Finally a solid neutral(!) tech card against resurrection strategies. What's nice is that this can be pretty easily played alongside a small AoE to immediately clear the spawned minions.
Duskbreaker was a ani-aggro card, it is true that one mana / one turn can make a difference, but this is still a very strong card in my opinion. Also, another slap in the face to our poor Arcanosaur, what were they even thinking with that card smh
Arcanosaur was fine IMO. Don't forget that Frost Lich Jaina was in standard at the time. Honestly the real problem for control elemental mage was Bloodreaver Gul'dan, which was incredibly difficult to defeat with Wellies. Otherwise Mage would've been the lategame deck of choice.
Fantastic card. I'm glad to see dragon warlock getting this level of support; the class was already in a pretty weak place and it doesn't have any particular affinity for dragons, so this archetype needs all the help it can get if it's supposed to become a real deck.
If Blizzard had wanted to abandon hearthstone they wouldn't have made Battlegrounds as a HS tie-in, they would have made it a separate game to begin with. IIR half of ladder was playing quest shaman prior to the doom in the tomb event, so it's not like Evolve is the only thing propping up the class.
Almost all 1 mana 1/3 minons have ended up seeing some amount of competetive play, except for Animated Berserker and maybe Warbot (I don't remember) and this card has a strong effect to accompany it. You could say that it's weak since Steamwheedle Sniper saw little play, but it didn't have the synergy that we have now with cards such as Dragonbane, Toxic Reinforcements, Phase Stalker and maybe even with Waterboy and it's 1 mana.
While I really like the card, I am afraid that it won't be strong enough since it supports a more control oriented strategy, the cards (mentioned above) that synergize with it are more aggresive in nature and you will probably prefer to just keep going face. Don't get me wrong, you could use Phase Stalker to pull defensive secrets and use Dragonbane for board control, but hunter usually ends up going back to its aggresive nature.
Steamwheedle Sniper saw quite a bit of support back in the day because The Grand Tournament was the inspire set: all about hero powers. The big distinction between the two cards is that Dwarven Sharpshooter has a better statline for its manacost but, more importantly, the ability lines up so much more cleanly: On turn two you can use HP without wasting mana to presumably negate your opponent's play. If they chose not to develop onto the board then the Sharpshooter has already done its job and you can get even further ahead by playing more minions.
Steamwheedle Sniper doesn't line up well with your mana curve at all unless you coin it on turn one. Otherwise your opponent can play a 3 health minion and effectively negate the effect, not to mention the fact that spending two mana on turn three is pretty painful. It's also worse as a "removal spell" because you're paying 4 for 2 damage instead of 3.
I think the only real question is whether there will be a competitive Hunter deck. If there is, Dwarven Sharpshooter will be in it.
This seems especially useful as a refill once you're in Galakrond mode, as you lose Life Tap. Drawing cards is rarely bad, but it tends to be less valuable for Warlock under normal circumstances.
I appreciate BG a great deal; I was kind of burnt out on regular HS. That said, I hope they'll implement some sort of rotation system for the cards because I can already see the game becoming really stale really quick if the only thing that changes is the roster of available heroes.
The only card that immediately comes to mind that would make me play this over Onyxia is Muckmorpher, but even then there are way juicier minions to morph. Not sure where they were going with this. The fact that this is an end of turn effect rather than a battlecry makes it much worse for the usual evolve/reroll type of exploit, and the statline just seems to weak to be depended on to survive for more than one turn.
It's a shame these aren't imp tokens or token warlock might have become a thing.
Personally I think it'd make a lot of sense if news articles automatically got posted as a forum thread with that same title. It'd integrate news and forums a bit more, effectively lowering the barrier to entry for both. It'd also get rid of a lot of duplicate discussion threads, which IMO doesn't just get rid of redundancy, but likely would result in more -and more substantive- discussion.
So you're going to build your whole deck around being super greedy and then if you don't draw your one legendary minion by turn 4-6 you just lose the game? Sounds like a real winner of a deck idea. Then you can also just lose to the normal control decks who are happy to have you ramp them to 10 mana as well and still be able to handle your 8/8 because they have solid board clears and single target removal, plus strong late game cards. I mean maybe, just maybe you can outpace someone, but again, hinging everything on drawing 1 specific card for your whole deck to be good is a garbage idea. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure people will build that deck and play it, but its not going to win that many games unless it just gets slotted into Holy Wrath paladin as random way to power your mana and help you more easily cycle your deck so you can just win the game faster.
