Just thinking, apropos-of-nothing, of specific health break-points to think about in LoR. Meta's still in flux, of course, but there are enough trends emerging that we can think of:
8 - Major Ledros breakpoint - >8 health means four plays required to kill you, guaranteeing you two attack rounds
Obviously I'm not being in any way comprehensive here, and am mostly trying to stick to the main meta points (e.g. Get Excited isn't on there because Jinx is basically absent from the meta so far)... but I'm still confident I'm missing stuff. Thoughts?
thanks guys, it would be cool if it negates but atleast now i know not to use it against recall it will be good against challangers trough.
Tbh it's not a great card at the moment. The meta trends towards buffs over big units; six mana for two Barriers feels steep in Constructed outside of specific Fiora setups or something. I find myself comparing it very unfavourably to Back To Back
d in a different thread (the patch predictions, I believe): Make Ledros bounce to the top of its owner's deck instead of their hand. Boom, suddenly the immense card advantage Ledros generates is gone. If your opponent keeps playing him turn after turn, they at least won't accumulate additional cards. He might still be a bit too strong and need some tweaking from there, but I think it'd be a great start to balancing Ledros while preserving his identity.
As in the other thread, I would agree with this change. It's less about card advantage, in my view, and more about having a significant trade-off to playing him - by doing so you're essentially locking yourself into a single strategy (particularly if your hand is otherwise empty). You're all-in, and your opponent can then formulate a strategy to counter what you're doing, in which case you lose. If they can't, you win. In that case, he would be no different to other game-ending cards.
Quote From meisterz39
There's a real irony in dropping an anecdote shortly after saying "When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless."
There isn't at all, assuming you're reading analytically rather than just looking to snipe. I stated clearly that it was an anecdotal example. The difference between this and the earlier instance is that the earlier post gave no real argument or context - just gave an anecdote and said 'this is why it needs to change'. That's attempting to use an anecdote as evidence, which is worthless.
My use-case was purely as an example to better explain what I was saying. It wasn't intended to be supporting evidence - which is why I called out the anecdote myself, twice - it was purely to make it clear what point I was trying to make. By calling it out I was attempting to make it clear that I wasn't trying to hang any point on it, but apparently that was unsuccessful.
Incidentally, the anecdote itself was raised purely in the context of the Fearsome tag and whether removing it makes trades more or less interesting. It wasn't connected to the rest of the card, and wasn't used to make any point in relation to the burn effect or similar. Again, thought that was obvious from the discussion.
I am not salty I just see that those decks are way too dominant, and Elise is too good of a 2 drop, I play fearsome/spiders/hecarim for a while so I am asking to nerf the deck I am playing cause I feel it's too strong, losing stuff in the mirror.. well Elise is part of the mirror lol.
I prefer to predict more nerfs that not also I don't claim ALL card should be nerfed just predicting what Riot might do.
In league balance when Riot nerfs something they nerf a lot of aspects of that something, also sometimes buff other aspects in the same time (see: aatrox and akali nerfs).
I don't believe it would make the decks unplayable, currently fearsome decks are over represented in the meta (Around 40% pick in masters according to swim), if you nerf 3 cards in the deck the deck is still really powerful.
- Salt - The trouble with that argument is that Elusives aren't dominant anymore. And the fact that they were shifted from the top spot in a couple of weeks makes it clear that dominance is the result of a shifting meta, not power level. So why would Riot intervene in the meta to resolve something which isn't a power level issue? There's no reason to do so beyond silencing some whiners.
- Elise - Apologies, I wasn't clear. When I say she'd lose a lot in the mirror, I mean she'd lose a lot against non-spider SI decks. She'd find it difficult to find any window to attack at any stage of the game without relying on Fearsome alone to survive (which can be overridden with buffs, of course).
- Predictions - I'm not sure throwing out a couple dozen nerfs and calling them predictions - particularly when your OP doesn't say that - is really predicting...
