Wondering how this will work with Ashen Elemental--how do you guys read it? I feel like the wording of the card as "when X, they take Y damage" makes the source of damage a bit ambiguous--is it coming from the draw (and therefore not restricted by Shudderblock's battlecry), or is it coming from Ashen itself (and therefore will not damage the opponent)? Does anyone know?
I wonder... if the DR Druid package flops, could we see Hadronox in the 2023 Core Set? 🤔 I don't think it's completely out of the question (after printing Bless, they threw Lyra the Sunshard and Radiant Elemental into this year's set), and I for one certainly wouldn't mind having yet another way to bury aggro decks!
I'm betting the mana cost makes this card early-meta aggro bait, but that it ends up getting revisited halfway between patches in slower lists. Tbh it really looked like trash to me at first, but then I thought of Blessing of Kings and how that's had use cases as both a finisher and a means of value trading. I don't think Promotion gets run outside a Dude Pally deck, but I do think in a more ecalue-oriented version of that deck it gets better the longer the game goes on--+3/+3 in the early game does nothing against the current interactions of more controlly Warrior/Paladin/Priest/Warlock decks, and decks like Fel DH and Rogue would likely just ignore an early 4/4 and kill your face (or kill it while still killing your face using cards like Fel Barrage or Multi-Strike). In the late game, though, you've got a potential 30-damage Silver Hand combo costing as little as 6 mana if the opponent leaves up a single Stewart the Steward recruit and you've a Great Hall charge ready to go (Great Hall + quest aura + Stewart buff + 2x Promotion + 2x The Garden's Grace + 2x Conviction (Rank 1) = base 3/3 + 2/2 + 3/3 + 2 x 3/3 + 2 x 5/5 + 2 x 3/0 = one 30/24 Silver Hand Recruit). (More as a general remark on Dude Pally, I also see potential shenanigans to be had post-Cariel with Red Herring + a super-buffed Silver Hand Recruit.) It's also not bad in allowing a 1/1 recruit to value-trade almost any early-game minion. Idk if it's quite good enough to run in a Control Pally list, but I do think it has enough mid-/late-game utility that it merits consideration.
I'm wondering whether it's even as good as that... please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't spell damage work by increasing all damage-related numbers on the spell? If that's right, then you'd have to have spell damage +3 to get any extra damage out of it, since spell damage +1 would mean the front end deals 1 more but the back end deals 2 less, and spell damage +2 would mean the front end deals 2 more but the back end deals 3 less...
Here's a few dust tips (keep in mind that this advice is coming from a player who's been F2P/budget since Whispers of the Old Gods... so if you're willing to average more than $5ish spent on each expansion, probably not all of this will apply):
In general, if you play wild (and even if you play mostly standard), it's a good idea to totally avoid crafting and disenchanting before the end of a rotation. There are a couple reasons for this:
New metas for a whole month - Prior to the expansion, you don't know exactly how the new expansion will affect the meta, and it usually takes a couple weeks for a meta to fully take shape--cards that are awful before the expansion may become playable, and cards that are playable now may become horrible. Since it usually takes about two weeks for the initial meta to shape up, and since the dev team usually announces a round of balance changes after the initial meta takes shape (creating another new meta that takes another couple weeks to shape up), you probably won't have a clear picture of what cards are good/bad and what cards you want to keep until at least a month after the expansion launches.
Capitalizing on dust refunds - The point at which the dev team announces nerfs two-ish weeks into the expansion is the point at which you should definitely disenchant any and all nerfed commons/rares to get the full dust refund, since duplicate protection means you're pretty much guaranteed to get them back at some point over the next month or so. You should also disenchant any nerfed epics and legendaries that you'd like to trade in for a different epic/legendary.
A couple other general tips for maximizing dust (not necessarily restricted to expansion launch):
NEVER craft commons or rares (except perhaps when trying to get specific wild cards). Duplicate protection's got your back for the rares and commons from the standard expansions, as long as you can wait the few weeks it'll take to collect them all.
If you want to try a new netdeck, don't craft any legendaries or epics right away. Instead, substitute cards and tweak the decklist in light of your collection and playstyle (it not only saves you dust but also hones your deck-building and meta-reading skills). Check out stats on websites like HSReplay to see what role the expensive cards are supposed to perform and how well they actually do their job. After a couple dozen games with your version of the deck, you'll have a pretty good idea of whether it's actually necessary to craft those epics/legendaries or whether they're simply a luxury (or simply in the decklist just because they fit the original deck creator's personal playstyle).
