I have no WOW background, but I'm also enjoying Hooktusk. Fun voice lines, great art. I assumed her arm decorations were tattoos (pirates would have tattoos, right?), but gill-upgrades makes sense too.
It's not easy to tell a story in just one piece of art, but there are a few series to enjoy, like the ranked spells from the Barrens. I particularly like the Druid one.
I first assumed they were tattoos too, until I noticed the faint shark fin which definitely disappears when she's not in the water. It's a bit tricky to tell for sure whether they are consistent when in and out of the water until we have higher resolution images to look at. Take their Supplies! and Take their Gold! only really show her right arm, while Pirate Admiral Hooktusk itself only really shows the left. Take their Ship! would resolve it, if we had a high enough resolution version to be convinced the 'gills' are absent. I think they are, but the contrast between the two colours is pretty small so I'm still unsure. Either way, she's definitely got some shark magic going on.
I also liked how the ranked spells told their own little stories. Spells generally have an easier time of it since they depict actions, while minions have to fill the frame with 1 particular character, so we usually can't see what's going on around them.
With the reveal of Pirate Admiral Hooktusk being one of the most flavourful cards I can think of, I thought it would be nice to step back from card power, tilt-factors and meta-relevance to focus on an aspect of the game everyone agrees is great: theme and flavour. Since Hooktusk was probably my favourite character in all of HS already (and because I have 2 weeks off work and a ton of time to kill) it felt fitting to do a deep dive on the character and appreciate all the little details the HS team put in.
All are welcome to point out what I missed, or show their own appreciation for their own HS character... in far fewer words I expect.
Her visual design (original card)
Show Spoiler
The HS-original pirates are an eccentric bunch. Skycap'n Kragg comes in flying a giant parrot, wielding a lance with a hook on the end, and cramming a few extra 'r's in the charge keyword (kicking off a trend that continues in pirate cards to this day). Then Patches the Pirate gets fired as a cannon ball onto the field, wearing more eye patches than most organisms have eyes, and originally having another eye pun in his attack voiceline. Both are perfect examples of HS whimsy done right. Indeed, Kragg's appearance in the TGT trailer was practically the original statement that HS no longer follows WoW lore closely. (The irony of course being that he was later made canon in WoW.)
Captain Hooktusk's eccentricities are a bit more subtle, and aren't defining features so much as clues to her personality. Between her portable cannon, her ridiculous belt anchor beneath a shark emblem, her obnoxiously elaborate and bright pink hair, and of course, the hooks on her tusks, we immediately know she's not interested in hiding in the shadows like most rogue characters. She's here to be noticed, with enough flair to overshadow her contemporaries in RR - which is impressive given the set's whole theme was showmanship.
She's also flexing pretty hard that she can carry a cast iron cannon with one hand while the other juggles a cannonball like its nothing. Coupled with that grin, it's a really disconcerting mix of playful and threatening. Finally, she's happy with a low cut shirt revealing cleavage. Unlike Jaina, I get the feeling Hooktusk would actually seek to exploit that feature, and if you told her to cover up she's gladly fire that cannon at you.
Luckily, RR gave us a couple of images of Hooktusk in action too. She's swinging around in Cannon Barrage and rappelling with her crew in Raiding Party. Again, there's no stealth here. It's all show and would be a joy to watch… so long as she isn't coming for you.
Her personification
Show Spoiler
When we factor in her various voicelines, she goes from an awesome deign to an instantly lovable character. Consider her entrance voiceline: “Cheatin’?! I never fight fair!” This is not some generic “For the Horde”-esque entrance. No. She’s clearly just been accused of cheating and says the “Cheatin’?!” as though insulted. Not because it isn’t true - she immediately admits she always cheats - but because she’s amazed they even needed to point it out.
