It has stealth, so at the very least it gives you a free coin on the subsequent turn. Seems fairly nuts in any tempo deck, but especially anything that has a swingy 6-drop. Nithogg is the first thing that comes to my mind but I bet I'm missing something.
I can even imagine holding onto this minion in stealth for a turn or two if you have a specific expensive card you want to cheat out on turn 6 or 7.
Now sure, the tempo-loss is pretty significant if you actually play this on turn four, but suppose you wait a bit and drop this on say turn 9 alongside Hagatha's Scheme; now you're clearing the board and developing a 5-drop for 4 and the next turn you can do even nuttier things with more expensive spells, like the new 10 mana Eye of the Storm.
I could definitely see big-spell Shaman becoming a thing, it has a lot of very strong spells and control elements already.
As the face hunter, you are the aggressor and should use every bit of mana to push damage.
Doomsayer is more a defensive tool. Also drawing it late when looking for damage for lethal can be back breaking.
Additionally, I would argue against Elven Archers. I'd prolly take Leper Gnomes over them. They do 1 more damage and the targeted aspect matters less in a face deck. Also you need Tracking I think. You need to find damage for reach. The discarded cards don't really matter in a short game.
It's a meta call really. Doomsayer shores up a lot of facehunter's bad matchups against decks that can get on the board before the face hunter. If you're not facing a lot of those, you cut the doomsayers, obviously. If you are, you can try to counter that or switch to a different deck. Other than some of the secrets, facehunter has very limited board control options against minion rush strategies. It also doesn't hurt that Doomsayer plays well with most secrets, making it even more difficult for an opponent to navigate their turn optimally.
In a deck that doesn't really care about maintaining the board once you get ahead, at worst Doomsayer is heal 7 for 2 mana, which is mighty relevant in a face-race. If your opponent is trading off your board and doomsayer that means one more turn you can burst them down. It might even contribute to an Unleash the Hounds + Timber Wolf burst for lethal.
Good stats, solid effect, not sure if there's a mage deck that wants to play this though. "inspire" mage isn't exactly a standard deck right now and neither are aggro or tempo mage. I suppose you could even run this in a control deck, but even then I don't really see a candidate that'd want this.
That said, it's definitely a card to check in on after rotation when the card pool gets halved and games become more like Arena again.
Don't forget about our buddy Keeper Stalladris when evaluating choose one cards. This one seems a bit slow/overpriced as a cantrip but the 3/2 body could work in token/buff druid. It is potentially a ton of value combined into one card.
I guess shaman didn't have to wait long to go back to hiding behind 5/6 taunty puppers. The card seems fine considering the cost, but still odd timing for T5 to start poking this particular bear again.
Pretty weird card TBH. Like, sure, it's worth the mana if you're already playing quests anyway but it's not particularly synergistic with any of them except shaman's and I suppose Righteous Cause. Doesn't go in pirate warrior either because that deck doesn't run quests.
An odd card for sure, especially considering that as a Captain Kragg clearly was a pirate tribal lord.
If Warrior gets to lean on Brawl from here on to perpetuity and still gets decent board clears on top of that I don't see why Priest shouldn't have Mass Hysteria in its evergreen set. As a control class Priest still has a natural disadvantage compared to Warrior in that it can't use the HP proactively to stack up defense, that's enough of a handicap without arbitrarily making the class cards weaker as well.
As for the other changes, the only one i really disagree with is removing Velen, as far as I'm concerned the card isn't a threat unless a substantive amount of healing/damage spells AND mana discount mechanics exist in standard, and it's pretty easy to design the former around Velen so long as you don't have too much of the latter. I don't think I've seen a Velen in standard since Radiant Elemental rotated out.
I for one am glad to finally see priest get a proactive tempo card for once. More of this please! Seems like a solid card even with no further support. This is a lot like a Vilespine Slayer, removal on a stick at an affordable price. This will definitely see play in standard at some point, and it probably will see play in wild as well. It's not just good tempo, it's a form of single target removal that plays around a lot of the counters to single-target removal, like secrets and the evasive non-keyword.
