They took a step back from "infinite" value but added very persistent value options with twinspells, elysiana, togwaggle's plan, mechs, to the point a single card is not worth anything anymore. In many scenarios you are virtually guaranteed to never run out of value at least for what concerns the duration of the game. Might aswell be infinite. Also dk's made exception for post ww rexxar, were infinite value but a very slow trickle of infinite value. They would grind you in the end, but they wouldnt have "hard" resources like a twinspell would give you. Drboom sure mech generation is gated between an 1 in 5 roll, but as i said, the card generates value simply because the current mech pool is extremely high quality, omega assembly is staple x2, and even if you don't roll delivery drone, most of the other options are pretty versatile board control tools.
Dr Boom is a quasi relic of an older mentalty of pushing infinite value. He's acceptable enough that he can exist purely because he will go away next year and because he won't be replaced with similar cards. If he was classic he would be a definate 'nuke'. For now he's strong enough to be big in the meta but we should be OK leaving him alone for now.
Conjure's Calling IS a Tempo issue that you are talking about while 'slow trickle' is a Value situation. But that's nitpicking definitions. I will note that the card actually works against Blizzard's desire for mage to NOT be a minion spammer. I'm guessing this is not going to be repeated later on.
Rafaam is actually a bad card, because while in theory he 'generates value' by turning your bad cards into legendaries, the end result is a very anti-synergetic deck. There's a reason why, even after we had slow metas that goes to late game, we STILL don't have 10+ legendaries in our decks, and that's when we get to choose the legendaries. Random ones are far worse. He's a meme. That's all. And I think it's intended to be that way.
You ARE correct that thinking ideas can lead to people focusing on how bad the ideas are rather than the issues. I think at this point though what we need is an overall theme of what the acceptable should be. That is, if you dislike all of these mechanics then what sort of mechanics ARE you looking for?
or a better question: What sort of decks or matchups do you like past or present, and why? That may help contrast what you see as wrong. It also helps remove the feeling of "I hate everything!" element. (note that it doesn't feel like you hate everything. I'm getting a feel of what you are against. But a few 'why can't it be more like (deck/hearthstone era/so on) would help.
I think very generically i would like for control decks to have a very limited amount of strong removal tools, for combo decks to have to work harder than they lately had to for their meal, even tho there aren't really any of them in the meta right now (on a side note, i am strongly against the existance of single cards that completely counter a combo deck), and for aggro decks to not have a jack of all trades card that just allowes them to match "equally" a deck tailored specifically for late game value, or to never run out of steam. Also no infinite value cards like jade idol unless they are very easily counterable.
It's just my personal taste tho, if i had to pick a specific meta that i liked i couln't really pick one, i enjoyed several of them, but you could pick any single meta and find flaws in it if you wanted. This specific rotation that i don't like, but what can you do.
decks i liked umm, i played midrange hunter quite a bit, had some very tight matchups against ctrl warrior decks. I liked deathlord priest with lightbombs, mill warrior with brann and violet illusionist, oil rogue was pretty fun.. idk i've played so many decks i can't really count them all, but before the brm set rotation i had my very own homebrew of dragon rogue which was pretty good against that meta...
I disagree with your main premise, IMO the devs clearly took a step back from the infinite value trend after KoFT and I think that is readily apparent when you compare the later hero cards, yes, even Boom, to DK hunter or Mage. Boom has 1/5 to discover a mech. DK hunter discovers two beasts every turn and splices them together for efficiency. There's no comparison there.
Rafaam is also not comparable since there is a very significant cost attached to playing him: all the cards you actually put in your deck (presumably because they're good) are transformed into random legendaries. This is not a card you put into a control/value/fatigue style of deck, unlike the Elise sisters, because you won't be able to afford to play it until you're basically out of cards anyway. Rafaam is only a "value" card in a zoo deck with 14 1,drops, in which case the value plan isn't really a threat, Rafaam and friends are just the desperate last hurrah of an aggro deck.
The problem with Conjurer's Calling as you pointed out isn't so much the card itself as it is the interaction with MG. It's also not really a value issue, the concern is tempo: unreasonable lumps of stats generated well below the market price.
Lastly, I think a complaint or criticism is much stronger if you provide a reasonable alternative. Sure, people will disagree and debate, but that's what message boards are for.
They took a step back from "infinite" value but added very persistent value options with twinspells, elysiana, togwaggle's plan, mechs, to the point a single card is not worth anything anymore. In many scenarios you are virtually guaranteed to never run out of value at least for what concerns the duration of the game. Might aswell be infinite. Also dk's made exception for post ww rexxar, were infinite value but a very slow trickle of infinite value. They would grind you in the end, but they wouldnt have "hard" resources like a twinspell would give you. Drboom sure mech generation is gated between an 1 in 5 roll, but as i said, the card generates value simply because the current mech pool is extremely high quality, omega assembly is staple x2, and even if you don't roll delivery drone, most of the other options are pretty versatile board control tools.
First of all, just to get some good boy points, i just recently turned to this site as my main hearthstone website. Well done with the news coverage, you won me over pretty quickly. Since i moved here i thought i'd take the occasion to add some content myself, even tho i never really did long posts on hearthpwn maybe i can do one here just because.
