I completely agree that set rotation is another huge factor that I had missed, despite not saying so explicitly in my previous response (I gave you an upvote for it instead).
I still think The Spring Water was obviously overtuned even in a deck with minions. Mage is the most spell-focused class after all, and though I don't know the statistics, I expect normal mage decks will be at least 50% spells. At which point Spring Water is on average a 2 mana draw 2 without even trying to make it work. If it cost 5, then it's an Arcane Intellect on average, which is much more reasonable, but even then I'd be uneasy with it just because of how easy it is to make a spell-dominated mage deck.
I think the idea of the card is cool, but the execution was obviously flawed. It can absolutely be salvaged though. If it refreshed 1 mana each time and still cost 4 then the whole card makes sense power-wise and doesn't lose any flavour.
Nirast - The Arcane Focus sounds like it should be a weapon: from my perspective, it's only a minion because the prompt says it has to be. Maybe if it were a character it would make more sense; the effect is interesting, though. I think I like the Rusted Harvester more, regardless, Treant Druid being a guilty pleasure of mine.
anchorm4n - The card is okay, but I don't know if it stands out enough.
DestroyerR - I don't know if Hearthstone has the same UI capability as Legends of Runeterra in-that it can keep a revealed card in that state for your opponent to see. Otherwise, you'd have to keep track of the cards mentally/manually, which is a bummer. Would people pay 3 mana and a deck slot for the information? I'm not sure.
grumpymonk - I like the Dreadmist Watch Post more than the Arcane Watchtower. I think the Watchtower effecting your opponent's costs is too similar to the one we have already. "Armor" should be capitalized, though.
Demonxz95 - Mini Ragnaros is a little on-the-nose for this prompt, in my opinion, creatively-speaking. Sheep Cannon is amusing and could see play in the right deck, like maybe a Spell Face Hunter or Token Druid.
Wailor - If you're going with Mortar Team, I would definitely pick the one with less Health. Either-way, I feel like it might be too powerful for 4-mana, clearing away up to 3 enemy minions at the end of the turn. I wish it could be something like "3 damage to a random enemy minion and 1 damage to its neighbors", but that's far too many words.
What agries me the most, is Blizz talked a lot about cost reduction and how it's no good for the game, and then they print a lot of Libram support and a lot of spell cost reduction for Mage.
I have the theory they want Standard to be annoying to make people play Classic. It's working with me at least.
I don't think that would make a lot of sense from a business perspective. Once you've collected all the Classic cards, you'll have no reason to spend money. They always have and always will want Standard to be the main game mode played by most players. Their real goal is to make Standard slightly too hard and disappointing to play with just the Core set, so that players are incentivized to buy expansion cards.
As for the mana cost reduction that is still too present in the game, I'm as confused as you are. I, too, remember them saying mana cheating has been a big problem in the past. In Iksar's recent AMA, he acknowledged that the power level got way out of control in the Year of the Raven, and I think he has to know that mana cheating was a huge part of that.
You CAN disenchant the non-golden copies you probably already have, so it's not totally nothing.
But also: the golden cards were just icing on the cake added to help stretch out all the rewards across the doubled number of levels in the new rewards track. So you didn't lose anything with the addition of the golden cards - they just help fill the space between levels.
I'm not at very high ranks but I have been having success with Warrior. I use a handbuff Overlord Saurfang build. It's really quite fun. Scrap Golem helps a lot to slow down the opponent and keep your health up for C'Thun, the Shattered. Horde Operative is also hilarious. Of course it's not 100% but Warrior feels good in those matchups. Still refining what I'm using and debating crafting a few things. Overall though I find Mage and Paladin a positive matchup.
The core set did a lot to clear out the useless cards so now card generation and discovers effects are almost entirely positive. Deck of Lunacy and Jandice Barov are the two stand outs but I think all those effects are very pushed right now. If Blizz does nerf anything hopefully they can revert it next set when the card pool is a bit more cluttered. It's a shame Lunacy, a fun card, feels oppressive in a small than normal bubble.
