I'm shocked to see no one discussing exactly how many cards we are losing. Basic, with the 10 Demon Hunter cards was 143 total cards, Classic without any Demon Hunter cards was 240, so it could have had 255 if they had truly made a Classic Demon Hunter set like they said they planned to before making this announcement. The new Core Set will only have 235 cards, that means the grand total of possible options is being cut from 398 down to 235. That's a loss of 163 cards. Now don't get me wrong, many many cards in Basic and Classic aren't viable constructed options, but let's be real, many cards from every set aren't really viable constructed options either, so even if they greatly increase the number of viable options overall will it outweigh those missing cards? That's more cards than a standard expansion just gone.
That also means that cards that generate cards, at least in Standard are going to have a much much smaller variance of power, if the base strength is naturally higher and all the terrible cards from Basic and Classic are purged it could create even more issues than ever before with randomly generated effects taking precedence. We already see things like Mana Cyclone in Mage and Sethekk Veilweaver in Priest almost making high cost high value cards unnecessary as generating large amounts of random cards is better. When you narrow that pool of options and make it more powerful it makes cards like those better while making the cards they actually generate less likely to be included in decks directly.
I do think the changes overall are great. I think returning cards is great. I think a few Core set is great. I think there might be negatives to a smaller, more powerful pool of cards moving forward considering Blizzards general approach to making Hearthstone about moments and randomness and excitement, instead of truly balanced gameplay.
Art changes weren't nerfs or buffs to cards, they were changes made based on art direction and dealing with potential outrage for a game they are marketing towards children and other cultures with different standards of censorship. If you somehow mistakenly believe that cards that were changed statistically but also got art changes won't be reverted to their vanilla functionality that isn't true. All non-art modification, be they nerfs or buffs, though basically nothing was every buffed, will be reverted for Classic mode, they just aren't going to go back to supporting the original art elements.
Man oh man was this tough. My first three games all ended with my opponent actually killing me by attacking me directly.... I just don't understand what makes people just jump into a brawl totally blind and not understand their deck isn't just random cards.
IDK what was going on that last time this brawl happened, I barely remember it to be honest, but Evolve Shaman makes this about as unfun for your opponent as possible. Don't get me wrong, Druid, Priest and Warlock have some interesting options as well, but shaman legitimately is the king of this Brawl.
I mean his "hand" was a weapon that dropped when he died. Interestingly as well Bladed Gauntlet is very similar in appearance and could have been an interesting part of the deathrattle to get a weapon that functioned off of armor like that, considering the Primes ability. However I also believe that its not really a character you're becoming, like Galakrond. I think if they wanted to increase flavor it would have been interesting to see the armor proc decreased, but give him some sort of multi-attack feature.
As someone that played WoW heavily until MoP, with BC being my favorite expansion, I can tell you that the base Kargath Bladefist is much more appropriate than you know. One of the major mechanics of the fight with him in the Shattered Halls instance was he would Charge (an iconic Warrior ability) players in the group. This occurred roughly every 30 seconds and each usage of the ability would increase the number of uses. So the first time he would just Charge once, then twice and so on. So the Rush mechanic fits that very well, as he was a very specific representation of the Warrior class in the game.
This is a pretty cool idea, though its definitely harder when you consider the other games you may know nothing about. There are some hints, but not the best ones.
Favorite thing in 2019 had to be the Wild event announcement, even if I found the results to be less than enjoyable hahahahaha, I was super hype when I saw the announcement and was excited to brew for that first week.
I'm looking forward to the seeing the new card change philosophy in effect for a year. ATM these rapid changes have done great work and made me come back to the game again and again after losing interested from deck fatigue. Having a drive to play HS because its balanced is hugely important to me.
I'm not saying Rummaging Kobold doesn't have a purpose, but its so much worse in terms of stats and efficiency overall that even in the narrow cases you might play Kobold you wouldn't, where even if its not getting the full value (ie battlecry) of a weapon you might still play Hoard Pillager, and in a bunch of other different cases Hoard Pillager is soooooo much better its sad.
