All Comments

It sounds like I'm the only person who picked Alliance because I actually like the Alliance.

Whatever. I'll take a victory by proxy. That's the only kind of victory the Alliance is allowed to have.

Killing heroics bosses is easy, getting to them can be tricky. Still I think they should make this for all bounties

Also this is basicly a pointless nerf i.m.o. because the battlecry is why you play it. Even as a 1/1 minion Alliance Bannerman will still see play.

It indeed won't have a big impact, but it's not zero. Remember EVIL Miscreant which went from a "slightly too strong" to a "pretty good" card through a simple 1 health nerf? Sure, the nerf doesn't matter in every game, but it will push the overall winrate down by a few percentages.

Sure but 7-mana is still a lot for an effect that might just fizzle entirely (or punch your own face, depending on which spells you discovered).

Not saying it's not worth running in certain decks, but it's still one of the weakest hero cards because it just requires way more support before it's useful as opposed to all the other ones that can just be played on curve for tempo.

Either way, in a dedicated HP deck this can easily leave you with a 5-damage Hero power quite early. Really, all we need to make the acrchetype work now is a Fire tutor. That way we can run other useful spells and not reduce consistency. Here's hoping for the miniset.

Any idea when the patch is going to drop?

I think people generally overestimated the Horde appeal.

Here in Europe I ran into almost exclusively Alliance players on the lower ranks (which is where the majority of players are). As a result you get more Alliance games in total which means more Honor gained, even if Alliance players were to lose to Horde more often on average.

Vanndar is just the more "fun" card in general so it makes sense that the majority of casual players with no ties to WoW would pick Alliance to get hi early. Meanwhile Drek'thar is more competitive but only a fraction of the playerbase really cared about that.

I mean...just consider how many people genuinely didn't know which races belonged to which faction when it came to Merc alignment.

Cause the hero power for hero dawngrasp is now a straight upgrade.  +1 damage, +scaling built into it.

Even if you don't build a hero power deck the card also helps with big spell replaying. 

And even if you dont build big spells, the card can help with hand refill (run card draw spells, stall spells, hand refill spells like studies or font of power).

The card can be used for ANY mage build now.  I don't think it's the worst thing in the world, just saying I thought the point of most of the heroes was not for them to be auto-includes in every deck.

I've tried them both out in a few things.  Roffle had a Secret Hunter list with Drek'thar to pull out Gossipers and Cloaked Huntresses.  Using that and Dane's Big Deathrattle Rogue list I completed the objectives achievement, as well as the Snowfall Graveyard achievement and the Hunter secrets achievement for this expansion.

Yeah, seems pretty obvious for sure.

I took Vanndar purely because I don't think I've ever made a deck with no 4+ cost minions that wasn't an all-spell deck, so I knew I'd never actually care about Drek'thar. Not that I've actually used Vanndar yet either :P

Buffs: Those mage buffs are AMAZING. I love ping mage, and Wildfires buff is incredible. Now you can play Wildfire into Magister Dawngrasp without losing the damage. ALSO this is a BIG buff for ODD Mage because Frost Lich Jaina also gets buffed because of the Wildfire buff. 

As someone who plays a lot of Magister Dawngrasps, the hero powers starting damage wasn't that big of a problem. The problem was mostly that it felt bad to play Magister Dawngrasp without playing a bunch of spells to re-cast. (And the mana cost) The +1 dmg buff is nice, but also kind of a nerf at the same time. This "buff" now means you want to honorably kill a 2-4-6-8-etc. minion, instead of a 1-3-5-7-etc. minion. And in all the times i played Magister Dawngrasp finding a 3-5-7 health minion to honorably kill is a LOT easier than 4-6-8 health minion. Still with some more experience of playing around with the buffed version of Magister Dawngrasp, i might change opinion on this. The +1 dmg could potentially snowball a bit faster. BUT the one thing that might be the most interesting thing about this change, is that Magister Dawngrasp can now be played in a ODD mage deck. (Not sure how good that will be, but it's going to be fun experimenting with it.)

