I don't think it's a bug. The task says "complete" which always requires the merc associated with the task (Chi-Ji in this case) to be part of the team. Now, we can argue that "complete" having that meaning is dumb 'til the cows come home, but that's not a QA issue.
As a rogue main I'm so glad they added Savory Deviate Delight and Parrrley to make up for the lack of a neutral like Dirty Rat. SDD didn't do much at first, but as the year has gone on so many decks have become so reliant on so few minions that it has become a perfect anti-meta card. A role helped by it being a 2-of and being playable before the opponent plays their key minion (unlike Mutanus). It has pretty much single-handedly allowed me to play slow, value decks like burgle rogue to decent success in what should be a very hostile meta.
Parrrley has been less reliable in that role, but even when it gets something mediocre, making the opponent effectively lose a draw to it is always nice. Plus it now serves as a backup plan to yoink one of Kazakusan's treasures if SDD misses him. That's all great for rogue, but no help for anyone else sadly.
I agree with @Purebalance on Loatheb though. Yeah, it encourages board-based decks, but primarily aggro since it also shafts midrange and control's ability to claim board control in the midgame.
Due to the popularity of Kazakusan there are a bunch of decks that only play Kazakusan (or relatively few other minions). All you have to do is assemble the combo of [Hearthstone Card (Don't Stand in the Fire) Not Found] + T[Hearthstone Card (otemic Reflection) Not Found] and it should be simple. Kazakusan Warrior is probably the best target for this because they run like 4 other minions max and can't do much else the turn they play Kazakusan.
I did it really quickly using the spells from Kobold Taskmaster. Being able to cheaply give an enemy minion 2 or 4 health means you don't have to rely on the opponent doing anything specific. If you use spells from both Taskmasters you can even buff a lowly 2 mana minion to 10 health.
Maybe, but it was definitely turned off fully in Dalaran Heist, and they could have played it safe and followed the precedent set by Sideshow Spelleater (which is also turned off in solo stuff for obvious reasons).
I'm surprised Maestra does anything at all. I had her in a randomly generated Brawl deck a while back and she did nothing, so I assumed they just turned her effect off in Tavern Brawl like they do in solo stuff. (Yes, I did test it in Dalaran Heist. No, it wasn't as easy to get her as I wanted :P) If it sounds weird to expect them to do this, I know the have had Sideshow Spelleater battlecry turned off the entire time Brawls have existed (admittedly I haven't checked for a few years), along with Mindbreaker I think.
I accept it's probably better than getting 2 new and unsynergistic decks each expansion like they did in the years of the Raven and Dragon, but it feels like it has turned the very meaning of a class on its head. To me, a class is a basic toolkit applied to different decks/archetypes.
For example, rogue has the basic toolkit of high tempo, great single target removal and card draw/generation, which all heavily influence how their various archetypes play but aren't actually what those decks are doing per se. Decks focused on deathrattles, SI:7, secret, poisons, garrote, burgle etc. are all trying to do something fundamentally different and using rogue's core strengths as the support. In other words rogue's basic toolkit is the foundation to the archetype's house.
Meanwhile paladin game-plans in Standard are mostly trying to do the same thing. They look distinct on paper - librams, divine shields, silver hand recruits - but they all revolve around summoning minions and having them be buffed into significance. So they're all using paladin's basic toolkit in essentially the same way, which has the unfortunate side effect that they are directly competing with each other. I.e. why would you play minion buff deck X when minion buff deck Y does the same thing better?
It wouldn't be fair if I didn't acknowledge the existence of secret and big minion pally, especially as the former was a major meta player in the Barrens. Unfortunately big minion pally suffers from intra-class competition as most of the buff decks build their own big minions anyway, so what should be distinct is once again quite similar.
All this amounts to 'paladin' feeling like a deck rather than a class, which is a shame.
So paladin got a spell that buffs minions, a minion that wants to be buffed, and a minion that probably discovers a buff. What new and exciting gameplay! Paladin's class design has been frustratingly 1-dimensional since librams came around. I know the class used to get pulled in too many directions, but this is getting silly.
In the HS universe your hubby (Turalyon, the Tenured) got a job at Scholomance and can't have been with you when you were trapped on the far side of the Dark Portal. Who knows if he survived the fall of that place, or whether you survived your thousand years with the Army of the Light. I suspect Xe'ra might have had you killed in this timeline without Turalyon there to lessen the sentence for your crime of dabbling with the void.
If you did both survive it all and remained faithful, I guess it's a fairly impressive love story. I'm not sure it qualifies as a love life though :P
i am pretty sure it copy actual weapon dmg not base dmg
Right, but my point is the +10 isn't considered weapon dmg because it is applied directly to your hero and leaves the weapon unchanged. You can test it currently with something like Heroic Strike, which Bloodsail Corsair's battlecry completely ignores.
