No, I don't think anyone is telling you that. Quite aside from the fact we haven't fully recovered from mage's recent bs - so there isn't much call for mage's "existing stuff" to be supported - there's still close to 2 years for the freeze mage cards to find their place.
In fairness, they didn't promise anything about the timing of the Mercs. mode. True, it had been listed as a 'new game mode' in both the Year of the Phoenix and Gryphon schedules, but all direct mention of the mode has said it will be ready when its ready. It's a bit frustrating for us for a while, but it's the best approach imo.
I have to agree that overload cards are constrained to a fine line between weak and broken, entirely because cheating things out early always makes them much more powerful even if you have to pay more for them overall (turn 1 Yeti comes to mind). On the flip side, overload does have a built-in limit on how early you can play a card. From a gameplay standpoint I feel that makes it a better alternative to druid's mana ramp, especially the quick stuff like old Innervate*, which too often creates one-sided games where the opponent just never had any chance, and the devs can't really do anything to change that because it isn't localised to individual cards.
* For the sake of separating the two mechanics, let's pretend Lightning Bloom doesn't exist.
I suppose it is also worth mentioning that overload isn't the only thing that requires special care when being balanced. The Caravans are a current example of where there is no 'fair' design space: 1 stat point makes the difference between too weak and too strong. So yes, overload is more tricky to balance than some other keywords, but it is not a uniquely difficult challenge.
For overloaded minions especially (and pseudo-minions like Feral Spirit), it is probably best for the overload to give you an effect rather than just stats. E.g. more like Jinyu Waterspeaker than Flamewreathed Faceless. That way it feels better for both players: the shaman knows they will get value out of the overload, and the opponent won't auto-lose games just because their class has no good way of dealing with a 4 mana 7/7. It is still going to be a narrow balancing act, but if the effect is situational (as most are) then it gives the devs a bit more freedom.
Regarding your examples of bad overload card, I can defend most of them quite easily.
Voltaic Burst actually makes a lot of sense with overload when you consider that at the point rush was still a new mechanic, 1-mana summon 2 1/1s (without rush!) was a well established good effect, and the set it was in had synergy for both overload and elementals. The fact Wound Prey is usually stronger doesn't mean it was wrong for Voltaic Burst to have overload.
Mark of the Lotus is one of the most powerful cards in the game's history, and was only allowed to stay that way because it was an era when Blizz rarely nerfed cards and because it was in druid, which is the class that is strongest at wide-board buffs. Storm's Wrath is really just an appropriate iteration on that for a class that is not meant to be quite so good at buffing wide boards.
Finders Keepers was clearly intended for decks that wanted to overload crystals (this was the year of Tunnel Trogg's dominance, so that's not a ridiculous sentence). It's job was to help guarantee that, and not so much to be a normal discover effect.
As for Neptulon, he should definitely have some overload, but maybe 3 is a bit too much.
There is some merit to asking whether we would benefit from removing overload entirely (at least from Standard). I would lean towards no because I think the mechanic is useful in keeping shaman feeling unique and I don't believe it is actually shaman's problem, despite what some people argue. Maybe I'll revisit that stance when shaman has card draw and win conditions yet still goes nowhere. For now though, I think the mechanic is good for the class to have, and if anything I'd like more synergy for it so our human brains can (re-)learn to not just treat it like a nuisance.
Prompted by a recent discussion, I want to discuss the overload mechanic in all its glory. Given we're 7 years into the game, and shaman is the current target of 'the class is weak' memes, it's high time I actually understood the mechanic beyond silent intuition.
Most discussion I've seen on the topic has tried to argue that the mechanic is weak, but I'm going to quickly shut down that idea. No mechanic is weak or strong, they are simply over- or under-valued on a card by card basis. Take inspire for example: if you were to only look at TGT, then you'd probably call it weak. However, if you look at Phase Stalker and Dragonbane (which have the inspire mechanic if not the keyword), then you'd call it strong.
You can look at all mechanics in the same way, and usually find both strong and weak examples, determined entirely by how much mana the devs attributed to the effect on each card. Such a viewpoint is especially convenient for overload, since it is entirely a matter of mana cost.
So having cast aside the notions of strong and weak mechanics, my interest is on assessing its pros and cons to determine whether overload is interesting enough to deserve a permanent spot in shaman's toolkit. I won't try to quantify how much overload is right for a given effect, simply because that would take too long. Maybe that can come later though.
The pros
Show Spoiler
I find the most useful way to view overload is as spending next turn's mana now. There are several benefits to doing this:
The earlier that you play minions, the more impact they are likely to have as the opponent will have a harder time dealing with them.
