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We had a few spoilers today, all revealed on the ECQ stream earlier.

It should totally be lower. Opening 40 packs just to get a single crappy Legendary will never feel good.

I, along with DAnon318, disagree with your first and second statement.

For one, it would be inconsistent with the other galakronds and the other epic invoke pay-off cards. 

Secondly, it would be huge overkill. Changing the battlecry in the way you suggested would make the galakrond incredibly unimpactful. If we are already removing the rush then why would we also reduce the stats? I think a better solution would be to generate one, two, and then four 4/4's with rush. This would be the same amount of stats we already have but it would be more spread out, and I think it is a lot easier to deal with four 4/4's than two 8/8's.

And changing the Dragon's Pack would be completely unnecessary. Making it only trigger after three invokes, while fair, would be a huge inconsistency. The only reason a change like this is needed is because you are able to invoke three times with only two cards. I think if we were to change corrupt elementalist's battlecry to only invoke once then we wouldn't need the change to Dragon's Pack. 

I wish Control-Priest would have some better Tools in Standard. Mass Hysteria and Plague of Death are good against their big Temposwings, but outside of that there's not much you can do. Too much Board-Spam. But hey, at least Wild seems more fun then usual.

Here are my Ideas for Nerfs: 

Change all Invoke Pay-Offs to „If you've Played 2 Cards with Invoke this Game,..."  -- wouldn't hit any one else but Shaman without sacrificing the „Praise Galakrond and be rewarded" flavour

Make [Hearthstone Card (Faceless Corruptor) Not Found] a 4-3  -- Still a good Temposwing, but easier to clear

or Make the Galakrond-Elementals from Invokes 1-1s

Thanks for the well-written report, I agree with everything. I think besides the overpowered galakrond the complete class needs rework with doubling battlecries and cheating 8-drops by turn 4 with evolving, but I doubt they will change anything drastically. 

Disagree with the 2nd and 3rd suggestions. Galakrond, Azeroth's End's Battlecry always quadruples the base effect and all Invoke beneficiary cards activate after 2 Invokes, none 3. 

Absolutely! I'm ready to dive back in and make it my main focus.

Right now the pity timer for Hearthstone packs is 40, which means that players have the ability to hypothetically get only 3 legendaries from their first 90 Packs. This doesn't affect me much (since I only open around 40 packs per expansion) but I imagine that it causes some players a lot of frustration and could cost Blizzard money because of angry players who were screwed over by pack RNG. A solution to fix this would be to reduce the pity timer to only every 30 or even 20 packs. Because there is usually only an average of 1 legendary per 20 packs, a change of the pity timer to 30 packs would not affect the vast majority of Hearthstone players, only the ones who got especially unlucky that expansion. I think this could actually make Blizzard more money by helping make the player experience better and by retaining players who are angered by RNG. so what do y'all think? Would this change make you happy? Do you think it'd cost Blizzard too much money? Do you think it's likely?

Officially stated by Team 5.

From https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/matchmaking-works-tyrandespecial-promotions-max-mccall-yong-woo/

(the bold is my emphasis)

MAX MCCALL DISCUSSES HOW MATCHMAKING WORKS

I saw this post last week, but didn’t have time to respond to it. I’ll do that now: when you go into a game, the only variable that affects who your opponent will be is your skill rating.

Matchmaking works as follows:

We use a formula to assess player skill. After every game, the formula looks at if you won or lost and uses your current rating, your opponent’s rating, and your rating history to generate your new rating. We call this rating MMR for short. In casual and at Legend rank, we pair players with similar MMRs. In Ranked below legend, we pair people with similar star ranks instead of similar MMRs. Your rating is the only input that the matchmaker receives. It doesn’t know what deck you’re playing, what deck you just played with or against, or anything else, except for your rating.

When you press ‘play’ you enter a queue for your chosen game mode. The matchmaker looks at your MMR and compares it to the MMR of everyone else in the queue. If it finds someone else with the same MMR as you, it pairs you into a game. If it doesn’t, it will wait a few seconds and look again. The second time, it doesn’t look just for someone with your MMR; it will also look for someone with an MMR that’s almost the same as yours. If it still doesn’t find a match, it waits another few seconds and looks again. The bound for what MMRs are considered a good match keep widening the longer you’re in the queue; this is to ensure that you don’t have to wait too long to play. Usually a match is found so quickly that the widening bounds never really matter. After the game, your rating is updated, and the process is repeated the next time you queue up.

NOTE:  the above was written before they changed it to make you less likely to face the same opponent twice in a row, so that's now a factor in the match making.

I realize some won't accept this and are convinced the game is rigged.  I'll listen if an analysis of 100K+ matchups by a statistics collection site by unbiased competent people show there is statistically significant matchup bias.   It's too easy as humans to suffer from comfirmation bias especially with a small sample size.

For the record I fell out with Blizzard during WoW days and told them I'd never give them money ever again (I haven't).  So I wouldn't consider myself part of their fanbase :)

Winning with jank > winning with the nuts.

So glad you had fun with this deck!

Or make it an evasive minion - cannot be targeted by spells but can work with the evolve lackey.

I too think shaman needs a rework. 

make the invoke mechanic a freeze a random enemy effect. No rush minions from invoke. 

Make the Galakrond battle cry scale from 2/2 to  4/4 and 6/6 no rush. 

