Doing this stuff for Wild from memory seems impossible XD Had to resort to collection searching on the first try. That, on the other hand, makes it a bit too trivial.
I have no clue what to address in Standard but for Wild, there are two very different lists of changes in my head. One that I wish would happen and one that is likely to happen.
What's likely to happen is they just lengthen the time it takes to complete the Warrior and Hunter questlines by a card or two and be done with it. It's rather boring, unimaginative, and, more importantly, doesn't really fix the format. It's likely to just usher in an age of OTK, with the possible exception of Freeze Shaman, if that survives the downfall of Questline Warrior it used to farm.
If they just nerf the two questlines, the meta doesn't really improve that much. Cause if it won't be the two questlines destroying you, it''ll be just normal Pirate Warrior, which even without the Questline has still been supercharged by the last few expansions. In that respect, they'd have to nerf the entire Neutral "free" pirate package (Patches + Parachute Brigand), otherwise Pirate aggro will always be the best type of aggro. If it's not that, it'll be Shadow Priest (also pirates) or the various Drek'Thar aggro decks (many, like Embiggen Druid, also running Pirates). But hey, those, at least, are good old-fashioned aggro decks that can be run out of resources by control. Or they would be, if control wasn't D.E.D. in Wild. Flamewaker Mage, Ignite Mage, Mozaki Mage, Pillager Rogue, Alignment Druid,. Mechathun Lock, Owl Lock, you name it, they all make control mostly unplayable if they're given room to breathe by the absence of the two Questline decks. And even if you were to nerf ALL of that. Wind the clocks back two years. You're right back to control being D.E.D. because Raza Priest can exist again and makes all control irrelevant. In that respect, so many nerfs would need to happen. Scabbs Cutterbutter + Spirit of the Shark is broken in Rogue, Sorcerer's Apprentice is broken in Mage, Runed Mithril Rod, after two mana nerfs, is still like 10 net negative mana. So is Incanter's Flow and Darkglare, btw, it's just that when it comes to mana cheating, the two respective classes have better options to cheat right now. Alignment + Anakondra is what Sorcerer's Apprentice is to Mage, what Kun Aviana used to be to Druid. Shadowreaper Anduin + Raza is just as unreasonable as it's always been, it's just unplayable right now due to the inevitability present in the meta right now. They would need to nerf/kill almost all of the mana cheating to truly, meaningfully improve the Wild format. Otherwise, they're just kicking two oppressive decks in the nuts to make room for other oppressive decks those two were holding back. That's not really addressing the core issue they've been gradually creating since Scholomance.
I don't really think that's the problem. From my experience playing the deck, playing the Ancharr is a last resort. It's a tempo loss if you didn't have the 2/2 discounters, it develops very little on the board and puts on very little pressure, and given the critical mass of 1-2 mana pirates in Wild, you can reliably and quickly complete the quest without the Ancharr card draw pretty much every game regardless. When your deck is like 22 1-2 mana pirates, you're completing by turn 5-6 even if you played Cannon on 2.
The fact that right around the time the old Pirate Warrior used to run out of steam, you get a 5 mana 7/7 with infinite value and damage stapled onto it is what makes it broken. It either needs to come out later so there's a window where the deck runs out of steam for a moment, or it needs to do less so that you're not in a scramble to survive from turn 2 until turn 10.
From the perspective of Wild, I'd say things that need to get hit:
- either Celestial Alignment or Anakondra (so that she can't reduce below 1)
- Hunter quest (1-2 more spells to complete)
- Warrior quest (you just can't let a hyper-aggressive deck have inevitability; nerf how long it takes to get to the reward or nerf the reward severely)
- Snowfall guardian (just another variety of solitaire for anyone trying to run a board-based deck)
- don't think this will happen right now but maybe with the new Core Set: FINALLY nerf Sorcerer's Apprentice to not discount below 1 mana so that Mages don't get to play like 5 varieties of solitaire anymore around that damn card. Considering the hit that Aviana Kun took because of how many stupid combos they enabled, I'm surprised Sorcerer's Apprentice has not been touched since release.
Granted, even if all this would happen we would go back to another variety of solitaire (Raza Priests), but at least that's solitaire with a longer-term gameplan and some room for disruption.
Um, nope, nice try Blizzard, but my Mercenaries rating reset several hours ago in the middle of a game. Thankfully made it to 6k yesterday...not that the reward chest gave me any meaningful progression on any hero.