- Unplayability - Nerfing several of the central cards to a deck is pretty much always going to drop it out of the meta. Using HS as an example, most decks will die off to a single nerf, and if they come back it's either a result of a subsequent meta shift or a new angle being taken. Single nerfs can have significant winrate shifts, and blanket-nerfing a significant chunk of a deck is far more than just a single nerf. Hell, if it's just three cards, that's still up to 30% of a deck nerfed in one go (and incidentally, assuming we're sticking with the Dawnspiders example from before, that'd be four cards nerfed. Five if you count Ledros as part of it).
- Riot nerf strategy - I wholly disagree with that statement, just looking at the empirical evidence. In any given League patch notes, you'll see one, maybe two big nerfs/buffs at most (usually one). You'll also see a dozen small changes which happen alongside it. Just looking at 10.3 as an example - major Akali buff (1x big), minor changes to Aphelios, Azir, Corki, Diana, Ekko, Ezreal, Galio, Leona, MF, Rumble, Sejuani, Senna, Sett, Sona, Yuumi (15x small), plus some assorted other changes. This, incidentally, is analogous to my point above (although I don't point to it as a true example because the games are wholly different genres) - these small changes are often, in themselves, enough to push a champion out of the meta for a time. Small changes can have big impacts.
Incidentally, given we're clearly both prone to large posts, I advise snipping quotes as I have done above so as to mitigate their length at least a little!
Agree with basically everything in the OP. Would also add that I'd like for Play mode to remember whether I last played Ranked or Casual when clicking it rather than defaulting to Casual every time, because I can see myself accidentally queueing Casual and spending an hour being very pleased with myself before realising my error (this has happened on HS ¬.¬).
When making a deck, number of card copies displayed is inconsistent - if you have one or two copies it'll show the number you have (or the number you have left), while if you have three copies it won't display a number at all. I realise that's because if you have three copies you have functionally infinite copies (since you can only run three), but it's inconsistent to not display the number (and can make it slightly more difficult to tell how many of a given card you have in the deck at a glance).
In general: for spells and effects that do multiple things, the game tends to err on the side of doing what it can and NOT fizzling--e.g., if I play an Augmented Experimenter to deal 3, discard, and draw, but then my opponent interrupts with a Glimpse Beyond on the damage target, I still discard and draw.
The exceptions I know about are Vile Feast (no healing or spiderling if target dies first) and Glimpse Beyond (no cards if target dies first), and I think that's because the concept is that the target is specifically fueling the other results.
In the SI cards' cases, it's because of the word 'to' in the text. You have to do the former to trigger the latter.
I hadn't really thought about this up to this point, but it's a valid consideration. It does seem like an odd inconsistency given Shadowshift's use in battle (and thematic feel). If I had to give a technical answer I'd argue that the original target leaves the field before the Shadow replaces it, leaving a gap during which time the targeted spell has no target and fizzles... but I have difficulty convincing myself to agree with it.
Given the choice of which to change for consistency, though, I'd lean towards changing Stand United to align with Shadowshift. It's already horribly expensive for such a niche card, I don't see why it couldn't be given an additional use-case.
Agreed that it should be visible to the player - the main difficulty (I'd assume) is the way of creating visual clarity. At a glance, it'd be easy to miss the negative number there - and it'd be usually more impactful to mistake a negative number for a positive one than to see a buff/nerf interaction like this one.
I'd say put the negative number in but give negatives a unique colour palette (say, white text on black background? Not sure how that is for visually impaired people) to make it clear there's something going on.
In general, you want more third copies of the better cards instead of so many doubles.
I know. Extreme loss aversion: I HATE opening 4th copies from vaults/rewards when I'm still missing so much, which makes me really anxious about crafting a third copy of anything. And it doesn't help that, as you said, this isn't the best meta for a knockoff/budget Jinx deck to begin with. :-P
I'll probably take a more serious look at my options after this week's vault. And probably something around Braum, since he's been performing a lot better for me lately--either buffing my Braum/Garen control deck or taking a leap and experimenting with Braum/Vlad.
