Cards I'll miss (both because of the concept and because I like playing them):
Houndmaster Shaw - this guy allowed many shenanigans/swing turns. A really cool card that has seen play here and there throughout its life in Standard. Will be missed.
Earthen Might - I personally like Elementals and this card is fun. Too bad Elemental Shaman never really existed (outside of a two week period before the launch of RoS).
Countess Ashmore - I wanted so much this card to be playable; too bad it never really became a staple in any deck.
Fireworks Tech - Deathrattle Hunter is cool and therefore this card as well.
Omega Medic - Crushing Zoolock with Duskbreaker and this minion felt so good back in the day. Thanks for all the good memories and the sweet concedes
Seance - I was one of the few to see the potential in this spell when it was revealed. I'm glad I was totally right.
Snapjaw Shellfighter - it has never seen play but I appreciate the concept behind it. I'd like to see it in the Classic set.
Cards I won't miss (because I think they're oppressive of just it feels bad to play against them):
Ferocious Howl - almost two years ago, when I first saw the card I was like "heh, has cycle but doesn't seem good at all". Holy moly I was totally wrong. Impressive card for the early game survivability, even more when paired with old Branching Paths. After April's rotation [Hearthstone Card (Steel Beatle) Not Found] will take its spot and I hope it won't feel to climb a mountain since turn 2/3 all over again.
Shudderwock - one of the most degenerated cards ever printed. Most of the times you either draw it or lose it, which feels terribly bad. I can't even say "go rot in Wild", cause this fucker is even more stupid over there. Seriously, this is my argument against all the people that keep saying "I love Ben Brode, when he was at Blizz things were much funnier". No.
Flobbidinous Floop - why keeping track of your opponent's hand when he can simply have a copy of everything he plays? Please, next.
So many wins with so many classes... I'm truly amazed.
My only golden hero is Anduin (666, so ironic lol), followed by Rexxar (413), Valeera (189) and... that's it. All the other classes are below 100 wins.
One reason of these records might be the fact that for the first year I played mostly in Casual mode, whereas I don't go there since June: playing stupid stuff at rank 5 is a lot more rewarding than doing it in Casual.
I guess I'll have to grind a lot to get even a single new portrait!
Almost 4 months later, here's how things have changed for me
Priest - got a couple more wins and now I'm around 710
Hunter - finally got that Golden Rexxar
Rogue - unexpectedly I hit the 500 wins with this class too (even before Hunter which was missing just 90 wins)
I've also improved (some slightly, some in a more remarkable way) my scores with all the other 6 classes and I wonder which one will be the next.
To be honest I'm just one Embiggen short for the complete meta list, but I'm not sure I want to play that. Also, I started taking a look to the "wild side" as well, and it gives me a lot more options.
I know that source and I'll look at it for sure, but I'd like to hear an opinion from someone that actually plays the format rather than just looking at percentages.
Really looking forward to this card: it may be the help Quest Druid needs against Aggro after Ferocious Howl rotates. Moreover, it perfectly fits in the "big spell" concept Malfurion has been pushed to in the last sets.
On average, the "real" meta tier list is established at Legend. The further you are, the more it takes to "your" meta to adopt new competitive decklists and therefore to shift in that direction.
The meta at rank 15 may differ a bit from the one at rank 2, but it won't be a completely different thing. Therefore, if a deck is doing well in the upper ranks, it will also do well in the lower ones because (let's put it this way) you're simply anticipating what is going to be good.
Rotnest Drake - will be a staple in Highlander Dragon Hunter, which is already quite successful
Aeon Reaver - Dragon Priest is not a thing now and I don't think it will be even with this card; it good though
Scalelord - it screams meme, but I want to believe that it will make Dragon Murloc Paladin tier 2
Sky Gen'ral Kragg - Tier 1 card, premium taunt + removal; will make Quest Hunter even stronger and help Mage, maybe Quest Druid (not sure about this one) and maybe some sort of aggro Paladin with Righteous Cause
Waxmancy - Rogue is already good and it's more of a meme card (you wouldn't cut any of the currently used cards for this one)
Chopshop Copter - You want your mechs to go face, not to trade
If you look at it, the Evergreen set only contains a few keywords: charge, poisonous, taunt, overload, battlecry, deathrattle, windfury, divine shield (I hope I didn't forget any).
