When comparing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft vs Path of Exile, the Slant community recommends Path of Exile for most people. In the question“What are the best free PC games?” Path of Exile is ranked 7th while Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose Path of Exile is:
There's a staggering amount of builds and skills you can try out in Path of Exile. There are 7 classes, 19 subclasses, 194 active skill gems, 107 support gems, and over 1000 skill nodes on the expansive skill tree. As a result, there are hundreds of possible combinations, allowing you to spend hours theory-crafting just to create the perfect build. Even if you don't feel like planning out a build from scratch, you can just look up one of the many guides online and get straight into the action.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Active community
It has a lot of players due to Blizzard's fanbase which means finding multiplayer matches is not all that difficult.
Pro Polished overall aesthetic
Possibly the most polished user Interface of digital CCGs. Unified and fun art style and flavor text.
Pro Great even for casual players
Hearthstone has a friendly learning curve that makes picking it up and getting started easy for people who don't want to spend a lot of time learning rules and tricks.
Pro Multi-platform
Available on PC and on mobile. Makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet).
Pro Familiar characters from Warcraft 3 and World of warcraft
The characters used in Hearthstone are all from the lore of the Warcraft series, making for a familiar universe for fans of the series.
Pro Brawl events, that don't require you to follow "the meta"
You can take advantage of weekly brawl events that give you a certain set of cards (so no need to pay to stay competitive). It keeps the game fresh, fun and fairly "casual".
Pro Entertaining Voice Acting
The voice work really adds to the game and makes it entertaining to play.
Pro Card Balances and Game Updates Often
The Hearthstone team is always looking at their data and community reaction towards cards and the state of the game, and they have made many card and game changes/updates to balance and improve the game for all players.
Pro You won't be cursed at in the chat.
Interaction with opponent limited to simple pre-made phrases, so you don't have to see how many 1337 gamers had their way with you or your mother. Or deal with the spam about free decks, new hacks etc.
Pro Near-perfect balance between going first or second
There's no significant first-turn or second-turn advantage in Hearthstone. The player going second gets an extra card from his deck as well as "The Coin", a card that gives one extra mana crystal for one turn. This subverts the advantage that would be gained otherwise by the player going first.
Pro Free to play that doesn't exploit
Yes it's free to play, but it's designed to easily continue to play and have fun without having to feel like you HAVE to pay. At the same time, after playing a while you'll probably want to.
Pro Great if you don't take it too seriously
HS is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and generally casual. It requires a lot of time and money investment if you wish to play seriously.
Pro Hundreds of possible character builds
There's a staggering amount of builds and skills you can try out in Path of Exile. There are 7 classes, 19 subclasses, 194 active skill gems, 107 support gems, and over 1000 skill nodes on the expansive skill tree. As a result, there are hundreds of possible combinations, allowing you to spend hours theory-crafting just to create the perfect build. Even if you don't feel like planning out a build from scratch, you can just look up one of the many guides online and get straight into the action.
Pro Completely free without pay to win mechanics
You can just download and install the game without any purchases. On top of that, there are no pay-to-win mechanics and the only things locked behind paywalls are cosmetic effects, pets, and additional storage space. You can easily play the game for hundreds of hours without spending a dime.
Pro Regularly updated
Every 4 months or so, Path of Exile has major updates, adding new interesting mechanics, skills, items, and various other content. As a result, every time you come back to Path of Exile after taking a break, it feels like a new game.
Pro Great setting
Path of Exile is set in a dark fantasy world where everything is gradually becoming worse. At the foreground, you have the massive continent of Wraeclast that once was the home to a flourishing empire, but now is a place filled with the undead, evil spirits, ruins, and echoes of the past. To make matters worse, malicious entities from another dimension seek to corrupt the world and its inhabitants, giving birth to disfigured monstrosities that seek to end you. The end result is an immersive setting with dark motifs, body horror, loads of gore, and a very tense atmosphere, which is refreshing in an era dominated by family friendly content.
Pro Feels exhilarating to play
While the gameplay might feel a little slow and clunky in the beginning, it gradually picks up speed as you progress, allowing you to swiftly destroy large groups of monsters with any skills you choose. Whether you're shooting ice arrows with your bow, freezing and shattering every enemy on-screen, or if you're cleaving enemies with a massive axe, causing them to bleed and explode on death, it just feels incredibly satisfying.
Pro Greet Developer
Grinding Gear Games provide a lot of communication and community interaction
Cons
Con Huge Money Sink
Although you can "technically" play for free, Hearthstone is very stingy on rewards. To get the limit of 100 paltry coins free a day, you have to win 30 games vs mostly players who have much better cards than you. It can take a new player 6 to 8(or more) hours to accomplish this. And after all this you get a pack of 5 cards that are often completely worthless to any viable deck. It's possible to get cards like "Angry Chicken"(worthless card) as the "Rare" card several times. You can also get a bunch of cards you already have a lot of.
