I disagree with Zilean since predict was released first in shurima and also has the largest support there. However Ekko is proably the champion you meant since predict never really was a P&Z theme and doesn't seem to become a p&z theme anytime soon.
I know the devs want to release a champion for every region to keep the balance between regions but if that means that a theme meant for 1 region is split upon 2 regions to support 2 different champions with the same theme it has to lead to forced pairs.
My solution for that they should make more use of the multiregion concept on support cards. Ziggs in Shurima bandle? Why not make many of his followers dual region aswell making only winconditions like The Arsenal mono region.
An other approach would be to release champion pairs for the same region giving up the approach to release a champion for 1 region at a time and although this pushes certain regions a lot, it doesn't come with the issue of forced regions pairs since the entire theme is in the same region.
How about...a Corruptible Hero card? I had the art for a Nightmare-Ysera, and found a similar pose for regular-Ysera, so why not, right? Edit: No wonder that art exists: it's the art for Ysera the Green, the Battlegrounds skin lol whoops.
I see this card kind of like the split between Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike, to be honest: you play the regular version or the Corrupted version for different reasons. The original is the top-end of a Treant or Aggro/Token deck, where you play a bunch of cheap minions and then turn them into badasses. The Corrupted Ysera card, conversely, is for a Control Druid that wants to keep removing the enemy's board before turning the tables with the Hero Power.
The former's Hero Power is stupid easy to upgrade, so I am concerned about that, but I want the base effects to remain the same for each (because that's what Blizzard would probably do, I think, to keep things simple and understandable). Only the Battlecry and the upgrade part are different. Edit: Maybe they should both say "Give a minion +1/+1 this turn"? That way the normal version would run out of steam, and the minions would revert to their small selves afterward.
In building your deck towards one or the other, normal or Corrupted, you are demonstrating your allegiance between The Dream or The Nightmare.
Here's an attempt at using the Dormant keyword, but since we're talking about Nightmares and Corruption I tried to push it into a more aggressive direction.
Dormant heroes can't attack, be attacked, take damage or be healed (just like Dormant minions - duh!). This card is meant to set up Two-Turn-Kills, by effectively 'freezing' your opponent's Health between two turns.
Commenting nearly 2 years after you posted this: I think you're a prophet. If you look at what has happened with the expansions, the new regions basically have 9 parts of their identity, one for every other region.
Bandle City, the newest region, is the most egrigious example of it. It's identity is so incoherent because it's trying to appeal to every region in drastically different ways. You have the Bandle+Shadow Isles pairing which is "do a lot of damage to enemy units" and there's no shared identity between that and the Bandle+Ionia pairing which is recalling stuff.
I don't know where the source of this quote is from, but I remember that a rioter has said that champions are allowed to break the color pie. I think it's gotten to the point where they're taking this to the extreme, where a champion will break outside the identity of their region, and as a result all their followers will as well. Good examples of this are Zilean, Nasus, Veigar, Kennen, and Ziggs.
For those not in the know, the Emerald Nightmare is a corrupting influence on the Emerald Dream, which is a spirit realm watched over by Ysera. Those affected by the Nightmare are driven to madness and (generally) lost forever, but it can also make them incredibly powerful in the process. The Emerald Nightmare originated from when the roots of the World Tree grew so far into the ground that they touched the prison of Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, although N'Zoth, the Corruptor has also had an influence as well. It is also a WoW raid, featuring numerous bosses (including Il'gynoth, a corrupted Cenarius, and Xavius as the final boss).
If you're looking to create Legendary minions, I would start with either "Xavius, Nightmare Lord" or a corrupted version of Ysera or Cenarius. There are also the "Dragons of Nightmare", which include Emeriss. For non-Legendaries, satyrs are a good one: corrupted minions in general are a great starting point. Druids of all races, night elves, wildlife, and green dragons are the most susceptible to the Nightmare. "Evil" spells focused on death and decay are another option.
In terms of art, red is the primary color of the Nightmare, followed by black and purple.
In terms of expansions, either a custom watermark, Whispers of the Old Gods, or Madness at the Darkmoon Faire would probably be best, unless you can find a reason for the card to be situated elsewhere.
That should be enough to get you started; you can always dig deeper if you'd like :)
If I'm not mistaken, Satyrs are basically corrupted Night Elves, so I thought about implementing this mechanically. I put it in the mini set because the Corrupted version is a non-Warlock/DH Demon, which was kind of an Outlands only thing.
