Its basically bombs for warlock. Used properly this card is just absurd, dealing 21 damage for 2 mana. Combined with tamsin, its game ending damage.
But Garrote it is not. Your opponent can play around this. Just fill your hand and burn the curses away, or just pretend they don't exist and play your game. Because honestly, even when bomb warrior was terrorizing standard, it still usually took all the way till turn 10 to properly win the game against anything that's not aggro.
And then there's the problem of where this card belongs. Controlock is the obvious one, but you can't even hope to play it with Tickatus because then you'd burn your own curses off. And whether or not its game ending you're still using 3 cards off your hand to do nothing but pray to the rng gods that your opponent draws them. Is there any reason why you're not just playing fatigue questlock or owlock instead?
All the potential in the world. But we'll have to see whether those big brained pros can make it work better than fatigue quest and owlock.
So I'll admit that I'm not especially learned in math or programming, but, following your analogy, why would you start with the assumption that all the marbles are red and go to disprove it? Surely, it's a schrodinger's cat situation first, since you have no idea if there are any red marbles in the bag. Once you've thoroughly checked the bag and it's empty, you have in fact disproved that there were any red marbles in there.
If I'm missing something very obvious here, feel free to point it out to me!
I'm not particularly skilled at mathmatical theory either, but I view it in a similar fashion as Zelgadis does except my experience is with SQL. You can view the marble bag as "null". Null can be a unknown value or an absence of a value, where as an Empty or Blank string is a value, but is just empty.
To take this into HS situations: If HS does a "deck check" when a card is played it will probably do something like it looks at the deck's minion types. Populates those types into a separate temporary table.
If that table contains anything other than dragons, it fails the check and the card's battlecry won't go off.
If they wanted, they could have coded it to fail the check if the table is empty, but that doesn't make sense (and also increases code overhead by making a card do multiple checks)
If the table is null on minion types (meaning no minions exist) then technically it doesn't fail the check, because it's only failure code is if the table contains OTHER minion types. Not if the table contains "NULL" values (no value).
Its a situational card, and as such will likely never really see much play outside of discovers.
The main problem is obvious: its 6 mana, you don't get to choose what it attacks, and then its only ever powerful if your opponent goes wide.
The card may be situational but the upsides are great. Play this against any aggro tempo deck and instantly win. There's also Felwalker, which will cast this for free. That's something I guess.
It does demonstrate that the power level is trending upwards and that is concerning. On the other hand, games with fatigue as the win condition aren't the most interesting to play or watch, so forcing decks to have a quicker win condition is not a bad thing, in my opinion.
They generally allow the last set/mini-set/expansion of a year's rotation have the highest power level, since it will be "in standard" for the shortest period of time. But I do agree that when power levels trend upwards, it makes me pause.
Note that I'm talking about decks designed around fatigue as a win condition, not about cases where a match happens to go to fatigue. Those can be interesting and skill-testing, since you have to decide whether you can win in fatigue or whether you have a better chance if you make a push before then.
Agreed. Reading between the lines of your statement: Demon Seed Warlock was a mistake and effectively kills any control deck attempting to build out in this meta, fatigue between two control opponents is a skill test. Fatigue from a warlock is a stupid win condition.
It heals face, and then grants mana cheat for 2 mana. Really, is there anything else as simple, yet powerful?
Hit Dunk Tank with this card's effect and suddenly you're golden. Bolner OTK already plays those Armor Vendors, and I'd gladly take it out for this card.
Spell damage is always good in shaman, and here's a sticky minion with that tag.
Probably good in burn shaman, where even one tick of spell damage counts massively. I have high hopes for this card, but deep down I suspect shaman would rather just play a 2 mana spell damage minion than this card.
I understand that "If there are no non-Dragon minions in your deck" is unwieldy, but the existing text does not convey this battlecry would activate with only spells or no deck at all in the slightest. If there are no minions in your deck, then all the minions in your deck are not Dragons!
True...but It's also something that has existed before: Zephrys the Great currently works/worked based on deck restrictions. So if he is the last card in your deck, or rather even the ONLY card in your deck/hand, he still activates despite there being no other minions.