I think they must have assumed No Minion Mage would be less popular/strong. Refreshing Spring Water is a much cooler card in a deck with some minions, and becomes a more interesting potential inclusion that you really have to think about.
They were obviously wrong, but I can kind of see why they might have thought that. They removed a lot of the best face damage in Mage, and added in a Hero Power package that uses a lot of minions and seems like a cool control finisher. Also, the archetype a) wasn't oppressively strong or powerful before rotation, and b) didn't gain a ton of new stuff. (The most common list for this deck only runs two new cards - 2x Runed Orb and 2x Refreshing Spring Water).
That's a big part of why I think the rotation plays a major role here. This deck is really strong in the context of what a lot of other classes are trying to do right now with their archetypes post-rotation, and it blows them out of the water.
Easily the strongest card in the set, and maybe even in all of Standard. Drawing 2 cards for effectively no mana is preposterous; potentially gaining mana off of it thanks to Incanter's Flow, even more so.
If it makes you feel any better, I have never gotten Deck of Lunacy in my hand/mulligan. I drew it on turn three once and discovered a copy of it from Runed Orb on turn two once.
Let's be honest, they should definitely have foreseen a card that is better than Pot of Greed would be a problem. You don't even need to look at the context to know that; it's like the cardinal rule of TCG/CCGs.
Not seeing/fully appreciating the problem specifically with Deck of Lunacy is easier to forgive, likewise with Sword of the Fallen. Secret pally has been pushed twice and failed twice between TGT and Barrens, so it makes sense they'd push the power higher this time.
I don't think Jaraxxus is that big of a problem, because he only really punishes Control decks that have no win condition.
A well timed Rattlegore can shut Warlock down quite easily, regardless of Jaraxxus. If you're talking about Control Priest, that's just because the deck doesn't have a real win condition (or way to get there yet).
I beg your pardon, but outlasting the opponent is a perfectly valid, very real win condition, especially for a class like Priest that doesn't get a lot of offensive tools.
The simple fact we have these problems and they are quick to change them shows the broken decks are unintentional. That doesn't mean they didn't intend to make Refreshing Spring Water and Sword of the Fallen strong, just that they hadn't been able to play test enough to see how strong they would be in the resulting meta.
There are many factors in that failure, not just time. The whole HS team is a bit over 100 people the last I heard, but only a fraction of those are in final design and have any say in the power of cards. Then ask that handful of people to play test the entire set in <4 months, with cards being tweaked the entire time so the internal meta is shifting just like it does with buffs and nerfs in the meta we see, and it is easy to see how difficult it can be for them to get everything right.
Let's do a bit of maths to help show the challenge they're up against: let's suppose there's 10 people in final design, and an active player-base of 10,000 (certainly an underestimate!) in the first week of an expansion. 4 months is ~122 days, but they're working hours, so we're looking at (122 days)*(8 hours per day)*(10 players) = 9760 hours of testing per expansion (maximum!).
Compare to 1 week in the hands of players (assuming an average play time of 2 hours a day in that time): 7*2*10,000 = 140,000 hours = 14 times more than final design had. In other words it takes players about half a day to test as much as the devs can in 4 months. If I had been more realistic with my numbers it would be even faster.
Tl;dr: you'd think 4 months is long enough, but it's not even close.
Everything that the OP says is true - Lord Jaraxxus offers infinite value, there's not really any competition for his card slot in Control Warlock, and Warlock is already very strong at control. Despite all that, I don't think we can reasonably say that Lord Jaraxxus is a problem. The major advantages of the new Jaraxxus over the old one is that he can safely be played before you drop below 15 life without risking a major blowout loss, and he can be healed back up to 30 so that even if you're at low life when you play him, you can recover.
The first advantage there is critical to making him playable. He was outclassed for a long time because Warlock often had anti-synergies with him in their control decks (e.g. Skull of the Man'ari), and you often had to delay until you had low life to play him. At the point that you're below 15 life and doing little else on that turn you play him, you're probably behind on board and being burst down the next turn.
