Hearthstone
Core Set Reactions
Submitted 3 years, 9 months ago by
meisterz39
There's a ton to pick apart with the new Core Set (available to peruse now), but I figured it would be nice to have a thread where people can post their reactions. Here's some of what I'm particularly excited about after reviewing the set:
- Charge is nearly non-existent, only showing up on some class legendaries. Old neutral Charge minions got minor buffs and were converted to Rush.
- Warsong Commander is getting a major redemption
- Mage is losing its biggest board-wide freeze effects
- Lord Jaraxxus is going to be playable again
- Baron Rivendare is back in standard
- Loads of minor changes that might make a lot of once great cards good again (e.g. -1 cost to Sprint and Big Game Hunter, minor health buffs to lot of classic cards like Cairne Bloodhoof, Baron Geddon, etc.)
- Doomsayer effectively replaced with Explosive Sheep - should reduce the number of feel bad moments that come from randomly creating the neutral AOE minion in the game.
Leave a Comment
You must be signed in to leave a comment. Sign in here.
There's a ton to pick apart with the new Core Set (available to peruse now), but I figured it would be nice to have a thread where people can post their reactions. Here's some of what I'm particularly excited about after reviewing the set:
Good idea to have a place for all reactions.
First of I am really surprised how small the core set actualy is, hearing the number of cards is one thing, but seeing it live...
I had counted with each class getting at least 2 legendaries, and the neutral spots are too overcrowded with Dragons, the same ones we saw in several versions already, that is just boring.
I am not a fan of butchering the small Charge cards, moving them to Wild would be ok, but I am still not sure if both versions are changed or not, but I enjoyed both Anyfin Pally and Handbuffcopy Boar Hunter decks. Also gonna miss Houndmaster, Unleash the Hounds, Tundra Rhino...
DH - no thoughs yet, I do not play or like the class that much. From lore perspective it is sad that both satyrs are leaving.
Druid - Surprised that Cenarius (hoped for Fandral Staghelm or Lucentbark - I hated how they printed him and then ruined an expansion later with Plague of Death) and Ancient of War (Deserved a buff, at least) stayed. The set looks quite weak withous Swipe and charge on the Druid of the Claw would definitely not ruin the game.
Hunter - I do not like to have Bearshark and Dire Frenzy in a single core set, it is quite anti - synergistic, Houndmaster did the job well. The new card seems too 1 dimensional, bringing back Stitched Tracker would work better for me, I guess Highmane, as well as Barrens Stablehand stayed because of the theme of the expansion. On second though, seems like Selective Breeder / Dire Frenzy paves a way for a certain hunter deck this year. Maybe even something for Beastmaster Leoroxx.
Mage - Never liked Frostbolt, but it is too iconic in my opinion. Archmage Antonidas was the nostalgia from WC3 campaign, alongside Goldshire Footman and Ironforge Rifleman, sad to see them gone. Footman and Rifleman deserve a buff if they are gonna be lost in wild. Back to mage - Flamestrike as a 5 damage epic seems weird. Arcanologist prevents Wild player from escaping a feeling of facing another Secret Mage, hate that. Do not like random Babbling Book stuff either.
Paladin - Recruits seem to pushed, Warhorse Trainer (unneeded buff) and Equality now enforce ODD PALLY in WILD even more. Hoped for Bellringer Sentry. Glad for the Guardian of Kings buff, now it can actualy guard someone.
Priest - Love to see Shadow Word: Pain go, sad for Inner Fire. Crimson Clergy seems interesting to me, maybe I'll try Priest this expansion.
Rogue - Sprint is probably still too weak, with Secret Passage around, [Hearthstone Card (Assasin's Blade) Not Found] seems really weird at 2 attack.
Shaman - Al'Akir buff is most likely too small. Hoped for some more Elemental synergy.
Warlock - Tiny Knight of Evil seems to lack support, Jaraxxus does not look right as a Hero card. No Voidwalker? Flame Imp, realy? Lakkari Felhound is also weird there.
Warrior - No Shield Block, no Kor'kron Elite, Little Enrage enablers. Fiery War Axe should have returned to 2. War Cache reminds me too much of a certain Hunter card. Really sad for no Magni's side representation, just a band of Horde there.