Font of Power also works in a similar fashion. If you happen to be a regular old mage with minions, but discover this at a point when your deck no longer exists (in fatigue), it will work: despite you having minions in your hand and starting off with minions in your deck at the beginning of the game.
Its almost a cruel joke. Rogue has all these cool deathrattle support cards and no real deathrattles to take advantage of.
On its own merits, this card is terrible. The cost is too high and if you're playing this you're likely filling your deck with deathrattle cards, most of which aren't very good played on its own. And then there's survivability, something which rogues struggle with, and this being an 8 mana card.
Ironically being able to draw 5 cards is also another problem. Since when has rogue ever struggle filling their hand with stuff?
So the first hurdle being good deathrattles, the second being surviving long enough to play this, and now the third: your hand must be 5 or less or this card losses its effectiveness. The only last silver lining for this card is the fact that we can hope and believe that team5 will never print this card unless they properly suspect its going to be at least playable: now, how many times have I said this about deathrattle rogue over the last 3 expansions at this point?
That Magister Dawngrasp interaction you mentioned has a double edge. You do discover two cards but you draw only one. Meaning unless you've draw options, you're really just 50-50 your choice of cards each turn, getting worse as the game progresses. In my opinion, that's something you dont want.
In any case, that mana increase is relevant, because its not easy even for mage to cast 7 mana do nothing, especially in a format like duels. A timely one too, because with most of the more dangerous treasures getting rarer or removed altogether, there isn't really alot of burn decks available so obviously something like ping mage gets better.
To get around this problem with discovering two, but drawing one: many mages started putting mana feeder panther (whatever the hero power/draw synergy card is) into their decks that way if need be, they can hero power (something they want to do anyways) to draw the extra discovers, granted this limits their action pool each round to potentially 6 mana tops (assuming they do both of the aforementioned actions)
I agree that the mana increase is largely irrelevant IF they are ahead. Ping mage has no problem casting frost nova+infinite arcane and stalling a turn.
And I disagree with what Avalon said on if they change the treasure to discover from a different pool it will "kill" the card. Discover itself is random and can be tailored in sooooooo many ways. "Discover a spell, discover arcane spells, discover spells that cost 5 or more, etc etc...) Changing it is the only way to reign it in. The nerf will slow decks down, but right now this signature treasure is the go to treasure for nearly all semi competent mage decks. It needs to be taken back in so the other treasures can be given equal opportunity.
The only reason why this card is viable at all is because its an SI7 card, of which without it would be the smallest turd floating in the sewers.
Because let's be honest here, you're never really holding this card in your hand for the late game. And the late game for quest rogue (where its most and perhaps only relevant in) is properly sealed with scabbs so its only real function is to essentially tick the quest.
I remember a time we were playing SI:7 Infiltrator merely because of the tag. This one will be no different.
Currently its not really that good. Or at least I should say it isn't good enough to ram itself into established decks.
Libram pally would be better served just playing those librams in the deck, and if they needed a clear option like Equality etc. it would still be better to just include that into your deck instead of this card, because discover or no, its still a gamble. The holy pool in pally isn't really that small it turns out, and there are genuine duds, like the many secrets.
Control pally doesn't exist currently, the best archetype in my opinion for this card to thrive. Maybe post rotation?
Theoretically this looks good, but honestly its never going to ever reach its full potential.
Play this on 3, your opponent damages it, and the turn after you buff it with noble mount? then it has 4 damage with somewhere around 3 health and divine shield. Wouldn't you be better off just playing Goody Two-Shields instead?
In the late game you can build up an absurdly damaging monster with librams, and then pray your opponent can't remove it. But then again, this applies to just about any minion, and since this card has no rush you dont have control the same way you would have if you have just buffed paladin's many taunt minions or just a plain rush minion.
I can't see this taking anything by storm. It gets even worse after librams rotate, and suddenly this card is just a slightly bigger Mana Addict.
Its deft support for quest dhunter. You can legit draw your entire deck post reward and just destroy your opponent that way.