The second advantage - that he can heal up to 30 - is really a symptom of the real problem in Warlock today; namely, that Warlock has way too much healing. The Soul Fragment package has gotten stronger over time with Luckysoul Hoarder, and Warlock has picked up a ton of lifesteal and an upgraded Siphon Soul with the core set and rotation.
With all that in mind, I think nerfing a bit of the key healing tools of Warlock would go a long way to weakening the Control Warlock deck enough to prevent Lord Jaraxxus's infinite value becoming a problem.
Thief Rogue (or Priest) decks can be a LOT of fun, but that's because the randomness is bounded. You have a core suite of tools that you need to end up integrating with your randomly generated ones. Even Lunacy Mage isn't entirely random, with the culling of the spell pool you've got a good idea of the cards you'll generate.
Your deck is shuffled, these games all have some randomness. Different strokes, I guess.
I think that's the biggest dilemma with this deck is finding the right end game win con. I do agree that in this current meta the C'thun is probably not needed and have actually been tinkering with it a bit more. I've taken out the Scavengers, C'thun and a Mo'arg and replaced with Rustwix, Taelan and Soul Rends for faster cycling. I do believe Rustwix is great after Portal to avoid fatigue so you don't die as quickly after you Neeru. I've even debated on putting in a Felosophy or 2 for more Rustwix and anti-fatigue or another Mo'arg in a pinch. This has allowed me to cycle much faster that the Soul Fragments havent gotten in the way of the Bristlebacks, but if you're finding they do you could replace Spirit Jailers with Armor Vendors. Hope this helps! :)
I haven’t enjoyed Hearthstone’s single player games, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this. (So much so that I skipped the spoilers in this article.)
In my opinion, Warcraft lore is REALLY boring. I actually get less interested in cards and characters when I learn more about them. (In contrast, I love learning the lore behind Runeterra cards.) But when Hearthstone creates new characters or elevates really minor existing ones, that can be interesting. The League of EVIL and League of Explorers were both a lot of fun. I’m excited to see a year developing 10 new characters.
The deck of lunacy mage is a RNG feast ... in my last game I got two Survival of the Fittest, which for a no minion deck is ridicolous ...
The problem is NOT that it's random. The problem is that it's not random enough. The card pools are so small at the higher mana costs that you are guaranteed to get massive draw at 6, and you can expect Nagrand Slam and Survival of the Fittest pretty consistently if you started with the right spell costs originally.
If there were more spells in the pool that were less generally useful (while still being powerful in their intended classes), Lunacy would be much less problematic.
This is my experience, too. Secret Paladin is powerful, but it's definitely the people who don't feel like interacting with your secrets patiently that make the winrate skyrocket. It will also be much less powerful if Control Warlock gets the opportunity to play anti-aggro instead of full greed.
I think it's worth noting that Paladin Play% + Rogue Play%, them being second and third most played classes, is still less than Mage on its own. Paladin's definitely really strong and really common at the moment, but it's certainly MUCH more annoying to play against the same Mage deck over and over in my opinion. Refreshing Spring Water is one of the most obnoxious cards I've had the displeasure of dealing with. A card that is very commonly "Draw 2 and gain 1/2 Mana" is pretty silly. Even without the mana gain, 0 mana Draw 2 is a bit much, considering they nerfed Druid's 2 mana draw 3. Font of Power's current powerful selection pool also makes sure that the "no minion" drawback is much less significant than it used to be.
Although I'll be the first to admit I'm biased considering Paladin is my favorite class, and Mage has always been at the bottom of my list of classes to play against, so take my whining with a grain of salt. Admittedly even I'm tired of Librams, though.
Unfortunately, there's currently no real counter to Paladin. All matchups are green. Any possible counter is kept in check by something else (edit: for example: secret rogue). We just wait for nerfs next week.
Medivh Bundle and For the Hoard Card Back Now Available for Gold in the Hearthstone Shop
Really hope they re-release Aranna, missed out on her and demon hunter is the only class I dont have an alternative hero for :(
Medivh Bundle and For the Hoard Card Back Now Available for Gold in the Hearthstone Shop
I knew I shouldn't have cared about discount, now I can buy him with gold hehe
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
I completely agree that set rotation is another huge factor that I had missed, despite not saying so explicitly in my previous response (I gave you an upvote for it instead).