Neutral - Hoped Hogger would receive a buff, Taelan Fordring seems quite good, (nice lore flavor with potencionaly drawing Tirion to action on death.) Glad for BGH buff, Yetti stayed, but Silverback Patriarch and Boulderfist Ogre, gone? Rager replacement is insulting to poor Magma guy and irrelevant for the game. No idea why Young Priestess stayed. New pirate seems too good.
Will update this posts with more later.
Okay, hear me out on this one. I've been thinking about how to best use the new Warsong Commander. (Side Note: I hope her voice line is still "Charge forward!" "Rush forward" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Okay, here it is: ETC combo! I know. I KNOW!!! With Bloodsworn leaving it seems almost impossible. Or so you'd think! Even without seeing like 98% of the new set, I already cracked a way to at least get a big burst turn. But you won't have the element of surprise unfortunately...
Here goes. Turn 8: ETC and then imprison your own ETC with Maiev! When he wakes up, pray the opponent has a decent enough board to trade into and play Warsong Commander, Faceless your ETC, play Broom to ensure both ETCs and Warsong also have rush (as well as any straggling minions you have left from prior turns), make a few trades leaving the ETCs and Warsong up. Then play another 1 cost minion with your last mana (Elven Archer for an additional ping face?), then 2x Tinyfin, make all possible trades for most possible drum solos in a turn!
The rest of the deck would need to be built around survivability and draw/cycle. Complicated and likely slow, so maybe you include some of these cards for a big end of game turn in slow match ups and maybe aim for a smaller burst turn after rushing down half your opponent's HP instead (negating need for Faceless, saving 5 mana for small minions). Either way, she and ETC are going to be Best Buds!
In Wild this gets even easier due to cost reductions and other tools (like Inner Rage + Bloodsworn).
Quick! Someone give me something clever to write here.
Alright, reaction time:
DH:
Nothing to suprising here, mostly cards that were introduced last year, charge seems to be part of the DH class ID.
Druid:
Sad to see moonfire, swipe (and Malygos) go, but it was to be expected. I genuinly expected them to rotate either Wild Growth or Nourish.
Hunter:
Seems to have gotten a bit of a focus on beast. With synergies swapping to that. Nice changes.
Mage:
A story of broken hearts and surprises. All the frostspells rotating, really did not expect them to send Frostbolt away aswell, that one feels so iconic and getting snapfreeze back for that is a slap in the face. In general, there are also some good changes. Aegwynn seems interesting (and iconic!) quite a bit of hero power synergy and the AOE is quite solid.
Paladin:
Quite a bit of silverhand support for paladin, makes me wonder if dude pali will be a thing again. Glad the kept Consecration, and 3 mana equality is nice. Avange back in standard is going to be interesting.
Priest:
Very happy to see priest get a bit more of tempo support. Its been such a dull and grindy class last year. It seems like the only things it could do was remove things and generate random trash.
Rogue:
Very surprised to see them send Evis away and not sinester strike. Very happy with Sap finally being removed. Swash is a solid 1 drop. Rogue had a lot less changes than I expected.
Shaman:
Mostly minor buffs across the board, some interesting additions. Curious to see how the one drop will do.
Warlock:
Seems more or less the same, no voidwalker though thats interesting. And Jaraxxus as a hero card is pretty cool.
Warrior:
Wow can't believe they send Shield block away, mostly some rush support, some pirate support, not to many changes. Interesting Warrior is allowed to keep twisting nether for 5 mana though.
Neutral:
Bye doomsayer, some very interesting additions, Baron Rivendare for one, mostly seems to give a lot of the tribes some foundation.
There are some good stuff being done here, but I can't help feeling like a few classes are being screwed here. Some of the best utility cards are being taken away presumably to encourage use of expansion cards, to encourage a tempo-oriented game, and a marked reduction of face hitting cards. Here's my impression;
- I like rogue, and very happy to see shadowstep not taken away, but I think rogue's tempo game just got neutered. Taking away both Eviscerate and Sap means that there is literally only backstab and weapons to keep up tempo. Even perdition's blades gone. Really strange they didn't unnerf Cold Blood. I mean, its not like its possible to ever assemble a killer combo turn since charge are all taken away
- No more Tundra Rhino, no more Unleash the Hounds. No more Animal Companion. So hunter's game plan is now entirely tempo, or bizarrely, spell cycling.