It only takes 1 Dragon to make this passable, and 2 makes it pretty scary. More than that and its a huge beatdown. That said, its not a Dragon itself and the number of non-Dragons you can run in any dragon deck is limited. So this will battle many other cards and may not find a home.
This isn't a great 1 drop for most classes, but most classes aren't Rogue. This offers a lot of great options for combo and so its likely to see some level of play. The pirate tag doesn't mean a ton, but its not awful.
This card is interesting. Its almost always better than Competitive Spirit, but it doesn't compare all that favorably to Mark of the Lotus or Storm's Wrath which you have much more control over. That said, Paladin is and has always been one of the best token classes, and in wild in particular. IDK if this will end up seeing much play in standard or Arena.
This card is certainly good, but the base body is a bit sad, and so the Aura effect is not that hard to remove at basically no cost. Mechs are currently good, so this should have a chance to shine for at least a few months, but once Boomsday rotates I think this loses a lot of its playability unless the sidequest really takes off.
This doesn't interact well with Thunderhead, but it does interact well with Vessina. Either way this sort of effect is always good in classes that like to go wide, like Shaman and Druid. This has some additional Overload upside and so it should see some play.
We all know how this compares to that other gamebreaking shaman 1 drop. That said, this is still good. Its got a fine ability, its got a helpful elemental tribe tag, its not a bad card at all. It won't warp the game in any bad way, but it will likely see play. All good things.
Its nice that this invokes twice, but that also seems unnecessary, besides generating the bodies. I mean I guess it would potentially allow you to run less really bad invoke cards, but you'd still be dependent on drawing this one. Its a fine card, it will see play in any successful Galakrond Shaman decks.
I'm shocked to see no one discussing exactly how many cards we are losing. Basic, with the 10 Demon Hunter cards was 143 total cards, Classic without any Demon Hunter cards was 240, so it could have had 255 if they had truly made a Classic Demon Hunter set like they said they planned to before making this announcement. The new Core Set will only have 235 cards, that means the grand total of possible options is being cut from 398 down to 235. That's a loss of 163 cards. Now don't get me wrong, many many cards in Basic and Classic aren't viable constructed options, but let's be real, many cards from every set aren't really viable constructed options either, so even if they greatly increase the number of viable options overall will it outweigh those missing cards? That's more cards than a standard expansion just gone.
That also means that cards that generate cards, at least in Standard are going to have a much much smaller variance of power, if the base strength is naturally higher and all the terrible cards from Basic and Classic are purged it could create even more issues than ever before with randomly generated effects taking precedence. We already see things like Mana Cyclone in Mage and Sethekk Veilweaver in Priest almost making high cost high value cards unnecessary as generating large amounts of random cards is better. When you narrow that pool of options and make it more powerful it makes cards like those better while making the cards they actually generate less likely to be included in decks directly.
I do think the changes overall are great. I think returning cards is great. I think a few Core set is great. I think there might be negatives to a smaller, more powerful pool of cards moving forward considering Blizzards general approach to making Hearthstone about moments and randomness and excitement, instead of truly balanced gameplay.
Art changes weren't nerfs or buffs to cards, they were changes made based on art direction and dealing with potential outrage for a game they are marketing towards children and other cultures with different standards of censorship. If you somehow mistakenly believe that cards that were changed statistically but also got art changes won't be reverted to their vanilla functionality that isn't true. All non-art modification, be they nerfs or buffs, though basically nothing was every buffed, will be reverted for Classic mode, they just aren't going to go back to supporting the original art elements.
Man oh man was this tough. My first three games all ended with my opponent actually killing me by attacking me directly.... I just don't understand what makes people just jump into a brawl totally blind and not understand their deck isn't just random cards.