Note if you have 2 or more overload, you are essentially playing them 2+ turns early (at least in principle).
The earlier removal comes online, the easier it is to respond to pressure.
You might not need all the mana next turn anyway.
The extreme case is when you win the game this turn and never have to pay the overload.
Squeezing more cards into a turn might amplify their effectiveness.
Game-winning combos come to mind again.
These benefits are all quite general, and make overload fill an impressively diverse range of roles. It can be used to the benefit of aggro, control and combo.
A weird sort of pro is that overload has a subtle synergy with itself, since you don't need the full number of mana crystals to have a good turn if you use an overload card. So chaining overload cards can stop you from really suffering from the cost of overload as you effectively kick the problem to later and later turns. Now I think about it, this is probably why overload has mostly worked in full overload synergy decks with lots of them in the deck.
The cons
Show Spoiler
I don't really count 'having less mana next turn' as a con in its own right, because the basis of the mechanic is that you shouldn't need all the mana if you can leverage the mana savings of the previous turn. As a result, I prefer to address what happens when you aren't able to capitalise on the pros above.
1. It is an absolute truth that the opponent will have a harder time dealing with minions played ahead of the curve: the opponent will have drawn fewer cards and therefore have fewer options; the opponent will have had less mana with which to build a board to combat yours; and the opponent has less mana to spend on removal. However, the last of those reasons is not as big a deal as it first seems because removal is usually cheaper than the minions it is designed to remove, meaning it is often available on the same turn overloaded minions come down.
The consequences of this are serious in an aggro/tempo shaman vs control match-up where you need minions to stick, and where a low tempo turn due to overloaded mana crystals can give the opponent enough of a respite to stabilise with. However, it is worth noting that this downside is much less severe when the opponent is using minions - rather than spells - to contest the board because value trading with the overloaded minion can be so efficient.
2. While overload lets you respond more quickly with removal, it reduces your ability to respond on consecutive turns. You are often torn between removal now OR removal next turn where another class might be able to do both. This is especially common because it is rare to need overloaded removal on curve, so it often gets in the way of a swing turn that is needed to in order to actually win.
It is not all doom and gloom though. As per pro 4, overloaded removal being cheap can also facilitate swing turns that most other classes couldn't put together. It ends up a matter of timing: overload can be either friend or foe depending on whether you can afford to wait a turn.
3 & 4. Heavily overloaded finisher and swing turns are great when they work, but you don't always have that luxury. Using these cards early and incurring the overload cost can cripple you much more than doing the equivalent thing in another class.
Personally I like this aspect. It lets the devs use overload as a way to make a finisher card without constraining it to only hit heroes, thereby allowing players to demonstrate skill by knowing when they have to use it inefficiently for something else.
So is it a good keyword?
Having looked at the keyword in some detail, I actually like it even more than I used to. For such a simple mechanic there is a lot of nuance that makes decision making in shaman unique, and does so for all of aggro, control and combo in different ways. That is a distinct advantage over some other mechanics that balance pros and cons, like outcast and discard, which have a much stronger preference for certain archetypes.
Overload is certainly not without its weaknesses, and where they exist they are more severe than other class keywords like combo or choose one, which probably accounts for why it is the target of more claims that it is weak. Part of this is that the effectiveness of overload depends on what the opponent does. This is especially obvious for overstatted minions: when they are dealt with efficiently it can easily feel like you didn't get any benefit for the overload you still have to pay.
However, HS players are salty creatures that more readily remember the bad than the good, and I suspect that is wrongly tilting the balance of opinion against overload. This is perhaps not helped by the way it is presented on the card is as a negative. What you see is how much less mana you have next turn, not how much you save this turn.
Phew, I'll stop there. I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, and would be keen to see how the community feels about overload. It is all too easy to hear the vocal minority and think it represents everyone...
Lava Burst's overload downside is that it is rubbish as removal. That's honestly a pretty neat feature of the overload mechanic since it gives the devs some control over which archetypes a card is made for, without taking too much agency away from players. E.g. Lava Burst could have just been the same as Mind Blast, but overload allows it to be more versatile while still strongly incentivising throwing it at the face.
I know you were exaggerating with the 3 mana deal 3 damage remark (we've always had Lightning Bolt to show that's a 1 mana thing with overload 1), but I nevertheless think people often overstate power creep. Serpentshrine Portal can be compared to SI:7 Agent quite easily, for example, and to be honest they're still pretty close. For reference, the mean stats for s 3-drop in Standard are 2.67 attack and 3.59 health. I know we have to be careful when comparing across classes, but in this case I think this comparison is valid.
