While I agree, I feel the old design was rather clunky. Freljord had neither significant self-damaging effects nor any real reason to cross-region with other regions with those effects; combined with the 'cannot block' that ensured Anivia would basically never level up since your opponent simply wouldn't block her unless they could deal with the egg (and she was WAY too stat-inefficient to be worth saying 'yay, free face damage').
The new design is a little less flavourful, but I suppose you could argue it's simply moving the Enlightened keyword away from being potentially seen as Ionian-specific. That's probably a good thing going forward.
It would be interesting, and certainly a unique mechanic, but making a mechanic that basically deletes another archetype from the game probably wouldn't be all that healthy in the long run. And if that mechanic WERE printed, I'd want it to follow the crab tradition. Graveyard Crawler - 5 mana 1/1, battlecry: eat all 7+ cost minions that have died for your opponent this game and gain +1/+1 for each one.
Re: 'does aggro mean a lack of skill', it absolutely does not. It's a statement you'll hear a lot, though, and usually from 'Control' players who don't actually know what Control means, and who lose every game to aggro while refusing to include anti-aggro techs. Just one of the usual excuses people make for things they don't know how to handle.
Aggro vs aggro can be quite skill-testing, but people who never play aggro don't experience those match-ups. Aggro vs control often boils down to who draws better, since even if the control deck has anti-aggro tools, it needs to find them very quickly. There is a limit to how much anti-aggro tech you can run before you become powerless against greedier control decks.
I'm not sure how far I'd agree, really. Sure, some games are determined that way, but equally, that's true of any matchup. It's not like you need to find all your anti-aggro tools in every match, after all, just enough of them to turn the corner (most of the time). Also, the very fact that you've got limited anti-aggro tools is a major skill factor - knowing when to sit on your defensive options and when to rip them is important. There's also a fair bit of basic prioritisation in there - you'd be amazed how many people I see sit on cards like Baleful Banker in aggro matchups instead of ripping them on turn 2, despite playing at a level where they should have learned better long ago
In my view, Karma pre-Enlighten is actually really quite weak. Her base stats are really low for a random generation effect. The trouble is, her Enlightened effect is oppressively strong in a deck built to use it, so she's very much the late-game time burner. A hard card to balance, really, but I can't help but think she'll be far too slow in a more competitive meta (which we haven't seen up til now) - by contrast, look at the level of value you're getting from Avarosan Hearthguard at the same mana point.
The effect of which being to give Zoolock a busted reset tool for aggro mirrors :P
@Neoguli - Loatheb certainly can delay the deck by a turn (nobody runs Rebuke in Paladin in Wild, primarily because nobody plays Paladin in wild :P). The trouble with considering that a counter is that it's very rare you'll be short a kill on a Mech'thun Lock by one turn - Highlander decks might occasionally be in that situation, but that's about it. And they run Loatheb anyway as a matter of course because it's such a good card.
Priest, meanwhile, is not a reliable counter because you're never going to get through your deck as quickly as they do, even building pure cycle. Particularly because you can't afford to run Hemet like they can. So you've got a significant in-built lossrate simply from the proportion of games in which you just don't draw your key tools before game over (I'd estimate this, pulling the numbers out of my backside estimating based on experience, at around ~20-30% of games minimum). That's before you even play the game, which could definitely go either way based on play patterns. I'm pretty confident that if you wanted to go pure Lock-hate, you could do so more effectively with a Rat-copying strategy rather than Tog Priest.
Amused at the Secret Mage suggestion - that's a skill matchup. At lower ranks Secret Mage is heavily favoured, but the higher you go the better the Mech'thun deck does. When I was spamming Mech'thun games for my Wild Legend, I was always very happy to see Jaina pop up because it was highly likely to be a win.
Re: thread - as a Mech'thun player, I would honestly say that the answer is a well timed Dirty Rat. Don't just throw it out whenever, that's not going to get you anywhere. Drop it after Thaurissan's hit the board (which is your best read that Mech'thun's in hand) or wait til they're almost decked out. Even if you're actively playing around Rat it's difficult to keep that many minions in hand, five at most - and frankly most people aren't smart enough to play around Rat intentionally anyway until you start hitting ~3-L. Even if you assume five minions in hand, dropping two Rats gives you a 40% chance to pull the Mech'thun, at which point the game is essentially won (unless you're playing them late and can't clear it, of course). Dropping that to four minions in hand leaves you with a ~49% chance. Of course, if you're playing Highlander that'll mean saving Zola (or similar) for your Rat turn.
