Lurker > metroid composite

Libram Paladin definitely looks a bit scary going into this expansion. Although worth noting the pen flinger part of the deck will get a bit less reliable cause they are losing Salhet's Pride, which was a fast way to reliably tutor for pen flingers and broomsticks out of the deck. Might not always draw pen flinger now; paladin draw is really bad.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

skullbone posted...

Just wait until the next expansion when we get a card that says "cast a random spell for each time your hero power was used this game".

Please no.

I like hero power decks because they have a high level of consistency, even if you don't draw what you need, you can hero power and it's not that bad.

Giving hero power decks the equivalent of puzzle box of yogg saron is like...the opposite of that.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Camden posted...

The hero power mage gimmick is something I like the idea of, but it feels like yet another gimmick that won't get enough support to ever actually do anything.

I mean, the two revealed cards don't seem like they need any support other than each other.

One of them is a 4 mana 3/5 with attached Arcane Explosion (that also hits face for 1).

Pretty solid when you realize that the following 2 cards saw play--a 5 mana 3/6 with a whirlwind effect:

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards/50412-dragonmaw-scorcher?set=wild&textFilter=1%20damage

And a 3 mana 2/2 with an arcane explosion effect:

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards/38409-twilight-flamecaller?set=wild&textFilter=1%20damage

The other card only really requires synergy from the first card, and then it becomes a 10 mana pyroblast the opponent's face while summoning a 10/10 and clearing their board.

I'm not sure if you run the core set hero power cards like Coldarra Drake or Fallen Hero alongside these cards, but pretty sure you could just run these two cards stand-alone.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Welp, they're printing support for Wild Even Mage

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/m6g06r/new_cards_reckless_apprentice_and_mordresh_fire/

So that's kinda neat.

(Presumably meant for a hero power mage in standard, of course).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Camden posted...

Which class is able to take advantage of the no four drop requirement the best? A lot rougher than no dupes.

Stealth Rogue at the moment runs no 4 drops and could maybe run Shaodw Step, so there's that as an option. But this seems like this might be designed as more of a value card, so IDK if an aggro deck will care.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

LiquidOshawott posted...

Oh hey Kazakus is back

I still need to see what the golems can do.

Like...the only one we've seen is 5 mana 5/5 taunt draw 2 cards, and that is I mean...better than Big ol' whelp I guess, but is it enough better to justify playing a 3/3 on turn 4? Is it enough better to justify cutting all your other 4 drops? Ehhhhhh....


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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Well, this sure is a "we did it reddit" moment:

https://twitter.com/GW_Alec/status/1371509599841484806

OG Stonetusk Boar and Bluegill Warrior are going to wild with charge; a new 2/1 beast with rush and 3/1 murloc with rush will replace them in standard.

You can thank fans of Anyfin Paladin for that one. (But I am a little worried about the implications for Quest Rogue, since they probably playtested Quest Rogue -without- boar).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Well lost three in a row with pure paladin, after going on winstreaks with it earlier in the season. But I decided, pure paladin isn't supposed to be that good right now, I'm just comfortable with it. So I switched to Libroom Paladin. Got some wins back, but still don't feel super comfortable deciding when to hold resources and when to spend resources with this deck.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

VeryInsane posted... Giggling would see play in a lot of aggro decks btw, it was like an auto include in a lot of them (Odd Pally, Zoo, Token Druid, I think Odd Rogue ran it too) at 5.

Not in wild.

When I looked during the time period when Giggling was 5 mana in wild, the tier list I looked at none of the aggro decks ran it, and only one control deck ran it out of 24 decklists (Reno Warlock). Here's a tier list I looked at:

https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/wild/2018-09-01

This includes zero copies in wild Odd Rogue and zero copies in wild Odd Paladin at the time.

The card for aggro decks is a setup card right? You play it turn 5, and then turn 6 because it's so sticky it's probably still alive so you play Fungalmancer or Wargear or Soul of the Forest or Savage Roar or whatever. But that's a turn 6 plan with a turn 5 setup, a little bit slow for wild aggro, a lot of wild decks can actually clear a giggling inventor easily through cards like defile or flamewaker, or not even clear it just cast spreading plague and laugh at you, or just clear it by having a wide board and attacking into it--it's not nearly as sticky as it was in standard, and also people don't really run Fungalmancer in wild anymore so the turn 6 buff followup isn't really there.

Just...pretty sure there's good reasons why it wasn't run in aggro decks in wild before, and I don't think anything has really changed.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

OK, what are the interesting exclusions?