With Call To Adventure, yes, that seems like a strategy you can reliably pull off. Even if you're going first, by turn 3 you've seen 9 cards out of 30 if you full mulligan for Nozdormu or Call to Adventure, giving you better than 2:3 odds of finding at least one on time.
As for the argument that such a deck would lose to other control decks, that doesn't follow because 1) this deck would be built to be greedy whereas most control decks do have to factor in a lack of mana early game and 2) you're not required to play Nozdormu. If, for whatever reason, you think your opponent can make better use of ten mana than you, you can just... not play Nozdormu. It's not like a control deck is going to aggro you down if you play it slow.
And for the record, I'm not saying this deck is guaranteed to be a hit. From my perspective it's lacking either a finisher or something like a hero card which grants infinite value. But the idea that this card couldn't work because paladin lacks control tools is absurd.
This is one of the hardest cards to judge. Going straight to 10 mana is crazy, and based on how you build your deck and your opponent build their there is a lot going on. Paladin isn't great at broad control or removal, its usually a grinding class that has to carefully manage its resources and IDK how this fits into that plan. Its going to be interesting, that is for sure, but I can't truly judge the card until the whole set is out and even then how the meta shakes up.
What do you mean Paladin isn't great at board control or removal? Equality? Shrink Ray? Time Out? Paladin has some of the best control tools in the game at the moment. Whether or not this type of deck works won't be due to a lack of removal options if you ask me.
All those tools are double sided. They don't just wipe your opponents board if you lose control. Also Time Out is a stall card, and its value is only really seen in combo decks. Its not some sort of weird OP card in a random tempo deck or something. Equality and Shrink Ray both don't actually clear the board, you need a second card to do that with them, and going 2 for 1 on your removal isn't that impressive. Its true that generally speaking those cards always let you fully clear, but you can only do it a limited number of times, while a class like priest has multiple AoEs of different power level and cost that do the job in 1 card. S
Symmetrical effects are rarely truly symmetrical. Nozdormu ramps both players to ten, but one player (presumably) has a deck built to capitalise on loads of mana whereas the other schmuck is stuck with a regular ol' mana curve.
What do you think happens when you drop a 4 mana 8/8 and give your opponent 10 mana? They are forced to extend onto the board, allowing you to gain a ton of value from board clears and further abuse the difference in value between the two decks.
Maybe Nozdormu might be busted enough to go in any old tempo deck, but the card is clearly most suited toward a very greedy control deck that likes spending lots of mana.
This is one of the hardest cards to judge. Going straight to 10 mana is crazy, and based on how you build your deck and your opponent build their there is a lot going on. Paladin isn't great at broad control or removal, its usually a grinding class that has to carefully manage its resources and IDK how this fits into that plan. Its going to be interesting, that is for sure, but I can't truly judge the card until the whole set is out and even then how the meta shakes up.
What do you mean Paladin isn't great at board control or removal? Equality? Shrink Ray? Time Out? Paladin has some of the best control tools in the game at the moment. Whether or not this type of deck works won't be due to a lack of removal options if you ask me.
All of this was hypothetical. If casual wants to ban competitive decks then ladder should be able to ban non-competitive decks.
Casual doesn't have a filter. Ranked play does. The two are not equivalent so treating them equally will not produce equal or fair outcomes. That's why I said earlier that I considered floored levels at certain ranks a fair compromise. It moves a lot of not-really-casual gameplay over to certain ranks of ladder, whereas before it had all been shoved into casual where it didn't belong.
As for what is stopping me from playing certain decks at lower ranks? Mill rogue. Both Evenlock and my Dragon Mind Blast Priest decks have so much draw on their own that I usually just aggro my way up the ladder and once I reach a good rank (for me), I start messing around.
I don't play casual and I use Zayle when someone offers me a Challenge a Friend quest. It's a bit unrealistic to win 30 matches a day in casual mode. The gold rewards aren't worth it - I know; I've tried.