IDK what was going on that last time this brawl happened, I barely remember it to be honest, but Evolve Shaman makes this about as unfun for your opponent as possible. Don't get me wrong, Druid, Priest and Warlock have some interesting options as well, but shaman legitimately is the king of this Brawl.
I mean his "hand" was a weapon that dropped when he died. Interestingly as well Bladed Gauntlet is very similar in appearance and could have been an interesting part of the deathrattle to get a weapon that functioned off of armor like that, considering the Primes ability. However I also believe that its not really a character you're becoming, like Galakrond. I think if they wanted to increase flavor it would have been interesting to see the armor proc decreased, but give him some sort of multi-attack feature.
As someone that played WoW heavily until MoP, with BC being my favorite expansion, I can tell you that the base Kargath Bladefist is much more appropriate than you know. One of the major mechanics of the fight with him in the Shattered Halls instance was he would Charge (an iconic Warrior ability) players in the group. This occurred roughly every 30 seconds and each usage of the ability would increase the number of uses. So the first time he would just Charge once, then twice and so on. So the Rush mechanic fits that very well, as he was a very specific representation of the Warrior class in the game.
This is a pretty cool idea, though its definitely harder when you consider the other games you may know nothing about. There are some hints, but not the best ones.
Battletag: TheOdinson#1825
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes, I'll show, you go first.
Battletag: TheOdinson#1825
Region: NA
Trade only? Yes, you go first.
Done
Favorite thing in 2019 had to be the Wild event announcement, even if I found the results to be less than enjoyable hahahahaha, I was super hype when I saw the announcement and was excited to brew for that first week.
I'm looking forward to the seeing the new card change philosophy in effect for a year. ATM these rapid changes have done great work and made me come back to the game again and again after losing interested from deck fatigue. Having a drive to play HS because its balanced is hugely important to me.
I'm not saying Rummaging Kobold doesn't have a purpose, but its so much worse in terms of stats and efficiency overall that even in the narrow cases you might play Kobold you wouldn't, where even if its not getting the full value (ie battlecry) of a weapon you might still play Hoard Pillager, and in a bunch of other different cases Hoard Pillager is soooooo much better its sad.
It only takes 1 Dragon to make this passable, and 2 makes it pretty scary. More than that and its a huge beatdown. That said, its not a Dragon itself and the number of non-Dragons you can run in any dragon deck is limited. So this will battle many other cards and may not find a home.
This isn't a great 1 drop for most classes, but most classes aren't Rogue. This offers a lot of great options for combo and so its likely to see some level of play. The pirate tag doesn't mean a ton, but its not awful.
This card is interesting. Its almost always better than Competitive Spirit, but it doesn't compare all that favorably to Mark of the Lotus or Storm's Wrath which you have much more control over. That said, Paladin is and has always been one of the best token classes, and in wild in particular. IDK if this will end up seeing much play in standard or Arena.
This card is certainly good, but the base body is a bit sad, and so the Aura effect is not that hard to remove at basically no cost. Mechs are currently good, so this should have a chance to shine for at least a few months, but once Boomsday rotates I think this loses a lot of its playability unless the sidequest really takes off.
This doesn't interact well with Thunderhead, but it does interact well with Vessina. Either way this sort of effect is always good in classes that like to go wide, like Shaman and Druid. This has some additional Overload upside and so it should see some play.
We all know how this compares to that other gamebreaking shaman 1 drop. That said, this is still good. Its got a fine ability, its got a helpful elemental tribe tag, its not a bad card at all. It won't warp the game in any bad way, but it will likely see play. All good things.
Its nice that this invokes twice, but that also seems unnecessary, besides generating the bodies. I mean I guess it would potentially allow you to run less really bad invoke cards, but you'd still be dependent on drawing this one. Its a fine card, it will see play in any successful Galakrond Shaman decks.
The upside on these 2 cards is outstanding. Is it worth building around? That is still to be seen. Hopefully, because that will be a lot of fun.
The effect is very strong, though its much harder to do in Standard atm, and it might be too slow for wild.