Note that the Warlock theming and mechanics flow pretty well together: undead and discard are playing nice. Compare that to Shaman and undead where the old contradiction (transform versus enchant) was unaddressed. I'll grant Blizz a point for getting Warlock on point and possibly getting High Priestess Jeklik to see some play.
Not only will this flavor never be a part of Shaman again, it directly contradicts an existing Shaman archetype and makes no attempt to harmonize the two. (Transformations do not play nice with enchantments.) This is typical of Shaman and Demon Hunter both and it's aggravating.
There's a missed opportunity here to make Shaman -- big on nature, and the undead are mostly unnatural -- have a hostile or controlling take on the undead, with anti-Reborn and pro-Reborn stuff both.
Priest and Death Knight -- especially the latter -- will share the most obnoxious spite deck ever in Standard. Everyone not running the most obnoxious neutrals in the game (Theotar/Denathrius) can look forward to getting far worse than they deserve.
I hope this much disruption is bad for some reason I haven't seen yet because otherwise the only thing slowing it down will be unrelenting aggro -- and not only is that not what many people want, it's not even the forte of the set.
Flesh Behemoth gives you tempo when you don't need it. Even if there were a negative battlecry worth avoiding in current-year Hearthstone, it wouldn't be worth dodging on turn nine. This can become worthwhile value in Arena alone.
Infectious Ghoul is bad Greybough. Which is good insofar as we don't need more Greybough in the game. There's a noticeable dearth of effects that grant Rush in Standard right now which is keeping these cards in check out of playability. Banshee, for example, is just a scaled-down Infectious Ghoul again.
Shatterskin Gargoyle's 4 damage is too random to justify its cost, keeping with the trend of modern Standard being weirdly light on decent neutral Taunts. This is an expensive Sen'jin Shieldmasta in Arena.
Umbral Geist has a tiny chance of maybe being a thing in Priest . . . ? But now that I think about it, it pollutes the Deathrattle pool. And jank Deathrattles were on the weak side of things before Big Priest was in Standard. My optimism may be unfounded.
Arena cards and little more. The dev's love of packfiller continues. And if Death Knight comes out over-strong in Arena, I don't know how much fun these cards will be since they'll be so much stronger for Death Knight over everyone else.
The most wholesome use of this card will be to replace Majordomo Executus in lolgimmick decks. So you'll get a chuckle when Mark does it.
Your only other emotions associated with this card will be sad.
This will see more play, in the long run, in random rolls than in deckbuilding because -- as has been pointed out -- if it works at all it will be nerfed. Shaman gets another punch in the face for . . . reasons, I guess?
but for an archetype that floods board anyway is there really a reason to even play this?
The answer to your question is in the question. Presuming that the devs were actually thinking this through, making this available to the DK equivalent of big spell Mage may have been a problem. If Frost cheat this out, it both mitigates its disadvantge and gains an advantage that's outside of what it's intended to be able to do. Possibly, just guessing intent.
Ymirjar Deathbringer makes me think that the build challenge for unholy will be trying to get your non-payoff, corpse-setup minions into play and dead before your payoff minions hit.
Unholy looks like an aggro-counter that plays like aggro itself. It so far lacks an unfriendly-fire board clear, so it looks like it relies on the opponent to clear its own minions, which will be a problem against face-healing and freeze control decks.
In that same patch, we will be able to adjust sound channels independently instead of one global volume slider.
This is an excellent example of an accessibility option granting significant advantages for the conventionally-abled. Much like how wheelchair ramps can be useful for people not in wheelchairs (ill people or people moving furniture), close-captioning is great for when sound would be a distraction, and push-button automatic doors come in handy even if you don't have a disability, this feature not only will allow disabled persons to play the game, but it will vastly improve the experience of everyone, because:
The ambient tavern noise should be drug out into the street and shot.
Personally, that chatter-loop is the main reason I have to play with the sound off the majority of the time. I generally like to play video games with the ambiance the devs shipped with the product, but Hearthstone is a harsh exception because that stupid loop is utterly tedious and wasn't even fun on day one.
I imagine that this will make things easier for streamers and other content creators as well.