But outside of that? Aggro dhunter is about as good as it can get. You can reduce its cost with skull, and have a draw engine for 1 mana. But if you're gonna play skull in your deck, then what are you doing with this card anyway?
Its just good. If you need tokens, well, here's some with naught but 1 mana. Why not? Even at its worst, its still two 1/1s for 1 mana, which is about standard for 1 drops anyway.
Its a decent clear option, and can easily turn aggressive to hand you a 2 mana deal 7 damage. Not too bad honestly.
But it'll likely be more utilized post rotation, after Immolation Aura gets the boot. Still, I like the idea of this card being able to deal game winning damage while also being useful as a clear.
This card has potential beyond the obvious quest hunter deck. What this card does is practically allow you to ping for 2 mana without losing any cards in hand, and that is not something that can be ignored for a class that usually plays aggro. Since it also allows you to hit face, its not really a loss in terms of aggression, so there's a rare flexibility there.
In quest hunter, this card is just too good not to be included. Quest hunter often loses steam early, so even a simple honor kill from this card is invaluable. Still dont think its going to be enough to make quest hunter more than tier 2, but the option is certainly there, and better off with it.
Its basically a smaller, weaker Guardian Animals that comes 3 turns earlier.
And that alone makes it viable. Had it grant rush, this would have been nuts. But it doesn't, so it sits somewhere around viable, but not game winning. But there are some applications that immediately comes to mind: Secret hunter with Teacher's Pet and Trampling Rhino, boar hunter, or hyper aggro hunter, with Furious Howl as reload so you can practically build an aggro deck with bs neutrals and a few core beasts.
Currently the card is simply bad. Hunters often have problems drawing, but this is the one meta where we have plenty of other options, from Multicaster to Barak Kodobane.
There is also the problem of where this card essentially fits into. Aggro tempo hunter would be the most obvious choice, so the vomit minion strat would then be followed up with a good 2 mana reload. Until rotation, however, Im not optimistic.
The main problem with this card is, as always with druid, consistency. If this practically guarantees Nourish, then its just absurdly powerful. But more likely it'll just give you a clear option, or a nice taunt, or some tokens. Not too bad, certainly, but not only would you need to take a gamble, you probably can't even play it out the same turn because this card costs 4.
Post rotation where the pool is smaller would benefit the card. Or team5 reprints or reintroduce Oasis Surger, so there's now two game winning choices in the pool, assuming nourish survives the rotation.
5 stars for the minion, 2 stars because its a druid minion. Its sad, because on its own the card is fundamentally sound, in fact its great. But trapped in a class that currently only plays either hyper aggro or ramp, this card just misses the mark.
Aggro druid has Park Panther, which comes out a turn earlier, and the healing is negligible in that deck. So no sound reason to have this card there. Ramp druid plays nothing but big stuff, where something like Cenarion Ward is simply the better option.
Well, there's some silver lining at least. The card is fundamentally sound, so maybe post rotation? Certainly not now.
Archivist Elysiana has only ever been viable because Dr. Boom, Mad Genius was broken, and the only way to win the mirrors was just this card. On its own merits elysiana has never truly been good, because it costed 8 (nerfed to 9 before reverting), had no taunt or rush, and is generally considered a tech card (against bombs, etc.)
This card shares many of its flaws, but the reward being so good, its likely worth the risk. I can already see druid decks with this card being tier 2. You're likely right that it wont break the meta, but not mainly because of power creep, but also because fundamentally its an 8 mana card with neither rush nor taunt, and does essentially nothing the turn its played.
It does demonstrate that the power level is trending upwards and that is concerning. On the other hand, games with fatigue as the win condition aren't the most interesting to play or watch, so forcing decks to have a quicker win condition is not a bad thing, in my opinion.
Note that I'm talking about decks designed around fatigue as a win condition, not about cases where a match happens to go to fatigue. Those can be interesting and skill-testing, since you have to decide whether you can win in fatigue or whether you have a better chance if you make a push before then.
New Warlock Spell - Curse of Agony
Its basically bombs for warlock. Used properly this card is just absurd, dealing 21 damage for 2 mana. Combined with tamsin, its game ending damage.