It is ok to not include keywords that are used once in all the history of the game (Magnetic, Overkill, Adapt, Echo, Recruit, obviously Invoke and probably Reborn), but with time the Devs have chosen new mechanics to use set after set: I'm talking about Discover (widely used since the first expansions), Lifesteal (introduced in Knights of the Frozen Throne and used in every expansion since then) and Rush (same reasoning of Lifesteal, since Witchwood).
Yes, in the whole Evergreen set there isn't a single Discover card, while in some cases 1/4 of the cards of some expansions can somehow do it (Rise of Shadow's "created by" meta for example).
I'm really sensible to newbies' game experience (in the past I struggled a lot between rank 21 and 18 before grasping how to be good at the game, so I won't forget any time soon what hell that rank belt is), but I don't think concepts like "heal for the damage it deals" or "choose one from three and add it to your hand" should be that difficult to get. To be honest, Overload looks like a trickier concept for someone that doesn't know the game.
Adding lifesteal to Holy Fire makes it a much better card and you shouldn't worsen Penance just for the sake of consistency. Capping the amount of healing means that you cripple yourself from improving it with Spell Damage (I don't know when you started playing the game, but Bloodmage Thalnos + Spirit Lash was one hell of an aggro killer), which is not irrelevant as you might think.
In other words, right now every expansion has Discover, Lifesteal and Rush: if you want to start the game you'll eventually get in touch with them after at worst 2-3 games. While I can understand people's doubts for Rush, I really don't see reasons for not adding the other two to the Evergreen set except the will of not improving it.
I remember this being posted two weeks ago or so in a specific thread and I also see that Shadow included some changes suggested by the community (Meeting of Minds being 3 mana instead of 2, the Barrier concept being reworked in order to affect only friendly minions and not your hero as well,...).
I agree with both the idea of a Priest core set's overhaul and the choices made by our fellow user: I think most of them are really on point and the flavor aspect is really strong and well built; however, I'm quite skeptical about whether a change like this will happen or not. I better explain myself on this point: I'm almost certain that next April we'll see some consistent changes in the Evergreen set. There are cards that have seen play or have created problems for too long (Divine SpiritInner Fire, Malygos, Leeroy Jenkins, Stonetusk Boar,...) or that have never seen play until now and they're unlikely going to be played in the future due to powercreep (Savagery, Lightwell, Kidnapper, Arcane Golem, Nat Pagle, The Beast, Felguard,...).
Everything looks fine until you take a look at Team 5's policy for changing the core set: up until now, the only "new" cards that have seen (very little) play are Brightwing, Pilfer and Tome of Intellect. Stuff like [Hearthstone Card (Barrons stablehand) Not Found] or Righteousness (I won't talk about Radiance cause that was one of the dirties blows I've ever seen since Purify) are underwhelming at best and no one sane will include them in a deck.
Ok, they dilute the Discover and RNG pool, ok Arena is also a thing, ok we can't (and I wholeheartedly agree on this one) have just good cards, but it is quite clear to me that T5 doesn't really want to introduce good cards (not broken or staple, just good) in the Evergreen set. The reason is simple: if you have bad cards, you need to buy better ones. And I can get behind it, since selling packs is their job. But for all the reasons I just explained I think Shadow's set is too good to be taken in consideration for a serious overhaul. Is it kind of sad? Yes, it is. Do I hope to be wrong about this? Hell yeah: please Team 5 prove me wrong, PLEASE.
Tl;dr - Shadow's set is cool but too good; up until now HoF cards have been replaced with bad to terrible stuff and unfortunately I don't see his idea being taken seriously by the Devs.
No, unfortunately you're not a pessimist. On average people tend to see the glass half empty rather than half full, and so every single occasion in which someone doesn't get the most out of it justifies a complaint.
Remember the Ragnaros card back drama? Or the Winter Veil brawl that rewards with a Classic pack only people who already own Winter veil wreath?
In the end, you have to get lucky with opening normal packs too: someone hits the pity timer immediately, someone has to wait 38 packs to get Mindflayer Kaahrj (I pity that guy, I wonder who he is...). But yeah, explaining it to certain people might be quite troublesome...
