I hope rogue never gets a taunt minion. It's the class of slipping in and out of the shadows and using subtle, underhanded tactics: you're doing something wrong as a rogue if you're drawing your foe's attention. Even the pirate side of the class wants to get away with the loot, not stand there waiting to get attacked.
And Undertaker is a neutral card which had the absolute worst type of effect to give a 1-drop: gaining both attack and health as a reward for playing good minions on curve which are already annoying themselves.
Snowballing 1-drops are fundamentally a problem, and Undertaker was the worst designed of all them. At least Mana Wyrm and Tunnel Trogg don't gain health so don't put themselves out of reach if you draw an answer 1 turn late. I cannot see why anyone would ever want the old Undertaker back.
HS's own tool-tip for rush describes it as "Can attack minions immediately". Translating that into more technical language: "this minion can attack your opponent's minions on the turn it is summoned (or otherwise appears on the board, e.g. transformed into)".
Nowhere does it say anything about not being able to attack heroes. It is a partial bypass of summoning sickness, and does nothing when you wouldn't be in the summoning sickness turn.
This does make me wonder what happens with rush and Sunstruck Henchman. I will do some science and find out whether it affects the turn of summoning or summoning sickness itself...
Edit: Sunstruck Henchman shows it is indeed a bypass of summoning sickness (or sleep as HS seems to call it), and is only indirectly to do with the turn the minion is summoned.
What you describe does happen for the Charge card though.
They already have a schedule for major announcements which is not going to change because the community is getting (a tiny bit) restless. Better they fill the time until then with these mini-announcements and announcements of announcements than nothing.
In the spirit of the card, I will make a proper comment when I am replied with 3 'candles' (i.e. 3 different people reply with anything, preferably candle related). For now my comment is dormant...
At the same time Mana Wyrm still had to be nerfed quite recently. Nobody wants snowball-y 1-drops, so there is no point in risking it becoming a problem again.
I'm not against raising it to a 2/3, but there is already good reason to pick Keeper over other silence: sometimes you would rather deal 2 damage than silence something. Keeper was always one of the choose one cards that actually used both choices often.
In this case priest is known to be good at buffs, hunter less so. So I think it is perfectly fair, after all hunter has better cards than priest in other areas.
There is a 4th added totem that a reverted Tuskarr Totemic could summon: Nightmare Amalgam. As a result it is actually more likely to high-roll into a 3/4 than it was before. That is not necessarily enough to mean it shouldn't be considered for an un-nerf, but it does make me a little uneasy about the prospect.
The tri-class mechanic had the downside of making classes feel more similar than they otherwise would, and hence the meta feel less diverse.
Jades were a good example of this: while jade rogue was all deathrattle shenanigans and a bit more unique than the other two, to the opponent they all amount to needing to deal with ever growing dudes.
Besides, what they did over the last year with Lackeys is essentially an incarnation of the tri-class system, albeit with 5 classes.
As you said it depends on what each player values, so I'm not preaching, but I did analyse it a little differently.
Irrespective of the pity timer, 24 packs are still fairly likely to net you 1 legendary with the usual average of 1 per 20 packs. Granted 24 isn't high enough above that to fully expect a legendary, but equally you can do better (I lucked out and got 3 for instance, and I haven't even opened the Classic packs yet because I am waiting for news on the set rotation and getting better odds of something new if there are more Hall of Fame replacement cards).
More widely, you shouldn't really open packs when "gunning for anything in particular". Unless you REALLY want a common that you cannot craft for some reason, even 20 packs of the appropriate set isn't enough to expect anything specific to turn up. In which case it doesn't make a huge difference how the packs are split across sets.
As someone who kept everything, I know that would put a smile on my face, but I fully understand those who dusted their Wild collection.
I suppose it is fine as long as the existing Standard format remains the same (give or take a few changes to Classic as usual), and the 'new Standard' is a 3rd format.
