Everything between the quilboar and Daelin Proudmoore fights are taken from Rexxar's role in WC3. He does a bunch of tasks for helping establish Orgimmar and uniting the races of Thrall's Horde (e.g. rescuing Baine to cement relations with the Tauren).
Nobbel87's video on him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wP77NMR7U) covers it well. The video is now 7 years old, and it's a shame that it's still pretty much up to date aside from a couple a small roles in BfA. They really haven't made good use out of Rexxar, especially since they designated him 'Champion of the Horde'.
Yeah I think the modern theme of K/DA is a jarring jump from the fantasy setting of LoR, especially when they haven't established the sort of 'fiction within a fiction' thing HS has going on that allows it to explain away inconsistencies with Warcraft canon as embellishments of the story teller. I guess Old Gods was the first expansion to use that in a major way, hence why some controversy surrounded a few far-from-canon cards.
With a limited supply of LoL Champions to use, I think it was only a matter of time before LoR was willing to branch out a bit, and I guess going to the surrounding LoL media such as K/DA was an obvious choice to start doing that. I agree with everyone else that it feels too far from LoR's aesthetic, but I'm not surprised it happened.
I fully see where you are coming from as it instinctively feels out of place to me too, but at the same time I cannot come up with an argument of why K/DA characters couldn't fit under the banner 'Legends of Runeterra'. They're from an alternate universe, but they are at least still from a version of Runeterra. So saying it would be like Overwatch cards in HS is not quite right.
Thinking about it, most HS expansions have some degree of alternate universe story telling going on, so HS wouldn't bat an eyelid at a Warcraft analogue to K/DA appearing. Besides, we have our music cards already thanks to Elite Tauren Chieftain.
I'm pretty sure Fireheart would be a good card in most shaman lists in Standard, and adding a couple of 2 mana 2/3s isn't going to do much harm to a deck, especially if you're happy for it to not be competitive.
At the moment I'd guess the most obvious route would be to use Corrupt the Waters, since quest decks often have quite a lot of discover cards (including a couple of the Lackeys), so the Archaeologist can function even without Fireheart.
Aww shucks. I was so sure no one would write a comment about her looking like a black dragon while I dawdled on the wording. Have a +1 for beating be to it :)
Looks like Jaina if she was secretly a black dragon, especially with the fire dripping through her fingers like lava more than normal fire. It's a great bit of art, though I agree with Flux that the one we ended up with works better in HS.
In regards to pirate warrior, granted it was an oversight on my part, but isn't the synergy related to anchar? and pirate synergy not just weapons? Sure the deck has weapons in it, i won't deny, but i don't think it would be a major problem, When you're being hit with an [Hearthstone Card (archanite reaper) Not Found], i don't think it would matter, if it was on that turn or the turn after.
If your hand has no taunts or healing to use, or you haven't seized board control then no, having an extra turn won't matter. But if you do have any of those an extra turn can make all the difference, especially to overall win rates where it can easily make an OP deck merely strong. It is that turn which made a huge difference to Patches era Pirate Warrior, which in the end got slowed down much more by the nerf to Fiery War Axe than Patches himself.
Since then the lack of strong 2 mana weapons has driven the archetype to slower plays, such as using Ancharrr. Perhaps Blizz is keen to never given them one again, in which case maybe a start of game dual wield effect would be OK, but that is a pretty major design limitation to commit to.
Regarding pirate synergy versus weapon synergy: there's a lot of overlap there. Along with cannons, weapons are what makes the pirate tribe distinct from the others. Sure there's plenty of pirates that have nothing to do with weapons, but there is definite two-way synergy between weapons and pirates, such that decks focusing on one almost always end up as a pirate/weapon decks with something else to cement the game plan (e.g. charge minions for smorc-ing in Pirate Warrior or something like Cannon Barrage if you want some style points in rogue).
I'm just going to point out that Blizz have tried to make dual-wielding weapons work in warrior and/or rogue for years (I think the early designs for what eventually became Kingsbane was such an attempt). Clearly getting something that feels good and fair is tricky.
With that in mind, the biggest issue I have with your own approach is that you combine attacks (which makes perfect sense since in HS weapons really feed into an overarching hero attack value), but only the durability of 1 weapon goes down. In essence the second weapon is both a weapon buff and a weapon in its own right. That might seem fine as compensation for losing your hero power, but I think upon actual testing it would be brutal to play against, especially as weapon removal would only get rid of 1 of the weapons.
I guess we have to look at pirate warrior, which already ignores its hero power anyway, and is often only looking for a small amount of extra damage to close out games. Not only is that deck having one of its weaknesses largely mitigated - namely that weapons often have to wait in your hand until the current one is used up - but it would also be giving them a higher total damage output. If both weapons lost durability then you focus on the first improvement only, allowing you to deal damage faster without increasing the total.
Frankly though, pirate warrior is dangerous largely because of how fast it kills opponents already. There's really not that much healing you can do before turn 5, so them being able to speed it up even more sounds more dangerous than it is worth allowing. If it wasn't a start of game effect, and was instead a battlecry so you couldn't use it before turn 4, then maybe that problem goes away.