Grey Sage Parrot buff is also solid i.m.o. It was way too expensive, and now it might show up in some Big Spell Mage lists. You just know this card was garbage based on the fact that it didn't see much play within the first 2 days of the Altarac release. 

Beaststalker Tavish "buff" is how he should have been from the get-go. I already found it weird that some hero cards such as Lightforged Cariels Blessing of Queens is a cheaper Blessing of Kings, but you have to pay the full cost for Beaststalker Tavishs Summon Pet. This was just odd to me, and it made Beaststalker Tavish so much harder to use. I have played Beaststalker Tavish A LOT during the 80+ games of Secret BIG Hunter that i played since expansion release, and having to pay 3 mana for the hero power was often way too difficult to slot into a turn. (Often meant playing 1 less secret each turn) But now that it costs 2 you can summon a lot more Huffers. (Always Huffer) with the hero power. And you can now hero power AND Beastmaster Leoroxx on the same turn, so that's nice.

Nerfs: Most nerfs were to be expected, but i'm still kinda surprised they went with "+1 mana" nerf so much. I had personally expected things like : -1 durability on Runed Mithril Rod. 

However i'm honestly the most surprised about the Alliance Bannerman, Bloodsail Deckhand and Irondeep Trogg nerfs. Alliance Bannerman is good, but i didn't expect it to get nerfed. Also this is basicly a pointless nerf i.m.o. because the battlecry is why you play it. Even as a 1/1 minion Alliance Bannerman will still see play.

Bloodsail Deckhand gets it's buff reverted. I kinda like this change, because it makes it harder for Pirate warrior to lock down the board right away. However i'm surprised that Raid the Docks itself managed to dodge the nerf. (Expected that to get a similar treatment as the shaman questline)

Irondeep Trogg nerf is also something i knew could happen, but was also kinda hoping it wouldn't because i feared that non-questline decks would become a lot weaker if Trogg got nerfed. However this Saronite Chain Gang like treatment shouldn't affect Trogg too much. It will remain super strong against spell-heavy decks, but it will become a bit easier to remove buffed up Troggs. Which i.m.o. is a good change. Just look at buff paladin decks, where the person who gets a trogg down first insta-wins. That is i.m.o. was not healthy for the game. (But at the same time the questlines mostly aren't healthy for the game either.)

I don't see why you'd put Dawngrasp into every deck. The HP isn't that good still unless you play a dedicated deck and the effect is still unreliable.

Also Fatiguelock is still affected by the Mo'arg nerf, even if they technically have it better because they get to run Soul Rend (which should probably be nerfed all things considered)

Oh well, we'll just have to accept a very Warlock Christmas and afterwards they'll probably deal with it.

Great! It was jolly frustrating going into bounties with the sole purpose of getting coins for a specific Merc but not making any progress at the end. It's not so bad with Mercs you already own since there are other reliable ways to get their coins, but it sucks when trying to grind coins to craft new ones.

I mean, I definitely took Vanndar for the higher combo potential in Wild.

Nothing wrong with being a good deck. It has counters after all. I just wish they'd addressed some of the more broken stuff like Devout Pupils being tutored by Varian and just creating a complete blowout turn really quickly (similar to how Questlock does it, except with actual tempo going in)

Pretty sure Trogg was printed as a direct answer against decks that are too spell heavy (like Alignment Druid) but they really didn't consider the implications of going 2nd against Trogg while the Coin is a spell.

That, or there is a silent majority of players who didn't know or give a sh*t who was stronger, and just think Vanndar is more interesting.

Okay so overall the changes are quite nice, but I'm still confused as to why they haven't hit Questlock a lot harder given that the only reason it's not as dominating as it could be is the abundance of combo decks, all of which have been nerfed right now.

Alignment kinda does fuckall in a world where LIghtning Bloom is still a thing but at the very least it curbs the deck against aggressive strategies which is hopefully enough to just remove it from ladder entirely.