Add in her Rumble Run voicelines, and we develop her cheating ways further: as the fight starts she says “I’ll fight fair. Dis time. Promise.”… She doesn't. Obviously. Her responses to her shrine dying add to her little mind games. While everyone else gets cross or worries how to proceed, she says things like "Ya think that's a good idea?", making poor Rikkar (the player's character) question whether he made a terrible mistake. Other times she'll just pass it off with "Eh. It was just a distraction anyways." Whether she actually thinks that or not is entirely unclear to us, and there's nothing more dangerous than an enemy you don't understand.
A personal favourite is when you threaten her, and she replies with "Bwa-haha. Oh… you were serious?" She's just having fun mocking you. But she knows to be serious when she needs to be. Emote her in Tamsin's chapter of the Book of Mercs and she'll reply with "Loose lips sink ships." Which demonstrates her playful demeanor is a facade hiding a mind that knows exactly what she's doing. Kind of like a more playful Jack Sparrow, which is high praise.
To top it off, her voice actress does a stellar job. Writing quotes down is one thing, but you really need to listen to them to truly appreciate them.
Updates to her visual design
Show Spoiler
New card, new promotion, and new look. Kind of. Pirate Admiral Hooktusk looks mostly the same with significantly bulkier arms. Presumably since she's been swimming a lot more lately. Admittedly the extra bulk made it more plausible she was going to be a warrior card, which would have sucked for me personally. I'm glad that didn't happen.
There are more subtle changes that are probably more important: her ponytail now ends with a shark tail like shape; and when she's underwater (see the Sunken City trailer and the minion art, but not art for the Plunder options) she has light blue stripes (likely representing gills) on her arms and a dorsal fin like shape behind her head. I suspect these are visual representations of Gral's power letting her swim fast and breathe underwater. If so, that's a pretty cool bit of character progression.
Her eyes might also have white goggle-like barriers over them underwater. That's what it looks like in the trailer, but I haven't seen a high enough resolution image of the card to tell there.
Her new card design
Show Spoiler
Her first card, Captain Hooktusk, won me a lot of games (yes, despite it being an 8-mana card in an aggessive deck), and I get the flavour: her opponent thinks she's alone for a fair fight, only to get jumped by her crew. So she's cheating thematically, but mechanically… not so much. She turned up at a time recruit was still in Standard, so it felt well within the rules of the game, and hence took me a while to work out what the flavour was.
The new Pirate Admiral Hooktusk is much clearer on the matter. Two of her options were utterly ruled out in the early days of HS, and even if a couple of similar effects have existed since, it is absolutely going to feel like cheating when it is done to you. But it's flavourful cheating. She's always stealing something. She's boarded your ship, tied up the crew, and is making off with the goods. Furthermore, they actually call back to her Treasure from Below shrine in Rumble Run, which is just so fitting here.
The art depicts this story beautifully, using the option 'cards' to go beyond the power pose of the base minion and show what happened after she burst into Faelin's ship. It didn't go well for him, Finley or Ini (I think that's the name of the female mecha gnome). Poor Ini is faced with Hooktusk pointing the cannon at her and juggling a cannonball, calling back the the original RR card and showing she actually does that outside of a photo shoot.
I don't think any other card has been able to tell the story surrounding the base artwork so well, especially not in so self-contained a way. I hope they find ways to do this sort of thing again in future. There must be so many little stories to tell this way that we'd never know if we only get single snapshots.
Misc stuff
Now we're here, it is clear Hooktusk was added to Tamsin's Book of Mercs chapter to softly re-introduce the character before she made a bigger appearance in Sunken City. However you feel about the Book of Mercs, it's neat to retroactively see the thought that went into them.
Now I've done this for Hooktusk, I feel kinda guilty for not paying more attention to a lot of cards. I'm sure there's a lot to find in them!
Blizzard have added the card to their database. The appendage is a similar thing that draws a card rather than dredging, so together you get 2x 4 damage attacks that more or less discover a cord from the bottom of your deck. It's a neat little application of dredge.