I burnt myself out real fast. I like to win and I like the challenge of playing ladder. Sure, it sucks to lose stars sometimes but not every Spike out there is gold farming in casual.
I don't really know what to say to this. Yes sometimes your favourite deck is poorly situated in a given (sub)meta. I don't see how that should inform policy decisions on game modes. If you think Mill Rogue itself is particularly toxic, petition to have that deck nerfed instead of holding Casual hostage over it. If mill rogue is endemic to all of the lower ranks and not just the floored ones, clearly some people are having success with it...
MMR refers to the ranking system for battlegrounds, I.E the amount of points you win or lose depending on your place on the scoreboard as well as your ranking relative to the rest of the lobby.
I have to say Blizzard hasn't communicated the tournament very well either, for example I couldn't find a match list for today at a quick glance.
That's my point, I don't blame out of cards.
I don't get why Blizzard highlights only a 300k $ influencers event, instead of the "world championship".
They clearly don't really care about HGG or they would no doubt at least do the bare minimum to draw eyes to it by putting a banner in the battlenet app. Just compare the nonexistent PR for HGG to the various ways they hyped Las Vegas and Bucharest earlier this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't reprise HGG and this is their way of killing it quietly.
MMR refers to the ranking system for battlegrounds, I.E the amount of points you win or lose depending on your place on the scoreboard as well as your ranking relative to the rest of the lobby.
Right? It makes no sense whatsoever. Sure there are maybe 2 turns where the +1/+1 on the wolf matters more than the ratpack swarm, but by the time you can actually buy T3 minions in the tavern Infested Wolf's advantage is already completely negated. I wouldn't mind seeing the wolf removed from the game: it's bad, it's redundant and something more interesting could be put in in its place.
Finally a solid neutral(!) tech card against resurrection strategies. What's nice is that this can be pretty easily played alongside a small AoE to immediately clear the spawned minions.
Arcanosaur was fine IMO. Don't forget that Frost Lich Jaina was in standard at the time. Honestly the real problem for control elemental mage was Bloodreaver Gul'dan, which was incredibly difficult to defeat with Wellies. Otherwise Mage would've been the lategame deck of choice.
Fantastic card. I'm glad to see dragon warlock getting this level of support; the class was already in a pretty weak place and it doesn't have any particular affinity for dragons, so this archetype needs all the help it can get if it's supposed to become a real deck.
If Blizzard had wanted to abandon hearthstone they wouldn't have made Battlegrounds as a HS tie-in, they would have made it a separate game to begin with. IIR half of ladder was playing quest shaman prior to the doom in the tomb event, so it's not like Evolve is the only thing propping up the class.
Sweet mother, that's one heck of a card.
Steamwheedle Sniper saw quite a bit of support back in the day because The Grand Tournament was the inspire set: all about hero powers. The big distinction between the two cards is that Dwarven Sharpshooter has a better statline for its manacost but, more importantly, the ability lines up so much more cleanly: On turn two you can use HP without wasting mana to presumably negate your opponent's play. If they chose not to develop onto the board then the Sharpshooter has already done its job and you can get even further ahead by playing more minions.
Steamwheedle Sniper doesn't line up well with your mana curve at all unless you coin it on turn one. Otherwise your opponent can play a 3 health minion and effectively negate the effect, not to mention the fact that spending two mana on turn three is pretty painful. It's also worse as a "removal spell" because you're paying 4 for 2 damage instead of 3.
I think the only real question is whether there will be a competitive Hunter deck. If there is, Dwarven Sharpshooter will be in it.
This seems especially useful as a refill once you're in Galakrond mode, as you lose Life Tap. Drawing cards is rarely bad, but it tends to be less valuable for Warlock under normal circumstances.
I appreciate BG a great deal; I was kind of burnt out on regular HS. That said, I hope they'll implement some sort of rotation system for the cards because I can already see the game becoming really stale really quick if the only thing that changes is the roster of available heroes.
The only card that immediately comes to mind that would make me play this over Onyxia is Muckmorpher, but even then there are way juicier minions to morph. Not sure where they were going with this. The fact that this is an end of turn effect rather than a battlecry makes it much worse for the usual evolve/reroll type of exploit, and the statline just seems to weak to be depended on to survive for more than one turn.
