It looks good. But is probably unplayable unless there's like massive ton of spells that make up other spells, like Runed Orb. The problem with this card is that there's not really a lot of direct damage from mage right now to take full advantage of the reward. You'll probably be spending cards like runed orb or Fireball to complete the quest because the demands are incredibly inflexible. Like how many fire spells are there that can be casted without a second thought? And before you'd ever cast them you'll probably need to cast something like Arcane Intellect, runed orb, or Cram Session, which will indirectly waste an arcane spell that you need for the second/third questline.
In short, the card looks good in theory, but until we see what mage has (because team5 doesn't print legendaries without card support in the same expansion) the reward is probably impracticable at best.
I think its because team5 wanted Prestor to be the preorder skin (because she's Onyxia so its more marketable, probably) and really the only class Prestor can be is either mage or warlock, and since Nzoth got warlock last time I guess for this reason we get another (shitty looking) mage skin?
There's always the chance we see rogue skins later down the line as I dont think they'll pass the chance of making up something with Mathias Shaw, or anything else related to the SI7 in an Alliance theme expansion.
Its either trash or completely overpowered. Negating fatigue damage is incredible. Supporting the least powerful archetype in warlock, not so much.
Because in what world does warlock actually does 21 damage to itself in standard, and not die is beyond me. The quest mercifully heals you back for a bit, but to do so much damage to yourself in the process, it would only work against control decks or decks that have no burn because chances are good you'll just end up putting yourself in range of death while completing this. Not to mention that outside of fatigue damage you've have wasted all your self damage cards at the end so what is the reward really going to do actually?
For this card to be consistently good, warlock would need lots of cards that deal damage to itself for both quest completion and to take advantage of the rewards, AND manage healing so they don't die as well. Outside of Neeru warlock I can't see it, and neeru already wins you the late game anyway.
Could've been great; her eyes could be glowing to show her sinister nature, partly transformed to show her heritage, or just straight out as a dragon. But blizz decided for the 'Coming out of a hair salon' look instead.
It'll probably see little to no play, and when it does see play its for the healing.
Against control a Mask of C'Thun seems powerful, but at the cost of 3 mana upfront and 5 turns of nothing, and any decent player would easily be able to play around it. The reason why Imprisoned Antaen was so powerful (when it was 5 mana) was because it came with a massive 10/6 body and followed up with Priestess of Fury for incredible tempo swing. This card costs less, but doesn't come with a tempo swing, and there's an even chance it would never even trigger before you get your arse kicked.
The 2/2 for 1 turn. That's decent. But then again, why'd you pick it is beyond me. There are better cards than a 3/3 and a 2/2 on 4.
But as a healing device this card is good. 3 turns to negate part of the damage that comes with a tempo loss on 3? That's still decent. Slow, but decent. I can see some applications for this card in rogue because of this, but I wouldn't count on this making any waves before or after the expansion releases.
Basically no weapon would be safe because this card is absolutely insane. Tradeable is already a busted keyword, and now you're pasting it on one of the most niche of counter cards available. So if its against a weaponless class, just draw another card for one mana. If its against shaman you keep it. The fact that it has decent stats too makes it bizarre that team5 would ever print it, because what drawback is there in this card? The only real problem is to find a spot for it in your deck.
Finding out the next pre-order hero skin will be Lady Katrana Prestor (aka Onyxia) for mage ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back, making me write a pretty salty comment about being annoyed it wasn't a rogue hero. Now, I'm the first to admit it is barely even a first world problem that the jpeg Blizz puts in a bundle isn't the one I wanted, and I wouldn't normally publicise my saltiness, so why did I care enough to do so this time?
There are a whole bunch of contributing factors that on their own wouldn't even be worth mentioning, but they nevertheless summed to one salty rogue main, so let's set them all out to see what really happened here.
* Note when I use the word 'devs' I don't mean the whole HS team, but only whoever has influence on the cosmetics.