These features would obviously be excellent even without these knock-on benefits, but it's good to see a great decision have good incidental side-effects.
Rimefang Sword and Deathchiller combo naturally with one another, giving you functionality like that of Wild Pyromancer when the enemy board is full and face damage when it's not.
"Better Paladin" seems to be a reoccuring theme with Death Knight.
There's also potential here with Queen Azshara as she can generate another cheap spell to help spam Deathchiller damage. A potential problem could be weenie druid decks that can get boardwide health buffs; outside of that, you should be able to poke the enemy board out of existence and spam leftover damage into face.
These cards, Marrow Manipulator, and Brann Bronzebeard all seem to synergize well with a Sire Denathrius finisher because you're constantly poking down the health of enemy minions. I think you end up with possibly fewer bodies on the board than, say, Spooky Mage trying the same thing, but Corpses give more utility along the way.
The only other deck strong against this is . . . another Death Knight deck. Anti-Magic Shell is a boardwide buff that makes this strategy harder.
Frost DK is going to be vicious against control. Killing your minions (generating corpses) just helps you do damage to their face.
Sure, sometimes you are forced to draft an absolute poop of a deck. Personally I don't find it happening too often
I did.
I had offerings where not a single bucket -- not one -- produced a card that could make a deck viable. I've had plenty where I wasn't offered a single spell, as I've already mentioned. What you're missing is that there is no skill issue there. If every bucket offering is "you can't win," then you can't win. During these build processes, not a single actual decision-point presented itself -- much like Tavern Brawls where your cards available are so limited that you literally have no decisions to make all game save play and concede.
The counterbalance here is iteration. The parallel in poker is getting a completely nonviable hand that you shouldn't even bluff with given your shown cards. In poker, that's fine because a hand plays out in under a minute and you move onto the next rapidly. In Arena, you can experience deck-build times of several minutes. So a non-game takes longer to work out. People who love Arena accept this cost. People who don't do not.
I already use HearthArena, personally, but that's good advice for others.
My problem wasn't a skill issue. My problem is that sometimes you draft a completely-unwinnable setup (oh, look, no spells offered and two minion selections where the minions actively hurt me). Arena can only conceivably be fair (and, imo, enjoyable) over a large number of games. When my draft is a literal non-game, I stop playing for a long while because I don't have time to not play games. That makes it impossible for Arena to "redeem" itself with actual, playable outcomes. I'd rather do chores and work than throw good money time after bad.
The buy-in wasn't always this bad, but the card mix has been really unfun -- again, imo -- for a number of years.
I literally started a run to avoid this problem and, as it turned out, it was the first non-autoloss arena draft that I had drafted in a year-plus. Not a super-broken list -- I don't know if the previous card mix even made that possible -- but a solid deck for potentially fun games. And now it's toast.
I have to start a floating duels game to make sure I don't get blindsided there.
I do love that after having made some meager, competent decisions in Arena -- pre-banning certain cards that are too strong -- they throw all that out the window by making the most awful decisions possible ("read the patch notes or auto-lose with DH, noobs!") alongside quality control that would make a neglectful drunk blush. I think Arena's greatest purpose right now is to make Tavern Brawl look good.
Theotar’s play rate did not drop as far as we would have liked it to with the smaller nerf
No fucking shit. It turns out the card that stops your opponent's win condition and sometimes gives you a win condition or just wins the game outright because they devs printed several other win conditions that can only be attacked from hand is both necessary and ubiquitous.
Quote From The Devs
and is still much higher than we would like it to be leading into the March of the Lich King. Our aim with this second nerf is to lower the card’s play rate to ensure that the release of Death Knight is as fun as possible for players with a wide variety of interests and experience levels.
And that just gives the game away.
They're pointing out that a substantial amount of the playerbase does not like playing with or against Theotar. They're acknowledging the card's unfun nature and have decided -- multiple times and with precedent from past cards -- that the answer is to make the unfunness less-immediately common as opposed to removed.
Here's what they're (deliberately) missing. A bad card can make a game bad even if it isn't played. A bad card warps the meta forcing decks to be built (and sometimes played) in unfun ways even if the card doesn't show up in a given game. It means entire classes are just played less because of their vulnerability to said bad card and/or the meta it creates.
