Great nuggets of information as always. I dread to think what it all means for the timeline though if all of these guys are appearing in the same place at once...
It's not really related to lore, but I like that Keymaster Alabaster's daughter ended up being a mage-rogue legendary after there was some speculation early in the Scholomance reveal season that Alabaster himself would be in that dual-class. Given cards are designed quite a long time before we see them, I doubt it happened in response to that speculation, but in any case its a nice bit of vindication for those of us who felt certain that the wizard adorned with keys would be mage-rogue.
I don't know about it being disappointing, since expectations and reality are often misaligned, but I do agree the low number of high rarity cards means anyone who hoarded packs in anticipation of the mini-set should seriously consider just using them and not buying the bundle.
I personally will craft a golden Keywarden Ivory anyway (gotta keep a full golden rogue legendary collection), and I'm not overly fussed with the other legendaries, so the ~25 DMF packs I have stockpiled will do fine for me. There will also be more DMF packs coming in the future, e.g. from Arena and end of season rewards, which will probably help fill in the few remaining gaps.
No. I am saying HoFing Coldlight Oracle because burning lots of cards is unfun, was perfectly consistent with continuing to print small-scale disruption cards.
I agree with you regarding Tickatus being printed, but that is about it.
I was very strongly against Tickatus in the thread calling for its nerf earlier, so I go into this answer trying to carefully sidestep hypocrisy. Here goes...
I think it is always a question of scale, i.e. how many cards are you disrupting? Oh My Yogg!, Counterspell, Gnomeferatu, Dirty Rat etc. all hit 1 card meaning they can do some work, but they only disrupt a very small fraction of the opponent's deck. That both means they won't hit a vital card most games, and they give the opponent opportunities to adapt to losing a single card.
The issue with [Hearthstone Card (Tackatus) Not Found] and Coldlight Oracle being bounced and multiplied is that they hit LOTS of cards, meaning they don't disrupt the opponent's plan so much as completely destroy it. There is very little you can so to compensate for losing a third of your deck, meaning the only viable solution is to kill them fast enough that it doesn't matter, which is fine from a balance point of view but it blocks off entire archetypes.
So in practice the two approaches are really very different: single card disruptions tend to be an annoyance for every deck but are rarely completely crippling, while large-scale deck destruction does nothing to aggro but completely negates control. Beyond that, everyone is entitled to their own opinions on these cards. I personally like the smaller ones but loathe the larger ones, because I like to be able to adapt during a game rather than when choosing a deck.
It's okay. There are some really terrible rolls (Guardian Animals and Commencement, mainly) but it will generate something useful most of the time. Five mana is a little bit costly so she might not see much play until rotation.
It has discover, so you'd have to be really unlucky to get something awful.
By her wording I guess she'll include any future dual-class spells when they come along, which is more relevant than additions to most discover pools because it is so small.
... when you have to stay within the flavor theme of the set.
This point is pretty significant I think. Aside from GvG every expansion has been pretty well tied to the theme, making it difficult to find a place for a lot of major lore characters who aren't often associated with the sorts of places HS goes to. Heck, we only went to Dalaran so the League of EVIL could steal it, not for Dalaran itself.
Of course paladins have decided to ignore that issue lately and throw major characters into sets they don't belong in, but if we assume cards stay thematic, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the biggest characters are also some of the last that make it into HS. Depending on what exactly they do, the changes to the Classic set might end up allowing some big characters to appear when they would otherwise have never found a set to call a home.
I took a look through the existing Shaman legendaries and... I have to predict we won't see any obvious candidates at all. Since Neptulon in GvG, they have only had 1 notable character from WoW lore: Lady Vashj. And she's not even a shaman in the usual sense.
It's a good sign that they won't run out of characters for a long time.
Right, but the very principle of cards with high reward for a deck restriction (e.g. highlander, odd/even, pure pally) only makes sense when the reward multiplied by the number of such cards in the deck is comparable to the price paid in the deck restriction. Add enough of them and you easily outweigh the price.
