Mid Aggro Blog #3 - Interview with Kisstafer

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Fenris - Twitter

Weekly Update: Ladder reset this week after I had scrapped myself to rank 6. Its been an interesting week as players race to get back into Legendary and by interesting I mean absolutely horrific. I had a good run to rank 12 then slipped back down to 14, sitting at a 51.3% win rate with 115 games played.

Expert Testimony

Something common to all players of any game is that their play will plateau at some point. Their play will stagnant and become corrosive to their efforts to improve or reach their goals. One of the best ways to overcome this is to bring in an expert in the game to pick their brain.

In Hearthstone, our goal is to reach Legendary each season, so it stands to reason that we need to talk to a Legendary player if we are falling short of that goal. This week, I had the pleasure to interview Kisstafer, a legendary player who is on the cutting edge of the Meta game today. I have learned quite a lot from watching his streams and informative guides. He is also very active on the iHearthu.com forums, answering questions and helping other players’ progress.

[su_spoiler title=”KISSTAFER QUICK FACTS N’ STATS” style=”fancy” icon=”plus-circle”]

Kisstafer Quick Facts:

Constructed Stats: 1139-763 (67% win rate)

Tournament Stats:

Managrind NA Open: 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 8th place finishes

Managrind Friday Night Swiss: 1st place.

MLG Challenge #5: 1st place

MLG Challenge #6: 1st place

Team Killing Spree: 1st place

Murlock Monday: 3rd place

CRT League #1: 3rd place

TopDeck.gg NA Tournament: 3rd place[/su_spoiler]

Interview:

Fenris: What’s your CCG history?

Kisstafer: This is the first CCG I’ve taken seriously, I played Yu-Gi-Oh back when I was younger but that was mostly because I followed the show and thought they were cool and fun to play with my cousin.

F: What’s your current Season 1 rank?

K: I’m sitting at 127 right now in NA legend, although it fluctuates pretty drastically depending on how much you play with certain decks compared to others. You could go up or down 100 ranks in a couple hours depending on if you play a test deck or one that’s already known to be good.

F: Are you part of a team or running solo?

K: I am currently not on a team but open to joining a competitive team if the situation is right.

F: What’s an important or overlooked basic skill or tactic that you use that a new player should incorporate into his or her game?

K: I have this rule of thumb for decks I make where if I want to include a certain combo I only include 1 combo card for every 2 cards that it combos off of to keep a 2:1 ratio. For example if I’m using the Warsong Commander and Molten Giants combo, I’d take 2 molten giants and only 1 Warsong Commander. The more combo parts you add to the deck, the combo itself will be stronger but you will have fewer cards that are strong on their own.

F: What’s something that you do outside of playing that has improved your game?

K: Becoming good at Hearthstone takes the same process as becoming good at anything else in the world; you have to apply critical thinking to analyze what you are doing. These two skills can be applied to literally everything on the planet. Learning a new musical instrument, learning a language, reading a challenging book, doing puzzles, etc. The more things you have mastered in the past will help you master new things easily, because the strategies used are transferable.

F: What was your biggest jump in terms of game improvement? How did you get above the 50 percent win percentage and gain the consistent winning needed to advance to Legendary?

K: Having a group of people to practice with and figure things out are really beneficial. You can get a lot of really useful information by grinding games vs. practice partners and figuring out specific things compared to just playing random people on the ladder. By doing this you can hold your opponents skill level constant while testing different cards to kind of keep a controlled setting when doing your deck testing.

F: When playing the in the Ladder, what is the biggest mistake you see?

K: Sometimes people either don’t hit me in the face enough, or they hit me in the face too much. Analyzing when it’s correct to hit face and when it’s correct to trade minions is one of the harder decisions to make in this game. One situation where it’s almost always better to hit them in the face is if they have a large card advantage over you, because at that point you’re all in. Even if you trade minions they will have more to replace them whereas you won’t, so you have to end the game as fast as possible by hitting them in the face. One situation where it’s almost always better to trade minions instead of hitting face is if they are using a deck that uses buff minions - if you ignore their minions the situation will almost always become worse for you next turn.