In the end what brought me to write a post is the charm of the new, in other words something that we've never seen before and that would have been cool to open just for the sake of doing it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Those packs are kind of cool. It's sad that Blizz decided to completely lock them behind a paywall.
Not that I want to complain for every single thing but, like someone wrote under an article a few days ago, it would have been great if this week's brawl rewarded one of these "Year of the Dragon" packs.
Oh well, maybe we'll get them in the shop once the rotation hits in order to help the newcomers get some cards from the Standard year they weren't playing the game. Now that I think of it, it would help a lot.
I think it's a head to head between Star Druid and Sniplock.
To be honest I think that whereas the former was on average faster, the latter was a lot more consistent and annoying too (you had to put up with a ton of animations and see if you opponent had the proper APM in order to OTK you).
Both busted, both stupid, both exploited the respective classes' strength (mana generation, card draw and combo potential for Star Druid; card draw, removal and again OTK potential for Sniplock).
One thing that I remember with Star Druid is that sometimes not even aggro was an effective choice, since that deck has some insane tools against SMOrc (2 mana Wild Growth, Ferocious Howl and Branching Paths; all supported by Juicy Psychmelon).
Aviana + Kun the Forgotten King didn't deserve the nerf for that exact deck (the problem was clearly a certain spell released a month before that was able to draw the whole combo for just 4 mana), but my opinion is that it would have become problematic sooner or later nonetheless.
I'd like to apply and help the current team, but I don't really know if I could handle it properly.
My main worries are the fact that my English skills may not be enough (as a non native English speaker I think I'm really good, but I don't know if it matches what you're looking for) and that I don't want to let down people's expectations.
Let's say that I decide to join the Content Squad but then I realize that I can't give a valid contribute or that I can't produce enough fresh content: it would be a shame, wouldn't it?
May someone that is already in the Team and that had the same doubts give me their opinion please?
I'll adopt FieselFitz's division
Cards I'll miss (both because of the concept and because I like playing them):
Houndmaster Shaw - this guy allowed many shenanigans/swing turns. A really cool card that has seen play here and there throughout its life in Standard. Will be missed.
Earthen Might - I personally like Elementals and this card is fun. Too bad Elemental Shaman never really existed (outside of a two week period before the launch of RoS).
Countess Ashmore - I wanted so much this card to be playable; too bad it never really became a staple in any deck.
Fireworks Tech - Deathrattle Hunter is cool and therefore this card as well.
Omega Medic - Crushing Zoolock with Duskbreaker and this minion felt so good back in the day. Thanks for all the good memories and the sweet concedes
Necrium Blade - the card that brought me to legend for the first time ever. It has become part of a bigger problem later on, but that's not a problem of mine lol
Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk - Odd Mage lover here. Simply cool.
Seance - I was one of the few to see the potential in this spell when it was revealed. I'm glad I was totally right.
Snapjaw Shellfighter - it has never seen play but I appreciate the concept behind it. I'd like to see it in the Classic set.
Cards I won't miss (because I think they're oppressive of just it feels bad to play against them):
Ferocious Howl - almost two years ago, when I first saw the card I was like "heh, has cycle but doesn't seem good at all". Holy moly I was totally wrong. Impressive card for the early game survivability, even more when paired with old Branching Paths. After April's rotation [Hearthstone Card (Steel Beatle) Not Found] will take its spot and I hope it won't feel to climb a mountain since turn 2/3 all over again.
Shudderwock - one of the most degenerated cards ever printed. Most of the times you either draw it or lose it, which feels terribly bad. I can't even say "go rot in Wild", cause this fucker is even more stupid over there. Seriously, this is my argument against all the people that keep saying "I love Ben Brode, when he was at Blizz things were much funnier". No.
Flobbidinous Floop - why keeping track of your opponent's hand when he can simply have a copy of everything he plays? Please, next.
Eternium Rover - do I really have to explain why?
Almost 4 months later, here's how things have changed for me
Priest - got a couple more wins and now I'm around 710
Hunter - finally got that Golden Rexxar
Rogue - unexpectedly I hit the 500 wins with this class too (even before Hunter which was missing just 90 wins)
I've also improved (some slightly, some in a more remarkable way) my scores with all the other 6 classes and I wonder which one will be the next.
