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Thief Rogue got some sweet sweet lovin! Gnoll and Tooth buffs make those cards very playable. Giving Burgler one more health does matter because there a lot of spells and weapons that do 3 damage. Tess to 7 is a great cherry on top.

Good riddance to Drek'Thar and Dragonbane Shot. Multistrike will still be good I think. It was that OP.

So many great buffs. I remember when something like this was just a pipe dream. I'm really glad Team 5 has come around to embracing buffs.

Also, Xhilag looking BONKERS.

Cool, thief rogue buff. And I just created thief deck. Also happy with warlock buffs (because I play him :P).

Dragonbane Shot Nerf sounds like a Buff for Wild Odd Quest Hunter *_*

Overall good changes.

Only downside for me is that they totally killed Drek'Thar. 

Compared to for example Occult Conjurer, summoning only one minion is often not even worth 4 mana anymore in the currently power creeped version of Hearthstone.

The Colossal buffs look nice, though I'm really sad that the Hunter Quest didn't get a nerf to the quest itself.

I think Xhilag’s Stalk's buff will be too much, but only time will tell. 

Also really like this as I have been playing all the buffed cards already in my fun/suboptimal decks

Lvl 81 today. All my gold is going into packs as I did not open any single legendary since expansion opening day and just waiting for pity timer until saving for miniset. Still have 2/3 of achivements to go.

Drekthar's refund policy really made my day.

Nice! This changes and the buffs/nerfs really made my day. Mostly drekthar as I bought it with gold.

Those are quite accurate buff predictions, some are on-the-nose. Congrats!

Still no fel buffs for Warlock tho...

Oh, so it summoning two units is not actually a WoW lore perspective, it just mirrors an effect of it's sister card.

So I assume the author was referencing it had two wolves in the art when he mentions that summoning just one would break the flavor.

I won't lie, Iceblood Tower really makes the deck super inconsistent. I probably had 2 out of 10 times where it actually cast a helpful spell or didn't inflict damage onto me. I'd recommend replacing it with Pyroblast.

Level 98 at the start of the day today. Should easily pass 100/the end of the track by the end of today. I have two 1200 point dailies and two of my weekly tasks left, so plenty of XP on demand. Can't wait to get those final Tavern Pass portraits, a couple of them are awesome.

Regarding your last paragraph, I would argue the Behemoth fits very well with priest mechanically: a big value minion with lots of healing and effectively a destroy effect is very on-brand for the class. Not every priest archetype will want to use it of course, but there's no doubt it fits the class. However, it does suffer from priest already having good healing, so other classes might be happier to generate a Behemoth than priest is to run it.

I guess rogue's current position is a great demonstration of how heavily success depends on the meta, and not just on how good your own cards are. Rogue's Year of the Gryphon archetypes were all left incomplete upon rotation, and VSC only pushed pirates, hence why that class is stuck with only 1 deck atm, and double-hence why a class that's usually extremely resilient in the meta is now so beholden to it. Priest is much less resilient than rogue, and often finds itself in the dumps. That's relevant here because it means it's often not a problem of priest cards being weak so much as the class's overall design being easily countered (and then everyone hates it when it's top dog...). So to me it looks like people are making Behemoth the scapegoat for much wider priest problems, and doing so for no better reason than that it's the latest set's flagship card.

On a broader comment about the colossal cards, I think they have dug themselves a bit of a hole with them. Most of them are serious power creep over previous big minions, and I definitely count Behemoth in that already. (It's so much better than Ragnaros, Lightlord is almost upsetting :P) I'm always very conservative with my thoughts on power creep, but we should still be mindful of what benchmark we are comparing them and future cards to. I feel like perhaps 'Nellie is too strong' should be the narrative here, not that Behemoth is too weak.

Grats to Ben and his team.
No idea what it's going to be, was hoping something very nice and tempting. But (my opinion only) I have never been and never will be a fan of the whole Marvel stuff. Guess I am too old haha

But good luck Ben and friends

Completely agree with you dapperdog, it happens a lot. Seems to increase with every patch. 
I never ragequit, but i start to losing my patience with all those disconnections. It's not my pc or internet either.

The only time for me, that behemoth worked the way you describe it is largely whenever Im not playing it as priest. Or whenever Im playing against an aggro deck that somehow manages to last past 8 turns. In any case, in absence of a case study, we can agree to disagree on this one.

Im actually looking at this card being buffed to push quest and highlander archetypes that may well benefit the most from this being 7 mana. Looking at the list there's really not many cards that needs a buff that won't end up buffing another archetype that will then take over the priest class. From that perspective, buffing this card seems like a no brainer.

I would agree that for the most part people are sneering at this card because its supposed to be the flagship of the class in this expansion. I mean, look at nellie and leviathan and somehow those cards are 7 mana. But on its own merits, this is one card that simply doesn't seem to fit priest at all. What purpose could a priest, in consideration of what priests tends to do and what they have at the moment in standard, does this card even fit in? If nothing else, buffing it to 7 (and likely lowering its stats) would make it fit more roles. Maybe its fast enough now to be a stabilizer - past turn 6, one turn can mean a lot.