Good luck Avalon and have fun with the last part of the grind before getting that sweet sweet reward at the very end.
As for my own progression, I have been playing all classes slowly but steadily towards the next checkpoint of 1500 wins. I really tried to get the custom made All classes at 1337 wins achievement set by anchorm4n along the way, but alas I did not realize playing Diablo in Duels counts towards Warrior wins and I accidentally crossed the 1337 wins mark at one point.
Here are the new win counts (+940 wins in total since my last report):
Currently level 61 with no tavern pass and current weekly quests still to go.
I've mostly been achievement hunting with what I have available, 40% done so far, Xmas break helps as well. I don't mind the meta so much other than going against priest or Qwarrior/Qwarlock. Thankfully, freeze shaman achievement hunting = easy wins against Pirate Garrosh.
My favorite thing to do so far has been to have Yogg in my freeze shaman and get to play his effect 3 times total with parrot.
Greetings everyone, how are these winter holidays going? Hope you're all okay.
I brought this thread back to life just to say that recently I've been grinding Demon Hunter for that sweet sweet Demonic Illidan, and with the release of FiAV I decided to make the final push.
I am currently 30-ish wins away from the finishing line, and I can't wait to set that skin as the default one!
Thank you for the highlight! Unlike previous decks I’ve been working on, this questline birb one has hit it’s more or less refined state for what I’m trying to do. I did change out Cornelius for a Psychopomp to help out the 4 drop spot a little bit more. I’m still not sure which I like better but it is nice to have a win condition baked into a bird priest deck for once other than stealing everything back and transforming it. Even in the event that the questline reward gets hit by Dirty Rat, I’ve still usually been able to win through either the Xyrella hero power or the waves of resurrections wearing the opponent down. It’s been a very fun deck so far and I’m proud of it
I will say this though, and this is my personal opinion: the reason why I haven't completely given up on Mercs (and HS in general) is that the devs still care about the game. I don't put my money on it because I don't like a lot of the current design decisions (or because I don't want to spend 20€ on 8 Jpegs and a couple of voicelines in BGs case [come on, T5, lower those prices, I bought Valheim for 17€ around 5 months ago and have almost 300 hours of play time already while juggling studies and work, that's just so much more value than what you're offering it's almost sad]), but I understand why people still put money on this game. Just look at how the devs still try to cater to the requests of the community while having to deal with Bobby Kotick's greedy little shadow everywhere. Iksar doesn't need to do weekly AMAs, he chooses to. Celestalon doesn't need to do weird puzzles for us, he chooses to (although dude, spend more time fixing bugs, Wildpaw Gnoll is a buggy mess, for example). Those are just some examples. But we also see a lot of community interaction through advertising content creators and other background stuff like that. That's why HS survived through 7 years of game life or the rise of other digital card games like LoR or MtG Arena or Artifact (LUL) or other "HS killers".
I dont actually recall a Wildpaw Gnoll bug, far as I know its working as intended. Can you clarify on this?
And it's not like we only see Activision's grubby little fingers in Mercenaries, I feel a non insignificant percentage of the design process in Standard HS is revolved around selling the newest expansion above all things, which is why the newest expansions feel like the most broken ones (just look at a card like Soulciologist Malicia, an insanely powerful card that was a staple for a couple of expansion cycles before being rendered useless not because she was nerfed but because the environment around her just started chewing her for breakfast) [yes, this is a power creep rant, you can ignore it].
I dont think there's anything particularly wrong if expansions are designed to overtake the previous meta. In fact, I'd argue that's particularly one thing it should be doing: freshen up the meta, something which the midset tends to fail doing.
There are cards that are still seeing play from earlier expansion. Librams, amusingly enough, sees more play after it was first introduced and are still seeing play now. Insane cards can be pushed away simply because of the meta is not conducive to it, not necessarily because of power creep.
Regarding the Gnoll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Xy831K9Q Starts at 1:28. And something similar did happen to me. In my case, I was playing wild, added Grumble, Worldshaker to my hand (so far so good), played him and returned him to hand using Shadowstep (at which point Wildpaw Gnoll's cost did not decrease) and replayed him, with Wildpaw Gnoll increasing its cost. I don't have Maestra, so I was always a Rogue, so the card couldn't even get "confused" by that factor.