An inexplicable imbalance
Show Spoiler
Let's start quantitative, since that's always the easiest to argue. As it stands, the number of unique characters each class has representing them as hero portraits is:
Demon Hunter: 3
Druid: 5
Hunter: 3
Mage: 5 (including Lady Prestor)
Paladin: 4
Priest: 4
Rogue: 2
Shaman: 6 (including Ragnaros)
Warlock: 4
Warrior: 5
In a game where all classes play an equal role, generally get an equal number of cards, and over time get a more or less equal amount of time in the spotlight, having that much variation between classes in anything is pretty weird. We can dismiss DH's low count by it only having been here for a year, but hunter and rogue having so few compared to several classes is tough to explain.
Certainly it's not a problem with limited class fantasy. For rogue especially, you've got rogues filling the role of thugs, thieves, crime lords, spies, assassins, ninjas, pirates and more. Certainly there's scope for overlap in that, but there's also a lot more variation in themes and flavour than, say, a mage who chooses to use a different spell school, or a paladin who… let's face it, there's not much variation within paladin since it's a niche combination of priest and warrior to begin with.
It is somewhat amusing then, that rogues are represented by Valeera (a female elf who's a lawful good spy, ex-gladiator and messenger between the Horde and Alliance) and Maiev (a female elf and lawful good warden/jailer (yep, she's technically not even a rogue)). Not exactly ticking many of the rogue profession boxes there. Love it or loathe it, the Cap'n Valeera skin is all we really have to start representing the less lawful side of the class whose name actively specifies they are outside of the law.
To be honest, getting Mathias Shaw wouldn't help tick many boxes either. We'd get a lawful good male human spy, so that's a hooray for gender and race diversity but doesn't add much new elsewhere. Someone like Gallywix or Lilian Voss would be better, but the ship already seems to have sailed for them.
All this makes it especially frustrating the rogue only has 2 heroes. Where possible I like to set my hero and card back to fit the themes of a deck, but the range of options in rogue is sorely lacking for that.
Anticipation for nothing
Show Spoiler
A more emotional aspect is simply that we are expecting a rogue hero, so when something else arrives instead it is disappointing. Partly we expect a rogue hero just out of the foolish belief that the numbers above can't go too uneven, surely?
The main reason to expect it, however, is that about a year ago the devs said they had the next rogue hero lined up and that it would be "legendary". So they actually told us one was coming! Granted, they said it probably wouldn't arrive as soon as we wanted it - which certainly wasn't a lie - but it being more than a whole year later is well beyond what anyone read into it. I first just assumed it wouldn't be in Scholomance.
The whole anticipation thing was amplified by there being so many good opportunities for rogue heroes lately:
Ashes of Outland could have had Akama
Scholomance Academy could have had Lilian Voss
OK, I fully accept Kel'Thuzad was great here, but still a bit of a slap in the face when he wasn't actually in the Scholo. dungeon/raid in WoW.
We got a half-baked Horseman Uther for Hallows End, which could easily have been our favourite zombie rogue Lilian
Or at least do it properly and give us the actual Headless Horseman not some Uther rip-off
Darkmoon Faire could have had Silas Darkmoon
Similar to K'T, N'Zoth is great but also getting in the way of the actual Darkmoon Faire character
Barrens… OK people had been asking for Hamuul Runetotem for ages, so that's fine
We could have got Gallywix on the Barrens Rewards Track in place of Firefang Rexxar, especially as there will be another fiery Rexxar next week!
Finally Lady Prestor sits in place of Mathias Shaw who everyone seemed pretty certain would finally arrive
How could you not expect one when there's always a good option? Any one of these not being the rogue alternative is fine. But all of them being something else at a time when the devs are well aware rogue has fallen behind is a bit of a joke and starts to look intentional.