You're assuming it's going to be an aggro deck primarily because of the history of warrior pirate decks, which were always the more notorious. Rogue versions were usually more nuanced due to the nature of the class, and the Sunken City version really doesn't look to be that aggressive at all. If you look at the pirates we currently know rogue will have available, we have:
And a slow, board presence generator in Azsharan Vessel that probably needs you to spend time dredging, e.g. with Tuskarrrr Trawler.
I assume Swashburglar will stick around in the Core set as support for both pirates and the AV burgle stuff. He's cheap, but not at all aggressive.
Other than Mr. Smite, even the neutral pirates aren't that aggressive as they mostly need you to have a weapon, which typically slows rogue down more than it does in warrior.
The situation can change if more pirates are revealed, but for now it looks unlikely pirate rogue will be an aggro deck. More likely it's a midrange deck utilising rogue's natural tempo, and reaching turn 8 with those decks is perfectly reasonable.
I know one angryshukie would be glad to see this one. Seems like hooktusk is just a rogue for life. Now all we need is a portrait.
It was quite the relief! I guess she wasn't lying when she said "Cheatin'? I never fight fair!" back in RR. Now I know how serious she was with it, how could I ever doubt she'd stay in rogue?
We do seriously need her as a portrait though. Blizz could just be lazy and give us the emotes she already has and they'd make one of the best hero skins in the game in the process.
Quote From dapperdog
But the question remains, whether this will see play. The answer is yes. Will it be good? Probably not. Again, this is a turn 8 play with no rush or taunt, and rogue is notorious for their lack of defensive cards. So chances are good, if you maintain tempo throughout the game rogue will simply just die the following turn after this is played. Expect the mind control to be picked often, not because its the best choice, but because they'll literally lose the game if they dont.
As someone who loathed Tickatus I admit I hope this all ends up true. I always quietly want nasty rogue cards to be a bit rubbish so I can use them without feeling dirty, and this certainly fits that bill. Maybe in the end Raid the Docks, which looks stronger for a very similar condition, remains the pirate villain in the meta, and us Hooktusk users get to do what we like without feeling bad about it.
I don't think it's going to be as difficult to spend 8 mana with no immediate impact as people claim (they always exaggerate that), especially if Crabatoa and/or Shadowcrafter Scabbs are played the previous turn(s) to prevent the opponent's board being too scary. The pirate cards in rogue that we know about aren't aggressive, so I would be surprised if it ended up fast enough that reaching turn 8 was a sign that things had gone wrong. In which case, a control/combo killer card like this might be exactly what the deck needs to cross the line.
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This is a bit disconnected but I wanted to say it somewhere people would see it: I look forward to rogue-warrior matchups where the warrior plays Nellie, the Great Thresher, then the rogue spitefully sinks Nellie's Pirate Ship with Bootstrap Sunkeneer. Now I guess you could just get Hooktusk to steal her ship back if you can somehow manage to get rid of Nellie herself first.
Also their really pushing Pirate Rogue, and we still haven't seen the new Captain Hooktusk card. (She is in the expansion trailer, so we know she has to be a card.) So i bet this might have some place in that deck.
This is what I'm thinking too. We have some pirates in rogue, but nothing yet telling us how the deck will work, and there's a good bet Hooktusk will give us the answer. Fortunately she's the next reveal, judging by the thumbnail image being the anchor she wears on her belt (which means Blizzard chose an... interesting part of her to use. She seems flirty enough that I'm sure she won't mind :P)
Some bosses are tougher than others, depending on what mercs you own. Balinda's a pushover if you have Anduin and Velen to heal you pretty much back to full each time she sets you to 1 (I assume other mass healing will do too), and Popsi-cooler will practically kill itself if you are patient with Alexstrazsa and use Dragonqueen's Gambit. I'd take them over Omok in BRM any day.
Whether they get tougher on average is not something I have the data to argue one way or the other. But certainly my anecdotal evidence points towards it being a shallow increase in difficulty at most.