Regarding the Librams: they did get buffed. Aldor Attendant started as a 2 mana 2/3. Not saying that's the only reason the package became good, but it did become much more efficient from that point onward. But that wasn't my point regarding power creep. I believe the current design process has the flaw of shunning past expansions too hard. Yes, a card like The Demon Seed can exist, but if every other warlock archetype gets completely outclassed by it, then that card becomes a problem. And while it's impossible to have a meta where every card has similar power levels, it is possible to have metas where weaker archetypes can still fight with stronger ones, like the Un'Goro meta or even the OG Old Gods meta. It just feels the current metas revolve too much around the new instead of harmonizing the new with the old.
EDIT: Although I do have to say, the Libram package is still one of their best designs regarding balancing the new with the old.
Thanks for the Wildpaw Gnoll note. Interesting bug. Gonna test a little of this myself later.
Regarding the impact of current expansions versus the old, I still think team5 got it mostly right, or at least the intention is correct: new expansions should introduce new decks, and the goal is to have as many new cards see play as possible. Often enough this means power creeping, or deliberate design decisions to disadvantage old cards in favor of newer ones. A good example would be the introduction of new frost spells in shaman, so usage of Primal Dungeoneer is theoretically disadvantaged, as inclusion of frost spells affects its consistency.
Harmonizing with the old is hard when you're trying to get people to play new cards. To do this, they would need to dedicate some cards to support old existing decks, but this would run counter to their design decision to have the new expansion stand out. Witchwood was deliberately designed to be weaker than the preceeding expansions, and as a result many of its cards never saw light of day.
Besides, there's no reason to believe the old decks can't function in the new ecosystem. Rush warrior can still play, and control priest arguably just evolved into the current existing quest priest. Face hunter from barrens is still here, as is the many iterations of libram paladin. One of the ways I enjoy hearthstone is to engineer old decks to new expansions and while I dont always meet success, that doesn't mean they're completely unplayable.
Also, I think we can all agree that stormwind's meta is an anomaly: a once in a lifetime situation where cards are so disgustingly polarizing that it strangled the game for weeks. Using that as examples should be done sparingly, because I think its unanimous, that this is the extreme end of examples of unhealthy new expansion cards (pre-nerfed).
That Gaby concede is legitimately one of the craziest things Ive seen in a tournament (albeit in this case a semi-tournament) setting. Literally got destroyed by maestra.
I enjoyed that tournament to be honest. Let's hope for more from the community for these concept fun tournaments. Maybe one day we'll even see seatstory cup again.
I will say this though, and this is my personal opinion: the reason why I haven't completely given up on Mercs (and HS in general) is that the devs still care about the game. I don't put my money on it because I don't like a lot of the current design decisions (or because I don't want to spend 20€ on 8 Jpegs and a couple of voicelines in BGs case [come on, T5, lower those prices, I bought Valheim for 17€ around 5 months ago and have almost 300 hours of play time already while juggling studies and work, that's just so much more value than what you're offering it's almost sad]), but I understand why people still put money on this game. Just look at how the devs still try to cater to the requests of the community while having to deal with Bobby Kotick's greedy little shadow everywhere. Iksar doesn't need to do weekly AMAs, he chooses to. Celestalon doesn't need to do weird puzzles for us, he chooses to (although dude, spend more time fixing bugs, Wildpaw Gnoll is a buggy mess, for example). Those are just some examples. But we also see a lot of community interaction through advertising content creators and other background stuff like that. That's why HS survived through 7 years of game life or the rise of other digital card games like LoR or MtG Arena or Artifact (LUL) or other "HS killers".
I dont actually recall a Wildpaw Gnoll bug, far as I know its working as intended. Can you clarify on this?
And it's not like we only see Activision's grubby little fingers in Mercenaries, I feel a non insignificant percentage of the design process in Standard HS is revolved around selling the newest expansion above all things, which is why the newest expansions feel like the most broken ones (just look at a card like Soulciologist Malicia, an insanely powerful card that was a staple for a couple of expansion cycles before being rendered useless not because she was nerfed but because the environment around her just started chewing her for breakfast) [yes, this is a power creep rant, you can ignore it].
I dont think there's anything particularly wrong if expansions are designed to overtake the previous meta. In fact, I'd argue that's particularly one thing it should be doing: freshen up the meta, something which the midset tends to fail doing.