I agree that overall the EVIL classes got more of the 'headlines' in the Year of the Dragon, and it perhaps wasn't helped that Zephrys (and later Alex) were enough for EVIL classes to steal a bit of the Explorer's singleton limelight.
But I think you are overstating the imbalance a bit. Here are my thoughts.
Regarding class mechanics and flavour
While hunter, druid and paladin flavour was a bit lacking in RoS (mage had Dalaran's mages to fall back on), the same could be said of the EVIL classes in SoU who were really doing their own separate things aside from the odd lackey card. The plagues are connected only in name and it's not really a mechanic, as is best evidenced by Plague of Madness which didn't even affect the whole board because unlike the other EVIL classes rogue doesn't do AoEs.
That just leaves DoD, where Galakrond is a true imbalance, but not quite as much as it first seems. Excluding Galakrond himself because he was an extra card, the EVIL classes had to use up 3 of their 10 cards towards Galakrond. In their place the Explorer classes got both their explorer dragon and sidequests. That might not compensate totally (especially on power, see below), but they are more flexible so if you don't want to play a Galakrond deck that is 3 less options than the good classes got.
As far as flavour goes, Galakrond was more interesting than getting one of the main dragon aspects (sorry hunter). On the bright side, at least The Amazing Reno nudged that back a little bit so mage didn't feel left out. So the losers here were hunter, druid and pally I guess, just as they were in RoS.
Regarding power
First let's get Galakrond out of the way: the shaman, warrior, warlock and probably rogue Galakrond packages were over-tuned compared to everything else. Nerfs have helped bring them back in line, but I am never going to defend Blizz for the state of Galakrond shaman on release. I am also happy to complain about how the Doom in the Tomb event brought shaman-stone upon us, which only compounded the annoyance of the smooth transition to Galakrond shaman when DoD arrived.
As for everything else, I don't remember it being too biased towards EVIL. Pally has been a bit narrow, focusing so much on mech decks, but druid, hunter and mage have all been significant and varied presences in the meta across the year.
Edit: pally also had that dumb high-roll murloc deck. So even pally has had it's place in the meta.
Regarding fun to play
Now this truly is subjective, and I am certainly biased towards rogue, but not because the Year of the Dragon cards were more interesting; I just enjoy the rogue class the most generally. Rogue aside, I have found the EVIL classes less enjoyable than the good ones this year. Probably not enough to make a huge point about it, but certainly enough to disagree with you.
I'm sure everyone disagrees with everyone on the fine details here so I'll leave it at that.
Looking forwards
I would be surprised if there was a plan to leave the "EVIL classes in the dust", especially as the EVIL vs Explorers story has now ended and I doubt they would group classes in exactly that way again for a long time.
What we might see is the usual cycle of class power landing in favour of one of the good classes (I'd suspect paladin, which is very believable if the guesses for a blood elf expansion are correct), though that would likely be disconnected from the good/EVIL bias.
Blade Flurry is also great in Bazaar Burglary decks. Those might not be top tier but it is further evidence that Blade Flurry is actually in a nice spot for an evergreen card: far from auto-include but finds homes every now and then.
I was going to say something similar for Ancient of Lore, but currently that is used more for its healing in Lucentbark decks, so yeah reverting its card draw is probably fine.
That certainly seems to be the mindset they are taking with LoR too. It is no doubt a noble approach to take, and it is easier to follow through if you start with it.
In HS, the class system is both a blessing and a curse for this. By keeping class cards entirely separate (thief cards in rogue and priest notwithstanding) they get to really push what classes are good at with clearly over-tuned cards like Cloud Prince or Vilespine Slayer, and they can do so without wreaking havoc because the decks are guaranteed to have weaknesses in other areas. At least, that's how it works in Standard...
Now that Wild has been around for long enough the OP synergy cards have stacked up enough to make decks that are really one dimensional but are so good in that 'dimension' that anything not exploiting the deck's weakness just sees a bonkers OP deck. Wild secret mage is a great example of this, but is by no means the only example.
This throws up 2 questions:
is this OK?
how does one go about fixing it if it is not OK?