The dragons pack 2/3 with +2/+2 in stats after 3 (not 2) invokes.

make faceless 4/4 with no rush. .

I am fine with waiting.. they have enough pressure as is.. let them work.. they have a great game on their hands hope for a more polished beta launch.

I miss the game and I would like to play it but I understand their side too.. they are devs after all.. compared to blizzard we won't be disappointed for sure.

Me just after opening 4 Dragon's Pack: "Fuck, I wanted some Fate Weavers!"

Me just after a few days of DoD meta: "Gimme dat sweet sweet dust baby!"

I am just baffled as to why after shaman was already the most powerful class in the game, they still let this deck slip past them.

What's bad is people are starting to take it to Wild now too. I thought I could escape it there, but I've been running into it there too. If it's viable in Wild out of the gates, to be able to compete with the broken shit Wild offers, you know it's a major problem. 

 

Control player here, and I do play wild a bit more than standard. For the past year, Shudderwock decks have skirted the threshold of being "too perfect" in countering their opponents. The quest and minions offered the quick fixes the deck needs to address early aggro or trouble minions put up by the opponent, and now Galakrond offers tempo and a constant rain of rush minions, not to mention a giant BS battlecry and all the other OP cards introduced in this expansion for shaman -- yeah, it's crossed that threshold and is "unfun" to play against.

/Trying to Dirty Rat Shudderwock these days? Good luck -- most shaman are sitting on a half dozen lackeys or battlecry minions in hand.

yep they definetly knew. the only thing surprising is that the best shaman isnt using the quest. i fully expected shaman to be absolutly insane but i thought it should include quest.  crazy thing is that with all the dragons of this exp and the tier s deck that rises doesnt use a single dragon.

team 5 fucked up beyond any kind of measure 2 TIMES IN A ROW, cause of evolve doom in the tomb. sad

I've been playing Overload Shaman (slightly modified version of the deck recipe) and Quest Dragon Shaman and both of those feel pretty powerful as well. Not overpowered like the Galakrond deck, but good enough to keep up with the other unrefined decks on ladder. So I think there is hope for Shaman after the nerf. I also want to try Control Shaman at some point: with Control Warrior nowhere to be seen, I think Shaman can win by outlasting their opponent.

I've had a few easy wins with a Mech Paladin, but that might be very situational to the current meta, since there is not a lot of AoE at the moment. Most Shamans seem to have cut Sandstorm Elemental, for example.

Galakrond Zoo Warlock doesn't really work for me, but I don't have all the cards yet. I'm not sure I want to craft the epics though; I'm not too crazy about Zoo as an archetype, so maybe my dust is better spent on Valdris Felgorge.

[Hearthstone Card (Mogu Fleshshaper) Not Found] to cost (1) less for each friendly minion  on the battlefield

Quote From Marega

i love it that the report is just outright calling out the meta bullshit cause of shaman.

Glad its getting nerfed. Ive never seen the meta game been so skewe . cause of this i just play casual mode for the quest gold stuff BUT  i keep facing like 2 shamans out of 3. never in my years of playing HS have i faced the tier S deck so many times in casual. the deck is so far off balance that ppl play it without stop both on ranked and on casual to a rate ive never witnessed.

i believe the nerfs should occur on tuesday. thank fuck

What's bad is people are starting to take it to Wild now too. I thought I could escape it there, but I've been running into it there too. If it's viable in Wild out of the gates, to be able to compete with the broken shit Wild offers, you know it's a major problem. 

Good use of the meta report. There's really no reason to look at any other classes right now, because everything is going to change when Shaman gets nerfed. Not only that, it seems like most people have given up (at least I know I did days ago) trying to refine other classes decks, because it just feels so pointless to try and improve a list that's just going to get obliterated by Shaman anyways. 

You said it best: "This is likely the worst possible way to have kicked off Descent of Dragons" 

After the great year we've had, it is extremely disheartening to have a deck like this make it past play testing. 

At this point, I've stopped playing standard ladder, and am only playing in Wild just to get my daily's done. Less than a week into a new expansion, I should still be excitedly playing new decks, and trying to refine some home brews. Instead, I find myself barely even wanting to play. 

The excitement of the new expansion was killed. Even though this nerf is the fastest ever, it still feels too slow. 

I honestly don't know what they were thinking. I hope they give us further explanation as to why this was allowed to happen in the first place. I'm really curious what their thought process was that made them believe this wasn't going to be an issue. It honestly seems like they knew this was going to happen, but went with it anyways. They told us they were watching Shaman for nerfs going into DoD, they waited until the very end of the release season to show the new Shaman cards, and they are doing the fastest nerf ever. All that tells me they KNEW this was going to happen. If they knew, then why do it? I think the community deserves an explanation at this point. 

Instead of rush elementals, summoning two totems seems fun

I decided to start grinding up the ranks with my midrange hunter and I haven’t really had any problems with seeing counters. The decks that counter me are pretty evident too, anything that floods the board a lot is a likely loss for me (Don’t have anywhere near the board clears to beat something like the Warlock Galakrond or really aggressive Pirate/Murloc decks). I’ve seen plenty of different types of decks along the way and not many of them have been that bad of a matchup.

Even in the past I don’t remember any times it felt like something was up, my good and bad matchups were generally split enough that I wouldn’t rank up, but I wouldn’t go down in ranks much either

i really hope blizz removes rush from that deck