Someone should make a thread on this because I do think this is a topic that deserves greater discussion, but I think its simple enough to just ask the question: Can we design an overload card thats not just blatantly broken?
Edit: Should have added that there are two other overload cards that are consistently in shaman when it was good: Lightning bolt and lava burst. No need to explain why.
It seems like the sort of thing that I'd make a thread for, so challenge accepted! I personally like the overload mechanic, so let's see if that survives the process of putting together an essay on it. I should probably attempt to quantify how much overload cards should have while I'm at it.
Regarding good overload cards, I'm always surprised at how often people forget Serpentshrine Portal. That card seems to have got it exactly right and is rarely used as a finisher (meaning you do have to deal with the overload), so there must be some lessons to learn in there. I guess Lava Burst teaches us another lesson: if you want do design a card specifically as a finisher, pile a lot of overload onto it.
They DM Races had dual class cards, so the 30 class cards meant 4 cards for each class, despite 30/10 = 3 per class. So it's 3 per class unless dual-class stuff messes with the maths.
Oh, and in case the devs are reading, heres a tip assuming you've been avoiding reddit the whole of this and last week. OVERLOAD = BAD. Seriously, why is druid able to cheat mana without any downside while shaman can't get an allegedly overstated card that cripples their next turn?
I always get a little annoyed when people say 'mechanic X is bad', especially when 'bad' means weak. No mechanic is fundamentally weak, they are just over-costed. Take inspire as an example: hunter's DoD cards showed the keyword itself is perfectly fine as long as the effect matches the effort put in. Likewise, lots of independently good overload cards have existed in the past, and some are still in Standard and don't need something like Tunnel Trogg to be strong.
As for the comparison with druid's mana cheat, that's a bit disingenuous. Druid's mana cheat always comes with card disadvantage and/or a (very) low tempo turn, with the latter being a big deal in a class with frankly abysmal removal. Overload forces a low tempo turn on you afterwards, yes, but that follows a high tempo turn so you aren't really falling further and further behind like druid does. And with the overload being embedded into the individual cards, there is no associated card disadvantage. So you have to be really careful when comparing them.
Overload's weakness is that you still have to pay it even if your high tempo turn is dealt with efficiently, but that doesn't mean it is fundamentally bad. That just needs to be factored into the overload cost, especially for minions.
Ahh, Banana Rogue. It's been a while since I put one of those together (I definitely don't have series of theme decks telling the story of Sergeant Sally bringing down Gallywix's banana company stored on this site...).
I agree with @Pezman that there is a definite need for Shenanigans in here. There's no such thing as too much potassium.
Thinking about it some more, I guess there's a important distinction between 'consistent' and 'contradictory' traits.
A consistent trait would be something like poisons for Valeera: she doesn't use them in the lore (or on her hero portraits), but she could easily add them without it being at odds with her character/artwork. Anything in this category is OK and they wouldn't need to worry about representing them in the artwork.
Rexxar's weapon choice on the other hand is contradictory because he cannot use them both simultaneously, making it somewhat jarring. We could argue it falls apart anyway because non-hammer weapons exist in paladin, for example, but I think it would be especially bad with Rexxar's axes because there is no expectation for hunter to get axes in HS, whereas paladin does often get hammers. Plus all melee weapons are thematically closer to each other than a bow is to an axe (ignoring Rexxar's insistence on punching the opponent with his bow...).
I'm not sure if Garrosh ever made a big point about not wearing armour, so I don't know whether to classify that as consistent or contradictory. Meanwhile, I know Jaina was awful with fire spells in her youth, but I assume she's mastered them by this point, so I'd count that as consistent.
In fairness, I think it is more important for the hero art to fit the theme of the class as it is in HS than to fit the lore of WoW, just due to proximity. It would feel weird to everyone if the basic hero had axes but only used bows in-game, but only some subset of players will know Rexxar doesn't use a bow in Warcraft lore, and only a subset of them will be bothered by it.
Given there were no major lore characters that simultaneously used beasts and bows, it looks like a fair compromise to me. The same goes for the void aspect of Anduin's art, even if he hadn't since had hints towards it in Warcraft lore.
That said, Garrosh doesn't really sell the idea of warriors using armour, so I'm not going to defend their choices too much!
