Blizzcon started the biggest reveal season in the history of the game - not only Forged in the Barrens, the new Hearthstone expansion, will be released soon, but with the beginning of the Year of the Gryphon, we'll also receive a new and completely free Core set.
The Core set will replace the Evergreen set (Classic and Basic sets) and will be made of:
- 29 Brand new cards.
- Cards returning from wild such as Annoy-o-Tron and Tomb Pillager.
- Old cards that have been changed
- Menagerie Warden will receive a 1 mana discount at the price of -1/-1 in stats.
- Assassinate will cost 4 mana instead of 5.
- Basic and Classic cards that make sense to stay are going to hang around still. Fireball and Tirion Fordring confirmed.
Out of the 29 new cards, 3 have been revealed so far, and they're not trivial at all: Ysera, Malygos and Deathwing received reimagining in order to keep the lore fantasy of these characters around in Standard and to keep them up with the increase in power level that the game has gone through since its release in 2014. Note, these new cards we're going to showcase do not replace the older ones. The older cards will still be playable in Wild.
While we're still waiting to see if we'll get new forms of Nozdormu and Alexstrasza, here are the new versions of the three new Dragon Aspects together with our two cents.
First of all, let's look at all the Dream cards and how they got rebalanced:
- Emerald Drake - no changes.
- Laughing Sister - cost reduced from 3 to 2 mana.
- Ysera Awakens - cost increased from 2 to 3 mana; it will damage only minions.
- Dream - cost increased from 0 to 1; it can only target enemy minions.
- Nightmare - buff reduced from +5/+5 to +4/+4.
Now, let's compare Ysera the Dreamer to the original Ysera: the problem with the latter was that you were just playing a 9 mana 4/12 with no immediate impact whatsoever - you needed to spend your whole turn playing her, wait a turn, hope to be still alive and to have received a good Dream card. In other words, a card that was too slow card for modern Hearthstone.
Now we're getting Ysera the Dreamer which gives you all the Dream cards immediately, so we won't have to wait a turn to be able to get rewarded with Nightmare, which is an insta-cast Blessing of Kings, or the now 1-cost Dream that, assuming you're on turn 10, can be played to remove something nasty on your opponent's board as a cheaper Sap. The reworked card removes the painful RNG which prevented Ysera from being desirable in many decks.
All in all, a much faster card when compared to the original version, which promises lots of play in control-oriented archetypes. A great addition to the core set!
Malygos' +5 Spell Damage has always been problematic from a balance point of view - it even dodged the Hall of Fame a couple of times - so we're glad they moved away from that design while keeping the character's flavor.
Malygos the Spellweaver's effect quite reminds us of Myra's Unstable Element and Bwonsamdi, the Dead. While its cost makes it so that it will be hardly exploited by aggressive burn decks, we can see this card in spell-heavy combo-oriented decks that want to draw as much as possible, as well as control decks.
Our first impression is that it may see some experimentation for drawing C'Thun, the Shattered's pieces, maybe in Control Warrior, thanks to Ringmaster Whatley's Battlecry, but Paladin's Redscale Dragontamer allows you to reach the same goal.
A very interesting card that we're sure will find some use in the future and if it becomes too oppressive, the new core set format allows Blizzard to simply push it into Wild next year.
A straight-up better card when compared to the original Deathwing. If the board is full, you'll still discard your whole hand, but in any other scenario, you'll have the chance to keep some of your cards. For example, if your opponent has just 2 big minions on board, you'll just have to lose a couple of cards instead of nuking your entire hand for that sweet board clear.
We think that classes like Druid and Paladin, which lack hard removals and are control-oriented, will gladly experiment with this new toy.
What do you think of these brand new versions of the Dragon Aspects? How will you play them? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/lo619q/rebalanced_ysera_dream_cards/
Other dream cards are being changed for ysera.
ysera wakens costs 3 isntead of 2 and onyl does dmg to minions instead of all characters.
Nightmare gives +4/+4 instead of +5/+5
Laughing sister cots 2 down fromm 3
Dream is 1mana and can only atrget enemeis
Drake is unchanged.