I'm not sure Haleh is really a control card, but let's assume it is for the sake of argument: While it is true they have willingly printed cards, and those cards have led to a hostile environment for control decks, that doesn't mean the devs planned to completely abandon slow decks for the rest of time. Cards for slow decks need to continue to be printed if they are ever going to return to relevance, else there's no basis for them when the meta becomes less hostile. Not printing them would be an open admission to the players that there will never be slow decks again, and all the players who most enjoy those decks will leave.
In a much broader picture, they need to keep printing cards for all types of players if they want to keep them around, and they need to cover all the game modes too. Even Tavern Brawl occasionally makes complete dud cards shine, while things just being in pools for card generation can matter even when nobody actually puts the card in their deck. In Haleh's case, they clearly want big spell mage to function, and that in turn wants Drakefire Amulet to be good, which can ultimately make Haleh relevant no matter how awkward she is to run naturally.
Well mage is the only class missing a card, so it's a safe bet that it's mage. I have no idea who the dragon is though. It looks like one of the Infinite Dragonflight, who - as corrupted Bronzes - can time travel so I guess they can be anywhere they want to be.
I guess these are the rest of the cycle of cards along with Spawn of Deathwing, all calling back to the black dragons' previous cards (albeit very loosely in Wrathion's case).
If Wrathion is around then the Year of the Gryphon timeline is even more twisted compared to WoW than I thought. I guess the events leading to Wrathion hatching are sufficiently separated from the main story that it doesn't cause any paradoxes, so sure, let's run with it. I'm curious to see whether he helps the mercs in the story, and thus takes the 4th legendary spot. I can't think of any other candidates, so if they're going to imply he's present they might as well use him.
- Spawn of Deathwing is probably only ever going to see play in a theoretical zoolock, but because its effect is random and it discards a card from your hand, Im not optimistic. Had this discarded from the deck it would have been nuts, but it doesn't, so that's too bad.
Since discarding from your deck is basically not discarding at all, then yeah, that would be nutty enough that it would raise some serious concerns that the devs have completely given up on reigning in power creep. I'm glad it has not got so far that an over-statted, tribal minion with a powerful and always beneficial effect doesn't also have a real downside. Frankly I miss the days I could describe warlock class design as balancing powerful upsides with downsides; for years the downsides have either been absent or just more upsides in disguise.
I expect so yes. It's normal for these special/story tasks to require you to complete specific bounties, and you only have access to a bounty when you have beaten all the ones before it within that zone. You won't have to do them on Heroic though, so you won't need your mercs to be super powerful to do it.
I don't think it's a bug. The task says "complete" which always requires the merc associated with the task (Chi-Ji in this case) to be part of the team. Now, we can argue that "complete" having that meaning is dumb 'til the cows come home, but that's not a QA issue.
As a rogue main I'm so glad they added Savory Deviate Delight and Parrrley to make up for the lack of a neutral like Dirty Rat. SDD didn't do much at first, but as the year has gone on so many decks have become so reliant on so few minions that it has become a perfect anti-meta card. A role helped by it being a 2-of and being playable before the opponent plays their key minion (unlike Mutanus). It has pretty much single-handedly allowed me to play slow, value decks like burgle rogue to decent success in what should be a very hostile meta.
Parrrley has been less reliable in that role, but even when it gets something mediocre, making the opponent effectively lose a draw to it is always nice. Plus it now serves as a backup plan to yoink one of Kazakusan's treasures if SDD misses him. That's all great for rogue, but no help for anyone else sadly.
I agree with @Purebalance on Loatheb though. Yeah, it encourages board-based decks, but primarily aggro since it also shafts midrange and control's ability to claim board control in the midgame.
I did it really quickly using the spells from Kobold Taskmaster. Being able to cheaply give an enemy minion 2 or 4 health means you don't have to rely on the opponent doing anything specific. If you use spells from both Taskmasters you can even buff a lowly 2 mana minion to 10 health.
Maybe, but it was definitely turned off fully in Dalaran Heist, and they could have played it safe and followed the precedent set by Sideshow Spelleater (which is also turned off in solo stuff for obvious reasons).
I'm surprised Maestra does anything at all. I had her in a randomly generated Brawl deck a while back and she did nothing, so I assumed they just turned her effect off in Tavern Brawl like they do in solo stuff. (Yes, I did test it in Dalaran Heist. No, it wasn't as easy to get her as I wanted :P) If it sounds weird to expect them to do this, I know the have had Sideshow Spelleater battlecry turned off the entire time Brawls have existed (admittedly I haven't checked for a few years), along with Mindbreaker I think.
I accept it's probably better than getting 2 new and unsynergistic decks each expansion like they did in the years of the Raven and Dragon, but it feels like it has turned the very meaning of a class on its head. To me, a class is a basic toolkit applied to different decks/archetypes.
For example, rogue has the basic toolkit of high tempo, great single target removal and card draw/generation, which all heavily influence how their various archetypes play but aren't actually what those decks are doing per se. Decks focused on deathrattles, SI:7, secret, poisons, garrote, burgle etc. are all trying to do something fundamentally different and using rogue's core strengths as the support. In other words rogue's basic toolkit is the foundation to the archetype's house.