It is insightful to imagine the extreme limit where pally has a full 30 pure pally cards, so literally the entire deck is OP and you aren't worried about missing a few OP neutrals. There will be a break-point somewhere below that, and it may be a long way off, but it will eventually be reached if they keep supporting pure pally in Standard.
They can keep supporting it if all the pure pally cards are expensive so you cannot afford to use them all. But that requires designers making a commitment to do that, and they'll almost certainly break it some point. So I'd prefer it if they accept it is a temporary feature of the class, and choose to not walk down a road which will inevitably end with one more slap in the face to 'honest' decks in Wild (I just want to be able to use my cards, dammit!).
I'm going to be the 'class identity bore' and hope a possible priest-rogue card would not help with either tempo or AoE. Classes always become a problem when they have no serious weaknesses, so it was good that the pairings in Scholomance focused on the overlap between the classes. Priest-rogue definitely works though, either for value or hard removal.
Fun side-thought: a black and white card border would look pretty sweet, and in Scholomance they played with card art colour palettes to match the border, sometimes to beautiful effect with a left-right colour split (e.g. Commencement and Potion of Illusion). If the mini-set is indeed Darkmoon Races, then a chequered flag or finish line banner provides a convenient black and white object to include.
The idea of shaman-warrior on weapon grounds seems solid, though I'm finding it easier to picture a rogue-shaman card since they both add stuff to weapons (poisons and the elements respectively). Something like "Crackling Poison" perhaps.
Your paladin-warlock logic is actually brilliant, and Yrel might be lonely next year if she doesn't get any more pure support. That said, right now I am bored of pure pally and I'd be lying if I said I wanted it to get more support before April. Like highlander, it is also one of those archetypes that might become concerning in Wild if it gets sustained support for Standard. We're some way off that for now, but the back of my mind still tells me it might be best as a temporary archetype.
Hmm. Did Solarian die during the Puzzle Box? I don't remember whether she follows the rule that she stops if she dies (some similar cards do, others don't).
I haven't noticed that. Do you have any screenshot evidence? Solarian's battlecry in the game history bar should show all the spells cast by both her and Puzzle Box, so you should be able to count 15 spells if she's working normally and casts Puzzle Box once.
I don't think there is a visual cue that Puzzle Box has ended and it gets back to Solarian's own spells, which can make it tricky to tell if you aren't counting.
anyone who has been saving up packs and is now instead going to buy the cards this way, saving the packs feels kind of dumb in retrospect. There's no loss of value, of course, but you could have had that value earlier...
Until this is all said officially I'd still hold onto those packs. Besides, there is nothing dumb about making a rational decision based on the knowledge available at the time.
It is fine thematically, but horrid in practice since basic hero powers are meant to be things you can just use when you have spare mana. If it discarded something it would be a liability to any slow archetype, essentially committing half of the class to having no hero power whatsoever.
Your POV on card design being the real problem sounds like it underestimates the importance of the surrounding class. While there's a handful of dangerous cards that would play out pretty much the same in any class (e.g. Puzzle Box), most of them are a product of the class they are in. Put Il'gynoth in warrior and he's useless, for example.
Importantly, that goes both ways and there are a lot of cards that are in the 'wrong' class, and kept fair because of it. Had Moorabi been in mage, Anub'arak been in warrior, or Animated Armor been in rogue they would certainly be remembered as more powerful cards. Perhaps these examples would still be OK, but you can bet a lot of weak cards become busted.
I think that's part of the trouble with the whole concept: it is its own worst enemy because the very things that get people excited by it are the very things that end up ruining it. In a sense that always happens, which brings it back to your point, but at least the weaknesses of individual classes open up design space for exciting cards that dual-classes shut off.
