I guess so, but if that's the plan why not just play The Caverns Below and ignore Hooktusk and Galakrond altogether? Sure, wanting to play them is reason enough to make the deck, but being forced to spend a few turns faffing around with 1/1s purely to activate one battlecry that probably won't be game winning doesn't seem worth it to me. I'd rather incorporate pirates into the core gameplay personally.
Some off meta decks like Galakrond Rogue or Reno Rogue may want to use [Pirate Admiral Hooktusk] as a top end.
I'd be impressed if someone found space for all the required pirates and invoke cards. Seems like an interesting challenge! Definitely a Pirate-Reno deck could work though since there has been plenty of pirates for rogue to choose from in Wild. I've had reasonable success with one of those decks before, and it gets a huge boost now.
I agree with your overall assessment. The set is heavily geared towards a kinda slow pirate-heavy deck, which is unlikely to compete directly with warrior in Wild. It's no doubt more fun though, what with having plans beyond just spamming pirates and hitting face.
That makes no difference. The amount of XP you need to reach the levels to get higher XP bonuses is the same regardless of where it comes from, and hence the amount multiplied by 1.1, 1.15 and 1.2 is the same. If you reach the levels where you get 50g for every 1500XP, all you end up doing in the long run is shifting some XP from the end of 1 rewards track to another.
You do change how quickly you get rewards in the first 100 levels - albeit only slightly - but in the end you have the exact same stuff and the same amount of gold.
That race to XP bonus argument is always a fallacy though, because you'd have the larger XP bonus applied to the achievements if you claimed them as part of the AV rewards track, so it all evens out in the long run. A related argument does apply though if you didn't get the AV Tavern Pass but do get the SC one, since now you actually get some XP bonus out of it.
This naga alone could make Smokescreen actually playable. I feel it does limit design space for rogue though as it can become bonkers if more high cost rogue spells are released. Time will tell
Agreed, although if you look at the entire history of rogue spells they have only ever had 2 that cost more than 6 mana, and one of those (Sprint) was buffed down to 6. So 7+ mana spells were basically never part of rogue's design space to begin with, and it has very little real impact in that regard. It might cement the class' inability to get any worthwhile deathrattles for a while though :(
I have always viewed 'control' in a Classic HS sense: no requirement to use fatigue, but slow and defensive with the primary win condition being that its cards do more than the opponent's. That could mean value generation, AoE taking out multiple minions, big minions being more card efficient than small ones etc. They can sometimes end like combo decks, but with a very different route to getting there (the focus is on survival not just drawing asap).
Card draw is so efficient these days that it becomes impractical to try to win via a resource war. Aggro never runs out of cards and combo finds everything more quickly than you can hope to race, leading to control decks becoming a rare sight. I laugh as people re-define control to include things like Kazakusan druid, which has none of the control gameplay and shows how far people have to stretch the term these days.
Swordfish, Filletfighter and Gone Fishin' will bring Odd Rogue back to tier one in a new, more piratey deck. Like holy crap Swordfish is insane.
I agree Swordfish looks insane, though it has anti-synergy with odd rogue: if a key card is a weapon with decent durability you're probably not getting enough out of the upgraded hero power for it to be worth excluding all even cost cards.
No, I meant the hero card. It's hero power makes it a 2 card combo that's really trivial, and significantly more powerful than Tickatus ever was. The only reason it wouldn't be another nail in control's coffin would be if pirate rogue is too fast to care, which it might well be, but that does make it weird that it's flagship legendary isn't even relevant in the deck.
Agreed. I think part of their issue is that they made it equipment that needed upgrading 3 times to get to tier 4, and if they reduce it to a speed increase of (2) they'll have to change it to start at tier 3. It's something of a non-issue in my mind: just give players the 250 Valeera coins they wouldn't have needed to fully upgrade it and just change the damn thing. It fuels the excess coin problem further, but that's hardly worth screwing over PvP for.
Um, she's really not. Being (4) speed faster is still very useful in PvE. I do find her bouncing in and out of stealth with Scabbs and buffing attack on the way more enjoyable though (doubly so now Scabbs can give himself a whole +10 attack instead of +4), so if they nerf her speed equipment then I'm chill with it.
Super glad of the task change. By the 12th I will have finished all the other mercs' tasks, and it'll be nice to just be able to rattle off Murky's tasks in quick succession so I can get on with life without having to report in to do my dailies or hunt for Strangers!
OK, so they weren't hiding anything especially fancy in rogue's last 5 cards; just more stuff to work with the pirates, including the expected Swordfish. I'm a bit surprised they added OG and unmodified Brann Bronzebeard to Core though. People disliked Tickatus, even in Standard, so having Shadowcrafter Scabbs around to make Brann + Hooktusk 9 mana seems like it's just wanting to make people angry.