I do have to say, I came in with zero hype for Mercenaries and it's not actually too bad. The Slay the Spire comparison they were trying to go for is completely off base cause the PvE content has nothing to offer, but the PvP CAN be decent. It just usually isn't because chances are, you will have sufficient coins for plenty of mercenaries that have no synergies whatsoever. Like, what are you supposed to do if your best equipped heroes are Cariel, Cornelius, Blink Fox, Brukan and Samuro. Cariel is useless, Cornelius is nice support but you need an actual build that he can support, Blink Fox is ok in general I guess, Brukan is useless without Malfurion (legendary) and Samuro requires setup that everyone and their mother is built to counter now. The inflexibility of the mode is a major issue. I have thousands of coins extra on some common heroes while others I've had for the same length of time have their skills at lvls 3, 3, 2 and all equipment at lvl 1. I would love to make a Shadow comp, for instance. Too bad I need like 700 just to get Voljin's skills and equipment to a decent level.
IMO they need to add a system where you can convert coins from heroes to universal coins you can use on anybody. Even if it's at a 2:1 ratio, it would be a massive boost to variety and give people control over what comps they can play.
Patches + Ritual of Doom. Game over by turn 3. How they haven't figured out Pogos, Patches and Jades need to be removed from these kinds of deck stacking brawls is beyond me.
There's no way this isn't busted. Premium statline coupled with a full-powered spell effect at no extra cost. The only potential balancing factor is that you'll want to play this with the more powerful choose one effects, i.e. you don't want to play this on curve to get the most bang for your buck. If you ramp with your Nourish, the 3/4 statline is not such a big deal when it's turn 7.
I really wish there was a viable Secret/Spell Hunter deck in Wild, with stuff like Emerald Spellstone, Petting Zoo, Call of the Wild and Zul'jin on the top end. But given that (Odd) Questline Hunter exists, I doubt any other version of spell Hunter will be able compete for as long as that Questline remains.
Talking about those that are eating Wild alive right now. Sure you may not care about Wild and mostly, neither does the design team. But they're gonna keep printing damaging spells for Hunter and Mage, self damage for Warlock and Pirates for Warrior. It may not be an immediate problem for Standard now, but the threat is always there and these decks are gonna keep getting better. And none of these heroes and long-term value cards really do anything to address that. How long is it going to take for Scabbs to steal the opponent's entire deck vs how long is it going to take for the Juggernaut to kill you while you're doing that? My bet is on the Juggernaut.
And I would be surprised if Questline Mage folded after losing +1 spell damage. Their damage is still infinite with Ignite. As long as they can draw enough cards, and Mage will continue getting card draw in the next 12 months, they'll kill you. Scabbs may be able to steal their Ignites but the other heroes can't. Questline Mage may not look exactly the same after the expansion as it does now but none of the cards revealed so far say to me that Questlines are dead and outmoded.
Well, on one hand I'm kinda happy this miniset seems to be pretty ass overall. Get to save up some gold for the next actual expansion and we're not getting insane power creep and OBVIOUS brokenness like we did with the last one. On the other hand, this miniset sucking will likely result in poor sales, which will motivate the team to do "better" next time. And by better I mean it's gonna be power-crept to all hell from now on.
Or I might be wrong and this miniset is busted and I just don't see it yet.
Gotta say, this one is pretty fun. Made a Silver Hand pally deck with the questline thinking I'd screw over all non-Paladin opponents.
First game, Odd Questline Hunter. My deck was only 1 drops so both of us got his Baku activation and suddenly it was Odd Pally with mostly useless questline vs an Odd Hunter with a bunch of 1 cost Paladin spells that don't do damage. Opponent didn't know you can't have two Quests active at once, so he played my Quest first and screwed himself over throwing away most of his damage spells, while I completed both my Questline and his Questline, giving me a "0 mana summon two 3/3s" hero power that refreshes.
Yeah. They really didn't need to give Quest Warrior any buffs for it to be decent and it got two (as in, buffs on two cards the deck actually wants to play). Oof.
It's pretty damn telling that many of the game's formats are currently in various advanced stages of BROKEN but what occupies the majority of space on news sites is not "all the things we're going to do to make things better". It's an endless spam of how many more cosmetic .jpegs you can now buy for retarded amounts of money. Seriously, where are the times when you could just buy a game and be confident in not being aggressively advertised to to buy more shit for something you already bought. Yeah Hearthstone is a free-to-play game but it already requires a hefty investment of either time or money to keep up with in just the constructed formats, now we're getting another format that has its own separate progression and thus, monetisation, that will potentially siphon tons of money from people who already pay tons for constructed and yet apparently it's not enough. There simply has to be a full front page of new cosmetics every week else the game is just not profitable enough apparently.