Whether it is worth using packs to get legendaries depends a lot on your position. I put in a lot of work to craft legendaries early on (pre-Deadmines), and have been able to keep up with owning everything since. If, and I stress IF, that is your position, then you should get enough packs from tasks to open legendaries each time they are added. That is, presuming they return to only 1 per ~month; if they stick with 3 (I'm not counting Leeroy for this) then I'll have to re-evaluate it.
Otherwise, yes, it's probably wisest just to open until you get the epics.
To clarify, since what we have both written is a bit ambiguous, tasks 16, 17 and 18 each give 1 pack. So it's 3 total per merc. Still enough that one day you'll end up rolling in packs, but precisely when you least need them :P
That's nothing to be embarrassed about :) Many abilities don't really need to get past tier 3 though. It's certainly useful, but when you go from, say, 10 damage to 11 then 12, it's a fairly small difference that often won't matter much. Strategy will often be more valuable than those small upgrades, though I accept you actually need the right mercs to be able to enact a strategy.
The pack situation in Mercs is really weird and kind of backwards. When you start out you get very, very few, but eventually your mercs reach tasks 16-18 and get you 3 packs each. So it ends up being quite generous with packs, but only after you've put a lot of effort in. At least, that's what I would say if the packs themselves were at all kind. I got hit hard by the lack of a pity timer when the last batch arrived (going >50 packs between legendaries... TWICE!)
Are you stuck with Heroic or normal? The difficulty doesn't really rise after BRM, so if you can just get through everything on normal you'll at least be able to get Leeroy himself.
I'm glad I've nearly finished mopping up tasks for all mercs except the latest batch. Very soon the 'grind' will be covered almost entirely by doing the 4 tasks each day, without ever looking for mysterious wanderers. It won't max mercs out of course, but as long as they're in fighting shape I'm fine with that.
Still, I'll do whatever I need to to finish these quests. That diamond animation is glorious!
Ah yes, the bane of every 'fun meme deck': living long enough to become the villain! Even burgle rogue managed it in AV (though that was so stripped back on actual burgling that it barely counts).
That would be poggers indeed. I can never remember how to display golden cards, but this is definitely one of the best in the game's history. If it was in the Core set so many more people would see it to appreciate it. It might also give combo players a reason to not just label pirates as loathsome aggro!
It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure killing Sylvanas with a battlecry is liable to get your battlecry minion stolen. It was definitely a bad idea to play Deathwing with her on board, for example.
I first assumed they were tattoos too, until I noticed the faint shark fin which definitely disappears when she's not in the water. It's a bit tricky to tell for sure whether they are consistent when in and out of the water until we have higher resolution images to look at. Take their Supplies! and Take their Gold! only really show her right arm, while Pirate Admiral Hooktusk itself only really shows the left. Take their Ship! would resolve it, if we had a high enough resolution version to be convinced the 'gills' are absent. I think they are, but the contrast between the two colours is pretty small so I'm still unsure. Either way, she's definitely got some shark magic going on.
I also liked how the ranked spells told their own little stories. Spells generally have an easier time of it since they depict actions, while minions have to fill the frame with 1 particular character, so we usually can't see what's going on around them.
With the reveal of Pirate Admiral Hooktusk being one of the most flavourful cards I can think of, I thought it would be nice to step back from card power, tilt-factors and meta-relevance to focus on an aspect of the game everyone agrees is great: theme and flavour. Since Hooktusk was probably my favourite character in all of HS already (and because I have 2 weeks off work and a ton of time to kill) it felt fitting to do a deep dive on the character and appreciate all the little details the HS team put in.
All are welcome to point out what I missed, or show their own appreciation for their own HS character... in far fewer words I expect.
