Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
Since we will soon enter into the new pre-release card discussion phase, here's a small reminder of what we collectively thought of Prince Keleseth when he was revealed
Also a reminder, it took a massive set of nerfs to Aggro Druid, Jade Druid, Pirate Warrior, and Murloc Paladin for this card to become viable. Before that, it was just "ok" in Rogue but other decks were faster.
As we moved into the "Year of the Raven", Blizzard also stopped printing good 2-Drop cards so Kel'seth continued to be unchecked. When stronger Aggro or 2-Drop minion choices exist, suddenly Prince Kelseth is more expensive.
When you are doing card evaluations, you look at what is good and what you anticipate to be good. Balance patches and new set releases change the formula of card analysis because they introduce or change information.
Statistically speaking, Keleseth was powerful from the first day it was released. This was surprising to me considering it usually takes people a while to zero in on where to use high deckbuilding restriction cards like Keleseth. It did take quite some time before it became a popular archetype, though the power was always though.
It's interesting watching what happens in the fallout after a nerf patch. There are always a few archetypes that are high win rate but not popular enough to be seen on the ladder or clustered by data sites. When nerf patches happen, sometimes these archetypes get picked up on and further tuned because players are back in the experimentation phase.
Powerful to me means tier 1 or very close to it. Keleseth decks early on were that in data. If I remember right, was similar to how aggro paladin was high tier 1 for about a year before it was played at a greater than 1% rate.
Iksar
Statistically speaking, Keleseth was powerful from the first day it was released. This was surprising to me considering it usually takes people a while to zero in on where to use high deckbuilding restriction cards like Keleseth. It did take quite some time before it became a popular archetype, though the power was always though.
It's interesting watching what happens in the fallout after a nerf patch. There are always a few archetypes that are high win rate but not popular enough to be seen on the ladder or clustered by data sites. When nerf patches happen, sometimes these archetypes get picked up on and further tuned because players are back in the experimentation phase.
Iksar
Powerful to me means tier 1 or very close to it. Keleseth decks early on were that in data. If I remember right, was similar to how aggro paladin was high tier 1 for about a year before it was played at a greater than 1% rate.