Feast of Souls, while very good, is not in the same tier as Skull of Gul'dan and therefore I predict that its either going to be nerf contender no. 2, or just plain never seen. There's already plenty of cards that allows dhunter to draw and I don't think, outside of combo decks, they would need something close to Divine Favor just yet.
Eye Beam on the other hand, is my personal nerf contender no. 1. I'm somewhat surprised that the statement from this article merely concludes that it is "very strong". This card swings tempo, and swings tempo as early as turn 1-2 with your opponent effectively locked out by dhunter's own powerful turn 1s and 2. Effectively speaking, if you get this from your mulligan along with a 1-2 drop curve, I'm convinced that you can never lose that game outside of facing control decks. At its best, it clears your opponent's 1-2 drop while ensuring you would be able to establish your own board completely unhindered. Even OP cards like Backstab still only dealt 2 damage and can be skirted by playing a 3 health minion (not exactly rare considering that 2/3s are a staple for turn 2), forcing a hero power from rogue. Eye Beam deals 3 damage, will often be played for no mana, swings tempo, and bizarrely, is capable of healing as well. Even at 3 mana, its essentially a Bash, and is decent. This will likely be in all dhunter decks bar none.
Raging Felscreamer will likely get a small but significant nerf by being turned into a demon. Being a able to stack discounts, and on top of that, discounts that persists between turns is always dangerous. Dhunters are not exactly lacking in very strong demons, so this one will see play in almost all midrange dhunter lists. Dropping a Priestess of Fury turn 5 is a game winning play, very much akin to dropping Ragnaros the Firelord on turn 6.
But it would seem strange to me that they would extend this to golden cards. Is this even important that they do? Most guys I play against barely have any goldens. Make me look special for keeping mine.
Seriously, you must have spent quite a lot of time with this write up. Perhaps it would have been better to space it by opening multiple threads addressing each class.
I'll only be putting out some immediate thoughts. Maybe more later.
Savagery - My own thoughts would be to make this "choose a minion, deal your attack damage to both it and adjacent minions." I dont like the idea of this being able to hit face because there's way too many ways for druid to raise his attack, and I dont like the idea of team5 having to design cards around this conundrum. Being able to do a slight AoE is fine, especially since you need at least 2 cards for this to work decently.
Moonfire - No changes needed. Its already one of the weakest cards outside of Malydruid. And its relatively harmless. Druid often needs to either duplicate their Malygos or this does only 6 damage each. Not remotely threatening.
Tundra Rhino - Its my favourite card, as a disclosure. So I'm obviously not in it to be changed in any way. It enables combo in hunter, and that's saying alot. Hunters dont do combo well for obvious reasons, and outside of combo this is just a soft taunt. Couple that with hunter's atrocious control cards (if any such existed), hunters just never live long enough to see tundra rhino do a 30 damage combo. Every now and then it allows for an occasional burst of 10-15 damage for lethal. When that happens, you'd rightly earned a pat in the back for both setting it up and spotting it. I'd let this one slide. Its perfect the way it is.
Al'Akir the Windlord - Everyone has been laughing at this card for years. It doesnt change the fact that this card has the potential to simply take you down 12 health at 10. Even worse if you can somehow cheat some damage up on this bad boy. Either no changes, or buff him to a 5/7 but change charge to rush. I'd rather him stay as he is, to be honest.
Don't know why there needs to be a 50g quest when its obvious any hearthstoner thats grinding these stuff will pick the 60g ones.
It might as well be 60g by default, to be rerolled into a possible 50, 80 or 100 depending on luck.
But as of late, been seeing more 50g than usual. And it's been a long time since this has happened. Hope the devs come out with a statement soon
I think all quests should give less gold, but we should also get a lot more rewards from playing/winning games. Instead of getting the majority of our gold from the quest and then every third win getting an insult, we should earn around 50% of the gold from logging on and doing a simple task, but then getting the rest from winning/playing.
Agreed. But probably unworkable. That means it might actually be possible to never buy, just grind for packs. While I am in wholehearted support of a model like this, activision is unlikely to approve.