SO, at the start of the expansion, when dks rotated out, i thought the game would move from the old "infinite value" model to a more oldschool kind of hs where you had to manage your resources more carefully. But it really didnt, actually it got worse, because dks just slooowly gave you value with their hero powers, and everyone had them, now value generation is all over the place.
Following here the things i dont like-->
I don't like conjurer's calling. The card is pretty cool on paper, it's supposed to balance the value it can create with the randomness of the effect, except you can use it pretty consistently cheap mountain giants, with the only results being either 2 mountain giants or 2 grave shamblers, which are basically mountain giants with taunt. I don't have a problem with mountain giant per se, the card is a pretty cool way hand focused control decks can contest the board, but at the moment we don't have bgh anymore as a valuable option to remove it, and if it sticks and a conjurer calling lands, it's pretty much game over (with conjurer calling being twinspell). I really don't like this kind of value because it comes too early in the game and is way too consistent for the value it gives.
I don't like that they put another strong mech removal on warrior. I would have been fine with a generic removal, but with dr boom warrior has too much removal. I don't have a problem with dr boom per se, but the card suffers from deathstalker rexxar syndrome, where he was a perfectly fine card on release, and got completely out of control with the introduction of the new cards. Omega assembly also worsens the problem, as it has the same problem with the cards it generates being too consistently good, which in turn makes the interaction with the dr boom aura stronger.
I don't like bomb hunter, not the concept per se, but i really dont like how the deck interacts with magnetic. When i saw magnetic, and i think a lot of people thought the same, i went "well this mechanic is either gonna be completely useless, or it's gonna be completely overpowered". Matter of fact, magnetic is completely useless in the decks that can't abuse it, and completely broken in the decks that do abuse it. If you manage to make minions stick, it's virtually charge, except the minions that have it don't have bad stats to compensate. "but you can't silence charge" duh, but you can't really silence magnetic either, when every card has magnetic you are not gonna silence every one of them, and even if you do the card most likely already used its value and it's still gona leave behind a body that you can magnetize on.
I don't really like arch thief rafaam either. The effect is very cool, but it was cool as a late game option on elise decks, because you had to decide which removal tools you wanted to use and which you were gonna turn into legendaries. Made for some very cool value battles (incidentally one of my favourite decks was grinder priest with elise and justicar, where the game felt as you were ramping up in power and pretty often games were really close (also a callout to elise ctrl warrior)). Like it is now, it's just another rexxar where you are gonna build the aggroest deck you can make and just drop rafaam to turn into a late game deck if the aggro plan fails. Meh.
SO yeah, i don't like anything sorry, i thought i was going somewhere with this but whatever xD. I just wanted to say what i didn't like and see if anyone else has concerns over this.
Also i didn't give solutions to the stuff, im not some kind of wanna be game designer that is gonna say yeah blizzard is so stupid lmao if i made the cards it would be 10 times better lul. I think if you just write some solutions in a post like this you are gonna get attacked over them. Im just raising the issue, if you guys can think of a "solution" you can share it but i mean, whatever bro do what you want. Some of the stuff they put in the game is flawed at a basic level, i can't just say "remove it from the game" or " yeah let's just make conjurer's calling 10 mana" because the problems are more in the way cards interact with each other than the cards themselves. Hopefully next expansion waters this stuff down enough that it's not as impactful as it is now, blizz pls don't fuck up reno.
--- edit
-- Since i'm getting a lot of replies about rafaam not being that strong, im gonna clarify. When i said that i didn't like rafaam and compared it to rexxar, what i meant was that the cards share a similiar theme where you get to turn an aggro plan into a slower but inconsistent value game. The fact that rexxar got blown completely into overpowerdness by the ww beast package full of rush beasts, lifesteal and poisonus is another discussion. I specifically said that the effect, is actually a pretty fun one to toy with in control decks, citing old elise-the golden monkey decks as an example, but is not the kind of effect in my opinion that should be so easily available as to just put in a single card in your deck for more aggressive strategies. --
I think very generically i would like for control decks to have a very limited amount of strong removal tools, for combo decks to have to work harder than they lately had to for their meal, even tho there aren't really any of them in the meta right now (on a side note, i am strongly against the existance of single cards that completely counter a combo deck), and for aggro decks to not have a jack of all trades card that just allowes them to match "equally" a deck tailored specifically for late game value, or to never run out of steam. Also no infinite value cards like jade idol unless they are very easily counterable.
It's just my personal taste tho, if i had to pick a specific meta that i liked i couln't really pick one, i enjoyed several of them, but you could pick any single meta and find flaws in it if you wanted. This specific rotation that i don't like, but what can you do.
decks i liked umm, i played midrange hunter quite a bit, had some very tight matchups against ctrl warrior decks. I liked deathlord priest with lightbombs, mill warrior with brann and violet illusionist, oil rogue was pretty fun.. idk i've played so many decks i can't really count them all, but before the brm set rotation i had my very own homebrew of dragon rogue which was pretty good against that meta...