Saboteur is another option, but in a lot of ways strictly inferior to Rat - it's a lot easier to keep random spells in hand than random minions (because spells are often reactionary cards you won't bother casting unless you have a reason to). Include if you're actively trying to hate on Mech'thun, and include alongside rat. Deathlord is actually a very careful decision to make, because while it has a chance to win you the game on the spot, if it doesn't it simply accelerates their win condition - the main reason to include it, in my opinion, is because it's great against other decks.
The key, in my opinion, is knowing what your win condition is very early into the matchup. If you're playing something relatively slow and without a lot of sticking power and/or on-demand damage - the more defensive variants of Renolock are a good example - then don't even bother trying to threaten aggressively and instead do some hardcore digging for your Rat/Zola/etc.
One further interesting note for Mech'thun counterplay - Mech'thun checks its win condition after deathrattles on the board conclude. That means that if there's a Voidlord on your opponent's board, they have to kill it before they can win. Not a problem if they have a Sac Pact or something left, of course, but if they don't then you can feasibly just sit there tanking 3 per turn while they fatigue out. Voidcaller doesn't work, unfortunately, because you discard your hand before the deathrattle triggers.
Initially I read 'Doomsayer? In face hunter?' and dismissed it with a derisive snort (I'm good at those). After stopping to think about it though... it's not actually a bad idea. Turn 3 has traditionally been Hunter's power turn, after all, and the main goal of Doomsayer is to snatch initiative heading into a power turn.
I'm not saying it's optimal, of course. It absolutely isn't - very few decks will be stronger on the board on turn 1 vs face hunter now (I think Warrior is about the only one that can do that), so all you're doing is removing your own advantage while also missing 2 damage from your hero power (or further developing). But it's not awful despite being utterly crazy, which I like.
Re: 'does aggro mean a lack of skill', it absolutely does not. It's a statement you'll hear a lot, though, and usually from 'Control' players who don't actually know what Control means, and who lose every game to aggro while refusing to include anti-aggro techs. Just one of the usual excuses people make for things they don't know how to handle.
I can confirm that I have some form of godlike powers. I've been spending every night for two weeks staring at the LoR homepage and yelling 'LET ME PLAY IT' every hour on the hour, and hey presto, I'll soon be able to play it.
Possibly I'm misunderstanding you, but to be clear for others reading - mobile is not available on release and is expected to be launched later this year.
Quote From Article
Legends of Runeterra will launch on mobile later this year with full cross-platform play (trying to complete during first half of 2020).
Honestly the main reason for issues like this is simply keeping card text clean. Blizzard have always held a design philosophy with Hearthstone that certain things simply won't be stated in any depth in the client simply because it would lead to UI cluttering.
What's actually happening when you play something like Leeroy, rather than you summoning the whelps, is you force your opponent to summon whelps. But that would lead to multiple lines of additional game text to explain what's happening, and the cases in which that actually matters are absolutely tiny. So, they leave it unexplained because to even encounter it you're going to need a specific, niche set of legendaries - and when it happens once, you then know the interaction going forward anyway.
I support that philosophy from a game design perspective, personally. Though the card game purist in me hates it, because I'm used to physical games where the card text has to be read in fine print to understand perfectly.
I find myself in a tricky situation with this card.
I, from a personal view, hate it. It's deeply disappointing to me to see what is usually an expansion-defining card be so hard random. There's never going to be a time when I can put this in a deck happily, and it's one legendary slot that Mage won't get any value from.
On the other hand, for the long-term health of Hearthstone as a game - and a community - this is a great thing. People who play for laughs and shenanigans get an actual trump card, which is something they rarely get - and it being a hero is so much more meaningful than it simply being another legendary. It's a release which offers a nod towards the players who find alternate paths to enjoyment than simply chasing legend every season, and while I'm not one of those people, it's good that Blizzard are supporting them.
So, yeah, I'm going to be sitting ambivalent for quite a while.
