Yeah, like I said, I'm not trying to judge your plays - we all make mistakes in the moment (I know I've made plenty of misplays). I just really enjoy thinking about replays and how to improve across the board - it's not personal at all. (Your opponent, for instance, screwed up their turn 2 by not playing around Combustion to preserve their ravens. That's a mistake I probably would have made in the moment too, so I expect I'll be more mindful of that going forward.)
My point was just that lots of other decks that want to play for the board wouldn't end up at this position on turn 7, and that even in your game there were choices you could have made to avoid your opponent getting that far ahead. So using this near defeat as proof that Token Druid is too powerful isn't really fair - Token Druid might be very strong after Lunacy Mage is nerfed, but it won't exist in a vacuum, and lots of other decks are better-suited to deal with it.
More than anything, I think your replay demonstrates the OP nature of Lunacy Mage. You didn't really fight for the board, and thus got overrun, but still won in the last moments thanks to random, super cheap spells.
You didn't seem to receive my last Patreon pledge, though I had it confirmed as per usual via email and Patreon billing site. Something on yours or their end?
it's not so much about playrate, but about how they very easily shut down certain archetypes completely and without reasonable counterplay.
I have no problem with them being playable or even popular, but I think they should require more overall support other than just being the best play for their mana cost in most situations.
It's pretty weird to see something that can't even attack and has no flexible usage being included in just about any deck archetype that doesn't already have 30 other cards that are much better by comparison.
I mean, for fuck's sake, even Deathrattle Demon Hunter runs them and that's supposed to be a tempo deck.#
I don't think it's good design if you can win the tempo game by just preventing your opponent from playing the game properly.
They aren't just defensive Neutrals, they're jack of all trades in almost all matchups (except a select few)
At the very least make them more easily removable. It's not fair that Zoolock literally auto-loses the moment someone tosses out Mor'shan....or that a tempo deck can completely shut down druid with a Far Watch Post because they no longer have the means to efficiently get rid of it.
A card this powerful shouuld not have vanilla stats, especially when "can't attack" isn't a drawback. It's like if Ragnaros was a 12/12.
Never a good sign when a deck's worst matchup is itself.
It makes me wonder if Team 5 didn't think people would combine the Libram package (which was already slightly too strong) with the powerful new Secret tools. Did they think the new package would actually weaken the old one? Did they think there was some reason the two wouldn't work well together? Did they simply not test the two packages in the same deck?
It boggles the mind.
I think that might be legit. I think they thought that to run the Secret Package as a draw engine would require too much deidcation to effectively combine it with Librams, so they didn't consider the overlap of the two obviously very powerful archetypes.
Also, as is evident by the delayed launch and the multitude of very strange bugs, it's quite obvious that they just didn't have as much time as they needed and it's very likely that playtesting suffered because of it.
I mean, they clearly didn't playtest Spell Mage that much either or else they would have very quickly realised that DoL gotten that much stronger.
I'm honestly not even mad at the current state of the game. I very much expected something like this to happen, and honestly, if you look at all the other decks that are currently completely overshadowed...they're actually quite diverse. I'm fairly certain that after this initial wave of nerfs (and the second one that takes care of the remaining outliers like Druid or Warlock) we might actually get back to the fairly balanced meta of last expansion.
Sword of the Fallen is just too good. Deck thinning and secret synergy is really awesome. It will most certainly lose a durability. Increasing the cost by (1) comes in at a close second, but the fact that it will nab 3 secrets is really soild
Hand of A'dal is a perfect tempo piece and usable at pretty much any point in the game. To blend with Paladin's theme, I can see this being brought down to +1/+1 or removing the bonus to health as a whole. Priest is like Pixar, is all about having the dump truck butt. So reducing the bonus to +1/+2 would be more in that realm.
Aldor Attendant is not only a solid T1 drop, but it makes a follow up turn with a buff just ridiculous. I can see this being pulled back to a 1/2 to keep it from getting too out of hand so quickly.
