Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Quote from: Drrek on December 13, 2014, 02:34:31 AM

I really hate Unstable Portal.  I'm still convinced that in the average case its pretty bad, but it has such low investment, and the good case is so absurdly good that it doesn't really matter.  Card is way too swingy.

In an absolute worst case scenario, Unstable Portal will cost you 1 mana. That will happen in roughly 15% of cases. The odds of it being neutral or hurting you is something around 30% of cases. That gives us a 70% chance that it will help our curve. Now, knock off a couple percentage points for minions that are just truly garbage (which are really only a few, in this case), and you probably end up with roughly a 65% chance that you're going to get a very good play out of it; something that is guaranteed to give you a major tempo advantage over your opponent. I've seen no analysis for the odds of an exceptional play (e.g. turn 3 Boulderfist), but in many cases such a play will effectively guarantee you a win. If we assume an exceptional game-winning play in 10% of cases, that's still incredibly efficient overall. The highs are extremely high, and the lows are uncommon and don't actually hurt you that much.

For the love of all that is holy Blizzard, rework this card.
Let’s assume for a moment that a card existed in Hearthstone that read “2 mana: 90% chance win the game, 10% chance do nothing”. I think we’d unanimously agree that such a card would be overpowered. Now imagine a card that said “1% chance win the game, 99% chance do nothing”. We can agree that such a card would suck. That means that somewhere between 1% and 90% we have a balanced card. I think that number is somewhere around 15%. Unstable portal has about an 85% chance to hit a minion that costs 2 or more. 70% for 3 or more. In the event that you play unstable portal on turn two and get a minion costing 6+ (about a 20% chance), you will probably win the game on the spot. All you invested was one card and your second turn to have a boulderfist ogre in play on turn 3.
Will you get Grimscale oracle sometimes? Sure, but even in that scenario all you did was play a 2 mana 1/1. The vast majority of the time you’ll be breaking even or netting a huge tempo swing akin to Innervate or Wild Growth. Is it worse off the top of the deck later in the game? Sure, but still much better than Wild Growth would have been and still capable of rolling a 6 mana Onyxia. Unstable Portal will warp half of the games it’s played in around itself, and the extremely high chance for a free win makes it an auto-include in any mage deck. Hold on to your extra Portals so you can disenchant them for full dust once the nerf bat strikes. However, of all the cards on this list, Unstable Portal is the one I’m least sure about. The variance involved may very well make it unplayable. Only one way to find out, get out there and play!

Off topic, incredibly funny to see how much Muster for Battle was hated on here...and then turns out to be one of the best GvG cards to come out for Pally. Absolute staple in every top ranked Pally deck.

Knife Juggler and synergy with Equality still existed. And what everyone seemed to miss was the fact Muster for Battle finally shored up one of Paladins greatest weaknesses by giving it a respectable early game 3 drop as well as another answer to early game aggression.

Muster is much better than Wild Pyro. Did Pally need more ways to combo with Equality? Probably not 'need', no. But no one is going to say no to a card that fulfills more roles and has more synergy with the deck than Wild Pryo ever did. Quartermaster just happened to push the card over the top. One of the biggest strengths of the card is, again, the fact it addressed the Paladins weak early game, which is further perpetuated by top Pally's choosing to run Shielded Minibot over Wild Pyro even.