No Giggling Inventor. A little surprised by this, they're handing out a lot of aggro tools, and no control tools, and also Giggling Inventor was barely played in wild as a 5 drop before. But also not really surprised since Giggling is a monster in Quest Rogue. They probably want to see if Quest Rogue becomes a force in the meta, and then if it is still a non-factor in the meta maybe Giggling goes back down to 5 next year?

No Murloc Warleader. It's a battlegrounds card and also a card they might think about bringing back to standard; has to be one of those two reasons.

No Faceless Corruptor. I'm not surprised by this--a lot of these un-nerfs are targeted at nostalgia, and nobody actually has nostalgia for 5/4 Faceless because it was nerfed to 4/4 in like...two weeks, and then spent a full year seeing plenty of play as a 4/4, so most people probably remember that version.

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https://twitter.com/GW_Alec/status/1370068287615164420

Undertaker (gets +1/+1)
Arcane Golem (4/2 w/ Charge)
Leper Gnome (2/1)
Knife Juggler (3/2)
Bonemare (7 mana)
Saronite Chain Gang (summons copy)
Archivist Elysiana (8 mana)
DQA (0 mana dragons, can't get self)
Albatross (3 mana)
Frenzied Felwing (3/3)

Well RIP, the two I didn't want to see them touch (Elysiana cause it would make her unplayable in Odd Warrior, and Albatross cause it was in every deck last time it was 3 mana in wild) did indeed get reverted.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Well one more hint about what's being reverted tomorrow:

https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/1369857154077761540

This was posted a few hours ago, so after Charge in warrior was reverted.

Which suggests at least one of Leeroy Jenkins, Arcane Golem, or Patches will be getting reverted tomorrow. (But I already expected Arcane Golem).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

So it's narrowed down to these 19? How did people figure this out?

There's only been 19 neutral cards nerfed since patch 1.0.0.5832 (the patch that is being used for Classic Mode). The assumption is that none of the cards will be reverted to older versions than classic (e.g. no pre-nerf Tinkmaster Overspark).

EDIT: oh yeah, guess I forgot about Faceless Corruptor. Eh, yeah, it's a contender. On the one hand, the card has shown up in a couple wild decks as a 4/4, like odd paladin, but on the other hand...not recently. Maybe the card is fine at 5/4. But then again, it was only a 5/4 for like...three weeks, do people really have nostalgia for 5/4 faceless?

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Anyway, I think these are a lock:

Dragonqueen Alextraza
Bonemare
Saronite Chain Gang
Frenzied Felwing
Arcane Golem

4 of them are pretty low impact in wild, and Saronite Chain Gang has already been spoiled.

These are really likely cause it's hard to get to 10 without them, and while maybe some decks play them, they aren't that scary:

Knife Juggler
Leper Gnome

Which leaves 3 cards out of the following list:

Murloc Warleader (Not that scary, but if they ever want to bring it back to standard it stays +2/+0. If they plan to leave it in wild, it becomes +2/+1).
Giggling Inventor (Not that scary in theory. However they did just un-nerf Rogue Quest, and it's scary in Quest Rogue).
Leeroy Jenkins (Normally I wouldn't expect them to buff a card that's already seeing wild play, but it's not impossible just cause it would actually shake up the meta, weaken odd decks a little and it's not clear what it would strengthen).
Bad Luck Albatross (Most people who play wild don't want this back at 3, but how tuned in are they with the wild community? Find out tomorrow...).
Undertaker (Would they bring back the best creature of all time just because it doesn't have the support cards it used to?)
Archivist Elysiana (I mean, very safe revert, it just ruins the card for the only wild deck that wanted it; will they actually bear that in mind before doing their reverts? Stay tuned...).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Saronite was already spoiled basically, so we know that's one of the 10.

I don't think they touch Archivist Elysiana. It's only used in Odd Warrior in wild. Buffing it to 8 mana means that it would be used in no wild decks (non-Odd Warrior has access to Dead Man's Hand, which is like 50x better). Unless they like...buff Elysiana to 7 mana or something.

I think Frenzied Felwing probably also gets the un-nerf. Don't remember it ever actually doing much in wild when it was 3/3.

I'm skittish about Undertaker. Undertaker is actually that good, like probably still the best minion they've ever printed, but the deathrattles are pretty weak now, so it would be a highroll deck that did well if it drew undertaker on turn 1, and badly if it didn't draw undertaker. IDK, doesn't sound like it would be fun for either player.

I really don't think they'll revert Small Time Buckaneer. Instantly goes into nearly every deck running patches (including Kingsbane Rogue, Odd Rogue, Pirate Warrior). These are tier 1-2 decks.