- Priest got a huge buff in Shadowform. But loses Shadow Word: Pain. Can't understand why this was done since its brother Shadow Word: Death is still here, except that all the new cards pushes for another form of tempo or silence priest. And there's no more Thoughtsteal, the one priest card for reload. I'd expect Barrens to add a few more generation card for priest, but getting rid of Thoughtsteal might not be the best choice.
- Mage got screwed hard here. No more apprentice, no more Frostbolt, no more Pyroblast, no more Arcane Missiles, no more arcane explosion. And then in comes Aegwynn, who's power would have best benefit those cards removed. Combo mage has been dealt a severe blow by basically removing two of the best freezing spells, and the removal of doomsayer. Even Mozaki mage needs a something to back it up since arcane missiles is gone. Makes me nervous where team5 intends to go with mage for the next year.
- The only class that seems to get aggressive cards are dhunters. Nearly all their cards are either drawing you cards or hitting your opponent's face. I guess the removal of Satyr Overseer and Glaivebound Adept makes some dent but easily replaced by Felfire Deadeye and Felsaber, not to mention other cards like Felsteel Executioner and the new Illidari Inquisitor
- Paladin looks scary. At least they cant draw for shit. No further comment.
- Shield Slam in. Shield Block out. Like really? And a major nipple cripple has been delivered by removing its sole draw engine, Battle Rage. Well, I guess its back to Slam then.
- Warlock is fine. Not losing Twisting Nether is key here. But losing voidwalker. Guess team5 really hates pain warlock in standard
- Druid is fine as well. Because I'm absolutely positively fine with druid losing Savage Roar. There's still Arbor Up, but at least theres no more turn 5 solar eclipse finishers.
Other notables;
- No more Murloc Warleader, no more charge minions in neutral, no more Leper Gnome, no more Faerie Dragon, no more Cult Master, no more Knife Juggler, no more Questing Adventurer. Its like team5 gathered up all the cards that are still good enough today, or do face damage, and tossing them all away
- No lorewalker cho. Im sad. Maybe I missed it out. Someone please tell me im wrong.
- And no more Wild Pyromancer. Well, that's it.
Murloc Tinyfin has returned! That’s all I really needed anyway.
I like how Demon Hunter’s class identity is shifting to include charge as a keyword. Its almost as if we needed more reasons to dislike the class
This ain't no place for a hero
Warsong + Playmaker + Broomstick + 0 or 1 mana minion
Banned for spamming.
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.
"True mastery takes dedication."
How did Noz get worse?!
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?
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.
So my reactions to the core set:
DH: Illidari Inquisitor and Kor'vas Bloodthorn seem insane, but that's DH in a nutshell.
Druid: The core set seems quite weak without any kind of AOE, but Nordrassil Druid seems interesting and the buff to Cenarius seems interesting.
Hunter: I love the Tracking change, it really nerfs aggro hunter and buffs late game hunter decks. Selective Breeder seems good as well, and i hope i can be able to finally play a Beastmaster Leoroxx hunter deck. Bearshark being back is interesting, and Dire Frenzy is solid for late game beast decks. I really like the direction hunter seems to be going now!
Mage: Babbling Book IS BACK! YES! I love this card. Coldarra Drake and Fallen Hero being back might hint towards some kind of hero power synergy in the future. (Like in the Rastahkans Arena expansion.) Shooting Star is interesting, and your opponent can play around it. Ethereal Conjurer still seems bad even after that buff, it dies way too fast. Aegwynn, the Guardian seems really powerfull, i like it. And Arcanologist.... wait... Arcanologist... oh no... oh.... no.... well good thing the secret synergy from Uldum will rotate, otherwise Standard had to REALLY bow down (just like wild) to our Secret mage overlords.
Paladin: Dude Paladin seems busted with all this support. I'm kinda scared about it's powerlevel. BUT as long as Paladin doesn't get that much draw we should be fine. Righteous Protector being back is huge, that card used to see play in pretty much every paladin deck when it was last in standard, and she still sees play often in wild.