As I said at the start, this is known to be a tricky thing to get right, and I suspect there is actually no good way to do it within HS.
The new explanation that they always intended to make new voice lines but hadn’t gotten around to it yet is just weird. It’s an obvious lie - Are they afraid to say “We heard your feedback and are making a change?
As I said in response to Thraxus above, they weren't saying they were going to get around to it later. They said they had intended them to not include new voicelines (as one of the differences between these skins and alt heroes), and are now changing that approach because of the backlash.
They could have worded it more clearly, but the whole thing does amount to "We heard your feedback and are making a change".
In fairness they did say "we missed here on painting a clear picture of the difference between these skins and the alternate heroes we’ve done in the past, that include all sorts of unique audio and visual effects. That’s something we should have gotten across better and want to ensure that we address in the future."
I.e. they are openly saying they were not intending on giving them new voicelines until the backlash came, and not pretending there is some excuse for the delay. They have only put fault on themselves for lack of communication and/or poor judgement.
While cynicism has a useful purpose, I think its excessive to cling to it when they both admit mistakes and make the changes people were asking for.
The turtle: good riddance. It takes something truly special to make me remember Shudderwock on day 1 of Witchwood and thank it for only making me wait 5 minutes for it to inevitably kill me.
Guardian Animals: I like the nerf, though I do wonder whether Twilight Runner isn't the bigger problem. I'm sure they designed that card specifically to be great with GA, so are reluctant to raise its mana cost, but it is really one of those cards where you have to think they were pushing a little too hard even when it isn't recruited with rush.
Quite possibly. It looks like he merged with the Headless Horseman for Hallow's End this year, so maybe he's just here to give us some rhymes for a while.
You can be sure of one thing though: if he's another new paladin skin before rogue gets one there'll be riots.
I completely agree, but while I love watching Flik's shadowy stabby-stab-stabs fill the screen, I also considered turtle mage the least fun deck to play against in HS's entire history otherwise... and that's saying something. So on balance I have to say it's worth it.
Yes, that is more or less what I was imagining. It might want a few tweaks for HS though (I can't imagine a repeatable Reno or Zephrys that you always have ready when you need it would be a good thing).
Agreed, although it depends a bit on how much nonsense they introduce. I know I was only fed up of Evolve and N'Zoth being around that long, and didn't mind the rest of them, even right at the end.
Everything between the quilboar and Daelin Proudmoore fights are taken from Rexxar's role in WC3. He does a bunch of tasks for helping establish Orgimmar and uniting the races of Thrall's Horde (e.g. rescuing Baine to cement relations with the Tauren).
Nobbel87's video on him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wP77NMR7U) covers it well. The video is now 7 years old, and it's a shame that it's still pretty much up to date aside from a couple a small roles in BfA. They really haven't made good use out of Rexxar, especially since they designated him 'Champion of the Horde'.
Yeah I think the modern theme of K/DA is a jarring jump from the fantasy setting of LoR, especially when they haven't established the sort of 'fiction within a fiction' thing HS has going on that allows it to explain away inconsistencies with Warcraft canon as embellishments of the story teller. I guess Old Gods was the first expansion to use that in a major way, hence why some controversy surrounded a few far-from-canon cards.
With a limited supply of LoL Champions to use, I think it was only a matter of time before LoR was willing to branch out a bit, and I guess going to the surrounding LoL media such as K/DA was an obvious choice to start doing that. I agree with everyone else that it feels too far from LoR's aesthetic, but I'm not surprised it happened.
I fully see where you are coming from as it instinctively feels out of place to me too, but at the same time I cannot come up with an argument of why K/DA characters couldn't fit under the banner 'Legends of Runeterra'. They're from an alternate universe, but they are at least still from a version of Runeterra. So saying it would be like Overwatch cards in HS is not quite right.
Thinking about it, most HS expansions have some degree of alternate universe story telling going on, so HS wouldn't bat an eyelid at a Warcraft analogue to K/DA appearing. Besides, we have our music cards already thanks to Elite Tauren Chieftain.
I'm pretty sure Fireheart would be a good card in most shaman lists in Standard, and adding a couple of 2 mana 2/3s isn't going to do much harm to a deck, especially if you're happy for it to not be competitive.
At the moment I'd guess the most obvious route would be to use Corrupt the Waters, since quest decks often have quite a lot of discover cards (including a couple of the Lackeys), so the Archaeologist can function even without Fireheart.
Aww shucks. I was so sure no one would write a comment about her looking like a black dragon while I dawdled on the wording. Have a +1 for beating be to it :)
Looks like Jaina if she was secretly a black dragon, especially with the fire dripping through her fingers like lava more than normal fire. It's a great bit of art, though I agree with Flux that the one we ended up with works better in HS.
If you go back to the old-school TCGs you can find fewer slots. E.g. Yu-Gi-Oh only has 5, while Pokemon has 6 but only 1 of those is active at a time.
Of course both of those games have a mechanism to sacrifice/evolve monsters/Pokemon in the slots, so you don't get blocked off in quite the same way.