Prior warning - due to every Elusive deck having Braum crowbarred into it in the opening weeks, a lot of decks are running Rimefang Wolf lately which shuts down Braum hard.
Eh, it's arguably underwhelming, but for something we didn't really expect and we paid nothing for it's fine. Custom VOs would probably have a disproportionate cost-benefit given they'd need to get the VA talent back in for it (I presume aren't all Blizzard employees).
Guess why anivia was nerfed to 7 mana from 6? yep this combo.
it's too memey because dusk and dawn only works with high mana cost comboes otherwise it's not that great, and it's a slow spell so Deny exists.. when Deny gets nerfed maybe it will be used more.
We need a peper thread for LoR.
I mean... it wasn't this combo, because 6 -> 7 doesn't stop you doing it, just shifts it back a turn. And it was part of an overall rework rather than just a nerf.
He should really return to the top of the deck instead, that way you can’t play him the turn he dies (and he doesn’t give you “card draw” when he dies
That was actually a thought bouncing around my head after revisiting the Ledros thread this morning. Wouldn't be a bad idea as a change, though I wonder if it would make him unplayable.
Re: rest of OP's list:
- My main point - we're not going to see any sweeping changes at this point. For all that I rip on Rito's revolving door balance strategy, they have at least shown via TFT that they're capable of patience when a meta is still in heavy flux. At release (not all that long ago, really) we had a lot of Elusive complaints and they were flooding the meta - nerf calls abound. Fast forward to now, the meta has responded; Elusive isn't top of the pile because other things have risen up to counter them.
- Major disagreement with any Lux changes. She's fine at doing what she does, as what she is - which is a lower-risk lower-reward Heimer.
- Major disagreement with basically the entire bottom half of your post. Elusives don't need nerfing at this stage as meta shifts show they're clearly counterable. Elise nerf would render her wholly unplayable as she'd lose far too much in the mirror - if time suggests spiders need a nerf they can be hit in other ways. I could maybe get behind nerfs to Rhasa and Cursed Keeper, but that's about it.
Overall, my view is that your list is basically saying 'nerf every popular deck in half a dozen ways so that they're wholly unplayable' - which really doesn't chime with your claim to be salt-free. That is not balancing - that's see-sawing.
All of which is an analysis of the card itself - the OP was on rounding on the burn effect. Throughout the entire thread I've not been saying that the card is bad - what I have been saying is that of all the things on the card to complain about, burn rounding is the very bottom of the list. It's not touched on at all in your post, either, so I assume you're in agreement with me and just vociferously disagreeing with points I haven't made :P
Quote From meisterz39
Removing Fearsome doesn't make blocking interesting, it makes it obvious. If Ledros didn't have Fearsome, you'd always chump block him to ensure he takes very little damage over time. This would be the best play every time to delay the inevitable bounce back to your opponent's hand.
On a surface-level analysis, sure. The inverse (as is currently on live) is that you're shoved into an automatic lose-lose situation in which you either take eight to the dome or bounce him back in two turns max while losing a chunk of your board. It's hard to make something an interesting decision when either result is atrocious for you.
By contrast, removing restrictions opens up decision-making options. Entirely anecdotal example - I had a game last night in which I purposefully blocked a Ledros with a 6/5 spider rather than a 4/1spiderling, killing it intentionally. My reasoning was that my opponent had burned all mana for the turn and didn't have lethal, so I had the opportunity for counter-lethal if I could bait the Ledros play. Following round, he did indeed drop the Ledros - giving me 100% security that he couldn't then stop my play for lethal which would otherwise have been risky and depended on him not having counter-buffs.
Obviously, as I say, anecdotal (and something I was able to do with Ledros having Fearsome already, obviously). Point is, though, opening more options makes for a more involved decision.