To be honest I'm just one Embiggen short for the complete meta list, but I'm not sure I want to play that. Also, I started taking a look to the "wild side" as well, and it gives me a lot more options.
I know that source and I'll look at it for sure, but I'd like to hear an opinion from someone that actually plays the format rather than just looking at percentages.
Ok fellow arena players, could you suggest me which classes are good in the format right now please?
I have a free entry and I'd like to make the most out of it :)
Not a flashy card but incredibly solid. 3 mana draw 1 gain 7/8 most of the times.
No wonder it is a staple even in Wild.
Really looking forward to this card: it may be the help Quest Druid needs against Aggro after Ferocious Howl rotates.
Moreover, it perfectly fits in the "big spell" concept Malfurion has been pushed to in the last sets.
Pharaoh Cat did the trick for me
On average, the "real" meta tier list is established at Legend. The further you are, the more it takes to "your" meta to adopt new competitive decklists and therefore to shift in that direction.
The meta at rank 15 may differ a bit from the one at rank 2, but it won't be a completely different thing.
Therefore, if a deck is doing well in the upper ranks, it will also do well in the lower ones because (let's put it this way) you're simply anticipating what is going to be good.
Rotnest Drake - will be a staple in Highlander Dragon Hunter, which is already quite successful
Aeon Reaver - Dragon Priest is not a thing now and I don't think it will be even with this card; it good though
Scalelord - it screams meme, but I want to believe that it will make Dragon Murloc Paladin tier 2
Sky Gen'ral Kragg - Tier 1 card, premium taunt + removal; will make Quest Hunter even stronger and help Mage, maybe Quest Druid (not sure about this one) and maybe some sort of aggro Paladin with Righteous Cause
Waxmancy - Rogue is already good and it's more of a meme card (you wouldn't cut any of the currently used cards for this one)
Chopshop Copter - You want your mechs to go face, not to trade
Risky Skipper - I genuinely don't know
Boompistol Bully - staple in any Control and Midrange deck
If you look at it, the Evergreen set only contains a few keywords: charge, poisonous, taunt, overload, battlecry, deathrattle, windfury, divine shield (I hope I didn't forget any).
It is ok to not include keywords that are used once in all the history of the game (Magnetic, Overkill, Adapt, Echo, Recruit, obviously Invoke and probably Reborn), but with time the Devs have chosen new mechanics to use set after set: I'm talking about Discover (widely used since the first expansions), Lifesteal (introduced in Knights of the Frozen Throne and used in every expansion since then) and Rush (same reasoning of Lifesteal, since Witchwood).
Yes, in the whole Evergreen set there isn't a single Discover card, while in some cases 1/4 of the cards of some expansions can somehow do it (Rise of Shadow's "created by" meta for example).
I'm really sensible to newbies' game experience (in the past I struggled a lot between rank 21 and 18 before grasping how to be good at the game, so I won't forget any time soon what hell that rank belt is), but I don't think concepts like "heal for the damage it deals" or "choose one from three and add it to your hand" should be that difficult to get. To be honest, Overload looks like a trickier concept for someone that doesn't know the game.
Adding lifesteal to Holy Fire makes it a much better card and you shouldn't worsen Penance just for the sake of consistency. Capping the amount of healing means that you cripple yourself from improving it with Spell Damage (I don't know when you started playing the game, but Bloodmage Thalnos + Spirit Lash was one hell of an aggro killer), which is not irrelevant as you might think.
In other words, right now every expansion has Discover, Lifesteal and Rush: if you want to start the game you'll eventually get in touch with them after at worst 2-3 games. While I can understand people's doubts for Rush, I really don't see reasons for not adding the other two to the Evergreen set except the will of not improving it.
I remember this being posted two weeks ago or so in a specific thread and I also see that Shadow included some changes suggested by the community (Meeting of Minds being 3 mana instead of 2, the Barrier concept being reworked in order to affect only friendly minions and not your hero as well,...).
I agree with both the idea of a Priest core set's overhaul and the choices made by our fellow user: I think most of them are really on point and the flavor aspect is really strong and well built; however, I'm quite skeptical about whether a change like this will happen or not.