Her visual design (original card)
The HS-original pirates are an eccentric bunch. Skycap'n Kragg comes in flying a giant parrot, wielding a lance with a hook on the end, and cramming a few extra 'r's in the charge keyword (kicking off a trend that continues in pirate cards to this day). Then Patches the Pirate gets fired as a cannon ball onto the field, wearing more eye patches than most organisms have eyes, and originally having another eye pun in his attack voiceline. Both are perfect examples of HS whimsy done right. Indeed, Kragg's appearance in the TGT trailer was practically the original statement that HS no longer follows WoW lore closely. (The irony of course being that he was later made canon in WoW.)
Captain Hooktusk's eccentricities are a bit more subtle, and aren't defining features so much as clues to her personality. Between her portable cannon, her ridiculous belt anchor beneath a shark emblem, her obnoxiously elaborate and bright pink hair, and of course, the hooks on her tusks, we immediately know she's not interested in hiding in the shadows like most rogue characters. She's here to be noticed, with enough flair to overshadow her contemporaries in RR - which is impressive given the set's whole theme was showmanship.
She's also flexing pretty hard that she can carry a cast iron cannon with one hand while the other juggles a cannonball like its nothing. Coupled with that grin, it's a really disconcerting mix of playful and threatening. Finally, she's happy with a low cut shirt revealing cleavage. Unlike Jaina, I get the feeling Hooktusk would actually seek to exploit that feature, and if you told her to cover up she's gladly fire that cannon at you.
Luckily, RR gave us a couple of images of Hooktusk in action too. She's swinging around in Cannon Barrage and rappelling with her crew in Raiding Party. Again, there's no stealth here. It's all show and would be a joy to watch… so long as she isn't coming for you.
Her personification
When we factor in her various voicelines, she goes from an awesome deign to an instantly lovable character. Consider her entrance voiceline: “Cheatin’?! I never fight fair!” This is not some generic “For the Horde”-esque entrance. No. She’s clearly just been accused of cheating and says the “Cheatin’?!” as though insulted. Not because it isn’t true - she immediately admits she always cheats - but because she’s amazed they even needed to point it out.
Add in her Rumble Run voicelines, and we develop her cheating ways further: as the fight starts she says “I’ll fight fair. Dis time. Promise.”… She doesn't. Obviously. Her responses to her shrine dying add to her little mind games. While everyone else gets cross or worries how to proceed, she says things like "Ya think that's a good idea?", making poor Rikkar (the player's character) question whether he made a terrible mistake. Other times she'll just pass it off with "Eh. It was just a distraction anyways." Whether she actually thinks that or not is entirely unclear to us, and there's nothing more dangerous than an enemy you don't understand.
A personal favourite is when you threaten her, and she replies with "Bwa-haha. Oh… you were serious?" She's just having fun mocking you. But she knows to be serious when she needs to be. Emote her in Tamsin's chapter of the Book of Mercs and she'll reply with "Loose lips sink ships." Which demonstrates her playful demeanor is a facade hiding a mind that knows exactly what she's doing. Kind of like a more playful Jack Sparrow, which is high praise.
To top it off, her voice actress does a stellar job. Writing quotes down is one thing, but you really need to listen to them to truly appreciate them.
Updates to her visual design
New card, new promotion, and new look. Kind of. Pirate Admiral Hooktusk looks mostly the same with significantly bulkier arms. Presumably since she's been swimming a lot more lately. Admittedly the extra bulk made it more plausible she was going to be a warrior card, which would have sucked for me personally. I'm glad that didn't happen.
There are more subtle changes that are probably more important: her ponytail now ends with a shark tail like shape; and when she's underwater (see the Sunken City trailer and the minion art, but not art for the Plunder options) she has light blue stripes (likely representing gills) on her arms and a dorsal fin like shape behind her head. I suspect these are visual representations of Gral's power letting her swim fast and breathe underwater. If so, that's a pretty cool bit of character progression.
Her eyes might also have white goggle-like barriers over them underwater. That's what it looks like in the trailer, but I haven't seen a high enough resolution image of the card to tell there.
