The issue again is that whenever Priest gets on the Control side of things people just start throwing all sorts of complaints. Too slow, too boring to play against, too much random value and so on. The result is them constantly trying to force the Tempo archetype but failing every single time so far. That causes a lot of cards to become unusable within the class.
Look at High Abbess Alura. She is completely unplayable in the class because she forces you to abdicate of all your board control tools and run a completely buff centric deck around her. But the archetype lacks card draw so badly that you run into all sorts of issues. If you try to play conservatively, you fall behind. If you go all in, you run out of cards really fast. If you lose your board, it's pretty much impossible to recover due to a lack of resources. Your hand becomes stuck with buff spells that you can't do anything with because Priest can't dump those cards without any minions to buff while Paladin does that very easily with their Hero Power. The Priest Hero Power itself is useless most of the time because you have to keep healing your face and you don't want to be trading a lot. You pretty much have to build an early snowball in order to have any chance of winning. I have played Tempo Priest a lot and these issues have consistently plagued the archetype. It needs card draw in order to fix those issues. However, i fear that the archetype will become completely broken when that happens because they have printed too many high quality Tempo cards. I feel like the only thing that holds it back from becoming an oppressive force is its lack of card draw.
This card remains too slow. The one mana discount barely matters when the issue with the card is drawing it early enough. You are pretty much forced to run two copies of this if you want to draw it with any consistency. There was a point in doing it before because you could upgrade the Hero Power a second time to 3 damage. They removed that though. This means that the second copy is a dead card in your deck and a terrible draw after changing the Hero Power. Now you have to choose between a better chance of drawing it time to deal direct damage to your opponent and hopefully win before they kill you or ignore the second copy and run the risk of drawing it too late or not at all. Out of all direct damage options they had to bring back the absolute worst possible option. Total garbage.
A slightly sturdier Lightwarden with less snowballing capabilities won't change Tempo Priest's fortunes. The issue with that archetype is not card quality but lack of card draw. Without that, they can print all the best possible Tempo minions in the world and the deck will still suck because it runs out of gas too easily and has a really hard time recovering from a board wipe.
It could be good if it wasn't for the rotation. Some of its most synergistic cards are leaving as it arrives in standard. Shadowy Figure and Wretched Reclaimer would be good with this. Without them, this card seems to have no place in the class. As always, all attempts at Tempo Priest will fail miserably until the archetype gets some actually usable card draw.
Good on paper but completely irrelevant as Tempo/Silence Priest are dead on arrival without proper card draw. Also, Inner Fire is gone which makes all health buffs a lot weaker. And targeting an enemy minion with this is always going to feel bad. Terrible.
A 7 mana 8/8 >> 9 mana 8/8 with an effect that is irrelevant 90% of the time. Even if a 7 mana 8/8 is still not enough to make it into any competitive decks, it at least feels OK to play now.
On the meme side, he's now an absolute monster that creates a whole new game mode, especially for friendly games where you can both agree to put him into your decks. That alone makes him more worthwhile than most cards can ever hope for. Yes, he could be turned into something functional, but would we really be better off because of it?
Quote From meisterz39
I think AngryShuckie got it right - he's not a spectacularly powerful card, but he creates the ability to play "Speed Hearthstone," which seems like a fun option to have for friendly games.
If you assume for a minute that people like the original effect of Nozdormu in principle, I think there are two questions the design team has to resolve: "is this an effect that is healthy for the game when your opponent drops it on you?" and "how can we make that effect consistent when you want it, but not the kind of thing that punishes a player arbitrarily?"
For the first question, I think it's pretty clear that his effect is very bad for the game if one player is able to take advantage of it and harm the other player's ability to interact with the game (e.g. a 15 second turn on mobile is pretty rough, and if you happened to be AFK during your opponent's turn, they might have just stolen a turn from you with that play, which feels bad). On the second question, Nozdormu today typically shows up when he's randomly generated, and it's usually a surprise/punishment that screws over the active player because you weren't expecting to suddenly lose the rest of your turn. If he's generated during some long animation, that loss of time is all the more frustrating.
