Which is why it is important Smite is still included, so you can still create some burst damage from the pirates, just without tons of mana left over to do other stuff too. That is what Nellie should be doing imo, and the reason she was bs was the scale of the mana cheating, for Smite in particular. In that regard I'm not too worried if she makes the final cut in meta decks - many good/great cards don't - though she should still be decent in questline warrior where they have mana to spare at that point in the game.
Re Scoundrel: in a slow game, does it matter much whether she costs 1 or 3? 1 is objectively better, of course, but on turns 8+ it's not a huge deal unless you're trying to squeeze her into a combo turn (i.e. with Smite).
The Anchorman is good, sure, but it is also good at 4 mana and its still going to feel like Nellie has done something worthwhile.
As for the Scoundrel, I'm not so sure you'd take her over most 3-cost pirates if it wasn't for Smite giving her charge. Hence, I didn't think warrior would actually care much about 4+ cost pirates if Smite wasn't present, since the Anchorman is the only serious choice in that scenario.
In the bigger picture, "is Nellie still a good card?" is the more important question than "is Nellie significantly weaker?" I guess she now looks something like a 5/5 + Stegodon + a slightly stronger variant of the traditional 5 mana draw/generate 3 cards. That's still a lot for 7 mana. She's no longer bs, but that doesn't mean she's bad.
I think people are overstating the Nellie nerf. At that stage of the game, it's not that big a difference whether most pirates cost 1 or 1 less. It's only 4+ costs that really care much, and most of those wouldn't be your first choice if Smite wasn't available. Honestly, this version where you still get Smite half the time feels stronger to me than the old one with Smite removed.
The story is a bit different when rogues generate Nellie since they have lots of 4+ mana pirates that are good without charge, but warrior's pirates are generally cheaper.
Generally you are right, but occasionally those effects work well, notably Lynessa Sunsorrow because it's still limited to creating 1 big minion and Tess Greymane because her effect is entirely improvised and different every game. I guess the big difference between these two and the rest is that playing them usually gives the opponent an opportunity to respond (Tess usually only 'guarantees' wins when she is multiplied like crazy).
I haven't played much Standard since the mini-set came out, but I'm not surprised that Jackpot! + Swiftscale Trickster are doing better than most people expected. What does surprise me is reading "Front Lines is probably the best Rogue card in Standard right now". Even at 4 mana I'm struggling to see how it ends up beneficial in rogue - the class with the smallest minions on average. Doesn't it just get you killed the next turn?
Nope. I got to something like 21 doing the 3 runs, then refused to look for the rest. I know some missions have multiple lore books, sometimes appearing after you could have had lethal, so you could take every fight as slow as possible and see if that helps (assuming you haven't already done that).
It doesn't help that they can't be predicted if you don't know they're coming, so I do my actions and end the turn immediately like usual, only to see the damn things appear and disappear before my eyes. It's too much mental strain to play slowly enough to make sure I don't miss the ones I do find lol.
Tongue-in-cheek doesn't really work without facial expressions or vocal intonations, unless you use something to replace them. For obvious reasons emojis are the most efficient option, but whatever you use, you've gotta give us plebs a hand if you want us to interpret things correctly :P
Wait, so you're complaining that some achievements are non-trivial? The clue is in the name: they acknowledge your ability to do something noteworthy. There would be no point in them if Blizz just handed them out for doing next to nothing.
Nobody forces you to do all the achievements, and you won't be significantly disadvantaged if you miss a couple of XP-giving ones. That wouldn't even come close to getting you an XP-level (an hence are worth <<50 gold), so don't worry about it. Just do what you enjoy doing, and stop there.
Hmm, is it a bug that it gave me a golden Tyrael skin instead of the base version? It's cool and all, but I know it'll bite me in the ass one day when he's available in packs and duplicate protection ignores skins, so I get him again instead of someone new.
Depends on the legendary itself. So far, none of those really intrigue me personally. And no, with 5 packs from the season reward, I reckon I'll get 'majority' of miniset commons, and some rares. I don't think I'll go as far as spending 20packs just for rares and commons.
With the diminishing returns on packs, I'd still rather use 2k gold on an unexciting mini-set than save it for future packs. In all likelihood that would only net me 1 underwhelming legendary plus less dust than is needed to craft one I do want. Given I could dust 3 of the mini-set legendaries to be in a similar place dust-wise, I'd be happy to have got all the extra rares (and 2 epics I guess) for 'free'.
OK, so I admit Naz'jar is pretty neat, but mage gets the legendary love again Blizz? Counting Galakrond's awakening, that's a mage legendary in 4 of the 6 mini-sets so far, alongside 3 of the 5 diamond class cards to date. Someone really needs to tell them that people like the other classes too.