But Garrote it is not. Your opponent can play around this. Just fill your hand and burn the curses away, or just pretend they don't exist and play your game. Because honestly, even when bomb warrior was terrorizing standard, it still usually took all the way till turn 10 to properly win the game against anything that's not aggro.
And then there's the problem of where this card belongs. Controlock is the obvious one, but you can't even hope to play it with Tickatus because then you'd burn your own curses off. And whether or not its game ending you're still using 3 cards off your hand to do nothing but pray to the rng gods that your opponent draws them. Is there any reason why you're not just playing fatigue questlock or owlock instead?
All the potential in the world. But we'll have to see whether those big brained pros can make it work better than fatigue quest and owlock.
Blizzard Clarifies Treasures & Info on the New Kazakusan Legendary in Onyxia's Lair
I'm not particularly skilled at mathmatical theory either, but I view it in a similar fashion as Zelgadis does except my experience is with SQL. You can view the marble bag as "null". Null can be a unknown value or an absence of a value, where as an Empty or Blank string is a value, but is just empty.
To take this into HS situations: If HS does a "deck check" when a card is played it will probably do something like it looks at the deck's minion types. Populates those types into a separate temporary table.
If that table contains anything other than dragons, it fails the check and the card's battlecry won't go off.
If they wanted, they could have coded it to fail the check if the table is empty, but that doesn't make sense (and also increases code overhead by making a card do multiple checks)
If the table is null on minion types (meaning no minions exist) then technically it doesn't fail the check, because it's only failure code is if the table contains OTHER minion types. Not if the table contains "NULL" values (no value).
Hit It Very Hard
Huge from Blizzard to include a reference to that notorious "More dots" meme.
Delighted :D
Our Thoughts on the New Hearthstone Duels Balance Changes - Hero Power Mage Slowed Down
Rally the Troops solves the issue.
New Warlock Spell - Impfestation
Its a situational card, and as such will likely never really see much play outside of discovers.
The main problem is obvious: its 6 mana, you don't get to choose what it attacks, and then its only ever powerful if your opponent goes wide.
The card may be situational but the upsides are great. Play this against any aggro tempo deck and instantly win. There's also Felwalker, which will cast this for free. That's something I guess.
Blizzard Clarifies Treasures & Info on the New Kazakusan Legendary in Onyxia's Lair
They generally allow the last set/mini-set/expansion of a year's rotation have the highest power level, since it will be "in standard" for the shortest period of time. But I do agree that when power levels trend upwards, it makes me pause.
Agreed. Reading between the lines of your statement: Demon Seed Warlock was a mistake and effectively kills any control deck attempting to build out in this meta, fatigue between two control opponents is a skill test. Fatigue from a warlock is a stupid win condition.
New Shaman Spell - Bracing Cold
It heals face, and then grants mana cheat for 2 mana. Really, is there anything else as simple, yet powerful?
Hit Dunk Tank with this card's effect and suddenly you're golden. Bolner OTK already plays those Armor Vendors, and I'd gladly take it out for this card.
New Shaman Spell - Spirit Mount
Spell damage is always good in shaman, and here's a sticky minion with that tag.
Probably good in burn shaman, where even one tick of spell damage counts massively. I have high hopes for this card, but deep down I suspect shaman would rather just play a 2 mana spell damage minion than this card.
Blizzard Clarifies Treasures & Info on the New Kazakusan Legendary in Onyxia's Lair
True...but It's also something that has existed before: Zephrys the Great currently works/worked based on deck restrictions. So if he is the last card in your deck, or rather even the ONLY card in your deck/hand, he still activates despite there being no other minions.
Font of Power also works in a similar fashion. If you happen to be a regular old mage with minions, but discover this at a point when your deck no longer exists (in fatigue), it will work: despite you having minions in your hand and starting off with minions in your deck at the beginning of the game.
New Rogue Spell - Smokescreen
Its almost a cruel joke. Rogue has all these cool deathrattle support cards and no real deathrattles to take advantage of.