The answer to question 1 depends on who you ask and is why I think having a rotating wild format would be good. Question 2 is harder to answer imo. No one disagrees with mage being good at secrets, so why should mage secret synergy not be strong? If you tone them down, you have to keep doing this else they'll stack back up again, leading to this weird process of nerfing powerful cards when they move to Wild, with an equally weird outcome where no class it that great at anything.
Perhaps that would be fine, or (as is likely) I have missed lots of better options. But I personally think it would be simpler and better to leave Wild as it is, but introduce a new format to better represent what half the people want Wild to be.
Now the idea has been put in my head, I think a new rotating format has to be the pragmatic solution to the wild 'problem'. Without it or something similar we're left with a fundamental question on what Wild should be, akin to the age old question of what Casual should be, which has no answer that everyone agrees on and is therefore certain to disappoint people no matter how they treat Wild.
Add in a new sub-Wild format and you get to say: Wild is ALL cards and the most extreme power levels, and the new format is a rotating sub-set of Wild cards that lets old cards and decks have a time to shine. I essence it is like Standard, but with sets chosen more like Arena: i.e. more frequent changes and a huge number of different set permutations. As always certain decks will rise to the top of the meta, but make it change often enough (e.g. every 2 months as is done in the Arena,) and no deck reigns for too long and cards don't have to wait too long to enter the cycle.
Ideally you would allow people to choose which sets to restrict from, but the player base isn't infinitely large to that's not practical.
People agree with you, and Dean acknowledged it when he said Wild isn't the ideal format for using a lot of old cards and then asked for thoughts on rotating formats.
Deep down I think that has to be right: we don't actually want to change what Wild is, we want another format that allows many of the mid-power Wild cards to see play. Trying to do both in the same place (i.e. 'balance' Wild) is just going to disappoint both camps.
I hope rogue never gets a taunt minion. It's the class of slipping in and out of the shadows and using subtle, underhanded tactics: you're doing something wrong as a rogue if you're drawing your foe's attention. Even the pirate side of the class wants to get away with the loot, not stand there waiting to get attacked.
And Undertaker is a neutral card which had the absolute worst type of effect to give a 1-drop: gaining both attack and health as a reward for playing good minions on curve which are already annoying themselves.
Snowballing 1-drops are fundamentally a problem, and Undertaker was the worst designed of all them. At least Mana Wyrm and Tunnel Trogg don't gain health so don't put themselves out of reach if you draw an answer 1 turn late. I cannot see why anyone would ever want the old Undertaker back.
HS's own tool-tip for rush describes it as "Can attack minions immediately". Translating that into more technical language: "this minion can attack your opponent's minions on the turn it is summoned (or otherwise appears on the board, e.g. transformed into)".
Nowhere does it say anything about not being able to attack heroes. It is a partial bypass of summoning sickness, and does nothing when you wouldn't be in the summoning sickness turn.
This does make me wonder what happens with rush and Sunstruck Henchman. I will do some science and find out whether it affects the turn of summoning or summoning sickness itself...
Edit: Sunstruck Henchman shows it is indeed a bypass of summoning sickness (or sleep as HS seems to call it), and is only indirectly to do with the turn the minion is summoned.
What you describe does happen for the Charge card though.
They already have a schedule for major announcements which is not going to change because the community is getting (a tiny bit) restless. Better they fill the time until then with these mini-announcements and announcements of announcements than nothing.
In the spirit of the card, I will make a proper comment when I am replied with 3 'candles' (i.e. 3 different people reply with anything, preferably candle related). For now my comment is dormant...
This could take a very long time.
At the same time Mana Wyrm still had to be nerfed quite recently. Nobody wants snowball-y 1-drops, so there is no point in risking it becoming a problem again.
I'm not against raising it to a 2/3, but there is already good reason to pick Keeper over other silence: sometimes you would rather deal 2 damage than silence something. Keeper was always one of the choose one cards that actually used both choices often.