I guess they can aim to cover the Explorers and EVIL members incrementally since many of them are main characters in their own sets. If they are happy to make diamond hero cards, then all of Boom, Togwaggle, Hagatha, Elise and Reno can easily be covered without overlapping with other League members. For the 4 remaining members, there are 3 expansions to choose from (LoE, RoS and SoU), so it only requires 1 double somewhere.
If there is a double in LoE, the achievement points would make sense since collecting the whole set is pretty trivial. That or they add an achievement for the respective card, e.g. play all 3 of Rafaam's treasures to unlock his diamond version.
A cool feature of golden cards is that they generate more golden cards. Obviously this won't translate over to diamond cards since diamond copies won't exist, except maybe in limited cases like Thaddius or Boom Bots. So I suspect they'll skip some of the obvious choices to avoid the issue (ain't nobody got time to get assets ready for Kel'Thuzad to diamond-ify all minions, or Nefarian to diamond-ify all spells), although it would mean skipping a lot of the games most iconic cards.
Although it's an awkward solution, I think it is best overall if they bite the bullet right away and make it so diamond cards generate golden copies (they already count as golden themselves for the purposes of getting golden coins in an all-golden deck). Assuming they do this, I would personally like them to choose based on which cards best represent the themes/story of the expansions, rather than basing it on power. So I'd say:
Naxx: Kel'Thuzad
GvG: Doctor Boom
BRM: Nefarian
TGT: Justicar Trueheart (maybe time to give us more hero power 'skins' for 1000+ wins? I definitely don't have a vested interest with ~3500 rogue wins...)
LoE: Reno(? all 5 legendaries are pretty equal on importance to the set's story)
In the case of Nature Warrior spells vs Shadow Paladin spells, there are two factors at play here: The flavor of the class as a whole, and the total number of spell cards in the class that have spell types.
2 out 5 Warrior spells with types are Fire spells, or in other words, they make up 40% of Warrior spells with types. Compare that to Paladin Shadow spells, which makes up 2 out of 45 Paladin spells with types, which is only 4.4% of Paladin spells with types.
And then there's class flavor. As you pointed out, fire is an occasional thematic element for Warrior even if it isn't the main focus of the card as it would be for a Mage or Shaman card for instance. While nature is not necessarily a thematic element for Warrior, there is not anti-thematic association either as there is for Shadow spells in Paladin which are supposed to be flavored around being warriors of the light and standing for everything that's right. Shadow spells seem very anti-thematic to the class in a huge way, compared to Fire and Nature to Warrior which are not.
I've seen/read enough man vs nature stories that I'm predisposed to thinking the guy forging metal armour is thematically opposed to nature, but never mind. I'll leave any arguments to whoever wants to make a nature warrior spell (if any such person exists).
Warrior is a very weird class for the prompt, and this is something that we actually spoke about while discussing the specifics of it. Warrior (and to a lesser extent, Hunter) is a class that unlike all the others, does not have a main spell school of choice. They have the least amount of tagged spells in the game at only 5. Fire and Nature were the two biggest ones in the class, both having 2, so we decided to go with that
Follow up question: why did warrior and hunter need 2 schools to begin with when paladin only has holy? Pally has 2 shadow spells but that wasn't forced onto the class.
I can easily see why warrior would have fire for thematic reasons (smelting metal for weapons and armour), even if it rarely makes its way onto cards. But as with paladin's shadow spells, the reasons for the nature tag in warrior are completely external to the class (either a poison from rogue or just because Un'Goro was all about nature) in a way that would be quite fitting for this competition.
That would be a good solution, though I would refine it further by making it say "It costs 0 this turn." I think it truly would kill the card if it permanently cost 0, especially as restricting it to this turn still keeps the instances where OMY! backfires.
While I like cards to be flavourful, I generally think it is fine to lose some flavour upon a nerf if the flavour is a serious barrier to balance. The ability to change mana costs normally removes that barrier, but that's not an option for secrets (unless they do the unthinkable and move cards around classes).
There aren't many cases where you would want your 9 mana spell (which is presumably very powerful in its own right else you wouldn't run it) to turn into a Libram of Hope which heals a random target.
I'm not advocating the change suggested above, but I'm not sure it giving the opponent value would be a bad thing. If Oh My Yogg! was a simple Counterspell with a 2 mana discount, then you'd expect the opponent to gain some advantage to balance things out. That's what every under-costed/over-statted minion does, and likewise with the Boomsday 'project' spells.
It feels fair to say OMY! would cost 2 if it were a fair card, and probably ought to have been a rogue secret instead (taking the place of Shadow Clone). If we were to take that view, then giving the opponent a 1 mana boost to compensate for your 1 mana discount would make sense.
