Wouldn't surprise me if the devs have only just been reminded that Juicy Psychmelon existed. Kael'thas might actually break the speed record for the quickest double nerf in hearthstone history.
To be honest hero power at 1 is pretty broken. It allows for so much flexibility, and technically making inspire cards absolutely a nightmare to face against. Ive always thought Illidan's hp, though underwhelming, is already the best in the game for an aggressive class simply because of its efficiency.
It kinda reminds me of rogue's hp at the start of hearthstone where it adds +1 attack to the weapon if you're already holding one, and that quickly spiraled out of control, and having the ability to store the dudes and swarm the board at key turns might be actually impossible for some classes like rogue and hunter to deal with.
Then he'd just destroy any control deck, and being in an evergreen set that's not good.
At the moment, his only weakness is that he's a 9 mana equip a 3/8 weapon. Take that away and Lord Jaraxxus will legit be in contention in every warlock deck right now.
Altruis the Outcast and Kael'thas Sunstrider had their mana cost increased by 1, Glaivebound Adept to have that apparently paltry slap to the hand by having his 7 attack reduced by 1. All this seemed to be to be balanced to ensure a slower dhunter aggro deck (due to the not insubstantial nerf to Battlefiend) are not too slow to succeed against spell druid and other dhunter decks.
Frenzied Felwing change is perhaps massive, since it can now be AoE down along with the other aggro cards from dhunters, but its still a ridiculously good card in an aggro deck so I don't predict this card getting dropped any time soon. Bad Luck Albatross is another nerf that generally make it less of an auto include, but a 4/3 is still not too bad, even at 4 mana. Only time can tell if 2 copies of 4 mana 4/3 is too much to see inclusion into decks that plays it.
That change to Open the Waygate. 2 extra to its requirements. Hardly slowing it down against anything but hyper aggro. Not exactly what I had in mind.
And the best nerf/buff to warlock. Sac Pact not longer a 0 mana destroy a key dhunter minion, and no longer troubling the dreams of Lord Jaraxxus. Not that it changes much in the matchup since warlock still have the cards to remain Illidan's strongest enemy.
Sacrificial Pact can still do things even if it only targets friendly minions. Its played unironically in galakrond control warlock in DoD. Healing 5 health for 0 mana is nothing to be snuffed at.
If there's a deathrattle demon like a 1/1 for 3 mana that spawns a 5/5 on death, I'd play sac pact just for that.
If they're nerfing Kael'thas Sunstrider and Altruis the Outcast, then I think Twin Slice fits in just nice. Priestess of Fury is strong, but hardly a problem card. Since dhunter's gonna get their early game slowed down a notch I think its fine to leave it as it is.
I prefer it at 3 so some silly combo can still be done with albatross. Also, allowing it to come out 1 mana earlier means its more effective at doing what it's supposed to be doing in the first place, mostly to block Zephrys the Great. Blocking zephrys 1 turn earlier can be decisive in some games.
Agreed that dhunters will probably be too weak for wild, but as a new class introduced a few weeks back and being vastly outnumbered in terms of cards and years I think its only to be expected.
There's plenty of expansions in the future to prop up dhunters in wild. I think the priority should be on standard first.
Or, perhaps team5 will make the bold move of printing dhunter cards for wild only. That's perhaps an appropriate solution, but I doubt it will ever be done.
After some thought I kinda agree somewhat with you on Bad Luck Albatross. Maybe a nerf to albatross to a 2/2 for 3 mana is perhaps a little too far. Conventionally a tech card should be around 1 mana slower than vanilla, so maybe as a 3/2 is more appropriate.
Mecha'thun warlock already play cards like Emperor Thaurissan to discount the combo. So now they have to weigh either playing an additional Drakkari Enchanter or play Galvanizer + brann. An appropriate nerf to mecha'thun warlock, I think.
Making Bloodbloom work like prep is a nice suggestion, but team5 historically starts by nerfing stuff like mana cost first. They rarely change card descriptions.
We can give Blizzard a pass on that though, it's good to see them quickly reacting to their new class.
YOU can give them a pass if you want, Flux, but personally I feel like I'm getting whiplash from trying to play this game. This is the second straight expansion where they release a handful of grossly OP cards and respond with a two emergency balance patches. At this point, I have to seriously question their balancing strategy.
I agree that its not a good strategy to print OP cards only to nerf them a few weeks later. But I think we can make an exception to dhunters, since its a new class and the idea is to hype it up as much as possible.
