Pretty insane card in Pure Paladin but limited to it. Pure Paladin is strong right now and this makes it even stronger but it doesn't alleviate the archetype's main weakness of getting shut down by enemy shuffles. Bomb Warrior will keep the archetype in check and, in case it isn't enough, we still have Bad Luck Albatross.
This could be a nice win condition for decks with lots of rush minions. There isn't a deck like that right now but this could create a new archetype. Playmaker likes this. There are a lot of cards that haven't been revealed yet and there's people already dismissing it.
Blood herald costs 5, this costs 2.. If you play it as a 2 mana 4/4 it's already decent enough.
A 4/4 on turn 4 isn't great regardless of its low cost. It's too slow to stop any aggro as your opponent is just going to ignore it and continue hitting you in the face since this thing doesn't do anything upon entering the board. And slow decks will just laugh and remove it like it's nothing regardless of its size. It's an insanely slow and low impact card that is going to be rotting in your hand the whole game just for you to drop it and see it removed instantly. Are you really going to commit precious slots in your deck that could be occupied by way better cards to play this? Even if it comes back at its buffed state after playing Y'shaarj, it's still too low impact to be relevant. You need cards that swing the board in slow matchups and this doesn't accomplish that.
This isn't an aggro DH card. It's an aggressive value card for slower DH decks. You can't play this on curve as you won't be able to play the card drawn to get the attack buff and the card is horribly stated as well. You have a guaranteed buff in the late game if your deck doesn't go above 7 mana (which is the case for most DH decks). This card is really slow and not 100% reliable. If you don't get the buff then you just spent 3 mana to draw 1 and play a body that dies to anything which is atrocious. I wouldn't call this bad as the new legendary might allow for some crazy combo with Aldrachi Warblades and high attack and this might complement such deck but it's not really that great in any tempo based archetype and that might kill its viability.
As its name suggests, it's horrendous. It's just a pile of stats that does nothing. You can continuously grow this in your hand and make it gigantic. Does that make it playable? Ask Blood Herald. Pass.
Another broken DH card. This thing has only one downside: you can't heal yourself with your lifesteal cards while it's alive. Does that even matter if the opponent is just dead with a single swing of Aldrachi Warblades? Nope. I'm pretty much done at this point. I'm not going to endure another 4+ months of DH burn decks. Regardless of whatever comes next, i really don't care anymore.
I really like when they design cards that encourages different strategies for classes that are usually one dimensional (like Hunter currently is). This card is interesting but it might suffer from the same problems that caused Dr. Morrigan to be one of the worst cards ever printed. It lacks consistency. It can pull literally anything from the deck and it restricts the usage of minions a lot. Low attack minions and high value minions (Zephrys, Dinotamer Brann) can't coexist with this in the same deck. Even Beastmaster Leoroxx is bad with this. Hunter is lacking some form of late game sustainability or comeback potential (like Zul'jin) in standard so this might limit the usability of this card a lot.
I OTK'ed my opponent with Give It All. Two Reckless Trifarians and two Daring Poros was all i needed. Someone is going to find a way to abuse this. I also tried Feel The Rush and it was pretty hard to survive all the aggression from the elusive deck but once i played the card it was game over. It's a fun card and i have some neat ideas for it but i don't think it will surpass the level of Warmother's Call. They might coexist on the same meta but i don't believe one is strictly better than the other. I might be totally wrong though.
I'm interested in utilizing this alongside Vi and Braum. Use Counterfeit Copies to shuffle a bunch of Vis into the deck and just kill the opponent with a bunch of leveled up Vis. Maybe Trundle is better than Braum for stabilization. I need to test this idea.
This might not find a home in a meta deck but he already gave me enough of a pay off to receive a thumbs up. I used him to steal a Face Hunter's Dragonbane when he was trying to set up lethal. That felt good...
You yourself said in another comment that the mode is super inconsistent and not balanced at all. I'm not getting early access to it as i'm not buying any preorders. Also, this new mode isn't something that interests me. I'll play it once it becomes available to everyone but i'm not going to play it more than a few times. I already know how dungeon run works and it was never something very interesting to me.