However, I think it would never happen because that presents issues with transforming the most expensive spells (10 mana). It would have to add the 'up to 10 mana' line that a few cards have, but there isn't enough space left to write that.
Agreed on all fronts. I could write an essay about why Dalaran Heist is the best version of the Dungeon Run formula. There's a degree of subjectivity on that when comparing to Monster Hunt, Rumble Run and Tombs of Terror - which all have their own unique mechanics - but it is objectively better than the OG Dungeon Run. That is not to say the OG version isn't great in its own right - it is! - but all of Dalaran Heist's additions were improvements (except the fact it cost money/gold to obtain most of it).
All of which makes me say no to simple additions of cards and bosses to Dungeon Run. I'd be very happy to see a version that gets continually updated though, it just needs to include the great features that were added since Dungeon Run. It seems a little silly to have to reinvent the wheel, so I'd want them to just extend Dalaran Heist and make that free/cheaper so everyone can join in.
you could see any expression however you want to see it, depends on your view of things, really
i barely use emotes ever, but i can't help it when my opponent makes some absolutely ridiculous misplay or terrible play in general i just say "well played"
but that's pretty much about it
While different people have different emotional responses to things, that doesn't mean the expression itself doesn't carry most of the blame when taken negatively.
In your case of using "well played" when the opponent makes a mistake, you are being sarcastic, which is always going to be viewed as antagonistic because sarcasm is always a form of mockery. You could instead use the "oops" emote, which may still annoy the opponent, but it might also be taken as a friendly way of pointing out the mistake.
Both emotes are pointing out an error, but they can be perceived very differently. So if the aim is to annoy the opponent, then go ahead and take the sarcastic option, but if you are just eager to point out the error, then try out the "oops" emote instead.
No, I don't think anyone is telling you that. Quite aside from the fact we haven't fully recovered from mage's recent bs - so there isn't much call for mage's "existing stuff" to be supported - there's still close to 2 years for the freeze mage cards to find their place.
In fairness, they didn't promise anything about the timing of the Mercs. mode. True, it had been listed as a 'new game mode' in both the Year of the Phoenix and Gryphon schedules, but all direct mention of the mode has said it will be ready when its ready. It's a bit frustrating for us for a while, but it's the best approach imo.
I have to agree that overload cards are constrained to a fine line between weak and broken, entirely because cheating things out early always makes them much more powerful even if you have to pay more for them overall (turn 1 Yeti comes to mind). On the flip side, overload does have a built-in limit on how early you can play a card. From a gameplay standpoint I feel that makes it a better alternative to druid's mana ramp, especially the quick stuff like old Innervate*, which too often creates one-sided games where the opponent just never had any chance, and the devs can't really do anything to change that because it isn't localised to individual cards.
* For the sake of separating the two mechanics, let's pretend Lightning Bloom doesn't exist.
I suppose it is also worth mentioning that overload isn't the only thing that requires special care when being balanced. The Caravans are a current example of where there is no 'fair' design space: 1 stat point makes the difference between too weak and too strong. So yes, overload is more tricky to balance than some other keywords, but it is not a uniquely difficult challenge.
For overloaded minions especially (and pseudo-minions like Feral Spirit), it is probably best for the overload to give you an effect rather than just stats. E.g. more like Jinyu Waterspeaker than Flamewreathed Faceless. That way it feels better for both players: the shaman knows they will get value out of the overload, and the opponent won't auto-lose games just because their class has no good way of dealing with a 4 mana 7/7. It is still going to be a narrow balancing act, but if the effect is situational (as most are) then it gives the devs a bit more freedom.
Regarding your examples of bad overload card, I can defend most of them quite easily.
There is some merit to asking whether we would benefit from removing overload entirely (at least from Standard). I would lean towards no because I think the mechanic is useful in keeping shaman feeling unique and I don't believe it is actually shaman's problem, despite what some people argue. Maybe I'll revisit that stance when shaman has card draw and win conditions yet still goes nowhere. For now though, I think the mechanic is good for the class to have, and if anything I'd like more synergy for it so our human brains can (re-)learn to not just treat it like a nuisance.
Prompted by a recent discussion, I want to discuss the overload mechanic in all its glory. Given we're 7 years into the game, and shaman is the current target of 'the class is weak' memes, it's high time I actually understood the mechanic beyond silent intuition.