Having considered that point now, I do agree that the Fearsome keyword is kind of problematic. Though I stand by my disagreement on the burn rounding up/down, because again, if you're losing to this card purely from the burn alone, you were probably dead anyway.
I could see either dropping the Fearsome tag or (even better) lowering his attack from 8 to ~4 so that his OTK potential circa Frank's example is reduced from 15 HP to 9 HP--you're getting tons of value from his Played and Last Whisper effects; you shouldn't need vanilla stats as well.
I don't think I'd agree with lowering his attack value because making him kinda garbage on the board leaves him with all his cost going to pay for the effect. Having him be top heavy but blockable by trash makes him more interesting by design - the opponent needs to make tough decisions as to how to block him.
Quote From 40D
It's literally 100 percent of the comparable population. Even if you add 9- and 10-drops into the mix, Ledros is still bonkers.
I didn't say it wasn't the entire population, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable sample size. It just means the cards don't exist to compare it to yet. I don't agree on your point regarding 9 and 10 drops though - if you expand the pool out that way you're looking at Brightsteel Formation and She Who Wanders (much stronger statline), along with Minah Swiftfoot (who is even more gamewinning than this card, albeit requiring more setup) and Corina Veraza (who kinda sucks). Plaza Guardian and Scuttlegeist don't really count given their cost reduction which will mean they're effectively not 10-drops.
Zilliax isn't an autoinclude because he's too good - he's an autoinclude because he's splashable. Design-wise you could argue that the two are the same thing, but from a pure balance perspective they're not.
Indeed, but that would have to be 2 turns later, where I would be dead already. And that would be 2 more cards to draw, where he could draw Decimate and Blade's Edge and in that case he didn't even need to attack or a board at all.
That's why I gave a practical example, and not an assuming one. Because when we enter the realm of assumptions, everything is possible ;)
When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless. Anyone can come up with a scenario in which a card is gamewinning.
Moving on.
Quote From FortyDust
Roughly the same stats as other 8-drops
Immediately deals direct damage to enemy nexus (up to 10 damage!)
Returns to hand and can be resummoned for infinite value, infinite direct damage (expensive, but infinite nonetheless)
Fearsome, so impossible to chump block
Very few ways in the entire game to keep him from coming back
Alternative view:
- There are barely any 8-drops in the game, so stat-comparison doesn't really have much of a sample size. Small enough, in fact, that it's not unreasonable to ask 'okay, well, are the other 8-drops too weak rather than this one too strong?'. I would however note that he shares a mana slot with Ren Shadowblade, who literally sits on board saying 'your opponent now cannot develop a board, ever, until I'm removed'.
- Direct damage which is scaled to be incredibly inefficient as a finisher and strong if levelling a playing field; being burn in and of itself doesn't indicate an abundance of power.
- Historically, people tend to overvalue 'infinite' effects from my experience. Saw it a lot in HS - people tend to ignore the actual value of the card in favour of what can happen in incredibly obscure circumstances. While still relevant for balance purposes (of course), you're not going to see the card bounced more than a couple of times in the vast majority of games.
- Fearsome - sure. On the other hand, you're running at least 8 mana at this point - you can afford to block with something other than chumps. However, further point on this below.
Having thought further on the Fearsome point - generally speaking I don't value Fearsome all that highly, particularly on expensive cards (if you're getting that late into the game and still relying on chumps, you're having issues, is my usual feeling). However in this case, Fearsome has the secondary issue which I don't see anyone raising - top-heavy stats plus Fearsome plus bounce effect is a Catch-22 situation because you're forced into blocking with higher attack followers, which in turn makes the follower more likely to bounce.
Having considered that point now, I do agree that the Fearsome keyword is kind of problematic. Though I stand by my disagreement on the burn rounding up/down, because again, if you're losing to this card purely from the burn alone, you were probably dead anyway.