Wrapping up
So yes, it is the most minor thing that has no real impact when I'm actually playing the game. But I think my very last sentence contains the real heart of the problem: even if it is very unlikely Blizzard actually planned to screw rogue over with this, the fact it is beginning to look intentional is a real problem for players who have been waiting for a non-Valeera rogue hero for 4 years. It's eroding trust in the devs in a way that is just so silly and avoidable. And despite what it first looks like, it's not the frustrated rogue players who are being silly here because they actually have got the short end of the stick. No, it's the devs who could have simply commissioned a different bit of art at any time in those 4 years. No one would have been the slightest bit upset if Lady Prestor was Mathias Shaw instead, or if we never got Horseman Uther or Firefang Rexxar, so why keep avoiding rogue heroes?
The extension to this is that if we get a trio of Scabbs portraits in the Rewards Track, it won't really remedy the problem because it will look a lot like every class was going to get a trio of mercenary portraits this year anyway. You don't placate someone who's annoyed they have less than everyone else by giving everyone a treat.
So yeah, it is all a super minor psychological issue, but also so easily avoided that I'm still wagging a grumpy finger at Blizz and blaming them for needlessly creating it in the first place.
There a good reason for everyone to want this card to be good: if you ever see it, that means you're not facing bs priest
Its tailor made for aggro priest to be a thing, since essentially you're transforming your priest to hunter at no cost except to play no healing spells. Hell you can legit make a deck with nothing but Raise Dead as the only spell and this card will still work. Just add a few more damaging shadow spells and woila you've just solve the priest equation - Make a tempo priest deck that's a priest, except its not priest, because it does absolutely nothing what a typical priest would do.
The problem with a Spikeridged Steed in Priest vs Paladin is that Priest doesn't have the endless supply of Silverhand Recruits. Obviously it is big pile of stats for the cost, but if the mount cards become too popular, I can see Secret Rogue rising to the top by punishing with Blackjack Stunner.
Tradable cards are incredibly interesting because that's basically providing every class with an optional draw engine. It might be possible to simply put it in your deck just to draw cards. For that reason at some point of time this mechanic will likely at some point prove way too powerful. Wonder what team5 have designed themselves into? Its either we don't see that many tradable cards introduced, or the cards with tradeable would be much too powerful to trade out.
Very interested to find out more about the questlines. And also to see what cards team5 may have designed just to slow the game down or otherwise no one would be playing the quests. Mage's quest looks very powerful, but very likely you'll just die to aggro before you ever get to take full advantage of it. It does concern me slightly that that mage quest fits too nicely into spell mage.
Well, we got the prerequisite reveals of the upcoming expansion. Please for the love of god blizz, show the reveals earlier this time and not cram everything into one week again.
Minion update sounds really good, I could also imagine a rotating minion pool, like the rotating minion type pool. For example, out of 30 demon-themed minions random 20 is present in a game. It would help making every game different.
didn't they promise a new rogue skin like last year and we have yet to get one other than the rewards track ones/book of heroes which don't really count
In Reward track there will be a lot more skins - most likely 3 mercenaries each with 3 skins + at least one additional skin, just like in last time.
Its just speculation on your part, which is fair. But if blizz would like to make money by monetizing one of the most iconic character in their games is also fair play to them. Like many others, I too would like that ragnaros skin for free (honestly, both Rexxar and Uther looks incredible sick, much more so than Malfurion) but you can't always expect nice things to be free.
Im more concerned on the price tag of the bundle, and whether I can afford it without busting my gut thanks to the incredible bs exchange rate.
It seems like there has been a last minute change ...
The Ragnaros shaman hero was supposed to be the reward for the legendary quest-chain (for free), while the Eternal Flame bundle contained "flamish" skins for 3 classic heroes and a cardback.
New Neutral Minion - Peasant
To me it looks like the set's inconspicuously broken neutral common. Many decks can't ping on turn 1, or only at a cost.
"More work?"
Stormwind Pre-Order
"Fixed a bug where Golden Core Set cards drafted in Arena would not be Golden once in a match."
Finally! I've been waiting for this!