Most discussion I've seen on the topic has tried to argue that the mechanic is weak, but I'm going to quickly shut down that idea. No mechanic is weak or strong, they are simply over- or under-valued on a card by card basis. Take inspire for example: if you were to only look at TGT, then you'd probably call it weak. However, if you look at Phase Stalker and Dragonbane (which have the inspire mechanic if not the keyword), then you'd call it strong.
You can look at all mechanics in the same way, and usually find both strong and weak examples, determined entirely by how much mana the devs attributed to the effect on each card. Such a viewpoint is especially convenient for overload, since it is entirely a matter of mana cost.
So having cast aside the notions of strong and weak mechanics, my interest is on assessing its pros and cons to determine whether overload is interesting enough to deserve a permanent spot in shaman's toolkit. I won't try to quantify how much overload is right for a given effect, simply because that would take too long. Maybe that can come later though.
The pros
I find the most useful way to view overload is as spending next turn's mana now. There are several benefits to doing this:
These benefits are all quite general, and make overload fill an impressively diverse range of roles. It can be used to the benefit of aggro, control and combo.
A weird sort of pro is that overload has a subtle synergy with itself, since you don't need the full number of mana crystals to have a good turn if you use an overload card. So chaining overload cards can stop you from really suffering from the cost of overload as you effectively kick the problem to later and later turns. Now I think about it, this is probably why overload has mostly worked in full overload synergy decks with lots of them in the deck.
The cons
I don't really count 'having less mana next turn' as a con in its own right, because the basis of the mechanic is that you shouldn't need all the mana if you can leverage the mana savings of the previous turn. As a result, I prefer to address what happens when you aren't able to capitalise on the pros above.
1. It is an absolute truth that the opponent will have a harder time dealing with minions played ahead of the curve: the opponent will have drawn fewer cards and therefore have fewer options; the opponent will have had less mana with which to build a board to combat yours; and the opponent has less mana to spend on removal. However, the last of those reasons is not as big a deal as it first seems because removal is usually cheaper than the minions it is designed to remove, meaning it is often available on the same turn overloaded minions come down.
The consequences of this are serious in an aggro/tempo shaman vs control match-up where you need minions to stick, and where a low tempo turn due to overloaded mana crystals can give the opponent enough of a respite to stabilise with. However, it is worth noting that this downside is much less severe when the opponent is using minions - rather than spells - to contest the board because value trading with the overloaded minion can be so efficient.
2. While overload lets you respond more quickly with removal, it reduces your ability to respond on consecutive turns. You are often torn between removal now OR removal next turn where another class might be able to do both. This is especially common because it is rare to need overloaded removal on curve, so it often gets in the way of a swing turn that is needed to in order to actually win.
It is not all doom and gloom though. As per pro 4, overloaded removal being cheap can also facilitate swing turns that most other classes couldn't put together. It ends up a matter of timing: overload can be either friend or foe depending on whether you can afford to wait a turn.
3 & 4. Heavily overloaded finisher and swing turns are great when they work, but you don't always have that luxury. Using these cards early and incurring the overload cost can cripple you much more than doing the equivalent thing in another class.
Personally I like this aspect. It lets the devs use overload as a way to make a finisher card without constraining it to only hit heroes, thereby allowing players to demonstrate skill by knowing when they have to use it inefficiently for something else.
So is it a good keyword?
Having looked at the keyword in some detail, I actually like it even more than I used to. For such a simple mechanic there is a lot of nuance that makes decision making in shaman unique, and does so for all of aggro, control and combo in different ways. That is a distinct advantage over some other mechanics that balance pros and cons, like outcast and discard, which have a much stronger preference for certain archetypes.
Overload is certainly not without its weaknesses, and where they exist they are more severe than other class keywords like combo or choose one, which probably accounts for why it is the target of more claims that it is weak. Part of this is that the effectiveness of overload depends on what the opponent does. This is especially obvious for overstatted minions: when they are dealt with efficiently it can easily feel like you didn't get any benefit for the overload you still have to pay.
However, HS players are salty creatures that more readily remember the bad than the good, and I suspect that is wrongly tilting the balance of opinion against overload. This is perhaps not helped by the way it is presented on the card is as a negative. What you see is how much less mana you have next turn, not how much you save this turn.
Phew, I'll stop there. I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, and would be keen to see how the community feels about overload. It is all too easy to hear the vocal minority and think it represents everyone...
Lava Burst's overload downside is that it is rubbish as removal. That's honestly a pretty neat feature of the overload mechanic since it gives the devs some control over which archetypes a card is made for, without taking too much agency away from players. E.g. Lava Burst could have just been the same as Mind Blast, but overload allows it to be more versatile while still strongly incentivising throwing it at the face.
