Thoughts on BotfT pt. 2

Gilesclone

I played on a team with many lower level players this time and it was very painful for many of them.  Then with the freezes, it got a lot of the veterans angry too.  This is mostly a self inflicted wound by the dev team, they should have known this would be a problem.

Laeuftbeidir

I really wonder why they didn't make it

1-2-4

2-3-5

To balance the grind and overall level

Kinesia

I find it interesting that Merfolk 3 was thought slow... For me the free card draw and mana makes it one of the quickest and simplest.

And Azor himself is a good test for every deck you have, play a different one every time! They should ALL be able to beat him, otherwise they have a big hole...

Unknown

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Machine

I was surprised they put the Merfolk node in, as I expected only to play the Vampire and the original 5.x nodes. I'm very glad they split the original event, as this was still a horrible grind.

For me the advantages of this event:

- Not the five full nodes the original event had

- Event end on Sunday

- 8 hour recharge time

- Last progression reward close to max. I believe there should be a reward for coming close to a perfect score and the way the rewards are given now reflects that.

Disadvantages:

- Grind, grind, grind... yuk. Azor is playing such a passive, disrupting deck that it takes over 20 minutes to get rid of him. His indestructible support only adds to the pain.

- The Merfolk node again? The original nodes 4 and 5 are a grind already.

- Bugs, bugs, bugs... a lot of players complained about the bugs. If nailed by one of them, your shot at the final rewards is as good as gone. IF the devs choose for a tight reward structure, make sure players are able to achieve it without getting screwed by bugs.

I understand that some people are complaining about the difficulty of this event. That being said, it seems that no one realizes that most of the 4.x and 5.x nodes were nerfed (e.g. less HP (Azor), less mana gains (Gateway), more expensive loyalty abilities), making it already easier for all of us. I also believe that some of the encounters must be challenging (but not impossible).

UweTellkampf

Cons:

The event is overly steep for newcomers and even mid-range players.
It is also too slow (animations are just a pain in vampire nodes).
And it is of course buggy too.

Pros:

(For veteran players) It has one or two challenging nodes where you really need to think about your strategy in order to win with both objectives. 

Alanako

For nodes 3.2 and 3.3 Ral fast decks kill them without a problem, but you need BSZ

Tilwin90

This was an interesting event. I find the reduced number of battles still to be quite refreshing and less of a grind. It's the duration itself that's improved. The rest of the non-node specific feedback remains the same.

What's different about part 2 is that I dislike the difficult level now. Not for me, I don't mind the challenge, but for casual players. Now part 1 is noticeably easier than part 2, and this is noticed because the structure of the nodes and Greg decks was kept the same as B4T was before (a 5 nodes event). 
Part 1 is do-able by newbies (even ignoring the objectives), part 2 is noticeably difficult. I would be okay if newbies could approach nodes 1 and 2 and had difficulty with the last one for both events, rather than shut down all nodes altogether, because of how difficult Elenda, Gateway and Azor all are, shutting down essentially two out of three nodes.

Now let's get to the nodes analysis.

1) Chapter 1 is literally recycling. This duplication is silly. Since it's battle of the four tribes, maybe you can split this into two-two tribes, and make the last node for each part non-tribe related.
Example: Pirates & Dinos for part 1, Merfolk & Vampires for part 2.

Other than that, not much I can say about this one. I think the objectives were changed but I went with about the same strategy. Summon 3 or more creatures in a turn at common/uncommon was a fun challenge for me.

2) Chapter 2 is tricky, especially getting Mavren with pauper cards only. I initially went with Karn, stole Settle then abused his ultimate to keep getting it back and on the board. But because I had to rely on rather small creatures it took FOREVER. That total HP in pauper was the most ridiculous thing I have seen.
Then I went with Kiora at the advice of my comrades, and her ultimate made a huge difference in speeding things up. This comes to show that most pauper objectives are more about planeswalker abilities than the cards themselves. 

Vona is alright, though I initially disliked having to lose 4 or more creatures and was always really close to losing that objective. That was my mistake in assuming at first that she would use her ability more often (see, prior to this incarnation of B4T that was a creatureless node). But once you tweak accordingly, it's very much what I do in TDW Jund node. Nevertheless, much faster than before, I like the new objectives better.

Elenda is suprisingly easy now that we have access to Bolas2 and some really decent vampires (Blood Operative keeps coming back and counts as summon so that's neat, plus I got Blood Baron in the meantime and it just kept growing thanks to everything having lifelink). It was still more grindy than other nodes but nowhere near as annoying as I remembered it.

3) Thank you for getting rid of the "Win with 20 or less HP" objective. That was just silly. The first node now is a breeze, and thankfully since the opponent puts creatures on the board by themselves and has tons of HP, you have enough time to destroy 4 creatures and build up a board to smash through with 20+ damage easily. Fun node.

Azor's Gateway remains hit and miss and I guess I was lucky for having pulled through a perfect both games. Not because the deck couldn't do it in 12 or less turns AND get the creatures down (thank you Trostani), but because I kept the Gateway from getting the City's Blessing. Otherwise I would've been toast easily (that ability activates way too often when compared to Vona for instance).

Azor is definitely a great challenge not because of the cards he plays, but because of ALL the effects he has access to. Three very powerful abilities, combined with the stupid cycling effect that either prevents you from casting spells, casting supports or attacking. I mean, it's incredibly crippling. So I went the power way and decided to try and combo him off and win as soon as possible. I got lucky enough the second time around and pulled a turn one win (I still have the screenshot where one could clearly see the "infinite support" is not out). In case people are wondering how that can be done, I tweaked @babar3355 's Sarkhan deck to meet the objectives and one-shot Azor in the face with a huge hasty Djinn.


All in all a much better event and objectives altogether, but now less beginner friendly. We want the whole community enjoying these events instead of creating "an elite experience", so I recommend rethinking the difficulty curve a bit more on this one. Other than that, it's an improvement.

Oh yeah, the mythic pack was super nice (I got only commons and uncommons out of the stupid 3x pack) and I'm sure loads of people will appreciate it. I did not check if it guarantees non-duplicates but it did get me the last mythic of the set I was not willing to craft.

ManiiNames

I enjoyed the event, was fun.  Have to admit the Pauper objectives vs L90+ surprised me, but it also led to different deck construction.  Ran fine.