But we're staring down two nerf cycles in 2.5 weeks. That's a little too much honestly.
There's already very few hearthstone tournaments, and what with this virus around we're basically stuck at home for most periods, and then the idea is to ensure that we get to watch only the very final moments of the entire thing?
That's a bad move in my opinion. I was looking forward to grandmasters since DoD, and to find out now that its no longer a round robin throughout and that I don't get to watch the majority of the matches. Is twitch charging you to broadcast games?
Killed all the hype for grandmasters for me. I'd rather they show this instead of that inn-vitational.
Also, what happened to that self deck ban concept that came with conquest the last time round? I thought that was a good idea instead of regular conquest.
EDIT: Okay, I've gone around searching a little. It appears that youtube is still scheduled to broadcast the grandmasters. Not really sure what is happening here, but it may yet be some hope that we can still watch some parts of the grandmasters aside from the final brackets.
Hoping we can watch all of it, fingers crossed, even if they're not live.
Battlefiend - either 1/2 or 2/1. If the idea is to preserve dhunter competitively, then it would be a 1/2. Its still not that weak as a 1/2 honestly, but will definitely hit the class.
Altruis the Outcast - this one is obvious. The nerf will remove its ability to hit the face. Honestly, that was what's broken about this card
Glaivebound Adept - Didint see this one coming to be honest. Will likely tone his attack down to 5. Otherwise the effect will deal 3 damage instead of 4. Maybe even both. a 7/4 is pretty dangerous to leave alive. A 5/4, not as much.
Kael'thas Sunstrider - remove the ability to cast ALL third spells for free. Only the first will cost 0. This, I believe, was the original design. They then went on to make it what it was. Well, its about time that it got back to being normal again. This change will ensure other classes can still do stuff with kael, and will hit only druid hard and I'm okay with that.
Bad Luck Albatross - Well, its been fun. Will likely see a stat nerf to 2/2. Its sin was being good enough to see inclusion in any deck. As a 2/2, not so much.
Frenzied Felwing - Likely cost 6 now. So the earliest you can get this out is at least turn 3. Will likely kill the card and relegate it to being shaman fodder for evolve moves, much like poor old Corridor Creeper.
Open the Waygate - Increase requirement from 6 to 10. Still playable, just weakened for aggro. I much rather they nuke the card, but making it slower might be enough for now.
Bloodbloom - Increase cost to 4. Kinda a shame, I really love the design. But it had to be done at some point. They would probably want to ensure [Hearthstone Card (mecha'tun) Not Found] can still be played, while removing Darkest Hour cheese as a possibility.
Sacrificial Pact - Affect only friendly minions. Yes, you've had your one expansion of fame, now back to the collection book with you until the next time a demon deathrattle gets printed.
Libram of Justice - Mana buff to 5 instead of 6. I don't really know why this one got buffed. They could've just buffed up Libram of Wisdom to a 1 mana spell instead. Maybe after all the nerfs playtesting reveals paladin get to actually play for once, so they'd rather not go too far.
Or...if the idea is to make Libram of Justice one of paladin's best card, just give a 1/2 weapon with immune while attacking. That works as well.
Vanessa VanCleef at last? Or maybe its Eudora from RoS adventure. Also, what happened to the supposed mage skin, Celeste, or something like that.
Judging historically, it might be a hearthstone only character, something a little light hearted.
I frequent hearthpwn every now and then too, its like going through a zoo exhibit. I have no idea there were others here that share my secret hobby.
I usually go there when I look at a news post on here and think "what would be the absolute worst take you could have on this"...and Hearthpwn usually delivers.
True enough. Arguments here can get heated every now and then but its nowhere near the level of offensive screeching that can be found there.
Always nice to see more tournaments from hearthstone. Its been kinda barren these last 2 years. There used to be a time where you can watch hearthstone tournaments every 2 weeks or something.
There's an old saying "assume the best intentions of those who engage in discourse with you. Respond to the STRONGEST possible argument that they would present, not the weakest...otherwise you are talking past each other, not to each other."
I don't know why you're starting off with this, considering that in your original post basically assumes fault in others for not being able to play around pre-nerfed Imprisoned Antaen. You should have instead displayed all the facts and figures supporting that as you do here. My argument is just that :- many classes/decks can't, hence why I supported the first Imprisoned Antaen nerf.