For Mage:
Deck of Lunacy gives way too much of a discount for the cards. Adding in the extra cards you get from C'Thun, the Shattered and you're staring down the barrel at a really efficient gattling gun of spells. I can see this being dropped to a (2) mana cost reduction to keep it viable, but not abused too much
Refreshing Spring Water is pretty much an autoinclude at this point in the meta. Given it's prominence in Mage decks, having the cost go up from (4) to (5) seems logical since it can be reduced with cards like Incanter's Flow and mana games with Mana Biscuit, the potential to draw through a number of cards with minimal cost is ridiculous. Reducing the mana on the back end rom (2) to (1) would also help nullify a lot of the abuse on this card.
For Neutral:
Pen Flinger is just so wonderfully good that it is hard to nerf it without totally killing it. There is little that can be done to it without outright turning it into Elven Archer. My thoughts would be that it will only target minions. Personally, I'd like to see it go along with the random target theme because I think that would be hilarious AND reduce it's prominence in decks but not outright kill the card.
Never a good sign when a deck's worst matchup is itself.
It makes me wonder if Team 5 didn't think people would combine the Libram package (which was already slightly too strong) with the powerful new Secret tools. Did they think the new package would actually weaken the old one? Did they think there was some reason the two wouldn't work well together? Did they simply not test the two packages in the same deck?
I was playing a no minion mage earlier today against a Druid. A tree/token druid. Watch the replay. By turn 7 I was down to 4 health. If I was playing ANY OTHER DECK other than Lunacy Mage, I would have lost 100%.
The challenge for me with this explanation is the idea that the game would have played out the same - with you down at 4 health by turn 7 - if you were playing any other deck. I don't even really believe that outcome was inevitably true in the game you've linked to.
With the exception of an early Combustion, you spend the first six turns doing very little to interact with your opponent's board. Take your turn 5, for example, when you could easily have used your Fireball to take out one of your opponent's minions, but you dropped a Trick Totem instead. That right there was 4 damage you didn't have to take. And that would have set you up to Apexis Blast their remaining buffed taunt, which also has about a 27.7% chance of getting you something to further deal with the board (18.5% taunts, 9.2% rush minions)
My aim here is not to criticize your plays, but rather to point out that the game could have played out differently if you had interacted more with your opponent's minions. And there are other cards you could have run to deal with aggro decks more effectively in the early game that didn't show up in your deck list (e.g. Ice Barrier and Cone of Cold) which would have probably changed the outcome quite a bit.
So it's hard to believe that any other deck would have lost the game. Certainly, any other deck would have lost from that position - down to 4 HP against aggro on turn 7 - but most other decks wouldn't have let the game get there in the first place.
That's fair. And thanks for the feedback. On the one hand, interacting with the board "more" is not the no-minion goal though. Inherently, even if no minion mage wasn't running DoL, the first 5 turns would play out just the same. Hell, let's pretend for a second I was playing watcher/ping mage. The watch towers? At that point do hardly nothing since he plays out his early actual minions before the 2 mana watch tower would have come into play. He a few more minions but nothing that would have posed a threat. The 3 mana watch tower would have spawned 2/2's that he could handily take care of with his buffed minions. And the watch tower itself doesn't pose a threat.
And for a button mage, at that point in the game under *ideal* circumstances, what would the best play be? The 4 drop that casts hero power on all enemies with a 1 or even 2 copies of wildfire previously played (which to do so, would mean pretty much doing nothing on turn 2 and turn 3.
So ultimately ANY prominent mage deck (either no-minion or button) would have under ideal circumstances done the same first few turns.
I understand that aggro's goal is to overwhelm early before the enemy stabilizes. My counterpoint is this: Why is it ok for aggro decks to have such power available to them, but when a control deck is able to RNG into a win condition against them semi-consistently, suddenly it's "unfair".
If you recall, the aggro deck just needs to pray that the opponent doesn't draw into AoE/Removal, and/or heals/armor gains. (which statistically for mage is exceedingly rare). Imagine if I was running Ice Barrier. What good would that REALLY do? 8 armor stall. That's 2 minion attacks. Cone of Cold, stall for one turn into the hopes that I draw my flamestrike before he kills me? Again, the aggro deck just needs the control player to brick because control decks HOLISTICALLY only have a FEW answers to aggro. They are COUNTING on control decks to brick and not have the tool that they need in order to stabilize.