I know you were exaggerating with the 3 mana deal 3 damage remark (we've always had Lightning Bolt to show that's a 1 mana thing with overload 1), but I nevertheless think people often overstate power creep. Serpentshrine Portal can be compared to SI:7 Agent quite easily, for example, and to be honest they're still pretty close. For reference, the mean stats for s 3-drop in Standard are 2.67 attack and 3.59 health. I know we have to be careful when comparing across classes, but in this case I think this comparison is valid.
It seems like the sort of thing that I'd make a thread for, so challenge accepted! I personally like the overload mechanic, so let's see if that survives the process of putting together an essay on it. I should probably attempt to quantify how much overload cards should have while I'm at it.
Regarding good overload cards, I'm always surprised at how often people forget Serpentshrine Portal. That card seems to have got it exactly right and is rarely used as a finisher (meaning you do have to deal with the overload), so there must be some lessons to learn in there. I guess Lava Burst teaches us another lesson: if you want do design a card specifically as a finisher, pile a lot of overload onto it.
They DM Races had dual class cards, so the 30 class cards meant 4 cards for each class, despite 30/10 = 3 per class. So it's 3 per class unless dual-class stuff messes with the maths.
I always get a little annoyed when people say 'mechanic X is bad', especially when 'bad' means weak. No mechanic is fundamentally weak, they are just over-costed. Take inspire as an example: hunter's DoD cards showed the keyword itself is perfectly fine as long as the effect matches the effort put in. Likewise, lots of independently good overload cards have existed in the past, and some are still in Standard and don't need something like Tunnel Trogg to be strong.
As for the comparison with druid's mana cheat, that's a bit disingenuous. Druid's mana cheat always comes with card disadvantage and/or a (very) low tempo turn, with the latter being a big deal in a class with frankly abysmal removal. Overload forces a low tempo turn on you afterwards, yes, but that follows a high tempo turn so you aren't really falling further and further behind like druid does. And with the overload being embedded into the individual cards, there is no associated card disadvantage. So you have to be really careful when comparing them.
Overload's weakness is that you still have to pay it even if your high tempo turn is dealt with efficiently, but that doesn't mean it is fundamentally bad. That just needs to be factored into the overload cost, especially for minions.
At this point both Kadgar and Magni are neutral. They've got bigger things to worry about than the petty squabbles between the Horde and Alliance.
Ahh, Banana Rogue. It's been a while since I put one of those together (I definitely don't have series of theme decks telling the story of Sergeant Sally bringing down Gallywix's banana company stored on this site...).
I agree with @Pezman that there is a definite need for Shenanigans in here. There's no such thing as too much potassium.
Thinking about it some more, I guess there's a important distinction between 'consistent' and 'contradictory' traits.
A consistent trait would be something like poisons for Valeera: she doesn't use them in the lore (or on her hero portraits), but she could easily add them without it being at odds with her character/artwork. Anything in this category is OK and they wouldn't need to worry about representing them in the artwork.
Rexxar's weapon choice on the other hand is contradictory because he cannot use them both simultaneously, making it somewhat jarring. We could argue it falls apart anyway because non-hammer weapons exist in paladin, for example, but I think it would be especially bad with Rexxar's axes because there is no expectation for hunter to get axes in HS, whereas paladin does often get hammers. Plus all melee weapons are thematically closer to each other than a bow is to an axe (ignoring Rexxar's insistence on punching the opponent with his bow...).
I'm not sure if Garrosh ever made a big point about not wearing armour, so I don't know whether to classify that as consistent or contradictory. Meanwhile, I know Jaina was awful with fire spells in her youth, but I assume she's mastered them by this point, so I'd count that as consistent.
In fairness, I think it is more important for the hero art to fit the theme of the class as it is in HS than to fit the lore of WoW, just due to proximity. It would feel weird to everyone if the basic hero had axes but only used bows in-game, but only some subset of players will know Rexxar doesn't use a bow in Warcraft lore, and only a subset of them will be bothered by it.
Given there were no major lore characters that simultaneously used beasts and bows, it looks like a fair compromise to me. The same goes for the void aspect of Anduin's art, even if he hadn't since had hints towards it in Warcraft lore.
That said, Garrosh doesn't really sell the idea of warriors using armour, so I'm not going to defend their choices too much!