Fireball is better than Mortal Strike. Flik Skyshiv is better than, well, pretty much all similar cards.
In this case priest is known to be good at buffs, hunter less so. So I think it is perfectly fair, after all hunter has better cards than priest in other areas.
There is a 4th added totem that a reverted Tuskarr Totemic could summon: Nightmare Amalgam. As a result it is actually more likely to high-roll into a 3/4 than it was before. That is not necessarily enough to mean it shouldn't be considered for an un-nerf, but it does make me a little uneasy about the prospect.
Looking back at the full list of nerfs there aren't as many as I expected there to be in the current Wild-only pool. The full list of those is:
Those I would be OK with being reverted I have marked with a *, and the only 2 I would actually want reverted with **.
The tri-class mechanic had the downside of making classes feel more similar than they otherwise would, and hence the meta feel less diverse.
Jades were a good example of this: while jade rogue was all deathrattle shenanigans and a bit more unique than the other two, to the opponent they all amount to needing to deal with ever growing dudes.
Besides, what they did over the last year with Lackeys is essentially an incarnation of the tri-class system, albeit with 5 classes.
They said no balance changes before the next set. HoF is still likely.
As you said it depends on what each player values, so I'm not preaching, but I did analyse it a little differently.
Irrespective of the pity timer, 24 packs are still fairly likely to net you 1 legendary with the usual average of 1 per 20 packs. Granted 24 isn't high enough above that to fully expect a legendary, but equally you can do better (I lucked out and got 3 for instance, and I haven't even opened the Classic packs yet because I am waiting for news on the set rotation and getting better odds of something new if there are more Hall of Fame replacement cards).
More widely, you shouldn't really open packs when "gunning for anything in particular". Unless you REALLY want a common that you cannot craft for some reason, even 20 packs of the appropriate set isn't enough to expect anything specific to turn up. In which case it doesn't make a huge difference how the packs are split across sets.
As someone who kept everything, I know that would put a smile on my face, but I fully understand those who dusted their Wild collection.
I suppose it is fine as long as the existing Standard format remains the same (give or take a few changes to Classic as usual), and the 'new Standard' is a 3rd format.
I agree that overall the EVIL classes got more of the 'headlines' in the Year of the Dragon, and it perhaps wasn't helped that Zephrys (and later Alex) were enough for EVIL classes to steal a bit of the Explorer's singleton limelight.
But I think you are overstating the imbalance a bit. Here are my thoughts.
Regarding class mechanics and flavour
While hunter, druid and paladin flavour was a bit lacking in RoS (mage had Dalaran's mages to fall back on), the same could be said of the EVIL classes in SoU who were really doing their own separate things aside from the odd lackey card. The plagues are connected only in name and it's not really a mechanic, as is best evidenced by Plague of Madness which didn't even affect the whole board because unlike the other EVIL classes rogue doesn't do AoEs.
That just leaves DoD, where Galakrond is a true imbalance, but not quite as much as it first seems. Excluding Galakrond himself because he was an extra card, the EVIL classes had to use up 3 of their 10 cards towards Galakrond. In their place the Explorer classes got both their explorer dragon and sidequests. That might not compensate totally (especially on power, see below), but they are more flexible so if you don't want to play a Galakrond deck that is 3 less options than the good classes got.
As far as flavour goes, Galakrond was more interesting than getting one of the main dragon aspects (sorry hunter). On the bright side, at least The Amazing Reno nudged that back a little bit so mage didn't feel left out. So the losers here were hunter, druid and pally I guess, just as they were in RoS.
Regarding power
First let's get Galakrond out of the way: the shaman, warrior, warlock and probably rogue Galakrond packages were over-tuned compared to everything else. Nerfs have helped bring them back in line, but I am never going to defend Blizz for the state of Galakrond shaman on release. I am also happy to complain about how the Doom in the Tomb event brought shaman-stone upon us, which only compounded the annoyance of the smooth transition to Galakrond shaman when DoD arrived.