Deck of Lunacy takes that scenario and says "I'm going to turn all your spells into RNG spells, which statistically higher cost spells have such powerful effects that they are most likely going to help you, but you won't know what spells you have, and you'll have to draw them". It gives the no minion mage deck an ACTUAL shot at dealing with aggro and winning. As opposed to the 1% chance of winning that they normally would have without Deck of Lunacy and just PRAYING that they draw their stall/aoe clear cards.
The latter is NOT fun. There's NOTHING fun about a control deck losing to an aggro deck because the aggro deck can just play pretty much anything and the control deck is going "well, there he goes just smorcing me while I pray for heals/stall/clears".
Maybe I'm biased, but aggro ALWAYS has the upper hand against other decks. (Which it shouldn't even be that way. The holy trinity of counters SHOULD be Aggro>OTK>Control>Aggro.) But instead in Hearthstone it's just Aggro>>>>>>>Everything else 99% of the time unless the other decks get lucky.
I agree he should have played Font of Power prior to Deck of Lunacy for the options, but I think otherwise it seemed like the right play to drop Deck of Lunacy rather than float a mana.
You could maybe argue that he should have played Font of Power into the randomly generated Firebrand into Deck of Lunacy with the hopes of killing the Bonechewer Brawler with the spellburst, but the average outcome is that their Bonechewer Brawler becomes a 6/1 and their Toad of the Wilds dies. Then they'd play their new Toad and Mark of the Spikeshell on the 6/1 and go face for 8 (rather than trade with the 3/4 like they did). Now you're starting turn 5 at 16 health instead of 22, but you can trade on board with the Brawler and Apexis Blast the last minion on board. Ultimately that's probably better than what happened, since the Trick Totem didn't stop any incoming damage, leaving him at 14 at the start of turn 6.
I'm not sure that's better than just Font of Power into Fireball like you've suggested, but I'd always play the Deck of Lunacy there at the end of turn 4 regardless.
(Notably, I'm assuming all random card generation would have played out exactly the same as it did - maybe order matters and would have changed the results without Deck of Lunacy being played first.)
Oh I'm sure I didn't play perfectly. Ultimately why I chose not to use fireball on the minion was that 1) I was hoping that the Trick totem would absorb some damage, or remove damage from the board (it didn't really). And that the fireball would be for a bigger threat and/or burst. As it turns out, even though I may have misplayed a little; I ultimately still ended up being able to win purely on my opponent's misplay as well (they didn't kill trick totem, if they had, I would have had nothing to buff with the power word card, and thus would have lost by not being able to clear his board).
This really isn't a hot take as it's pretty known among the better players that paladin is the deck with the oppressive win-rate. Mage's winrate is 'just' tier 1 but ridiculously overplayed for some reason.
The reason why it's a problem is exactly as you described. Because it has a card that boosts its winrate to toxic levels if played early, much like Keleseth. Nothing wrong with the deck being strong, if it's got counters, which it does, and doesn't generally rely so heavily on drawing a single card.
And then there's the fact that people are turned away from the game simply because once every three games they'll face a mage. Even if the deck isn't the strongest, the fact that it has made standard this boring while we're only a week in isn't healthy for the game. We've had a similar scenario with Barnes in wild a few years ago. The deck's nerf is justified, even if it's not a meta tyrant.
That's fair. I know that sometimes Blizzard nerfs deck purely out of community perception, and less on the actual statistical power. It's just one of the few times in recent history that a control deck has had that opportunity. But yea, Paladin's winrate made mage's winrate look like nothing.
Yep, sadly we'll have to wait a long, long week until Blizzard nerfs it. The lineups for GM are also very funny: out of 48 players, 47 brought mage and 46 brought paladin. The only player to bring neither class is Fled.
I'm actually looking forward to it, because I'm absolutely certain that paladin's win rate in grandmasters will be actually less impressive than what we tend to believe it should be.
Pretty sure the whole lineup in grandmasters is actually targetting mage. Plenty of aggro decks, at least in asia.