It's mostly that she had hero emotes back in Rumble Run (and a Tavern Brawl I think), and they were among the best in the entire game imo. The simple fact she has reappeared multiple times means someone in Team 5 agrees she's great, but they don't seem to have much sway over cosmetics which endlessly go to the same few classes, often without really adding anything to their options. Like, who cared that warrior got another dwarf in Vanndar? Or that druid is getting another night elf in Faelin? Or that mage gets yet another character every damn expansion? Meanwhile rogue can't get a troll that lots of people already love and for whom they could be lazy and recycle existing emotes.
Sometimes I'm just baffled that they won't take the big, juicy, low-hanging fruit and instead spend their time stretching to pick fruit no one is really interested in. So in essence Hooktusk is just representative of a series of missed opportunities for portraits. She's not the only character we can use for that (Togwaggle, Rafaam, Mathias Shaw...), but she happens to be the most relevant one currently.
It's difficult to say until we see full-sized versions of the portraits when the patch arrives, but I suspect the trays and hero power effects might also be out of place sometimes. Sticking with Sylvanas, she might still have shadow-infused arrows, but why would she keep the bone motifs used in her tray?
I'm not someone who should be judging their worth though since I rarely even notice those effects these days if I'm honest, usually only noting them after I change hero with Maestra and keep whatever tray I started with. So if you think they're important, then they're important. For me, the new emotes matter the most, and we can at least be confident they'll have those at least.
This feels like something to just not worry about for now, especially as I'd be surprised if that was ever the deciding factor in whether someone buys the Tavern Pass or not. Plus, I doubt it would make much sense to carry over some of the existing entrance animations. E.g. Sylvanas' banshee wail and Maiev's shadowy cloak don't really fit with them being a naga and a mariner.
They clearly wanted to adapt existing, non-basic heroes for... some reason. It's a step up from the umpteenth version of the basic guys I guess. What I don't really understand is that they must have had the voice actors around for the Sunken City legendary minions (non-colossal ones), so wouldn't it be easier to give us those guys instead? Seems like it would be a win-win to me, though I suppose I don't know the details of their pipeline. Kaldori Vashj and Handmaiden Tyrande do at least make good sense to appear here, so maybe some mix? No one would complain.
I like that they went with giving every class a skin this time. I'm not sure about druid and shaman being the two that get a second one though; those classes had no lack of options to begin with. Where's my Hooktusk dammit!
There's no way the vfx team has time to make diamond versions of every spell in the game. If they ever make a diamond spell I'm sure it'll work with that though. Given how much they like to make diamond cards out of mage legendaries (sigh) that doesn't even feel that unlikely lol.
The Chinese and western zodiacs are superficially similar, but are completely distinct things that don't share anything much. So referring to a HS/Warcraft zodiac isn't a problem since there is no singular meaning of the word to begin with.
I guess so, but if that's the plan why not just play The Caverns Below and ignore Hooktusk and Galakrond altogether? Sure, wanting to play them is reason enough to make the deck, but being forced to spend a few turns faffing around with 1/1s purely to activate one battlecry that probably won't be game winning doesn't seem worth it to me. I'd rather incorporate pirates into the core gameplay personally.
I'd be impressed if someone found space for all the required pirates and invoke cards. Seems like an interesting challenge! Definitely a Pirate-Reno deck could work though since there has been plenty of pirates for rogue to choose from in Wild. I've had reasonable success with one of those decks before, and it gets a huge boost now.
I agree with your overall assessment. The set is heavily geared towards a kinda slow pirate-heavy deck, which is unlikely to compete directly with warrior in Wild. It's no doubt more fun though, what with having plans beyond just spamming pirates and hitting face.
That makes no difference. The amount of XP you need to reach the levels to get higher XP bonuses is the same regardless of where it comes from, and hence the amount multiplied by 1.1, 1.15 and 1.2 is the same. If you reach the levels where you get 50g for every 1500XP, all you end up doing in the long run is shifting some XP from the end of 1 rewards track to another.
You do change how quickly you get rewards in the first 100 levels - albeit only slightly - but in the end you have the exact same stuff and the same amount of gold.
That race to XP bonus argument is always a fallacy though, because you'd have the larger XP bonus applied to the achievements if you claimed them as part of the AV rewards track, so it all evens out in the long run. A related argument does apply though if you didn't get the AV Tavern Pass but do get the SC one, since now you actually get some XP bonus out of it.
Agreed, although if you look at the entire history of rogue spells they have only ever had 2 that cost more than 6 mana, and one of those (Sprint) was buffed down to 6. So 7+ mana spells were basically never part of rogue's design space to begin with, and it has very little real impact in that regard. It might cement the class' inability to get any worthwhile deathrattles for a while though :(
I have always viewed 'control' in a Classic HS sense: no requirement to use fatigue, but slow and defensive with the primary win condition being that its cards do more than the opponent's. That could mean value generation, AoE taking out multiple minions, big minions being more card efficient than small ones etc. They can sometimes end like combo decks, but with a very different route to getting there (the focus is on survival not just drawing asap).
