Firstly, why is Lothraxion at the Darkmoon Faire? It is related to neither the Light nor the Legion. And what has he got to do with the Silver Hand? I'm not sure why they're intent on shoehorning actual pally characters into recent expansions when making new ones would do fine.
Edit: It's worse than that. If they're going to make a Silver Hand legendary, then why not use one of the actual members of the Silver Hand?
Edit 2: thanks to Alfi pointing it out below, that Lothraxion has some connection to the Silver Hand.
Secondly, this is going to make Odd Pally even more frustrating to play against. Hooray...
No worries. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. All that matters is that people are willing to change their mind when more evidence presents itself :)
I think the point that AngryShuckie is making is about the PROBABILITY that a card shows up in the options, not whether it’s DISPLAYED more than once.
I know. And these two things correlate with each other.
What I'm trying to say is, that the Probability of a certain Card being offered to you is influenced by the Fact that it can't be displayed more than once. Like I mentioned before, Effects that dicover from your Deck treat the Cards in it as if they were unique.
If you play Stitched Tracker with 15 Raptors and 3 other Minions in your Deck, it doesn't look at it and think:
„There's 1 Loothoarder, 1 Acolyte of Pain, 1 Thalnos and 15 Raptors in the Deck". What it actually thinks is:
„There's Loothoarder, Acolyte of Pain, Thalnos and Raptor in the Deck".
My point is that the test you mentioned could not distinguish between "1 Shadow Visions, 1 Jade Idol, and 1 other spell" and "1 Shadow Visions, 15 Jade Idols, and 1 other spell" because if it ever offered Jade Idol it would ignore it for the remaining options simply because discover doesn't show 2+ of the same card.
Me and a friend just tested it ourselves. I set up a deck of 7 unique spells plus 35 Jade Idols, and I was presented a Jade Idol all 10 times I played Shadow Visions. If all the different spells had the same odds (i.e. it didn't matter if there was 1 or 35 Idols) then the probability of that happening is
( 1 - (7/8)*(6/7)*(5/6) )^10 = 0.0055%.
That is possible, but extremely unlikely. Much more likely is that Jade Idol was weighted by 35 when the probability ends up at 97%. So I have to assume Shek'zara will also benefit from having lots of duplicates.
Warlock is a class designed to have strong AoE cards, which in this case you can either interpret as them having a lower cost for the same effect, or paying a smaller penalty on minion stats.
It's similar to how Flik Skyshiv in rogue can casually get a better Assassinate at the cost of only -2/-3 from Boulderfist Ogre, while every other class has a higher cost for single target removal.
There's a bit of misalignment between the goals of the AoE effect and the aggressive stat distribution of the minion. Zoo decks would make good use of those stats but also hurt themselves with the effect unless they limit their choices of minions to work around it. Meanwhile, slow decks won't get as much out of the 4/3 body. So it's an instance where a card is less than the sum of its parts.
I might be misunderstanding how the test was conducted, but it sounds like Shadow Visions was offering 1 Jade Idol, and 1 of each of the other spells each time. If so, that doesn't say anything about the odds of seeing a card in the options to begin with, only that it won't offer the same card twice.
What you really need to test is a deck with of lots of different spells, and a whole ton of Jade Idols. Suppose you have 10 different spells and 30 Jade Idols. Then if the number of duplicates is important, the odds of seeing a Jade Idol in the discover options would be 1-(10/40)(9/39)(8/38) = 98.8%, whereas it would be 1-(10/11)(9/10)(8/9) = 27.3% if it treats all the Idols as a single card. That is a large enough difference for it to be obvious very quickly, but I only have 1 account so cannot set this up with the aid of Lorewalker Cho.
Anyway, even if Shadow Visions ignores duplicates, it is also possible that Shek'zara would work differently because unlike the other similar cards she was quite clearly designed with the possibility of there being lots of duplicates in mind. It would be a bit odd for them to design a card for that very scenario only to code it in a way that makes it very unlikely to happen.
I think the trouble is he was balanced around Preparation + Academic Espionage, which was completely needless since late game combos like that are never relevant in rogue meta decks. If he just cost 5 or 6 instead he could be so much easier to use with all the other shuffle cards. Then I could at least pull off my favourite backup combo of casting Shadow of Death on Tak himself, to make sure I had enough of him to do something more impactful with.