The best rule of thumb is "when in doubt, wait it out." If you're not certain whether you should craft something or disenchant something, don't do it--this prevents you from making dust-inefficient choices you may regret later. Only disenchant something when you're sure that you really want the card you want to craft more than the card(s) you'll need to disenchant.
Buy the mini-sets (great dust-to-gold value!), but don't buy anything else between the launch of a mini-set and the launch of the next expansion. This lets you stockpile gold, which you can then sink into packs on launch day. Those packs then get turned into potential dust as you quickly begin to gather extra commons/rares right away on launch day (or within a couple weeks of it)!
If we're talking standard, I kind of doubt fatigue immunity will be relevant in Druid, at least for the next year... Kazakusan is just too strong of a finisher, and Taunt and Beast Druid are just too fast for fatigue to matter. Even if fatigue becomes relevant, Kaz is just a straight-up better way of avoiding fatigue... he puts it off by ten turns all in one go, while Bottomfeeder puts it off by just one turn at a time and requires your opponent to choose to kill it--something that's not super likely in a fatigue mirror, which is the only situation I can imagine where fatigue prevention would be relevant.
Makes sense! The part I wasn't sure about was whether Dredge is actually considered to be a Discover, or whether it's a separate mechanic whose UI just looks like Discover. I guess it really doesn't make much sense to reinvent the wheel within the game's code, though...
I'll be curious to see how this card actually works once it hits ladder... "Fire" is listed as the first school in both the English and Japanese versions of the card, but the gameplay video shows the Nature spell proc'ing first. It's inconsistent with how similar wording is interpreted on other cards (e.g. Spirit Guide always draws the Holy spell first), so I'm wondering whether the apparent randomness is intended or is just an oversight. Also curious about the interaction between Scalding Geyser and Windchill off this card if Geyser gets cast first... do you actually get to dredge before drawing, or does it just effectively mean that you're randomly drawing one of the three bottom cards of your deck?
That's really good to know about Brann and Siamat! Thanks!!!
Not saying the OTK is competitively viable (I certainly hope it's not... my favorite games of all time were Rise of Shadows Control Warrior mirrors), I'm just double-checking that it's possible. :) It actually doesn't include Brilliant Macaw... instead, it's based on the idea that whenever Bolner repeats Bru'kan's battlecry, you'll always be able to choose from among all of his hero powers. If that's true, then basically, every single battlecry you play that turn can include a Fireball to face (since the Fire Invocation HP always goes face), which means a ton of cheap battlecries that you play on the same turn as Bru'kan = a ton of Fireballs to face.
That could be true--I haven't used or seen Bolner a whole bunch! However, as I understand it, he only chooses randomly when the battlecry is itself random.
The way Bru'kan of the Elements's battlecry reads to me is "Battlecry: Choose two hero powers to activate this turn." If that's how the battlecry really should be translated into plain HS terms, I'd be really surprised if you weren't given a choice each time.
I'm thinking mainly of a precedent for a similar scenario: if you play Siamat with Battle Totem, you get to choose from all four options each time his battlecry triggers. That said, I know that's an example from single-player content... if you know whether it works the same way with Brann Bronzebeard, though, that might confirm it one way or another!
No, I was just throwing in a random 1-mana battlecry. I did realize, however, that Tour Guide could mean extra damage too. Here is the thought process:
Cards Played
Total Damage to Face
Remaining Mana
Bolner
--
8
Bru'kan
12
0
2x Lightning Bloom
12
4
2x Kindling Elemental
24
3
2x Elven Archer
38 (2 from the archers as Alfi pointed out)
1
Tour Guide
44 (with a 25% chance of rolling the 6-damage HP to boost it to 50)
Obviously that 9-card max damage combo probably isn't going to happen on ladder, but I feel like we could realistically see Bolner + Bru'kan being used as a 10-mana, 12-damage Alexstrasza the Life-Binder + pre-Barrens Flamestrike to top off a Control Shaman or Quest Shaman's curve. I could also see many people getting very mad about that 12-damage finisher (putting aside any potential Lightning Bloom shenanigans), given how people felt about Alex a few metas ago.
For sure! Here's the list I'm currently running: https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/31084-amulet-nzoth-priest. I've seen mostly Shadow Amulet Priest builds on ladder, but I feel like the extra healing from Holy cards/your hero power is more valuable than a proactive hero power. Still tinkering a lot, but this build has felt like a low tier-2 deck--I've been yo-yoing between Diamond 4 and 2 with a winrate that's just a tick higher than 50%. The main issues (as with all slow decks) are Quest Mage and Questlock... you win those two "fun" and "interactive" matchups so rarely that it's actually probably worth conceding as soon as you see them play the quest, but pretty much everything else is winnable. (I did find out the hard way that this deck loses to Mozaki Mage. -_-)
Agreed. When I first saw Drek'Thar, I immediately thought of Grim Necromancer, which is right on the edge of playability (it seems to me like it almost always pops up in early versions of board-flooding decks before getting cut in more refined lists). Given that his stats and (usually) the stats of the minions he summons are quite a bit more threatening than a 2/4 and a couple 1/1s, I feel like he'll be a staple of faster minion-based strategies for quite a while.