Another method is to reduce the daily quest takings and improve winning rewards. Like 30g per quest, 20g every 3 wins, or even 10g every win. Unfortunately, this will likely spark a backlash from the community, and incentivize netdecking, playing highest win rated decks, or just plain fast aggro decks for the grind.
I think its fair enough to have 10g every 3 wins, miserable as it is. Grinding with face hunter yields quick results, even if you dont climb up ranks. Increase that and its probably wiser to just grind with face hunter. And I've personally no intention of seeing 50% of face hunters in the meta, all grinding for gold.
The outcast mechanic is actually a lot easier to activate than I once thought. Turns out that playing cards is quite easy for dhunters, and they're not exactly low on draw neither.
I think the Gadgetzan Auctioneer synergy doesnt make much sense since dhunters can already draw pretty fast all on their own. Its like 3 or 4 cycle cards and on top of all that is Skull of Gul'dan, practically a mini, slightly more expensive wondrous wand. Dhunters can probably play Chef Nomi with no support other than their cycle cards, just speculating.
I wouldnt mind if dhunters starts out being an aggro-midrange class for the entire 3 months, to be expanded upon in later expansions. Its not like every class gets to play all four archetypes of control, midrange, aggro, and combo at any specific point in the last 6 years anyway.
Again, I would argue its not the quantity of the cards that matters in standard, its quality. It only takes a couple of cards to change how a deck plays or performs. If the quantity of cards really do matter, I dont see why team5 dont just print 10 more cards in the initiate set. They already said the classic for dhunters would probably be a mishmash anyway.
Also, lets point out now that there are certain cards that can be toned down and probably still see play. To take a few examples, Battlefiend is straight up the best 1 drop in the game at its current iteration. It would still see play even if it had 1 less attack. Eye Beam would still be playable even at 1 mana after outcast. I would still consider Coilfang Warlord in my midrange list even if it costed 9. Priestess of Fury will still be a dangerous card even at 8.
And as a bonus, I will point out that the supposed weakness of the class can only be exploited by a few classes by nature of their design. Big minions? the only card dhunters have to legitimately watch out for is Edwin VanCleef. And even then with Eye Beam being so handy at 0 mana, I'm not even sure of that. Board clear? I saw Kibler desperately mulliganing for Consecration and a 2 drop when he saw dhunters, he lost every game as paladin.
So I've been thinking about it and this might actually be pretty good In Plot twist Warlock.
YOu run Broodmother, Betrug and the new Enhanced Dreadlord as your demons, then sruvive until the Betrug turnand use it with Plot Twist to get out a bunch of stuff to stabilize as well as Kanrethad (the base form) so you get to shuffle at least two Primes in the deck, which will act as your lategame powerplays and will usually res something good (Betrug, taunts or lifesteal demons).
Unfortunately there isn't any way to shuffle more Primes
Why shuffle more primes when you can get it off Expired Merchant instead? if you keep the coin or generated it, you can easily just coin Mortal Coil and play the prime with another prime in hand.
This can actually help control warlock get some value instead of using Dragonqueen Alexstrasza.
Theres like no reason to exploit this since we are all guaranteed to play the prologue anyway. I dont remember an adventure that got me wanting to play it day 1 before moving into standard since KotFT.
Hey, just sharing my opinion. You are free to argue or to share yours.
And the argument that they start with less total cards than the others only truly matter in wild, and I'm commenting on standard. I think that goes without saying.
And as far as I'm concerned you can have double or triple the total number of cards but that only means you're flipping more pages. Every deck have 30 cards in them, doesnt matter if you started 6 years ago or now. Right now I'm concerned about the power level of demon hunters relative to the other classes in standard, which I think is a relevent topic of discussion. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun here, we will see about that in 10 days.