If your hand has no taunts or healing to use, or you haven't seized board control then no, having an extra turn won't matter. But if you do have any of those an extra turn can make all the difference, especially to overall win rates where it can easily make an OP deck merely strong. It is that turn which made a huge difference to Patches era Pirate Warrior, which in the end got slowed down much more by the nerf to Fiery War Axe than Patches himself.
Since then the lack of strong 2 mana weapons has driven the archetype to slower plays, such as using Ancharrr. Perhaps Blizz is keen to never given them one again, in which case maybe a start of game dual wield effect would be OK, but that is a pretty major design limitation to commit to.
Regarding pirate synergy versus weapon synergy: there's a lot of overlap there. Along with cannons, weapons are what makes the pirate tribe distinct from the others. Sure there's plenty of pirates that have nothing to do with weapons, but there is definite two-way synergy between weapons and pirates, such that decks focusing on one almost always end up as a pirate/weapon decks with something else to cement the game plan (e.g. charge minions for smorc-ing in Pirate Warrior or something like Cannon Barrage if you want some style points in rogue).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, I'm heading a bit off-topic. In the end I acknowledge both of the following:
So I guess, the tl;dr is: I still have pirate warrior PTSD but would still like to see how any attempt at dual-wielding weapons would work out.
It is still offering full dust for me, so it should be working as normal.
I'm just going to point out that Blizz have tried to make dual-wielding weapons work in warrior and/or rogue for years (I think the early designs for what eventually became Kingsbane was such an attempt). Clearly getting something that feels good and fair is tricky.
With that in mind, the biggest issue I have with your own approach is that you combine attacks (which makes perfect sense since in HS weapons really feed into an overarching hero attack value), but only the durability of 1 weapon goes down. In essence the second weapon is both a weapon buff and a weapon in its own right. That might seem fine as compensation for losing your hero power, but I think upon actual testing it would be brutal to play against, especially as weapon removal would only get rid of 1 of the weapons.
I guess we have to look at pirate warrior, which already ignores its hero power anyway, and is often only looking for a small amount of extra damage to close out games. Not only is that deck having one of its weaknesses largely mitigated - namely that weapons often have to wait in your hand until the current one is used up - but it would also be giving them a higher total damage output. If both weapons lost durability then you focus on the first improvement only, allowing you to deal damage faster without increasing the total.
Frankly though, pirate warrior is dangerous largely because of how fast it kills opponents already. There's really not that much healing you can do before turn 5, so them being able to speed it up even more sounds more dangerous than it is worth allowing. If it wasn't a start of game effect, and was instead a battlecry so you couldn't use it before turn 4, then maybe that problem goes away.
As I said at the start, this is known to be a tricky thing to get right, and I suspect there is actually no good way to do it within HS.
As I said in response to Thraxus above, they weren't saying they were going to get around to it later. They said they had intended them to not include new voicelines (as one of the differences between these skins and alt heroes), and are now changing that approach because of the backlash.
They could have worded it more clearly, but the whole thing does amount to "We heard your feedback and are making a change".
In fairness they did say "we missed here on painting a clear picture of the difference between these skins and the alternate heroes we’ve done in the past, that include all sorts of unique audio and visual effects. That’s something we should have gotten across better and want to ensure that we address in the future."
I.e. they are openly saying they were not intending on giving them new voicelines until the backlash came, and not pretending there is some excuse for the delay. They have only put fault on themselves for lack of communication and/or poor judgement.
While cynicism has a useful purpose, I think its excessive to cling to it when they both admit mistakes and make the changes people were asking for.
Same. We've gone to Northrend 3.5 times already, so it's a crime that the closest we've come to Pandaria is the Jade Lotus in MSoG.
The turtle: good riddance. It takes something truly special to make me remember Shudderwock on day 1 of Witchwood and thank it for only making me wait 5 minutes for it to inevitably kill me.
Guardian Animals: I like the nerf, though I do wonder whether Twilight Runner isn't the bigger problem. I'm sure they designed that card specifically to be great with GA, so are reluctant to raise its mana cost, but it is really one of those cards where you have to think they were pushing a little too hard even when it isn't recruited with rush.
Quite possibly. It looks like he merged with the Headless Horseman for Hallow's End this year, so maybe he's just here to give us some rhymes for a while.
You can be sure of one thing though: if he's another new paladin skin before rogue gets one there'll be riots.
Just click the dialogue box and it should skip it. I assume it works the same on a phone, if that applies to you, but I'm not certain.
I completely agree, but while I love watching Flik's shadowy stabby-stab-stabs fill the screen, I also considered turtle mage the least fun deck to play against in HS's entire history otherwise... and that's saying something. So on balance I have to say it's worth it.
Yes, that is more or less what I was imagining. It might want a few tweaks for HS though (I can't imagine a repeatable Reno or Zephrys that you always have ready when you need it would be a good thing).
Hmm. Perhaps a clue to the new game mode, where you can guarantee you have a certain card?
Agreed, although it depends a bit on how much nonsense they introduce. I know I was only fed up of Evolve and N'Zoth being around that long, and didn't mind the rest of them, even right at the end.