What benefit would rotating Frost Nova have? This means there's only one option for Freezing in mage's basic set, which allows Blizzard to print more freezing cards as expansions rotate. Eventually, mage will have countless freezing options in Wild. While that may not seem like a problem because "Wild is supposed to be wild", you run into the old Naga Sea Witch problem where it actually plauges the ladder and becomes virtually unplayable. This is the same problem with Priest, their basic and classis set is so unbelievably bad that they rely on ridiculously strong cards to be printed throughout expansions, which eventually ends up in Wild, adding to Priests ever growing collection of stong cards. Beacuse Priest doesn't have a proper board clear, Blizzard has no choice but to print a new one every rotation. And just so that they don't have to print a new board clear every expansion, they print cards like Psychich Scream and Plague of Death so that they can focus on making other cards instead. This is probably what will happen to mage if they removed Forst Nova; they won't have any other viable option, which will force Blizzard into a position where they have to print mass freeze effects every rotation, which will either clog up slots for other potential new cards or just be an insanely strong card that will eventually funnel into wild.
None of the other classes have access to mass-freeze, which is an incredibly busted mechanic to begin with. Even if they took away nova and never printed another freezing card, mage would still be the king of freezes, not to mention one of the best classes at clearing boards. The comparison to priest simply doesn't hold water. Mage probably has the strongest evergreen set of all the classes.
Among the class cards, I expect Flamewaker, Babbling Book, Call of the Wild and Evolve to do some heavy lifting. I think the paladin cards are heavily overrated in light of the average power level that existed in their glory days. Secret Paladin is garbage now and I don't think these 2 will change that.
Personally I think Emperor T Ragnaros and Sylvanas are going to have the most impact. A bold prediction, I know, but there it is. I think N'zoth isn't nearly as strong as he used to be: there are tons of cards that summon wide boards nowadays, Phaoris, Nomi, Zul'jin, Kangor's Endless Army, Tip the Scales, etc. The current pool of deathrattles isn't terribly exciting, and the only current deck that naturally synergises with N'zoth is the meme that is quest Warlock.
I think it'd be fine if Lord J was reworked along the lines of other hero cards. I realise that heroes/death knights didn't exist when Jaraxxus was printed, but now that they do it'd make a lot more sense if he were reframed as one because that's functionally how the card works. It'd get rid of a bunch of fringe weaknesses of Jaraxxus like: 1. Weakness to Sacrificial Pact. 2. Losing all your armor when you enter Jaraxxus mode(!). 3. getting Jaraxxus pulled by Dirty Rat et al. Points 1 & 2 would go a long way toward making Jaraxxus playable, even if he retains the punishing 15 hp health cap.
Even if we disregard sac pact, I think Lord J would be too weak for 2019 hearthstone without addressing the armor issue, because it's so much easier to burst someone for 15. Any deck with Zephyris is just 5 damage off, after all.
It's pretty common for the ranked ladder to be stratified into several mini-metas, with decks popping up a lot more or less frequently at different ranks. For example, people tend not to play nearly as many serious control decks at lower ranks, because playing fast games will result in a faster climb, even if it costs you some wins here and there.
If you're climbing and you suddenly hit a series of losses, sometimes it's worth swapping your deck for something more suited for what the opposition is bringing. That zoolock isn't nearly as good if you keep facing control warriors, after all. Other times if you hit a plateau it's because you're being paired with players that match your level of skill, which means you need to improve your play to progress.
On the other hand, it could be that aggro warrior's top build doesn't differ much from lesser builds and that it has a lot of great alternatives for its main 30 cards.
I think that's a fair argument to make for the control highlander warrior deck, where you do have a wealth of redundancy, not to mention the option to include duplicates of EG Town Crier or Warpath because the game is expected to go long. You barely have to make any changes to turn a normal control warrior into a highlander control warrior.
In the aggro deck however, you're swapping out Frothing Berserkers and Bloodsworn Mercenaries for cards that are strictly inferior. If that one Zephyris is worth replacing half your deck with worse cards -and I'm not discounting the possibility- then I'd say Zephyris is probably going to see a nerf soon. If you compare it to Kazakus it's hard to come up with scenarios where you'd rather have a potion than the "perfect" card from basic/classic, and of course Zephyris can't brick like kazakus can.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the card get nerfed to 3-4 mana, where it'd still be game-defining.