The concern here isn't what's fun. The concern here is what the players will tolerate.
Just like with animation speeds pre-Battlegrounds and cards only changed when they've done maximum damage to the play state, Theotar will get a text change only if it seems to hit a novel asset (a new game mode or the newest, in-house designed deck for a class respectively). Otherwise, nothing changes unless the card somehow, after rotation, warps Wild (which I doubt it ever could).
And their main concern is that their newest, shiny thing isn't supplanted by what was just five minutes ago their newest, shiny thing.
This explains why I was unable to reroll one of the new event quests (which would pop back into existence as soon as I changed screens) and why I was unable to delete a deck until I restarted for each transaction.
Starting in Patch 24.6, we’re opening them up even more: all Task Chains will available at all times!
This is Blizzard literally rewarding me for stopping playing Mercenaries.
I simply couldn't keep grinding Mercs to max tasks. The new content didn't move the needle at all. It made it worse -- now I have to randomly get new Mercs and raise them up via a random task system. I didn't formally quit Mercenaries. My brain just walked away.
I expected that I'd be interested in the newest PvE material. I haven't even opened the PvE menu. The sheer mass of new content to grind up smothers any curiosity that I might have had.
Coin transfer at 1:1 with universally-available tasks is the bare minimum it would take to get me to even open up those windows. Acquiring new Mercs is still a pain because it requires tasking-up Mercs to get cards, but the ability to force Legendaries you've coined-up into existence would make the game almost playable. Here's what I expect, though: not only will the buyable Merc be random and many of the rolls be worthless (spend overmaxed coins on a Merc that also has overmaxed coins!), I don't think you'll be able to spend many coins at a time on the available Merc, which means the benefit will be tiny or even worthless.
Requiring players to win games even after they make a purchase aggravates the bizarre scenario in BGs where the worse your record is the easier it is to get assets and tat out of it because winning/top 4 becomes easier. If you play BGs to win, you will be in a MMR/rank that makes getting your cosmetics far harder than less driven players.
Note that the Warlock theming and mechanics flow pretty well together: undead and discard are playing nice. Compare that to Shaman and undead where the old contradiction (transform versus enchant) was unaddressed. I'll grant Blizz a point for getting Warlock on point and possibly getting High Priestess Jeklik to see some play.
Not only will this flavor never be a part of Shaman again, it directly contradicts an existing Shaman archetype and makes no attempt to harmonize the two. (Transformations do not play nice with enchantments.) This is typical of Shaman and Demon Hunter both and it's aggravating.
There's a missed opportunity here to make Shaman -- big on nature, and the undead are mostly unnatural -- have a hostile or controlling take on the undead, with anti-Reborn and pro-Reborn stuff both.
DH theming is typically all over the place (and terrible) but they may yet have a surfeit of Wretched cards for them coming up.
Priest and Death Knight -- especially the latter -- will share the most obnoxious spite deck ever in Standard. Everyone not running the most obnoxious neutrals in the game (Theotar/Denathrius) can look forward to getting far worse than they deserve.
I hope this much disruption is bad for some reason I haven't seen yet because otherwise the only thing slowing it down will be unrelenting aggro -- and not only is that not what many people want, it's not even the forte of the set.
Flesh Behemoth gives you tempo when you don't need it. Even if there were a negative battlecry worth avoiding in current-year Hearthstone, it wouldn't be worth dodging on turn nine. This can become worthwhile value in Arena alone.
Infectious Ghoul is bad Greybough. Which is good insofar as we don't need more Greybough in the game. There's a noticeable dearth of effects that grant Rush in Standard right now which is keeping these cards in check out of playability. Banshee, for example, is just a scaled-down Infectious Ghoul again.
Shatterskin Gargoyle's 4 damage is too random to justify its cost, keeping with the trend of modern Standard being weirdly light on decent neutral Taunts. This is an expensive Sen'jin Shieldmasta in Arena.
Brittleskin Zombie: Will be just as beloved and employed by the playerbase as Shadowed Spirit.
Umbral Geist has a tiny chance of maybe being a thing in Priest . . . ? But now that I think about it, it pollutes the Deathrattle pool. And jank Deathrattles were on the weak side of things before Big Priest was in Standard. My optimism may be unfounded.