Priest: I'm hyped for priest actually. Tempo priest is getting a lot of support and Shadowed Spirit seems really good together with Rally!. Also i'm really interested in what their going to do with Shadowform and shadow priest. Focused Will also might hint that were going to see some more Silence Priest. But in order for tempo and Silence priest to work they will need some more card draw first.
Rogue: Tomb Pillager seems interesting, that coin can help with activating a lot of combo cards. SI:7 Agent is iconic and i'm glad to have it still in the core set. Swashburglar buff is AMAZING and i love it, and Vanessa VanCleef seems like very flexible card that has a lot of potential. Looking forward to the thing rogue is going to do this year. (And it's cool that we still have our 3 amazing 0 cost spells.)
Shaman: RIP Wrath of Air Totem, but at least we got Novice Zapper to replace it. Seeing Menacing Nimbus back is amazing, i always loved playing that card. Actually Shaman has a lot of elementals in core, so i hope Elemental shaman will make a comeback. Shaman seems really good in core, most cards were the ones from classic but with some buffs to make them better. Let's hope these changes change shaman from "OP or trash" into an actually balanced class.
Warrior: It kinda seems like they want to make the warrior core set less control focussed. The core set overall seems a lot weaker for warrior, sure they have some iconic stuff but it still doesn't seem that good. but aggresive cards like Bloodsail Deckhand seems amazing though. (Also i love the Warsong Commander change, she actually has a use now! :O )
Warlock: As someone who loves playing control warlock, these changes are very exciting. Drain Soul might see play with that buff, as it now can actually destroy some early game minions, and the buff to Siphon Soul is really good. Enslaved Fel Lord seems AMAZING and Twisting Nether still being here is also good! But most importantly: Lord Jaraxxus IS GOOD NOW! WHOOO! Lord Jaraxxus is such a good finisher (if it keeps the 2 mana HP with "summon a 6/6 demon"). Warlock seems like strong class for the future expansions, and i love it. Also it's interesting that Tiny Knight of Evil and Lakkari Felhound are back, maybe their going to push discardlock some more? (As a wild player, please no. It's already strong enough.)
Neutral: The new dragons really impress me, they look so much more powerfull now. I love it. Baron Geddons buff is also amazing, and the new legendaries all seems quite good in some decks. Baron Rivendare being back can be a bit scary, but i still look forward to what kind of shenanigans you can do with it. Bloodmage Thalnos is still here and that's really good, he is such a good and flexible card. The neutral part of the core set seems really good. Oh and Murloc Tinyfin is back, everyone that watched a few of GrosGhiles videos knows that it's definatly OP and wins games easely. (lol) Oh and Humongous Razorleaf is back, hinting even more towards the return of Silence Priest.
However the rotation will be a sad day. It will be the day we remember our lord and savior Magma Rager, who got replaced with the unholy Ice Rager. Rip Magma Rager, us memers will miss you. (Well tbf he did see more play in meme rager decks in wild.)
RNG is only fun as long as there is a 50/50 chance of getting something really good or trash level of bad. If RNG always results in something good, then it's not fun.
I understand where you're coming from on this, but ultimately I think it's good to have less Charge in the Core Set. Hearthstone at its core is a tempo game, so I think the "Core Set" should reflect that, and that swapping Charge for Rush on most cards achieves that. You also see this reflected in removal of cards like Pyroblast.
Removing those sources of direct face damage leaves room to introduce new chargers and other direct damage tools in expansions. I don't think they'll introduce a ton of Chargers, mind you - it's still a keyword that can produce some very frustrating metagames - but because the baseline for direct face damage is much lower in the Core Set, they can now introduce new direct damage cards they might have otherwise been afraid to put into the game for fear of hyper-degenerate aggro metas.
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.
"True mastery takes dedication."
Warrior core set is pretty much the same. A lot of ppl moaning about Shieldblock but Shieldmaiden is a better card than Shieldblock. In GvG era a lot of CW deck drop 1 Shieldblock to put 2 Shieldmaiden in. And I am sure they will print even better armor card to replace Shieldblock in the next set, so we have nothing to worry about.