Her new card design
Her first card, Captain Hooktusk, won me a lot of games (yes, despite it being an 8-mana card in an aggessive deck), and I get the flavour: her opponent thinks she's alone for a fair fight, only to get jumped by her crew. So she's cheating thematically, but mechanically… not so much. She turned up at a time recruit was still in Standard, so it felt well within the rules of the game, and hence took me a while to work out what the flavour was.
The new Pirate Admiral Hooktusk is much clearer on the matter. Two of her options were utterly ruled out in the early days of HS, and even if a couple of similar effects have existed since, it is absolutely going to feel like cheating when it is done to you. But it's flavourful cheating. She's always stealing something. She's boarded your ship, tied up the crew, and is making off with the goods. Furthermore, they actually call back to her Treasure from Below shrine in Rumble Run, which is just so fitting here.
The art depicts this story beautifully, using the option 'cards' to go beyond the power pose of the base minion and show what happened after she burst into Faelin's ship. It didn't go well for him, Finley or Ini (I think that's the name of the female mecha gnome). Poor Ini is faced with Hooktusk pointing the cannon at her and juggling a cannonball, calling back the the original RR card and showing she actually does that outside of a photo shoot.
I don't think any other card has been able to tell the story surrounding the base artwork so well, especially not in so self-contained a way. I hope they find ways to do this sort of thing again in future. There must be so many little stories to tell this way that we'd never know if we only get single snapshots.
Misc stuff
Now we're here, it is clear Hooktusk was added to Tamsin's Book of Mercs chapter to softly re-introduce the character before she made a bigger appearance in Sunken City. However you feel about the Book of Mercs, it's neat to retroactively see the thought that went into them.
Now I've done this for Hooktusk, I feel kinda guilty for not paying more attention to a lot of cards. I'm sure there's a lot to find in them!
I'm all for a mystery tail. Perhaps not very fitting for paladin class identity though. Maybe in rogue or mage though :)
4/2; divine shield; rush; after this attacks, draw a card.
Blizzard have added the card to their database. The appendage is a similar thing that draws a card rather than dredging, so together you get 2x 4 damage attacks that more or less discover a cord from the bottom of your deck. It's a neat little application of dredge.
Dat sure be true, but lookin' at her hair's new fish-tail, me be thinkin' ol' Gral been givin' her some of his loa magic so she be a betta swimma.
You're assuming it's going to be an aggro deck primarily because of the history of warrior pirate decks, which were always the more notorious. Rogue versions were usually more nuanced due to the nature of the class, and the Sunken City version really doesn't look to be that aggressive at all. If you look at the pirates we currently know rogue will have available, we have:
Other than Mr. Smite, even the neutral pirates aren't that aggressive as they mostly need you to have a weapon, which typically slows rogue down more than it does in warrior.
The situation can change if more pirates are revealed, but for now it looks unlikely pirate rogue will be an aggro deck. More likely it's a midrange deck utilising rogue's natural tempo, and reaching turn 8 with those decks is perfectly reasonable.
Highly optimistic Youthful Brewmaster pirate warrior incoming!
It was quite the relief! I guess she wasn't lying when she said "Cheatin'? I never fight fair!" back in RR. Now I know how serious she was with it, how could I ever doubt she'd stay in rogue?
We do seriously need her as a portrait though. Blizz could just be lazy and give us the emotes she already has and they'd make one of the best hero skins in the game in the process.
As someone who loathed Tickatus I admit I hope this all ends up true. I always quietly want nasty rogue cards to be a bit rubbish so I can use them without feeling dirty, and this certainly fits that bill. Maybe in the end Raid the Docks, which looks stronger for a very similar condition, remains the pirate villain in the meta, and us Hooktusk users get to do what we like without feeling bad about it.
I don't think it's going to be as difficult to spend 8 mana with no immediate impact as people claim (they always exaggerate that), especially if Crabatoa and/or Shadowcrafter Scabbs are played the previous turn(s) to prevent the opponent's board being too scary. The pirate cards in rogue that we know about aren't aggressive, so I would be surprised if it ended up fast enough that reaching turn 8 was a sign that things had gone wrong. In which case, a control/combo killer card like this might be exactly what the deck needs to cross the line.