Quote From sykomyke
Your math is correct but the scenarios you postulated aren't. A card showcasing a high winrate doesn't mean that it's always played, only that when it's played it produces a higher winrate…
…But for a dose of reality. Stormhammer can come out as early as turn 3. That meas in a hunter vs DH matchup. The hunter has had the chance to attack for 12 total damage by the time PoF comes down. That's not counting damage from hero powers, other spells/effects or minions.
I applaud the extensive amount of statistics you pulled, but the original argument on this specific point, which I engaged, wasn't about win rates of cards. Its addressing what you stated: "All in all I just find it amusing because if this was Hunter, noone would be complaining but hunter throws out just as much early damage as DH yet flies under the radar all the time. "
Your dose of reality is to show me that stormhammer can potentially* do 12 damage before PoF gets out. What are you comparing here? Damage output in a hunter vs dhunter match? I think its easy enough for me to point out how badly hunters do against dhunters as an argument that dhunters output more damage in a matchup between the two.
Lastly:
Quote From sykomyke
So in short: No. While Antaen and Pof may feel like powerhouse cards, and may feel strong, and may win some games. They are not the problem cards of DH. They are often the cards that people see and sometimes feel slightly helpless against, but they aren't "winning" the game for them.
I agree that PoF and IA are hardly the most problematic when it comes to assessing dhunters as a whole. But to say that they are 'aren't "winning" the game for them' does not mesh well with your statistics. There's a good reason why PoF have high win rates. They win games. And if other players feel slightly helpless every time they see it played, they ought to be; they're 55.9% likely to lose that game, to quote your stats.
I dont have a premium account from hsreplay, and I can't tell easily how you're pulling these stats out. But if all you wanted to say was that dhunter's early game cards are more responsible for wins than cards like IA and PoF, I would encourage you to just make a statistical comparison of it, instead of insinuating that hunters "flies under the radar all the time". Might have helped your case better had you just leave hunters out of it altogether.
Its just one of those things that I think should be general enough so it stays in evergreen, so we're not playing that same congo with priest's many many many AoE cards in wild.
On that note, acolyte fits in well. I think the real intention is to highlight class limitations/weakness, with some unintended effects (I seriously doubt control warrior is ever coming back because of the lack of draw).
Best warlock deck is probably control galakrond, with around 4 core epic cards and since you get Galakrond for free its not that expensive.
But if you just want to grind up ladder, just play tempo dhunters. Its just faster, and its currently the undisputed best deck in hearthstone standard.
Zoolock gets eviscerated by dhunters, I can't really see anything happening with zoo unless your opponent literally draws shit for 3 turns back to back.
Wouldn't surprise me if the devs have only just been reminded that Juicy Psychmelon existed. Kael'thas might actually break the speed record for the quickest double nerf in hearthstone history.
To be honest hero power at 1 is pretty broken. It allows for so much flexibility, and technically making inspire cards absolutely a nightmare to face against. Ive always thought Illidan's hp, though underwhelming, is already the best in the game for an aggressive class simply because of its efficiency.
It kinda reminds me of rogue's hp at the start of hearthstone where it adds +1 attack to the weapon if you're already holding one, and that quickly spiraled out of control, and having the ability to store the dudes and swarm the board at key turns might be actually impossible for some classes like rogue and hunter to deal with.
Then he'd just destroy any control deck, and being in an evergreen set that's not good.
At the moment, his only weakness is that he's a 9 mana equip a 3/8 weapon. Take that away and Lord Jaraxxus will legit be in contention in every warlock deck right now.
A lot of these nerfs seemed...underwhelming.
Altruis the Outcast and Kael'thas Sunstrider had their mana cost increased by 1, Glaivebound Adept to have that apparently paltry slap to the hand by having his 7 attack reduced by 1. All this seemed to be to be balanced to ensure a slower dhunter aggro deck (due to the not insubstantial nerf to Battlefiend) are not too slow to succeed against spell druid and other dhunter decks.
Frenzied Felwing change is perhaps massive, since it can now be AoE down along with the other aggro cards from dhunters, but its still a ridiculously good card in an aggro deck so I don't predict this card getting dropped any time soon. Bad Luck Albatross is another nerf that generally make it less of an auto include, but a 4/3 is still not too bad, even at 4 mana. Only time can tell if 2 copies of 4 mana 4/3 is too much to see inclusion into decks that plays it.