I think this is where I ended up the last time I discussed the idea of a dual-class game mode with someone: that the effective removal of class weaknesses is a fundamental failure of the game mode. It is also something that cannot really be solved by banning cards, because a class' strengths usually manifest over many cards. You are not going to ban all priest healing in the priest/rogue pair, for example.
Can all this be sorted out? Yes, but it is a massive task that would probably benefit from a full reboot to make the whole game like that, so the devs aren't split between the two vastly different design spaces of mono- and dual-class HS.
There's an argument that card draw is more 'essential' than direct face damage, and that they can therefore be treated differently. There's also the fact that priest kept Mass Dispel despite their card draw being cut back substantially.
But the easier answer is simply that shaman didn't have a complete rework of Basic and Classic like priest did. If Far Sight is still around in Standard in April, then come back and say "I told you so" :)
I have always been a pessimist when it comes to dual-class constructed. It's fine in Arena or Solo stuff, but as soon as you give players complete freedom with deck construction you open up Pandora's box when it comes to game balance. Sure, there's a huge number of cool things you could do, but a few of those will be so unfair that they they'll quickly establish a meta that is even less forgiving than Wild.
The heart of the problem is that HS has always been designed and balanced on the basis that the classes are distinct, with the only exceptions being:
Neutral, dual- and tri-class cards, which are themselves balanced with their availability to classes in mind.
Thief rogue and priest cards, which don't give you anywhere close to complete control on what you'll get.
Breaking this fundamental part of HS's design is huge deal, and would take a lot of effort before it was the paradise of creativity it first sounds like.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to be in the world where dual-class constructed existed and worked dreamily well - but I just don't see it happening.
They wanted to remove face damage from priest, so Shadowform was always going to be HoF'd last year. Certainly it wouldn't have been buffed and left in Standard, even if that would have been fine for game balance.
I'm no less disappointed than anyone else (it was the shadow priest cards that made it my second favourite class in Classic), but I see why they did it.
If it follows what physical card games do, then resurrecting a minion would take it out of the graveyard, so minions won't multiply by being resurrected multiple times. They can still multiply by copies being summoned, e.g. with Shadow Essence, but it would avoid the common problem of: priest plays Vargoth on turn 4, you kill it, they res it multiple times...
Great nuggets of information as always. I dread to think what it all means for the timeline though if all of these guys are appearing in the same place at once...
It's not really related to lore, but I like that Keymaster Alabaster's daughter ended up being a mage-rogue legendary after there was some speculation early in the Scholomance reveal season that Alabaster himself would be in that dual-class. Given cards are designed quite a long time before we see them, I doubt it happened in response to that speculation, but in any case its a nice bit of vindication for those of us who felt certain that the wizard adorned with keys would be mage-rogue.
I don't know about it being disappointing, since expectations and reality are often misaligned, but I do agree the low number of high rarity cards means anyone who hoarded packs in anticipation of the mini-set should seriously consider just using them and not buying the bundle.
I personally will craft a golden Keywarden Ivory anyway (gotta keep a full golden rogue legendary collection), and I'm not overly fussed with the other legendaries, so the ~25 DMF packs I have stockpiled will do fine for me. There will also be more DMF packs coming in the future, e.g. from Arena and end of season rewards, which will probably help fill in the few remaining gaps.
No. I am saying HoFing Coldlight Oracle because burning lots of cards is unfun, was perfectly consistent with continuing to print small-scale disruption cards.
I agree with you regarding Tickatus being printed, but that is about it.
I was very strongly against Tickatus in the thread calling for its nerf earlier, so I go into this answer trying to carefully sidestep hypocrisy. Here goes...
I think it is always a question of scale, i.e. how many cards are you disrupting? Oh My Yogg!, Counterspell, Gnomeferatu, Dirty Rat etc. all hit 1 card meaning they can do some work, but they only disrupt a very small fraction of the opponent's deck. That both means they won't hit a vital card most games, and they give the opponent opportunities to adapt to losing a single card.
