Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Can we talk about Y'Shaarj? [Wall of text ahead]

[[Y'Shaarj]]

So throughout WotOG which we're well past now, C'thun, N'Zoth and Yogg-Saron all saw decent amount of play in a multitude of decks and classes...But Y'Shaarj didn't. The only deck(s) that used to it to any great effect, to the best of my knowledge, was Ramp/Astral Communion Druid, and that never became particularly popular as far as I'm aware.

And while I'm fully aware that "not every card is meant to be good", I think it's interesting to point out the reasons why Y'Shaarj flopped compared to the other three Old Gods.

Firstly, Y'Shaarj does not have, or at least has much fewer, 'obvious synergy' cards - all you really need to make a C'Thun deck work is C'thun, cards that activate off of C'thun's attack and some cultists - N'zoth just needs good deathrattle minions, and Yogg decks come down to more or less "spells".
But with Y'Shaarj, it's not as clear - yes, "big minions" is probably what you're looking after, but even then you have extra restrictions like "battlecries and end-of-turn effects won't go off", and stuffing your deck with too many "big lategame minions" will end up making it horrendously slow (and Y'Shaarj is already pretty damn slow to begin with).

Another thing is that Y'Shaarj works completely backwards with the few cards it does synergize with - C'thun benefits when you play his cultists before him, N'zoth gains value when your deathrattle minions die before he comes down, and Yogg gets crazier the more spells you play first.
Meanwhile Y'shaarj's power gets worse if you draw/play all your big minions before him, and there's almost zero means for you to ensure that doesn't happen - if Y'shaarj takes a nap at the very bottom of your deck, you're more screwed than with any other Old God.

There's also the problem that even if you do end up playing him in a timely fashion, you still have the risk that he pulls something 'crappy' - an understatted battlecry minion, or a 2-drop or something.

And the one deck that did try to make him work, the Druid Communion deck, had its own extra share of reliability problems - you end up drawing Y'Shaarj too early and your Astral Communion plan goes up in smoke, or you play Astral Communion and Y'Shaarj is nowhere to be seen for a good few turns.

That said, he was pretty strong in the Top 2 and perfect curve brawls, but even then there were slightly better decks.

I'm by no means suggesting that the card should be changed, because I'm well aware it will not be, and even then I don't know how he'd have to be changed to be 'good' - and again, he doesn't need to be 'good'. Regardless, I still wanted to shed some light on the card and see what others think of it - for all I know, all my points are completely wrong and I should never pretend to act like I know anything about game design ever again.

shrug

Tweet