Interesting. Should I read "impersonating" as something that gets muddled up in translation, and really just means you have a choice of hero to use? I assume the 3 characters would be Faelin, Ini and Finley so the story is effectively the same throughout, just with different decks. Though I'd love it if we actually got genuinely different perspectives of the same events through the eyes of VttSC's 3 faction leaders: Faelin, Hooktusk and Aszhara.
Thanks to having 20 mana, lots of card draw and Kazakusan, that druid deck made removal more futile than most decks with mid-to-large minions. You could deal with the whole deck fine until they blew you up with 4 treasures in 1 turn. So I'm not surprised priests didn't bother teching against it much.
I agree we'd need a surprisingly low population of aggro decks to run 2 copies of Drown, but control priests never really play for tempo, so it costing 4 mana can easily be compensated for by it not triggering deathrattles or having the 5+ attack limitation. So I don't think it gets squeezed out of decks just because SW:Death is cheaper.
Entomb was used alongside a 3-mana SW:Death, so there's no reason to think that comparison will hold Drown back much. More likely it just depends on whether there are enough big minions in the meta to want that effect at all.
My guess is that it is a shorthand justification for priest doing something decidedly cruel, while also handing control decks something else when they require shadow spells. If it was in any other class I doubt it would have a spell school, though shaman might give it nature since that's usually what their water spells are classified as.
Pirates are finally getting some casters. Jolly good. I doubt it's practical, but it would be neat if there was a way for Hooktusk or Patches to interact with Eudora's cannons somehow, since both characters are affiliated with cannons.
I'm also keen to see what Maestra ends up doing. There's no way they would include her if she didn't have some weird disguise mechanic again.
Both of those rely on not running many spells though, so it would be difficult to make a deck that both benefits from Front Lines and doesn't completely fold after only being able to play weapons in the first few turns.
They might not even be that crazy, but damn they're going to be annoying (I haven't forgotten people's hatred for Entomb). I guess Ambassador Faelin kinda counters the elemental at least. There's no way the priest would want to dredge any colossal for you, especially giving a mana discount.
We can put Shattershambler in the already-overcrowded waiting room for actual deathrattle minions. It lets Ozumat be an immediate board clear... I guess. Not that rogue will want to be doing that.
Jackpot! is good for the thief rogue players who are there for the long games (so won't actually make it into refined versions of the deck).
Inkveil Ambusher reminds me of Gankster, but should be a decent bit better. I doubt it makes it into any meta decks though.
Rogue's first 1 mana 1/3... and far from rogue's first bit of deathrattle synergy while the class has no damn deathrattles to work with! What do they want us to do with all this stuff?
Which is why it is important Smite is still included, so you can still create some burst damage from the pirates, just without tons of mana left over to do other stuff too. That is what Nellie should be doing imo, and the reason she was bs was the scale of the mana cheating, for Smite in particular. In that regard I'm not too worried if she makes the final cut in meta decks - many good/great cards don't - though she should still be decent in questline warrior where they have mana to spare at that point in the game.
Re Scoundrel: in a slow game, does it matter much whether she costs 1 or 3? 1 is objectively better, of course, but on turns 8+ it's not a huge deal unless you're trying to squeeze her into a combo turn (i.e. with Smite).
The Anchorman is good, sure, but it is also good at 4 mana and its still going to feel like Nellie has done something worthwhile.
As for the Scoundrel, I'm not so sure you'd take her over most 3-cost pirates if it wasn't for Smite giving her charge. Hence, I didn't think warrior would actually care much about 4+ cost pirates if Smite wasn't present, since the Anchorman is the only serious choice in that scenario.
In the bigger picture, "is Nellie still a good card?" is the more important question than "is Nellie significantly weaker?" I guess she now looks something like a 5/5 + Stegodon + a slightly stronger variant of the traditional 5 mana draw/generate 3 cards. That's still a lot for 7 mana. She's no longer bs, but that doesn't mean she's bad.
I think people are overstating the Nellie nerf. At that stage of the game, it's not that big a difference whether most pirates cost 1 or 1 less. It's only 4+ costs that really care much, and most of those wouldn't be your first choice if Smite wasn't available. Honestly, this version where you still get Smite half the time feels stronger to me than the old one with Smite removed.
The story is a bit different when rogues generate Nellie since they have lots of 4+ mana pirates that are good without charge, but warrior's pirates are generally cheaper.
Generally you are right, but occasionally those effects work well, notably Lynessa Sunsorrow because it's still limited to creating 1 big minion and Tess Greymane because her effect is entirely improvised and different every game. I guess the big difference between these two and the rest is that playing them usually gives the opponent an opportunity to respond (Tess usually only 'guarantees' wins when she is multiplied like crazy).
I haven't played much Standard since the mini-set came out, but I'm not surprised that Jackpot! + Swiftscale Trickster are doing better than most people expected. What does surprise me is reading "Front Lines is probably the best Rogue card in Standard right now". Even at 4 mana I'm struggling to see how it ends up beneficial in rogue - the class with the smallest minions on average. Doesn't it just get you killed the next turn?