When I saw the thread title I assumed this was about a control highlander deck. I haven't played this version of aggro warrior, but intuitively it seems like you're sacrificing a lot of consistency for potential high-rolls, which sounds like a bad deal for an aggro deck. My instinct is that this deck is a fad that'll gradually get replaced by the non-highlander version. If it isn't, that means that Zephyris is stronger than consistency in an aggro deck, which is a terrifying commentary on that card's power.
The Darkness is awful. Trust me, I had the misfortune of opening one. While the idea of shutting down Reno-synergies might sound appealing, if that's literally all the card does (you never draw the third candle, ever) it's not a very efficient way to spend four mana. I'd consider Hakkar over The Darkness as a neutral Reno-foil; at least it hoses Nomis and other draw-intensive decks as well. I'd even consider Seaforium Bomber + Augmented Elekk in this role, because if nothing else you're getting solid stats for your mana.
In case I wasn't clear, The Darkness is really really terrible. Avoid like the plague.
I wouldn't worry about it. Yeah, the quest is powerful, but it doesn't pidgeonhole druid to a single strategy nearly as much as most of the other quests. As we speak there are two variants with quite different win conditions being played at high level, the regular board flood version and a Malygos OTK variant. It's likely that quest decks will continue to be the most powerful druid decks for some time to come, but I expect the content of these decks to change quite a bit: the shell isn't nearly as rigid as you make it out to be.
Wins definitely shouldn’t be decreasing over time. Either it’s bugged at the moment, or you are just going mad.
Best way to make sure would probably be taking a screenshot of it every now and then and comparing them when you think it’s gone down
Yeah I absolutely should have documented this, like I said it's not the first time I think this has happened to me. However, every time it was easier to rationalise it away as something normal (like wins dropping after a year or w/e) and/or me being crazy. The other weird thing is that this doesn't seem to be happening to others, which is usually the case with bugs.
Now I'm not a terribly competitive HS player, so I don't play an awful lot of ladder, usually just a burst at the end of the month to get to rank 5-ish. As such I don't have any golden portraits.
One thing I keep noticing is that the number of wins on classes that I'm not really active with at the moment seems to go down with time. Even my least favourite classes had at least double digit wins last time I checked and now there are classes with only single-digit numbers of registered wins. For example, I played a bunch of aggro rogue during the Genn and Baku meta and now it says I have 19 wins with Rogue, which is absolutely not correct.
Is this normal? Has anyone else noticed something similar? Am I slowly going mad?
If it is the case that wins reset between seasons/rotations or w/e, I'd find that pretty demotivating - after all what's the point of slowly building up wins if they just disappear into the aether- but I'd like to know about it at least.
An important point in this case is that there will be a sizable number of players who don't own Renounce Darkness but would now get a chance to mess around with it without having to craft the card. To the meme-playing, F2P casuals Renounce Darkness is potentially more interesting than the cards which might affect the meta.
That's a fair point regarding Renounce the Darkness, but a bunch of the other class cards just don't make sense to me. Even if it slots into aggro warrior, I doubt anyone had Bloodhoof Brave on their wishlist, for example.
"While not included in our next major update, here’s a preview of some of the changes we’re making to quests a little further down the line.
We’re cutting some of the less popular daily quests and tuning down some of their requirements to make them quicker and easier to complete. We’ll also be adding some new quests to the pool to mix things up!
We split most daily quests into two buckets: Easy (50g) and Slightly More Difficult (60g). Rerolling a Slightly More Difficult (60g) quest (like Play 10 Beasts) always gives you an Easy (50g) quest, so players can be guaranteed to get an Easy quest every day if they want. We love Murlocs and Pirates as much as anyone, but it should be your choice if you decide to complete their quests."
I really don't understand why they thought it'd be a good idea to have so many of these be unplayable meme cards like renounce the darkness, lock and load, astral communion, etc.
It's not that difficult to understand. Meme's are fun. End of Story
Cards can be meme-y and still playable, CF Yogg-saron. Wasting slots on cards that are just hot garbage is, well, a waste. I'd rather have cards that would actually affect the standard meta if they were still in the game. If you just want to play silly meme decks you can just go do that in wild anyway.
It's an amazing win-more card in quest Warlock, but I don't see a really good application for N'zoth in standard otherwise. I also think the old god is the victim of power creep: we have a lot more cards that build wide boards (Phaoris, Nomi, Zul'jin) than were present during Whispers of the Old Gods, and I don't think the deathrattle pool is that exciting ATM.