So by making this something each player gets to opt into, you set the effect up to create much more positive experiences when it's active. Honestly, I think it's great. The only way to make a truly "playable" Nozdormu would have been to change the effect entirely, which I think would have been less fun/unique.
It's fine if you think this can be fun but i'm not into that. Incredibly short turns aren't fun so i'm certainly not playing with this. The thing that annoys me is that i got the impression that Nozdormu was this really important character in the lore of WoW. The other dragon aspects got really good cards that make them relevant choices when building a deck. They can have an impact in the game but Nozdormu doesn't get the same treatment. It feels like some kind of injustice. It doesn't matter. I was expecting the core set to raise my interest in constructed again but i have seen nothing interesting besides the changes to a few cards (like Tracking).
Priest got kicked in the balls really hard, btw. The class got only two cards that are worth anything: Flash Heal (at least they got rid of Radiance) and the card that discovers a spell in the deck (cycle option). Everything else is incredibly bad. Silence Priest? A complete joke without Divine Spirit. Tempo Priest? Completely unviable without card draw. Shadow Form? Terrible regardless of its cost. The legendary card? An absolute unplayable piece of garbage. Priest got treated like s*** and is going back to its state of being 100% dependant on expansion cards to be relevant. I'm just done with this.
Edit: I just realized they got rid of Inner Fire and Shadow Word: Pain. The main finisher for any sort of buff based Aggro/Tempo/Silence Priest deck is gone. One of the best early game removal tools is gone as well. Instead they gave us a bunch of Tempo cards that are completely irrelevant without proper card draw. Without Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain that archetype will never get anywhere. Basic cycle options aren't good enough when every other Aggro/Tempo class can draw through their entire deck in a few turns or have much higher quality cards and methods of dealing direct damage. Priest's core set is absolutely atrocious. A complete joke.
My only reaction to this is feeling unnecessarily outraged by their decision to make Nozdormu even worse than he already is for the sake of a joke/meme. Every other Dragon Aspect got better but he got the Boulderfist Ogre treatment: a pile of stats that does absolutely nothing. I'm just going to forget this whole thing and move on.
Is that the new Nozdormu? Really? What?! Why?! Why they treat Nozdormu like this? That card is horrendous! It does literally nothing! And when it does something, it just makes things worse for both players! It simply doesn't matter that he got a 2 mana cost decrease while keeping the 8/8 stats. It's just stats. High cost cards need to do something to be playable. He is just a slightly better War Golem. And that is pretty pathetic especially for a character who is supposed to be one of the dragon aspects. I thought that actually meant something in terms of importance but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Meanwhile, Alex became better than she already is. Malygos can easily find a niche for himself because card draw is always important. Ysera will do fine in slow value decks. Deathwing doesn't discard your entire hand anymore. And even Onyxia became better! Onyxia! She is now a better Shu'ma with a higher cost! Nozdormu was the only one who became worse than he already is! I'm completely astonished! I can't even say anything about the other changes because this is sticking out too hard for me. People might not consider it a big deal but after so many years of his original card only causing problems i thought it was about time that he got a card that actually made him relevant in the game. Nozdormu the Timeless barely saw play. He only became meta now at the very end with an extremely unhealthy deck that caused another card to get nerfed.
I wasn't hoping for anything highly competitive, meta breaking or anything of the sort. I just wanted to see a card that actually would be worth considering when building a deck. Some people might take this one in consideration for their own meme decks but i like when the cards i play do something interesting. This card does absolutely nothing. It's just a pile of stats that costs almost your whole turn to play and that the other player can easily ignore/remove. It's a complete joke. That's the whole point, i suppose. It's just one big joke to maintain Nozdormu's status as the game's biggest (not playable) meme. Good for those that got a laugh out of it. But i don't find it funny in the slightest. Whatever. What's done is done and can't be reverted.