I agree that it's probably better for newer players, but let's be honest, HS is not in any way friendly to new players so I feel like that's a drop in the bucket :P
I actually don't play the deck at all, so there's no vested interest there. My comments are wholly from my position as an analyst and theorycrafter. I rarely play very aggressive decks simply because I find piloting them less interesting than other decks, and most of my play this expansion has been on midrange decks with a little bit of highlander thrown in.
That said, I would note that pretty much every single deck that people complain about being 'brainless' in fact requires just as much ability to pilot as any other deck. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a major skill in HS, and funnily enough it's one that most control players never master.
The classic example is that of the old Pirate Warrior. Ask the average 'man on the street' and he'll whine that it's a braindead aggro deck. Watch a couple of professional players running Pirate Warrior mirrors, on the other hand, and you'll see more depth of technical ability than you'd see in most matchups in Standard today.
To answer your final paragraph - what you're doing there is apparently misreading my post to mean 'always play for the board'. I very specifically laid out the gamestate in my post - you're only looking to hold the board for as long as you reasonably can. You're making a value judgment on what's going to net the most damage over the course of the game - maintaining board vs abandoning it to push. If you enter a game and start playing all-face from turn 1, you will not maximise your winrate with this deck. Hell, your own post states precisely that - Dwarven Sharpshooter exists to prevent value trades to maximise face damage. That is what board control means. You are controlling the game-state to allow your game plan to proceed - your game plan in this case being maximising damage to ensure the game doesn't go too late.
Your statement 'Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent' is wholly inaccurate. Board matters when you can judge the board, the gamestate, your opponent's projected deck and projected hand, and you can make the call that you'll get more damage within your expected game duration from playing for board than you will mindlessly pushing. That is a judgment you have to make every turn - arguably multiple times within each turn - when playing a damage-oriented deck. If you're not performing that analysis, you're playing suboptimally.
There's a difference between even a full face hunter deck, and a mindless SMOrc deck. A lot of the people on ladder play the deck like the latter, certainly, but the only reason to build towards that path is if you simply don't have the cards to build a stronger list.
- Spellzerker is for Rapid Fire first and foremost, as AliRadicali suggests above. It also has a little more relevance in the later stages of the game because these hunter decks expect to lose the board at some point - and any juggles hitting minions are worthless to you at that point (and arguably even earlier given your game-plan).
- Animal Companion wins out over Wolfrider because while the deck expects to lose the board at some point, there's no reason to just throw away all board pressure on turn 3 without really being pushed to do so. Note that with Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Stalker in these decks you have strong early-game board potential, and remember that controlling the board adds up to more damage over time than just throwing everything at face from turn 1.
- I may be wrong (I haven't spent a lot of time on Hunter stats lately), but my assumption is that Timber Wolf is a two-of because Unleash is often your win condition. You want to be able to reliably burst out after losing board. Specifically in that circumstance, it's doubling your Unleash damage for only 1 additional mana outlay. There may be other benefits I'm not seeing because I don't have the deck in front of me right now.
- EDIT: Didn't see the Bomb Toss question. My answer is I have no idea, other than maybe an alternate late-game plan trying to set up a big Spellzerker turn. It's absolutely not something I'd run, personally, unless I was teching against Mage specifically.
- It's important to recognise that this deck is not a mindless SMOrc deck - and in fact, such decks don't really exist outside of budget ladder-grind decks. Your early game should absolutely be about early board, and getting out Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Hunter. Midgame is about minimizing what you have to let through on board while pushing more damage. Late game - which for this deck means around turn 7 or 8 - is where you accept the board is lost and make a push to set up lethal. Accept the loss of board to activate a big Wolf-Unleash and push through everything you can. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a fundamental skill of any aggro deck, and in spite of what memes will tell you, 'always face' is not an acceptable answer.
I am a little concerned that the normal-difficulty version uses a pre-built deck, with only the Heroic versions requiring deckbuilding. It seems like that would significantly lessen the replay value for weaker players.
Warlock - I think you're exaggerating what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying it won't be viable, necessarily. I was simply expressing amusement that a deck that's been viable for a miniscule amount of time, and at no point oppressive, is immediately eating a nerf regardless.
Apothecary - I would agree with you if the current Apothecary-centric Rogue decks were at all tempo-oriented, or indeed, if they ran many combo cards at all. I don't consider that Rogue decks will be disincentivized to run low-cost cards as a result of the change, because their deck's focus hasn't changed at all - the earliest possible turn they can start doing it has shifted back by one turn, and that's all. With so few combo cards in a typical DR Rogue list (meaning limited competition for activators) there really isn't much impact at all.