They might put Giggling Inventor down to 5 mana. It wasn't played in wild at 5 mana when it first came out, and I'm not sure why they left it at 6 mana when they "buffed" it.

Are they crazy enough to do Leeroy Jenkins at 4 mana? I feel like it's not impossible that they do this, just because most of the decks that run Leeroy right now are odd decks, so it would actually make those decks weaker (while making other decks stronger).

I hope they don't cause it was really obnoxious at 3 mana and still gets played sometimes in wild at 4 mana, but there is a nightmare scenario where they decide to make Bad Luck Albatross 3 mana again.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

And here are the warrior/shaman/warlock un-nerfs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/m23l0i/bufflist_shaman_warlock_warrior_visuals_tomorrow/

I was right about Tuskarr Totemic, Dreadsteed, and Dark Pact staying nerfed.

I was right about Charge being reverted.

The ones I was unsure about

Mogu Fleshshaper = stay nerfed

Posessed Lackey = stay nerfed

Spirit Claws = reverted

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VeryInsane posted...

Prep honestly is what does it in I think but idk maybe it'll be entertaining

I think it might have a place as just a high value deck, since it probably can just out-muscle res priest. Obviously I'm very skeptical about the deck against aggro; that's a given. And yeah, prep only reducing by 2 instead of 3 is a big problem for the deck.

VeryInsane posted...

Leaves Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior huh? I'm guessing most of the galakrond stuff for Shaman gets unnerfed, Mogu might go to 7, Fiendish goes back to 3, bloodsworn's stats go back up. I doubt they unnerf Ancharr.

I expect all of those, except maybe for Mogu, not sure about that one. But I also expect to see Scion of Ruin back at 3 mana.

They also hinted that we're getting a partial un-nerf of Flametongue totem since it's a card they might bring back to standard (kind of like the hunter's mark to 1 mana but not 0 mana). I'm not quite sure what to expect here, but I'm guessing it costs 2 mana still but is a 0/2 instead of a 0/3.

I don't think we'll see a Dark Pact rollback, Warlock is good enough in wild, doesn't also need a 1 mana heal for 8.

We could see a Posessed Lackey rollback. It does help some already decent decks, but meh, cubelock is already really tight on cards, and doesn't run Lackey currently; what's it going to cut for Lackey?

Dreadsteed...I don't think they will do it. Like...they've definitely done a few I thought were on the outside range of ones they could un-nerf like Buzzard and Apothecary, but Dreadsteed I think is a whole tier above those cards when paired with wild tools like Defile.

Spirit Claws...huh. Yeah, they might. Especially with the removal of spell damage totem from the hero power pool.

Charge. Yeah, they probably will actually. Wild can handle raging worgen combos.

Tuskarr Totemic. Man, fuck this card, nobody liked it when it was an RNG fest, and nobody really wants to see it summoning 4/5 amalgams and Grand Totem Eye'sor. Powerlevel wise they...could, but I hope they don't.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Second round of buffs revealed:

Paladin:
Call to Arms (4 mana)

Priest:
Power Word: Shield (1 mana, draws a card)

Rogue:
Blade Flurry (2 mana, no face dmg)
Caverns Below (4 minions, 5/5 stats)
Necrium Apothecary (4 mana)
Galakrond (cards cost 0)
Edwin (3 mana)

The one that scares me is Necrium Apothecary, since there's already a wild deck that uses it to draw Deathwing Dragonlord and then summon a hand full of dragons.

Caverns Below is going to get an initial flurry of play and then I expect fade away as people realize it still loses to aggro. Maybe it fucks up Big Priest or something though by outvaluing them in the mean time; we can hope.

I'm excited about Call to Arms for Even Paladin, maybe it will finally be a real deck again; it's been getting a lot of great tools like First Day of School and Hand of A'dal. Is this the card that pushes it back into viability? Eh, don't know, but maybe!

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

They're spoiling wild un-nerfs in batches of 3 classes at a time:

https://twitter.com/GW_Alec/status/1369013190034550784

Druid:
Keeper of the Grove
Ancient of Lore

Hunter:
Starving Buzzard
Flare
Dinotamer Brann
Hunter's Mark (costs 1)

Mage:
Mana Wyrm (1 mana, 1/2)
Conjurer's Calling
Dragoncaster

As part of this Wyrm Weaver moves down to a 4 mana, 3/5 and summons two 1/2 Mana Wyrms.

Biggest one by far is 2 mana Starving Buzzard. Hunter has been dead in wild for a long time, but this might just breathe life into wild hunter decks, cause 2 mana Buzzard is absolutely bonkers.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Kotick is a great CEO.