Yep, sadly we'll have to wait a long, long week until Blizzard nerfs it. The lineups for GM are also very funny: out of 48 players, 47 brought mage and 46 brought paladin. The only player to bring neither class is Fled.
At 5 mana, Refreshing Spring Water is exactly the same as Arcane Intellect with one minion drawn. That's not horrible, especially considering no-minion decks run both cards anyway -- and you're always going to get full discount in that deck unless you choose to shuffle a Solarian. Draw two for 1 mana is still insanely good value.
The card is supposed to be a bit of a gamble for decks with minions. It makes sense that it would "break even" with Arcane Intellect when you draw one and one. It does not make sense that they made it cost 4 in the first place.
@Kat__HS I also think we fall into the trap of making too many statlines that are Attack/Attack+2/3. Usually that is what 'makes sense' but we should be trying to do weirder statlines and compensate power in cost/design. I want to see more 8/3's and 4/1's.
Other than with rush/charge minions, there needs to be greater compensation for weird stat lines than what we've seen so far. Unfortunately, it seems Hearthstone has written itself into a corner with its game mechanics - hero powers and attackable minions - that greatly disadvantage anything with low health. Not so for LoR, where a 6/3 while vulnerable to direct damage spells, can still find opportunities to attack or block favourably.
There is nothing wrong with the watch posts. Leave the watch posts alone.
Sure, they can be frustrating to play against in the same way Annoy-o-Tron was frustrating back in the day (less so now), but that's not a reason to nerf them. The whole point of them is to slow the game down, and that's all they do. There's no clearly oppressive archetype that absolutely depends on watch posts. Any oppressive deck that uses them will find a way to be oppressive without them.
Our journey into the Barrens follows Infinis Tempor, a young bronze dragon with ties to the Bronze Dragonflight who learns of his draconic nature and ability to use time magic through his journey with Elise into Un'Goro crater after awakening Eternos the Time Lord. Though he is far from a master in the arts of time magic, he is making quick strides in his journey to become better and aspires to be the best he can be. Why exactly he's found himself in the Barrens is not clear yet though.
Full Forged in the Barrens set
Tokens
Infinis Tempor is the mercenary for Time Traveler in this set. In continuing the theme of all the mercenaries having different races, Infinis is a bronze dragon. His Rank Up spell card depicts him in his dragon form whereas his Legendary card depicts him in his human form. His story will be expanded upon in Book of Mercenaries.
With Year of the Gryphon out, you can now unlock Nina Clockenwerk to use as your hero. She will eventually come into play at some point too.
I am not looking forward to having to tag all my old spell cards..........
Neutrals are pretty easy to guess. Both the popular Watchposts are clearly way more common than they want them to be. Pen Flinger is most certainly getting the boot now.
Regarding Watch Posts, I don’t think play rate is a good enough reason alone for a nerf. Especially considering that they are neutral, so they will obviously be more common. Just look at Zilliax, Khartut Defender, among other popular defensive neutrals.
At this point, they feel balanced to me, both playing with them and against them. I also like the concept and creativity, so I’d like them to live freely for awhile.
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
Yeah, like I said, I'm not trying to judge your plays - we all make mistakes in the moment (I know I've made plenty of misplays). I just really enjoy thinking about replays and how to improve across the board - it's not personal at all. (Your opponent, for instance, screwed up their turn 2 by not playing around Combustion to preserve their ravens. That's a mistake I probably would have made in the moment too, so I expect I'll be more mindful of that going forward.)
My point was just that lots of other decks that want to play for the board wouldn't end up at this position on turn 7, and that even in your game there were choices you could have made to avoid your opponent getting that far ahead. So using this near defeat as proof that Token Druid is too powerful isn't really fair - Token Druid might be very strong after Lunacy Mage is nerfed, but it won't exist in a vacuum, and lots of other decks are better-suited to deal with it.
More than anything, I think your replay demonstrates the OP nature of Lunacy Mage. You didn't really fight for the board, and thus got overrun, but still won in the last moments thanks to random, super cheap spells.
A Recipe of Tenacity!
My tavern brawl is buggy as hell. No title, Hero stuck on loading, every card played ends up disconnect.
A Recipe of Tenacity!