The treasures shown in the screenshot in this article are exactly the same as the ones used in dungeon run games. Maybe my memory is betraying me and Small Pouches in the dungeon run adventures draws a card each turn instead of just one extra at the start of the game. But i'm pretty certain the other two are exactly the same. No changes whatsoever. Crystal Gem is pretty crazy as starting with three mana is such huge tempo. Sure, you go back to two mana on the next turn but you started with such a huge tempo advantage because of the extra mana on the first turn that your opponent is going to have a hard time catching up. I don't think you can call that "balanced". Again, i'm not saying that they didn't work on balancing or that they are lazy. But sometimes they miss their balance target by a long shot. And that creates a snowball of other issues.
It might see some play in Odd Paladin but it might not make the cut because setting up tempo plays with corrupt cards in even and odd decks seems really awkward. Maybe this will see play in standard because this indicates they are printing new dude synergy cards. It's also good with Sword of Justice and Righteous Cause. You instantly get 5 2/2 dudes. We might see a token paladin deck. It's quite decent.
I don't think this will see any play in standard. It might see some experimentation in some meme wild priest decks because of Zilliax and SN1P-SN4P. But there's no support left for mechs in standard, this isn't a good resurrection target and committing a 5 mana slot (which is completely overcrowded for this class) for a slightly bigger than average taunt that can easily be silenced, removed or completely ignored by a Kayn Sunfury isn't a good deal. It requires at least three spells to be playable and even then it only surpasses Faceless Lurker in utility. Totally not worth it even with the new N'Zoth card.
Things certainly look better than what we have right now. It's also nice that they aren't going to cap the amount of gold we can receive after grinding all those levels. There are still quite a lot of questions though. How fast can we grind those levels? How much exp will be required for further gold rewards after level 50? How much time this new system is going to ask of the average player? We will only have the answers after we experience it so let's wait and see. In a few months we will know if things got better or if the game is doomed.
Now, with the rewards currently revealed, i can say that this is still a big joke compared to Legends of Runeterra. I played LoR for three hours today to complete a few quests, receive the weekly chest (which i barely grinded for, totally forgot) and some pending tutorial missions and i was rewarded with 5 champions (the equivalent to legendary cards in HS), several epics, rares and commons, a decent amount of shards (equivalent to dust) and a bunch of wildcards (something that HS doesn't have). And i barely did anything. Just a bunch of tutorials for 150 exp, a few games against the A.I. to test a deck i made and 1 game against a real player.
The reward track in HS gives 1 epic and 2 legendary cards. ONE EPIC? For the whole track? And two legendaries (which i imagine are completely RANDOM)? There are more than 100 legendary and epic cards in standard. Most are unplayable. The disenchant cost for cards isn't receiving any adjustments. If you get garbage then too bad. You just spent a bunch of time grinding for gold that you will only spend in 4 months, several packs that might contain something you want or just dust, a few cosmetic items and three garbage unplayable cards that won't even be worth enough dust to craft a single legendary. Totally worth your time right? Now, imagine that once you spend your hard earned gold on packs from the next expansion... you hit the pity timer every single time. You get two to three legendaries that might not even be playable. And you have no choice but to go back to grinding.
The game might become more affordable. But it's still too expensive if you want to be competitive. They are not addressing that issue in the slightest. If Runeterra wasn't a thing or if i didn't start playing it (which i only did because HS was pushing me away from it) then i wouldn't be able to raise an argument about this. But i did. And this is inexcusable. I'm not joking. The difference is that outrageous. ActiBlizz isn't going to change its greedy ways.
I'm not saying they don't deserve any credit or that they aren't working hard to improve each game mode. What i'm saying is that they are usually overshooting too hard on their new designs and that generates a lot of dissatisfaction very quickly. They try to balance things but when they miss the target (or don't really fix anything as that's the case of Djinni), it only creates even more problems that they need to solve quickly. They are being proactive but the pressure over them is at its highest in a very long time. There's a lot of things to look out for and i doubt Activision will expand the team to make things easier for the devs. They might already be under work overload and it could lead to a snowball of other problems.
Adding a mode that uses things that weren't balanced properly for PvP could be a major source of problems and i don't think it was the right call. People have been asking for a Tournament mode for a long time and there were other suggestions as well. I believe the reason they went for this is the ability to re-utilize assets. It wouldn't need a ton of work to implement and their only worry would be the overall balance of the mode. But it could backfire pretty hard if things become too messy. I also don't believe they chose this because they are lazy. It's exactly because they have to meet certain deadlines and are constantly under pressure from their superiors. It was easier and healthier to go for this route and bank everything on the previous success of Dungeon Runs.
Cool to see the Old Gods back in standard. All the cards are interesting.
Yogg is just... Yogg. A pure RNG Roulette. Good for those who only care about fun. A nightmare for those who despise extreme variance.
Y'Shaarj is a value engine for the corrupt keyword but getting full value from the cards can be difficult as playing him costs all your mana and the corrupt effects require you to play a card that costs more than the cards with corrupt in them. You will need a Coin and a 1-cost card to trigger them. Or find a way to discount Y'Shaarj below 10 mana. Priest can do this very easily with Fate Weaver. Or maybe i misunderstood how corrupt works? I didn't watch the stream so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.
N'Zoth is a neutral full board resurrect card. That's probably already enough to make some people hate it but making him work isn't as simple as Mass Resurrection or old N'Zoth, the Corruptor. He only works for tribal minions. That means you won't see him resurrecting a full board of the most annoying minions of all time (Obsidian Statue, Convincing Infiltrator) as those aren't eligible for his effect. Getting the most out of him requires a good mixture of different card types that usually don't synergize well with each other. Also, the current pool of eligible cards isn't exactly great so he is going to be really dependent on whatever they decide to print in this expansion.
C'Thunn... Oh boy! This one is something else entirely. He is essentially the Exodia of Hearthstone. I'm not sure how he works but i believe you have to assemble all pieces and play them one by one once you have all of them to complete his body. Then you can play him and win the game (most likely). He is obviously better in classes with a lot of card draw (DH, Warlock) and it could be completely busted in those classes. Maybe i'm wrong and he works in a different way? I really don't know but this is certainly the coolest card by far.
The achievements isn't something i care about a lot but it's cool that they finally added them. And the new progression system seems fine but the only way to be sure is to experience it so once we get to 2021 then we all should know if it's better or worse. I highly doubt it could be worse than what we have right now but it might not be as good as we expect. It depends on how fast we can grind those levels and how much gold we can earn (and how fast as well) after completing the 50 levels.
Pretty insane card in Pure Paladin but limited to it. Pure Paladin is strong right now and this makes it even stronger but it doesn't alleviate the archetype's main weakness of getting shut down by enemy shuffles. Bomb Warrior will keep the archetype in check and, in case it isn't enough, we still have Bad Luck Albatross.
This could be a nice win condition for decks with lots of rush minions. There isn't a deck like that right now but this could create a new archetype. Playmaker likes this. There are a lot of cards that haven't been revealed yet and there's people already dismissing it.
Value + Silence. It's a good card but it might be too niche. Oddly enough, it shuts down Mindflayer Kaahrj quite well.
A 4/4 on turn 4 isn't great regardless of its low cost. It's too slow to stop any aggro as your opponent is just going to ignore it and continue hitting you in the face since this thing doesn't do anything upon entering the board. And slow decks will just laugh and remove it like it's nothing regardless of its size. It's an insanely slow and low impact card that is going to be rotting in your hand the whole game just for you to drop it and see it removed instantly. Are you really going to commit precious slots in your deck that could be occupied by way better cards to play this? Even if it comes back at its buffed state after playing Y'shaarj, it's still too low impact to be relevant. You need cards that swing the board in slow matchups and this doesn't accomplish that.
This isn't an aggro DH card. It's an aggressive value card for slower DH decks. You can't play this on curve as you won't be able to play the card drawn to get the attack buff and the card is horribly stated as well. You have a guaranteed buff in the late game if your deck doesn't go above 7 mana (which is the case for most DH decks). This card is really slow and not 100% reliable. If you don't get the buff then you just spent 3 mana to draw 1 and play a body that dies to anything which is atrocious. I wouldn't call this bad as the new legendary might allow for some crazy combo with Aldrachi Warblades and high attack and this might complement such deck but it's not really that great in any tempo based archetype and that might kill its viability.
As its name suggests, it's horrendous. It's just a pile of stats that does nothing. You can continuously grow this in your hand and make it gigantic. Does that make it playable? Ask Blood Herald. Pass.
Great value but pretty boring in design.
Another broken DH card. This thing has only one downside: you can't heal yourself with your lifesteal cards while it's alive. Does that even matter if the opponent is just dead with a single swing of Aldrachi Warblades? Nope. I'm pretty much done at this point. I'm not going to endure another 4+ months of DH burn decks. Regardless of whatever comes next, i really don't care anymore.
I really like when they design cards that encourages different strategies for classes that are usually one dimensional (like Hunter currently is). This card is interesting but it might suffer from the same problems that caused Dr. Morrigan to be one of the worst cards ever printed. It lacks consistency. It can pull literally anything from the deck and it restricts the usage of minions a lot. Low attack minions and high value minions (Zephrys, Dinotamer Brann) can't coexist with this in the same deck. Even Beastmaster Leoroxx is bad with this. Hunter is lacking some form of late game sustainability or comeback potential (like Zul'jin) in standard so this might limit the usability of this card a lot.
I like the idea behind these cards. Savannah Highmane might finally make a comeback!
I OTK'ed my opponent with Give It All. Two Reckless Trifarians and two Daring Poros was all i needed. Someone is going to find a way to abuse this. I also tried Feel The Rush and it was pretty hard to survive all the aggression from the elusive deck but once i played the card it was game over. It's a fun card and i have some neat ideas for it but i don't think it will surpass the level of Warmother's Call. They might coexist on the same meta but i don't believe one is strictly better than the other. I might be totally wrong though.
I'm interested in utilizing this alongside Vi and Braum. Use Counterfeit Copies to shuffle a bunch of Vis into the deck and just kill the opponent with a bunch of leveled up Vis. Maybe Trundle is better than Braum for stabilization. I need to test this idea.
This might not find a home in a meta deck but he already gave me enough of a pay off to receive a thumbs up. I used him to steal a Face Hunter's Dragonbane when he was trying to set up lethal. That felt good...
You yourself said in another comment that the mode is super inconsistent and not balanced at all. I'm not getting early access to it as i'm not buying any preorders. Also, this new mode isn't something that interests me. I'll play it once it becomes available to everyone but i'm not going to play it more than a few times. I already know how dungeon run works and it was never something very interesting to me.
The treasures shown in the screenshot in this article are exactly the same as the ones used in dungeon run games. Maybe my memory is betraying me and Small Pouches in the dungeon run adventures draws a card each turn instead of just one extra at the start of the game. But i'm pretty certain the other two are exactly the same. No changes whatsoever. Crystal Gem is pretty crazy as starting with three mana is such huge tempo. Sure, you go back to two mana on the next turn but you started with such a huge tempo advantage because of the extra mana on the first turn that your opponent is going to have a hard time catching up. I don't think you can call that "balanced". Again, i'm not saying that they didn't work on balancing or that they are lazy. But sometimes they miss their balance target by a long shot. And that creates a snowball of other issues.
It might see some play in Odd Paladin but it might not make the cut because setting up tempo plays with corrupt cards in even and odd decks seems really awkward. Maybe this will see play in standard because this indicates they are printing new dude synergy cards. It's also good with Sword of Justice and Righteous Cause. You instantly get 5 2/2 dudes. We might see a token paladin deck. It's quite decent.
I don't think this will see any play in standard. It might see some experimentation in some meme wild priest decks because of Zilliax and SN1P-SN4P. But there's no support left for mechs in standard, this isn't a good resurrection target and committing a 5 mana slot (which is completely overcrowded for this class) for a slightly bigger than average taunt that can easily be silenced, removed or completely ignored by a Kayn Sunfury isn't a good deal. It requires at least three spells to be playable and even then it only surpasses Faceless Lurker in utility. Totally not worth it even with the new N'Zoth card.
Things certainly look better than what we have right now. It's also nice that they aren't going to cap the amount of gold we can receive after grinding all those levels. There are still quite a lot of questions though. How fast can we grind those levels? How much exp will be required for further gold rewards after level 50? How much time this new system is going to ask of the average player? We will only have the answers after we experience it so let's wait and see. In a few months we will know if things got better or if the game is doomed.
Now, with the rewards currently revealed, i can say that this is still a big joke compared to Legends of Runeterra. I played LoR for three hours today to complete a few quests, receive the weekly chest (which i barely grinded for, totally forgot) and some pending tutorial missions and i was rewarded with 5 champions (the equivalent to legendary cards in HS), several epics, rares and commons, a decent amount of shards (equivalent to dust) and a bunch of wildcards (something that HS doesn't have). And i barely did anything. Just a bunch of tutorials for 150 exp, a few games against the A.I. to test a deck i made and 1 game against a real player.
The reward track in HS gives 1 epic and 2 legendary cards. ONE EPIC? For the whole track? And two legendaries (which i imagine are completely RANDOM)? There are more than 100 legendary and epic cards in standard. Most are unplayable. The disenchant cost for cards isn't receiving any adjustments. If you get garbage then too bad. You just spent a bunch of time grinding for gold that you will only spend in 4 months, several packs that might contain something you want or just dust, a few cosmetic items and three garbage unplayable cards that won't even be worth enough dust to craft a single legendary. Totally worth your time right? Now, imagine that once you spend your hard earned gold on packs from the next expansion... you hit the pity timer every single time. You get two to three legendaries that might not even be playable. And you have no choice but to go back to grinding.
The game might become more affordable. But it's still too expensive if you want to be competitive. They are not addressing that issue in the slightest. If Runeterra wasn't a thing or if i didn't start playing it (which i only did because HS was pushing me away from it) then i wouldn't be able to raise an argument about this. But i did. And this is inexcusable. I'm not joking. The difference is that outrageous. ActiBlizz isn't going to change its greedy ways.
I'm not saying they don't deserve any credit or that they aren't working hard to improve each game mode. What i'm saying is that they are usually overshooting too hard on their new designs and that generates a lot of dissatisfaction very quickly. They try to balance things but when they miss the target (or don't really fix anything as that's the case of Djinni), it only creates even more problems that they need to solve quickly. They are being proactive but the pressure over them is at its highest in a very long time. There's a lot of things to look out for and i doubt Activision will expand the team to make things easier for the devs. They might already be under work overload and it could lead to a snowball of other problems.
Adding a mode that uses things that weren't balanced properly for PvP could be a major source of problems and i don't think it was the right call. People have been asking for a Tournament mode for a long time and there were other suggestions as well. I believe the reason they went for this is the ability to re-utilize assets. It wouldn't need a ton of work to implement and their only worry would be the overall balance of the mode. But it could backfire pretty hard if things become too messy. I also don't believe they chose this because they are lazy. It's exactly because they have to meet certain deadlines and are constantly under pressure from their superiors. It was easier and healthier to go for this route and bank everything on the previous success of Dungeon Runs.
Cool to see the Old Gods back in standard. All the cards are interesting.
Yogg is just... Yogg. A pure RNG Roulette. Good for those who only care about fun. A nightmare for those who despise extreme variance.
Y'Shaarj is a value engine for the corrupt keyword but getting full value from the cards can be difficult as playing him costs all your mana and the corrupt effects require you to play a card that costs more than the cards with corrupt in them. You will need a Coin and a 1-cost card to trigger them. Or find a way to discount Y'Shaarj below 10 mana. Priest can do this very easily with Fate Weaver. Or maybe i misunderstood how corrupt works? I didn't watch the stream so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.
N'Zoth is a neutral full board resurrect card. That's probably already enough to make some people hate it but making him work isn't as simple as Mass Resurrection or old N'Zoth, the Corruptor. He only works for tribal minions. That means you won't see him resurrecting a full board of the most annoying minions of all time (Obsidian Statue, Convincing Infiltrator) as those aren't eligible for his effect. Getting the most out of him requires a good mixture of different card types that usually don't synergize well with each other. Also, the current pool of eligible cards isn't exactly great so he is going to be really dependent on whatever they decide to print in this expansion.
C'Thunn... Oh boy! This one is something else entirely. He is essentially the Exodia of Hearthstone. I'm not sure how he works but i believe you have to assemble all pieces and play them one by one once you have all of them to complete his body. Then you can play him and win the game (most likely). He is obviously better in classes with a lot of card draw (DH, Warlock) and it could be completely busted in those classes. Maybe i'm wrong and he works in a different way? I really don't know but this is certainly the coolest card by far.
The achievements isn't something i care about a lot but it's cool that they finally added them. And the new progression system seems fine but the only way to be sure is to experience it so once we get to 2021 then we all should know if it's better or worse. I highly doubt it could be worse than what we have right now but it might not be as good as we expect. It depends on how fast we can grind those levels and how much gold we can earn (and how fast as well) after completing the 50 levels.