Agreed. Having a board, hand and deck full of the adorable little hoppers is worth all the hours you put in to get there.
It's a shame that Pogo Rogue is the only deck I have been able to honestly say Tak Nozwhisker was good in. Most of the time I have to cut him even if he was the reason I made the deck to begin with. I'm quietly hoping there's another card this set that helps breathe life into the old kobold.
I like that Blizzard is establishing a precedent of giving rogue mantid leaders in Old Gods sets, with Xaril, Poisoned Mind the first time around. Its a small thing but is a nice touch nonetheless.
As for the card itself, I always like designs that are fine but not spectacular under normal conditions, but have potential for ludicrous shenanigans. It is rare they have much impact on the meta since 'shenanigans' isn't exactly a byword for consistency, but they always feel good for casual players to mess around with. Plus I insist on playing slow rogue decks regardless of the meta, so I am sure Shek'zara and I will get along wonderfully.
You also end up drawing 6 other cards too because of how the Casts when drawn keyword works. I'm not sure what happens if one of those draws draws a teddy bear before Shek'zara draws it, so 6 might just be an upper limit, but that's a pretty good turn no matter how many you draw.
In fairness, when a meta is slow af rogue doesn't need survival tools. Slow rogue decks are pretty much always control killers, they just need good control classes to push aggro out of the meta for them :)
.... Also, man, the Paladin legendary characters are feeling really out of place. Turalyon doesn't make a ton of sense in Scholomance, let alone as a professor, and Yrel has little to nothing to do with the Faire or the Old Gods in general. At least the Silver Hand Recruits look like theyre at the Faire to have a good time, she does not look happy at all. If anything I would have thought Outland to be the place for her character, but oh well.
Turalyon will probably confuse me until the end of days, but I can at least understand the timing of Yrel, if not the setting. I imagine they wanted another Pure Pally card before DoD rotates out, and Yrel is the leader of the over-zealous Lightbound in modern day alternate Draenor, making her the right character for the effect. Maybe one of the Mag'har orcs told her to chill out for a bit, so she's gone to Darkmoon Faire to (try to) do that?
An important correction: playing 'casts when drawn' cards does not draw a card. That got bundled up with the keyword, and since you are not casting it when drawing it, it won't draw anything. So if you ever need to desperately draw something and think it might be worth playing that Bomb, DON'T!
It's not bad. A decent 3-drop that can provide some free stats later in the game. And with cards like Secret Passage, I don't think rogues will have a particularly hard time drawing those teddy bears.
Secret Passage doesn't play well with 'Cast when drawn' cards because it doesn't actually cast them, which presumably means the game doesn't treat SP as drawing anything. So in the end they have anti-synergy, as they clog up the 4 cards you get from SP and you don't really want to play them yourself because then you won't draw a card with them.
That doesn't mean rogues will have a hard time drawing the teddies though: the class gets card draw specific to pretty much every archetype it is ever given after all. In this case, Stowaway would want to come out of hiding.
I guess it's best for yoinking the opponent's strong effects/deathrattles rather than being great synergy with your own cards, since if you wanted to silence your own minions, then you wouldn't want it to turn into an un-silenced version. It's quite a bit better than Spellbreaker, so it has to be pretty good, though priest can easily just steal the minion anyway so it might not be needed.
The Pandaria card back is the only non-competitive one that I would be a little uneasy about them bringing back. I'm sure I'd get over it very quickly, but as the first it does hold a special position even if it was no harder to obtain than any other monthly card back.
Shame you missed it though. If they wanted to make it available to players who were around at the start I'd happily support that.
That's a good shout. Thanks. A part of me wants them to have gone silly with it and the cards you play give you hits on target (rather than just shots), so you get a bigger toy the more cards you play, and then he throws the toy as the effect.
Perhaps a bit too convoluted, but if it means we have a teddy bear attack animation it is all worth it.
Power-wise it is clearly solid, but perhaps unlikely to make it into meta decks. I'm keen to see how its official name manages to tie together the effect, pirate tag and artwork, because so far they all feel disconnected.