Awesome to see this type of brawl back again. Should be a go to brawl in the first few weeks of every new expansion.
The Patreon support
Hi!
You didn't seem to receive my last Patreon pledge, though I had it confirmed as per usual via email and Patreon billing site. Something on yours or their end?
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
it's not so much about playrate, but about how they very easily shut down certain archetypes completely and without reasonable counterplay.
I have no problem with them being playable or even popular, but I think they should require more overall support other than just being the best play for their mana cost in most situations.
It's pretty weird to see something that can't even attack and has no flexible usage being included in just about any deck archetype that doesn't already have 30 other cards that are much better by comparison.
I mean, for fuck's sake, even Deathrattle Demon Hunter runs them and that's supposed to be a tempo deck.#
I don't think it's good design if you can win the tempo game by just preventing your opponent from playing the game properly.
They aren't just defensive Neutrals, they're jack of all trades in almost all matchups (except a select few)
At the very least make them more easily removable. It's not fair that Zoolock literally auto-loses the moment someone tosses out Mor'shan....or that a tempo deck can completely shut down druid with a Far Watch Post because they no longer have the means to efficiently get rid of it.
A card this powerful shouuld not have vanilla stats, especially when "can't attack" isn't a drawback. It's like if Ragnaros was a 12/12.
The absolute state of the meta
I think that might be legit. I think they thought that to run the Secret Package as a draw engine would require too much deidcation to effectively combine it with Librams, so they didn't consider the overlap of the two obviously very powerful archetypes.
Also, as is evident by the delayed launch and the multitude of very strange bugs, it's quite obvious that they just didn't have as much time as they needed and it's very likely that playtesting suffered because of it.
I mean, they clearly didn't playtest Spell Mage that much either or else they would have very quickly realised that DoL gotten that much stronger.
I'm honestly not even mad at the current state of the game. I very much expected something like this to happen, and honestly, if you look at all the other decks that are currently completely overshadowed...they're actually quite diverse. I'm fairly certain that after this initial wave of nerfs (and the second one that takes care of the remaining outliers like Druid or Warlock) we might actually get back to the fairly balanced meta of last expansion.
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
For Paladin:
Sword of the Fallen is just too good. Deck thinning and secret synergy is really awesome. It will most certainly lose a durability. Increasing the cost by (1) comes in at a close second, but the fact that it will nab 3 secrets is really soild
Hand of A'dal is a perfect tempo piece and usable at pretty much any point in the game. To blend with Paladin's theme, I can see this being brought down to +1/+1 or removing the bonus to health as a whole. Priest is like Pixar, is all about having the dump truck butt. So reducing the bonus to +1/+2 would be more in that realm.
Aldor Attendant is not only a solid T1 drop, but it makes a follow up turn with a buff just ridiculous. I can see this being pulled back to a 1/2 to keep it from getting too out of hand so quickly.
For Mage:
Deck of Lunacy gives way too much of a discount for the cards. Adding in the extra cards you get from C'Thun, the Shattered and you're staring down the barrel at a really efficient gattling gun of spells. I can see this being dropped to a (2) mana cost reduction to keep it viable, but not abused too much
Refreshing Spring Water is pretty much an autoinclude at this point in the meta. Given it's prominence in Mage decks, having the cost go up from (4) to (5) seems logical since it can be reduced with cards like Incanter's Flow and mana games with Mana Biscuit, the potential to draw through a number of cards with minimal cost is ridiculous. Reducing the mana on the back end rom (2) to (1) would also help nullify a lot of the abuse on this card.
For Neutral:
Pen Flinger is just so wonderfully good that it is hard to nerf it without totally killing it. There is little that can be done to it without outright turning it into Elven Archer. My thoughts would be that it will only target minions. Personally, I'd like to see it go along with the random target theme because I think that would be hilarious AND reduce it's prominence in decks but not outright kill the card.
The absolute state of the meta
Never a good sign when a deck's worst matchup is itself.
It makes me wonder if Team 5 didn't think people would combine the Libram package (which was already slightly too strong) with the powerful new Secret tools. Did they think the new package would actually weaken the old one? Did they think there was some reason the two wouldn't work well together? Did they simply not test the two packages in the same deck?