There are cards that are still seeing play from earlier expansion. Librams, amusingly enough, sees more play after it was first introduced and are still seeing play now. Insane cards can be pushed away simply because of the meta is not conducive to it, not necessarily because of power creep.
Regarding the Gnoll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Xy831K9Q Starts at 1:28. And something similar did happen to me. In my case, I was playing wild, added Grumble, Worldshaker to my hand (so far so good), played him and returned him to hand using Shadowstep (at which point Wildpaw Gnoll's cost did not decrease) and replayed him, with Wildpaw Gnoll increasing its cost. I don't have Maestra, so I was always a Rogue, so the card couldn't even get "confused" by that factor.
Regarding the Librams: they did get buffed. Aldor Attendant started as a 2 mana 2/3. Not saying that's the only reason the package became good, but it did become much more efficient from that point onward. But that wasn't my point regarding power creep. I believe the current design process has the flaw of shunning past expansions too hard. Yes, a card like The Demon Seed can exist, but if every other warlock archetype gets completely outclassed by it, then that card becomes a problem. And while it's impossible to have a meta where every card has similar power levels, it is possible to have metas where weaker archetypes can still fight with stronger ones, like the Un'Goro meta or even the OG Old Gods meta. It just feels the current metas revolve too much around the new instead of harmonizing the new with the old.
EDIT: Although I do have to say, the Libram package is still one of their best designs regarding balancing the new with the old.
Does each region have enough of an identity?
I disagree with Zilean since predict was released first in shurima and also has the largest support there. However Ekko is proably the champion you meant since predict never really was a P&Z theme and doesn't seem to become a p&z theme anytime soon.
I know the devs want to release a champion for every region to keep the balance between regions but if that means that a theme meant for 1 region is split upon 2 regions to support 2 different champions with the same theme it has to lead to forced pairs.
My solution for that they should make more use of the multiregion concept on support cards. Ziggs in Shurima bandle? Why not make many of his followers dual region aswell making only winconditions like The Arsenal mono region.
An other approach would be to release champion pairs for the same region giving up the approach to release a champion for 1 region at a time and although this pushes certain regions a lot, it doesn't come with the issue of forced regions pairs since the entire theme is in the same region.
Combo Harvester - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Congrats to BloodMefist!
Frozen Festivities - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Congrats to Wailor and DatMageDoe!
This Week's Top Hearthstone Twitch Clips Featuring Kripparrian, Thijs, & Rdu
A Kripp highlight? Does he stream anything besides complaining about RNG? /s
Nightmare On Emerald Street - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
How about...a Corruptible Hero card? I had the art for a Nightmare-Ysera, and found a similar pose for regular-Ysera, so why not, right? Edit: No wonder that art exists: it's the art for Ysera the Green, the Battlegrounds skin lol whoops.
I see this card kind of like the split between Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike, to be honest: you play the regular version or the Corrupted version for different reasons. The original is the top-end of a Treant or Aggro/Token deck, where you play a bunch of cheap minions and then turn them into badasses. The Corrupted Ysera card, conversely, is for a Control Druid that wants to keep removing the enemy's board before turning the tables with the Hero Power.
The former's Hero Power is stupid easy to upgrade, so I am concerned about that, but I want the base effects to remain the same for each (because that's what Blizzard would probably do, I think, to keep things simple and understandable). Only the Battlecry and the upgrade part are different. Edit: Maybe they should both say "Give a minion +1/+1 this turn"? That way the normal version would run out of steam, and the minions would revert to their small selves afterward.
In building your deck towards one or the other, normal or Corrupted, you are demonstrating your allegiance between The Dream or The Nightmare.
Nightmare On Emerald Street - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Here's an attempt at using the Dormant keyword, but since we're talking about Nightmares and Corruption I tried to push it into a more aggressive direction.
Dormant heroes can't attack, be attacked, take damage or be healed (just like Dormant minions - duh!). This card is meant to set up Two-Turn-Kills, by effectively 'freezing' your opponent's Health between two turns.
Does each region have enough of an identity?
Commenting nearly 2 years after you posted this: I think you're a prophet. If you look at what has happened with the expansions, the new regions basically have 9 parts of their identity, one for every other region.
