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Looks like the pool of 4-5-6 Celestial cards is very small -- small enough that this card becomes extremely consistent. That explains why her mana cost is higher than you might expect.

For example, if you so choose, you can count on this to be a 1/2 and a 3/4 plus another Celestial card in hand, all for just 5 mana. Now that's value!

I am currently grinding a game with a battlepass system (Fall Guys). I hope HS system is nothing like this, as it takes longer to play in HS, and we prefer gold rewards over cosmetics (like in FG).

posting at 9/24:

the 3 cards I didn't review:

3 mana stun 3, slow speed.. another situationally good card you wouldn't put into your deck, it's yone's effect you would really want it in a yasuo deck.. or maybe with leona, but slow speed stun without the body is much worse since a 3/2 might be similar to another stun cause you can block a target with the 3/2, anyway different region and it's not exactly the same card.

the.. mink? 3/3 elusive for 3 is kind of powerful tbh in a none fully committed elusive deck it's less of an issue, since every deck has some sort of backline interactability, but that paired with the 2/3 night fall elusive it's more elusives in the deck and it can become overwhelming at that point.

the traveler: basically 4 mana reroll and it can get itself.. in hearthstone they just removed the ability to do just that so it's really powerful, cause it's a lot of value.. but at the price of tempo.

To be honest the xp system just sounds like new ladder but you're the one keeping track of your score. This wont benefit control players like me that enjoy playing slow decks itll just encourage more aggro...

If I don't have to play every 3 days to not lose value on my quests will be a huge improvement for me, sometimes I don't want to play but I feel obligated to, just to not lose "free gold".

Сombine this with They Who Endure?

Spectral MatronBADCARDNAME + Wraithcaller shenanigans?

Happy they made a public statement on this.

Makes me a little more optimistic on the battlepass.

Still no actual helpful details about how experience is actually obtained specifically. I play many meme decks, which plainly require many loses (playing for fun over playing just to win, such as going through many games to pull that meme dream off). If experience is tuned for mostly winning games that would theoretically mean the way in which I play will actually punish the rewards I gain from playing the game.

I agree that drawing always costs mana. When I say "'taxing a player' for the flexibility" I'm trying to draw a distinction between drawing a single card from your deck vs. generating a random card from a small pool of super efficient cards (and specifically, getting to choose the card from the pool, rather than just top-decking or getting a random thing). Those are certainly not the same value, and therefore shouldn't be the same typical price - so I opted to use the word "tax" to describe that difference. My language probably could have been clearer, but I think we're basically saying the same thing.

Drawing or creating a card nearly always costs mana. The cost of Invoke generally seems to be in line with that -- I don't think it's fair to call it a "tax." And as you pointed out, Celestial cards are more mana-efficient than normal cards, so what's really happening is that you're getting a better-than-normal deal overall to make up for the randomness of the outcome.

Question for you Libram Paladin enthusiasts - what matchups give you the most trouble?  I'm really struggling to counter them, even with control decks.

Iceborn Downsides:
1- Cost too much so is hard to find a turn to play it;
2- The longer it takes to play -> less return on the investment; 
3- Slow speed, so it can be denied by killing the target.

Iceborn Upsides:
1- Makes Wraithcaller extremely resilient against dmg based board wipes;
2- It will almost always trade 2/1 as there are many untis with 3 attack being played right now but very few with 4 attack.

I am not sure if Iceborn Legacy is worth the slot or not, probably not, thats something that it will demand some experiment.

Then...... why do you play it? Or visit fan sites and forums about it?

Give me gold not packs, while packs may have more potential value I want to choose which to buy, as many pointed out packs are better earlier in the expansion and pretty much dust before a new release.

I wouldn't bother with Iceborn Legacy - I don't think it's actually that hard to get a lot of big Mistwraiths without it, and it will screw up the consistency of the Wraithcaller, which is the real workhorse of the deck. That said, I love the idea of Atrocity - pairs very reasonably with Risen Mists for a sort of game-ending Pyroblast type effect.

Positive message addressing many of the concerns people have.

Seems an even clearer promise that new system will be better than current, and not harmful to f2p.

Glad to read that, and once the new system is live, analyzed and accurate comparisons drawn, I expect the promises to be kept (even if adjustment their end required).

And if they are, and it's a plus for everyone no matter how you play, then I'll say "good job".

You could easily compare this to paladins. Paladins if you aren't aware is a team based shooter that while unlike hearthstone in gameplay had a similar model back in the day. Before you would play matches and based on wins you would receive gold to buy skins or unlock different characters. But now they have a battle pass system in place. Where you aren't rewarded as much and instead recieve seemingly random rewards that you more often than not dont even want instead of in game currency and of course there is a paid version of the battle pass which yields far better rewards in turn.

This is what I expect from a battle pass in hearthstone in the future. They even state so by the play for xp for in game currency. You think they wont just add an xp cap like they have for win gold which dwarfs the current daily win gold cap? I dont have as much faith in Activision as you do.

Of all the F2P games I’m familiar with, Hearthstone has always been the most respectful with my time. You can earn enough to participate in the game with only a tiny amount of time. (Probably as low as 20-30 minutes every 3 days if you push it.) The strong impression I get is that they want to barrier to entry to be low, and they expect people to keep playing the game after those 20 minutes just because it’s fun. (Imagine that!)

However, they have definitely not been as respectful with my money as other games. If you decide you really want to be competitive, it’s a minimum of $50 every 4 months, possibly much more. (I can say from experience that just buying the $50 preorders works, but it will take a few expansions before you can really stop looking at at budget decks.)

I have no reason to believe that they have changed their approach of rewarding play, and we have seen lots of signs recently that they’re adjusting their approach to the cost. It’s not that Blizzard isn’t focused on making money - of course that’s their end goal - but they’ve realized that they need to be more competitive to attract and maintain customers.

We’ll obviously need to see the details when the new system is revealed, but I am confident that they mean everything they’re saying about their intentions. There’s no way they could become more expensive and keep their customers, and they know it.

Sounds like itll be grindier if I am reading it correctly instead of doing things for rewards that actually matter you're doing things for something else for rewards that actually matter....

Just looking over the costs of all of the Invoke cards revealed so far, it seems like they're saying Invoke is worth about 2 mana (maybe 1.5 after you account for the other little "costs," like the cost added for a Daybreak/Nightfall synergy, or the cost of Burst Speed).

The biggest thing to me is that Celestial cards (mostly) cost more mana on top of that. They've revealed six as of my writing this, and it's clear that some will cost at much as 4, 5, and 6 mana (based on Solari Priestess). The cards you can get seem pretty good, but since they will (mostly) cost more mana, that 2 mana Invoke cost seems to be how Riot is "taxing a player" for the flexibility of this discover-like ability. We'll have to see the full set of cards before it's fair to judge, but to me that seems like a fair price to pay - "2 mana draw a better than average card."

Maybe when the full set is revealed, we'll find that the use-cases are too varied to make that price fair (i.e. there are going to be thousands of potential triples to choose from, so if there aren't a critical mass of cards for particular use cases - aggro tools vs. removal tools vs. card draw tools, etc. - then the variance in value will go up and the cost will seem expensive).

Well, now that F2P is safe, I'm all in for the new system.

Quote From sinti

Congratulations! :)

Thank you

I am so excited for this. Hope it comes soon.

Well they couldn’t put Celestial at the top of the spells without changing the spell format. I guess they could have made Celestial a keyword but that’d be weird too