Regarding Nozdormu, and big lore characters more generally, my stance is always that they have been handled well as long as they are exciting to a noticeable fraction of players. That doesn't require them to actually be strong, especially in a neutral cycle of cards like the dragon aspects where they'd all be competing with each other for the 9/10 mana spot anyway. So by my metric, Noz is much more likely to be a success than any of the other reworked dragons, since he's practically guaranteed to have a following. It's just that that following probably won't include many Spikes.
----------------------------------
Regarding the priest Core set, it is very buff-centric, which doesn't usually go well for the class I agree. Whether it will be "absolutely atrocious" after the significant shift when the Barrens arrives remains to be seen, however. Aside from not knowing what the Barrens set will bring, it is also almost impossible to say what will happen when all the classes lose staple cards.
In the end priest's problems are always rooted in it being at the greedier end of control than warrior: they always have more value at the cost of lower tempo removal. That is a benefit in slow metas, but a hindrance in the aggro metas the Year of the Phoenix pushed so hard. From a game design point of view this is all perfectly sensible, but I've played the game more than long enough to acknowledge it has its problems in practice.
So the best solution to the priest problem is probably just to design sets that swing the balance away from aggro and back towards control a bit. Priest can then prey on the slower meta. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that a horde-focused expansion is going to weigh control over aggro...
Apologies - this turned into a longer response than I intended because I really love the Tempo Priest archetype, wish it had gotten more love over the last several expansions, and I see this set as hopeful for it.
Tempo Priest has been right on the edge of playable for a long time, and I would be careful not to underestimate it in the context of a rotation and a Core Set whose focus is clearly more on Tempo/Midrange play than the Classic/Basic sets. I tried a lot of Tempo Priest after Scholomance launched, and one of the biggest issues was turn 2 - it was easy to load up on useful 1-drops like Frazzled Freshman and Intrepid Initiate (or even Soulbound Ashtongue), but if you didn't get the perfect draw into Power Word: Feast you'd often have very little to do on turn 2.
For that reason, I think you're underselling Crimson Clergy a bit. He provides a relevant body on turn 1, and a meaningful way to leverage your hero power on turn 2. In many respects, that was the most important thing Northshire Cleric had going for it. Because of how many of Priest's 2-mana options are reactive cards and resource generation cards, a turn 2 hero power is commonplace. So, any viable tempo deck needs to be able maximize the hero power on turn 2. A value trade into buffing your 1-drop into a vanilla 2-drop statline is nothing to scoff at. And in the right match-up, "Crimson Clergy into Power Word: Feast + trade" can give you a 4/5 minion on turn 2 that can continue to scale its attack over time.
The important thing to note about cards like Shadowform and Shadowed Spirit isn't that they're knockout, amazing cards, but rather that they offer Priest a way to "switch into attack mode" and pressure down their opponent. This can be a real struggle in Tempo Priest because the Priest hero power strongly incentivizes value trading and board control, but does very little for you when it's time to make the shift over to beating down your opponent.
It's true card draw was a struggle for the deck - often if you didn't get Voracious Reader in time, you'd run out of gas. With that in mind, I think this rotation has more going for it than you give it credit for. Thrive in the Shadows provides deck-thinning and a useful tutor effect, either for buffs to keep your board trading up or reload in the form of Rally!. Also, Insight and Raise Dead are still available, and we may get more draw tools in the FitB expansion.
(One other shout-out here is the potential tempo sleeper for Priest - Nerubian Egg. By turn 3 you have access to two strong buffs: Power Word: Feast and Apotheosis. These make the egg a real threat. It also offers a very relevant deathrattle for Disciplinarian Gandling, which never really took off.)
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.
"True mastery takes dedication."
My thoughts on individual cards are on their respective discussion pages. I'll use the space here for deletions and my overall reactions.
It feels good to see all of the garbage cards taken out. It also feels good to see the overused cards taken out, nostalgia be damned. In fact, they could have gone a little farther on that front. Like, I'm glad we get to play without Blizzard for the next year, but couldn't we also do without Brawl? That has always been the most toxic card in the game IMO, but it has never been touched.
Rogue without Eviscerate is going to feel weird. They are going to have to work so much harder to threaten lethal. But this change is definitely in line with the focus shifting back to the board for most classes.