As someone who's worked for Kotick...he's...good at making money and pushing the company in a more greedy direction. I don't think his approach leads to better videogames, though.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

I mean, having a new collection and playing against people with full collections was a problem from back when the game was in beta. I remember being annoyed when playing against people who had 10 legendaries when I had 0.

It's definitely possible to compete with a relatively small collection as long as you are fine with playing certain kinds of budget decks, though (mostly aggro decks, a bunch of them only use commons and rares).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

ESY16 posted...

I know I keep harping on this, but this game is unplayable for new players. I started keeping track the last couple of days, and 85% of players I face have 500 or 1000 wins on their hero and 80% are playing fully fleshed out tier 1 decks. I generally only play enough to finish the weekly quest which gets me around Gold 5. I just can't fathom how apparently a huge chunk of the player base have played this game forever, have every resource they could ever want, but are somehow hard-stuck gold.

I mean, they have been steadily ramping up how much they give new players.

First they introduced the newbie ranks where you only play other new accounts, and you get packs frequently just for ranking up.

Then they introduced a full free deck you get when you get out of newbie ranks (or if you return after taking 4 months off).

They also introduced duplicate protection for commons and rares making it pretty easy for ongoing players to get all the rares, and for new players to get all the commons. End of season rewards also seem to be reworked to provide much more benefit to new players (Up to 7 guaranteed rares that you don't have--not a big deal for people who open all the rares on day 1, but that's a lot of rares if you are missing rares).

The rewards track is...about the same value for veterans as the old quest system, but rewards like packs from old sets which are fairly low value for vets are quite useful for new players.

And coming up soon everyone will be able to use the entire core set for free. No more needing to collect/craft classic set cards for new players (when a lot of veteran players never needed to worry about that due to having full classic sets).

I mean, prior to all these changes, the new player experience was hot garbage. And maybe these changes still aren't enough. But I'm glad they've made like...5-6 changes that at least move in the right direction.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Camden posted...

I figured the brawl this week would just be aggro Druid/Rogue/Hunter, which is the route I took with Token Druid, but the one game I played was against Secret Mage. I don't know what all cards Secret Mage would lose in this format and I won fast enough that I didn't have to find out.

Secret Mage is one of the obviously pretty good options in this tavern brawl.

It loses Rigged Faire Game (and turn 1 Kabal Lackey into Rigged Faire game is the thing that really turbo charged Secret Mage in wild).

It loses Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon. (Or for a slightly more oldschool version of the deck, it would lose Aluneth). So basically between Rigged Faire Game, Sayge, and Aluneth all of its big card draw options are gone.

It also loses Ice Block, which...not every list runs in wild, but might get run in this tavern brawl to give you an extra turn to burn your opponent to death. Although...maybe all the missing card draw means you can't run this.

It loses Occult Conjurer (the 4/4 that summons another 4/4 if you have a secret equipped). This isn't the end of the world, but a 4 mana 8/8 is still pretty nice.

So basically, it's not losing very many cards, but the cards it does lose kind of open up a weakness with the deck since it's losing most of its card draw.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

So...the tavern brawl is make a deck out of all basic, common, and rare cards (but it's also a wild TB). The obvious direction that most people are taking is aggro, which works pretty good. But when the meta is all aggro it's exploitable by dedicated control.

Problem is, most control wincons are legendaries (hero cards, quests, old gods etc). First one I could think of that's not legendary or epic was Jade Idol. So I made a deck with Jade Idol and a bunch of control cards. I think I'm like 6-0 with this list.

Brawl Deck
Class: Druid
Format: Wild
2x (1) Crystal Power
2x (1) Jade Idol
2x (1) Lesser Jasper Spellstone
2x (1) Nature Studies
2x (2) Lunar Eclipse
2x (2) Solar Eclipse
2x (3) Ferocious Howl
2x (3) Jade Blossom
2x (4) Hecklebot
2x (4) Oaken Summons
2x (4) Poison Seeds
2x (5) Starfall
2x (6) Jade Behemoth
2x (6) Spreading Plague
2x (7) Overflow
AAEBAbSKAwAPVooOtLsCy7wC3b4CoM0CmNIChOYCv/IClZQDuZQD26UDm84DieADiuADAA==

Normal wild jade druid lists cut even more jade cards than this (like only one copy of Jade Idol and no copies of Jade Behemoth) but eh, needed more cards in the deck; they're solid filler, Jade Idol is solid cause it costs 1, Jade Behemoth is solid cause it has taunt. (Aya on the other hand I don't think belongs in this deck, it's like an anti-control card). Loaded up on turn 1-2 removal to deal with hyper aggro stuff like board flood druid. Deck doesn't get outvalued by anything I've encountered, so extra early plays to stabilize seem fine.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

ESY16 posted...