A Warlock ban huh? Could they actually be axing Demon Seed? Or is Demon Seed getting nerfed and they're axing Mithril Rod? Hm hm hm. The buffs got me a little scared though. Mage and Hunter buffs could do terrible things if misplaced and Quest Warrior also definitely doesn't need help. Hope it's for some off meta archetypes.
The Pirate buffs were definitely needed, though I question whether that's enough. A few stats here and there early on definitely help but Pirates are still probably the worst tribe at endgame because all they are is a pile of stats with no abilities.
Not too sure about the Quilboars. It's nice that Charlga once again grows herself so it's not just a worthless little divine shield breaker at endgame but I'm not sure whether all the other buffs were that needed, Quilboars weren't too bad from my experience.
As for Beasts, it's hard to say. The Frog is cut in half but in the fights where the order went your way you often had way more stats than you ever needed and the fact the Macaw can't trigger on itself now is also a bit limiting. Given that, I'm not sure the Rattler nerf was required. It seemed already pretty hard to get as is, like looking for a damn Annoy-o-module in divine shield mechs. Bumping it to 5 might make it so hard to get beasts might just fall off the face of the planet. I mean, how often have you tried playing a taunt build and buying up Strongshell Scavengers? That shit almost never shows up even though you constantly resell it. It's good that Goldrinn beasts should once again be the way to go at least. A tier 2 frog definitely shouldn't be the go-to for an endgame beast build.
Demons are similar question mark. Something definitely needed to happen but it's hard to say if they'll be able to keep up in scaling with Doomsayer so heavily nerfed. I expected either an increase in tier and nerf in stats or increase in avenge count and nerf in stats. Didn't expect a nerf in tier and avenge count at the same time. Hope the nerf doesn't outright kill demons because it's a nice change of pace for demons to actually do something at endgame. I just worry they might end up like Pirates. Piles of stats and nothing else to show for it.
Yeah but then you have to win with a deck full of Nerubian Weblords against anything that isn't Pogos, which isn't gonna work. They've banned cards out of brawls before, no reason not to do it now. In fact if there's one brawl to ban cards in, it's this one.
Doing this stuff for Wild from memory seems impossible XD Had to resort to collection searching on the first try. That, on the other hand, makes it a bit too trivial.
Totems? Can I has totems at last?
I have no clue what to address in Standard but for Wild, there are two very different lists of changes in my head. One that I wish would happen and one that is likely to happen.
What's likely to happen is they just lengthen the time it takes to complete the Warrior and Hunter questlines by a card or two and be done with it. It's rather boring, unimaginative, and, more importantly, doesn't really fix the format. It's likely to just usher in an age of OTK, with the possible exception of Freeze Shaman, if that survives the downfall of Questline Warrior it used to farm.
If they just nerf the two questlines, the meta doesn't really improve that much. Cause if it won't be the two questlines destroying you, it''ll be just normal Pirate Warrior, which even without the Questline has still been supercharged by the last few expansions. In that respect, they'd have to nerf the entire Neutral "free" pirate package (Patches + Parachute Brigand), otherwise Pirate aggro will always be the best type of aggro. If it's not that, it'll be Shadow Priest (also pirates) or the various Drek'Thar aggro decks (many, like Embiggen Druid, also running Pirates). But hey, those, at least, are good old-fashioned aggro decks that can be run out of resources by control. Or they would be, if control wasn't D.E.D. in Wild. Flamewaker Mage, Ignite Mage, Mozaki Mage, Pillager Rogue, Alignment Druid,. Mechathun Lock, Owl Lock, you name it, they all make control mostly unplayable if they're given room to breathe by the absence of the two Questline decks. And even if you were to nerf ALL of that. Wind the clocks back two years. You're right back to control being D.E.D. because Raza Priest can exist again and makes all control irrelevant. In that respect, so many nerfs would need to happen. Scabbs Cutterbutter + Spirit of the Shark is broken in Rogue, Sorcerer's Apprentice is broken in Mage, Runed Mithril Rod, after two mana nerfs, is still like 10 net negative mana. So is Incanter's Flow and Darkglare, btw, it's just that when it comes to mana cheating, the two respective classes have better options to cheat right now. Alignment + Anakondra is what Sorcerer's Apprentice is to Mage, what Kun Aviana used to be to Druid. Shadowreaper Anduin + Raza is just as unreasonable as it's always been, it's just unplayable right now due to the inevitability present in the meta right now. They would need to nerf/kill almost all of the mana cheating to truly, meaningfully improve the Wild format. Otherwise, they're just kicking two oppressive decks in the nuts to make room for other oppressive decks those two were holding back. That's not really addressing the core issue they've been gradually creating since Scholomance.