Bandle City, the newest region, is the most egrigious example of it. It's identity is so incoherent because it's trying to appeal to every region in drastically different ways. You have the Bandle+Shadow Isles pairing which is "do a lot of damage to enemy units" and there's no shared identity between that and the Bandle+Ionia pairing which is recalling stuff.
I don't know where the source of this quote is from, but I remember that a rioter has said that champions are allowed to break the color pie. I think it's gotten to the point where they're taking this to the extreme, where a champion will break outside the identity of their region, and as a result all their followers will as well. Good examples of this are Zilean, Nasus, Veigar, Kennen, and Ziggs.
Combo Harvester - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Congratulations to BloodMefist for the victory (and it being their own comp to boot!) :D
Nightmare On Emerald Street - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
For those not in the know, the Emerald Nightmare is a corrupting influence on the Emerald Dream, which is a spirit realm watched over by Ysera. Those affected by the Nightmare are driven to madness and (generally) lost forever, but it can also make them incredibly powerful in the process. The Emerald Nightmare originated from when the roots of the World Tree grew so far into the ground that they touched the prison of Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, although N'Zoth, the Corruptor has also had an influence as well. It is also a WoW raid, featuring numerous bosses (including Il'gynoth, a corrupted Cenarius, and Xavius as the final boss).
If you're looking to create Legendary minions, I would start with either "Xavius, Nightmare Lord" or a corrupted version of Ysera or Cenarius. There are also the "Dragons of Nightmare", which include Emeriss. For non-Legendaries, satyrs are a good one: corrupted minions in general are a great starting point. Druids of all races, night elves, wildlife, and green dragons are the most susceptible to the Nightmare. "Evil" spells focused on death and decay are another option.
In terms of art, red is the primary color of the Nightmare, followed by black and purple.
In terms of expansions, either a custom watermark, Whispers of the Old Gods, or Madness at the Darkmoon Faire would probably be best, unless you can find a reason for the card to be situated elsewhere.
That should be enough to get you started; you can always dig deeper if you'd like :)
[Duels] AgentCroque`s 12 Win Spiked Arms Pirate Warrior
Yea, there are a few options that are alternatives for korkron elite.
Combo Harvester - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Congrats, Mefist! Very cool card.
(Btw, I have lost count of the times I've been the runner up this season XD)
Nightmare On Emerald Street - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
If I'm not mistaken, Satyrs are basically corrupted Night Elves, so I thought about implementing this mechanically. I put it in the mini set because the Corrupted version is a non-Warlock/DH Demon, which was kind of an Outlands only thing.
Nightmare On Emerald Street - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Competition Theme: Nightmare On Emerald Street
It's time to turn our dreams into reality! But our sleep has been far too restless lately... oh dear...
Our very own linkblade91 is looking for a different kind of Druid this week. Dream up some nightmarish cards for him!
As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
Discussion Thread Rules
No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.
Golden Hero Portrait - Completionist & Grind
Good luck Avalon and have fun with the last part of the grind before getting that sweet sweet reward at the very end.
As for my own progression, I have been playing all classes slowly but steadily towards the next checkpoint of 1500 wins. I really tried to get the custom made All classes at 1337 wins achievement set by anchorm4n along the way, but alas I did not realize playing Diablo in Duels counts towards Warrior wins and I accidentally crossed the 1337 wins mark at one point.
Here are the new win counts (+940 wins in total since my last report):
How to Complete Alterac Valley's Priest Achievements for Rewards Track Experience - Great Deck Lists!
Not gonna lie: it took me quite a lot of work is a short window of time, but I am glad you folks are enjoying it!
How to Complete Alterac Valley's Priest Achievements for Rewards Track Experience - Great Deck Lists!
Wow, you're really pushing out these achievement guides fast this expansion Avalon, keep up the good work!
Shadowcrafter Scabbs
Great against rattle priest
Rewards Track Progress: 4.0
Currently level 61 with no tavern pass and current weekly quests still to go.
I've mostly been achievement hunting with what I have available, 40% done so far, Xmas break helps as well. I don't mind the meta so much other than going against priest or Qwarrior/Qwarlock. Thankfully, freeze shaman achievement hunting = easy wins against Pirate Garrosh.
My favorite thing to do so far has been to have Yogg in my freeze shaman and get to play his effect 3 times total with parrot.
Magnificent Multiplying Macaw Battlecry Freeze Shaman Deck List and Guide - Memes and Dreams #22
But you won't get anything done memeing like this ;)
Golden Hero Portrait - Completionist & Grind
Greetings everyone, how are these winter holidays going? Hope you're all okay.