I'm not saying there is no power creep in here, but when comparing class cards to cards in neutral or other classes it becomes very unclear how to define it. In this case, we could ask whether Paladin is designed to have stronger late-midgame cards (expecially minions) than Shaman, and I'd generally say yes to that. At which point this being better than Fire Elemental is not enough to call it power creep, since it just says Paladin is very good at this sort of thing.
As for a stat bump to high cost cards in Basic and Classic: that would honestly be a good thing and still not really be power creep because the high cost stat-sticks were always weak, even during Classic.
Perhaps I'll set out my thoughts on power creep in a big thread post sometime soon. The tl;dr would definitely be that it is much weaker than people expect, especially since the Classic set is considerably weaker now than it was initially.
Firstly, why is Lothraxion at the Darkmoon Faire? It is related to neither the Light nor the Legion. And what has he got to do with the Silver Hand? I'm not sure why they're intent on shoehorning actual pally characters into recent expansions when making new ones would do fine.
Edit: It's worse than that. If they're going to make a Silver Hand legendary, then why not use one of the actual members of the Silver Hand?
Edit 2: thanks to Alfi pointing it out below, that Lothraxion has some connection to the Silver Hand.
Secondly, this is going to make Odd Pally even more frustrating to play against. Hooray...
No worries. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. All that matters is that people are willing to change their mind when more evidence presents itself :)
My point is that the test you mentioned could not distinguish between "1 Shadow Visions, 1 Jade Idol, and 1 other spell" and "1 Shadow Visions, 15 Jade Idols, and 1 other spell" because if it ever offered Jade Idol it would ignore it for the remaining options simply because discover doesn't show 2+ of the same card.
Me and a friend just tested it ourselves. I set up a deck of 7 unique spells plus 35 Jade Idols, and I was presented a Jade Idol all 10 times I played Shadow Visions. If all the different spells had the same odds (i.e. it didn't matter if there was 1 or 35 Idols) then the probability of that happening is
( 1 - (7/8)*(6/7)*(5/6) )^10 = 0.0055%.
That is possible, but extremely unlikely. Much more likely is that Jade Idol was weighted by 35 when the probability ends up at 97%. So I have to assume Shek'zara will also benefit from having lots of duplicates.
There are 2 aspects here:
I might be misunderstanding how the test was conducted, but it sounds like Shadow Visions was offering 1 Jade Idol, and 1 of each of the other spells each time. If so, that doesn't say anything about the odds of seeing a card in the options to begin with, only that it won't offer the same card twice.
What you really need to test is a deck with of lots of different spells, and a whole ton of Jade Idols. Suppose you have 10 different spells and 30 Jade Idols. Then if the number of duplicates is important, the odds of seeing a Jade Idol in the discover options would be 1-(10/40)(9/39)(8/38) = 98.8%, whereas it would be 1-(10/11)(9/10)(8/9) = 27.3% if it treats all the Idols as a single card. That is a large enough difference for it to be obvious very quickly, but I only have 1 account so cannot set this up with the aid of Lorewalker Cho.
Anyway, even if Shadow Visions ignores duplicates, it is also possible that Shek'zara would work differently because unlike the other similar cards she was quite clearly designed with the possibility of there being lots of duplicates in mind. It would be a bit odd for them to design a card for that very scenario only to code it in a way that makes it very unlikely to happen.
I think the trouble is he was balanced around Preparation + Academic Espionage, which was completely needless since late game combos like that are never relevant in rogue meta decks. If he just cost 5 or 6 instead he could be so much easier to use with all the other shuffle cards. Then I could at least pull off my favourite backup combo of casting Shadow of Death on Tak himself, to make sure I had enough of him to do something more impactful with.
Agreed. Having a board, hand and deck full of the adorable little hoppers is worth all the hours you put in to get there.
It's a shame that Pogo Rogue is the only deck I have been able to honestly say Tak Nozwhisker was good in. Most of the time I have to cut him even if he was the reason I made the deck to begin with. I'm quietly hoping there's another card this set that helps breathe life into the old kobold.