Edit: regarding the whole tempo/control debate: a card that generates tempo can still be good in a control deck. If you can remove a big threat and make a mid-sized dude in the process on turn six that means you can probably spend a small amount of resources to control the board on the subsequent turn. Most control decks don't have the removal to clear every single board, they have to force their opponent to overcommit in order to use their mass-removal cards efficiently. Also, having several different options to take care of different types of boards is generally a boon to the control archetype, CF control warrior all of last year. Aeon Reaver can reset a board for a turn so you can save that Mass Hysteria for an even more threatening board. It can punish a player for not committing heavily enough or only playing one big minion by creating a huge tempo swing.
Not to mention, a lot of aggro decks in particular are terrible at swinging back tempo in their favour. If you do manage to bully them off the board with a mass-removal, they will often only be able to play one thing per turn, making a two-for-one tempo swing with a card like Aeon Reaver very powerful as a followup to a board clear.
Not sure what sort of deck this would fit in currently, but if nothing else this is an amazing arena pick due to the stats. The combination of keywords and stats make this a nightmare to deal with for any deck. The only single card I can think of ATm that deals with this is Plague of Death. Other than that you're going to need two cards at least to chew through this bad boy. Unless you have exactly sea giant and a bunch of small tokens on the board I don't see a common scenario where you can easily deal with minion on board unless you're incredibly far ahead.
This is an extremely solid card because it's so flexible and has so much value packed into a single card. Normally, a card such as this would fall off in value considerably later on because the stats get less and less impressive, but the fact that these tokens have taunt, spawn two-at-a-time and can be recast means that this can continue to be a nuisance even later on, it's not just a weenie fountain for aggro decks.
This might even see play in OTK paladin as a one-of, but you can bet this card will see play after rotation so long as there is any viable paladin deck. Terrific card.
This card seems really powerful. More or less a neutral spirit of the shark for lackeys. In rogue I imagine this'll be even stronger because you can shadowstep it for back-to-back miracle lackey turns.
I assume versions of the deck running Spellzerker are also running cards like rapid fire, arcane shot, maybe Cobalt Spellkin to deal a whole bunch of extra burn damage in one turn with a single spellzerker. Whether that's better than just leaning in on the beast/swarm synergies seems questionable to me, I'd be more inclined toward the juggler as well.
I can see the argument for wolfrider over animal comp but I value the companion higher. Later on rolling a Leokk often isn't even a detriment with all the leper gnomes and such.
Vessina isn't essential to the deck, I played it without her for ages. She definitely makes the deck a bit better, but you can add a dire wolf alpha and still feel fine about life. Bloodlust is great when you happen to have a full board, but this isn't really a dedicated token deck, so it'll often be a dead card.
Sludge slurper definitely got a bit worse, but the card does a lot of small things that this deck likes: it's a way to get overloaded for Likkim/thunderhead/vessina and it's a cheap minion that generates stuff, which matters a lot in the first few turns if you don't draw a curve. You can consider Sandstorm Elemental as an alternate cheap overload minion.
Not sure what's up with the Hench Clan Thugs but it seems to me that the autocomplete wants to build resurrect quest priest (which is a legit deck btw) by hook or by crook. You could try forcing the AI's choice by adding more invoke cards and Kronx before hitting autocomplete, I'm curious what would change.
Well deserved nerf. Man, I wish they had designed Galakrond around fair cards at the outset, because if you take away these unfun, busted cards I doubt those decks will be able to stand on their own. What a shame /s.
What a bizarre nerf. Feels like one they threw in just to placate the angry galakrond shamans out there: "see, you're not the only Galakrond getting hosed."
TBH I've not really been blown away by pirates this patch. Even supposing the deck is a problem, why go after the one card that gives it some consistency over obvious highroller cards like Prachute Brigand which can end a game by turn four if you draw the perfect hand.