Man, hunter and DH look so bad post rotation unless they get a lot of help from the new set.

Yeah....

Hunter already had a LOT of cards rotating. Phase Stalker, Dragonbane, highlander hunter stuff, dragon hunter stuff, Dwarven Sharpshooter, Blazing Battlemage.

And then on top of that they're slapping on the loss of Animal Companion, Kill Command, and Eaglehorn Bow? Ouch.

At least they get Quickshot, great card.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

azuarc posted...

That's a lot of staple stuff gone. Swipe, Wrath, Starfall, basically all the direct damage spells. In fact, there aren't *any* left in the core set. Also a bunch of chaff and icons of the past have been cut, like Claw, Ironbark, Savagery, Bite, Force, Savage, etc. Adjusting to all of that being out of the cycle is going to be jarring.

Instead, what we still have includes minor mana cheats (Innervate, Nourish, Nordrassil Druid), buffs (improved Mark of the Wild, Power of the Wild, Soul of the Forest, Cenarius), and a very small collection of choose one cards (Power, Druid of the Claw, Nourish, Ancient of War, Cenarius). Maybe 5 isn't that small, but most of those cards haven't seen recent play. There's very little beast support outside of Raven -- is a 1 mana 2/2 that good in 2021? -- and Menagerie Warden. I'm honestly not sure what druid's identity is here. It certainly isn't treants. It's not mana ramp. It's not beasts. It's not...well, much of anything. Druid will be completely dependent on the sets of the current year, because these cards don't even seem like they're likely to augment an existing deck beyond maybe 1 or 2 cherrypicks. Making a core-set-only deck, though? Yeesh.

Worth noting most of the choose one stuff that hasn't seen recent play got a buff.

Druid of the Claw is now a 5/6 taunt (or 5/4 rush, which granted, is arguably a downgrade from 4/4 charge, but that was the weaker mode anyway). Cenarius now costs 8 mana (down from 9)

> "is a 1 mana 2/2 that good in 2021?"

Well, let's take a peek at how many decks are running blazing battlemage. It's...a decent number, although it's not a common include in Token Druid. (Token Druid has access to 1 mana for a 2/2 Treant, though, which they do run, and Treeinforcements is rotating, so maybe they do care about enchanted raven after rotation?)

I guess there's an outside chance of Druid of the Claw being a relevant beast with its stat buff? No, probably not, probably still need to get beasts from expansions.

Anyway, worth noting Druid is keeping almost all the cards they actually use in decks right now. They aren't using Wrath right now; Lunar Eclipse is better. Bogbeam is also better. They aren't using Swipe either. But they are using Power of the Wild. They are using Innervate. They are sometimes using Wild growth.

There is one massive exception that they are losing: Savage Roar is obviously a card they're using right now. But other than that it seems like they're keeping everything else important?

I don't want to declare any of the new cards as being on the power level of savage roar, cause I'm pretty sure they're not. But Druid looks like it should survive the rotation.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

azuarc posted...

However, since the most powerful card here is easily the new 8 mana 8/8 rush, maybe DH starts playing for longer games and then tags you in the face for 9 after rushing into your taunt.

Eh, I think that card is overhyped.

DH has had a lot of big minions that just ended up doing nothing, including Ancient Void Hound and Coilfang Warlord.

Yeah, that card plus a hero power sure is 9 face damage for 9 mana, but you could say the same thing about Inner Demon, and it's not like aggro decks were running Inner Demon as a finisher. Inner Demon only got run when you could cast it for 0 mana with Kael'Thas.

I'm a lot more interested in the "pen flinger" legendary. Not because I think you're going to recur it a ton like Pen Flinger, but because it's basically Lifedrinker. Opponent loses 2 health, you gain 2 health, get a 2/2. Obviously Lifedrinker is gain/lose 3 and a 3/3, but it's also double the mana. Even one bounce is into very good territory (after one bounce, for the same mana as Lifedrinker, you've dealt 4 and gained 4 health).

Gan'arg Glaivesmith also looks...well it's a lot worse than Twin Slice, but what are you going to do, not run it? It gives your hero +3 attack. But god, it is a little underwhelming isn't it? Like...you need outcast for that? Pretty sure you could remove the outcast requirement, and Shaman's Stormstrike would still be the better card. Still, I would be genuinely surprised if DH aggro decks didn't run this.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

skullbone posted...