I have a feeling that this will be a repeat of what we've seen in DoD, where cards are intentionally designed to be very strong so to poke interest in a specific class/archetype. And much like galakrond shaman, dhunter will likely see some nerfs before the 1st month is over. Just some obvious pointers to how OP the class feels;
- Demon hunters have access to the cheapest hero power in the game which pretty much guarantee 1 health minions to be unplayable against them, as the investment to rid them is so small. It also helps with their mana management. Floating mana in hearthstone is generally considered to be losing plays
- You would think a class that secures tempo with his face would therefore have trouble with dying too fast, ala rogue. Indeed demon hunter plays a tempo game very much like rogue. Unlike rogue however, they have available to them lifesteal minions/weapons, and many of them dont even seem conditional. Ashtongue Battlelord is a card that if introduced as a neutral will be an automatic staple to many classes now that Zilliax is gone. So why would dhunters, who needs to secure tempo with face, have access to this kind of stuff while rogue, zoolock and hunter sit on the sidelines and pray not to die before they're done?
- There are a variety of very very strong, close to OP levels, cards that really dont make much sense how any class bar control can deal with. Eye Beam deals 3 damage, heals for 3, and can and often will, cost nothing. I saw this in the theorycraft stream and can confirm if youve got two of this in your hand and curve 1 and 2 drops, youre never going to lose that game. Period. Couple that with Imprisoned Antaen and Priestess of Fury, and the frankly insane amount of stats all rolled up in one, Coilfang Warlord, I cant imagine how midrange dhunters gets taken down. And all those cards which I mentioned are not legendary so you get to have 2 of each in your deck.
- And if you think dhunter have too many cards that are too OP and cant decide, just build a highlander dhunter. Saw firebat play this and he only lost once the entire stream. Just to give you a glimpse of the future tier 1 of hearthstone. And he only lost to the most high rolling, cheesiest strat in hearthstone. I'll let you guys look it up yourself.
- They keep repeating that dhunters are weak to big minions and to board clears. Three classes out of 10 have unreliable board clears and only one can match tempo with dhunters in the first few turns on the game. The others simply cant develop fast enough in my opinion to even pose a threat.
Just to leave on a more positive note. Expansions not out yet, so there's plenty of room for me to be wrong here. The class is obviously going to be 80% of the meta (because its new) so hang on tight. I think its tier 1, no matter what the build.
I saw some streamer playing this in control warrior during that theorycrafting stream and it looked pretty alright to be honest.
It might be slower than [Hearthstone Card (dyno-matic) Not Found], but since that thing is rotating, this is the closest thing we get to it. Like dyno, it has its uses, can clear up some mid tier stuff or it can kill off tokens. That's still something since warrior will be losing Warpath. Maybe a 1 off? I think its good enough.
dhunter's hero power's already messing with both baku and gen, the latter in especially since the hp is already at 1. Pretty sure the upgraded version is 2 attack. Keep us posted, for those trying.
In my opinion Infectious Sporeling is a tech card, used to remove big threats and deathrattles. As a card to build around itself, its kinda counter intuitive to have buffs stack on the little guy, since your opponent, after being transformed, will easily just use the same sporeling against you.
Your deck is too heavy, and allows your opponent to take advantage of the sporeling you gave him. Build a libram zoo type deck, with plenty of little minions instead of big ones. Magic Carpet is a must. Have more battlecry minions, not deathrattle (anti synergy). Since Leeroy Jenkins is no longer here, Reckless Rocketeer or Wolfrider is your win condition. Have buff cards like Blessing of Might; Blessed Champion so you can steal a win. Blessing of Might actually works very well with Lady Liadrin, more so than the librams really.
The only one thing good about this card is that its a 4/4 murloc, and it has an upside. Paired with Coldlight Seer makes a pretty big minion and that's saying much for murlocs.
Unfortunately, as Prismatic Lens is rotating, we wont be seeing any murloc shenanigans from paladin. And Murloc Tastyfin with his nose is rotating too, so if this card gets played its most likely to be in shaman and nowhere else.
Its going to be a rough time to be a murloc in AoO but at least this card will see plenty of play in battlegrounds.