Card draw is so efficient these days that it becomes impractical to try to win via a resource war. Aggro never runs out of cards and combo finds everything more quickly than you can hope to race, leading to control decks becoming a rare sight. I laugh as people re-define control to include things like Kazakusan druid, which has none of the control gameplay and shows how far people have to stretch the term these days.
I agree Swordfish looks insane, though it has anti-synergy with odd rogue: if a key card is a weapon with decent durability you're probably not getting enough out of the upgraded hero power for it to be worth excluding all even cost cards.
No, I meant the hero card. It's hero power makes it a 2 card combo that's really trivial, and significantly more powerful than Tickatus ever was. The only reason it wouldn't be another nail in control's coffin would be if pirate rogue is too fast to care, which it might well be, but that does make it weird that it's flagship legendary isn't even relevant in the deck.
Agreed. I think part of their issue is that they made it equipment that needed upgrading 3 times to get to tier 4, and if they reduce it to a speed increase of (2) they'll have to change it to start at tier 3. It's something of a non-issue in my mind: just give players the 250 Valeera coins they wouldn't have needed to fully upgrade it and just change the damn thing. It fuels the excess coin problem further, but that's hardly worth screwing over PvP for.
Um, she's really not. Being (4) speed faster is still very useful in PvE. I do find her bouncing in and out of stealth with Scabbs and buffing attack on the way more enjoyable though (doubly so now Scabbs can give himself a whole +10 attack instead of +4), so if they nerf her speed equipment then I'm chill with it.
Super glad of the task change. By the 12th I will have finished all the other mercs' tasks, and it'll be nice to just be able to rattle off Murky's tasks in quick succession so I can get on with life without having to report in to do my dailies or hunt for Strangers!
I didn't have any trouble in either normal or heroic. I always seem to get lucky dodging these bugs.
Edit: @apsoteljoe's comment reminded me I did it before the patch, not after. So ignore me.
OK, so they weren't hiding anything especially fancy in rogue's last 5 cards; just more stuff to work with the pirates, including the expected Swordfish. I'm a bit surprised they added OG and unmodified Brann Bronzebeard to Core though. People disliked Tickatus, even in Standard, so having Shadowcrafter Scabbs around to make Brann + Hooktusk 9 mana seems like it's just wanting to make people angry.
It's mostly that she had hero emotes back in Rumble Run (and a Tavern Brawl I think), and they were among the best in the entire game imo. The simple fact she has reappeared multiple times means someone in Team 5 agrees she's great, but they don't seem to have much sway over cosmetics which endlessly go to the same few classes, often without really adding anything to their options. Like, who cared that warrior got another dwarf in Vanndar? Or that druid is getting another night elf in Faelin? Or that mage gets yet another character every damn expansion? Meanwhile rogue can't get a troll that lots of people already love and for whom they could be lazy and recycle existing emotes.
Sometimes I'm just baffled that they won't take the big, juicy, low-hanging fruit and instead spend their time stretching to pick fruit no one is really interested in. So in essence Hooktusk is just representative of a series of missed opportunities for portraits. She's not the only character we can use for that (Togwaggle, Rafaam, Mathias Shaw...), but she happens to be the most relevant one currently.
It's difficult to say until we see full-sized versions of the portraits when the patch arrives, but I suspect the trays and hero power effects might also be out of place sometimes. Sticking with Sylvanas, she might still have shadow-infused arrows, but why would she keep the bone motifs used in her tray?
I'm not someone who should be judging their worth though since I rarely even notice those effects these days if I'm honest, usually only noting them after I change hero with Maestra and keep whatever tray I started with. So if you think they're important, then they're important. For me, the new emotes matter the most, and we can at least be confident they'll have those at least.
This feels like something to just not worry about for now, especially as I'd be surprised if that was ever the deciding factor in whether someone buys the Tavern Pass or not. Plus, I doubt it would make much sense to carry over some of the existing entrance animations. E.g. Sylvanas' banshee wail and Maiev's shadowy cloak don't really fit with them being a naga and a mariner.
They clearly wanted to adapt existing, non-basic heroes for... some reason. It's a step up from the umpteenth version of the basic guys I guess. What I don't really understand is that they must have had the voice actors around for the Sunken City legendary minions (non-colossal ones), so wouldn't it be easier to give us those guys instead? Seems like it would be a win-win to me, though I suppose I don't know the details of their pipeline. Kaldori Vashj and Handmaiden Tyrande do at least make good sense to appear here, so maybe some mix? No one would complain.
I like that they went with giving every class a skin this time. I'm not sure about druid and shaman being the two that get a second one though; those classes had no lack of options to begin with. Where's my Hooktusk dammit!
There's no way the vfx team has time to make diamond versions of every spell in the game. If they ever make a diamond spell I'm sure it'll work with that though. Given how much they like to make diamond cards out of mage legendaries (sigh) that doesn't even feel that unlikely lol.
The Chinese and western zodiacs are superficially similar, but are completely distinct things that don't share anything much. So referring to a HS/Warcraft zodiac isn't a problem since there is no singular meaning of the word to begin with.