I guess they can aim to cover the Explorers and EVIL members incrementally since many of them are main characters in their own sets. If they are happy to make diamond hero cards, then all of Boom, Togwaggle, Hagatha, Elise and Reno can easily be covered without overlapping with other League members. For the 4 remaining members, there are 3 expansions to choose from (LoE, RoS and SoU), so it only requires 1 double somewhere.
If there is a double in LoE, the achievement points would make sense since collecting the whole set is pretty trivial. That or they add an achievement for the respective card, e.g. play all 3 of Rafaam's treasures to unlock his diamond version.
A cool feature of golden cards is that they generate more golden cards. Obviously this won't translate over to diamond cards since diamond copies won't exist, except maybe in limited cases like Thaddius or Boom Bots. So I suspect they'll skip some of the obvious choices to avoid the issue (ain't nobody got time to get assets ready for Kel'Thuzad to diamond-ify all minions, or Nefarian to diamond-ify all spells), although it would mean skipping a lot of the games most iconic cards.
Although it's an awkward solution, I think it is best overall if they bite the bullet right away and make it so diamond cards generate golden copies (they already count as golden themselves for the purposes of getting golden coins in an all-golden deck). Assuming they do this, I would personally like them to choose based on which cards best represent the themes/story of the expansions, rather than basing it on power. So I'd say:
I've seen/read enough man vs nature stories that I'm predisposed to thinking the guy forging metal armour is thematically opposed to nature, but never mind. I'll leave any arguments to whoever wants to make a nature warrior spell (if any such person exists).
Follow up question: why did warrior and hunter need 2 schools to begin with when paladin only has holy? Pally has 2 shadow spells but that wasn't forced onto the class.
I can easily see why warrior would have fire for thematic reasons (smelting metal for weapons and armour), even if it rarely makes its way onto cards. But as with paladin's shadow spells, the reasons for the nature tag in warrior are completely external to the class (either a poison from rogue or just because Un'Goro was all about nature) in a way that would be quite fitting for this competition.
That would be a good solution, though I would refine it further by making it say "It costs 0 this turn." I think it truly would kill the card if it permanently cost 0, especially as restricting it to this turn still keeps the instances where OMY! backfires.
While I like cards to be flavourful, I generally think it is fine to lose some flavour upon a nerf if the flavour is a serious barrier to balance. The ability to change mana costs normally removes that barrier, but that's not an option for secrets (unless they do the unthinkable and move cards around classes).
There aren't many cases where you would want your 9 mana spell (which is presumably very powerful in its own right else you wouldn't run it) to turn into a Libram of Hope which heals a random target.
I'm not advocating the change suggested above, but I'm not sure it giving the opponent value would be a bad thing. If Oh My Yogg! was a simple Counterspell with a 2 mana discount, then you'd expect the opponent to gain some advantage to balance things out. That's what every under-costed/over-statted minion does, and likewise with the Boomsday 'project' spells.
It feels fair to say OMY! would cost 2 if it were a fair card, and probably ought to have been a rogue secret instead (taking the place of Shadow Clone). If we were to take that view, then giving the opponent a 1 mana boost to compensate for your 1 mana discount would make sense.
However, I think it would never happen because that presents issues with transforming the most expensive spells (10 mana). It would have to add the 'up to 10 mana' line that a few cards have, but there isn't enough space left to write that.
Agreed on all fronts. I could write an essay about why Dalaran Heist is the best version of the Dungeon Run formula. There's a degree of subjectivity on that when comparing to Monster Hunt, Rumble Run and Tombs of Terror - which all have their own unique mechanics - but it is objectively better than the OG Dungeon Run. That is not to say the OG version isn't great in its own right - it is! - but all of Dalaran Heist's additions were improvements (except the fact it cost money/gold to obtain most of it).
All of which makes me say no to simple additions of cards and bosses to Dungeon Run. I'd be very happy to see a version that gets continually updated though, it just needs to include the great features that were added since Dungeon Run. It seems a little silly to have to reinvent the wheel, so I'd want them to just extend Dalaran Heist and make that free/cheaper so everyone can join in.
While different people have different emotional responses to things, that doesn't mean the expression itself doesn't carry most of the blame when taken negatively.
In your case of using "well played" when the opponent makes a mistake, you are being sarcastic, which is always going to be viewed as antagonistic because sarcasm is always a form of mockery. You could instead use the "oops" emote, which may still annoy the opponent, but it might also be taken as a friendly way of pointing out the mistake.
Both emotes are pointing out an error, but they can be perceived very differently. So if the aim is to annoy the opponent, then go ahead and take the sarcastic option, but if you are just eager to point out the error, then try out the "oops" emote instead.