Feast of Souls, while very good, is not in the same tier as Skull of Gul'dan and therefore I predict that its either going to be nerf contender no. 2, or just plain never seen. There's already plenty of cards that allows dhunter to draw and I don't think, outside of combo decks, they would need something close to Divine Favor just yet.
Eye Beam on the other hand, is my personal nerf contender no. 1. I'm somewhat surprised that the statement from this article merely concludes that it is "very strong". This card swings tempo, and swings tempo as early as turn 1-2 with your opponent effectively locked out by dhunter's own powerful turn 1s and 2. Effectively speaking, if you get this from your mulligan along with a 1-2 drop curve, I'm convinced that you can never lose that game outside of facing control decks. At its best, it clears your opponent's 1-2 drop while ensuring you would be able to establish your own board completely unhindered. Even OP cards like Backstab still only dealt 2 damage and can be skirted by playing a 3 health minion (not exactly rare considering that 2/3s are a staple for turn 2), forcing a hero power from rogue. Eye Beam deals 3 damage, will often be played for no mana, swings tempo, and bizarrely, is capable of healing as well. Even at 3 mana, its essentially a Bash, and is decent. This will likely be in all dhunter decks bar none.
Raging Felscreamer will likely get a small but significant nerf by being turned into a demon. Being a able to stack discounts, and on top of that, discounts that persists between turns is always dangerous. Dhunters are not exactly lacking in very strong demons, so this one will see play in almost all midrange dhunter lists. Dropping a Priestess of Fury turn 5 is a game winning play, very much akin to dropping Ragnaros the Firelord on turn 6.
theorycraft stream. Its in their twitch video history. Happened like 3 days ago, I think.
But if you're not keen on following the 7 hr video, firebat made some kind of montage of his time with dhunter in youtube.
I guess I misunderstood. Sorry.
But it would seem strange to me that they would extend this to golden cards. Is this even important that they do? Most guys I play against barely have any goldens. Make me look special for keeping mine.
I have had a more than 2x golden cards before. So I guess not.
Seriously, you must have spent quite a lot of time with this write up. Perhaps it would have been better to space it by opening multiple threads addressing each class.
I'll only be putting out some immediate thoughts. Maybe more later.
Savagery - My own thoughts would be to make this "choose a minion, deal your attack damage to both it and adjacent minions." I dont like the idea of this being able to hit face because there's way too many ways for druid to raise his attack, and I dont like the idea of team5 having to design cards around this conundrum. Being able to do a slight AoE is fine, especially since you need at least 2 cards for this to work decently.
Moonfire - No changes needed. Its already one of the weakest cards outside of Malydruid. And its relatively harmless. Druid often needs to either duplicate their Malygos or this does only 6 damage each. Not remotely threatening.
Tundra Rhino - Its my favourite card, as a disclosure. So I'm obviously not in it to be changed in any way. It enables combo in hunter, and that's saying alot. Hunters dont do combo well for obvious reasons, and outside of combo this is just a soft taunt. Couple that with hunter's atrocious control cards (if any such existed), hunters just never live long enough to see tundra rhino do a 30 damage combo. Every now and then it allows for an occasional burst of 10-15 damage for lethal. When that happens, you'd rightly earned a pat in the back for both setting it up and spotting it. I'd let this one slide. Its perfect the way it is.
Al'Akir the Windlord - Everyone has been laughing at this card for years. It doesnt change the fact that this card has the potential to simply take you down 12 health at 10. Even worse if you can somehow cheat some damage up on this bad boy. Either no changes, or buff him to a 5/7 but change charge to rush. I'd rather him stay as he is, to be honest.
Agreed. But probably unworkable. That means it might actually be possible to never buy, just grind for packs. While I am in wholehearted support of a model like this, activision is unlikely to approve.
Another method is to reduce the daily quest takings and improve winning rewards. Like 30g per quest, 20g every 3 wins, or even 10g every win. Unfortunately, this will likely spark a backlash from the community, and incentivize netdecking, playing highest win rated decks, or just plain fast aggro decks for the grind.