Bannerman change is honestly baffling. OUt of all the cards in Paladin that are currently enabling it, Bannerman is the least problematic. Devout Pupil would have been a better choice at this point. Honestly, it feels almost like a placebo nerf, something that's supposed to make Paladin look weaker without changing anything...and no I'm not just salty because they didn't nerf it when I still had my extra copies (I am though, I am incredibly salty)

Octobot should have also happened a while ago, but at least's they're finally caught up. I doubt it's gonna stop Rogue from doing Tournament stuff but at the very least it makes it much more difficult to just throw the thing out on curve and expect it to proc.

Snowfall Guardian was very much necessary, that card just comes out too quickly and Freeze Shaman already has plenty of insane cards to begin with.

Touch nerf probably won't change much, but that's good because they nerfed Mo'Arg alongside it. Still think there'll have to be more targetted nerfs against Questlock unless they're content with just sitting this one out until the rotation takes care of it. Keeping my extra Raise Dead's just in case.

Rod nerf was definitely necessary and should hopefully axe both Owl and Fatiguelock for good seeing how both of those decks rely on it and we're still gonna keep running Vipers because of Paladin. I also maintain that Owl needs a nerf which I'm definitely not just saying because I have around 20 of the thing lying around. No bias here, no sir.

Deckhand unbuff seems a bit pointless honest. i'd rather they hit the 3-mana 3/4, but whatever. I guess this is the most relevant nerf for Wild since the amount of 1-drops is what gives the deck its power there. I also don't even think the deck needed a nerf, it's pretty fucking garbage if you don't just draw the nuts on curve, but hey, ranked floors are gonna complain.

Trogg nerf was necessary and hopefully kills it for good. I guess it'll still find a place in Swarming decks with board buffs.

Finally the Mo'arg nerf that should have happened a year ago. No idea why they decided to compensate on the stats, but whatever, it's not like it usually survives anyways.

Buffs seem mostly fine. Tavish is now insanely good and I wouldn't be surprised if we came to regret it down the line. He can basically solo any deck that doesn't have crazy lethality and might unironically be a better long term wincondition than Pirate Warrior.

Parrot buff is good but won't change much I'M afraid. Best thing I can say is that it makes it so you can immediately play it after a 5-mana spell on curve....which there is only a single relevant one so..hooray? It doesn'T really address any of the major problems of Big Spelll Mage, but at the very least it sets it up for the future when there are more useful spells. Gonna have to wait and see.

I really do like the Wildfire and Dawngrasp buffs although I would have much preferred if they kept Dawngrasp as is and instead had them cast the highest cost spells so we actually have a lategame payoff for Big spells that's reliable. In any case, at least it'S a fine addition to Wildfire mage now. Makes me wonder...is it possibly to maybe combine Big Spells (a shaved down version) with Wildfire if the latter is your only Fire spell? Will have to test, but at least Dawngrasp can turn your hero power into an actual lategame threat now (even if you're stilll getting demolished by most other lategame strategies but hey, who's counting?)

Overall a good patch to start with, but it won't be the last. Questlock will have to be dealt with, it legitimately has no actual counters outside of degenerate combos and maybe Libram Paladin (some of the time)...and now people have a reason to play Questlock again.

I don't know why people are surprised, it was a Prisoner's Dilemma of sorts. A ton of people chose Alliance because they assumed Horde would win, and people didn't understand that you got both Golden Legendaries from the questline. Also, most of the big Hearthstone content creator's chose the Alliance on their main accounts, so they'd probably have some sway in everyone's decision.

In Wild this could even be considered a buff as Alliance Bannerman can now be drawn by Salhet's Pride.

I wonder if they do any real testing anymore before sending cards out into the wild, or whether they entirely rely on the data they get in the weeks to follow. I know balancing a game is not at all an easy task, but it's not a crazy, unforeseen combo we're talking about here. It was basic buff cards on the Trogg, which was the only thing you would reasonably do with it.

Quote From dapperdog

Should've stated that Im commenting on standard.

Nah, it should always be assumed you are talking about Standard unless you specify Wild.

I thought it was just me but I had noticed an oddly high number of Alliance opponents over the last several weeks.  Can Alliance actually be winning this thing?