On its own merits, this card is terrible. The cost is too high and if you're playing this you're likely filling your deck with deathrattle cards, most of which aren't very good played on its own. And then there's survivability, something which rogues struggle with, and this being an 8 mana card.
Ironically being able to draw 5 cards is also another problem. Since when has rogue ever struggle filling their hand with stuff?
So the first hurdle being good deathrattles, the second being surviving long enough to play this, and now the third: your hand must be 5 or less or this card losses its effectiveness. The only last silver lining for this card is the fact that we can hope and believe that team5 will never print this card unless they properly suspect its going to be at least playable: now, how many times have I said this about deathrattle rogue over the last 3 expansions at this point?
Our Thoughts on the New Hearthstone Duels Balance Changes - Hero Power Mage Slowed Down
To get around this problem with discovering two, but drawing one: many mages started putting mana feeder panther (whatever the hero power/draw synergy card is) into their decks that way if need be, they can hero power (something they want to do anyways) to draw the extra discovers, granted this limits their action pool each round to potentially 6 mana tops (assuming they do both of the aforementioned actions)
I agree that the mana increase is largely irrelevant IF they are ahead. Ping mage has no problem casting frost nova+infinite arcane and stalling a turn.
And I disagree with what Avalon said on if they change the treasure to discover from a different pool it will "kill" the card. Discover itself is random and can be tailored in sooooooo many ways. "Discover a spell, discover arcane spells, discover spells that cost 5 or more, etc etc...) Changing it is the only way to reign it in. The nerf will slow decks down, but right now this signature treasure is the go to treasure for nearly all semi competent mage decks. It needs to be taken back in so the other treasures can be given equal opportunity.
New Rogue Minion - SI:7 Smuggler
The only reason why this card is viable at all is because its an SI7 card, of which without it would be the smallest turd floating in the sewers.
Because let's be honest here, you're never really holding this card in your hand for the late game. And the late game for quest rogue (where its most and perhaps only relevant in) is properly sealed with scabbs so its only real function is to essentially tick the quest.
I remember a time we were playing SI:7 Infiltrator merely because of the tag. This one will be no different.
New Paladin Minion - Battle Vicar
Currently its not really that good. Or at least I should say it isn't good enough to ram itself into established decks.
Libram pally would be better served just playing those librams in the deck, and if they needed a clear option like Equality etc. it would still be better to just include that into your deck instead of this card, because discover or no, its still a gamble. The holy pool in pally isn't really that small it turns out, and there are genuine duds, like the many secrets.
Control pally doesn't exist currently, the best archetype in my opinion for this card to thrive. Maybe post rotation?
Duels Treasures Enter Constructed! Kibler Reveals the Legendary Kazakusan for Onyxia's Lair
Uhm, Deck of Lunacy was nerfed specifically because it saw too much play in a high winrate deck.
New Paladin Minion - Stormwind Avenger
Theoretically this looks good, but honestly its never going to ever reach its full potential.
Play this on 3, your opponent damages it, and the turn after you buff it with noble mount? then it has 4 damage with somewhere around 3 health and divine shield. Wouldn't you be better off just playing Goody Two-Shields instead?
In the late game you can build up an absurdly damaging monster with librams, and then pray your opponent can't remove it. But then again, this applies to just about any minion, and since this card has no rush you dont have control the same way you would have if you have just buffed paladin's many taunt minions or just a plain rush minion.
I can't see this taking anything by storm. It gets even worse after librams rotate, and suddenly this card is just a slightly bigger Mana Addict.
New Demon Hunter Minion - Razorglaive Sentinel
Its deft support for quest dhunter. You can legit draw your entire deck post reward and just destroy your opponent that way.
But outside of that? Aggro dhunter is about as good as it can get. You can reduce its cost with skull, and have a draw engine for 1 mana. But if you're gonna play skull in your deck, then what are you doing with this card anyway?
New Demon Hunter Spell - Wings of Hate (Rank 1)
Its just good. If you need tokens, well, here's some with naught but 1 mana. Why not? Even at its worst, its still two 1/1s for 1 mana, which is about standard for 1 drops anyway.