I better explain myself on this point: I'm almost certain that next April we'll see some consistent changes in the Evergreen set. There are cards that have seen play or have created problems for too long (Divine Spirit Inner Fire, Malygos, Leeroy Jenkins, Stonetusk Boar,...) or that have never seen play until now and they're unlikely going to be played in the future due to powercreep (Savagery, Lightwell, Kidnapper, Arcane Golem, Nat Pagle, The Beast, Felguard,...).
Everything looks fine until you take a look at Team 5's policy for changing the core set: up until now, the only "new" cards that have seen (very little) play are Brightwing, Pilfer and Tome of Intellect. Stuff like [Hearthstone Card (Barrons stablehand) Not Found] or Righteousness (I won't talk about Radiance cause that was one of the dirties blows I've ever seen since Purify) are underwhelming at best and no one sane will include them in a deck.
Ok, they dilute the Discover and RNG pool, ok Arena is also a thing, ok we can't (and I wholeheartedly agree on this one) have just good cards, but it is quite clear to me that T5 doesn't really want to introduce good cards (not broken or staple, just good) in the Evergreen set. The reason is simple: if you have bad cards, you need to buy better ones. And I can get behind it, since selling packs is their job. But for all the reasons I just explained I think Shadow's set is too good to be taken in consideration for a serious overhaul. Is it kind of sad? Yes, it is. Do I hope to be wrong about this? Hell yeah: please Team 5 prove me wrong, PLEASE.
Tl;dr - Shadow's set is cool but too good; up until now HoF cards have been replaced with bad to terrible stuff and unfortunately I don't see his idea being taken seriously by the Devs.
"The technology is not here yet" cit. /s
No, unfortunately you're not a pessimist. On average people tend to see the glass half empty rather than half full, and so every single occasion in which someone doesn't get the most out of it justifies a complaint.
Remember the Ragnaros card back drama? Or the Winter Veil brawl that rewards with a Classic pack only people who already own Winter veil wreath?
In the end, you have to get lucky with opening normal packs too: someone hits the pity timer immediately, someone has to wait 38 packs to get Mindflayer Kaahrj (I pity that guy, I wonder who he is...). But yeah, explaining it to certain people might be quite troublesome...
Yeah your point is valid.
In the end what brought me to write a post is the charm of the new, in other words something that we've never seen before and that would have been cool to open just for the sake of doing it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Always reroll the 60g event quests: the worst that could happen is getting another 60g quest, so there's no point in not taking the gamble!
Those packs are kind of cool. It's sad that Blizz decided to completely lock them behind a paywall.
Not that I want to complain for every single thing but, like someone wrote under an article a few days ago, it would have been great if this week's brawl rewarded one of these "Year of the Dragon" packs.
Oh well, maybe we'll get them in the shop once the rotation hits in order to help the newcomers get some cards from the Standard year they weren't playing the game. Now that I think of it, it would help a lot.
I think it's a head to head between Star Druid and Sniplock.
To be honest I think that whereas the former was on average faster, the latter was a lot more consistent and annoying too (you had to put up with a ton of animations and see if you opponent had the proper APM in order to OTK you).
Both busted, both stupid, both exploited the respective classes' strength (mana generation, card draw and combo potential for Star Druid; card draw, removal and again OTK potential for Sniplock).
One thing that I remember with Star Druid is that sometimes not even aggro was an effective choice, since that deck has some insane tools against SMOrc (2 mana Wild Growth, Ferocious Howl and Branching Paths; all supported by Juicy Psychmelon).
Aviana + Kun the Forgotten King didn't deserve the nerf for that exact deck (the problem was clearly a certain spell released a month before that was able to draw the whole combo for just 4 mana), but my opinion is that it would have become problematic sooner or later nonetheless.
Okay I made up my mind. I'll shoot my shot and see how it goes.
In the end, if I won't get chosen it just means that there are better candidates than me and therefore this community will grow even more.
Thanks for both your answers :)
I'd like to apply and help the current team, but I don't really know if I could handle it properly.
My main worries are the fact that my English skills may not be enough (as a non native English speaker I think I'm really good, but I don't know if it matches what you're looking for) and that I don't want to let down people's expectations.
Let's say that I decide to join the Content Squad but then I realize that I can't give a valid contribute or that I can't produce enough fresh content: it would be a shame, wouldn't it?
May someone that is already in the Team and that had the same doubts give me their opinion please?
In my opinion one of the coolest card backs ever released.