It boggles the mind.
Kazakus bugged?
yes ... this is the reason ! I removed Kazakus from my deck :) tks
Push-Ups Warrior Budget Deck List & Guide - Hearthstone Budget Deck Breakdown
https://www.d0nkey.top/streamer-decks?include_cards%5B63128%5D=true&include_cards%5B56507%5D=true
Here I've added Warmaul Challenger and Conditioning to be included. They usually run ETC as one of the win conditions.
Push-Ups Warrior Budget Deck List & Guide - Hearthstone Budget Deck Breakdown
ZelKnow tweeted this list yesterday, apparently had some nice success with it on ladder.
69 Legend Handbuff Warrior
https://twitter.com/ZelKnow/status/1379372310646427648
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
That's fair. And thanks for the feedback. On the one hand, interacting with the board "more" is not the no-minion goal though. Inherently, even if no minion mage wasn't running DoL, the first 5 turns would play out just the same. Hell, let's pretend for a second I was playing watcher/ping mage. The watch towers? At that point do hardly nothing since he plays out his early actual minions before the 2 mana watch tower would have come into play. He a few more minions but nothing that would have posed a threat. The 3 mana watch tower would have spawned 2/2's that he could handily take care of with his buffed minions. And the watch tower itself doesn't pose a threat.
And for a button mage, at that point in the game under *ideal* circumstances, what would the best play be? The 4 drop that casts hero power on all enemies with a 1 or even 2 copies of wildfire previously played (which to do so, would mean pretty much doing nothing on turn 2 and turn 3.
So ultimately ANY prominent mage deck (either no-minion or button) would have under ideal circumstances done the same first few turns.
I understand that aggro's goal is to overwhelm early before the enemy stabilizes. My counterpoint is this: Why is it ok for aggro decks to have such power available to them, but when a control deck is able to RNG into a win condition against them semi-consistently, suddenly it's "unfair".
If you recall, the aggro deck just needs to pray that the opponent doesn't draw into AoE/Removal, and/or heals/armor gains. (which statistically for mage is exceedingly rare). Imagine if I was running Ice Barrier. What good would that REALLY do? 8 armor stall. That's 2 minion attacks. Cone of Cold, stall for one turn into the hopes that I draw my flamestrike before he kills me? Again, the aggro deck just needs the control player to brick because control decks HOLISTICALLY only have a FEW answers to aggro. They are COUNTING on control decks to brick and not have the tool that they need in order to stabilize.
Deck of Lunacy takes that scenario and says "I'm going to turn all your spells into RNG spells, which statistically higher cost spells have such powerful effects that they are most likely going to help you, but you won't know what spells you have, and you'll have to draw them". It gives the no minion mage deck an ACTUAL shot at dealing with aggro and winning. As opposed to the 1% chance of winning that they normally would have without Deck of Lunacy and just PRAYING that they draw their stall/aoe clear cards.
The latter is NOT fun. There's NOTHING fun about a control deck losing to an aggro deck because the aggro deck can just play pretty much anything and the control deck is going "well, there he goes just smorcing me while I pray for heals/stall/clears".
Maybe I'm biased, but aggro ALWAYS has the upper hand against other decks. (Which it shouldn't even be that way. The holy trinity of counters SHOULD be Aggro>OTK>Control>Aggro.) But instead in Hearthstone it's just Aggro>>>>>>>Everything else 99% of the time unless the other decks get lucky.
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
Oh I'm sure I didn't play perfectly. Ultimately why I chose not to use fireball on the minion was that 1) I was hoping that the Trick totem would absorb some damage, or remove damage from the board (it didn't really). And that the fireball would be for a bigger threat and/or burst. As it turns out, even though I may have misplayed a little; I ultimately still ended up being able to win purely on my opponent's misplay as well (they didn't kill trick totem, if they had, I would have had nothing to buff with the power word card, and thus would have lost by not being able to clear his board).
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
That's fair. I know that sometimes Blizzard nerfs deck purely out of community perception, and less on the actual statistical power. It's just one of the few times in recent history that a control deck has had that opportunity. But yea, Paladin's winrate made mage's winrate look like nothing.