Okay this is the best picture I've seen to see what cards are leaving:

My biggest takeaway from that picture is that the core set is much smaller than the original basic+classic.

Looks like we're going from 25 cards per class to 16 cards per class. (It'll probably have a similar overall impact on the meta cause like...most of the cards in the new core set are higher power on average than the cards from old basic+classic).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

LiquidOshawott posted...

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards?set=core

Wow they brought back and buffed a bunch of cool cards. Hello Lock and Load

Jaraxxus is a hero yay

Yep, been looking through this for a while. Biggest surprises at the moment:

Warglaives of Azzinoth are back at 5 mana (but 3/3 instead of 3/4). This'll have implications in both standard and wild.

Nourish is...not buffed; still 6 mana (why?)

Tracking no longer mills two cards out of your deck. This will make people who hated the idea of milling themselves happy.

King Krush is back with somehow no buffs. (The new 9 mana Alextraza is basically just better in every way, other than the beast tag).

Warhorse Trainer is a 3/4 now. (Reasonable change for standard, but oh wow wild is going to feel that one).

Fire Elemental deals 4 damage. (Good change; didn't see it coming).

Lakkari Felhound has been "buffed" to always discard your lowest cost cards (which is probably a nerf for wild).

Warsong Commander gives minions you summon rush (expected, but nice to have confirmation that Patron Warrior is probably back on the menu in wild).

Fiery War Axe is NOT buffed (I...expected them to either send this to wild or tweak it a little)

Nerubian Egg is back (I did NOT see this one coming)

Murloc Warleader is now wild-only with no replacement (didn't see this one coming either. Lowest support Murlocs have ever had from the core set).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

GANON1025 posted...

Im hearing that on a stream one of devs noted that Druid's going to be losing Wrath and Swipe with the new core set, in favor of using "feral" cards similar to Pounce

I mean, on the one hand feral cards in the past have often been bad...but on the other hand they can obviously make good feral cards if they actually try. They could un-nerf bite back to 3 mana, for example. If you think about it, 3 mana bite would be kind-of like demon hunter's 3 mana relentless pursuit. They could also bring back Feral Rage from wild--that card was pretty good, and it's just a choose one card so it would fit fine in the core set.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

You are describing an incredibly rare spot. Fatigue does not happen as often as players think it does.

I mean, there's not a lot of control shaman right now, it's true, but, tempo decks that don't use a lot of damage spells are still just going to prefer this totem regardless.

Top shaman deck right now is evolve shaman. No damage spells in the deck (although you can generate them). Clearly prefers the new totem.

Second most played shaman deck right now is Totem Shaman, which also runs no damage spells in the deck (but can generate them). Clearly prefers the new totem.

Third most played shaman deck right now is an aggro shaman with a bunch of spells (serpentshrine portal, earth shock, lava burst, lightning bolt). And it's...not immediately clear to me which of these totems that deck would prefer. Obviously with the spells the spell damage totem can be good. But on the other hand, rolling an early strength totem when you have a 1/3 on the board is also going to be really good. It's not immediately obvious to me which totem is better for the deck overall.

Fourth most played shaman deck is spell damage shaman with rune dagger and stuff. Obviously hates the change, wants spell damage totem back.

Fifth most played shaman deck is Galakrond Quest shaman, which barely runs spells (2 dunk tank being the only cards that care, and by the time you corrupt them you may have replaced your hero power anyway). Definitely prefers the new totem.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

This makes Shamans hero power strictly worse.

It really doesn't, though.

Like...I remember seeing statistics on totem summons back when spirit claws was 1 mana was in standard, and spell damage totem was on the lower end of win percentages. And...just to reiterate this was when spirit claws was 1 mana so this was a meta when you sometimes really wanted spell damage. Lowest win percentage was spell damage totem.

On the flip side, the thing this does do is that if both players are out of relevant cards in hand, like both players in fatigue, shaman hero power now becomes the straight up best hero power. Once you have all four totems on the field, none of the other hero powers can stop you. Your damage just scales up every turn (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) your totems heal so none of the other hero powers can kill them, and you have a taunt.

Maybe fatigue in particular won't come up, but the control shaman vs control warrior matchup WILL come up, and when shaman has the new totem out, Warrior has to spend a card from their hand clearing the totems, can't just ignore them. That's kind of a big deal.