That change to Open the Waygate. 2 extra to its requirements. Hardly slowing it down against anything but hyper aggro. Not exactly what I had in mind.
And the best nerf/buff to warlock. Sac Pact not longer a 0 mana destroy a key dhunter minion, and no longer troubling the dreams of Lord Jaraxxus. Not that it changes much in the matchup since warlock still have the cards to remain Illidan's strongest enemy.
So I guess not much will change after all.
"target a friendly minion. Set all enemy minions health to 1 and equip a 1/4 weapon"
Lol.
Just one question: How does all these cards make up an OTK scenario from 30 health?
Edit: yeah turns out I had to only click to get the guide. Thanks Thonson.
Sacrificial Pact can still do things even if it only targets friendly minions. Its played unironically in galakrond control warlock in DoD. Healing 5 health for 0 mana is nothing to be snuffed at.
If there's a deathrattle demon like a 1/1 for 3 mana that spawns a 5/5 on death, I'd play sac pact just for that.
If they're nerfing Kael'thas Sunstrider and Altruis the Outcast, then I think Twin Slice fits in just nice. Priestess of Fury is strong, but hardly a problem card. Since dhunter's gonna get their early game slowed down a notch I think its fine to leave it as it is.
I prefer it at 3 so some silly combo can still be done with albatross. Also, allowing it to come out 1 mana earlier means its more effective at doing what it's supposed to be doing in the first place, mostly to block Zephrys the Great. Blocking zephrys 1 turn earlier can be decisive in some games.
Agreed that dhunters will probably be too weak for wild, but as a new class introduced a few weeks back and being vastly outnumbered in terms of cards and years I think its only to be expected.
There's plenty of expansions in the future to prop up dhunters in wild. I think the priority should be on standard first.
Or, perhaps team5 will make the bold move of printing dhunter cards for wild only. That's perhaps an appropriate solution, but I doubt it will ever be done.
After some thought I kinda agree somewhat with you on Bad Luck Albatross. Maybe a nerf to albatross to a 2/2 for 3 mana is perhaps a little too far. Conventionally a tech card should be around 1 mana slower than vanilla, so maybe as a 3/2 is more appropriate.
Mecha'thun warlock already play cards like Emperor Thaurissan to discount the combo. So now they have to weigh either playing an additional Drakkari Enchanter or play Galvanizer + brann. An appropriate nerf to mecha'thun warlock, I think.
Making Bloodbloom work like prep is a nice suggestion, but team5 historically starts by nerfing stuff like mana cost first. They rarely change card descriptions.
I agree that its not a good strategy to print OP cards only to nerf them a few weeks later. But I think we can make an exception to dhunters, since its a new class and the idea is to hype it up as much as possible.
But we're staring down two nerf cycles in 2.5 weeks. That's a little too much honestly.
There's already very few hearthstone tournaments, and what with this virus around we're basically stuck at home for most periods, and then the idea is to ensure that we get to watch only the very final moments of the entire thing?
That's a bad move in my opinion. I was looking forward to grandmasters since DoD, and to find out now that its no longer a round robin throughout and that I don't get to watch the majority of the matches. Is twitch charging you to broadcast games?
Killed all the hype for grandmasters for me. I'd rather they show this instead of that inn-vitational.
Also, what happened to that self deck ban concept that came with conquest the last time round? I thought that was a good idea instead of regular conquest.
EDIT: Okay, I've gone around searching a little. It appears that youtube is still scheduled to broadcast the grandmasters. Not really sure what is happening here, but it may yet be some hope that we can still watch some parts of the grandmasters aside from the final brackets.
Hoping we can watch all of it, fingers crossed, even if they're not live.
Battlefiend - either 1/2 or 2/1. If the idea is to preserve dhunter competitively, then it would be a 1/2. Its still not that weak as a 1/2 honestly, but will definitely hit the class.
Altruis the Outcast - this one is obvious. The nerf will remove its ability to hit the face. Honestly, that was what's broken about this card
Glaivebound Adept - Didint see this one coming to be honest. Will likely tone his attack down to 5. Otherwise the effect will deal 3 damage instead of 4. Maybe even both. a 7/4 is pretty dangerous to leave alive. A 5/4, not as much.
Kael'thas Sunstrider - remove the ability to cast ALL third spells for free. Only the first will cost 0. This, I believe, was the original design. They then went on to make it what it was. Well, its about time that it got back to being normal again. This change will ensure other classes can still do stuff with kael, and will hit only druid hard and I'm okay with that.