Just thinking, apropos-of-nothing, of specific health break-points to think about in LoR. Meta's still in flux, of course, but there are enough trends emerging that we can think of:
1 - Vile Feast
2 - Mystic Shot, Fleetfeather Tracker, Laurent Protege
3 - Black Spear, Grasp, Fiora
[3] - Culling Strike; Power not health
4+ - Ehhh...?
8 - Major Ledros breakpoint - >8 health means four plays required to kill you, guaranteeing you two attack rounds
Obviously I'm not being in any way comprehensive here, and am mostly trying to stick to the main meta points (e.g. Get Excited isn't on there because Jinx is basically absent from the meta so far)... but I'm still confident I'm missing stuff. Thoughts?
Tbh it's not a great card at the moment. The meta trends towards buffs over big units; six mana for two Barriers feels steep in Constructed outside of specific Fiora setups or something. I find myself comparing it very unfavourably to Back To Back
As in the other thread, I would agree with this change. It's less about card advantage, in my view, and more about having a significant trade-off to playing him - by doing so you're essentially locking yourself into a single strategy (particularly if your hand is otherwise empty). You're all-in, and your opponent can then formulate a strategy to counter what you're doing, in which case you lose. If they can't, you win. In that case, he would be no different to other game-ending cards.
There isn't at all, assuming you're reading analytically rather than just looking to snipe. I stated clearly that it was an anecdotal example. The difference between this and the earlier instance is that the earlier post gave no real argument or context - just gave an anecdote and said 'this is why it needs to change'. That's attempting to use an anecdote as evidence, which is worthless.
My use-case was purely as an example to better explain what I was saying. It wasn't intended to be supporting evidence - which is why I called out the anecdote myself, twice - it was purely to make it clear what point I was trying to make. By calling it out I was attempting to make it clear that I wasn't trying to hang any point on it, but apparently that was unsuccessful.
Incidentally, the anecdote itself was raised purely in the context of the Fearsome tag and whether removing it makes trades more or less interesting. It wasn't connected to the rest of the card, and wasn't used to make any point in relation to the burn effect or similar. Again, thought that was obvious from the discussion.
- Salt - The trouble with that argument is that Elusives aren't dominant anymore. And the fact that they were shifted from the top spot in a couple of weeks makes it clear that dominance is the result of a shifting meta, not power level. So why would Riot intervene in the meta to resolve something which isn't a power level issue? There's no reason to do so beyond silencing some whiners.
- Elise - Apologies, I wasn't clear. When I say she'd lose a lot in the mirror, I mean she'd lose a lot against non-spider SI decks. She'd find it difficult to find any window to attack at any stage of the game without relying on Fearsome alone to survive (which can be overridden with buffs, of course).
- Predictions - I'm not sure throwing out a couple dozen nerfs and calling them predictions - particularly when your OP doesn't say that - is really predicting...
- Unplayability - Nerfing several of the central cards to a deck is pretty much always going to drop it out of the meta. Using HS as an example, most decks will die off to a single nerf, and if they come back it's either a result of a subsequent meta shift or a new angle being taken. Single nerfs can have significant winrate shifts, and blanket-nerfing a significant chunk of a deck is far more than just a single nerf. Hell, if it's just three cards, that's still up to 30% of a deck nerfed in one go (and incidentally, assuming we're sticking with the Dawnspiders example from before, that'd be four cards nerfed. Five if you count Ledros as part of it).
- Riot nerf strategy - I wholly disagree with that statement, just looking at the empirical evidence. In any given League patch notes, you'll see one, maybe two big nerfs/buffs at most (usually one). You'll also see a dozen small changes which happen alongside it. Just looking at 10.3 as an example - major Akali buff (1x big), minor changes to Aphelios, Azir, Corki, Diana, Ekko, Ezreal, Galio, Leona, MF, Rumble, Sejuani, Senna, Sett, Sona, Yuumi (15x small), plus some assorted other changes. This, incidentally, is analogous to my point above (although I don't point to it as a true example because the games are wholly different genres) - these small changes are often, in themselves, enough to push a champion out of the meta for a time. Small changes can have big impacts.
