But back to shaman. What's the best type of shaman without looking into Barrens? In my opinion, its midrange or control. Control in particular looks really good with either a Ysharaaj or Doomhammer finisher (now that stickyfingers will be gone, I can go back to this line without tearing my hair off) while midrange gets the better Feral Spirit, Menacing Nimbus, Fire Elemental and the now substantial Al'Akir the Windlord, which is honestly now a real deal; everything else having been axed, its finally now the windlord's turn to shine.
I was thinking the same with midrange. The „new" cards it's getting seem pretty juicy, and that whole Enhancement thing seems to be working quite well. So I'd say, if there's gonna be some Shaman, it's most likely gonna be midrange... Except of course when Blizz pulls a sneaky one and reveals something completely new and broken
Control on the other hand...ehh, tough.
Like, finishers exist for it. It's just a matter of getting there. Control Shaman doesn't lose as badly as aggro imo, but they do lose a big chunk of their removal, and pretty much all of their healing.
Rotating Blood Lust out is one of the dumbest moves. That's an absolute classic with Warcraft buffs and the audio will be missed.
That's as dumb as getting rid of True Silver Champion for Paladin's, Frostbolt for Mage's, Animal Companion for Hunter's, Swipe for Druid, Shadow Word Pain for Priest, Deadly Poison for Rogue, Voidwalker for Warlock, or Shield Block for Warrior. It's just one of those cards that is associated with it's class.
Its fairly obvious why Lava Burst been axed, its because Bru'kan is simply too good a finisher, and with the much smaller spell pool its not entirely impossible to consistently amass a good deal of Lightning Bolts and lava burst for a burn finish.
Alternatively, we can always indulge a small conspiracy theory that nearly all viable cards and finishers from the classic/basic set has been conveniently removed so expansion cards becomes extremely important. So your average legendary/epic in an expansion is now twice as important because nearly every other good card from classic (which you're likely to already have) is no longer available. I myself wouldn't go this far, but its a thought.
But back to shaman. What's the best type of shaman without looking into Barrens? In my opinion, its midrange or control. Control in particular looks really good with either a Ysharaaj or Doomhammer finisher (now that stickyfingers will be gone, I can go back to this line without tearing my hair off) while midrange gets the better Feral Spirit, Menacing Nimbus, Fire Elemental and the now substantial Al'Akir the Windlord, which is honestly now a real deal; everything else having been axed, its finally now the windlord's turn to shine.
OKay, extremely minimal, but I had the win 2 games in any mode quest, so I decided to try it on PvE content. I had a Dalaran Heist run going on the first Bartender Bob encounter. I thought, let's do this and win the next game to see if it works. Not only does it work, it worked on Bob himself.
Outside of maybe keg shenanigans I think this is going to be too slow and awkward. I'm not thrilled with most of the removal that Shurima has and if it needs good removal I suspect from what we've seen so far that it will need to rely on other regions to get it.
Dreams: Not exactly helpful. If you want to support other people's deckbuilding, offer a suggestion (and refrain from labeling it "bad deck"). If all you want to do is criticize (which is what it looks like), just don't bother.
Trimutius: Loot Hoarder wouldn't actually be terrible here. Although I am not F2P, I'm sure F2P players appreciate postings like this. Does it need to include ONLY free core cards? Could you run a few commons/rares from other Standard sets?
A level is a number assigned to each hero class. Each player's classes start at level 1, and levels can be gained for each by accumulating experience. Experience is gained by playing games, especially winning games, in that class. The current level cap is 60.
The wiki didn't go into any details other than that winning helps.
From my own memory/experiences, I think it behaves similarly to XP for the reward track in that longer games tend to give more XP, but I don't know if they are directly connected at all. It might track the number of cards played rather than the time spent, but I really don't know for sure. Other than that, all I know is you get more in constructed than playing against the Innkeeper (there wasn't any other solo content back when I was grinding class levels!).