I still think The Spring Water was obviously overtuned even in a deck with minions. Mage is the most spell-focused class after all, and though I don't know the statistics, I expect normal mage decks will be at least 50% spells. At which point Spring Water is on average a 2 mana draw 2 without even trying to make it work. If it cost 5, then it's an Arcane Intellect on average, which is much more reasonable, but even then I'd be uneasy with it just because of how easy it is to make a spell-dominated mage deck.
I think the idea of the card is cool, but the execution was obviously flawed. It can absolutely be salvaged though. If it refreshed 1 mana each time and still cost 4 then the whole card makes sense power-wise and doesn't lose any flavour.
Watch Post And Learn - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Some early feedback:
Nirast - The Arcane Focus sounds like it should be a weapon: from my perspective, it's only a minion because the prompt says it has to be. Maybe if it were a character it would make more sense; the effect is interesting, though. I think I like the Rusted Harvester more, regardless, Treant Druid being a guilty pleasure of mine.
anchorm4n - The card is okay, but I don't know if it stands out enough.
DestroyerR - I don't know if Hearthstone has the same UI capability as Legends of Runeterra in-that it can keep a revealed card in that state for your opponent to see. Otherwise, you'd have to keep track of the cards mentally/manually, which is a bummer. Would people pay 3 mana and a deck slot for the information? I'm not sure.
grumpymonk - I like the Dreadmist Watch Post more than the Arcane Watchtower. I think the Watchtower effecting your opponent's costs is too similar to the one we have already. "Armor" should be capitalized, though.
Demonxz95 - Mini Ragnaros is a little on-the-nose for this prompt, in my opinion, creatively-speaking. Sheep Cannon is amusing and could see play in the right deck, like maybe a Spell Face Hunter or Token Druid.
Wailor - If you're going with Mortar Team, I would definitely pick the one with less Health. Either-way, I feel like it might be too powerful for 4-mana, clearing away up to 3 enemy minions at the end of the turn. I wish it could be something like "3 damage to a random enemy minion and 1 damage to its neighbors", but that's far too many words.
Out of Cards Changelog - 2021-04-05
Deployed code to fix issues with threads not updating.
Hearthstone is unplayable right now
I don't think that would make a lot of sense from a business perspective. Once you've collected all the Classic cards, you'll have no reason to spend money. They always have and always will want Standard to be the main game mode played by most players. Their real goal is to make Standard slightly too hard and disappointing to play with just the Core set, so that players are incentivized to buy expansion cards.
As for the mana cost reduction that is still too present in the game, I'm as confused as you are. I, too, remember them saying mana cheating has been a big problem in the past. In Iksar's recent AMA, he acknowledged that the power level got way out of control in the Year of the Raven, and I think he has to know that mana cheating was a huge part of that.
Dean Ayala's Community Q&A #12 - Barrens Balance Meeting on Monday, AI Ladder, Core Set, Heroic Battlegrounds, and More
You CAN disenchant the non-golden copies you probably already have, so it's not totally nothing.
But also: the golden cards were just icing on the cake added to help stretch out all the rewards across the doubled number of levels in the new rewards track. So you didn't lose anything with the addition of the golden cards - they just help fill the space between levels.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
I'm not at very high ranks but I have been having success with Warrior. I use a handbuff Overlord Saurfang build. It's really quite fun. Scrap Golem helps a lot to slow down the opponent and keep your health up for C'Thun, the Shattered. Horde Operative is also hilarious. Of course it's not 100% but Warrior feels good in those matchups. Still refining what I'm using and debating crafting a few things. Overall though I find Mage and Paladin a positive matchup.
The core set did a lot to clear out the useless cards so now card generation and discovers effects are almost entirely positive. Deck of Lunacy and Jandice Barov are the two stand outs but I think all those effects are very pushed right now. If Blizz does nerf anything hopefully they can revert it next set when the card pool is a bit more cluttered. It's a shame Lunacy, a fun card, feels oppressive in a small than normal bubble.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
I think they must have assumed No Minion Mage would be less popular/strong. Refreshing Spring Water is a much cooler card in a deck with some minions, and becomes a more interesting potential inclusion that you really have to think about.