Foul Egg is another egg.
Arena cards and little more. The dev's love of packfiller continues. And if Death Knight comes out over-strong in Arena, I don't know how much fun these cards will be since they'll be so much stronger for Death Knight over everyone else.
The most wholesome use of this card will be to replace Majordomo Executus in lolgimmick decks. So you'll get a chuckle when Mark does it.
Your only other emotions associated with this card will be sad.
This will see more play, in the long run, in random rolls than in deckbuilding because -- as has been pointed out -- if it works at all it will be nerfed. Shaman gets another punch in the face for . . . reasons, I guess?
Dev A: I keep trying to tell the playerbase to go screw themselves but they're just not hearing me!
Dev B: [looks over Dev A's shoulder at what their working on]: Change that "Battlecry" to "Deathrattle." They'll be feeling you now.
Imprisoned Vilefiend's big sister.
The answer to your question is in the question. Presuming that the devs were actually thinking this through, making this available to the DK equivalent of big spell Mage may have been a problem. If Frost cheat this out, it both mitigates its disadvantge and gains an advantage that's outside of what it's intended to be able to do. Possibly, just guessing intent.
Ymirjar Deathbringer makes me think that the build challenge for unholy will be trying to get your non-payoff, corpse-setup minions into play and dead before your payoff minions hit.
Unholy looks like an aggro-counter that plays like aggro itself. It so far lacks an unfriendly-fire board clear, so it looks like it relies on the opponent to clear its own minions, which will be a problem against face-healing and freeze control decks.
This is an excellent example of an accessibility option granting significant advantages for the conventionally-abled. Much like how wheelchair ramps can be useful for people not in wheelchairs (ill people or people moving furniture), close-captioning is great for when sound would be a distraction, and push-button automatic doors come in handy even if you don't have a disability, this feature not only will allow disabled persons to play the game, but it will vastly improve the experience of everyone, because:
The ambient tavern noise should be drug out into the street and shot.
Personally, that chatter-loop is the main reason I have to play with the sound off the majority of the time. I generally like to play video games with the ambiance the devs shipped with the product, but Hearthstone is a harsh exception because that stupid loop is utterly tedious and wasn't even fun on day one.
I imagine that this will make things easier for streamers and other content creators as well.
These features would obviously be excellent even without these knock-on benefits, but it's good to see a great decision have good incidental side-effects.
Rimefang Sword and Deathchiller combo naturally with one another, giving you functionality like that of Wild Pyromancer when the enemy board is full and face damage when it's not.
"Better Paladin" seems to be a reoccuring theme with Death Knight.
There's also potential here with Queen Azshara as she can generate another cheap spell to help spam Deathchiller damage. A potential problem could be weenie druid decks that can get boardwide health buffs; outside of that, you should be able to poke the enemy board out of existence and spam leftover damage into face.
These cards, Marrow Manipulator, and Brann Bronzebeard all seem to synergize well with a Sire Denathrius finisher because you're constantly poking down the health of enemy minions. I think you end up with possibly fewer bodies on the board than, say, Spooky Mage trying the same thing, but Corpses give more utility along the way.
The only other deck strong against this is . . . another Death Knight deck. Anti-Magic Shell is a boardwide buff that makes this strategy harder.
Frost DK is going to be vicious against control. Killing your minions (generating corpses) just helps you do damage to their face.
So did I.
I did.
I had offerings where not a single bucket -- not one -- produced a card that could make a deck viable. I've had plenty where I wasn't offered a single spell, as I've already mentioned. What you're missing is that there is no skill issue there. If every bucket offering is "you can't win," then you can't win. During these build processes, not a single actual decision-point presented itself -- much like Tavern Brawls where your cards available are so limited that you literally have no decisions to make all game save play and concede.
The counterbalance here is iteration. The parallel in poker is getting a completely nonviable hand that you shouldn't even bluff with given your shown cards. In poker, that's fine because a hand plays out in under a minute and you move onto the next rapidly. In Arena, you can experience deck-build times of several minutes. So a non-game takes longer to work out. People who love Arena accept this cost. People who don't do not.