The issue with [Hearthstone Card (Tackatus) Not Found] and Coldlight Oracle being bounced and multiplied is that they hit LOTS of cards, meaning they don't disrupt the opponent's plan so much as completely destroy it. There is very little you can so to compensate for losing a third of your deck, meaning the only viable solution is to kill them fast enough that it doesn't matter, which is fine from a balance point of view but it blocks off entire archetypes.
So in practice the two approaches are really very different: single card disruptions tend to be an annoyance for every deck but are rarely completely crippling, while large-scale deck destruction does nothing to aggro but completely negates control. Beyond that, everyone is entitled to their own opinions on these cards. I personally like the smaller ones but loathe the larger ones, because I like to be able to adapt during a game rather than when choosing a deck.
I don't really know what to say, but everything about the card puts a big smile on my face.
It has discover, so you'd have to be really unlucky to get something awful.
By her wording I guess she'll include any future dual-class spells when they come along, which is more relevant than additions to most discover pools because it is so small.
This point is pretty significant I think. Aside from GvG every expansion has been pretty well tied to the theme, making it difficult to find a place for a lot of major lore characters who aren't often associated with the sorts of places HS goes to. Heck, we only went to Dalaran so the League of EVIL could steal it, not for Dalaran itself.
Of course paladins have decided to ignore that issue lately and throw major characters into sets they don't belong in, but if we assume cards stay thematic, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the biggest characters are also some of the last that make it into HS. Depending on what exactly they do, the changes to the Classic set might end up allowing some big characters to appear when they would otherwise have never found a set to call a home.
I took a look through the existing Shaman legendaries and... I have to predict we won't see any obvious candidates at all. Since Neptulon in GvG, they have only had 1 notable character from WoW lore: Lady Vashj. And she's not even a shaman in the usual sense.
It's a good sign that they won't run out of characters for a long time.
Right, but the very principle of cards with high reward for a deck restriction (e.g. highlander, odd/even, pure pally) only makes sense when the reward multiplied by the number of such cards in the deck is comparable to the price paid in the deck restriction. Add enough of them and you easily outweigh the price.
It is insightful to imagine the extreme limit where pally has a full 30 pure pally cards, so literally the entire deck is OP and you aren't worried about missing a few OP neutrals. There will be a break-point somewhere below that, and it may be a long way off, but it will eventually be reached if they keep supporting pure pally in Standard.
They can keep supporting it if all the pure pally cards are expensive so you cannot afford to use them all. But that requires designers making a commitment to do that, and they'll almost certainly break it some point. So I'd prefer it if they accept it is a temporary feature of the class, and choose to not walk down a road which will inevitably end with one more slap in the face to 'honest' decks in Wild (I just want to be able to use my cards, dammit!).
I'm going to be the 'class identity bore' and hope a possible priest-rogue card would not help with either tempo or AoE. Classes always become a problem when they have no serious weaknesses, so it was good that the pairings in Scholomance focused on the overlap between the classes. Priest-rogue definitely works though, either for value or hard removal.
Fun side-thought: a black and white card border would look pretty sweet, and in Scholomance they played with card art colour palettes to match the border, sometimes to beautiful effect with a left-right colour split (e.g. Commencement and Potion of Illusion). If the mini-set is indeed Darkmoon Races, then a chequered flag or finish line banner provides a convenient black and white object to include.
The idea of shaman-warrior on weapon grounds seems solid, though I'm finding it easier to picture a rogue-shaman card since they both add stuff to weapons (poisons and the elements respectively). Something like "Crackling Poison" perhaps.
Your paladin-warlock logic is actually brilliant, and Yrel might be lonely next year if she doesn't get any more pure support. That said, right now I am bored of pure pally and I'd be lying if I said I wanted it to get more support before April. Like highlander, it is also one of those archetypes that might become concerning in Wild if it gets sustained support for Standard. We're some way off that for now, but the back of my mind still tells me it might be best as a temporary archetype.