They were obviously wrong, but I can kind of see why they might have thought that. They removed a lot of the best face damage in Mage, and added in a Hero Power package that uses a lot of minions and seems like a cool control finisher. Also, the archetype a) wasn't oppressively strong or powerful before rotation, and b) didn't gain a ton of new stuff. (The most common list for this deck only runs two new cards - 2x Runed Orb and 2x Refreshing Spring Water).
That's a big part of why I think the rotation plays a major role here. This deck is really strong in the context of what a lot of other classes are trying to do right now with their archetypes post-rotation, and it blows them out of the water.
Refreshing Spring Water
Easily the strongest card in the set, and maybe even in all of Standard. Drawing 2 cards for effectively no mana is preposterous; potentially gaining mana off of it thanks to Incanter's Flow, even more so.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
If it makes you feel any better, I have never gotten Deck of Lunacy in my hand/mulligan. I drew it on turn three once and discovered a copy of it from Runed Orb on turn two once.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
Let's be honest, they should definitely have foreseen a card that is better than Pot of Greed would be a problem. You don't even need to look at the context to know that; it's like the cardinal rule of TCG/CCGs.
Not seeing/fully appreciating the problem specifically with Deck of Lunacy is easier to forgive, likewise with Sword of the Fallen. Secret pally has been pushed twice and failed twice between TGT and Barrens, so it makes sense they'd push the power higher this time.
Can we talk about Jaraxxus yet?
I beg your pardon, but outlasting the opponent is a perfectly valid, very real win condition, especially for a class like Priest that doesn't get a lot of offensive tools.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
The simple fact we have these problems and they are quick to change them shows the broken decks are unintentional. That doesn't mean they didn't intend to make Refreshing Spring Water and Sword of the Fallen strong, just that they hadn't been able to play test enough to see how strong they would be in the resulting meta.
There are many factors in that failure, not just time. The whole HS team is a bit over 100 people the last I heard, but only a fraction of those are in final design and have any say in the power of cards. Then ask that handful of people to play test the entire set in <4 months, with cards being tweaked the entire time so the internal meta is shifting just like it does with buffs and nerfs in the meta we see, and it is easy to see how difficult it can be for them to get everything right.
Let's do a bit of maths to help show the challenge they're up against: let's suppose there's 10 people in final design, and an active player-base of 10,000 (certainly an underestimate!) in the first week of an expansion. 4 months is ~122 days, but they're working hours, so we're looking at (122 days)*(8 hours per day)*(10 players) = 9760 hours of testing per expansion (maximum!).
Compare to 1 week in the hands of players (assuming an average play time of 2 hours a day in that time): 7*2*10,000 = 140,000 hours = 14 times more than final design had. In other words it takes players about half a day to test as much as the devs can in 4 months. If I had been more realistic with my numbers it would be even faster.
Tl;dr: you'd think 4 months is long enough, but it's not even close.
Can we talk about Jaraxxus yet?
Everything that the OP says is true - Lord Jaraxxus offers infinite value, there's not really any competition for his card slot in Control Warlock, and Warlock is already very strong at control. Despite all that, I don't think we can reasonably say that Lord Jaraxxus is a problem. The major advantages of the new Jaraxxus over the old one is that he can safely be played before you drop below 15 life without risking a major blowout loss, and he can be healed back up to 30 so that even if you're at low life when you play him, you can recover.
The first advantage there is critical to making him playable. He was outclassed for a long time because Warlock often had anti-synergies with him in their control decks (e.g. Skull of the Man'ari), and you often had to delay until you had low life to play him. At the point that you're below 15 life and doing little else on that turn you play him, you're probably behind on board and being burst down the next turn.
The second advantage - that he can heal up to 30 - is really a symptom of the real problem in Warlock today; namely, that Warlock has way too much healing. The Soul Fragment package has gotten stronger over time with Luckysoul Hoarder, and Warlock has picked up a ton of lifesteal and an upgraded Siphon Soul with the core set and rotation.