Speaking purely anecdotally, Vandarr has felt like he's made a huge difference in Amulet N'Zoth Priest, Commencement Warrior, and Big Demon Demon Hunter. I haven't gotten around to trying him in Clown Druid or Corrupt Priest yet, but I imagine he'd slot in well there too. Even if Vandarr doesn't end up being good in the long run, it feels really good for slow decks to get some payback in the early meta against faster stuff like Taunt Druid and Handbuff Paladin. Now if only someone would delete Handlock...
Wondering how this will work with Ashen Elemental--how do you guys read it? I feel like the wording of the card as "when X, they take Y damage" makes the source of damage a bit ambiguous--is it coming from the draw (and therefore not restricted by Shudderblock's battlecry), or is it coming from Ashen itself (and therefore will not damage the opponent)? Does anyone know?
I wonder... if the DR Druid package flops, could we see Hadronox in the 2023 Core Set? 🤔 I don't think it's completely out of the question (after printing Bless, they threw Lyra the Sunshard and Radiant Elemental into this year's set), and I for one certainly wouldn't mind having yet another way to bury aggro decks!
Welp, if I pull this, it's going straight into my Hadronox Druid. :D
I'm betting the mana cost makes this card early-meta aggro bait, but that it ends up getting revisited halfway between patches in slower lists. Tbh it really looked like trash to me at first, but then I thought of Blessing of Kings and how that's had use cases as both a finisher and a means of value trading. I don't think Promotion gets run outside a Dude Pally deck, but I do think in a more ecalue-oriented version of that deck it gets better the longer the game goes on--+3/+3 in the early game does nothing against the current interactions of more controlly Warrior/Paladin/Priest/Warlock decks, and decks like Fel DH and Rogue would likely just ignore an early 4/4 and kill your face (or kill it while still killing your face using cards like Fel Barrage or Multi-Strike). In the late game, though, you've got a potential 30-damage Silver Hand combo costing as little as 6 mana if the opponent leaves up a single Stewart the Steward recruit and you've a Great Hall charge ready to go (Great Hall + quest aura + Stewart buff + 2x Promotion + 2x The Garden's Grace + 2x Conviction (Rank 1) = base 3/3 + 2/2 + 3/3 + 2 x 3/3 + 2 x 5/5 + 2 x 3/0 = one 30/24 Silver Hand Recruit). (More as a general remark on Dude Pally, I also see potential shenanigans to be had post-Cariel with Red Herring + a super-buffed Silver Hand Recruit.) It's also not bad in allowing a 1/1 recruit to value-trade almost any early-game minion. Idk if it's quite good enough to run in a Control Pally list, but I do think it has enough mid-/late-game utility that it merits consideration.
I'm wondering whether it's even as good as that... please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't spell damage work by increasing all damage-related numbers on the spell? If that's right, then you'd have to have spell damage +3 to get any extra damage out of it, since spell damage +1 would mean the front end deals 1 more but the back end deals 2 less, and spell damage +2 would mean the front end deals 2 more but the back end deals 3 less...
Here's a few dust tips (keep in mind that this advice is coming from a player who's been F2P/budget since Whispers of the Old Gods... so if you're willing to average more than $5ish spent on each expansion, probably not all of this will apply):
A couple other general tips for maximizing dust (not necessarily restricted to expansion launch):
If we're talking standard, I kind of doubt fatigue immunity will be relevant in Druid, at least for the next year... Kazakusan is just too strong of a finisher, and Taunt and Beast Druid are just too fast for fatigue to matter. Even if fatigue becomes relevant, Kaz is just a straight-up better way of avoiding fatigue... he puts it off by ten turns all in one go, while Bottomfeeder puts it off by just one turn at a time and requires your opponent to choose to kill it--something that's not super likely in a fatigue mirror, which is the only situation I can imagine where fatigue prevention would be relevant.
I think when you say "Doomguard," people hear "Carnivorous Cube and Bloodreaver Gul'dan"... and all the trauma comes rushing back haha.
Vanndar Beast Hunter to tier 2?
