I know it's a "Fun" card, but it represents everything bad about the *competitive* rng in the game, and the fact that tournaments can easily ride on this is doing a lot to hurt the game's credibility. .... I also really really hate the potential swinginess of the card. Nothing else in the game has the same potential swing, even if the odds are against it, and the sheer amount of stupid crap it can pull is starting to worry me about the game's future if we can expect more stuff like this. While it makes for a great story, I don't think it's good for the game as a whole to have something this rng-prone actually be somewhat competitive.

Mana screw ruins just as many games of Magic, but people find a way to make it a competitive game anyway. Card games are sometimes decided by luck -- that's just the nature of the beast.

is Yogg competitively playable in any real way? I don't follow competitive play, but it seems really bad for that. if it's not then I think massive swinginess is fine for the fun factor. if it is, though, then yeah, maybe.

I only cast Yogg when I'm going to lose any ways. I have won many games I had no business winning with the favor of my unholy master. There is no bad.

I mean, I know you don't cast it when you're ahead, but do you run a 10-drop just for an unreliable, potentially-ruinous panic button?

Short answer: no, yogg is fine.

Long answer: coming later

Heck yes. In the right deck. He's not an instant include by any means.

He has had shown up in tournaments and at least one tournament has come down to him in the final two games of the final match, used by opposite players. He may not be the most consistent thing ever, but if he never sees another competitive deck (unlikely) he has already made his mark by winning a non-negligible number of tournament games.

Edit:
Oh and Tempostorm claims Yogg Druid is number 3 deck atm.
/endEdit

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Hearthstone is a game struggling to be an Esport, where the "pros" constantly get asked why they get knocked out of tournaments and the response goes something like "The other person got luckier." It has a huge problem with players **** on the game by.... well basically telling the truth but in the most negative light possible. And whether it deserves the reputation or not, it is not viewed as a "real" esport compared to things like CS:GO, LOL, etc, because rng cards like Imp-losion and Dr. Boom play a huge role in who wins games at the most competitive level. Thus the on-and-off debate about Yogg Saron. While it's an extremely entertaining card, when thousands of dollars in prize money are decided by something like Yogg Saron, it's very hard for people to take Hearthstone seriously. It has at a minimum furthered a stereotype/stigma people have been trying to get disassociated from Hearthstone.

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While this is true, Magic has over the years tried very hard to limit the number of random swing effects, and it is a better game for it, while Hearthstone repeatedly **** all over MTG design philosophy when it comes to what is good card design and what isn't. I do not buy the argument that it is better for the game to be decided by added rng on the cards themselves, when they went through all the trouble to remove as much as possible from things like the mana base.

Hearth doesn't need to be an esport, it's an extremely casual game that gets a lot of it's popularity from the RNG moments that get tweeted and tubed and whatever social media BS that's going around these days.

Actually, Hearthstone actually gets a very large part of its popularity from people who watch other people playing the game on Twitch. The easiest way to become a popular streamer is to stream your games at legend rank, and this is one of the more commonly watched activities on twitch (along with the bigger tourneys) so the competitive aspect of the game is VERY important for its overall health.

So when these streamers bitch frequently about the rng aspect of the game and how it negatively effects the ladder experience, it's a very big deal.

Theres no signs of hearth dying or a mass of streamers quitting because rng.

- Mark Rosewater, 'Ten Things Every Game Needs'.

if tournaments are decided by rng then they should probably be playing more games so that the rng factor is reduced

in most tcgs, players are sometimes dealt a bad hand, and that's part of what makes the game interesting. you're tested on your ability to play from a variety of situations. this does mean that in a given game, your chances of winning might be lower than your opponents for reasons outside either of your controls. it should even out over enough games though, and in tournament play you would expect them to play enough games that the better player will consistently win the match with the worse player.

Yes when you actually commit to many tournaments or to ranking highly the rng tends to even out. Of course people who only play casually or play one tournament ever and lose due to rng only sees the extreme and then complains.

ideally in a competitive event you don't want the winner to hinge on who gets the better dice roll. Losing a tournament to luck shouldn't happen, if its something that can be helped.

Running yogg is no different than running a card that only hoses one or two decks in hopes of seeing that deck ran.

I guess he was a bit too much.

They made him worse because the gap between good and bad are even larger now.

I agree with Lily. And now there is a reasonable chance Yogg is a do-nothing card now, which just sucks. Is there any other RNG card that can literally do nothing?

His Servant.