It's a shame these aren't imp tokens or token warlock might have become a thing.
Personally I think it'd make a lot of sense if news articles automatically got posted as a forum thread with that same title. It'd integrate news and forums a bit more, effectively lowering the barrier to entry for both. It'd also get rid of a lot of duplicate discussion threads, which IMO doesn't just get rid of redundancy, but likely would result in more -and more substantive- discussion.
With Call To Adventure, yes, that seems like a strategy you can reliably pull off. Even if you're going first, by turn 3 you've seen 9 cards out of 30 if you full mulligan for Nozdormu or Call to Adventure, giving you better than 2:3 odds of finding at least one on time.
As for the argument that such a deck would lose to other control decks, that doesn't follow because 1) this deck would be built to be greedy whereas most control decks do have to factor in a lack of mana early game and 2) you're not required to play Nozdormu. If, for whatever reason, you think your opponent can make better use of ten mana than you, you can just... not play Nozdormu. It's not like a control deck is going to aggro you down if you play it slow.
And for the record, I'm not saying this deck is guaranteed to be a hit. From my perspective it's lacking either a finisher or something like a hero card which grants infinite value. But the idea that this card couldn't work because paladin lacks control tools is absurd.
If this sees play I expect it'll mainly be as a source of cheap spells for gadget.
Symmetrical effects are rarely truly symmetrical. Nozdormu ramps both players to ten, but one player (presumably) has a deck built to capitalise on loads of mana whereas the other schmuck is stuck with a regular ol' mana curve.
What do you think happens when you drop a 4 mana 8/8 and give your opponent 10 mana? They are forced to extend onto the board, allowing you to gain a ton of value from board clears and further abuse the difference in value between the two decks.
Maybe Nozdormu might be busted enough to go in any old tempo deck, but the card is clearly most suited toward a very greedy control deck that likes spending lots of mana.
What do you mean Paladin isn't great at board control or removal? Equality? Shrink Ray? Time Out? Paladin has some of the best control tools in the game at the moment. Whether or not this type of deck works won't be due to a lack of removal options if you ask me.
Casual doesn't have a filter. Ranked play does. The two are not equivalent so treating them equally will not produce equal or fair outcomes. That's why I said earlier that I considered floored levels at certain ranks a fair compromise. It moves a lot of not-really-casual gameplay over to certain ranks of ladder, whereas before it had all been shoved into casual where it didn't belong.
I don't really know what to say to this. Yes sometimes your favourite deck is poorly situated in a given (sub)meta. I don't see how that should inform policy decisions on game modes. If you think Mill Rogue itself is particularly toxic, petition to have that deck nerfed instead of holding Casual hostage over it. If mill rogue is endemic to all of the lower ranks and not just the floored ones, clearly some people are having success with it...
"MMR gaming" works fine too. I doubt this is an abbreviation that a lot of gamers need to look up, the term is ubiquitous.
Is there a stickied post or something with all of the bbcode? If not, i'm sure I'm not the only one who would find that helpful.
They clearly don't really care about HGG or they would no doubt at least do the bare minimum to draw eyes to it by putting a banner in the battlenet app. Just compare the nonexistent PR for HGG to the various ways they hyped Las Vegas and Bucharest earlier this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't reprise HGG and this is their way of killing it quietly.
MMR refers to the ranking system for battlegrounds, I.E the amount of points you win or lose depending on your place on the scoreboard as well as your ranking relative to the rest of the lobby.
The problem is Blizzard isn't entirely clear on how the MMR system for battlegrounds works. We've gotten a bit more info on it from Mike Donais (https://outof.cards/hearthstone/495-mike-donais-talks-battlegrounds-lich-bazhial-mmr-blog-coming-this-week) but I doubt Blizzard will ever be completely transparent about the formula they use to score your games.
Right? It makes no sense whatsoever. Sure there are maybe 2 turns where the +1/+1 on the wolf matters more than the ratpack swarm, but by the time you can actually buy T3 minions in the tavern Infested Wolf's advantage is already completely negated. I wouldn't mind seeing the wolf removed from the game: it's bad, it's redundant and something more interesting could be put in in its place.