May I ask why you are keen to level up asap? We will be given golden copies of all the Basic cards when the Barrens set arrives along with the Core set, so I'm not sure what you really gain from rushing to level up the classes.
What stood out to me though were Bloodlust, Flametongue Totem, and Totemic Might. With them gone, aggressive, board-flooding archetypes will have a much harder time competing with other minion-focused decks. Totem Shaman has been hit especially hard, since it basically lost its win condition, one of their strongest totems, and one of their best board-wide buffs. But that's of course not all! With rotation, Shamans will also loose other vital powerhouses for board-flooding decks, like Splitting Axe, Totemic Surge, or Storm's Wrath. So, with all that, I think it's safe to say that aggro Shamans off the table for a while; Or at least Totem Shaman.
I love how far we have come with Totemic Might. It feels like only yesterday the entire community laughed at how useless it is, but now we're unironically giving it a joint obituary with Bloodlust and Flametongue Totem. I can't wait for newer players to go into the Classic format expecting it to be a good card.
On that matter, it will be interesting to see whether players are going to have to (re-)learn the old wisdom from the Classic era (e.g. that you shouldn't run 1-drops in most decks), or whether we'll learn we were actually just wrong back then. Certainly a lot of the old 'bad' cards are widely respected these days, with notable inclusions being Twisting Nether and Vanish, and of course Totemic Might.
There's also some precedent for Deathrattle synergy in Zoo with Possessed Villager and Nerubian Egg, so I don't think Ritual of Doom needs that much of a push, but it's definitely going to need support from the sets this year.
What would you consider to be the fastest way of upgrading class heroes lvl (a.k.a. class progress)?
I am thinking about playing with control decks, in standard ranked mode. Any suggestions that would provide better/quicker results?
I couldn't find any relevant info/data about this, so wondering if anyone can confirm that the XP received (the new XP system) and the points the class receives for playing the game, are in fact, related?
And if so, what is the relation e.g. direct proportional gain, gain per time spent playing, etc?
Also, can anyone point me to a web source which actually provides numbers on how a class is being upgraded (points/playing cards, points/win or loss, etc.)?
Thank you a lot for taking your time to read my post and for any info you may provide, it helps a lot! (feels like I am a bit playing in the dark here...)
I have to be honest, I don't like the removal of charge from everything. Team5 could've just left at least one in standard, this one for instance, so the dream of pulling out some combo will still be possible. I remember the dead days of boar hunter, in AoO, made possible precisely because it had charge, and gave hunter a semblance of a chance in that trying tempo dhunter period. Guess we won't ever be seeing any more of that.
On its own, its bad. Basically for a class that can't draw for shit, every card must count, and this one happily runs itself to its death the same turn you play him, with no obvious combo of either keeping him alive or doing some really powerful stuff. Is there any reason to not play say, Arcane Shot, or Backstab, or in fact any other card, instead of a 1 mana deal 2 to a minion? The only thing I can think of to justify a card slot would be Saddlemaster, an equally weak card in its own right.
Perhaps this signals that team5 is going to print something that will cheapen beasts in hand, in which case there's a sliver of an opportunity for new boar to actually see play. But until then, this is trash, topped only by new Bluegill Warrior.
There are other game modes other than Constructed, you know. It will be pretty good Arena card, probably Duels too, and can appear in Brawls. Definitely not a useless card by any means in the set.
By that reasoning, there are no 'bad' cards. The context of my review/rant is obviously standard constructed because that's where the decision to include into a deck is pertinent and I simply cannot see why anyone would want it. Paladin is the only class that comes closes because there's no 1 mana removal in that class currently, and even then I cannot see why boar would be taken over the deluge of other 1 drops.
That's right, technically, there are no bad cards. There are bad cards for certain game modes and there are cards that are (a lot) worse than alternatives, but all cards can find a place to be played somewhere.
There is a Humongous Razorleaf in the Core set, which will never see a play in anything but Silence Priest at best, but it also serves to dilute the random/discover pool in some situations. You cant only have top tier cards in a set, how would you then know which cards are better? Boar is by no means a dead card, it just wont be used to push face damage. It might not be put in any popular deck list, but it will be pulled by RNG effects and it will help in certain situations.