Personally I'm a lot more excited about exploring the possibilities with Emperor T. There has to be some sort of degenerate OTK combo with him, especially in Druid.
I really don't understand why they thought it'd be a good idea to have so many of these be unplayable meme cards like renounce the darkness, lock and load, astral communion, etc.
Maybe you guys could put up a sticky about it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who assumed their post got moderated or failed to post due to connection issues or w/e. Furthermore from what Flux said it sounds like having these false positives reported will also help the spam filter learn to behave properly.
Your posts were accidentally automatically marked as spam, sto. If you want to go ahead and delete whichever ones you don't want, please do!
If this happens again and your post doesn't appear, please let us know about it before posting again with similar content so you system doesn't incorrectly flag more of it. Overtime the system learns what is and isn't spam, it's just so new without a large database of "good" and "bad" that we have these silly cases.
Ideally we'd let you know if something gets marked as spam so you can let us know about faster, that'll have to be something we add into notifications.
Sorry for the trouble.
(It might not like lots of quick edits though since its lots of repetitive content, we have seen some of that. Will need to be tuned a bit better towards it most likely)
Has this been going on for a longer time? I recall having had a post or two of mine disappear but it's been a while
None of the other classes have access to mass-freeze, which is an incredibly busted mechanic to begin with. Even if they took away nova and never printed another freezing card, mage would still be the king of freezes, not to mention one of the best classes at clearing boards. The comparison to priest simply doesn't hold water. Mage probably has the strongest evergreen set of all the classes.
It's definitely high on the list, yes. I could see Blizzard dying for Frost Nova's sins but I think we all know who's the real bad guy there.
Among the class cards, I expect Flamewaker, Babbling Book, Call of the Wild and Evolve to do some heavy lifting. I think the paladin cards are heavily overrated in light of the average power level that existed in their glory days. Secret Paladin is garbage now and I don't think these 2 will change that.
Personally I think Emperor T Ragnaros and Sylvanas are going to have the most impact. A bold prediction, I know, but there it is. I think N'zoth isn't nearly as strong as he used to be: there are tons of cards that summon wide boards nowadays, Phaoris, Nomi, Zul'jin, Kangor's Endless Army, Tip the Scales, etc. The current pool of deathrattles isn't terribly exciting, and the only current deck that naturally synergises with N'zoth is the meme that is quest Warlock.
I think it'd be fine if Lord J was reworked along the lines of other hero cards. I realise that heroes/death knights didn't exist when Jaraxxus was printed, but now that they do it'd make a lot more sense if he were reframed as one because that's functionally how the card works. It'd get rid of a bunch of fringe weaknesses of Jaraxxus like: 1. Weakness to Sacrificial Pact. 2. Losing all your armor when you enter Jaraxxus mode(!). 3. getting Jaraxxus pulled by Dirty Rat et al. Points 1 & 2 would go a long way toward making Jaraxxus playable, even if he retains the punishing 15 hp health cap.
Even if we disregard sac pact, I think Lord J would be too weak for 2019 hearthstone without addressing the armor issue, because it's so much easier to burst someone for 15. Any deck with Zephyris is just 5 damage off, after all.
Only played a few games, but I had good success with a fast beast hunter: Alleycat, Springpaw, Scavenging Hyena, Crackling Razormaw, Animal Companion and Desert Spear.
You could probably take out the spear for Master's Call, Revenge of the Wild or Unleash the Hounds though.
It's pretty common for the ranked ladder to be stratified into several mini-metas, with decks popping up a lot more or less frequently at different ranks. For example, people tend not to play nearly as many serious control decks at lower ranks, because playing fast games will result in a faster climb, even if it costs you some wins here and there.
If you're climbing and you suddenly hit a series of losses, sometimes it's worth swapping your deck for something more suited for what the opposition is bringing. That zoolock isn't nearly as good if you keep facing control warriors, after all. Other times if you hit a plateau it's because you're being paired with players that match your level of skill, which means you need to improve your play to progress.
I think that's a fair argument to make for the control highlander warrior deck, where you do have a wealth of redundancy, not to mention the option to include duplicates of EG Town Crier or Warpath because the game is expected to go long. You barely have to make any changes to turn a normal control warrior into a highlander control warrior.