With all that in mind, I think nerfing a bit of the key healing tools of Warlock would go a long way to weakening the Control Warlock deck enough to prevent Lord Jaraxxus's infinite value becoming a problem.
Out of Cards Changelog - 2021-04-05
Recent Threads is not updating
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
Thief Rogue (or Priest) decks can be a LOT of fun, but that's because the randomness is bounded. You have a core suite of tools that you need to end up integrating with your randomly generated ones. Even Lunacy Mage isn't entirely random, with the culling of the spell pool you've got a good idea of the cards you'll generate.
Your deck is shuffled, these games all have some randomness. Different strokes, I guess.
Neeru Warlock!
Great to hear! :D
I think that's the biggest dilemma with this deck is finding the right end game win con. I do agree that in this current meta the C'thun is probably not needed and have actually been tinkering with it a bit more. I've taken out the Scavengers, C'thun and a Mo'arg and replaced with Rustwix, Taelan and Soul Rends for faster cycling. I do believe Rustwix is great after Portal to avoid fatigue so you don't die as quickly after you Neeru. I've even debated on putting in a Felosophy or 2 for more Rustwix and anti-fatigue or another Mo'arg in a pinch. This has allowed me to cycle much faster that the Soul Fragments havent gotten in the way of the Bristlebacks, but if you're finding they do you could replace Spirit Jailers with Armor Vendors. Hope this helps! :)
Rokara's Warrior Book of Mercenaries Datamined - Bosses, Decks, and Voicelines
I haven’t enjoyed Hearthstone’s single player games, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this. (So much so that I skipped the spoilers in this article.)
In my opinion, Warcraft lore is REALLY boring. I actually get less interested in cards and characters when I learn more about them. (In contrast, I love learning the lore behind Runeterra cards.) But when Hearthstone creates new characters or elevates really minor existing ones, that can be interesting. The League of EVIL and League of Explorers were both a lot of fun. I’m excited to see a year developing 10 new characters.
Out of Cards Changelog - 2021-04-05
*Cough* It's not 2020 anymore *cough*
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
The problem is NOT that it's random. The problem is that it's not random enough. The card pools are so small at the higher mana costs that you are guaranteed to get massive draw at 6, and you can expect Nagrand Slam and Survival of the Fittest pretty consistently if you started with the right spell costs originally.
If there were more spells in the pool that were less generally useful (while still being powerful in their intended classes), Lunacy would be much less problematic.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
This is my experience, too. Secret Paladin is powerful, but it's definitely the people who don't feel like interacting with your secrets patiently that make the winrate skyrocket. It will also be much less powerful if Control Warlock gets the opportunity to play anti-aggro instead of full greed.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
I think it's worth noting that Paladin Play% + Rogue Play%, them being second and third most played classes, is still less than Mage on its own. Paladin's definitely really strong and really common at the moment, but it's certainly MUCH more annoying to play against the same Mage deck over and over in my opinion. Refreshing Spring Water is one of the most obnoxious cards I've had the displeasure of dealing with. A card that is very commonly "Draw 2 and gain 1/2 Mana" is pretty silly. Even without the mana gain, 0 mana Draw 2 is a bit much, considering they nerfed Druid's 2 mana draw 3. Font of Power's current powerful selection pool also makes sure that the "no minion" drawback is much less significant than it used to be.
Although I'll be the first to admit I'm biased considering Paladin is my favorite class, and Mage has always been at the bottom of my list of classes to play against, so take my whining with a grain of salt. Admittedly even I'm tired of Librams, though.
Mage and Paladin are Dominating Hearthstone's Forged in the Barrens Meta With Over 50% of Decks Played
Unfortunately, there's currently no real counter to Paladin. All matchups are green. Any possible counter is kept in check by something else (edit: for example: secret rogue). We just wait for nerfs next week.
Rokara's Warrior Book of Mercenaries Datamined - Bosses, Decks, and Voicelines
I love how scatterbrained Bru'kan is. It's honestly really funny