It has stealth, so at the very least it gives you a free coin on the subsequent turn. Seems fairly nuts in any tempo deck, but especially anything that has a swingy 6-drop. Nithogg is the first thing that comes to my mind but I bet I'm missing something.
I can even imagine holding onto this minion in stealth for a turn or two if you have a specific expensive card you want to cheat out on turn 6 or 7.
WOOOOOW.
Now sure, the tempo-loss is pretty significant if you actually play this on turn four, but suppose you wait a bit and drop this on say turn 9 alongside Hagatha's Scheme; now you're clearing the board and developing a 5-drop for 4 and the next turn you can do even nuttier things with more expensive spells, like the new 10 mana Eye of the Storm.
I could definitely see big-spell Shaman becoming a thing, it has a lot of very strong spells and control elements already.
Edit: Atiesh sits and cries in a corner.
It's a meta call really. Doomsayer shores up a lot of facehunter's bad matchups against decks that can get on the board before the face hunter. If you're not facing a lot of those, you cut the doomsayers, obviously. If you are, you can try to counter that or switch to a different deck. Other than some of the secrets, facehunter has very limited board control options against minion rush strategies. It also doesn't hurt that Doomsayer plays well with most secrets, making it even more difficult for an opponent to navigate their turn optimally.
In a deck that doesn't really care about maintaining the board once you get ahead, at worst Doomsayer is heal 7 for 2 mana, which is mighty relevant in a face-race. If your opponent is trading off your board and doomsayer that means one more turn you can burst them down. It might even contribute to an Unleash the Hounds + Timber Wolf burst for lethal.
Good stats, solid effect, not sure if there's a mage deck that wants to play this though. "inspire" mage isn't exactly a standard deck right now and neither are aggro or tempo mage. I suppose you could even run this in a control deck, but even then I don't really see a candidate that'd want this.
That said, it's definitely a card to check in on after rotation when the card pool gets halved and games become more like Arena again.
Don't forget about our buddy Keeper Stalladris when evaluating choose one cards. This one seems a bit slow/overpriced as a cantrip but the 3/2 body could work in token/buff druid. It is potentially a ton of value combined into one card.
I guess shaman didn't have to wait long to go back to hiding behind 5/6 taunty puppers. The card seems fine considering the cost, but still odd timing for T5 to start poking this particular bear again.
Pretty weird card TBH. Like, sure, it's worth the mana if you're already playing quests anyway but it's not particularly synergistic with any of them except shaman's and I suppose Righteous Cause. Doesn't go in pirate warrior either because that deck doesn't run quests.
An odd card for sure, especially considering that as a Captain Kragg clearly was a pirate tribal lord.
If Warrior gets to lean on Brawl from here on to perpetuity and still gets decent board clears on top of that I don't see why Priest shouldn't have Mass Hysteria in its evergreen set. As a control class Priest still has a natural disadvantage compared to Warrior in that it can't use the HP proactively to stack up defense, that's enough of a handicap without arbitrarily making the class cards weaker as well.
As for the other changes, the only one i really disagree with is removing Velen, as far as I'm concerned the card isn't a threat unless a substantive amount of healing/damage spells AND mana discount mechanics exist in standard, and it's pretty easy to design the former around Velen so long as you don't have too much of the latter. I don't think I've seen a Velen in standard since Radiant Elemental rotated out.
I for one am glad to finally see priest get a proactive tempo card for once. More of this please! Seems like a solid card even with no further support. This is a lot like a Vilespine Slayer, removal on a stick at an affordable price. This will definitely see play in standard at some point, and it probably will see play in wild as well. It's not just good tempo, it's a form of single target removal that plays around a lot of the counters to single-target removal, like secrets and the evasive non-keyword.