In the aggro deck however, you're swapping out Frothing Berserkers and Bloodsworn Mercenaries for cards that are strictly inferior. If that one Zephyris is worth replacing half your deck with worse cards -and I'm not discounting the possibility- then I'd say Zephyris is probably going to see a nerf soon. If you compare it to Kazakus it's hard to come up with scenarios where you'd rather have a potion than the "perfect" card from basic/classic, and of course Zephyris can't brick like kazakus can.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the card get nerfed to 3-4 mana, where it'd still be game-defining.
When I saw the thread title I assumed this was about a control highlander deck. I haven't played this version of aggro warrior, but intuitively it seems like you're sacrificing a lot of consistency for potential high-rolls, which sounds like a bad deal for an aggro deck. My instinct is that this deck is a fad that'll gradually get replaced by the non-highlander version. If it isn't, that means that Zephyris is stronger than consistency in an aggro deck, which is a terrifying commentary on that card's power.
The Darkness is awful. Trust me, I had the misfortune of opening one. While the idea of shutting down Reno-synergies might sound appealing, if that's literally all the card does (you never draw the third candle, ever) it's not a very efficient way to spend four mana. I'd consider Hakkar over The Darkness as a neutral Reno-foil; at least it hoses Nomis and other draw-intensive decks as well. I'd even consider Seaforium Bomber + Augmented Elekk in this role, because if nothing else you're getting solid stats for your mana.
In case I wasn't clear, The Darkness is really really terrible. Avoid like the plague.
I wouldn't worry about it. Yeah, the quest is powerful, but it doesn't pidgeonhole druid to a single strategy nearly as much as most of the other quests. As we speak there are two variants with quite different win conditions being played at high level, the regular board flood version and a Malygos OTK variant. It's likely that quest decks will continue to be the most powerful druid decks for some time to come, but I expect the content of these decks to change quite a bit: the shell isn't nearly as rigid as you make it out to be.
Yeah I absolutely should have documented this, like I said it's not the first time I think this has happened to me. However, every time it was easier to rationalise it away as something normal (like wins dropping after a year or w/e) and/or me being crazy. The other weird thing is that this doesn't seem to be happening to others, which is usually the case with bugs.
Now I'm not a terribly competitive HS player, so I don't play an awful lot of ladder, usually just a burst at the end of the month to get to rank 5-ish. As such I don't have any golden portraits.
One thing I keep noticing is that the number of wins on classes that I'm not really active with at the moment seems to go down with time. Even my least favourite classes had at least double digit wins last time I checked and now there are classes with only single-digit numbers of registered wins. For example, I played a bunch of aggro rogue during the Genn and Baku meta and now it says I have 19 wins with Rogue, which is absolutely not correct.
Is this normal? Has anyone else noticed something similar? Am I slowly going mad?
If it is the case that wins reset between seasons/rotations or w/e, I'd find that pretty demotivating - after all what's the point of slowly building up wins if they just disappear into the aether- but I'd like to know about it at least.
I'm pretty sure that board was released alongside the adventure.
That's a fair point regarding Renounce the Darkness, but a bunch of the other class cards just don't make sense to me. Even if it slots into aggro warrior, I doubt anyone had Bloodhoof Brave on their wishlist, for example.
This looks promising:
"While not included in our next major update, here’s a preview of some of the changes we’re making to quests a little further down the line.
Cards can be meme-y and still playable, CF Yogg-saron. Wasting slots on cards that are just hot garbage is, well, a waste. I'd rather have cards that would actually affect the standard meta if they were still in the game. If you just want to play silly meme decks you can just go do that in wild anyway.
It's an amazing win-more card in quest Warlock, but I don't see a really good application for N'zoth in standard otherwise. I also think the old god is the victim of power creep: we have a lot more cards that build wide boards (Phaoris, Nomi, Zul'jin) than were present during Whispers of the Old Gods, and I don't think the deathrattle pool is that exciting ATM.
Personally I'm a lot more excited about exploring the possibilities with Emperor T. There has to be some sort of degenerate OTK combo with him, especially in Druid.
I really don't understand why they thought it'd be a good idea to have so many of these be unplayable meme cards like renounce the darkness, lock and load, astral communion, etc.
Maybe you guys could put up a sticky about it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who assumed their post got moderated or failed to post due to connection issues or w/e. Furthermore from what Flux said it sounds like having these false positives reported will also help the spam filter learn to behave properly.
Has this been going on for a longer time? I recall having had a post or two of mine disappear but it's been a while