Con Many mechanics based on random numbers
Random effects in the game use a random number generator, which causes an uncertainty of all outcomes. This causes one or both players to be frustrated because they can lose an already won game despite playing to the best of their ability.
Con The reward system is not significant enough
Hearthstone's reward system is very lackluster, providing little to nothing of significance to the casual or excessive player. There will be times when you feel heavily rewarded by the game, but these times are few and far between and if you are driven by rewards you will likely lose attraction to this game quickly.
Con Lacking a lot of depth found in better TCGs
Con Crafting is expensive
In lieu of trading cards, this game uses a disenchanting/crafting system to handle duplicate copies in your collection and being able to obtain the cards you want. Many cards disenchant for paltry amounts, and the best cards cost lots of "dust" to be able to play with.
Con Luck is more rewarding than skill.
When you lose a game in Hearthstone you don't learn anything because you generally can't play around most of the cards, most of the cards have random effects you have no control over it whatsoever.
Con Additional "Cards" must be paid for if not earned by continuously playing
There is a bit of a grind in earning new cards, so for those that do not want to spend the large amount of time needed to earn quality cards they will need to be purchased, which can get expensive.
Con Dependent on Battle.net infrastructure, not playable offline
The game requires a connection with Battle.net servers from the developers, and thus can't be played offline.
Con Ridiculously bloated
Over 4 GB data installed on ones device. Which is quite a lot of room, something many might not have to spare.
Con No trading with other players
Con The discover mechanic alone ruined this game
Luck tends to be more important than skill: there are numerous RNG-based cards in this game. Players that care about skill are better of playing other games, like Magic.
Con Simplistic and unintuitive card design
Very little mechanical depth, most of the complexity is based on random numbers.
Con Sometimes unfair matchmaking
Sometimes players will be matched up with people who clearly have been playing longer.
Con Poor port
Plays much better on PC. Sluggish and crashes often on mobile, sometimes connections can be difficult to make as well.
Con Chinese money > Freedom of speech
Blizzard WILL sell your soul to the chinese overlords for a couple sheckels. DO NOT play this game if you care about freedom of any kind. There are many other CCG out there. Have some dignity and principles.
Con Anti-experimentation for new players
The game heavily punishes any experimentation for new players. Unless you have near perfect understanding of late game and the various viable build-options you are more or less unable to experiment your way into viable builds (and the options for correcting mistakes are limited at best). So, unless you are fine with having to scrap a bunch of characters for being sub-optimal, you are more or less forced into following player-made guides to learn the game rather than through engaging with the game itself. This may or may not be a problem for you.
Con Very high learning curve
There's quite a lot to learn when starting to play Path of Exile. There are the mechanics, the crafting system, and the skill gem system. However, the most intimidating factor is the massive skill tree with over 1000 skill nodes, 6 classes and 19 subclasses, allowing you to create hundreds of unique builds. Unfortunately, creating a functional build is really difficult, taking hours of theorycrafting, so it might be better to stick to guides as you're starting out, unless you're fine with possibly messing up.
Con Endgame can get really repetitive
It takes an exceptionally long time to get any wealth, useful items, or access to endgame bosses in this game. You endlessly farm the same maps, hoping you'll get lucky with a few good items, but that usually won't be the case, which can be really discouraging to keep playing. This is made worse by the fact that your character progression comes to a grinding halt near the upper 80s of character levels, requiring you to buy insanely expensive items to feel any progression at all. If you don't like grinding, you'll get quickly bored of Path of Exile.
Con Clunky trading system
The western PC version of Path of Exile currently requires using an external site to find deals or sifting through scam attempts in the trade chat. After you find an item you want to buy, you need to message the seller, and if they respond, enter the same area as them to make a direct trade. There is no auction house, no mail, no automated trading posts, and to sell stuff you have to buy a premium stash tab via a microtransaction.
Con One shot fest
This game has an extreme learning curve, meaning you'll invest 100 hours of just reading on the internet before understanding the basic game, plus the endgame is a one dimensional "spam all flasks and one shot everything or get one shot" style of gameplay.
Con Unrewarding
You fight 40 minutes with "uber uber boss" and he drops white items that can be found anywhere in barrels most of the time
whats worse, you have to "farm" "fragments" to start that boss battle, that will take a while too, if you decide to buy the fragments, you will drop nothing and you will lose a lot of currency.
Con Some aspects of the graphics look dated
While the graphics have received updates over time, a lot of the visuals still lack polish you'd see in most AAA games. Some textures are fairly low res, certain character models look weird when they have armor on, and the animations feel somewhat stiff and clunky. You probably won't notice this during active gameplay, but when you stop for a moment to look around it becomes painfully obvious.