Even if they remove the health cap or just make him a regular +5 armor hero card, this won't be enough to make him competitive imo. He will become playable which is a very good thing but competing is a completely different story. Late game Warlock strategies are suffering a lot nowadays because of the constant self-damage from the hero power and all the burn and aggro power creep. It's really hard to survive to play such late game cards. Simply getting a weapon and a new hero power isn't enough to help you stabilize against all the burn being thrown at your face constantly. They need to re-evaluate the state of the class as a whole imo. A change to the base hero power, better healing cards or something else. But something needs to be done in order to help Warlock actually live long enough to play Lord J.
It's okay if they believe replacing the Spell Damage Totem will be better for the future. But they could have buffed or reworked Searing Totem into something less awful. Paying two mana for a 1/1 that does nothing is terrible. It works for Paladin because they are inherently a buff based class and they summon 1/1s consistently. Shaman gets a 1/1 only 25% of the time, the class isn't good at buffing minions and most of the time you need something else. The only time the 1/1 isn't a total liability is when the board is completely empty. In every other scenario it is simply a waste of two mana. This won't alleviate the consistency issues of the Shaman Hero Power. If every totem could do something different but all were useful in some way then it would be up to the player to discover the best way to utilize RNG to their favor. But the 1/1 will keep getting in the way of that. The Shaman Hero Power will remain inconsistent. They really missed the opportunity to actually make the class better imo.
I never said Rogue can't function without Edwin. I just think this new card doesn't look interesting or exciting to play with. It doesn't look very fun or rewarding. If you like the whole burgle thing then it's fine. But i'm not really into it. Making a big play with Edwin always felt good even if he got removed afterward. This new card is just a body that gives you one card. It simply looks boring to me. But Natalie Seline is way worse. She is boring, slow, weak, inefficient (due to high cost) and has no purpose for existing other than Zephrys. I hope she gets axed and another legendary takes her place in the core set. She is just not playable.
That is definitely a possibility. But some other adjustments could help offset that. I just don't like the idea of having a legendary card that's simply not playable in the class it supposedly belongs to. Their whole idea of forcing any sort of Tempo/Aggro/Buff Priest simply has not paid off so far. All the cards that were released for these archetypes simply see no play and that even includes the cards that replaced the Hall of Fame ones in the classic set. The Tempo cards were buffed but that didn't do anything to improve their viability. Temple Enforcer is good on paper but it requires a target for its buff and Priest just struggles to maintain their board against any of the other Tempo/Aggro classes.
The rotation of two of the class' main draw engines (Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain) also causes serious issues when it comes to maintaining a steady flow of resources. Card generation doesn't help because it's simply too unreliable and Tempo Priest decks require their cards to synergize well with each other. Control Priest can get away with card generation because they have better sustainability and can live long enough to make use of any random resources they generate. But Tempo Priest doesn't have that luxury. They need to win fast against slow decks and they can't afford to lose the board once against any other Aggro/Tempo class. The hand gets clogged too easily with buff spells which are completely useless without anything to buff. Paladins have their 1/1 dudes to buff in case they don't have any other minions. Priest only has a heal that does nothing when you don't need healing and it is too weak for the current level of Aggro power creep in the game.
TL, DR: Tempo Priest is hopeless. Most of its cards are simply not playable and the class can't compete against the other classes in terms of draw consistency.
What are you talking about? How is she not detrimental to Priest in her current state? You can't play her if you generate her from Galakrond. She is just going to waste one of your key removals in an extremely inefficient manner and could even wipe your whole board with a Plague of Death. If she could only cast targeted spells this would never happen as Plague of Death isn't a targeted spell. You could still run Shadow Word: Death as she isn't eligible as a target for the card. This would open her up as an option for filtering. You could use her to cast some specific targeted spells (thus removing that card from deck) while conserving your ability to run all sorts of non-targeted removal and AoE without any risk of her wasting those resources inefficiently.
Is Vanessa VanCleef the replacement for Edwin as the class legendary for Rogue in the core set? Copy a card my opponent played on a combo trigger... Really? Edwin was way too strong, i get it. But why these replacements to classic legendary cards need to be so meh? It was the same thing with Natalie Seline. That card's only reason for existing is as an option for Zephrys. Priest has way too many efficient targeted removal spells and they are all cheap. The class doesn't need an extremely slow and expensive removal on a stick. Also, i really dislike how this card lacks any other utility or synergy. It's a card that does only one thing. It has zero flexibility. Velen could at least be used to improve your healing. It was mostly used for broken combos but it could do something else. Natalie can't do anything other than kill one thing (eating up your whole turn in the process) and die immediately after. The class is lacking a classic legendary ever since Prophet Velen was moved to the Hall of Fame. And Rogue seems to be heading in the same direction as the design of this new card doesn't inspire any confidence. That's how i feel about it.
