Neoguli's Custom Neutral Core Set Changes

Greetings here! I'm here to present you my version of how I would change the Neutral Core Set. I'm back at doing these, and this may be the last one, as it's just Neutrals left.

This time, as I'm mentioning again, I'm going to end my project with Neutral cards. The cards we currently have are not that bad, but a lot of them have been brushed under the rug due to powercreep, and even in the beginning of Hearthstone, some were so bad they need to be replaced. There's also room to add even more diversity to evergreen strategies. I've also added five new Basic cards to alter Demon Hunter's Golden Card distribution to be more in line with Mage and Warrior.

FYI, all cards under spoilers are only new cards  or existing cards that got changed. The rest of cards that were not shown stay the same, so they don't exactly need to be exposed. Some cards or changes to them are also giggles and my guilty pleasures. Expect Da Undatakah.

Basic Set

Core Set

Hall of Fame

Deck Recipes

Click on the deck you enjoy to also see, which cards that exist in the game are being replaced by cards from my changes!

Overall, I have fewer qualms with these changes than I usually do. Perhaps that is because there isn't the issue of class identity to disagree over. 

The Good

• I really like the Sky Daredevil and Floating Eyebat cards.
• I have something of a soft spot for Sergeant Sally since I made a whole series of story-driven decks around her. So I can say - probably with more authority than the vast majority of players - that she has just the right amount of potential synergies to balance out her baseline low power and thereby make her a worthy inclusion in the Classic set.
• I am similarly happy to see Gazlowe (who is one of a group of legendaries that I put together in a 1-mana spell rogue deck every few expansions). He'd be especially interesting in Standard because the pool of mechs will change with time.
• Where stats were buffed, I agreed with them, except for 1 instance (see below).

The bad?

Not much to say here. Just a couple of points where I would be (overly?) cautious.

• I wouldn't include Illuminator because 3 of the 4 secret classes are designed to be bad at healing, and I'd worry that this card violates that too much. I remember mage used this card quite a lot back in the day, but then again, perhaps secret mage and hunter are too aggressive now for it to matter much. Still, that can change quickly with set rotations.
• I have a slight reservation about Blazecaller. I appreciate a bit of permanent elemental synergy, but perhaps the big burn card was not the best choice given the 2 primary elemental classes (mage and shaman) are both notorious for just needing a little extra burn to be pushed over a dangerous threshold. Again, I might be a bit stuck in the past with this mentality, and such decks just aren't as dangerous anymore, especially if they have to squeeze elementals in.

The outrageous

I'm sorry, but I have to protest about Magma Rager being replaced by/buffed into Ice Rager. His icy brother is still never going to be played, but at the cost of being a bit better it loses out on 1-health synergies, memes, and the lesson to new players about why 1 health is bad. For the record, I'm fine with the change to Silverback Patriarch because it retained its primary problem of having only 1 attack so the essence of the card was not lost.

Quote From AngryShuckle

I wouldn't include Illuminator because 3 of the 4 secret classes are designed to be bad at healing, and I'd worry that this card violates that too much.

I did consider including Avian Watcher, but now that I've created actual decks that use my reworked sets, I'd say she is fine, because turns out my sets have so much minion-based anti-aggro tools it can gladly take some counters to burst. Mage can definitely still use it, but remember that I removed Counterspell from Mage, so they definitely benefit from including Illuminator, as they can no longer prevent face damage spells.

Quote From AngryShuckle

I have a slight reservation about Blazecaller.

This was one of my recent changes actually. Elementals in this rework are meh, so Blazecaller can push the deck a notch to be better. It's also one of few sources of burst that can bypass all these Taunt minions and even future cards like Spellward Jeweler, who (spoiler!) was initially in the set, but I instead opted to leave up Coldlight Seer.