They took a step back from "infinite" value but added very persistent value options with twinspells, elysiana, togwaggle's plan, mechs, to the point a single card is not worth anything anymore. In many scenarios you are virtually guaranteed to never run out of value at least for what concerns the duration of the game. Might aswell be infinite. Also dk's made exception for post ww rexxar, were infinite value but a very slow trickle of infinite value. They would grind you in the end, but they wouldnt have "hard" resources like a twinspell would give you. Drboom sure mech generation is gated between an 1 in 5 roll, but as i said, the card generates value simply because the current mech pool is extremely high quality, omega assembly is staple x2, and even if you don't roll delivery drone, most of the other options are pretty versatile board control tools.
For the moment, it's another of those cards that benefit from a better pool where to pick from so you never know how powerful it might get
First of all, just to get some good boy points, i just recently turned to this site as my main hearthstone website. Well done with the news coverage, you won me over pretty quickly. Since i moved here i thought i'd take the occasion to add some content myself, even tho i never really did long posts on hearthpwn maybe i can do one here just because.
SO, at the start of the expansion, when dks rotated out, i thought the game would move from the old "infinite value" model to a more oldschool kind of hs where you had to manage your resources more carefully. But it really didnt, actually it got worse, because dks just slooowly gave you value with their hero powers, and everyone had them, now value generation is all over the place.
Following here the things i dont like-->
I don't like conjurer's calling. The card is pretty cool on paper, it's supposed to balance the value it can create with the randomness of the effect, except you can use it pretty consistently cheap mountain giants, with the only results being either 2 mountain giants or 2 grave shamblers, which are basically mountain giants with taunt. I don't have a problem with mountain giant per se, the card is a pretty cool way hand focused control decks can contest the board, but at the moment we don't have bgh anymore as a valuable option to remove it, and if it sticks and a conjurer calling lands, it's pretty much game over (with conjurer calling being twinspell). I really don't like this kind of value because it comes too early in the game and is way too consistent for the value it gives.
I don't like that they put another strong mech removal on warrior. I would have been fine with a generic removal, but with dr boom warrior has too much removal. I don't have a problem with dr boom per se, but the card suffers from deathstalker rexxar syndrome, where he was a perfectly fine card on release, and got completely out of control with the introduction of the new cards. Omega assembly also worsens the problem, as it has the same problem with the cards it generates being too consistently good, which in turn makes the interaction with the dr boom aura stronger.
I don't like bomb hunter, not the concept per se, but i really dont like how the deck interacts with magnetic. When i saw magnetic, and i think a lot of people thought the same, i went "well this mechanic is either gonna be completely useless, or it's gonna be completely overpowered". Matter of fact, magnetic is completely useless in the decks that can't abuse it, and completely broken in the decks that do abuse it. If you manage to make minions stick, it's virtually charge, except the minions that have it don't have bad stats to compensate. "but you can't silence charge" duh, but you can't really silence magnetic either, when every card has magnetic you are not gonna silence every one of them, and even if you do the card most likely already used its value and it's still gona leave behind a body that you can magnetize on.
I don't really like arch thief rafaam either. The effect is very cool, but it was cool as a late game option on elise decks, because you had to decide which removal tools you wanted to use and which you were gonna turn into legendaries. Made for some very cool value battles (incidentally one of my favourite decks was grinder priest with elise and justicar, where the game felt as you were ramping up in power and pretty often games were really close (also a callout to elise ctrl warrior)). Like it is now, it's just another rexxar where you are gonna build the aggroest deck you can make and just drop rafaam to turn into a late game deck if the aggro plan fails. Meh.
SO yeah, i don't like anything sorry, i thought i was going somewhere with this but whatever xD. I just wanted to say what i didn't like and see if anyone else has concerns over this.
Also i didn't give solutions to the stuff, im not some kind of wanna be game designer that is gonna say yeah blizzard is so stupid lmao if i made the cards it would be 10 times better lul. I think if you just write some solutions in a post like this you are gonna get attacked over them. Im just raising the issue, if you guys can think of a "solution" you can share it but i mean, whatever bro do what you want. Some of the stuff they put in the game is flawed at a basic level, i can't just say "remove it from the game" or " yeah let's just make conjurer's calling 10 mana" because the problems are more in the way cards interact with each other than the cards themselves. Hopefully next expansion waters this stuff down enough that it's not as impactful as it is now, blizz pls don't fuck up reno.
--- edit
-- Since i'm getting a lot of replies about rafaam not being that strong, im gonna clarify. When i said that i didn't like rafaam and compared it to rexxar, what i meant was that the cards share a similiar theme where you get to turn an aggro plan into a slower but inconsistent value game. The fact that rexxar got blown completely into overpowerdness by the ww beast package full of rush beasts, lifesteal and poisonus is another discussion. I specifically said that the effect, is actually a pretty fun one to toy with in control decks, citing old elise-the golden monkey decks as an example, but is not the kind of effect in my opinion that should be so easily available as to just put in a single card in your deck for more aggressive strategies. --
Im conflicted, on one hand i hate the current game, on the other hand i want to farm gold because loe is one of my favourite expansions.
Ehh