Control Priest is going to appreciate the new Malygos a lot. Instead of relying too much on spell generation, the class now will have access to a really good and reliable hand refill. The new Ysera is good but the dragon and Laughing Sister she generates are incredibly slow cards and undesirable in most situations. And the new Deathwing is definitely a much less punishing card. You can't choose what is being discarded but it's still better than losing your entire hand.
Changing her to only cast targeted spells would be better imo. This would stop her from casting Tip the Scales and would also make her a viable card for Priest. Nobody even gave a thought if this would have any significance for Priest. That's because she is completely unviable for the class in this state. She can only be used in decks that abandon most forms of targeted removal and AoE and Priest simply can't afford to do that. Tempo Priest simply doesn't work. It just runs out of resources way too easily and is too dependent on creating an early game snowball to win games. It's just way too unreliable.
I was expecting them to change High Abbess Alura to only cast targeted spells. It would stop the whole Tip the Scales nonsense and make her a lot more viable for Priest. There is no way to use her in any Priest deck because Priests really need their removal cards. Building a buff deck around her is simply not viable due to a lack of better card draw options. She is pretty much a Paladin exclusive legendary instead of a dual class card.
Junkbot should be fine in Tier 4. It isn't going to be a carry as it was in the past because token builds are pretty bad nowadays. He will work fine as a transition and stabilization unit. And fixing Brann + Khadgar is highly appreciated.
Yep. As i imagined, they are rotating the entirety of the Classic and Basic set. The rotating core set is a good thing but i'll wait and see what cards are going to be added to it before developing any interest of playing constructed again. The new Classic Mode is interesting but i'm not very excited about it. I have to admit one thing though. Reading that Demon Hunter isn't going to be playable in that mode instantly brought a big smile to my face.
I hit level 67 today. Despite the initial hype, i didn't feel inclined to play ranked more than a few times after the launch of the mini-set. As such, i ended up only in Silver at the end of the last season. I'm completely burnt out of playing constructed, it seems. I returned to my suboptimal ways of playing and i'm only playing BGs while re-rolling any quest that can't be completed there. Less exp means less progress. Also, i'm not really bothering with the 2500 exp weekly one or any achievements. I hit level 50 around 10 days ago so i got 17 levels in this period. If i keep this pace then i might be able to hit around level 100 or so in less than a month. My gold is currently sitting at 5050. That is a fine value but i should be able to get way more. The track seems to be in a good state now.
The issue again is that whenever Priest gets on the Control side of things people just start throwing all sorts of complaints. Too slow, too boring to play against, too much random value and so on. The result is them constantly trying to force the Tempo archetype but failing every single time so far. That causes a lot of cards to become unusable within the class.
Look at High Abbess Alura. She is completely unplayable in the class because she forces you to abdicate of all your board control tools and run a completely buff centric deck around her. But the archetype lacks card draw so badly that you run into all sorts of issues. If you try to play conservatively, you fall behind. If you go all in, you run out of cards really fast. If you lose your board, it's pretty much impossible to recover due to a lack of resources. Your hand becomes stuck with buff spells that you can't do anything with because Priest can't dump those cards without any minions to buff while Paladin does that very easily with their Hero Power. The Priest Hero Power itself is useless most of the time because you have to keep healing your face and you don't want to be trading a lot. You pretty much have to build an early snowball in order to have any chance of winning. I have played Tempo Priest a lot and these issues have consistently plagued the archetype. It needs card draw in order to fix those issues. However, i fear that the archetype will become completely broken when that happens because they have printed too many high quality Tempo cards. I feel like the only thing that holds it back from becoming an oppressive force is its lack of card draw.