New Mage Spell - Sorcerer's Gambit
It looks good. But is probably unplayable unless there's like massive ton of spells that make up other spells, like Runed Orb. The problem with this card is that there's not really a lot of direct damage from mage right now to take full advantage of the reward. You'll probably be spending cards like runed orb or Fireball to complete the quest because the demands are incredibly inflexible. Like how many fire spells are there that can be casted without a second thought? And before you'd ever cast them you'll probably need to cast something like Arcane Intellect, runed orb, or Cram Session, which will indirectly waste an arcane spell that you need for the second/third questline.
In short, the card looks good in theory, but until we see what mage has (because team5 doesn't print legendaries without card support in the same expansion) the reward is probably impracticable at best.
Why the lack of rogue heroes is so frustrating
I think its because team5 wanted Prestor to be the preorder skin (because she's Onyxia so its more marketable, probably) and really the only class Prestor can be is either mage or warlock, and since Nzoth got warlock last time I guess for this reason we get another (shitty looking) mage skin?
There's always the chance we see rogue skins later down the line as I dont think they'll pass the chance of making up something with Mathias Shaw, or anything else related to the SI7 in an Alliance theme expansion.
New Warlock Spell - The Demon Seed
Its either trash or completely overpowered. Negating fatigue damage is incredible. Supporting the least powerful archetype in warlock, not so much.
Because in what world does warlock actually does 21 damage to itself in standard, and not die is beyond me. The quest mercifully heals you back for a bit, but to do so much damage to yourself in the process, it would only work against control decks or decks that have no burn because chances are good you'll just end up putting yourself in range of death while completing this. Not to mention that outside of fatigue damage you've have wasted all your self damage cards at the end so what is the reward really going to do actually?
For this card to be consistently good, warlock would need lots of cards that deal damage to itself for both quest completion and to take advantage of the rewards, AND manage healing so they don't die as well. Outside of Neeru warlock I can't see it, and neeru already wins you the late game anyway.
Hearthstone's Fire Festival Returns Next Week - 7 Legendary Quests, Brawls, Firelands Hero Bundle
this sounds so true! makes so much sense... damn tho I'd really want to get a Ragnaros hero instead.
United in Stormwind is Hearthstone's Next Expansion - Live Reveal and Recap
Succinctly to the point actually.
Could've been great; her eyes could be glowing to show her sinister nature, partly transformed to show her heritage, or just straight out as a dragon. But blizz decided for the 'Coming out of a hair salon' look instead.
New Neutral Minion - Flightmaster Dungar
It'll probably see little to no play, and when it does see play its for the healing.
Against control a Mask of C'Thun seems powerful, but at the cost of 3 mana upfront and 5 turns of nothing, and any decent player would easily be able to play around it. The reason why Imprisoned Antaen was so powerful (when it was 5 mana) was because it came with a massive 10/6 body and followed up with Priestess of Fury for incredible tempo swing. This card costs less, but doesn't come with a tempo swing, and there's an even chance it would never even trigger before you get your arse kicked.
The 2/2 for 1 turn. That's decent. But then again, why'd you pick it is beyond me. There are better cards than a 3/3 and a 2/2 on 4.
But as a healing device this card is good. 3 turns to negate part of the damage that comes with a tempo loss on 3? That's still decent. Slow, but decent. I can see some applications for this card in rogue because of this, but I wouldn't count on this making any waves before or after the expansion releases.
Five New Pieces of Music Were Added in Hearthstone's 20.8 Patch for Ragnaros, Lady Prestor, and the Fire Festival
That Lady Prestor music is quite ominous... and pretty accurate, nice!
New Neutral Minion - Rustrot Viper
Basically no weapon would be safe because this card is absolutely insane. Tradeable is already a busted keyword, and now you're pasting it on one of the most niche of counter cards available. So if its against a weaponless class, just draw another card for one mana. If its against shaman you keep it. The fact that it has decent stats too makes it bizarre that team5 would ever print it, because what drawback is there in this card? The only real problem is to find a spot for it in your deck.
Why the lack of rogue heroes is so frustrating
I don't like playing the Rogue, but...yeah. It's kinda stupid at this point.
New Neutral Minion - Impatient Shopkeep
Its bad. But that's not the point. If you put this in your deck the reason would be to draw a card for 1 mana and nothing else.
