All Comments

I certainly agree It's not hard to figure out that Azir plus blade dance equals free sandman. Then those summons buff up your Ionia dudes so your 1/1 is now an 8/8 because your opponent isn't running pings for some reason.

However keeping track of keywords and stats in a Lee Sin lucky find list can be quite tricky. Or using your health as a resource in a midrange list. But there should be decks for all types.

I mean, "unbelievably short sighted" is kind of uncalled-for: I too was expecting a nerf to Incanter's Flow and I too am sure the deck will still be very powerful (if not problematic), but burning to the ground the only archetype that Mage currently has is not the most clever decision either.

Just weaken it, wait for the mini-set to come and then, if it still needs to be addressed, hit it again.

Super cool, Crabrider is completely dead now! But where's the Conviction nerf?

Yeah, my love of symmetry really doesn't like the fact that only one of the eight Old God cards is not a 10-mana card now. It is super weird.

oh okay thanks it isnt too hard of a nerf i guess.

I....actually agree for the most part.  I don't think this really hits Paladin that hard at all.  Shaman still lacks the card draw or any cohesive gameplan outside of doomhammer/aggro to win.

I'm extremely dissapointed in the hysteria nerf.  I know that it indirectly nerfs warlock, but it hits priests way harder with that nerf.  For one, Kazakus priest is dead with a 4 cost Hysteria (priest can't really afford to drop hysteria, which means priests are now back to running Xyrella/Samuro.)

And to top things the Dark Inquisitor buff is neat, but corrupt priest wasn't exactly "top tier" in the meta.  Nzoth seems like it's meant to help slam it down a turn earlier in order to close out games but honestly some of the best synergy with Nzoth are the 10 cost cards it "revives" making the 1 cost reduction pointless in a lot of scenarios.

It will be interesting to see if Deck of Chaos spawns a new warlock archetype that is viable, but I doubt it.  Warlock is enjoying the Trifecta of Tickatus/Jarraxus/Y'shaarj too much for them to expand their minds outside that pure control archetype.

I was honestly expecting Paladin to take a much stronger direct hit.  Perhaps blizz thinks that the miniset will shake the power level of the classes up enough and didn't want to go overboard with Paladin nerfs, that's my only real guess on why they weren't hit harder.

The Spring Water change is just so unbelievably short sighted it's actually baffling.

There's is absolutely 0 chance that Flow will not continue to be a problem in the future, either with coming expansions, or just for Wild because of combo shenanigans.

Every single new Mage spell for the next two expansions will have to be designed around the fact that it might cost 2-mana less.

The only reason that Mage is even still playable at this stage is the fact that Spell Mage can just win if they find Flow in their mulligan because they have so much draw, burn and removal that playing most of that in a single turn is enough to scam a win.

What makes it even worse is that Spring Water isn't even that busted outside the Spell MAge deck (which is, again, only carried by FLow to begin with) so they're essentially kneecapping every future Mage deck by nerfing Water instead of nerfing Flow first and seeing where that leads us?

We're never getting an unnerf of Spring Water, even if Flow gets nerfed within the next two weeks.

Also, compensation buff for School, because apparently Secret Paladin wasn't consistently generating Blackjack Stunners enough. There are premium cards for just about any mana slot in Paladin and all they can do is do a half-nerf for one of them.

I don't know what you're talking about sir: I can't find where you got that quote from Kappa

Well done to Avalon who predicted those Tidal Surge and Deck of Chaos buffs

Not sure this will be enough honestly.

I think one of the more understated, but very powerful Quilboar cards is Necrolyte, which didn't see any change. And the amount of blood gems gained from Quilboars didn't change either, except for golden Bonker.

The fact that you can buff your early game minions, and then transfer many of those buffs to a powerful late game minion, like a Foe Reaper 4000, Bristleback Knight or similar, is pretty busted. With all other builds, you are often forced to waste many early game buffs when swapping out your minions. I think it's pretty cool that you can transfer buffs like this now. But it leaves all other build strategies in the dust come late game.

Not sure how one would change Necrolyte, but maybe only transfer Blood Gems from the right most minion on the board, and move it up a tavern tier.

I agree, the Crabrider change feels like an elegant way to fix the issues with the card while it retains some utility. I could see it staying in Rush Warrior as it still works well with Parade Leader and Playmaker. Other nerfs seems fine. Incanter's Flow feels far more problematic than Refreshing Spring Water, but we'll see. It has an absurd winrate when played on turn 2 / coined on 2, and most cards like that with low cost (Keleseth, 2 mana DoL) have felt that way. 

Buffs feel conservative, which is probably a good way to approach it but less exciting. The Boomsday buffs were probably too much as the had to nerf a bunch of them after the fact. Iksar has talked about how hard buffs are, because if the buffs are too strong they made new problems, but if they aren't enough then why did they bother. The Lilypad Lurker is the only one that jumps out, but that needs a deck to go in. If they commit to Elemental support in future content, that feels like one that gets reverted. Premium stats and a plus effect (albeit with condition) seems scary. 