This card remains too slow. The one mana discount barely matters when the issue with the card is drawing it early enough. You are pretty much forced to run two copies of this if you want to draw it with any consistency. There was a point in doing it before because you could upgrade the Hero Power a second time to 3 damage. They removed that though. This means that the second copy is a dead card in your deck and a terrible draw after changing the Hero Power. Now you have to choose between a better chance of drawing it time to deal direct damage to your opponent and hopefully win before they kill you or ignore the second copy and run the risk of drawing it too late or not at all. Out of all direct damage options they had to bring back the absolute worst possible option. Total garbage.
A slightly sturdier Lightwarden with less snowballing capabilities won't change Tempo Priest's fortunes. The issue with that archetype is not card quality but lack of card draw. Without that, they can print all the best possible Tempo minions in the world and the deck will still suck because it runs out of gas too easily and has a really hard time recovering from a board wipe.
It could be good if it wasn't for the rotation. Some of its most synergistic cards are leaving as it arrives in standard. Shadowy Figure and Wretched Reclaimer would be good with this. Without them, this card seems to have no place in the class. As always, all attempts at Tempo Priest will fail miserably until the archetype gets some actually usable card draw.
Good on paper but completely irrelevant as Tempo/Silence Priest are dead on arrival without proper card draw. Also, Inner Fire is gone which makes all health buffs a lot weaker. And targeting an enemy minion with this is always going to feel bad. Terrible.
It's fine if you think this can be fun but i'm not into that. Incredibly short turns aren't fun so i'm certainly not playing with this. The thing that annoys me is that i got the impression that Nozdormu was this really important character in the lore of WoW. The other dragon aspects got really good cards that make them relevant choices when building a deck. They can have an impact in the game but Nozdormu doesn't get the same treatment. It feels like some kind of injustice. It doesn't matter. I was expecting the core set to raise my interest in constructed again but i have seen nothing interesting besides the changes to a few cards (like Tracking).
Priest got kicked in the balls really hard, btw. The class got only two cards that are worth anything: Flash Heal (at least they got rid of Radiance) and the card that discovers a spell in the deck (cycle option). Everything else is incredibly bad. Silence Priest? A complete joke without Divine Spirit. Tempo Priest? Completely unviable without card draw. Shadow Form? Terrible regardless of its cost. The legendary card? An absolute unplayable piece of garbage. Priest got treated like s*** and is going back to its state of being 100% dependant on expansion cards to be relevant. I'm just done with this.
Edit: I just realized they got rid of Inner Fire and Shadow Word: Pain. The main finisher for any sort of buff based Aggro/Tempo/Silence Priest deck is gone. One of the best early game removal tools is gone as well. Instead they gave us a bunch of Tempo cards that are completely irrelevant without proper card draw. Without Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain that archetype will never get anywhere. Basic cycle options aren't good enough when every other Aggro/Tempo class can draw through their entire deck in a few turns or have much higher quality cards and methods of dealing direct damage. Priest's core set is absolutely atrocious. A complete joke.
My only reaction to this is feeling unnecessarily outraged by their decision to make Nozdormu even worse than he already is for the sake of a joke/meme. Every other Dragon Aspect got better but he got the Boulderfist Ogre treatment: a pile of stats that does absolutely nothing. I'm just going to forget this whole thing and move on.
Is that the new Nozdormu? Really? What?! Why?! Why they treat Nozdormu like this? That card is horrendous! It does literally nothing! And when it does something, it just makes things worse for both players! It simply doesn't matter that he got a 2 mana cost decrease while keeping the 8/8 stats. It's just stats. High cost cards need to do something to be playable. He is just a slightly better War Golem. And that is pretty pathetic especially for a character who is supposed to be one of the dragon aspects. I thought that actually meant something in terms of importance but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Meanwhile, Alex became better than she already is. Malygos can easily find a niche for himself because card draw is always important. Ysera will do fine in slow value decks. Deathwing doesn't discard your entire hand anymore. And even Onyxia became better! Onyxia! She is now a better Shu'ma with a higher cost! Nozdormu was the only one who became worse than he already is! I'm completely astonished! I can't even say anything about the other changes because this is sticking out too hard for me. People might not consider it a big deal but after so many years of his original card only causing problems i thought it was about time that he got a card that actually made him relevant in the game. Nozdormu the Timeless barely saw play. He only became meta now at the very end with an extremely unhealthy deck that caused another card to get nerfed.