I don't really think that's the problem. From my experience playing the deck, playing the Ancharr is a last resort. It's a tempo loss if you didn't have the 2/2 discounters, it develops very little on the board and puts on very little pressure, and given the critical mass of 1-2 mana pirates in Wild, you can reliably and quickly complete the quest without the Ancharr card draw pretty much every game regardless. When your deck is like 22 1-2 mana pirates, you're completing by turn 5-6 even if you played Cannon on 2.
The fact that right around the time the old Pirate Warrior used to run out of steam, you get a 5 mana 7/7 with infinite value and damage stapled onto it is what makes it broken. It either needs to come out later so there's a window where the deck runs out of steam for a moment, or it needs to do less so that you're not in a scramble to survive from turn 2 until turn 10.
From the perspective of Wild, I'd say things that need to get hit:
- either Celestial Alignment or Anakondra (so that she can't reduce below 1)
- Hunter quest (1-2 more spells to complete)
- Warrior quest (you just can't let a hyper-aggressive deck have inevitability; nerf how long it takes to get to the reward or nerf the reward severely)
- Snowfall guardian (just another variety of solitaire for anyone trying to run a board-based deck)
- don't think this will happen right now but maybe with the new Core Set: FINALLY nerf Sorcerer's Apprentice to not discount below 1 mana so that Mages don't get to play like 5 varieties of solitaire anymore around that damn card. Considering the hit that Aviana Kun took because of how many stupid combos they enabled, I'm surprised Sorcerer's Apprentice has not been touched since release.
Granted, even if all this would happen we would go back to another variety of solitaire (Raza Priests), but at least that's solitaire with a longer-term gameplan and some room for disruption.
Um, nope, nice try Blizzard, but my Mercenaries rating reset several hours ago in the middle of a game. Thankfully made it to 6k yesterday...not that the reward chest gave me any meaningful progression on any hero.
I do have to say, I came in with zero hype for Mercenaries and it's not actually too bad. The Slay the Spire comparison they were trying to go for is completely off base cause the PvE content has nothing to offer, but the PvP CAN be decent. It just usually isn't because chances are, you will have sufficient coins for plenty of mercenaries that have no synergies whatsoever. Like, what are you supposed to do if your best equipped heroes are Cariel, Cornelius, Blink Fox, Brukan and Samuro. Cariel is useless, Cornelius is nice support but you need an actual build that he can support, Blink Fox is ok in general I guess, Brukan is useless without Malfurion (legendary) and Samuro requires setup that everyone and their mother is built to counter now. The inflexibility of the mode is a major issue. I have thousands of coins extra on some common heroes while others I've had for the same length of time have their skills at lvls 3, 3, 2 and all equipment at lvl 1. I would love to make a Shadow comp, for instance. Too bad I need like 700 just to get Voljin's skills and equipment to a decent level.
IMO they need to add a system where you can convert coins from heroes to universal coins you can use on anybody. Even if it's at a 2:1 ratio, it would be a massive boost to variety and give people control over what comps they can play.
Patches + Ritual of Doom. Game over by turn 3. How they haven't figured out Pogos, Patches and Jades need to be removed from these kinds of deck stacking brawls is beyond me.
Yo why did I get an add popup when I clicked to open the thread?
There's no way this isn't busted. Premium statline coupled with a full-powered spell effect at no extra cost. The only potential balancing factor is that you'll want to play this with the more powerful choose one effects, i.e. you don't want to play this on curve to get the most bang for your buck. If you ramp with your Nourish, the 3/4 statline is not such a big deal when it's turn 7.
I really wish there was a viable Secret/Spell Hunter deck in Wild, with stuff like Emerald Spellstone, Petting Zoo, Call of the Wild and Zul'jin on the top end. But given that (Odd) Questline Hunter exists, I doubt any other version of spell Hunter will be able compete for as long as that Questline remains.
Talking about those that are eating Wild alive right now. Sure you may not care about Wild and mostly, neither does the design team. But they're gonna keep printing damaging spells for Hunter and Mage, self damage for Warlock and Pirates for Warrior. It may not be an immediate problem for Standard now, but the threat is always there and these decks are gonna keep getting better. And none of these heroes and long-term value cards really do anything to address that. How long is it going to take for Scabbs to steal the opponent's entire deck vs how long is it going to take for the Juggernaut to kill you while you're doing that? My bet is on the Juggernaut.