As for everything else, I don't remember it being too biased towards EVIL. Pally has been a bit narrow, focusing so much on mech decks, but druid, hunter and mage have all been significant and varied presences in the meta across the year.
Edit: pally also had that dumb high-roll murloc deck. So even pally has had it's place in the meta.
Regarding fun to play
Now this truly is subjective, and I am certainly biased towards rogue, but not because the Year of the Dragon cards were more interesting; I just enjoy the rogue class the most generally. Rogue aside, I have found the EVIL classes less enjoyable than the good ones this year. Probably not enough to make a huge point about it, but certainly enough to disagree with you.
I'm sure everyone disagrees with everyone on the fine details here so I'll leave it at that.
Looking forwards
I would be surprised if there was a plan to leave the "EVIL classes in the dust", especially as the EVIL vs Explorers story has now ended and I doubt they would group classes in exactly that way again for a long time.
What we might see is the usual cycle of class power landing in favour of one of the good classes (I'd suspect paladin, which is very believable if the guesses for a blood elf expansion are correct), though that would likely be disconnected from the good/EVIL bias.
How did Gral, the Shark get on that list?
Blade Flurry is also great in Bazaar Burglary decks. Those might not be top tier but it is further evidence that Blade Flurry is actually in a nice spot for an evergreen card: far from auto-include but finds homes every now and then.
I was going to say something similar for Ancient of Lore, but currently that is used more for its healing in Lucentbark decks, so yeah reverting its card draw is probably fine.
That certainly seems to be the mindset they are taking with LoR too. It is no doubt a noble approach to take, and it is easier to follow through if you start with it.
In HS, the class system is both a blessing and a curse for this. By keeping class cards entirely separate (thief cards in rogue and priest notwithstanding) they get to really push what classes are good at with clearly over-tuned cards like Cloud Prince or Vilespine Slayer, and they can do so without wreaking havoc because the decks are guaranteed to have weaknesses in other areas. At least, that's how it works in Standard...
Now that Wild has been around for long enough the OP synergy cards have stacked up enough to make decks that are really one dimensional but are so good in that 'dimension' that anything not exploiting the deck's weakness just sees a bonkers OP deck. Wild secret mage is a great example of this, but is by no means the only example.
This throws up 2 questions:
The answer to question 1 depends on who you ask and is why I think having a rotating wild format would be good. Question 2 is harder to answer imo. No one disagrees with mage being good at secrets, so why should mage secret synergy not be strong? If you tone them down, you have to keep doing this else they'll stack back up again, leading to this weird process of nerfing powerful cards when they move to Wild, with an equally weird outcome where no class it that great at anything.
Perhaps that would be fine, or (as is likely) I have missed lots of better options. But I personally think it would be simpler and better to leave Wild as it is, but introduce a new format to better represent what half the people want Wild to be.
Now the idea has been put in my head, I think a new rotating format has to be the pragmatic solution to the wild 'problem'. Without it or something similar we're left with a fundamental question on what Wild should be, akin to the age old question of what Casual should be, which has no answer that everyone agrees on and is therefore certain to disappoint people no matter how they treat Wild.
Add in a new sub-Wild format and you get to say: Wild is ALL cards and the most extreme power levels, and the new format is a rotating sub-set of Wild cards that lets old cards and decks have a time to shine. I essence it is like Standard, but with sets chosen more like Arena: i.e. more frequent changes and a huge number of different set permutations. As always certain decks will rise to the top of the meta, but make it change often enough (e.g. every 2 months as is done in the Arena,) and no deck reigns for too long and cards don't have to wait too long to enter the cycle.
Ideally you would allow people to choose which sets to restrict from, but the player base isn't infinitely large to that's not practical.
People agree with you, and Dean acknowledged it when he said Wild isn't the ideal format for using a lot of old cards and then asked for thoughts on rotating formats.
Deep down I think that has to be right: we don't actually want to change what Wild is, we want another format that allows many of the mid-power Wild cards to see play. Trying to do both in the same place (i.e. 'balance' Wild) is just going to disappoint both camps.