It's kinda weird how this is a post specifically about the power level of these cards, yet it doesn't mention the changes to Laughing Sister and Ysera Awakens. I would assume they didn't know about the changes outside of Dream, but then they mention that Nightmare is a free Blessing of Kings, implying they know it is now +4/+4. This should really be added to the post in the same place they clarified the change to Dream.
Greetings.
When we wrote the article we had no info yet about the rebalancing of the Dream cards - we only knew that Dream would've costed 1 instead of 0.
However, later on we came to knowledge of changes to all the Dream cards (except for Emerald Drake), but at that point the article was already out.
I will personally edit it now so that it will include these changes.
is another change for ysera awakens ,it doesnt do face dmg anymore. went from all characters to all minions alongside the mana cost increase.
Ysera is so much better. Much needed change. Malygos seems like he'll open a lot of options.
Wild Reno Dragon Priest is back in the game!
Why do I get the feeling that Malygos will end up as a huge headache later down the line. It just looks like some really dumb Druid stuff is going to happen with ramping into Maly and then assembling an entire OTK by turn 6.
That doesn't seem like an issue in Standard, considering Druid OTK was almost always based on the old Maly. Without that spell damage they really don't have enough face damage to pull off an OTK.
In Wild, sure, but if a Druid has ramped to turn 9 then they have much bigger things they could pull than dropping a 4/12 and then waiting a turn.
quote
Our first impression is that it may see some experimentation for drawing C'Thun, the Shattered's pieces,
unquote
this can be very risky: you need to have a 1 mana card to play immediately, otherwise the next card will be destroyed and can be a piece of C'Thun ...
That's only an issue if you have more spells in your deck than space in your hand. I would imagine that such a combo-oriented deck would run as few spells as possible outside of the C'Thun pieces, specifically to avoid that.
This.
Plus you build your own deck, so you'll probably want to include a couple of cheap spells to mitigate that scenario.
I really like the Malygos rework; it seems it will fit nicely with classes that traditionally liked its original version (druid mostly), while also being attractive to control decks that need card draw or tutoring, like priest and mage.
This is exactly what needed to be done -- look at Classic cards and fearlessly redesign them with the benefit of six years of Hearthstone under their belts.
In every case, the new dragon fills the same purpose as the original, but it a way that makes more sense.
If this is any indication of the Core set as a whole, I'm very excited for the Year of the Gryphon. Maybe a reworked Warrior will actually be fun to play against. Dare we dream?
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.
Very cool redesigns. Really enjoy them keeping true to the old effects. Malygos is the one that changed the most from it's original form but I think it really keeps true to the original "I favor spells/combo" design.
Great start for the core set. This is gonna be a big reveal season between Core and Barrens expansion. Can't wait to get to play with the new stuff. I guess Shadow Hunter Vol'jin will amuse me until then!
p.s. Blizz keep printing more Deathwings! I want an entire deck of nothing but Deathwings. Thanks.
Only 26 more to go! And as long as the Class card Deathwings are all in Warrior you can build a 30 Deathwing deck, playing as Deathwing!
Ysera is still powerful despite the 1 mana change to dream. Even if you can't cast ysera awakens on 10 in the same turn, it still more or less send a signal to your opponent that any board they build will immediately be challenged with a 5 damage board wipe. Overall, I like this change.
For Malygos on the other hand, its hard to evaluate. It fills your hand but chances are good you can't cast any of it until the following turn. So unless there's some really impactful 1 mana spell, this is just going to be a 9 mana do nothing card. But anything that tutors cards, and to such an extreme degree, would at some point be core, so I'm not giving my hopes up yet.
Deathwing. Well, its a powerful card swing with a more reasonable condition. But discarding cards have often always been bad, so Im not entirely sure. But it is a 12/12 board swing. And that has got to count for something.
I'm honestly already dreaming of a world where I can use Malygos the Spellweaver in a Wild spell burst Shaman deck. Frizz Kindleroost to reduce the cost of Malygos, maybe Emperor Thaurissan for more cost reduction... But basically you want to play Malygos for cheap, pull a bunch of spells like Lightning Bloom, Lightning Bolt, Crackle and maybe some other cheap face damage spells. If you are running Emperor you might also have some other spell damage minions and/or spells in hand with reduced cost, increase your damage output... Who knows!
Amazing!
Like me.