Bad Luck Albatross - Well, its been fun. Will likely see a stat nerf to 2/2. Its sin was being good enough to see inclusion in any deck. As a 2/2, not so much.
Frenzied Felwing - Likely cost 6 now. So the earliest you can get this out is at least turn 3. Will likely kill the card and relegate it to being shaman fodder for evolve moves, much like poor old Corridor Creeper.
Open the Waygate - Increase requirement from 6 to 10. Still playable, just weakened for aggro. I much rather they nuke the card, but making it slower might be enough for now.
Bloodbloom - Increase cost to 4. Kinda a shame, I really love the design. But it had to be done at some point. They would probably want to ensure [Hearthstone Card (mecha'tun) Not Found] can still be played, while removing Darkest Hour cheese as a possibility.
Sacrificial Pact - Affect only friendly minions. Yes, you've had your one expansion of fame, now back to the collection book with you until the next time a demon deathrattle gets printed.
Libram of Justice - Mana buff to 5 instead of 6. I don't really know why this one got buffed. They could've just buffed up Libram of Wisdom to a 1 mana spell instead. Maybe after all the nerfs playtesting reveals paladin get to actually play for once, so they'd rather not go too far.
Or...if the idea is to make Libram of Justice one of paladin's best card, just give a 1/2 weapon with immune while attacking. That works as well.
True enough. Arguments here can get heated every now and then but its nowhere near the level of offensive screeching that can be found there.
Vanessa VanCleef at last? Or maybe its Eudora from RoS adventure. Also, what happened to the supposed mage skin, Celeste, or something like that.
Judging historically, it might be a hearthstone only character, something a little light hearted.
I frequent hearthpwn every now and then too, its like going through a zoo exhibit. I have no idea there were others here that share my secret hobby.
Always nice to see more tournaments from hearthstone. Its been kinda barren these last 2 years. There used to be a time where you can watch hearthstone tournaments every 2 weeks or something.
I don't know why you're starting off with this, considering that in your original post basically assumes fault in others for not being able to play around pre-nerfed Imprisoned Antaen. You should have instead displayed all the facts and figures supporting that as you do here. My argument is just that :- many classes/decks can't, hence why I supported the first Imprisoned Antaen nerf.
I applaud the extensive amount of statistics you pulled, but the original argument on this specific point, which I engaged, wasn't about win rates of cards. Its addressing what you stated: "All in all I just find it amusing because if this was Hunter, noone would be complaining but hunter throws out just as much early damage as DH yet flies under the radar all the time. "
Your dose of reality is to show me that stormhammer can potentially* do 12 damage before PoF gets out. What are you comparing here? Damage output in a hunter vs dhunter match? I think its easy enough for me to point out how badly hunters do against dhunters as an argument that dhunters output more damage in a matchup between the two.
Lastly:
I agree that PoF and IA are hardly the most problematic when it comes to assessing dhunters as a whole. But to say that they are 'aren't "winning" the game for them' does not mesh well with your statistics. There's a good reason why PoF have high win rates. They win games. And if other players feel slightly helpless every time they see it played, they ought to be; they're 55.9% likely to lose that game, to quote your stats.
I dont have a premium account from hsreplay, and I can't tell easily how you're pulling these stats out. But if all you wanted to say was that dhunter's early game cards are more responsible for wins than cards like IA and PoF, I would encourage you to just make a statistical comparison of it, instead of insinuating that hunters "flies under the radar all the time". Might have helped your case better had you just leave hunters out of it altogether.
Its just one of those things that I think should be general enough so it stays in evergreen, so we're not playing that same congo with priest's many many many AoE cards in wild.
On that note, acolyte fits in well. I think the real intention is to highlight class limitations/weakness, with some unintended effects (I seriously doubt control warrior is ever coming back because of the lack of draw).
Best warlock deck is probably control galakrond, with around 4 core epic cards and since you get Galakrond for free its not that expensive.
But if you just want to grind up ladder, just play tempo dhunters. Its just faster, and its currently the undisputed best deck in hearthstone standard.
Zoolock gets eviscerated by dhunters, I can't really see anything happening with zoo unless your opponent literally draws shit for 3 turns back to back.
Acolyte of Pain was a perfect neutral card draw engine since its a conditional card. But then it was taken off without any replacement in AoO.
Hopefully some other neutral card draw will be introduced next time.