Tradeable cards are 4 stars almost by default its ridiculous.
Why the lack of rogue heroes is so frustrating
Finding out the next pre-order hero skin will be Lady Katrana Prestor (aka Onyxia) for mage ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back, making me write a pretty salty comment about being annoyed it wasn't a rogue hero. Now, I'm the first to admit it is barely even a first world problem that the jpeg Blizz puts in a bundle isn't the one I wanted, and I wouldn't normally publicise my saltiness, so why did I care enough to do so this time?
There are a whole bunch of contributing factors that on their own wouldn't even be worth mentioning, but they nevertheless summed to one salty rogue main, so let's set them all out to see what really happened here.
* Note when I use the word 'devs' I don't mean the whole HS team, but only whoever has influence on the cosmetics.
An inexplicable imbalance
Let's start quantitative, since that's always the easiest to argue. As it stands, the number of unique characters each class has representing them as hero portraits is:
In a game where all classes play an equal role, generally get an equal number of cards, and over time get a more or less equal amount of time in the spotlight, having that much variation between classes in anything is pretty weird. We can dismiss DH's low count by it only having been here for a year, but hunter and rogue having so few compared to several classes is tough to explain.
Certainly it's not a problem with limited class fantasy. For rogue especially, you've got rogues filling the role of thugs, thieves, crime lords, spies, assassins, ninjas, pirates and more. Certainly there's scope for overlap in that, but there's also a lot more variation in themes and flavour than, say, a mage who chooses to use a different spell school, or a paladin who… let's face it, there's not much variation within paladin since it's a niche combination of priest and warrior to begin with.
It is somewhat amusing then, that rogues are represented by Valeera (a female elf who's a lawful good spy, ex-gladiator and messenger between the Horde and Alliance) and Maiev (a female elf and lawful good warden/jailer (yep, she's technically not even a rogue)). Not exactly ticking many of the rogue profession boxes there. Love it or loathe it, the Cap'n Valeera skin is all we really have to start representing the less lawful side of the class whose name actively specifies they are outside of the law.
To be honest, getting Mathias Shaw wouldn't help tick many boxes either. We'd get a lawful good male human spy, so that's a hooray for gender and race diversity but doesn't add much new elsewhere. Someone like Gallywix or Lilian Voss would be better, but the ship already seems to have sailed for them.
All this makes it especially frustrating the rogue only has 2 heroes. Where possible I like to set my hero and card back to fit the themes of a deck, but the range of options in rogue is sorely lacking for that.
Anticipation for nothing
A more emotional aspect is simply that we are expecting a rogue hero, so when something else arrives instead it is disappointing. Partly we expect a rogue hero just out of the foolish belief that the numbers above can't go too uneven, surely?
The main reason to expect it, however, is that about a year ago the devs said they had the next rogue hero lined up and that it would be "legendary". So they actually told us one was coming! Granted, they said it probably wouldn't arrive as soon as we wanted it - which certainly wasn't a lie - but it being more than a whole year later is well beyond what anyone read into it. I first just assumed it wouldn't be in Scholomance.
The whole anticipation thing was amplified by there being so many good opportunities for rogue heroes lately:
How could you not expect one when there's always a good option? Any one of these not being the rogue alternative is fine. But all of them being something else at a time when the devs are well aware rogue has fallen behind is a bit of a joke and starts to look intentional.
Wrapping up
So yes, it is the most minor thing that has no real impact when I'm actually playing the game. But I think my very last sentence contains the real heart of the problem: even if it is very unlikely Blizzard actually planned to screw rogue over with this, the fact it is beginning to look intentional is a real problem for players who have been waiting for a non-Valeera rogue hero for 4 years. It's eroding trust in the devs in a way that is just so silly and avoidable. And despite what it first looks like, it's not the frustrated rogue players who are being silly here because they actually have got the short end of the stick. No, it's the devs who could have simply commissioned a different bit of art at any time in those 4 years. No one would have been the slightest bit upset if Lady Prestor was Mathias Shaw instead, or if we never got Horseman Uther or Firefang Rexxar, so why keep avoiding rogue heroes?