And I would be surprised if Questline Mage folded after losing +1 spell damage. Their damage is still infinite with Ignite. As long as they can draw enough cards, and Mage will continue getting card draw in the next 12 months, they'll kill you. Scabbs may be able to steal their Ignites but the other heroes can't. Questline Mage may not look exactly the same after the expansion as it does now but none of the cards revealed so far say to me that Questlines are dead and outmoded.
All these seem like fun effects, but I don't see how any of it is supposed to compete with the much faster infinite value from questlines.
Well, on one hand I'm kinda happy this miniset seems to be pretty ass overall. Get to save up some gold for the next actual expansion and we're not getting insane power creep and OBVIOUS brokenness like we did with the last one. On the other hand, this miniset sucking will likely result in poor sales, which will motivate the team to do "better" next time. And by better I mean it's gonna be power-crept to all hell from now on.
Or I might be wrong and this miniset is busted and I just don't see it yet.
Gotta say, this one is pretty fun. Made a Silver Hand pally deck with the questline thinking I'd screw over all non-Paladin opponents.
First game, Odd Questline Hunter. My deck was only 1 drops so both of us got his Baku activation and suddenly it was Odd Pally with mostly useless questline vs an Odd Hunter with a bunch of 1 cost Paladin spells that don't do damage. Opponent didn't know you can't have two Quests active at once, so he played my Quest first and screwed himself over throwing away most of his damage spells, while I completed both my Questline and his Questline, giving me a "0 mana summon two 3/3s" hero power that refreshes.
Yeah. They really didn't need to give Quest Warrior any buffs for it to be decent and it got two (as in, buffs on two cards the deck actually wants to play). Oof.
It's pretty damn telling that many of the game's formats are currently in various advanced stages of BROKEN but what occupies the majority of space on news sites is not "all the things we're going to do to make things better". It's an endless spam of how many more cosmetic .jpegs you can now buy for retarded amounts of money. Seriously, where are the times when you could just buy a game and be confident in not being aggressively advertised to to buy more shit for something you already bought. Yeah Hearthstone is a free-to-play game but it already requires a hefty investment of either time or money to keep up with in just the constructed formats, now we're getting another format that has its own separate progression and thus, monetisation, that will potentially siphon tons of money from people who already pay tons for constructed and yet apparently it's not enough. There simply has to be a full front page of new cosmetics every week else the game is just not profitable enough apparently.
/rant
A Warlock ban huh? Could they actually be axing Demon Seed? Or is Demon Seed getting nerfed and they're axing Mithril Rod? Hm hm hm. The buffs got me a little scared though. Mage and Hunter buffs could do terrible things if misplaced and Quest Warrior also definitely doesn't need help. Hope it's for some off meta archetypes.
The Pirate buffs were definitely needed, though I question whether that's enough. A few stats here and there early on definitely help but Pirates are still probably the worst tribe at endgame because all they are is a pile of stats with no abilities.
Not too sure about the Quilboars. It's nice that Charlga once again grows herself so it's not just a worthless little divine shield breaker at endgame but I'm not sure whether all the other buffs were that needed, Quilboars weren't too bad from my experience.
As for Beasts, it's hard to say. The Frog is cut in half but in the fights where the order went your way you often had way more stats than you ever needed and the fact the Macaw can't trigger on itself now is also a bit limiting. Given that, I'm not sure the Rattler nerf was required. It seemed already pretty hard to get as is, like looking for a damn Annoy-o-module in divine shield mechs. Bumping it to 5 might make it so hard to get beasts might just fall off the face of the planet. I mean, how often have you tried playing a taunt build and buying up Strongshell Scavengers? That shit almost never shows up even though you constantly resell it. It's good that Goldrinn beasts should once again be the way to go at least. A tier 2 frog definitely shouldn't be the go-to for an endgame beast build.
Demons are similar question mark. Something definitely needed to happen but it's hard to say if they'll be able to keep up in scaling with Doomsayer so heavily nerfed. I expected either an increase in tier and nerf in stats or increase in avenge count and nerf in stats. Didn't expect a nerf in tier and avenge count at the same time. Hope the nerf doesn't outright kill demons because it's a nice change of pace for demons to actually do something at endgame. I just worry they might end up like Pirates. Piles of stats and nothing else to show for it.
Yeah but then you have to win with a deck full of Nerubian Weblords against anything that isn't Pogos, which isn't gonna work. They've banned cards out of brawls before, no reason not to do it now. In fact if there's one brawl to ban cards in, it's this one.
And they didn't even bother banning Jades and Pogos...