Definitely not strictly worse, just...different.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Some buffs to basic/classic cards I haven't seen mentioned in this topic yet:

Lightning Storm -> deal 3 damage to all enemy minions (RNG removed)
Feral Spirit -> Overload 1 (no longer Overload 2)
Earth Elemental -> Overload 2 (no longer Overload 3).

And a hero power change

Shaman Hero Power: spell damage totem replaced by "Strength Totem"--end of your turn give a minion +1 attack.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Tried taking big warrior onto ladder, went 0-2 losing to a priest who stole and copied rattlegore and a rogue with sinister strikes; noped back to casual with that deck.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

I've been spamming a bad DH deck in casual to try and get my level up to 60 for all the gold cards, in case that matters with the rotation (it's not supposed to I think but not clear).

The deck that's cleaning up in casual is big warrior, though. Don't even have all the cards (no Kargath, which means I need to cut the "draw a rush minion" card too). But like...it's got control tools for aggro, and cheats out enough big nonsense to threaten warlock. I haven't lost yet with it I think? Bit of a surprise to me.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Underleveled posted...

Historians pretty consistently rank Polk in the top 10-15 presidents so no he's not just a meme.

Historians also rate presidents by how much they cause long term policy changes, not by how positive those policy changes are.

Like...historians rate Andrew Jackson in the top 10, even though he ignored the supreme court, caused a constitutional crisis, genocided the native americans, got impeached, and came the closest of any president ever to being convicted after being impeached.

But he "expanded executive power" (which is true, pretty much every president after him flexed that amount of power).

(That said, I don't have a strong opinion on Polk. I just have a strong opinion about historian rankings).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Last I heard it only works on Luigi Raceway, so the game isn't as broken as that one individual track makes it look.

Still pretty broken though.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Spades

The bridge suit you want to be in. (Well, that or no trump).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

Okay then you should absolutely know how laughably and indefensibly stupid that combo is. Even if there is marginal counterplay, an entire meta is warped around it to laughable levels.

I mean, I want it gone, don't get me wrong.

But while we're there, if they could delete Big Priest too the way they deleted Darkest Hour Warlock that would be great.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

I mean no offense here but I question how involved you are with Wild.

Been to legend several times, been 11 star MMR multiplier, though I'm more frequently 10 star mult. Regularly read wild meta reports, periodically read wild subreddits. In lower ranks like Diamond 5 (where I am at the moment) it's very common. But I was watching a few high legend streamers and in top 100 legend it's not that common--much more kingsbane rogue and secret mage.

Anyway, apparently it's getting nerfed next week:

https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/1352819329775984641

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Yeah, seems my initial assessment of the combo was a bit overblown; seems kingsbane rogue counters it decently well (because they don't play enough minions to attack into, so they can't get comboed out on turn 5-6). And Secret Mage also apparently does fine (counterspell, explosive runes).

Those being two of the top aggro decks anyway, it might make the combo only tier 2 or something.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

I've been killed by Wretched Tiller OTK on turn 5. Too early to be sure, because decklists aren't even refined yet, but if decks do continue getting refined this could actually be the strongest combo of all time in wild.

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Well, opened my packs, and then ended up spending 2,400 dust on...Lothraxion the Redeemed and Oh My Yogg.

Lothraxion just appeals to me, I really like having strong hero powers, and Lothraxion with Odd Paladin's hero power is really nifty.

Oh My Yogg is disruption that is really needed to be functional in wild right now. Wretched Tiller is everywhere.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

If you use ignore rather than block, can they still post in the topic?

Cause I have a couple people ignored just so that I can stop myself from getting into flame wars with them, and I want to say I've made politics topics.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

dowolf posted...

Edit: I wonder if all-golden whale actually overestimates their dust value, since I imagine they're still opening packs after they get 100% of golden commons? Not that I think that appellation applies to any of us :)

Yeah, IDK, I just tossed that one in for fun, so it might not be totally accurate.

I will say opening all golden commons takes a really, really long time, though. There's way more commons than any other rarity (like 54 commons, vs 25 legendaries) and you need two copies of each. And golden commons are barely more frequent than legendaries, so like...by the time you have all the golden commons from a set from opening packs, you have (on average) 3 copies of every legendary.

I guess there's some chance you complete the golden rares before the golden commons? For some reason, golden rares are almost as frequent as golden commons, and there's a lot less of them (32 rares in a set compared to 54 commons) so yeah, they probably complete the golden rares before the golden commons. Golden commons and golden rares should still complete around the same time.