The extension to this is that if we get a trio of Scabbs portraits in the Rewards Track, it won't really remedy the problem because it will look a lot like every class was going to get a trio of mercenary portraits this year anyway. You don't placate someone who's annoyed they have less than everyone else by giving everyone a treat.
So yeah, it is all a super minor psychological issue, but also so easily avoided that I'm still wagging a grumpy finger at Blizz and blaming them for needlessly creating it in the first place.
New Priest Minion - Darkbishop Benedictus
There a good reason for everyone to want this card to be good: if you ever see it, that means you're not facing bs priest
Its tailor made for aggro priest to be a thing, since essentially you're transforming your priest to hunter at no cost except to play no healing spells. Hell you can legit make a deck with nothing but Raise Dead as the only spell and this card will still work. Just add a few more damaging shadow spells and woila you've just solve the priest equation - Make a tempo priest deck that's a priest, except its not priest, because it does absolutely nothing what a typical priest would do.
New Priest Spell - Elekk Mount
The problem with a Spikeridged Steed in Priest vs Paladin is that Priest doesn't have the endless supply of Silverhand Recruits. Obviously it is big pile of stats for the cost, but if the mount cards become too popular, I can see Secret Rogue rising to the top by punishing with Blackjack Stunner.
United in Stormwind is Hearthstone's Next Expansion - Live Reveal and Recap
Tradable cards are incredibly interesting because that's basically providing every class with an optional draw engine. It might be possible to simply put it in your deck just to draw cards. For that reason at some point of time this mechanic will likely at some point prove way too powerful. Wonder what team5 have designed themselves into? Its either we don't see that many tradable cards introduced, or the cards with tradeable would be much too powerful to trade out.
Very interested to find out more about the questlines. And also to see what cards team5 may have designed just to slow the game down or otherwise no one would be playing the quests. Mage's quest looks very powerful, but very likely you'll just die to aggro before you ever get to take full advantage of it. It does concern me slightly that that mage quest fits too nicely into spell mage.
Well, we got the prerequisite reveals of the upcoming expansion. Please for the love of god blizz, show the reveals earlier this time and not cram everything into one week again.
New Neutral Minion - Flightmaster Dungar
This is good, just like the last free legendary
New Neutral Minion - Peasant
Too bad it dies to everything
New Priest Minion - Darkbishop Benedictus
This is an excellent meme!
New Hunter Spell - Ramming Mount
Actually +2/+2 and imune to minion with upside of getting possibly a 2/2 minion is nice
New Priest Spell - Elekk Mount
Exoensive and vulnerable to silence/transform effects. The hunter one is better with immediate effect
Hearthstone's Battlegrounds Gets a New Hero and Minion, Rebalancing, Future Minion and Tribe Overhaul
Minion update sounds really good, I could also imagine a rotating minion pool, like the rotating minion type pool. For example, out of 30 demon-themed minions random 20 is present in a game. It would help making every game different.
United in Stormwind is Hearthstone's Next Expansion - Live Reveal and Recap
In Reward track there will be a lot more skins - most likely 3 mercenaries each with 3 skins + at least one additional skin, just like in last time.
Hearthstone's Fire Festival Returns Next Week - 7 Legendary Quests, Brawls, Firelands Hero Bundle
Its just speculation on your part, which is fair. But if blizz would like to make money by monetizing one of the most iconic character in their games is also fair play to them. Like many others, I too would like that ragnaros skin for free (honestly, both Rexxar and Uther looks incredible sick, much more so than Malfurion) but you can't always expect nice things to be free.
Im more concerned on the price tag of the bundle, and whether I can afford it without busting my gut thanks to the incredible bs exchange rate.
Hearthstone's Fire Festival Returns Next Week - 7 Legendary Quests, Brawls, Firelands Hero Bundle
Most likely not, as Ragnaros comes with cardback