"Considerably" is doing a lot of work there. This costs one less mana.
I already use HearthArena, personally, but that's good advice for others.
My problem wasn't a skill issue. My problem is that sometimes you draft a completely-unwinnable setup (oh, look, no spells offered and two minion selections where the minions actively hurt me). Arena can only conceivably be fair (and, imo, enjoyable) over a large number of games. When my draft is a literal non-game, I stop playing for a long while because I don't have time to not play games. That makes it impossible for Arena to "redeem" itself with actual, playable outcomes. I'd rather do chores and work than throw good money time after bad.
The buy-in wasn't always this bad, but the card mix has been really unfun -- again, imo -- for a number of years.
I literally started a run to avoid this problem and, as it turned out, it was the first non-autoloss arena draft that I had drafted in a year-plus. Not a super-broken list -- I don't know if the previous card mix even made that possible -- but a solid deck for potentially fun games. And now it's toast.
I have to start a floating duels game to make sure I don't get blindsided there.
I do love that after having made some meager, competent decisions in Arena -- pre-banning certain cards that are too strong -- they throw all that out the window by making the most awful decisions possible ("read the patch notes or auto-lose with DH, noobs!") alongside quality control that would make a neglectful drunk blush. I think Arena's greatest purpose right now is to make Tavern Brawl look good.
No fucking shit. It turns out the card that stops your opponent's win condition and sometimes gives you a win condition or just wins the game outright because they devs printed several other win conditions that can only be attacked from hand is both necessary and ubiquitous.
And that just gives the game away.
They're pointing out that a substantial amount of the playerbase does not like playing with or against Theotar. They're acknowledging the card's unfun nature and have decided -- multiple times and with precedent from past cards -- that the answer is to make the unfunness less-immediately common as opposed to removed.
Here's what they're (deliberately) missing. A bad card can make a game bad even if it isn't played. A bad card warps the meta forcing decks to be built (and sometimes played) in unfun ways even if the card doesn't show up in a given game. It means entire classes are just played less because of their vulnerability to said bad card and/or the meta it creates.
The concern here isn't what's fun. The concern here is what the players will tolerate.
Just like with animation speeds pre-Battlegrounds and cards only changed when they've done maximum damage to the play state, Theotar will get a text change only if it seems to hit a novel asset (a new game mode or the newest, in-house designed deck for a class respectively). Otherwise, nothing changes unless the card somehow, after rotation, warps Wild (which I doubt it ever could).
And their main concern is that their newest, shiny thing isn't supplanted by what was just five minutes ago their newest, shiny thing.
I guess the upside here is that Theotar won't synergize a Death Knight control deck and end up seeing more play than they anticipate. Small blessings, right?
This explains why I was unable to reroll one of the new event quests (which would pop back into existence as soon as I changed screens) and why I was unable to delete a deck until I restarted for each transaction.
This is Blizzard literally rewarding me for stopping playing Mercenaries.
I simply couldn't keep grinding Mercs to max tasks. The new content didn't move the needle at all. It made it worse -- now I have to randomly get new Mercs and raise them up via a random task system. I didn't formally quit Mercenaries. My brain just walked away.
I expected that I'd be interested in the newest PvE material. I haven't even opened the PvE menu. The sheer mass of new content to grind up smothers any curiosity that I might have had.
Coin transfer at 1:1 with universally-available tasks is the bare minimum it would take to get me to even open up those windows. Acquiring new Mercs is still a pain because it requires tasking-up Mercs to get cards, but the ability to force Legendaries you've coined-up into existence would make the game almost playable. Here's what I expect, though: not only will the buyable Merc be random and many of the rolls be worthless (spend overmaxed coins on a Merc that also has overmaxed coins!), I don't think you'll be able to spend many coins at a time on the available Merc, which means the benefit will be tiny or even worthless.
Hopefully I'm wrong.
Requiring players to win games even after they make a purchase aggravates the bizarre scenario in BGs where the worse your record is the easier it is to get assets and tat out of it because winning/top 4 becomes easier. If you play BGs to win, you will be in a MMR/rank that makes getting your cosmetics far harder than less driven players.