I brought this thread back to life just to say that recently I've been grinding Demon Hunter for that sweet sweet Demonic Illidan, and with the release of FiAV I decided to make the final push.
I am currently 30-ish wins away from the finishing line, and I can't wait to set that skin as the default one!
Weekend of Wild Hearthstone Decks - Questline Priest, Deathrattle Rogue, Odd Control Mage, & More!
Thank you for the highlight! Unlike previous decks I’ve been working on, this questline birb one has hit it’s more or less refined state for what I’m trying to do. I did change out Cornelius for a Psychopomp to help out the 4 drop spot a little bit more. I’m still not sure which I like better but it is nice to have a win condition baked into a bird priest deck for once other than stealing everything back and transforming it. Even in the event that the questline reward gets hit by Dirty Rat, I’ve still usually been able to win through either the Xyrella hero power or the waves of resurrections wearing the opponent down. It’s been a very fun deck so far and I’m proud of it
Can we talk about Mercenaries?
Thanks for the Wildpaw Gnoll note. Interesting bug. Gonna test a little of this myself later.
Regarding the impact of current expansions versus the old, I still think team5 got it mostly right, or at least the intention is correct: new expansions should introduce new decks, and the goal is to have as many new cards see play as possible. Often enough this means power creeping, or deliberate design decisions to disadvantage old cards in favor of newer ones. A good example would be the introduction of new frost spells in shaman, so usage of Primal Dungeoneer is theoretically disadvantaged, as inclusion of frost spells affects its consistency.
Harmonizing with the old is hard when you're trying to get people to play new cards. To do this, they would need to dedicate some cards to support old existing decks, but this would run counter to their design decision to have the new expansion stand out. Witchwood was deliberately designed to be weaker than the preceeding expansions, and as a result many of its cards never saw light of day.
Besides, there's no reason to believe the old decks can't function in the new ecosystem. Rush warrior can still play, and control priest arguably just evolved into the current existing quest priest. Face hunter from barrens is still here, as is the many iterations of libram paladin. One of the ways I enjoy hearthstone is to engineer old decks to new expansions and while I dont always meet success, that doesn't mean they're completely unplayable.
Also, I think we can all agree that stormwind's meta is an anomaly: a once in a lifetime situation where cards are so disgustingly polarizing that it strangled the game for weeks. Using that as examples should be done sparingly, because I think its unanimous, that this is the extreme end of examples of unhealthy new expansion cards (pre-nerfed).
This Week's Top Hearthstone Twitch Clips Featuring Kripparrian, Thijs, & Rdu
That Gaby concede is legitimately one of the craziest things Ive seen in a tournament (albeit in this case a semi-tournament) setting. Literally got destroyed by maestra.
I enjoyed that tournament to be honest. Let's hope for more from the community for these concept fun tournaments. Maybe one day we'll even see seatstory cup again.
Can we talk about Mercenaries?
Regarding the Gnoll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Xy831K9Q Starts at 1:28. And something similar did happen to me. In my case, I was playing wild, added Grumble, Worldshaker to my hand (so far so good), played him and returned him to hand using Shadowstep (at which point Wildpaw Gnoll's cost did not decrease) and replayed him, with Wildpaw Gnoll increasing its cost. I don't have Maestra, so I was always a Rogue, so the card couldn't even get "confused" by that factor.
Regarding the Librams: they did get buffed. Aldor Attendant started as a 2 mana 2/3. Not saying that's the only reason the package became good, but it did become much more efficient from that point onward. But that wasn't my point regarding power creep. I believe the current design process has the flaw of shunning past expansions too hard. Yes, a card like The Demon Seed can exist, but if every other warlock archetype gets completely outclassed by it, then that card becomes a problem. And while it's impossible to have a meta where every card has similar power levels, it is possible to have metas where weaker archetypes can still fight with stronger ones, like the Un'Goro meta or even the OG Old Gods meta. It just feels the current metas revolve too much around the new instead of harmonizing the new with the old.
EDIT: Although I do have to say, the Libram package is still one of their best designs regarding balancing the new with the old.
This Week's Top Hearthstone Twitch Clips Featuring Kripparrian, Thijs, & Rdu
Damn those were some juicy clips 🤣🤣🤣loved it!