Nope. I got to something like 21 doing the 3 runs, then refused to look for the rest. I know some missions have multiple lore books, sometimes appearing after you could have had lethal, so you could take every fight as slow as possible and see if that helps (assuming you haven't already done that).
It doesn't help that they can't be predicted if you don't know they're coming, so I do my actions and end the turn immediately like usual, only to see the damn things appear and disappear before my eyes. It's too much mental strain to play slowly enough to make sure I don't miss the ones I do find lol.
Tongue-in-cheek doesn't really work without facial expressions or vocal intonations, unless you use something to replace them. For obvious reasons emojis are the most efficient option, but whatever you use, you've gotta give us plebs a hand if you want us to interpret things correctly :P
Wait, so you're complaining that some achievements are non-trivial? The clue is in the name: they acknowledge your ability to do something noteworthy. There would be no point in them if Blizz just handed them out for doing next to nothing.
Nobody forces you to do all the achievements, and you won't be significantly disadvantaged if you miss a couple of XP-giving ones. That wouldn't even come close to getting you an XP-level (an hence are worth <<50 gold), so don't worry about it. Just do what you enjoy doing, and stop there.
Hmm, is it a bug that it gave me a golden Tyrael skin instead of the base version? It's cool and all, but I know it'll bite me in the ass one day when he's available in packs and duplicate protection ignores skins, so I get him again instead of someone new.
With the diminishing returns on packs, I'd still rather use 2k gold on an unexciting mini-set than save it for future packs. In all likelihood that would only net me 1 underwhelming legendary plus less dust than is needed to craft one I do want. Given I could dust 3 of the mini-set legendaries to be in a similar place dust-wise, I'd be happy to have got all the extra rares (and 2 epics I guess) for 'free'.
OK, so I admit Naz'jar is pretty neat, but mage gets the legendary love again Blizz? Counting Galakrond's awakening, that's a mage legendary in 4 of the 6 mini-sets so far, alongside 3 of the 5 diamond class cards to date. Someone really needs to tell them that people like the other classes too.
Interesting. Should I read "impersonating" as something that gets muddled up in translation, and really just means you have a choice of hero to use? I assume the 3 characters would be Faelin, Ini and Finley so the story is effectively the same throughout, just with different decks. Though I'd love it if we actually got genuinely different perspectives of the same events through the eyes of VttSC's 3 faction leaders: Faelin, Hooktusk and Aszhara.
Thanks to having 20 mana, lots of card draw and Kazakusan, that druid deck made removal more futile than most decks with mid-to-large minions. You could deal with the whole deck fine until they blew you up with 4 treasures in 1 turn. So I'm not surprised priests didn't bother teching against it much.
I agree we'd need a surprisingly low population of aggro decks to run 2 copies of Drown, but control priests never really play for tempo, so it costing 4 mana can easily be compensated for by it not triggering deathrattles or having the 5+ attack limitation. So I don't think it gets squeezed out of decks just because SW:Death is cheaper.
Entomb was used alongside a 3-mana SW:Death, so there's no reason to think that comparison will hold Drown back much. More likely it just depends on whether there are enough big minions in the meta to want that effect at all.
My guess is that it is a shorthand justification for priest doing something decidedly cruel, while also handing control decks something else when they require shadow spells. If it was in any other class I doubt it would have a spell school, though shaman might give it nature since that's usually what their water spells are classified as.
Pirates are finally getting some casters. Jolly good. I doubt it's practical, but it would be neat if there was a way for Hooktusk or Patches to interact with Eudora's cannons somehow, since both characters are affiliated with cannons.
I'm also keen to see what Maestra ends up doing. There's no way they would include her if she didn't have some weird disguise mechanic again.
Both of those rely on not running many spells though, so it would be difficult to make a deck that both benefits from Front Lines and doesn't completely fold after only being able to play weapons in the first few turns.
Drown and Disarming Elemental: this, priest, is why nobody likes you doing well :P
They might not even be that crazy, but damn they're going to be annoying (I haven't forgotten people's hatred for Entomb). I guess Ambassador Faelin kinda counters the elemental at least. There's no way the priest would want to dredge any colossal for you, especially giving a mana discount.
We can put Shattershambler in the already-overcrowded waiting room for actual deathrattle minions. It lets Ozumat be an immediate board clear... I guess. Not that rogue will want to be doing that.
Jackpot! is good for the thief rogue players who are there for the long games (so won't actually make it into refined versions of the deck).
Inkveil Ambusher reminds me of Gankster, but should be a decent bit better. I doubt it makes it into any meta decks though.
Rogue's first 1 mana 1/3... and far from rogue's first bit of deathrattle synergy while the class has no damn deathrattles to work with! What do they want us to do with all this stuff?