With 4 health and spell shield, this card is hard to remove with spells, as for combat Shurima has some good attack reducing cards. So yeah this look great in any Shuriman aggro or midrange deck.
Its a small buff. But its still will not see any play. Part of the reason why BGH was a staple back then wasn't simply because it only costs 3, but also because Mountain Giants on 4 used to just end games. Now that that's no longer the case, BGH even at 4 is just not having any real targets to take down.
you underestimate how important removal will become now that the core set has eliminated a lot of flex cards. Druids can't really deal with big threats efficiently (even less than before) so this might just be necessary if there's a deck that runs big minions like that.
7 attack is a huge ask to be honest. Druid's game plan is switching to token tempo or just plain big minions + ramp, so I don't think they'd have any problems with big minions that aren't cheated out. Maybe if pain warlock takes the meta by storm, it might be a mandatory requirement but until then I'm not convinced.
Unless we start seeing a staple 7-8 attack minion that is nearly always guaranteed to be included into decks (Ragnaros the Firelord used to be that minion), BGH would have to sit on the sidelines.
From what we got in the core set for hunter, only 3 archetypes comes immediately to mind. Secret, midrange, and deathrattle hunter. All three, however, suffers from the same problem; establishing proper tempo. Headhunter's Hatchet is literally required to carry all hunter variants, because there are currently no follow up from a turn 1 play like Crackling Razormaw, and removal options for hunter are sketchy at best. With no Kill Command, even a spider tank (which incidentally would be part of standard) on 3 would threaten to sweep hunter off the midrange rug.
Barrens need to give hunter better 2 drops, or at least a rushing 3 drop because ignoring board is no longer possible for Rexxar. More draw/generation would be very helpful, or otherwise we'd have to start relying on stuff like Saddlemaster, and wouldn't that be pretty sad.
Actually, discussions about this card are pointless because there's no right or wrong answer. The utility of discard vs Discover depends largely on the archetype and deckbuilding. People go around and around for days because they can't even agree on what Hunter is "supposed" to be, but they don't ever address that because it's not the obvious question in front of them.
Even if you think Discover is worse, you can't pretend it's actually bad, so as a simpler card, the new version is much better for Core.
For the same reason, that discarding cards with tracking was no downside, keeping those cards is never a downside either. The deck thinning argument just isn't valid since you basically can presume that tracking looks at the 3 last cards of your deck.
This change is 100% upside. (I'll give you 99% for Nomi decks)
Is Targon Ruining Your Enjoyment Of The Game?
Sherima might be the counter to Targon silences like hush. A lot of raw stats unboosted by spell effects.
Think of ascended champions.
Or rockbears
Or 5/2 ephemeral chargers
You could potentially create a silence proof list.
The 8/8 overwhelms in Freij would be a great fit too.
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
I was thinking the same with midrange. The „new" cards it's getting seem pretty juicy, and that whole Enhancement thing seems to be working quite well. So I'd say, if there's gonna be some Shaman, it's most likely gonna be midrange... Except of course when Blizz pulls a sneaky one and reveals something completely new and broken
Control on the other hand...ehh, tough.
Like, finishers exist for it. It's just a matter of getting there. Control Shaman doesn't lose as badly as aggro imo, but they do lose a big chunk of their removal, and pretty much all of their healing.
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Rotating Blood Lust out is one of the dumbest moves. That's an absolute classic with Warcraft buffs and the audio will be missed.
That's as dumb as getting rid of True Silver Champion for Paladin's, Frostbolt for Mage's, Animal Companion for Hunter's, Swipe for Druid, Shadow Word Pain for Priest, Deadly Poison for Rogue, Voidwalker for Warlock, or Shield Block for Warrior. It's just one of those cards that is associated with it's class.