I think its fair enough to have 10g every 3 wins, miserable as it is. Grinding with face hunter yields quick results, even if you dont climb up ranks. Increase that and its probably wiser to just grind with face hunter. And I've personally no intention of seeing 50% of face hunters in the meta, all grinding for gold.
Dont know why there needs to be a 50g quest when its obvious any hearthstoner thats grinding these stuff will pick the 60g ones.
It might as well be 60g by default, to be rerolled into a possible 50, 80 or 100 depending on luck.
But as of late, been seeing more 50g than usual. And its been a long time since this has happened. Hope the devs come out with a statement soon
The outcast mechanic is actually a lot easier to activate than I once thought. Turns out that playing cards is quite easy for dhunters, and they're not exactly low on draw neither.
I think the Gadgetzan Auctioneer synergy doesnt make much sense since dhunters can already draw pretty fast all on their own. Its like 3 or 4 cycle cards and on top of all that is Skull of Gul'dan, practically a mini, slightly more expensive wondrous wand. Dhunters can probably play Chef Nomi with no support other than their cycle cards, just speculating.
I wouldnt mind if dhunters starts out being an aggro-midrange class for the entire 3 months, to be expanded upon in later expansions. Its not like every class gets to play all four archetypes of control, midrange, aggro, and combo at any specific point in the last 6 years anyway.
Again, I would argue its not the quantity of the cards that matters in standard, its quality. It only takes a couple of cards to change how a deck plays or performs. If the quantity of cards really do matter, I dont see why team5 dont just print 10 more cards in the initiate set. They already said the classic for dhunters would probably be a mishmash anyway.
Also, lets point out now that there are certain cards that can be toned down and probably still see play. To take a few examples, Battlefiend is straight up the best 1 drop in the game at its current iteration. It would still see play even if it had 1 less attack. Eye Beam would still be playable even at 1 mana after outcast. I would still consider Coilfang Warlord in my midrange list even if it costed 9. Priestess of Fury will still be a dangerous card even at 8.
And as a bonus, I will point out that the supposed weakness of the class can only be exploited by a few classes by nature of their design. Big minions? the only card dhunters have to legitimately watch out for is Edwin VanCleef. And even then with Eye Beam being so handy at 0 mana, I'm not even sure of that. Board clear? I saw Kibler desperately mulliganing for Consecration and a 2 drop when he saw dhunters, he lost every game as paladin.
Why shuffle more primes when you can get it off Expired Merchant instead? if you keep the coin or generated it, you can easily just coin Mortal Coil and play the prime with another prime in hand.
This can actually help control warlock get some value instead of using Dragonqueen Alexstrasza.
Theres like no reason to exploit this since we are all guaranteed to play the prologue anyway. I dont remember an adventure that got me wanting to play it day 1 before moving into standard since KotFT.
I rolled like a 50 into another 50. Never had that happen to me for like the past three months. So no idea whats going on.
But hey, at least there's some incentive to reroll every day.
Hey, just sharing my opinion. You are free to argue or to share yours.
And the argument that they start with less total cards than the others only truly matter in wild, and I'm commenting on standard. I think that goes without saying.
And as far as I'm concerned you can have double or triple the total number of cards but that only means you're flipping more pages. Every deck have 30 cards in them, doesnt matter if you started 6 years ago or now. Right now I'm concerned about the power level of demon hunters relative to the other classes in standard, which I think is a relevent topic of discussion. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun here, we will see about that in 10 days.
I have a feeling that this will be a repeat of what we've seen in DoD, where cards are intentionally designed to be very strong so to poke interest in a specific class/archetype. And much like galakrond shaman, dhunter will likely see some nerfs before the 1st month is over. Just some obvious pointers to how OP the class feels;
- Demon hunters have access to the cheapest hero power in the game which pretty much guarantee 1 health minions to be unplayable against them, as the investment to rid them is so small. It also helps with their mana management. Floating mana in hearthstone is generally considered to be losing plays
- You would think a class that secures tempo with his face would therefore have trouble with dying too fast, ala rogue. Indeed demon hunter plays a tempo game very much like rogue. Unlike rogue however, they have available to them lifesteal minions/weapons, and many of them dont even seem conditional. Ashtongue Battlelord is a card that if introduced as a neutral will be an automatic staple to many classes now that Zilliax is gone. So why would dhunters, who needs to secure tempo with face, have access to this kind of stuff while rogue, zoolock and hunter sit on the sidelines and pray not to die before they're done?