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
I made a partial prediction somewhere else, but I guess I'll do the full thing here since we now know how many and which classes.
Efficient Octo-bot --> 3 health (down from 4)
Deck of Lunacy --> ... into random spells that cost (1) more (down from (3) more, still hoping they clean up the wording)
Refreshing Spring Water --> 5 mana (up from 4) -- On par with Arcane Intellect when you draw one minion
Sword of the Fallen --> 4 mana (up from 2) -- That's how much 3 secrets and a 1/3 weapon should cost.
Pen Flinger --> 2 mana (up from 1) -- Does this kill the card completely? I doubt it, but I also don't care.
Jandice Barov --> 6 mana (up from 5) -- Still quite playable, but not universally so.
The absolute state of the meta
I'm actually looking forward to it, because I'm absolutely certain that paladin's win rate in grandmasters will be actually less impressive than what we tend to believe it should be.
Pretty sure the whole lineup in grandmasters is actually targetting mage. Plenty of aggro decks, at least in asia.
The absolute state of the meta
Yep, sadly we'll have to wait a long, long week until Blizzard nerfs it. The lineups for GM are also very funny: out of 48 players, 47 brought mage and 46 brought paladin. The only player to bring neither class is Fled.
Push-Ups Warrior Budget Deck List & Guide - Hearthstone Budget Deck Breakdown
Do you have some examples where I can find them?
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
At 5 mana, Refreshing Spring Water is exactly the same as Arcane Intellect with one minion drawn. That's not horrible, especially considering no-minion decks run both cards anyway -- and you're always going to get full discount in that deck unless you choose to shuffle a Solarian. Draw two for 1 mana is still insanely good value.
The card is supposed to be a bit of a gamble for decks with minions. It makes sense that it would "break even" with Arcane Intellect when you draw one and one. It does not make sense that they made it cost 4 in the first place.
Dean Ayala's Community Q&A #12 - Barrens Balance Meeting on Monday, AI Ladder, Core Set, Heroic Battlegrounds, and More
Other than with rush/charge minions, there needs to be greater compensation for weird stat lines than what we've seen so far. Unfortunately, it seems Hearthstone has written itself into a corner with its game mechanics - hero powers and attackable minions - that greatly disadvantage anything with low health. Not so for LoR, where a 6/3 while vulnerable to direct damage spells, can still find opportunities to attack or block favourably.
Push-Ups Warrior Budget Deck List & Guide - Hearthstone Budget Deck Breakdown
Ahem, I don't think Armor Vendor would be too happy being referred to as a man 😋
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
There is nothing wrong with the watch posts. Leave the watch posts alone.
Sure, they can be frustrating to play against in the same way Annoy-o-Tron was frustrating back in the day (less so now), but that's not a reason to nerf them. The whole point of them is to slow the game down, and that's all they do. There's no clearly oppressive archetype that absolutely depends on watch posts. Any oppressive deck that uses them will find a way to be oppressive without them.
The absolute state of the meta
Did you read your forum signature?
Custom Class - Time Traveler (Updated February 17th - Return to Naxxramas added!)
Forged in the Barrens now out!
Our journey into the Barrens follows Infinis Tempor, a young bronze dragon with ties to the Bronze Dragonflight who learns of his draconic nature and ability to use time magic through his journey with Elise into Un'Goro crater after awakening Eternos the Time Lord. Though he is far from a master in the arts of time magic, he is making quick strides in his journey to become better and aspires to be the best he can be. Why exactly he's found himself in the Barrens is not clear yet though.
Tokens
Infinis Tempor is the mercenary for Time Traveler in this set. In continuing the theme of all the mercenaries having different races, Infinis is a bronze dragon. His Rank Up spell card depicts him in his dragon form whereas his Legendary card depicts him in his human form. His story will be expanded upon in Book of Mercenaries.
With Year of the Gryphon out, you can now unlock Nina Clockenwerk to use as your hero. She will eventually come into play at some point too.
I am not looking forward to having to tag all my old spell cards..........
Six Card Changes are Coming to Hearthstone Next Week - Targets Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards
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