Edit: regarding the whole tempo/control debate: a card that generates tempo can still be good in a control deck. If you can remove a big threat and make a mid-sized dude in the process on turn six that means you can probably spend a small amount of resources to control the board on the subsequent turn. Most control decks don't have the removal to clear every single board, they have to force their opponent to overcommit in order to use their mass-removal cards efficiently. Also, having several different options to take care of different types of boards is generally a boon to the control archetype, CF control warrior all of last year. Aeon Reaver can reset a board for a turn so you can save that Mass Hysteria for an even more threatening board. It can punish a player for not committing heavily enough or only playing one big minion by creating a huge tempo swing.
Not to mention, a lot of aggro decks in particular are terrible at swinging back tempo in their favour. If you do manage to bully them off the board with a mass-removal, they will often only be able to play one thing per turn, making a two-for-one tempo swing with a card like Aeon Reaver very powerful as a followup to a board clear.
Not sure what sort of deck this would fit in currently, but if nothing else this is an amazing arena pick due to the stats. The combination of keywords and stats make this a nightmare to deal with for any deck. The only single card I can think of ATm that deals with this is Plague of Death. Other than that you're going to need two cards at least to chew through this bad boy. Unless you have exactly sea giant and a bunch of small tokens on the board I don't see a common scenario where you can easily deal with minion on board unless you're incredibly far ahead.
This is an extremely solid card because it's so flexible and has so much value packed into a single card. Normally, a card such as this would fall off in value considerably later on because the stats get less and less impressive, but the fact that these tokens have taunt, spawn two-at-a-time and can be recast means that this can continue to be a nuisance even later on, it's not just a weenie fountain for aggro decks.
This might even see play in OTK paladin as a one-of, but you can bet this card will see play after rotation so long as there is any viable paladin deck. Terrific card.
This card seems really powerful. More or less a neutral spirit of the shark for lackeys. In rogue I imagine this'll be even stronger because you can shadowstep it for back-to-back miracle lackey turns.
If this drew a 2-cost from your deck it'd absolutely have some applications but b/c it discovers it seems way too unreliable.
What happens to the corrupted card if it isn't played? Does it get discarded? Does it get transformed into a useless imp?
Strong card even as just a 3 mana 4/3 but I wish warlock weren't the only class to get combo-hosers.
I assume versions of the deck running Spellzerker are also running cards like rapid fire, arcane shot, maybe Cobalt Spellkin to deal a whole bunch of extra burn damage in one turn with a single spellzerker. Whether that's better than just leaning in on the beast/swarm synergies seems questionable to me, I'd be more inclined toward the juggler as well.
I can see the argument for wolfrider over animal comp but I value the companion higher. Later on rolling a Leokk often isn't even a detriment with all the leper gnomes and such.
Vessina isn't essential to the deck, I played it without her for ages. She definitely makes the deck a bit better, but you can add a dire wolf alpha and still feel fine about life. Bloodlust is great when you happen to have a full board, but this isn't really a dedicated token deck, so it'll often be a dead card.
Sludge slurper definitely got a bit worse, but the card does a lot of small things that this deck likes: it's a way to get overloaded for Likkim/thunderhead/vessina and it's a cheap minion that generates stuff, which matters a lot in the first few turns if you don't draw a curve. You can consider Sandstorm Elemental as an alternate cheap overload minion.
Not sure what's up with the Hench Clan Thugs but it seems to me that the autocomplete wants to build resurrect quest priest (which is a legit deck btw) by hook or by crook. You could try forcing the AI's choice by adding more invoke cards and Kronx before hitting autocomplete, I'm curious what would change.
Well deserved nerf. Man, I wish they had designed Galakrond around fair cards at the outset, because if you take away these unfun, busted cards I doubt those decks will be able to stand on their own. What a shame /s.
What a bizarre nerf. Feels like one they threw in just to placate the angry galakrond shamans out there: "see, you're not the only Galakrond getting hosed."
TBH I've not really been blown away by pirates this patch. Even supposing the deck is a problem, why go after the one card that gives it some consistency over obvious highroller cards like Prachute Brigand which can end a game by turn four if you draw the perfect hand.