I wasn't hoping for anything highly competitive, meta breaking or anything of the sort. I just wanted to see a card that actually would be worth considering when building a deck. Some people might take this one in consideration for their own meme decks but i like when the cards i play do something interesting. This card does absolutely nothing. It's just a pile of stats that costs almost your whole turn to play and that the other player can easily ignore/remove. It's a complete joke. That's the whole point, i suppose. It's just one big joke to maintain Nozdormu's status as the game's biggest (not playable) meme. Good for those that got a laugh out of it. But i don't find it funny in the slightest. Whatever. What's done is done and can't be reverted.
Even if they remove the health cap or just make him a regular +5 armor hero card, this won't be enough to make him competitive imo. He will become playable which is a very good thing but competing is a completely different story. Late game Warlock strategies are suffering a lot nowadays because of the constant self-damage from the hero power and all the burn and aggro power creep. It's really hard to survive to play such late game cards. Simply getting a weapon and a new hero power isn't enough to help you stabilize against all the burn being thrown at your face constantly. They need to re-evaluate the state of the class as a whole imo. A change to the base hero power, better healing cards or something else. But something needs to be done in order to help Warlock actually live long enough to play Lord J.
It's okay if they believe replacing the Spell Damage Totem will be better for the future. But they could have buffed or reworked Searing Totem into something less awful. Paying two mana for a 1/1 that does nothing is terrible. It works for Paladin because they are inherently a buff based class and they summon 1/1s consistently. Shaman gets a 1/1 only 25% of the time, the class isn't good at buffing minions and most of the time you need something else. The only time the 1/1 isn't a total liability is when the board is completely empty. In every other scenario it is simply a waste of two mana. This won't alleviate the consistency issues of the Shaman Hero Power. If every totem could do something different but all were useful in some way then it would be up to the player to discover the best way to utilize RNG to their favor. But the 1/1 will keep getting in the way of that. The Shaman Hero Power will remain inconsistent. They really missed the opportunity to actually make the class better imo.
I never said Rogue can't function without Edwin. I just think this new card doesn't look interesting or exciting to play with. It doesn't look very fun or rewarding. If you like the whole burgle thing then it's fine. But i'm not really into it. Making a big play with Edwin always felt good even if he got removed afterward. This new card is just a body that gives you one card. It simply looks boring to me. But Natalie Seline is way worse. She is boring, slow, weak, inefficient (due to high cost) and has no purpose for existing other than Zephrys. I hope she gets axed and another legendary takes her place in the core set. She is just not playable.
That is definitely a possibility. But some other adjustments could help offset that. I just don't like the idea of having a legendary card that's simply not playable in the class it supposedly belongs to. Their whole idea of forcing any sort of Tempo/Aggro/Buff Priest simply has not paid off so far. All the cards that were released for these archetypes simply see no play and that even includes the cards that replaced the Hall of Fame ones in the classic set. The Tempo cards were buffed but that didn't do anything to improve their viability. Temple Enforcer is good on paper but it requires a target for its buff and Priest just struggles to maintain their board against any of the other Tempo/Aggro classes.
The rotation of two of the class' main draw engines (Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain) also causes serious issues when it comes to maintaining a steady flow of resources. Card generation doesn't help because it's simply too unreliable and Tempo Priest decks require their cards to synergize well with each other. Control Priest can get away with card generation because they have better sustainability and can live long enough to make use of any random resources they generate. But Tempo Priest doesn't have that luxury. They need to win fast against slow decks and they can't afford to lose the board once against any other Aggro/Tempo class. The hand gets clogged too easily with buff spells which are completely useless without anything to buff. Paladins have their 1/1 dudes to buff in case they don't have any other minions. Priest only has a heal that does nothing when you don't need healing and it is too weak for the current level of Aggro power creep in the game.