Hmm. Did Solarian die during the Puzzle Box? I don't remember whether she follows the rule that she stops if she dies (some similar cards do, others don't).
I haven't noticed that. Do you have any screenshot evidence? Solarian's battlecry in the game history bar should show all the spells cast by both her and Puzzle Box, so you should be able to count 15 spells if she's working normally and casts Puzzle Box once.
I don't think there is a visual cue that Puzzle Box has ended and it gets back to Solarian's own spells, which can make it tricky to tell if you aren't counting.
It is important to point out this is NOT official info. Best to wait for confirmation from Blizzard before basing any decisions on this.
Until this is all said officially I'd still hold onto those packs. Besides, there is nothing dumb about making a rational decision based on the knowledge available at the time.
It is fine thematically, but horrid in practice since basic hero powers are meant to be things you can just use when you have spare mana. If it discarded something it would be a liability to any slow archetype, essentially committing half of the class to having no hero power whatsoever.
Your POV on card design being the real problem sounds like it underestimates the importance of the surrounding class. While there's a handful of dangerous cards that would play out pretty much the same in any class (e.g. Puzzle Box), most of them are a product of the class they are in. Put Il'gynoth in warrior and he's useless, for example.
Importantly, that goes both ways and there are a lot of cards that are in the 'wrong' class, and kept fair because of it. Had Moorabi been in mage, Anub'arak been in warrior, or Animated Armor been in rogue they would certainly be remembered as more powerful cards. Perhaps these examples would still be OK, but you can bet a lot of weak cards become busted.
I think that's part of the trouble with the whole concept: it is its own worst enemy because the very things that get people excited by it are the very things that end up ruining it. In a sense that always happens, which brings it back to your point, but at least the weaknesses of individual classes open up design space for exciting cards that dual-classes shut off.
I think this is where I ended up the last time I discussed the idea of a dual-class game mode with someone: that the effective removal of class weaknesses is a fundamental failure of the game mode. It is also something that cannot really be solved by banning cards, because a class' strengths usually manifest over many cards. You are not going to ban all priest healing in the priest/rogue pair, for example.
Can all this be sorted out? Yes, but it is a massive task that would probably benefit from a full reboot to make the whole game like that, so the devs aren't split between the two vastly different design spaces of mono- and dual-class HS.
There's an argument that card draw is more 'essential' than direct face damage, and that they can therefore be treated differently. There's also the fact that priest kept Mass Dispel despite their card draw being cut back substantially.
But the easier answer is simply that shaman didn't have a complete rework of Basic and Classic like priest did. If Far Sight is still around in Standard in April, then come back and say "I told you so" :)
I have always been a pessimist when it comes to dual-class constructed. It's fine in Arena or Solo stuff, but as soon as you give players complete freedom with deck construction you open up Pandora's box when it comes to game balance. Sure, there's a huge number of cool things you could do, but a few of those will be so unfair that they they'll quickly establish a meta that is even less forgiving than Wild.
The heart of the problem is that HS has always been designed and balanced on the basis that the classes are distinct, with the only exceptions being:
Breaking this fundamental part of HS's design is huge deal, and would take a lot of effort before it was the paradise of creativity it first sounds like.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to be in the world where dual-class constructed existed and worked dreamily well - but I just don't see it happening.
They wanted to remove face damage from priest, so Shadowform was always going to be HoF'd last year. Certainly it wouldn't have been buffed and left in Standard, even if that would have been fine for game balance.
I'm no less disappointed than anyone else (it was the shadow priest cards that made it my second favourite class in Classic), but I see why they did it.
If it follows what physical card games do, then resurrecting a minion would take it out of the graveyard, so minions won't multiply by being resurrected multiple times. They can still multiply by copies being summoned, e.g. with Shadow Essence, but it would avoid the common problem of: priest plays Vargoth on turn 4, you kill it, they res it multiple times...