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Its fairly obvious why Lava Burst been axed, its because Bru'kan is simply too good a finisher, and with the much smaller spell pool its not entirely impossible to consistently amass a good deal of Lightning Bolts and lava burst for a burn finish.
Alternatively, we can always indulge a small conspiracy theory that nearly all viable cards and finishers from the classic/basic set has been conveniently removed so expansion cards becomes extremely important. So your average legendary/epic in an expansion is now twice as important because nearly every other good card from classic (which you're likely to already have) is no longer available. I myself wouldn't go this far, but its a thought.
But back to shaman. What's the best type of shaman without looking into Barrens? In my opinion, its midrange or control. Control in particular looks really good with either a Ysharaaj or Doomhammer finisher (now that stickyfingers will be gone, I can go back to this line without tearing my hair off) while midrange gets the better Feral Spirit, Menacing Nimbus, Fire Elemental and the now substantial Al'Akir the Windlord, which is honestly now a real deal; everything else having been axed, its finally now the windlord's turn to shine.
The Pepper Thread - Share Some Good Vibes!
OKay, extremely minimal, but I had the win 2 games in any mode quest, so I decided to try it on PvE content. I had a Dalaran Heist run going on the first Bartender Bob encounter. I thought, let's do this and win the next game to see if it works. Not only does it work, it worked on Bob himself.
New Shurima Spell - Ricochet
Outside of maybe keg shenanigans I think this is going to be too slow and awkward. I'm not thrilled with most of the removal that Shurima has and if it needs good removal I suspect from what we've seen so far that it will need to rely on other regions to get it.
F2P Core 2021 only Zoo theorycraft
Dreams: Not exactly helpful. If you want to support other people's deckbuilding, offer a suggestion (and refrain from labeling it "bad deck"). If all you want to do is criticize (which is what it looks like), just don't bother.
Trimutius: Loot Hoarder wouldn't actually be terrible here. Although I am not F2P, I'm sure F2P players appreciate postings like this. Does it need to include ONLY free core cards? Could you run a few commons/rares from other Standard sets?
Help needed with info and stragegy on how to upgrade class lvl
The wiki didn't go into any details other than that winning helps.
From my own memory/experiences, I think it behaves similarly to XP for the reward track in that longer games tend to give more XP, but I don't know if they are directly connected at all. It might track the number of cards played rather than the time spent, but I really don't know for sure. Other than that, all I know is you get more in constructed than playing against the Innkeeper (there wasn't any other solo content back when I was grinding class levels!).
May I ask why you are keen to level up asap? We will be given golden copies of all the Basic cards when the Barrens set arrives along with the Core set, so I'm not sure what you really gain from rushing to level up the classes.
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
I love how far we have come with Totemic Might. It feels like only yesterday the entire community laughed at how useless it is, but now we're unironically giving it a joint obituary with Bloodlust and Flametongue Totem. I can't wait for newer players to go into the Classic format expecting it to be a good card.
On that matter, it will be interesting to see whether players are going to have to (re-)learn the old wisdom from the Classic era (e.g. that you shouldn't run 1-drops in most decks), or whether we'll learn we were actually just wrong back then. Certainly a lot of the old 'bad' cards are widely respected these days, with notable inclusions being Twisting Nether and Vanish, and of course Totemic Might.
How is Warlock Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
There's also some precedent for Deathrattle synergy in Zoo with Possessed Villager and Nerubian Egg, so I don't think Ritual of Doom needs that much of a push, but it's definitely going to need support from the sets this year.
Help needed with info and stragegy on how to upgrade class lvl
Hi all,
What would you consider to be the fastest way of upgrading class heroes lvl (a.k.a. class progress)?
I am thinking about playing with control decks, in standard ranked mode. Any suggestions that would provide better/quicker results?
I couldn't find any relevant info/data about this, so wondering if anyone can confirm that the XP received (the new XP system) and the points the class receives for playing the game, are in fact, related?
And if so, what is the relation e.g. direct proportional gain, gain per time spent playing, etc?
Also, can anyone point me to a web source which actually provides numbers on how a class is being upgraded (points/playing cards, points/win or loss, etc.)?