Regardless, arguments are getting circular. The meta will tell.
While I agree, I feel the old design was rather clunky. Freljord had neither significant self-damaging effects nor any real reason to cross-region with other regions with those effects; combined with the 'cannot block' that ensured Anivia would basically never level up since your opponent simply wouldn't block her unless they could deal with the egg (and she was WAY too stat-inefficient to be worth saying 'yay, free face damage').
The new design is a little less flavourful, but I suppose you could argue it's simply moving the Enlightened keyword away from being potentially seen as Ionian-specific. That's probably a good thing going forward.
It would be interesting, and certainly a unique mechanic, but making a mechanic that basically deletes another archetype from the game probably wouldn't be all that healthy in the long run. And if that mechanic WERE printed, I'd want it to follow the crab tradition. Graveyard Crawler - 5 mana 1/1, battlecry: eat all 7+ cost minions that have died for your opponent this game and gain +1/+1 for each one.
Horribly, horribly broken. But funny.
I'm not sure how far I'd agree, really. Sure, some games are determined that way, but equally, that's true of any matchup. It's not like you need to find all your anti-aggro tools in every match, after all, just enough of them to turn the corner (most of the time). Also, the very fact that you've got limited anti-aggro tools is a major skill factor - knowing when to sit on your defensive options and when to rip them is important. There's also a fair bit of basic prioritisation in there - you'd be amazed how many people I see sit on cards like Baleful Banker in aggro matchups instead of ripping them on turn 2, despite playing at a level where they should have learned better long ago
In my view, Karma pre-Enlighten is actually really quite weak. Her base stats are really low for a random generation effect. The trouble is, her Enlightened effect is oppressively strong in a deck built to use it, so she's very much the late-game time burner. A hard card to balance, really, but I can't help but think she'll be far too slow in a more competitive meta (which we haven't seen up til now) - by contrast, look at the level of value you're getting from Avarosan Hearthguard at the same mana point.
The effect of which being to give Zoolock a busted reset tool for aggro mirrors :P
@Neoguli - Loatheb certainly can delay the deck by a turn (nobody runs Rebuke in Paladin in Wild, primarily because nobody plays Paladin in wild :P). The trouble with considering that a counter is that it's very rare you'll be short a kill on a Mech'thun Lock by one turn - Highlander decks might occasionally be in that situation, but that's about it. And they run Loatheb anyway as a matter of course because it's such a good card.
Priest, meanwhile, is not a reliable counter because you're never going to get through your deck as quickly as they do, even building pure cycle. Particularly because you can't afford to run Hemet like they can. So you've got a significant in-built lossrate simply from the proportion of games in which you just don't draw your key tools before game over (I'd estimate this, pulling the numbers out of my backside estimating based on experience, at around ~20-30% of games minimum). That's before you even play the game, which could definitely go either way based on play patterns. I'm pretty confident that if you wanted to go pure Lock-hate, you could do so more effectively with a Rat-copying strategy rather than Tog Priest.
I laughed.
Amused at the Secret Mage suggestion - that's a skill matchup. At lower ranks Secret Mage is heavily favoured, but the higher you go the better the Mech'thun deck does. When I was spamming Mech'thun games for my Wild Legend, I was always very happy to see Jaina pop up because it was highly likely to be a win.
Re: thread - as a Mech'thun player, I would honestly say that the answer is a well timed Dirty Rat. Don't just throw it out whenever, that's not going to get you anywhere. Drop it after Thaurissan's hit the board (which is your best read that Mech'thun's in hand) or wait til they're almost decked out. Even if you're actively playing around Rat it's difficult to keep that many minions in hand, five at most - and frankly most people aren't smart enough to play around Rat intentionally anyway until you start hitting ~3-L. Even if you assume five minions in hand, dropping two Rats gives you a 40% chance to pull the Mech'thun, at which point the game is essentially won (unless you're playing them late and can't clear it, of course). Dropping that to four minions in hand leaves you with a ~49% chance. Of course, if you're playing Highlander that'll mean saving Zola (or similar) for your Rat turn.