Quote From dapperdog

The stealth effect on behemoth makes sense flavorwise, but the problem is that when it attacks it losses its stealth, so in effect what this does is merely make it stealth if there's no enemy minions around. I think the mana reduction to 7 would be enough. 8/10 for 7 mana with lifesteal, that's very nearly illegal.

As for the proposed buffs to rogue, Im not sure if it needs any help except reverting gnoll back. The main problem with rogue is simply that it has much less options than it did before. Losing Wand Thief is one of the biggest reason why only pirate rogue can exist today. This can be remedied in the midset or future expansions. I think we can survive with pirate rogue for the next 3 months. Its hardly a bad deck, only losses badly to dhunter who will doubtless be nerfed.

Also, fel warlock needs more than buffs, it needs an overhaul. Its just really weak, and in need of a good pay off. None of the cards offer that, and a small mana push here and there would not change this.

Burgle rogue actully needs help, more then just gnoll( and the rogue in AV wasnt a burgle deck, it was a tempo deck that run maestra and gnolls to be free of passage.

Tooth of Neferian  and burglar are just terrible/really weak cards

Pirate Rogue doesnt need (much) help, if blizz wants burgle rogue to be anything but completly dead and worthless it actulyll really needs the buffs.

And current lack of options for rogue is aslo its overall lack of draw after loss of swindle and passage, there is sprint but its terrible and smokescreen which is even worse unless have a full on DR deck (which is aslo doesnte xcist/is terrible atm)

Quote From lMarcusl

Props on the article but...you're out of your mind if you think Lightbomb at 5 is reasonable. Even in Wild that's be offensive (I run it in Wild Questline Priest, a meme deck, and it destroys). It's a more predictable and generally more powerful boardclear than Mass Hysteria, it deserves to be more expensive as a result.

But lightbomb just doesnt see play, and mass hysteria can clear alot more boards then lightbomb.

Aslong they got more hp the attack (which isnt exactly uncommon), lightbomb doesnt clear. Mass Hysteria often is actully 5 mana twistin,g nether.

In my experience, it has actually been strongest when I'm a decent way behind, just not quite so overwhelmed that the opponent will still have lethal the next turn. In those cases, they have to divert attention to killing it lest it just heals everything back up again, and it ends up like this big removal (and often pseudo-AoE as minions trade into it) that also heals for a ton. I certainly don't count that situation as 'winning already', and I wouldn't call it a win more card. Rather, it's priest's best way to turn a losing game into a winning one. It's not even bad against slow decks: sure the healing matters less, but it still goes at least 2-for-1 every time.

Deep down, I think there's a philosophical aspect to choosing which cards to buff. If you have a bad deck and only one card in it that ends up with a positive played win rate (and it isn't an OTK card since that would seriously skew it), then that card should be the last one you consider buffing. Otherwise you're actively pushing power creep and making the deck super reliant on finding that one card at the right time.

In this case, I think people are just targeting the Behemoth because it's a colossal and that's the flagship cycle of cards this set, so it is the first card people think of. It's the same with Xhilag, though that card actually is weak at least.

Blackwater Behemoth wouldn't lose stealth because it doesn't attack. It forces enemy minion to attack it.

That being said I think either of the buffs proposed would be pretty much okay.

Not that mage needed the help with quest line completion, but having minions to interact with is better than playing solitaire I feel

Its win rate is high likely because of the meta, which is pretty aggressive. If priest somehow survives until turn 8 in a quest hunter or dhunter game, then its likely going to seal the win for you. But if you're playing from behind, you're likely dead before this even comes out so that might explain its good play win rate.

According to hsreplay, the play win rate and mulligan win rate is about 18 points apart, while its play win rate vs its drawn win rate is 10 points apart. I think we can call it a win more card. If its improved to the 7 mana slot, then it'll actually do more than just winning a game that youre winning already.

No, units lose stealth when they "take action". If you mass hysteria a normal unit and it attacks a stealth one without killing it, the stealth stays stealth

The stealth effect on behemoth makes sense flavorwise, but the problem is that when it attacks it losses its stealth, so in effect what this does is merely make it stealth if there's no enemy minions around. I think the mana reduction to 7 would be enough. 8/10 for 7 mana with lifesteal, that's very nearly illegal.

As for the proposed buffs to rogue, Im not sure if it needs any help except reverting gnoll back. The main problem with rogue is simply that it has much less options than it did before. Losing Wand Thief is one of the biggest reason why only pirate rogue can exist today. This can be remedied in the midset or future expansions. I think we can survive with pirate rogue for the next 3 months. Its hardly a bad deck, only losses badly to dhunter who will doubtless be nerfed.

Also, fel warlock needs more than buffs, it needs an overhaul. Its just really weak, and in need of a good pay off. None of the cards offer that, and a small mana push here and there would not change this.