Thank you a lot for taking your time to read my post and for any info you may provide, it helps a lot! (feels like I am a bit playing in the dark here...)
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Just a secret conspiracy to keep The Lurker Below out of the meta. HE WILL NOT BE OPPRESSED FOREVER!
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Im still baffled who thought that Fire Elemental needed a buff.
How is Shaman Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Water.
Fire.
Earth.
Earth again.
With these powers combined I am Shaman, now hand me my hammer so I may cave your skull in.
Rip Spell damage totem, your absence is as confusing as the rest of Shaman's identity
New Neutral Minion - Stonetusk Boar
That's right, technically, there are no bad cards. There are bad cards for certain game modes and there are cards that are (a lot) worse than alternatives, but all cards can find a place to be played somewhere.
There is a Humongous Razorleaf in the Core set, which will never see a play in anything but Silence Priest at best, but it also serves to dilute the random/discover pool in some situations. You cant only have top tier cards in a set, how would you then know which cards are better? Boar is by no means a dead card, it just wont be used to push face damage. It might not be put in any popular deck list, but it will be pulled by RNG effects and it will help in certain situations.
New Shurima Card - Ruin Runner
With 4 health and spell shield, this card is hard to remove with spells, as for combat Shurima has some good attack reducing cards. So yeah this look great in any Shuriman aggro or midrange deck.
New Shurima Spell - Payday
It sucks that you can't cast it during combat but the buffs you get from this cost 0 and are permanent. So this has potential.
New Neutral Minion - Big Game Hunter
7 attack is a huge ask to be honest. Druid's game plan is switching to token tempo or just plain big minions + ramp, so I don't think they'd have any problems with big minions that aren't cheated out. Maybe if pain warlock takes the meta by storm, it might be a mandatory requirement but until then I'm not convinced.
Unless we start seeing a staple 7-8 attack minion that is nearly always guaranteed to be included into decks (Ragnaros the Firelord used to be that minion), BGH would have to sit on the sidelines.
New Shurima Spell - Boomerang Blade
Looks like a slightly better Molten Breath, still too slow and expensive.
How is Hunter Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
don't jinx it, who knows what Barrens does to my sanity
How is Hunter Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
From what we got in the core set for hunter, only 3 archetypes comes immediately to mind. Secret, midrange, and deathrattle hunter. All three, however, suffers from the same problem; establishing proper tempo. Headhunter's Hatchet is literally required to carry all hunter variants, because there are currently no follow up from a turn 1 play like Crackling Razormaw, and removal options for hunter are sketchy at best. With no Kill Command, even a spider tank (which incidentally would be part of standard) on 3 would threaten to sweep hunter off the midrange rug.
Barrens need to give hunter better 2 drops, or at least a rushing 3 drop because ignoring board is no longer possible for Rexxar. More draw/generation would be very helpful, or otherwise we'd have to start relying on stuff like Saddlemaster, and wouldn't that be pretty sad.
How is Hunter Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Comments like this one remind me how great it is to have you back on the site.
How is Hunter Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
Actually, discussions about this card are pointless because there's no right or wrong answer. The utility of discard vs Discover depends largely on the archetype and deckbuilding. People go around and around for days because they can't even agree on what Hunter is "supposed" to be, but they don't ever address that because it's not the obvious question in front of them.
Even if you think Discover is worse, you can't pretend it's actually bad, so as a simpler card, the new version is much better for Core.
Sivir Champion Reveal and New Shurima Cards for Runeterra's Empires of the Ascended Expansion
Interesting, not sure how viable these gonna be though.
// Avarosan Hearthguard still 5/6 in the video. :)
How is Hunter Going to Perform in Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon? Core Set Review
For the same reason, that discarding cards with tracking was no downside, keeping those cards is never a downside either.
The deck thinning argument just isn't valid since you basically can presume that tracking looks at the 3 last cards of your deck.
This change is 100% upside. (I'll give you 99% for Nomi decks)