Meanwhile paladin game-plans in Standard are mostly trying to do the same thing. They look distinct on paper - librams, divine shields, silver hand recruits - but they all revolve around summoning minions and having them be buffed into significance. So they're all using paladin's basic toolkit in essentially the same way, which has the unfortunate side effect that they are directly competing with each other. I.e. why would you play minion buff deck X when minion buff deck Y does the same thing better?
It wouldn't be fair if I didn't acknowledge the existence of secret and big minion pally, especially as the former was a major meta player in the Barrens. Unfortunately big minion pally suffers from intra-class competition as most of the buff decks build their own big minions anyway, so what should be distinct is once again quite similar.
All this amounts to 'paladin' feeling like a deck rather than a class, which is a shame.
So paladin got a spell that buffs minions, a minion that wants to be buffed, and a minion that probably discovers a buff. What new and exciting gameplay! Paladin's class design has been frustratingly 1-dimensional since librams came around. I know the class used to get pulled in too many directions, but this is getting silly.
Sometimes love and hate go hand in hand. Other times hate is just hate. I'm pretty sure Maiev's opinions of Illidan are firmly in the latter category.
In the HS universe your hubby (Turalyon, the Tenured) got a job at Scholomance and can't have been with you when you were trapped on the far side of the Dark Portal. Who knows if he survived the fall of that place, or whether you survived your thousand years with the Army of the Light. I suspect Xe'ra might have had you killed in this timeline without Turalyon there to lessen the sentence for your crime of dabbling with the void.
If you did both survive it all and remained faithful, I guess it's a fairly impressive love story. I'm not sure it qualifies as a love life though :P
Right, but my point is the +10 isn't considered weapon dmg because it is applied directly to your hero and leaves the weapon unchanged. You can test it currently with something like Heroic Strike, which Bloodsail Corsair's battlecry completely ignores.
I'm pretty sure Bloodsail Raider won't see the +10 attack buffs since these apply to the hero directly, not the weapon.
I'm not sure Haleh is really a control card, but let's assume it is for the sake of argument: While it is true they have willingly printed cards, and those cards have led to a hostile environment for control decks, that doesn't mean the devs planned to completely abandon slow decks for the rest of time. Cards for slow decks need to continue to be printed if they are ever going to return to relevance, else there's no basis for them when the meta becomes less hostile. Not printing them would be an open admission to the players that there will never be slow decks again, and all the players who most enjoy those decks will leave.
In a much broader picture, they need to keep printing cards for all types of players if they want to keep them around, and they need to cover all the game modes too. Even Tavern Brawl occasionally makes complete dud cards shine, while things just being in pools for card generation can matter even when nobody actually puts the card in their deck. In Haleh's case, they clearly want big spell mage to function, and that in turn wants Drakefire Amulet to be good, which can ultimately make Haleh relevant no matter how awkward she is to run naturally.
Well mage is the only class missing a card, so it's a safe bet that it's mage. I have no idea who the dragon is though. It looks like one of the Infinite Dragonflight, who - as corrupted Bronzes - can time travel so I guess they can be anywhere they want to be.
Oh, and thanks for showing me the image :)
I guess these are the rest of the cycle of cards along with Spawn of Deathwing, all calling back to the black dragons' previous cards (albeit very loosely in Wrathion's case).
If Wrathion is around then the Year of the Gryphon timeline is even more twisted compared to WoW than I thought. I guess the events leading to Wrathion hatching are sufficiently separated from the main story that it doesn't cause any paradoxes, so sure, let's run with it. I'm curious to see whether he helps the mercs in the story, and thus takes the 4th legendary spot. I can't think of any other candidates, so if they're going to imply he's present they might as well use him.
OK, fine Blizz, I'll craft Lorekeeper Polkelt again. How can I pass up a turn 6 Preparation into Smokescreen with a guaranteed draw of 5 massive deathrattles*?
* Rogue deathrattles not included... actually Cursed Vagrant might make it in.
Since discarding from your deck is basically not discarding at all, then yeah, that would be nutty enough that it would raise some serious concerns that the devs have completely given up on reigning in power creep. I'm glad it has not got so far that an over-statted, tribal minion with a powerful and always beneficial effect doesn't also have a real downside. Frankly I miss the days I could describe warlock class design as balancing powerful upsides with downsides; for years the downsides have either been absent or just more upsides in disguise.
Perhaps. Or it just became too cluttered putting all 9 on the screen at once.
I expect so yes. It's normal for these special/story tasks to require you to complete specific bounties, and you only have access to a bounty when you have beaten all the ones before it within that zone. You won't have to do them on Heroic though, so you won't need your mercs to be super powerful to do it.
There's no chance of that this time. The new mercs are about as disconnected from Onyxia's Lair as any characters in Warcraft.
The previous batch of mercs had Wrathion and Sinestra, who would be more plausible, but still quite unlikely.