Hysteria originally cost 2 mana, but it was quickly bumped to 3 mana (and made it so it could target just enemy minions) due to a game-breaking interaction with Deathspeaker and Wretched Tiller.

I'm pretty sure that it always costed 3 mana, HS wiki also confirms that.

I would dust my extra copies of hysteria, but I already dusted them when it was changed the first time.

The commons on the other hand - I knew I was keeping extras for a reason!   #gimmedust!

I think it's worth considering other characters for each class, and expect they will not overlap with each other. For most classes we only know we'll get the Barrens mercs plus the basic hero, which isn't a lot to work with but is something.

Rogue is the class that we have the most information for, since the Mercenaries key art depicts all of Scabbs, Valeera and Captain Eudora (who was our rogue character in The Dalaran Heist). Furthermore, Valeera's dagger is dripping with poison, so a sensible guess would be that they fill the WoW rogue specs like so:

• Valeera = assassination
• Eudora = outlaw
• Scabbs = subtlety

That would be a bit out of character for Valeera to be honest, since she's a subtlety rogue in Heroes of the Storm and I don't think she ever used poisons lore-wise, but the poison in the art easily outweighs those issues.

They could also go beyond WoW specs and focus on HS class mechanics. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a thief merc, for example. And who knows, maybe Scabbs' time as a chef will be represented inn his abilities? He is holding a meat cleaver in the key art after all.

Thoughts on a few other classes:

• Rexxar will definitely be the guy with a beast pal (most likely Misha if he doesn't have multiple friends), so I doubt Tavish will do that. He could definitely be a gunslinger though. I assume King Krush is representing big beasts, and Mukla will have some banana gimmick.
• Varden has to compete with Jaina for the frost mage spot. I suspect they'll shift Jaina to something else to try to push Varden's theme, but I'm not sure I'd support it (not that it matters much).
• Similarly, Thrall is like THE elemental guy, but maybe they choose to focus on his association with Doomhammer since a windfury character would be likely somewhere.

Until we know how gameplay works in Mercenaries it's difficult to really say what any of these would actually mean of course.

Agreed.  At least now it won't feel like "quillboar or bust" in BG's.  I'm a little concerned about hitting so many of the quillboar at once (read: the nerfs are definitely warranted, but wasn't expecting this many concurrent nerfs) that I feel like this is gonna relegate quillboar to a B tier comp.

Well, this is all sorts of disappointing.

Nerfing Spring Water is pointless because Incanter's Flow is ten times as busted and will break any future Mage spells until it finally gets destroyed.

All this nerf does is make the Mage deck even more polarizing because now they just lose if they don't find flow on 2, but still autowin if they have it.

Making Hysteria 4-mana kills Kazakus Priest, which is disappointing but necessary I guess, because that card is all sorts of busted (even if it was the only thing able to keep Paladin in check)

Crabrider nerf is good enough I guess. Keeps the intended effect for Rush Warrior while nerfing it for Paladin which is the best outcome.

No idea why they thought First Day of School needed a compensation buff. It would still be run at 1 and now it's probably even better outside of the specific "I need a 1-drop and have nothing else" scenario.

Mankrik nerf is perfectly fine and expected.

All the buffs are just wet farts though.

Shaman will remain unplayable until they actually get some card draw. Lilypad was already a good card. The problem is not actually having a way to consistently activate it because you can'T draw cards. Unbound Elemental will remain unplayable as long as Overload is as pointless of a gimmick as it is.

The core card buffs are literally just what they should have been in the first place and only turn them into baseline vanilla cards that will still not see play. 

How the Razorboar buff is supposed to make Demon Hunter any better at all is just confusing to me. They could have just unnerfed Priestess of Fury and give DH an actual gameplan outside of hoping for Green Rag to carry.

Only Whirling Combatant seems like an actually impactful change because it's actually a good control minion and the difference between 2 and 3 attack on a high health minion is usually significant.

[Hearthstone Card (Oh my Yogg) Not Found] remains untouched. I don't think I'm interested in playing a game where I can lose because a 1-mana card just ruins my entire gameplan at random.

Incanter's Flow is still a Dungeon Run treasure that decides games on turn 2.

Hunter is still only allowed to go full aggro, Hero power Mage is genuinely unplayable and Warlock now relies on Tickatus even more because after the Hysteria nerf the only thing they can ever reliable deal with is Priest (who is now also much worse against Paladin).

I think I'm just gonna take a break until the minii-set arrives and by then they'll hopefully figure out which cards actually need to be adressed instead of these band aids.

A lot of salt. Shaman just doesnt have a tool to draw cards, eventually this type od card will released in the miniset.

Good point! Suddenly it combos with Field Contact, which might actually be relevant.

I don't care about power level, get NZoth back to 10 please. Looks super weird now.

It doesn't buff itself.

Doesnt buff itself anymore.

Hm will Crabrider now see play in miracle rogue?

isnt groundshaker the same ? can someone explain the change plz i really not seeing it. XD