to make up for the difficulty of PvE modes. This makes many regular cards look really weak. Sort of how a card looks good in limited but bad in constructed, a lot of constructed cards look weak for PvE. When a mono-blue deck has 0 mana counterspells with a 2/2 unblockable creature attached, it's hard to find room for the normally balanced cards.

      3. Cards that make me go "I need to play with that." There's usually a few of these in each set. Walking Calamity. William Rowan. Mistress of Bones and her trinket that puts all Underworld troops from the graveyard into play had me so psyched for Herofall. For Frostheart, I like Vision of Zeota, but it's a Unique so I only bought 2. I tried out Hogarth and immediately resold him. That's about it. Even the dragons just don't grab me. One is for Illuminate, the other is a 7 drop in black, which is where Mistress resides. Which brings me to...

      4. So many cards to choose from. I'm not recommending formats for PvE, but the downside of including everything means there's only so much room for new stuff. Why buy Massacre when I already own Extinction? Why buy Uruunaz the Merciless to resurrect one card when Mistress can rez them all? I'm not sure how to fix this problem, but it seems like it will only get harder to include new cards with each set.

      Since this is the first set so far that I haven't been excited to play, hopefully it's an anomaly as the previous sets have been great.

    • yeah but he state the obvious.
      Frostheart is a pvp set so it is meant to be played, in its original form, in pvp.

      The juicy pve stuff, he ever does not mention, lies in the 290 new equipements that makes some of the pvp cards powerful in pve.

      In the 32 new PVE cards in thz frost ring he did not talk about ever

      In the 9 pve cards in chests and spins which some of them are really powerful , just look the price of some of them...

    • Gregangel wrote:

      yeah but he state the obvious.
      Frostheart is a pvp set so it is meant to be played, in its original form, in pvp.

      The juicy pve stuff, he ever does not mention, lies in the 290 new equipements that makes some of the pvp cards powerful in pve.

      In the 32 new PVE cards in thz frost ring he did not talk about ever

      In the 9 pve cards in chests and spins which some of them are really powerful , just look the price of some of them...
      So you are of the opinion that PvP sets shouldn't be interesting to PvE players?

    • Gregangel wrote:

      just the card yes
      As i said the juicy stuff are the equipement and the pve card omibg along with the set.
      Not the pvp cards by themselves

      It woukd be a big mistake to design a pvp set with pve in your mind
      Why? How does it hurt the set? As long as these cards go well with the limited environment of the set, I do not see a downside. Not every PVP card can be a constructed power house. It just like other TCG's specifically create cards for casual formats. To be honest, I'd actually be surprised if HEX does not consider PVE in the set design. After all, equipment usually just changes cards to some degree not its core.

    • Gregangel wrote:

      just the card yes
      As i said the juicy stuff are the equipement and the pve card omibg along with the set.
      Not the pvp cards by themselves

      It woukd be a big mistake to design a pvp set with pve in your mind
      You do realize that most PvE decks run a lot of PvP cards? To say that PvP cards have no influence on PvE is funny. For instance and I am just randomly think up a PvE deck, many mill cards from mill deck are PvP cards. What about Big Spider? A ton of PvP cards.

      What about the synergy? Book Smarts basically ask you to play a Loregoyle deck, Loregoyle is a PvP card. Pyresoul Magistrate helps Valor theme and most Valor cards are PvP cards(TCGBrowsers shows me 3 Valor cards on the PvE side and that's it, not even enough for a deck). PvP cards make up the backbone of most PvE decks, the PvE cards of any archetype are just cards that are too powerful for PvP so they are PvE-only. Also, PvE packs give out PvP commons to newbies so I am sure Hex Ent has all the intention and encourage players to use PvP cards in PvE.

    • A lot of the new PvE cards and Mercenaries, are obviously tuned to the new mechanics/keywords. This is nothing new. Set 5 had uniquely new mechanics, and Set 6 did as well. Set 8 will as well, but there will be a bit more handshaking between Set 7 and Set 8, since it makes up a limited block.

      I straddle both fences (PvE and PvP), and can convincingly say, that Set 7 has a lot of gold hidden deep within. The combos are starting to unfold through play with them, and those combos will roll into more fun and unique play paths for PvE as well. You'll need to do more mining before you find the goodies.

    • Just to clear up some confusion, I love Hex and the design of all 6 previous sets. I don't want them to cater to my needs specifically. I just thought the devs should know why I didn't spend much money on Frostheart. To address a couple of points...

      Equipment. Many of the chase cards don't have equipment yet. From the new set, only 6 out of 18 Legendary cards have equipment. That said, a card does not require equipment for me to want to buy it, nor does having equipment mean I would want to play it. William Rowan, Mightsinger of Ages, and Empress of Ice, the big flashy cards that make me spend money, are still missing equipment, but I bought them anyway because they looked fun to play. It just needs to be a cool card and none of the Frostheart cards really do it for me.

      Frost Ring Arena Rewards. The new FRA cards are indeed cool 8) , Frostmare being my favorite of the bunch, but they are free. I was not including that as part of the set because it doesn't get me buying stuff.

      Hex's PvE is great and Hex's PvE cards are great, but this is the first set in 7 that I didn't buy PvP cards. Honestly I think it's the overload of new synergies that are a turn off. Normally I love anything with synergy. Prophecy, Valor, Reanimator, Ramp, whatever. But this time we got Illuminate, Gladiator, Deathcry, Transform, Runic, Fateweave, Mill, and Constants all in one set. It's crazy. It's probably super fun for all the limited players out there. Maybe if there was a PvE form of draft.

    • I'm also mostly PvE and I totally hear what you're saying. I quite agree for Illuminate, Gladiator, and (somewhat less so) for Transform and Fateweave. They flesh out interesting design space, but there is a lot of "synergy matters" baked into their power levels... so they don't play well with other sets. Valorous and Conscript were in this camp, too.

      Dreadlings and Diligence were not though. They have synergy that extend well outside of the 5/6 set block.

      Similarly, I've fallen in love with the other set 7 mechanics. Runic / Constants, Mill, and Deathcry all offer a lot of new possibilities for existing cards... which is a good indication that they will also offer interesting options in future sets. Transform becomes an interesting a Sapphire revert option and Fateweave does all sorts of crazy things for 1-4 non-resource-card combo decks. Hopefully, these new mechanics grow on you, as they did for me over the release weekend.