Saboteur is another option, but in a lot of ways strictly inferior to Rat - it's a lot easier to keep random spells in hand than random minions (because spells are often reactionary cards you won't bother casting unless you have a reason to). Include if you're actively trying to hate on Mech'thun, and include alongside rat. Deathlord is actually a very careful decision to make, because while it has a chance to win you the game on the spot, if it doesn't it simply accelerates their win condition - the main reason to include it, in my opinion, is because it's great against other decks.
The key, in my opinion, is knowing what your win condition is very early into the matchup. If you're playing something relatively slow and without a lot of sticking power and/or on-demand damage - the more defensive variants of Renolock are a good example - then don't even bother trying to threaten aggressively and instead do some hardcore digging for your Rat/Zola/etc.
One further interesting note for Mech'thun counterplay - Mech'thun checks its win condition after deathrattles on the board conclude. That means that if there's a Voidlord on your opponent's board, they have to kill it before they can win. Not a problem if they have a Sac Pact or something left, of course, but if they don't then you can feasibly just sit there tanking 3 per turn while they fatigue out. Voidcaller doesn't work, unfortunately, because you discard your hand before the deathrattle triggers.
Initially I read 'Doomsayer? In face hunter?' and dismissed it with a derisive snort (I'm good at those). After stopping to think about it though... it's not actually a bad idea. Turn 3 has traditionally been Hunter's power turn, after all, and the main goal of Doomsayer is to snatch initiative heading into a power turn.
I'm not saying it's optimal, of course. It absolutely isn't - very few decks will be stronger on the board on turn 1 vs face hunter now (I think Warrior is about the only one that can do that), so all you're doing is removing your own advantage while also missing 2 damage from your hero power (or further developing). But it's not awful despite being utterly crazy, which I like.
Re: 'does aggro mean a lack of skill', it absolutely does not. It's a statement you'll hear a lot, though, and usually from 'Control' players who don't actually know what Control means, and who lose every game to aggro while refusing to include anti-aggro techs. Just one of the usual excuses people make for things they don't know how to handle.
I can confirm that I have some form of godlike powers. I've been spending every night for two weeks staring at the LoR homepage and yelling 'LET ME PLAY IT' every hour on the hour, and hey presto, I'll soon be able to play it.
...This is how religions get started, right?
Possibly I'm misunderstanding you, but to be clear for others reading - mobile is not available on release and is expected to be launched later this year.
Honestly the main reason for issues like this is simply keeping card text clean. Blizzard have always held a design philosophy with Hearthstone that certain things simply won't be stated in any depth in the client simply because it would lead to UI cluttering.
What's actually happening when you play something like Leeroy, rather than you summoning the whelps, is you force your opponent to summon whelps. But that would lead to multiple lines of additional game text to explain what's happening, and the cases in which that actually matters are absolutely tiny. So, they leave it unexplained because to even encounter it you're going to need a specific, niche set of legendaries - and when it happens once, you then know the interaction going forward anyway.
I support that philosophy from a game design perspective, personally. Though the card game purist in me hates it, because I'm used to physical games where the card text has to be read in fine print to understand perfectly.
I find myself in a tricky situation with this card.
I, from a personal view, hate it. It's deeply disappointing to me to see what is usually an expansion-defining card be so hard random. There's never going to be a time when I can put this in a deck happily, and it's one legendary slot that Mage won't get any value from.
On the other hand, for the long-term health of Hearthstone as a game - and a community - this is a great thing. People who play for laughs and shenanigans get an actual trump card, which is something they rarely get - and it being a hero is so much more meaningful than it simply being another legendary. It's a release which offers a nod towards the players who find alternate paths to enjoyment than simply chasing legend every season, and while I'm not one of those people, it's good that Blizzard are supporting them.
So, yeah, I'm going to be sitting ambivalent for quite a while.
Agree on this. Mage is in a good spot card-wise, it's just in an unfavourable meta right now.
Of course, this card won't see play in a competitive Mage deck. But still, the point stands.
I laughed.
I agree that it's probably better for newer players, but let's be honest, HS is not in any way friendly to new players so I feel like that's a drop in the bucket :P
I actually don't play the deck at all, so there's no vested interest there. My comments are wholly from my position as an analyst and theorycrafter. I rarely play very aggressive decks simply because I find piloting them less interesting than other decks, and most of my play this expansion has been on midrange decks with a little bit of highlander thrown in.