I like that Blizzard is establishing a precedent of giving rogue mantid leaders in Old Gods sets, with Xaril, Poisoned Mind the first time around. Its a small thing but is a nice touch nonetheless.
As for the card itself, I always like designs that are fine but not spectacular under normal conditions, but have potential for ludicrous shenanigans. It is rare they have much impact on the meta since 'shenanigans' isn't exactly a byword for consistency, but they always feel good for casual players to mess around with. Plus I insist on playing slow rogue decks regardless of the meta, so I am sure Shek'zara and I will get along wonderfully.
You also end up drawing 6 other cards too because of how the Casts when drawn keyword works. I'm not sure what happens if one of those draws draws a teddy bear before Shek'zara draws it, so 6 might just be an upper limit, but that's a pretty good turn no matter how many you draw.
In fairness, when a meta is slow af rogue doesn't need survival tools. Slow rogue decks are pretty much always control killers, they just need good control classes to push aggro out of the meta for them :)
Turalyon will probably confuse me until the end of days, but I can at least understand the timing of Yrel, if not the setting. I imagine they wanted another Pure Pally card before DoD rotates out, and Yrel is the leader of the over-zealous Lightbound in modern day alternate Draenor, making her the right character for the effect. Maybe one of the Mag'har orcs told her to chill out for a bit, so she's gone to Darkmoon Faire to (try to) do that?
An important correction: playing 'casts when drawn' cards does not draw a card. That got bundled up with the keyword, and since you are not casting it when drawing it, it won't draw anything. So if you ever need to desperately draw something and think it might be worth playing that Bomb, DON'T!
Secret Passage doesn't play well with 'Cast when drawn' cards because it doesn't actually cast them, which presumably means the game doesn't treat SP as drawing anything. So in the end they have anti-synergy, as they clog up the 4 cards you get from SP and you don't really want to play them yourself because then you won't draw a card with them.
That doesn't mean rogues will have a hard time drawing the teddies though: the class gets card draw specific to pretty much every archetype it is ever given after all. In this case, Stowaway would want to come out of hiding.
I guess it's best for yoinking the opponent's strong effects/deathrattles rather than being great synergy with your own cards, since if you wanted to silence your own minions, then you wouldn't want it to turn into an un-silenced version. It's quite a bit better than Spellbreaker, so it has to be pretty good, though priest can easily just steal the minion anyway so it might not be needed.
The Pandaria card back is the only non-competitive one that I would be a little uneasy about them bringing back. I'm sure I'd get over it very quickly, but as the first it does hold a special position even if it was no harder to obtain than any other monthly card back.
Shame you missed it though. If they wanted to make it available to players who were around at the start I'd happily support that.
To quote Cortana in Halo 2: "It's not the most original plan, but at least we know it will work."
More flavourfully, it looks like rogue has a strong teddy bear theme going, so I'm mentally preparing for a possessed teddy legendary for the class.
Similar cards in the past have destroyed one the mana crystals you used to pay for them, so it should never cost you 4.
That's a good shout. Thanks. A part of me wants them to have gone silly with it and the cards you play give you hits on target (rather than just shots), so you get a bigger toy the more cards you play, and then he throws the toy as the effect.
Perhaps a bit too convoluted, but if it means we have a teddy bear attack animation it is all worth it.
Power-wise it is clearly solid, but perhaps unlikely to make it into meta decks. I'm keen to see how its official name manages to tie together the effect, pirate tag and artwork, because so far they all feel disconnected.
I'm not saying there is no power creep in here, but when comparing class cards to cards in neutral or other classes it becomes very unclear how to define it. In this case, we could ask whether Paladin is designed to have stronger late-midgame cards (expecially minions) than Shaman, and I'd generally say yes to that. At which point this being better than Fire Elemental is not enough to call it power creep, since it just says Paladin is very good at this sort of thing.
As for a stat bump to high cost cards in Basic and Classic: that would honestly be a good thing and still not really be power creep because the high cost stat-sticks were always weak, even during Classic.
Perhaps I'll set out my thoughts on power creep in a big thread post sometime soon. The tl;dr would definitely be that it is much weaker than people expect, especially since the Classic set is considerably weaker now than it was initially.