New Demon Hunter Spell - Keen Reflex
Its a decent clear option, and can easily turn aggressive to hand you a 2 mana deal 7 damage. Not too bad honestly.
But it'll likely be more utilized post rotation, after Immolation Aura gets the boot. Still, I like the idea of this card being able to deal game winning damage while also being useful as a clear.
New Hunter Spell - Dragonbane Shot
This card has potential beyond the obvious quest hunter deck. What this card does is practically allow you to ping for 2 mana without losing any cards in hand, and that is not something that can be ignored for a class that usually plays aggro. Since it also allows you to hit face, its not really a loss in terms of aggression, so there's a rare flexibility there.
In quest hunter, this card is just too good not to be included. Quest hunter often loses steam early, so even a simple honor kill from this card is invaluable. Still dont think its going to be enough to make quest hunter more than tier 2, but the option is certainly there, and better off with it.
New Hunter Minion - Pet Collector
Its basically a smaller, weaker Guardian Animals that comes 3 turns earlier.
And that alone makes it viable. Had it grant rush, this would have been nuts. But it doesn't, so it sits somewhere around viable, but not game winning. But there are some applications that immediately comes to mind: Secret hunter with Teacher's Pet and Trampling Rhino, boar hunter, or hyper aggro hunter, with Furious Howl as reload so you can practically build an aggro deck with bs neutrals and a few core beasts.
New Hunter Spell - Furious Howl
Currently the card is simply bad. Hunters often have problems drawing, but this is the one meta where we have plenty of other options, from Multicaster to Barak Kodobane.
There is also the problem of where this card essentially fits into. Aggro tempo hunter would be the most obvious choice, so the vomit minion strat would then be followed up with a good 2 mana reload. Until rotation, however, Im not optimistic.
New Druid Minion - Raid Negotiator
The main problem with this card is, as always with druid, consistency. If this practically guarantees Nourish, then its just absurdly powerful. But more likely it'll just give you a clear option, or a nice taunt, or some tokens. Not too bad, certainly, but not only would you need to take a gamble, you probably can't even play it out the same turn because this card costs 4.
Post rotation where the pool is smaller would benefit the card. Or team5 reprints or reintroduce Oasis Surger, so there's now two game winning choices in the pool, assuming nourish survives the rotation.
New Druid Minion - Boomkin
5 stars for the minion, 2 stars because its a druid minion. Its sad, because on its own the card is fundamentally sound, in fact its great. But trapped in a class that currently only plays either hyper aggro or ramp, this card just misses the mark.
Aggro druid has Park Panther, which comes out a turn earlier, and the healing is negligible in that deck. So no sound reason to have this card there. Ramp druid plays nothing but big stuff, where something like Cenarion Ward is simply the better option.
Well, there's some silver lining at least. The card is fundamentally sound, so maybe post rotation? Certainly not now.
Blizzard Clarifies Treasures & Info on the New Kazakusan Legendary in Onyxia's Lair
Archivist Elysiana has only ever been viable because Dr. Boom, Mad Genius was broken, and the only way to win the mirrors was just this card. On its own merits elysiana has never truly been good, because it costed 8 (nerfed to 9 before reverting), had no taunt or rush, and is generally considered a tech card (against bombs, etc.)
This card shares many of its flaws, but the reward being so good, its likely worth the risk. I can already see druid decks with this card being tier 2. You're likely right that it wont break the meta, but not mainly because of power creep, but also because fundamentally its an 8 mana card with neither rush nor taunt, and does essentially nothing the turn its played.
Blizzard Clarifies Treasures & Info on the New Kazakusan Legendary in Onyxia's Lair
It does demonstrate that the power level is trending upwards and that is concerning. On the other hand, games with fatigue as the win condition aren't the most interesting to play or watch, so forcing decks to have a quicker win condition is not a bad thing, in my opinion.
Note that I'm talking about decks designed around fatigue as a win condition, not about cases where a match happens to go to fatigue. Those can be interesting and skill-testing, since you have to decide whether you can win in fatigue or whether you have a better chance if you make a push before then.