-----------------------
This is a bit disconnected but I wanted to say it somewhere people would see it: I look forward to rogue-warrior matchups where the warrior plays Nellie, the Great Thresher, then the rogue spitefully sinks Nellie's Pirate Ship with Bootstrap Sunkeneer. Now I guess you could just get Hooktusk to steal her ship back if you can somehow manage to get rid of Nellie herself first.
This is what I'm thinking too. We have some pirates in rogue, but nothing yet telling us how the deck will work, and there's a good bet Hooktusk will give us the answer. Fortunately she's the next reveal, judging by the thumbnail image being the anchor she wears on her belt (which means Blizzard chose an... interesting part of her to use. She seems flirty enough that I'm sure she won't mind :P)
Some bosses are tougher than others, depending on what mercs you own. Balinda's a pushover if you have Anduin and Velen to heal you pretty much back to full each time she sets you to 1 (I assume other mass healing will do too), and Popsi-cooler will practically kill itself if you are patient with Alexstrazsa and use Dragonqueen's Gambit. I'd take them over Omok in BRM any day.
Whether they get tougher on average is not something I have the data to argue one way or the other. But certainly my anecdotal evidence points towards it being a shallow increase in difficulty at most.
Whether it is worth using packs to get legendaries depends a lot on your position. I put in a lot of work to craft legendaries early on (pre-Deadmines), and have been able to keep up with owning everything since. If, and I stress IF, that is your position, then you should get enough packs from tasks to open legendaries each time they are added. That is, presuming they return to only 1 per ~month; if they stick with 3 (I'm not counting Leeroy for this) then I'll have to re-evaluate it.
Otherwise, yes, it's probably wisest just to open until you get the epics.
Thanks. It's so simple I really should remember it, but I always give up before I land on the right permutation.
To clarify, since what we have both written is a bit ambiguous, tasks 16, 17 and 18 each give 1 pack. So it's 3 total per merc. Still enough that one day you'll end up rolling in packs, but precisely when you least need them :P
That's nothing to be embarrassed about :) Many abilities don't really need to get past tier 3 though. It's certainly useful, but when you go from, say, 10 damage to 11 then 12, it's a fairly small difference that often won't matter much. Strategy will often be more valuable than those small upgrades, though I accept you actually need the right mercs to be able to enact a strategy.
The pack situation in Mercs is really weird and kind of backwards. When you start out you get very, very few, but eventually your mercs reach tasks 16-18 and get you 3 packs each. So it ends up being quite generous with packs, but only after you've put a lot of effort in. At least, that's what I would say if the packs themselves were at all kind. I got hit hard by the lack of a pity timer when the last batch arrived (going >50 packs between legendaries... TWICE!)
Are you stuck with Heroic or normal? The difficulty doesn't really rise after BRM, so if you can just get through everything on normal you'll at least be able to get Leeroy himself.
I'm glad I've nearly finished mopping up tasks for all mercs except the latest batch. Very soon the 'grind' will be covered almost entirely by doing the 4 tasks each day, without ever looking for mysterious wanderers. It won't max mercs out of course, but as long as they're in fighting shape I'm fine with that.
Still, I'll do whatever I need to to finish these quests. That diamond animation is glorious!
Ah yes, the bane of every 'fun meme deck': living long enough to become the villain! Even burgle rogue managed it in AV (though that was so stripped back on actual burgling that it barely counts).
That would be poggers indeed. I can never remember how to display golden cards, but this is definitely one of the best in the game's history. If it was in the Core set so many more people would see it to appreciate it. It might also give combo players a reason to not just label pirates as loathsome aggro!
It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure killing Sylvanas with a battlecry is liable to get your battlecry minion stolen. It was definitely a bad idea to play Deathwing with her on board, for example.