But when you complete all golden commons and all golden rares, I'm not sure how far off you would be from just crafting the rest of the epics and legendaries.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Since I've had discussions on multiple different hearthstone forums about how much gold should be attributed to a random legendary (either in the rewards track or as part of a bundle), I made a reddit image with lots of alternative dusting styles/collecting styles:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/k2dbwe/how_much_gold_is_a_random_legendary_worth_a/

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

UltimaterializerX posted...

https://imgur.com/2UZJBKE

Blizzard employees directly involved in overt racism, and Reddit moderators continue praising this writer, censoring the tweets, and have gone so far as to call them fake.

They are all real and remain on the account.

I've been running searches on twitter and I can't find most of these tweets.

The only one I can find is this one:

https://twitter.com/Authoroux/status/796231788167204868

Which...was written by a completely different woman (a book author with no connection I can see to Blizzard). So...that tweet looks like they photoshopped the Blizzard empoyees face onto the tweet, cause the tweet exists, but on a different account.

So uh, yeah, haven't found any of the other tweets in twitter's search but guessing the rest of this is fake too since none of them are showing up in a search.

(Also can't say I care that much what anyone on the WoW team does, the only reason I ever played WoW was to get to level 20 to unlock a Hearthstone portrait. It would need to be pretty serious for me to pay attention, and one low-level empoyee maybe making tweets that I can't find anymore just doesn't register).

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dowolf posted...

And here is an alternative calculation that agrees with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbnBolNJhYA . Note that that was made before Blizzard swapped the packs for 1350 gold, though it does count both legendaries.

Yeah, that video isn't subtracting out the free legendary and free packs we used to get from the launch event that got moved into the rewards track, which would reduce their estimate by about 1300. (obviously this is before blizzard swapped packs for gold at the end of the rewards track).

(Worth noting that this youtube channel is usually focused on getting a 100% full collection through ridiculous amounts of grinding, which is why they start talking about earning 100 gold per day from the 10 wins per 3 gold, and then talk about how if you grind all the way to level 150 you get slightly more gold than that. They're so different from my playstyle that I usually just make my own spreadsheets).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

dowolf posted...

But we can still justify quite a bit higher than your value.

Both your new suggestions push it lower btw.

dowolf posted...

First, you should not be dusting cards as soon as you open them, since if they get nerfed, you get the full dust value.

If we're accounting for nerfs, then commons and rares are worth EXTRA dust and the value of a pack increases by a noticable margin. Right now, they are nerfing about 10% of the cards from expansions.

Accounting for nerfs, and sticking with your assumption that every epic and legendary you open is a card so good you would craft it, the new expected dust value of a pack is 255.9.

Which means 1 epic + 1 rare is worth 782 gold.

(Using my "50% of cards are bad and won't get used" assumption, 643 gold).

dowolf posted...

Therefore, that dust isn't immediate value; it's value 1.5 years down the line. That should depreciate its worth somewhat in your mind

When you get the dust doesn't really matter though? Unless your dust count is sitting at 0.

If you want to talk about depreciation, I think the more significant depreciation is saving gold and packs for the mini-set--this means getting fewer epics and legendaries from the set at launch. If you save 2000 gold/the equivalent in packs (roughly what's needed to get the rares from the mini-set), that's 1 legendary and 4 epics you don't get to open until the middle of the expansion. Maybe by then you've crafted a few legendaries and epics, so duplicate protection means you're more likely to open bad ones

dowolf posted...

Second, a guaranteed legendary should be worth more than an expected legendary.

I mean, it's an average of 1 legendaries for 20 packs (Well...1.09 if you add golden and non-golden together 1 non-golden legendary, and 0.09 golden legendaries). You could theoretically open no legendaries or 10 legedaries. If you open no legendaries, obviously that's worse. If you open 10 legendaries, obviously that's better. This is why we use the average. Sometimes it's more (better) sometimes it's less (worse) but the average outcome is 1 legendary.

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dowolf posted...

Also, I think the 1236 dust includes the dust you'd get for dusting golden epics/legendaries? So there's a bit of double-counting there.

It assumes you either dust a golden epic/legendary, or keep/use a golden epic/legendary but don't care about the bling of it being golden. I used separate odds for opening non-golden epic and opening golden epic taken from data accumulated from 60,000 pack openings, so no, I didn't double count. My spreadsheet has 8 rarities (4 for non-golden pack openings and 4 for golden pack openings).

Either way, unless you're specifically collecting goldens, opening a golden epic is worth 400 dust, and opening a golden legendary is worth 1600 dust. Either you disenchant it and get that much dust, or it's a card you would have crafted anyway and saved that much crafting cost.

If you actually want golden cards, then the dust value of opening packs goes up (which would up the value of gold compared to non-golden rewards on the reward track).

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision