This card is simply awesome. Potential triple draw + tutoring (it draws specific cards) + an upside that helps swing the board. Is this the next Lich King/Ragnaros?
Hey, a win condition! And it's insanely slow which means it will most likely only fit in Control Priest. I highly doubt this working in any non-defensive Tempo shell. Also, the questline provides an insta-win card that can't be stopped directly. The opponent needs some lucky disruption (like Mutanus) which insta-wins the game for them. Or they can just hit face and try to kill the Priest before he gathers all the necessary pieces to win the game. Just like Tickatus. There are some differences though. Priest doesn't have a Hero Power that slowly kills them and they have a lot more healing. Priest has a much easier time surviving than Warlock. This is very likely another reason why they targeted the healing with the nerfs. A big heal through Samuro + Apotheosis would become a massive asset for stalling the game and getting to this win condition. This tells me that they are being really careful to not allow this to become the main win condition of the class. This adds an end point to games but that doesn't mean the games won't still be insanely long. It's still a slow grind and people will not like losing to this.
I was expecting something different. Something related to the Shadow Priest theme or some form of direct damage. Not some instant "I win and you can't stop me" card. I am really looking for a reason to come back and play the game as i don't hate it. It just isn't fun right now. This doesn't help. All pressure now falls on top of the Shadow archetype. If it fails then Priest will continue to play super slow but now with an unavoidable insta-win card.
I already stopped playing months ago, i said that in my first comment. The only reason why i still pay attention to anything that's going on and regularly visit this site for information is because i spent too much time and money to completely let go of the game. It feels terrible and it's my own fault. It's a learning experience. Never gonna make the same mistake again.
I completely forgot what Dungar was. I had to look it up. It's the new legendary from the next expansion that was released early. Cool. Seems like a good tradition they will maintain. The card does a few neat things and one of them is 10 healing... after three turns of him sitting dead on the board doing nothing. Great. If you live long enough to see that healing then you probably don't need it by the time it activates. Three turns is an eternity against any sort of aggression and burst damage can finish you off in a single turn. Ooze (and the Viper thing) can prevent repeated damage but can't stop instant burst from Doomhammer.
Priest has too much generation, that is the absolute truth. But guess what? That's the only thing they have when it comes to obtaining resources. Priest has no card draw, only basic cycling. That is not enough for the insanely fast pace of the game. Shaman was saved recently because of a single decent card draw option from the mini-set. Until Priest gets some of that love, they will remain the class that has no choice but to rely on RNG clown fiesta generation to be able to compete. And no other archetype will flourish other than slow "kill the opponent out of boredom" Control until that happens. If they gut the resource generation too much without adding real card draw the class will become unplayable.
Control decks are supposed to control the board and avoid dying in order to achieve whatever late game win condition the deck was built-around. Control decks need something to beat other types of decks. Controlling the board and not dying is only viable as a win condition against aggro but there will always be other decks that you must take into account even during an aggro meta. N'Zoth can be considered a win condition since the deck is built to get the most value from its battlecry. I always hear people complaining that Priest has no win conditions other than stalling/card generation but this particular deck seemed different. Also, aggro can deal 20+ damage in only a few turns with good draw and some even have instant burst win conditions (Like Doomhammer) but a Control deck from a healing class isn't allowed to regenerate that amount despite the fact that Control should have an edge against aggro?
If a Control deck isn't allowed to be greedy then what is the point of playing them? I like (or rather, used to like as i already stopped playing months ago) playing with big cards that do flashy plays and N'Zoth is one of them. Why print big 10 mana cards if the game is always going to be skewed towards aggro and why whenever a Control deck starts to show signs of dominance it must be stopped at all costs? The nerfs to aggro are never meant to make them unplayable but to make them more fair against the other aggro decks. But nerfs to Control and Combo are pretty much always a killing blow.
The cards still have a cost associated to them when the effect of the card triggers. It's not free (not without immune). Warlock doesn't have access to armor gain and healing is also limited. The class is all about self-sacrifice so this mechanic works perfectly for the class. The card can't really break anything in Standard because immunity cards aren't available. It's pretty clear that the card wasn't designed with Wild in mind. They are probably not taking Wild in consideration for new cards anymore because, as i said in my other post, it's just not possible to balance a mode that expands so rapidly and infinitely. It requires too much time and manpower to evaluate all possible interactions and that slows down development progression for other modes. At this point, they just accepted that they have to get rid of problematic cards in Wild to keep things working without hurting deck building possibilities in Standard through nerfs.
Removing specific mechanics like mana discounts (or mana cheating as people now like to call it) will hurt deck building possibilities. Most combo decks relies on mana discounts to function and this type of deck has a dedicated playerbase. If they stop giving people the ability to make combos out of a big combination of cards, they will lose a lot of players and that's something they want to avoid at all costs. Combo decks must be allowed to exist.
This is something that was going to happen sooner or later. The card pool in Wild is expanding rapidly each year and new mechanics are added to keep the game fresh in Standard. Wild, however, just has too many cards and too many interactions. If they spend time researching every single possible interaction then they will waste a lot of time that could be used for designing new cards, rewards and balancing other modes.
People say that they don't care about Wild but i believe that they just don't have enough people to work on balancing and testing cards for a format that only expands infinitely. And they don't have the final word when it comes to recruiting more people to work on the game. It's something that's out of their control. So, they finally decided that enough is enough. They simply can't afford to spend dev time to test everything that could happen in Wild when a new card is released and they don't want to nuke cards out of existence as soon as they are released because it would be a lot of time and resources wasted. The card isn't seeing play in Standard right now but it still has a lot of time on the format so they don't want to nerf it and destroy any chances of it ever seeing play. Changing specific mechanics or cards just for Wild is also going to cause a lot of confusion for anyone that decides to try the format in the future so they opted to keep things as is for the sake of consistency. It's a very courageous step and i respect them for taking risks.
I'm still surprised how much people underestimate mana curve nerfs. The nerf to First Day of School is devastating to all tempo decks for Paladin. The main purpose of the card was to enable a turn 1 play when they don't find their main 1-drop. The most busted thing about it is that it simply didn't cost any card advantage whatsoever. They simply spent no mana to gain an extra card and played one of those cards while maintaining their starting hand size and enabling their early game curve. The fact that they can't play this on turn 1 and drop a minion on the board means that they will have a really hard time curving into some of their strongest early game plays (1-drop into Hand of A'dal). This will buy a lot of time for other decks to pressure them or find answers to their plays. I can't say much about the other changes as i'm no longer playing constructed and i haven't played against those cards. I'll still share my opinion on the buffs though.
The buffs won't help Shaman. If the class is struggling because of card draw, making those cards better Tempo plays means absolutely nothing when you can't draw consistently enough to have them available on curve every game.
Lowering the cost of N'Zoth is okay but what the card needs mostly is a better selection of cards to summon. That will come with later expansions but the buff will help a lot once the pool of minion is slightly better.
Xanesh could be interesting to experiment with but it probably won't be a big deal because Priest's own corrupt cards are completely whatever which makes Y'sharrj not very attractive as a win condition.
The change to Deck of Chaos could be scary if it wasn't a Warlock card. The card suffers from similar issues as Luna's Pocket Galaxy before its buff. Only when that card got buffed and broke the game that people realized that the pay off was worth the risk of skipping a turn to enable it. The main difference in this case is that Warlock just slowly kills itself with the Hero Power throughout the game which makes the class even more vulnerable to aggression than Mage. Greedy cards like this are more easily punishable in Warlock so lowering its cost probably won't do anything to improve its viability. Also, Fiendish Circle won't save Zoolock unless they plan on releasing some powerful token synergy cards with the mini-set.
Shieldmaiden is a lot better as a 5-drop. It's now a decent card to play on curve that also comes with a small health boost to mitigate damage from incoming attacks. Whirling Combatant was already a good card and now is a premium defensive 4-drop. Slower Warrior decks are going to benefit a lot from these buffs.
I have played with Al'ar a lot in my own meme Priest decks and it won me many games (mostly due to the opponent being dumb enough to ignore it). If people think this is a card for deathrattle decks then they are just wrong. This card is good for cloning decks. Cards that create extra copies of it directly on the board can force the opponent to sink too many resources into it. Ignoring it is bad because buffs can make it pretty scary. And it hits pretty hard. It works best in Priest because of the class' copying effects. The card is a fine meme. It doesn't need any help in that regard. I don't think it needs to become a competitive force either.
The nerfs weren't meant to kill Lunacy Mage or make any of its good matchups worse. It was meant to make sure that it has no chance against aggro. At 2 mana, they could highroll and snowball right from turn 2 (with coin). Now, they can only start their shenanigans on turn 4 (if they played Lunacy on 3 with coin) and only if they draw the nuts. This gives aggro decks plenty of time to bring their health down to a level where they can finish them off from hand. The nerfs to the Watch Posts should allow aggro decks to come back into the game. With this, Lunacy Mage will start running into more bad matchups and this should bring its win rate down to a reasonable level (not that good but not completely terrible either). The tryhards that think the deck is good for a fast and reliable climb to legend will start dropping the deck for something better and faster and the deck will be played mostly by the people that actually enjoy it. The total population of the deck should go down and it won't be a meta defining force anymore. This is my analysis of their intention with these changes. Only time will tell if they were successful or not but it is too early to say that the patch was a failure.
Well, it seems like i'm not missing anything from not playing in the last week. I only played day 1 and it was okay but i'm into other games right now and i decided to wait and see what was going to happen. If Lunacy Mage is on the top then i'm definitely not playing until it gets nerfed. I already disliked that load of bs but it only got better with the rotation, it seems. And Secret Paladin was going to become a problem anyway. That weapon is completely disgusting and the secrets aren't bad anymore. There's no downside to it.
I got 0 dust. After looking into my collection i confirmed that i wasn't half-asleep or anything like that while opening my classic packs. I didn't receive any of the Hall of Fame cards despite the fact that i never opened them before. I got copies of cards like Southsea Captain and Force of Nature (and a terrible golden Hogger) but no sign of the HoF cards. Are these supposed to be in the packs or not?
I got to level 17 on day 1. I completed the 5 wins weekly quest (i have been neglecting it for weeks) and the 2 daily ones i had. Progression felt good with a lot of early rewards but that also happened during the last track. It felt really good early on but slowed down to a crawl around level 30. Things are different this time as the level up requirements are much lower for the early levels. It should feel a lot smoother and i hope it will feel good even after we get to the higher levels.
I opened 70 packs with only gold. I got 3 legendaries: Mordresh Fire Eye (okay), Firemancer Flurgl (terrible for me, won't use at all) and Scabbs Cutterbutter (fine as well). I will probably craft Xyrella and Overlord Saurfang. I never count the amount of epics i get but it felt like a decent enough amount. It was fine, overall. Not great but not bad.
Removing the golden cards worked for me and i was able to get into enough games to get the 5 ranked wins. You need a lot of patience and this isn't really acceptable. Also, i opened my classic packs and didn't obtain any of the Hall of Fame cards. I even got a golden legendary from the golden pack but it turned out to be Hogger. I don't know if there was a possibility of Ragnaros or Sylvanas showing up but if that was the case then i can't do anything other than feel bad about it.
I'll miss Murozond the Infinite and Mindflayer Kaahrj a lot. These are probably the most fun minions that Priest had in a long time. Murozond was an incredible way of getting some good value while still generating a threat and it is my favorite card in the game. Kaahrj is the most flexible minion that Priest has and it baffles me that they didn't choose him for the core set as he works well for Tempo archetypes and also scales well into the late game by copying the opponent's big threats. I'd take Murozond as well as it is powerful but requires planning to be used well. Instead, we got the amazingly garbageNatalie Seline again, one of the most underwhelming and uninspired cards of all time. Priest got screwed over hard with that core set.
Honorable mention to Deathwing, Mad Aspect. Incredible animation and very useful for Control and Big Warrior.
Hoping to stick one minion to the board and endlessly buffing it is something that Tempo/Aggro Priest already tries to do and they fail hard at it. Lack of draw is another issue that hasn't been addressed. Card generation doesn't work well for fast decks unless they work under a very synergistic archetype (Underbelly Angler, Librams). Priest only generates random stuff with no way to predict or control what gets added to hand. It works in Control Priest because they have time to figure out what to do with whatever garbage gets added to hand. Tempo/Aggro Priest doesn't have such a luxury. It needs to get on the board immediately and stick to it in order to get the buffs going. It lacks ways to get back on the board (Rally is the only thing available), it lacks ways to close out games, it lacks reliable reloading, it just lacks everything.
The only thing that Priest has going for it in this set is some sort of Spell Control archetype. But it no longer has the infinite potential of Galakrond to last throughout the game and they didn't really give the class any win conditions. That shadow archetype tease felt like a slap in the face. They added one source of direct damage and it was the worst possible one with a pathetic minor buff. They kept a terrible legendary in the core set. They took away several important tools and added a bunch of useless stuff. I don't have any hope for anything other than Control Priest going forward and even that is going to be lacking. My opinion is extremely negative but they didn't really give me any reason to believe in any of the changes they made. The legendaries from the set are decent, at least.
One weird thing happened for me and this might be a bug but i got the achievements for 1000 Top 4 and 250 1st places in Battlegrounds. However, my stats still show way less than that. Every new patch strange things happen.
I have achieved my objective of hitting level 100 before the new set releases. I have around 6700 gold and i'm not really playing the game. I have fully neglected quests for several weeks and i haven't played constructed in two months. I was playing a lot of Battlegrounds but i got bored of that as well after Darkmoon Prizes were removed. I still play a little every few days but only enough to do a few quests and sometimes i don't even bother with that. So, the track is definitely fine as it is right now. They are doing some major changes though and i hope it will be for the better but i can't be sure until at least a month after the new track is out. I hope the rotation ignites my interest in the game again but i'm not that excited about the new cards or some of the changes to the core set of certain classes (I don't really like what they did to Priest).
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Catrina Muerte but the people that dislike the other two cards (Mass Resurrection and Convincing Infiltrator) are probably happy that she's gone. I certainly won't miss her. I agree with most cards here. I'm gonna miss some of them but we need a fresh start. There are a few other cards that i was expecting to see here like Heistbaron Togwaggle (or rather Wondrous Wand and its insane mana cheating) and Omega Devastator (disappeared completely after rotation just like Archivist Elysiana but it was despised before that).
This card is simply awesome. Potential triple draw + tutoring (it draws specific cards) + an upside that helps swing the board. Is this the next Lich King/Ragnaros?
Hey, a win condition! And it's insanely slow which means it will most likely only fit in Control Priest. I highly doubt this working in any non-defensive Tempo shell. Also, the questline provides an insta-win card that can't be stopped directly. The opponent needs some lucky disruption (like Mutanus) which insta-wins the game for them. Or they can just hit face and try to kill the Priest before he gathers all the necessary pieces to win the game. Just like Tickatus. There are some differences though. Priest doesn't have a Hero Power that slowly kills them and they have a lot more healing. Priest has a much easier time surviving than Warlock. This is very likely another reason why they targeted the healing with the nerfs. A big heal through Samuro + Apotheosis would become a massive asset for stalling the game and getting to this win condition. This tells me that they are being really careful to not allow this to become the main win condition of the class. This adds an end point to games but that doesn't mean the games won't still be insanely long. It's still a slow grind and people will not like losing to this.
I was expecting something different. Something related to the Shadow Priest theme or some form of direct damage. Not some instant "I win and you can't stop me" card. I am really looking for a reason to come back and play the game as i don't hate it. It just isn't fun right now. This doesn't help. All pressure now falls on top of the Shadow archetype. If it fails then Priest will continue to play super slow but now with an unavoidable insta-win card.
I already stopped playing months ago, i said that in my first comment. The only reason why i still pay attention to anything that's going on and regularly visit this site for information is because i spent too much time and money to completely let go of the game. It feels terrible and it's my own fault. It's a learning experience. Never gonna make the same mistake again.
I completely forgot what Dungar was. I had to look it up. It's the new legendary from the next expansion that was released early. Cool. Seems like a good tradition they will maintain. The card does a few neat things and one of them is 10 healing... after three turns of him sitting dead on the board doing nothing. Great. If you live long enough to see that healing then you probably don't need it by the time it activates. Three turns is an eternity against any sort of aggression and burst damage can finish you off in a single turn. Ooze (and the Viper thing) can prevent repeated damage but can't stop instant burst from Doomhammer.
Priest has too much generation, that is the absolute truth. But guess what? That's the only thing they have when it comes to obtaining resources. Priest has no card draw, only basic cycling. That is not enough for the insanely fast pace of the game. Shaman was saved recently because of a single decent card draw option from the mini-set. Until Priest gets some of that love, they will remain the class that has no choice but to rely on RNG clown fiesta generation to be able to compete. And no other archetype will flourish other than slow "kill the opponent out of boredom" Control until that happens. If they gut the resource generation too much without adding real card draw the class will become unplayable.
Control decks are supposed to control the board and avoid dying in order to achieve whatever late game win condition the deck was built-around. Control decks need something to beat other types of decks. Controlling the board and not dying is only viable as a win condition against aggro but there will always be other decks that you must take into account even during an aggro meta. N'Zoth can be considered a win condition since the deck is built to get the most value from its battlecry. I always hear people complaining that Priest has no win conditions other than stalling/card generation but this particular deck seemed different. Also, aggro can deal 20+ damage in only a few turns with good draw and some even have instant burst win conditions (Like Doomhammer) but a Control deck from a healing class isn't allowed to regenerate that amount despite the fact that Control should have an edge against aggro?
If a Control deck isn't allowed to be greedy then what is the point of playing them? I like (or rather, used to like as i already stopped playing months ago) playing with big cards that do flashy plays and N'Zoth is one of them. Why print big 10 mana cards if the game is always going to be skewed towards aggro and why whenever a Control deck starts to show signs of dominance it must be stopped at all costs? The nerfs to aggro are never meant to make them unplayable but to make them more fair against the other aggro decks. But nerfs to Control and Combo are pretty much always a killing blow.
The cards still have a cost associated to them when the effect of the card triggers. It's not free (not without immune). Warlock doesn't have access to armor gain and healing is also limited. The class is all about self-sacrifice so this mechanic works perfectly for the class. The card can't really break anything in Standard because immunity cards aren't available. It's pretty clear that the card wasn't designed with Wild in mind. They are probably not taking Wild in consideration for new cards anymore because, as i said in my other post, it's just not possible to balance a mode that expands so rapidly and infinitely. It requires too much time and manpower to evaluate all possible interactions and that slows down development progression for other modes. At this point, they just accepted that they have to get rid of problematic cards in Wild to keep things working without hurting deck building possibilities in Standard through nerfs.
Removing specific mechanics like mana discounts (or mana cheating as people now like to call it) will hurt deck building possibilities. Most combo decks relies on mana discounts to function and this type of deck has a dedicated playerbase. If they stop giving people the ability to make combos out of a big combination of cards, they will lose a lot of players and that's something they want to avoid at all costs. Combo decks must be allowed to exist.
This is something that was going to happen sooner or later. The card pool in Wild is expanding rapidly each year and new mechanics are added to keep the game fresh in Standard. Wild, however, just has too many cards and too many interactions. If they spend time researching every single possible interaction then they will waste a lot of time that could be used for designing new cards, rewards and balancing other modes.
People say that they don't care about Wild but i believe that they just don't have enough people to work on balancing and testing cards for a format that only expands infinitely. And they don't have the final word when it comes to recruiting more people to work on the game. It's something that's out of their control. So, they finally decided that enough is enough. They simply can't afford to spend dev time to test everything that could happen in Wild when a new card is released and they don't want to nuke cards out of existence as soon as they are released because it would be a lot of time and resources wasted. The card isn't seeing play in Standard right now but it still has a lot of time on the format so they don't want to nerf it and destroy any chances of it ever seeing play. Changing specific mechanics or cards just for Wild is also going to cause a lot of confusion for anyone that decides to try the format in the future so they opted to keep things as is for the sake of consistency. It's a very courageous step and i respect them for taking risks.
I'm still surprised how much people underestimate mana curve nerfs. The nerf to First Day of School is devastating to all tempo decks for Paladin. The main purpose of the card was to enable a turn 1 play when they don't find their main 1-drop. The most busted thing about it is that it simply didn't cost any card advantage whatsoever. They simply spent no mana to gain an extra card and played one of those cards while maintaining their starting hand size and enabling their early game curve. The fact that they can't play this on turn 1 and drop a minion on the board means that they will have a really hard time curving into some of their strongest early game plays (1-drop into Hand of A'dal). This will buy a lot of time for other decks to pressure them or find answers to their plays. I can't say much about the other changes as i'm no longer playing constructed and i haven't played against those cards. I'll still share my opinion on the buffs though.
The buffs won't help Shaman. If the class is struggling because of card draw, making those cards better Tempo plays means absolutely nothing when you can't draw consistently enough to have them available on curve every game.
Lowering the cost of N'Zoth is okay but what the card needs mostly is a better selection of cards to summon. That will come with later expansions but the buff will help a lot once the pool of minion is slightly better.
Xanesh could be interesting to experiment with but it probably won't be a big deal because Priest's own corrupt cards are completely whatever which makes Y'sharrj not very attractive as a win condition.
The change to Deck of Chaos could be scary if it wasn't a Warlock card. The card suffers from similar issues as Luna's Pocket Galaxy before its buff. Only when that card got buffed and broke the game that people realized that the pay off was worth the risk of skipping a turn to enable it. The main difference in this case is that Warlock just slowly kills itself with the Hero Power throughout the game which makes the class even more vulnerable to aggression than Mage. Greedy cards like this are more easily punishable in Warlock so lowering its cost probably won't do anything to improve its viability. Also, Fiendish Circle won't save Zoolock unless they plan on releasing some powerful token synergy cards with the mini-set.
Shieldmaiden is a lot better as a 5-drop. It's now a decent card to play on curve that also comes with a small health boost to mitigate damage from incoming attacks. Whirling Combatant was already a good card and now is a premium defensive 4-drop. Slower Warrior decks are going to benefit a lot from these buffs.
I have played with Al'ar a lot in my own meme Priest decks and it won me many games (mostly due to the opponent being dumb enough to ignore it). If people think this is a card for deathrattle decks then they are just wrong. This card is good for cloning decks. Cards that create extra copies of it directly on the board can force the opponent to sink too many resources into it. Ignoring it is bad because buffs can make it pretty scary. And it hits pretty hard. It works best in Priest because of the class' copying effects. The card is a fine meme. It doesn't need any help in that regard. I don't think it needs to become a competitive force either.
The nerfs weren't meant to kill Lunacy Mage or make any of its good matchups worse. It was meant to make sure that it has no chance against aggro. At 2 mana, they could highroll and snowball right from turn 2 (with coin). Now, they can only start their shenanigans on turn 4 (if they played Lunacy on 3 with coin) and only if they draw the nuts. This gives aggro decks plenty of time to bring their health down to a level where they can finish them off from hand. The nerfs to the Watch Posts should allow aggro decks to come back into the game. With this, Lunacy Mage will start running into more bad matchups and this should bring its win rate down to a reasonable level (not that good but not completely terrible either). The tryhards that think the deck is good for a fast and reliable climb to legend will start dropping the deck for something better and faster and the deck will be played mostly by the people that actually enjoy it. The total population of the deck should go down and it won't be a meta defining force anymore. This is my analysis of their intention with these changes. Only time will tell if they were successful or not but it is too early to say that the patch was a failure.
Well, it seems like i'm not missing anything from not playing in the last week. I only played day 1 and it was okay but i'm into other games right now and i decided to wait and see what was going to happen. If Lunacy Mage is on the top then i'm definitely not playing until it gets nerfed. I already disliked that load of bs but it only got better with the rotation, it seems. And Secret Paladin was going to become a problem anyway. That weapon is completely disgusting and the secrets aren't bad anymore. There's no downside to it.
I got 0 dust. After looking into my collection i confirmed that i wasn't half-asleep or anything like that while opening my classic packs. I didn't receive any of the Hall of Fame cards despite the fact that i never opened them before. I got copies of cards like Southsea Captain and Force of Nature (and a terrible golden Hogger) but no sign of the HoF cards. Are these supposed to be in the packs or not?
I got to level 17 on day 1. I completed the 5 wins weekly quest (i have been neglecting it for weeks) and the 2 daily ones i had. Progression felt good with a lot of early rewards but that also happened during the last track. It felt really good early on but slowed down to a crawl around level 30. Things are different this time as the level up requirements are much lower for the early levels. It should feel a lot smoother and i hope it will feel good even after we get to the higher levels.
I opened 70 packs with only gold. I got 3 legendaries: Mordresh Fire Eye (okay), Firemancer Flurgl (terrible for me, won't use at all) and Scabbs Cutterbutter (fine as well). I will probably craft Xyrella and Overlord Saurfang. I never count the amount of epics i get but it felt like a decent enough amount. It was fine, overall. Not great but not bad.
Removing the golden cards worked for me and i was able to get into enough games to get the 5 ranked wins. You need a lot of patience and this isn't really acceptable. Also, i opened my classic packs and didn't obtain any of the Hall of Fame cards. I even got a golden legendary from the golden pack but it turned out to be Hogger. I don't know if there was a possibility of Ragnaros or Sylvanas showing up but if that was the case then i can't do anything other than feel bad about it.
I'll miss Murozond the Infinite and Mindflayer Kaahrj a lot. These are probably the most fun minions that Priest had in a long time. Murozond was an incredible way of getting some good value while still generating a threat and it is my favorite card in the game. Kaahrj is the most flexible minion that Priest has and it baffles me that they didn't choose him for the core set as he works well for Tempo archetypes and also scales well into the late game by copying the opponent's big threats. I'd take Murozond as well as it is powerful but requires planning to be used well. Instead, we got the amazingly garbage Natalie Seline again, one of the most underwhelming and uninspired cards of all time. Priest got screwed over hard with that core set.
Honorable mention to Deathwing, Mad Aspect. Incredible animation and very useful for Control and Big Warrior.
Hoping to stick one minion to the board and endlessly buffing it is something that Tempo/Aggro Priest already tries to do and they fail hard at it. Lack of draw is another issue that hasn't been addressed. Card generation doesn't work well for fast decks unless they work under a very synergistic archetype (Underbelly Angler, Librams). Priest only generates random stuff with no way to predict or control what gets added to hand. It works in Control Priest because they have time to figure out what to do with whatever garbage gets added to hand. Tempo/Aggro Priest doesn't have such a luxury. It needs to get on the board immediately and stick to it in order to get the buffs going. It lacks ways to get back on the board (Rally is the only thing available), it lacks ways to close out games, it lacks reliable reloading, it just lacks everything.
The only thing that Priest has going for it in this set is some sort of Spell Control archetype. But it no longer has the infinite potential of Galakrond to last throughout the game and they didn't really give the class any win conditions. That shadow archetype tease felt like a slap in the face. They added one source of direct damage and it was the worst possible one with a pathetic minor buff. They kept a terrible legendary in the core set. They took away several important tools and added a bunch of useless stuff. I don't have any hope for anything other than Control Priest going forward and even that is going to be lacking. My opinion is extremely negative but they didn't really give me any reason to believe in any of the changes they made. The legendaries from the set are decent, at least.
One weird thing happened for me and this might be a bug but i got the achievements for 1000 Top 4 and 250 1st places in Battlegrounds. However, my stats still show way less than that. Every new patch strange things happen.
I have achieved my objective of hitting level 100 before the new set releases. I have around 6700 gold and i'm not really playing the game. I have fully neglected quests for several weeks and i haven't played constructed in two months. I was playing a lot of Battlegrounds but i got bored of that as well after Darkmoon Prizes were removed. I still play a little every few days but only enough to do a few quests and sometimes i don't even bother with that. So, the track is definitely fine as it is right now. They are doing some major changes though and i hope it will be for the better but i can't be sure until at least a month after the new track is out. I hope the rotation ignites my interest in the game again but i'm not that excited about the new cards or some of the changes to the core set of certain classes (I don't really like what they did to Priest).
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Catrina Muerte but the people that dislike the other two cards (Mass Resurrection and Convincing Infiltrator) are probably happy that she's gone. I certainly won't miss her. I agree with most cards here. I'm gonna miss some of them but we need a fresh start. There are a few other cards that i was expecting to see here like Heistbaron Togwaggle (or rather Wondrous Wand and its insane mana cheating) and Omega Devastator (disappeared completely after rotation just like Archivist Elysiana but it was despised before that).