That said, I would note that pretty much every single deck that people complain about being 'brainless' in fact requires just as much ability to pilot as any other deck. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a major skill in HS, and funnily enough it's one that most control players never master.
The classic example is that of the old Pirate Warrior. Ask the average 'man on the street' and he'll whine that it's a braindead aggro deck. Watch a couple of professional players running Pirate Warrior mirrors, on the other hand, and you'll see more depth of technical ability than you'd see in most matchups in Standard today.
To answer your final paragraph - what you're doing there is apparently misreading my post to mean 'always play for the board'. I very specifically laid out the gamestate in my post - you're only looking to hold the board for as long as you reasonably can. You're making a value judgment on what's going to net the most damage over the course of the game - maintaining board vs abandoning it to push. If you enter a game and start playing all-face from turn 1, you will not maximise your winrate with this deck. Hell, your own post states precisely that - Dwarven Sharpshooter exists to prevent value trades to maximise face damage. That is what board control means. You are controlling the game-state to allow your game plan to proceed - your game plan in this case being maximising damage to ensure the game doesn't go too late.
Your statement 'Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent' is wholly inaccurate. Board matters when you can judge the board, the gamestate, your opponent's projected deck and projected hand, and you can make the call that you'll get more damage within your expected game duration from playing for board than you will mindlessly pushing. That is a judgment you have to make every turn - arguably multiple times within each turn - when playing a damage-oriented deck. If you're not performing that analysis, you're playing suboptimally.
There's a difference between even a full face hunter deck, and a mindless SMOrc deck. A lot of the people on ladder play the deck like the latter, certainly, but the only reason to build towards that path is if you simply don't have the cards to build a stronger list.
- Spellzerker is for Rapid Fire first and foremost, as AliRadicali suggests above. It also has a little more relevance in the later stages of the game because these hunter decks expect to lose the board at some point - and any juggles hitting minions are worthless to you at that point (and arguably even earlier given your game-plan).
- Animal Companion wins out over Wolfrider because while the deck expects to lose the board at some point, there's no reason to just throw away all board pressure on turn 3 without really being pushed to do so. Note that with Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Stalker in these decks you have strong early-game board potential, and remember that controlling the board adds up to more damage over time than just throwing everything at face from turn 1.
- I may be wrong (I haven't spent a lot of time on Hunter stats lately), but my assumption is that Timber Wolf is a two-of because Unleash is often your win condition. You want to be able to reliably burst out after losing board. Specifically in that circumstance, it's doubling your Unleash damage for only 1 additional mana outlay. There may be other benefits I'm not seeing because I don't have the deck in front of me right now.
- EDIT: Didn't see the Bomb Toss question. My answer is I have no idea, other than maybe an alternate late-game plan trying to set up a big Spellzerker turn. It's absolutely not something I'd run, personally, unless I was teching against Mage specifically.
- It's important to recognise that this deck is not a mindless SMOrc deck - and in fact, such decks don't really exist outside of budget ladder-grind decks. Your early game should absolutely be about early board, and getting out Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Hunter. Midgame is about minimizing what you have to let through on board while pushing more damage. Late game - which for this deck means around turn 7 or 8 - is where you accept the board is lost and make a push to set up lethal. Accept the loss of board to activate a big Wolf-Unleash and push through everything you can.
Knowing when to trade and when to push is a fundamental skill of any aggro deck, and in spite of what memes will tell you, 'always face' is not an acceptable answer.
I am a little concerned that the normal-difficulty version uses a pre-built deck, with only the Heroic versions requiring deckbuilding. It seems like that would significantly lessen the replay value for weaker players.
Because Priests really need more misery right now? O.o
Warlock - I think you're exaggerating what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying it won't be viable, necessarily. I was simply expressing amusement that a deck that's been viable for a miniscule amount of time, and at no point oppressive, is immediately eating a nerf regardless.
Apothecary - I would agree with you if the current Apothecary-centric Rogue decks were at all tempo-oriented, or indeed, if they ran many combo cards at all. I don't consider that Rogue decks will be disincentivized to run low-cost cards as a result of the change, because their deck's focus hasn't changed at all - the earliest possible turn they can start doing it has shifted back by one turn, and that's all. With so few combo cards in a typical DR Rogue list (meaning limited competition for activators) there really isn't much impact at all.
Regardless, arguments are getting circular. The meta will tell.