Makes sense! The part I wasn't sure about was whether Dredge is actually considered to be a Discover, or whether it's a separate mechanic whose UI just looks like Discover. I guess it really doesn't make much sense to reinvent the wheel within the game's code, though...
I'll be curious to see how this card actually works once it hits ladder... "Fire" is listed as the first school in both the English and Japanese versions of the card, but the gameplay video shows the Nature spell proc'ing first. It's inconsistent with how similar wording is interpreted on other cards (e.g. Spirit Guide always draws the Holy spell first), so I'm wondering whether the apparent randomness is intended or is just an oversight. Also curious about the interaction between Scalding Geyser and Windchill off this card if Geyser gets cast first... do you actually get to dredge before drawing, or does it just effectively mean that you're randomly drawing one of the three bottom cards of your deck?
Petting Zoo, is that you?
That's really good to know about Brann and Siamat! Thanks!!!
Not saying the OTK is competitively viable (I certainly hope it's not... my favorite games of all time were Rise of Shadows Control Warrior mirrors), I'm just double-checking that it's possible. :) It actually doesn't include Brilliant Macaw... instead, it's based on the idea that whenever Bolner repeats Bru'kan's battlecry, you'll always be able to choose from among all of his hero powers. If that's true, then basically, every single battlecry you play that turn can include a Fireball to face (since the Fire Invocation HP always goes face), which means a ton of cheap battlecries that you play on the same turn as Bru'kan = a ton of Fireballs to face.
That could be true--I haven't used or seen Bolner a whole bunch! However, as I understand it, he only chooses randomly when the battlecry is itself random.
The way Bru'kan of the Elements's battlecry reads to me is "Battlecry: Choose two hero powers to activate this turn." If that's how the battlecry really should be translated into plain HS terms, I'd be really surprised if you weren't given a choice each time.
I'm thinking mainly of a precedent for a similar scenario: if you play Siamat with Battle Totem, you get to choose from all four options each time his battlecry triggers. That said, I know that's an example from single-player content... if you know whether it works the same way with Brann Bronzebeard, though, that might confirm it one way or another!
I do find it somewhat frightening that Bolner + Bru'kan + Lightning Bloom + two 1-mana battlecries = 24 face damage.
No, I was just throwing in a random 1-mana battlecry. I did realize, however, that Tour Guide could mean extra damage too. Here is the thought process:
Someone check my math, but I believe Bolner Hammerbeak + Bru'kan of the Elements + 2x Lightning Bloom + 2x Kindling Elemental + 2x Elven Archer + Guardian Augmerchant = 44 face damage (plus an unrestricted Reno Jackson and/or asymmetrical Twisting Nether effect).
Obviously that 9-card max damage combo probably isn't going to happen on ladder, but I feel like we could realistically see Bolner + Bru'kan being used as a 10-mana, 12-damage Alexstrasza the Life-Binder + pre-Barrens Flamestrike to top off a Control Shaman or Quest Shaman's curve. I could also see many people getting very mad about that 12-damage finisher (putting aside any potential Lightning Bloom shenanigans), given how people felt about Alex a few metas ago.
For sure! Here's the list I'm currently running: https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/31084-amulet-nzoth-priest. I've seen mostly Shadow Amulet Priest builds on ladder, but I feel like the extra healing from Holy cards/your hero power is more valuable than a proactive hero power. Still tinkering a lot, but this build has felt like a low tier-2 deck--I've been yo-yoing between Diamond 4 and 2 with a winrate that's just a tick higher than 50%. The main issues (as with all slow decks) are Quest Mage and Questlock... you win those two "fun" and "interactive" matchups so rarely that it's actually probably worth conceding as soon as you see them play the quest, but pretty much everything else is winnable. (I did find out the hard way that this deck loses to Mozaki Mage. -_-)
Agreed. When I first saw Drek'Thar, I immediately thought of Grim Necromancer, which is right on the edge of playability (it seems to me like it almost always pops up in early versions of board-flooding decks before getting cut in more refined lists). Given that his stats and (usually) the stats of the minions he summons are quite a bit more threatening than a 2/4 and a couple 1/1s, I feel like he'll be a staple of faster minion-based strategies for quite a while.
Speaking purely anecdotally, Vandarr has felt like he's made a huge difference in Amulet N'Zoth Priest, Commencement Warrior, and Big Demon Demon Hunter. I haven't gotten around to trying him in Clown Druid or Corrupt Priest yet, but I imagine he'd slot in well there too. Even if Vandarr doesn't end up being good in the long run, it feels really good for slow decks to get some payback in the early meta against faster stuff like Taunt Druid and Handbuff Paladin. Now if only someone would delete Handlock...