- There are a variety of very very strong, close to OP levels, cards that really dont make much sense how any class bar control can deal with. Eye Beam deals 3 damage, heals for 3, and can and often will, cost nothing. I saw this in the theorycraft stream and can confirm if youve got two of this in your hand and curve 1 and 2 drops, youre never going to lose that game. Period. Couple that with Imprisoned Antaen and Priestess of Fury, and the frankly insane amount of stats all rolled up in one, Coilfang Warlord, I cant imagine how midrange dhunters gets taken down. And all those cards which I mentioned are not legendary so you get to have 2 of each in your deck.
- And if you think dhunter have too many cards that are too OP and cant decide, just build a highlander dhunter. Saw firebat play this and he only lost once the entire stream. Just to give you a glimpse of the future tier 1 of hearthstone. And he only lost to the most high rolling, cheesiest strat in hearthstone. I'll let you guys look it up yourself.
- They keep repeating that dhunters are weak to big minions and to board clears. Three classes out of 10 have unreliable board clears and only one can match tempo with dhunters in the first few turns on the game. The others simply cant develop fast enough in my opinion to even pose a threat.
Just to leave on a more positive note. Expansions not out yet, so there's plenty of room for me to be wrong here. The class is obviously going to be 80% of the meta (because its new) so hang on tight. I think its tier 1, no matter what the build.
I saw some streamer playing this in control warrior during that theorycrafting stream and it looked pretty alright to be honest.
It might be slower than [Hearthstone Card (dyno-matic) Not Found], but since that thing is rotating, this is the closest thing we get to it. Like dyno, it has its uses, can clear up some mid tier stuff or it can kill off tokens. That's still something since warrior will be losing Warpath. Maybe a 1 off? I think its good enough.
dhunter's hero power's already messing with both baku and gen, the latter in especially since the hp is already at 1. Pretty sure the upgraded version is 2 attack. Keep us posted, for those trying.
In my opinion Infectious Sporeling is a tech card, used to remove big threats and deathrattles. As a card to build around itself, its kinda counter intuitive to have buffs stack on the little guy, since your opponent, after being transformed, will easily just use the same sporeling against you.
Your deck is too heavy, and allows your opponent to take advantage of the sporeling you gave him. Build a libram zoo type deck, with plenty of little minions instead of big ones. Magic Carpet is a must. Have more battlecry minions, not deathrattle (anti synergy). Since Leeroy Jenkins is no longer here, Reckless Rocketeer or Wolfrider is your win condition. Have buff cards like Blessing of Might; Blessed Champion so you can steal a win. Blessing of Might actually works very well with Lady Liadrin, more so than the librams really.
- Lady Liadrin - Love the libram synergy.
- Metamorphosis - Because I like to win
- Shadowjeweler Hanar - Secret rogue will likely be top tier. Though I doubt this card will be in it, I like to believe
- Maiev Shadowsong - Its a neutral sap. And its Maiev Shadowsong.
- Evocation - I'm convinced if tempo mage makes a comeback this will be at the forefront.
The only one thing good about this card is that its a 4/4 murloc, and it has an upside. Paired with Coldlight Seer makes a pretty big minion and that's saying much for murlocs.
Unfortunately, as Prismatic Lens is rotating, we wont be seeing any murloc shenanigans from paladin. And Murloc Tastyfin with his nose is rotating too, so if this card gets played its most likely to be in shaman and nowhere else.
Its going to be a rough time to be a murloc in AoO but at least this card will see plenty of play in battlegrounds.
If I craft cards day 1, then open packs, will the ruling still register me as having those cards and therefore I wont be opening them in packs?
Because if it doesnt, then day 1 crafting epics is counter intuitive, as it has been in the past.