TL, DR: Tempo Priest is hopeless. Most of its cards are simply not playable and the class can't compete against the other classes in terms of draw consistency.
What are you talking about? How is she not detrimental to Priest in her current state? You can't play her if you generate her from Galakrond. She is just going to waste one of your key removals in an extremely inefficient manner and could even wipe your whole board with a Plague of Death. If she could only cast targeted spells this would never happen as Plague of Death isn't a targeted spell. You could still run Shadow Word: Death as she isn't eligible as a target for the card. This would open her up as an option for filtering. You could use her to cast some specific targeted spells (thus removing that card from deck) while conserving your ability to run all sorts of non-targeted removal and AoE without any risk of her wasting those resources inefficiently.
Is Vanessa VanCleef the replacement for Edwin as the class legendary for Rogue in the core set? Copy a card my opponent played on a combo trigger... Really? Edwin was way too strong, i get it. But why these replacements to classic legendary cards need to be so meh? It was the same thing with Natalie Seline. That card's only reason for existing is as an option for Zephrys. Priest has way too many efficient targeted removal spells and they are all cheap. The class doesn't need an extremely slow and expensive removal on a stick. Also, i really dislike how this card lacks any other utility or synergy. It's a card that does only one thing. It has zero flexibility. Velen could at least be used to improve your healing. It was mostly used for broken combos but it could do something else. Natalie can't do anything other than kill one thing (eating up your whole turn in the process) and die immediately after. The class is lacking a classic legendary ever since Prophet Velen was moved to the Hall of Fame. And Rogue seems to be heading in the same direction as the design of this new card doesn't inspire any confidence. That's how i feel about it.
Control Priest is going to appreciate the new Malygos a lot. Instead of relying too much on spell generation, the class now will have access to a really good and reliable hand refill. The new Ysera is good but the dragon and Laughing Sister she generates are incredibly slow cards and undesirable in most situations. And the new Deathwing is definitely a much less punishing card. You can't choose what is being discarded but it's still better than losing your entire hand.
Changing her to only cast targeted spells would be better imo. This would stop her from casting Tip the Scales and would also make her a viable card for Priest. Nobody even gave a thought if this would have any significance for Priest. That's because she is completely unviable for the class in this state. She can only be used in decks that abandon most forms of targeted removal and AoE and Priest simply can't afford to do that. Tempo Priest simply doesn't work. It just runs out of resources way too easily and is too dependent on creating an early game snowball to win games. It's just way too unreliable.
I was expecting them to change High Abbess Alura to only cast targeted spells. It would stop the whole Tip the Scales nonsense and make her a lot more viable for Priest. There is no way to use her in any Priest deck because Priests really need their removal cards. Building a buff deck around her is simply not viable due to a lack of better card draw options. She is pretty much a Paladin exclusive legendary instead of a dual class card.
Junkbot should be fine in Tier 4. It isn't going to be a carry as it was in the past because token builds are pretty bad nowadays. He will work fine as a transition and stabilization unit. And fixing Brann + Khadgar is highly appreciated.
Yep. As i imagined, they are rotating the entirety of the Classic and Basic set. The rotating core set is a good thing but i'll wait and see what cards are going to be added to it before developing any interest of playing constructed again. The new Classic Mode is interesting but i'm not very excited about it. I have to admit one thing though. Reading that Demon Hunter isn't going to be playable in that mode instantly brought a big smile to my face.
I hit level 67 today. Despite the initial hype, i didn't feel inclined to play ranked more than a few times after the launch of the mini-set. As such, i ended up only in Silver at the end of the last season. I'm completely burnt out of playing constructed, it seems. I returned to my suboptimal ways of playing and i'm only playing BGs while re-rolling any quest that can't be completed there. Less exp means less progress. Also, i'm not really bothering with the 2500 exp weekly one or any achievements. I hit level 50 around 10 days ago so i got 17 levels in this period. If i keep this pace then i might be able to hit around level 100 or so in less than a month. My gold is currently sitting at 5050. That is a fine value but i should be able to get way more. The track seems to be in a good state now.