F: How has streaming affected your game?

K: I can’t play new decks when I stream, and I also play worse when I try to read the chat and interact with viewers. ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ missed lethal ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ

F: What’s your opinion of “Net Decking”? Do you think this ultimately hurts a player in the long term or helps them become more efficient with their time, not needing to construct and test their decks themselves?

K: Net decking can be really useful because someone else has put a lot of time into testing their decks and you get their knowledge for free. If they copy someone else’s deck and don’t know why certain cards are in it they probably won’t play it properly anyways. Net decking probably helps people figure out why certain cards are used compared to others. New players can compare their win rate with the copied deck compared to one they made. When you’re learning the game it’s probably best to do a bit of both.

F: Please walk us through your mental process for the big moments in a match. How you evaluate cards, board position, opponents potential hand strength, not missing lethal or advantageous trades etc. Basically, how you approach the most crucial moments of a game and keep track of all the myriad details and combinations.

K: This is a really complicated question but I think I can give a *decent* answer without going on forever. Basically you have to keep track of what plays your opponent *can* make, how likely they are to do each play, and how each alternative universe affects your game plan. With this information you can decide which situations are the best for you, which are worse for you. It’s pretty much a balance of percentages, weighing the likelihood of each situation coming to be and playing around each one.

For example, if there’s a play you can make that puts you ahead 80% of the time but outright loses you the game the other 20%, you have to compare that to a play that would keep the game even or put you ahead less often, but with less drastic consequences should it not pan out favorably. If you’re a skilled player you would rather keep the game going longer rather than risk losing the game 20% but sometimes you actually have to just embrace the fact that risks are part of the game (Yolo rag).

There are certain strategies you can use to do a process of elimination to figure out what cards (or type of cards) are in your opponent’s hand. For example, if you have a 4-4 and a 4-1 on the field and your druid opponent doesn’t use Swipe, he probably does not have swipe in his hand. You can figure out what cards he doesn’t have in his hand by judging what the best play would be for him with his mana, and comparing that to what he actually does. If he has 7 mana and doesn’t play Ancient of War, it’s pretty likely he doesn’t actually have an ancient of war in his hand. These types of observations are situation dependent but it is the type of logic I use to deduce what the best plays are. A situation where this is useful is say for example you play a Sunwalker and he doesn’t use the black knight on it, you now know that it’s pretty likely he doesn’t have the black knight so now you can safely play your Ancient of War in taunt mode.

So to sum it all up, I base all my decisions around the likelihood that they will maximize rewards while minimizing risks.

F: I just made Kisstafer the Senior Game Designer for a day at Blizzard. What’s one improvement or feature that you would add or subtract from the Ranked experience? Feel free to make your mark, Mr. SGD.

K: I would add a visible ranking that is in real time so players don’t have to rely on the blizzard rankings to see where everybody stands in the ranks. As it is right now you can only see where people stand if they’re on your friends list. I would also add a spectator client so you can observe your own past games and also add a button that requests your friend to observe their game (to which they can decline if they want to keep their deck a secret). Other than those two features I think ranked is in a pretty good place right now.

F: What’s your favorite Hearthstone card? Why?

K: I really like mind control, Priest was my first love of Hearthstone - I loved the power trip of making my opponent feel hopeless as I took what was his away from him and sealed his demise. I also really like Deathwing for similar reasons; I destroy all his stuff and have a supremely powerful minion to impose my strength over him in one tumultuous turn.

F: Feel free to add any other advice you have for new and mid level players who are looking to take their game into legendary status.

K: When you play someone on ladder that you think is good add them to friends and play against them a lot so you can improve your decks at a faster rate. Play in tournaments so you get a grasp of what people are playing, and to find out what decks beat what. Also, try out as many cards as you can even if you think they’re bad because who knows, they might surprise you.

Thank you Kisstafer for that great interview. Please, if you have any interest in getting better, I highly recommend watching his stream and don’t be afraid to ask him questions! He is also available for coaching sessions through his Twitch page.

Find Kisstafer at: Twitter | IHEARTHU Section | Tumblr | TwitchTV