Incidentally, given we're clearly both prone to large posts, I advise snipping quotes as I have done above so as to mitigate their length at least a little!
Agree with basically everything in the OP. Would also add that I'd like for Play mode to remember whether I last played Ranked or Casual when clicking it rather than defaulting to Casual every time, because I can see myself accidentally queueing Casual and spending an hour being very pleased with myself before realising my error (this has happened on HS ¬.¬).
When making a deck, number of card copies displayed is inconsistent - if you have one or two copies it'll show the number you have (or the number you have left), while if you have three copies it won't display a number at all. I realise that's because if you have three copies you have functionally infinite copies (since you can only run three), but it's inconsistent to not display the number (and can make it slightly more difficult to tell how many of a given card you have in the deck at a glance).
In the SI cards' cases, it's because of the word 'to' in the text. You have to do the former to trigger the latter.
I hadn't really thought about this up to this point, but it's a valid consideration. It does seem like an odd inconsistency given Shadowshift's use in battle (and thematic feel). If I had to give a technical answer I'd argue that the original target leaves the field before the Shadow replaces it, leaving a gap during which time the targeted spell has no target and fizzles... but I have difficulty convincing myself to agree with it.
Given the choice of which to change for consistency, though, I'd lean towards changing Stand United to align with Shadowshift. It's already horribly expensive for such a niche card, I don't see why it couldn't be given an additional use-case.
Agreed that it should be visible to the player - the main difficulty (I'd assume) is the way of creating visual clarity. At a glance, it'd be easy to miss the negative number there - and it'd be usually more impactful to mistake a negative number for a positive one than to see a buff/nerf interaction like this one.
I'd say put the negative number in but give negatives a unique colour palette (say, white text on black background? Not sure how that is for visually impaired people) to make it clear there's something going on.
The bait post is real.
F
Prior warning - due to every Elusive deck having Braum crowbarred into it in the opening weeks, a lot of decks are running Rimefang Wolf lately which shuts down Braum hard.
Eh, it's arguably underwhelming, but for something we didn't really expect and we paid nothing for it's fine. Custom VOs would probably have a disproportionate cost-benefit given they'd need to get the VA talent back in for it (I presume aren't all Blizzard employees).
I mean... it wasn't this combo, because 6 -> 7 doesn't stop you doing it, just shifts it back a turn. And it was part of an overall rework rather than just a nerf.
That was actually a thought bouncing around my head after revisiting the Ledros thread this morning. Wouldn't be a bad idea as a change, though I wonder if it would make him unplayable.
Re: rest of OP's list:
- My main point - we're not going to see any sweeping changes at this point. For all that I rip on Rito's revolving door balance strategy, they have at least shown via TFT that they're capable of patience when a meta is still in heavy flux. At release (not all that long ago, really) we had a lot of Elusive complaints and they were flooding the meta - nerf calls abound. Fast forward to now, the meta has responded; Elusive isn't top of the pile because other things have risen up to counter them.
- Major disagreement with any Lux changes. She's fine at doing what she does, as what she is - which is a lower-risk lower-reward Heimer.
- Major disagreement with basically the entire bottom half of your post. Elusives don't need nerfing at this stage as meta shifts show they're clearly counterable. Elise nerf would render her wholly unplayable as she'd lose far too much in the mirror - if time suggests spiders need a nerf they can be hit in other ways. I could maybe get behind nerfs to Rhasa and Cursed Keeper, but that's about it.
Overall, my view is that your list is basically saying 'nerf every popular deck in half a dozen ways so that they're wholly unplayable' - which really doesn't chime with your claim to be salt-free. That is not balancing - that's see-sawing.