I love that Shaman has been pared down to a more Elemental- (and lightning-)focused set.
It seems many classes are getting support for their hero powers, either directly or indirectly. That makes sense for the Core set, I think. It's the job of expansions to create archetypes and define play patterns.
The buffs are generally good without being good enough to outshine the power level of expansion cards. These changes make formerly unplayable cards playable, but not at all broken. As we know, competitive decks use cards that are slightly broken, and it looks like those are still to be found in expansions. For example, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a build-around legendary in the Core set. Baron Rivendare adds some zing to a Deathrattle deck, but he doesn't define it the way N'Zoth, the Corruptor did.
So in summary, while I may be a bit disappointed in one or two of the individual choices they made, I think Team 5 did a great job curating this inaugural Core set. I look forward to the fresh new meta we are about to plunge into!
We don't need to keep debating the details of Tempo Priest, but one last thing I'd like to bring up is that Libram/Broom Paladin spent a lot of time at the top of the tier list despite running relatively little card draw (often just Hand of A'dal and Salhet's Pride). I think the lesson there is that you don't need a ton of card draw if you can snowball early tempo with cheap buffs and your hero power. That's obviously a tougher thing for Priest to do, but cards like Crimson Clergy and Lightsteed and the buffed* Lightspawn help a lot with making the hero power a positive tempo play, and they don't need much more in the form of cheap buffs to consistently build on early game tempo. Paladin does a lot of that stuff better, yes, but I think Priest can get there too.
*I'm calling it a buff, since -1 cost is well worth the -1/-1 statline
I guess it all depends on the perspective. Warlock and Warrior seem to be the winners at first glance. As a mage main I feel screwed once more. Mage must be the hardest hit class as it got gutted.
The new legendary indicates that they want to push mage more towards spell damage. However with no burn cards except Fireball this might end not that well. Mage really needs some good cards in the upcoming expansion otherwise it will end up trash tier.
English is not my native language, so please excuse occasional mistakes
Libram Paladin has a lot of cards with strong synergies with Libram cards and broken cards for this deck like Lady Liadrin (mega refill) or Barov. It's not even comparable. Priest has no synergies at all. Blizzard knows that Tempo priest will never be a thing, they know it, but still gives tempo cards to them without giving it draw. It's like they want Priest to be bad on purpose. I'm getting tired of this.
Tempo Priest has been a great deck before, so this idea that Blizzard is just pushing a junk archetype rings false to me. Back when the Boomsday Buffs came through (Summer 2019, I think), Buff Priest was hugely effective. (Here's a video from Kibler about the deck from July 2019.) The deck was so powerful they had to un-buff Extra Arms.
You're right that tempo decks rely on synergies, and that was true for the Buff Priest too (e.g. Grave Horror's synergy with cheap buffs), and they need decent card draw/resource generation. The landscape has changed, but there are some corollaries that suggest this could be a real deck in Year of the Gryphon. Crimson Clergy replaces Northshire Cleric, Voracious Reader replaces Acolyte of Pain, Power Word: Feast replaces Extra Arms, the Grave Horror spell synergies see some replacement with the self harm tempo package (Raise Dead, Brittlebone Destroyer, Flesh Giant, and Soulbound Ashtongue).
It doesn't look exactly the same as Boomsday's Buff Priest, and it doesn't look exactly like Libram Paladin, but there are a lot of good building blocks here, and it wouldn't take much more content to push this archetype over the edge.
That Buff Priest you are talking about was great because it had finishers. It had Cleric and PW:Shield that let you draw a lot of cards while winning tempo and the most important part: Divine Spirit + Inner Fire. That combo let you finish the game in one turn. Right now priest has no finisher in order to win the game. If they clean your board, you are out of the game.
I agree with you, but my point is that it was a really good Tempo Priest deck (a thing you claimed would never be a thing), and that a lot of the same pieces that made it effective exist in different forms today. It probably needs one or two more big plays and a little more card draw, but it's close to what it needs. For instance, it's possible that Shadowform will be the thing that makes it work. That's easy to scoff at, but Midrange Hunter (a perennially successful archetype) achieves success by whittling down the opponent with their hero power while managing tempo. Priest will be able to tutor Shadowform and buffs, both of which that kind of deck will want.