To be fair to the OP, I made that same mistake initially. It feels like it should be a Spider, though it's clearly not. *shrug*
All of which is an analysis of the card itself - the OP was on rounding on the burn effect. Throughout the entire thread I've not been saying that the card is bad - what I have been saying is that of all the things on the card to complain about, burn rounding is the very bottom of the list. It's not touched on at all in your post, either, so I assume you're in agreement with me and just vociferously disagreeing with points I haven't made :P
On a surface-level analysis, sure. The inverse (as is currently on live) is that you're shoved into an automatic lose-lose situation in which you either take eight to the dome or bounce him back in two turns max while losing a chunk of your board. It's hard to make something an interesting decision when either result is atrocious for you.
By contrast, removing restrictions opens up decision-making options. Entirely anecdotal example - I had a game last night in which I purposefully blocked a Ledros with a 6/5 spider rather than a 4/1spiderling, killing it intentionally. My reasoning was that my opponent had burned all mana for the turn and didn't have lethal, so I had the opportunity for counter-lethal if I could bait the Ledros play. Following round, he did indeed drop the Ledros - giving me 100% security that he couldn't then stop my play for lethal which would otherwise have been risky and depended on him not having counter-buffs.
Obviously, as I say, anecdotal (and something I was able to do with Ledros having Fearsome already, obviously). Point is, though, opening more options makes for a more involved decision.
Not sure this was necessary - I am very aware of my singleness :P
I don't think I'd agree with lowering his attack value because making him kinda garbage on the board leaves him with all his cost going to pay for the effect. Having him be top heavy but blockable by trash makes him more interesting by design - the opponent needs to make tough decisions as to how to block him.
I didn't say it wasn't the entire population, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable sample size. It just means the cards don't exist to compare it to yet. I don't agree on your point regarding 9 and 10 drops though - if you expand the pool out that way you're looking at Brightsteel Formation and She Who Wanders (much stronger statline), along with Minah Swiftfoot (who is even more gamewinning than this card, albeit requiring more setup) and Corina Veraza (who kinda sucks). Plaza Guardian and Scuttlegeist don't really count given their cost reduction which will mean they're effectively not 10-drops.
Zilliax isn't an autoinclude because he's too good - he's an autoinclude because he's splashable. Design-wise you could argue that the two are the same thing, but from a pure balance perspective they're not.
When it comes to analysis, 'practical examples' are better known as 'anecdotal evidence' and are generally worthless. Anyone can come up with a scenario in which a card is gamewinning.
Moving on.
Alternative view:
- There are barely any 8-drops in the game, so stat-comparison doesn't really have much of a sample size. Small enough, in fact, that it's not unreasonable to ask 'okay, well, are the other 8-drops too weak rather than this one too strong?'. I would however note that he shares a mana slot with Ren Shadowblade, who literally sits on board saying 'your opponent now cannot develop a board, ever, until I'm removed'.
- Direct damage which is scaled to be incredibly inefficient as a finisher and strong if levelling a playing field; being burn in and of itself doesn't indicate an abundance of power.
- Historically, people tend to overvalue 'infinite' effects from my experience. Saw it a lot in HS - people tend to ignore the actual value of the card in favour of what can happen in incredibly obscure circumstances. While still relevant for balance purposes (of course), you're not going to see the card bounced more than a couple of times in the vast majority of games.
- Fearsome - sure. On the other hand, you're running at least 8 mana at this point - you can afford to block with something other than chumps. However, further point on this below.
Having thought further on the Fearsome point - generally speaking I don't value Fearsome all that highly, particularly on expensive cards (if you're getting that late into the game and still relying on chumps, you're having issues, is my usual feeling). However in this case, Fearsome has the secondary issue which I don't see anyone raising - top-heavy stats plus Fearsome plus bounce effect is a Catch-22 situation because you're forced into blocking with higher attack followers, which in turn makes the follower more likely to bounce.
Having considered that point now, I do agree that the Fearsome keyword is kind of problematic. Though I stand by my disagreement on the burn rounding up/down, because again, if you're losing to this card purely from the burn alone, you were probably dead anyway.