Assuming you can trigger this easily on 4, its not a bad minion in of itself.
But its spiritual predecessor Oil Rig Ambusher had a better statline and is more consistent. But it saw no play even when barrens were first introduced. Granted that then there wasn't any synergy with combo cards.
The main problem would be figuring out where this card actually fits into. Since both draka and Sinstone Graveyard will still be in standard, its never going into any miracle builds, and tempo rogue has pirates. Unless combo synergy eclipse both, this card doesn't have a chance in hell.
This is precisely what I thought would be the problem with the rune system. It keyholes players into playing very specific designs of decks. Most likely team5 already figured out the perfect 25 cards, leaving only 5 flexes. In other words, there's no point debating cards like these - its viability is dependent on the deck's viability. You cant play this card in other archetypes like a second win-con (like how you can fit denathrius into implock for that reason). Its either going to work because rainbow DK works, or its going to be unplayable, because rainbow DK sucks.
This card can literally be played in any DK deck, if not for the rune system. And it might make archetypes like blood, unholy or frost less one dimensional.
As for the card, well, its certainly a finisher. There's a good reason why team5 disabled generating/discovering this card and that reason is because its plain insane. Its either going to outright win you the game or build a board that will do it a turn after.
Will it make rainbow DK playable though? Well, Im not that optimistic but it can happen. If we somehow get a rainbow expensive spell, we might even tempt a Barbaric Sorceress build.
Its massive health pool is what really makes this card good. If you can somehow heal it back, like Circle of Healing, or Fan Club, then its an amazing card for its cost.
But more likely someone will find a way to OTK the opponent out from this card. Fortunately, priest does not yet have a card that heals minions multiple times.
If thief decks are still in, then there's definitely a good reason to play this card. Unfortunately, in every other deck this is just plain inconsistent at best. The real question is why play this instead of a card that does what you want 100% of the time.
I will concede, that against certain classes like DK or warrior, chances are good you'll discover a card you need in that matchup. Because against control warrior you'll likely get a more aggressive spell, vice versa.
In constructed however, the question really is will this actually clear the board? 3 damage is hefty, but most common minions tend to be on 4 health or more so this can clear mostly tokens while leaving the more important minions alive.
Likely its only a real consideration for controlock. In other archetypes its too conditional, too slow, or just plain useless. Auto include in highlander, if nothing else.
Solid card for aggro druid. But unfortunately, aggro druid is not just dead I simply dont see it ever coming back. Because in what world will we play aggro druid and not just plain unholy DK, which is practically the same thing but better.
However, this card is pretty good nevertheless...for a bad deck nobody plays.
Its a better Seance, and you get to choose whether the buff triggers or not.
One of those weird keyword cards that would probably be more often played untriggered. Because I cant see this ever seeing play in a board based priest deck.
Its the kind of card that makes you want to tear what remains of your hair off your head.
But fortunately, this card is not easy to take full advantage of. Firstly, it needs to be equipped before it improves, and secondly it takes combo cards to improve it. These two conditions, added with the fact that this card is 3 mana, should more or less prevent the usual turn 5 death from draka, or early 10/10s from Sinstone Graveyard. And there's always ooze, if nothing else.
Wont be too surprised to see this nerfed either way. Hearthstone has consistently show that mana cheating, however convoluted, will almost always be broken at some point.
Im pretty sure this card will see play. But not so sure if its ever going to be as good as it looks.
Basically what it essentially does is to negate the self damage from weapon attacks, or force a hp from your opponent. It'll never realistically corner your opponent into suboptimal plays, or negate as much damage as Lightforged Cariel does. But for a 3 mana investment its fine, I guess. Control pally usually plays enough holy spells that we can see this triggering at least 5 times per game.
Sadly, this can never fit into anything outside control. It forces you to give up tempo and for pally that's usually a death sentence. Unfortunate. Because imagine this negating damage from Blood Crusader and cheat out something big with no drawback.
Its a better but less consistent Siamat, and that card only ever saw play in highlander decks
In other words, I dont think this card will make it. Just imagine the amount of bs cards you have to play just for this card to be good. Even in pally, where menagerie builds are possible this card cant fit because of racist discrimination against neutral cards.
Its best fit is highlander, the land where anything stands a chance for a call up.
Its a support card for something warlocks love to do and as such like Malchezaar's Imp it has to be respected despite there not being any obvious combo now.
Of course, this card hasn't a snowball's chance in hell to survive past its first turn, but for what's it worth its still a 1/3 for 1 and that's fine as long as you're not keeping it for some combo.
The main problem is its high cost, and there not being any cheap cards that actively allows you to take advantage of it. Assuming that team5 is pushing rainbow DK hard (and it seems like they are) then we can easily assume that there must be some card not revealed that will make this better.
But honestly though, the card is too slow even with a 0 mana card that adds to health.
Unintuitive, sure. But for balance sake I guess we can make exceptions. Especially since it means we dont nerf cards just because one particular card is causing trouble.
I wished they have just done this with Mr. Smite and not nerfed the shit out of him and all the other associated cards like nellie.
The video doesn't generate any hype in me for some reason. Seems underwhelming, or maybe its something I ate while watching it.
Would be nice if certain cards in this expansion can change the hearthstone background music so at the end youre probably listening to some crazy medley of different genres. Would reinforce the theme of the expansion as well.
Finale as a keyword is basically going to succeed if only because its the easiest to trigger. The only bumps being that the higher your maximum mana the harder it is to do it. Ironically it might be the only keyword in hearthstone history that is actually harder to trigger the lower the card's mana cost.
Harmonic spells need to be really good, because otherwise it'll never be played. We've seen this in witchwood and it was crap then because the cards were fairly poor and the lack of consistency doomed whatever hope it had.
I hate the new weapons already. Surely druid will get one, and that's yet another trigger in wild for that bs twig. Looking at Record Scratcher Ive a feeling that the weapons would suffer several nerfs or ooze will once again be in every deck.
All in all, seems like we're heading towards a good start of the new hearthstone year. Let's hope the usual bugs, balancing issues, and druids dont ruin it for me this time.
- Starlight Groove is interesting but its so difficult to justify in anything other than control pally. And then there's two other issues with that; first tutoring this because Knight of Anointment wouldnt be in standard anymore, and then having enough holy spells to annoy or deny the opponent. Most of the time its best function would be to negate damage from your weapon swings, because 90% of the time your opponent will simply ping your shield away before stomping your face.
It can also negate damage off the blood pally cards but you'll never run this card just to do that, its neither consistent enough and playing 3 mana no board is kinda harsh.
- Fan Club would probably be one of the more important priest card in this set and beyond.
- The One-Amalgam Band probably cant gain charge, because if it does then it justify playing a bs zoo-like deck. What a shame, because its completely worthless otherwise.
- Void Virtuoso is great in wild, but in standard there's really not many cards that take advantage of it. I'd suspect that this expansion will provide more cards that damages self for warlock.
I think its mostly a response to the lack of viewers and discussion amongst members. I come here mostly for banter and news, and unfortunately that's been far and few in between now.
But I feel any long time member of this site already saw this coming years ago. Hearthstone is a declining game, although still very much on the top. So it makes sense that the associated websites of hearthstone content has also steadily declined over the years. OoC has made the correct move by diversifying away from hearthstone but that is still what most of its base come here for. And with its decline, OoC naturally suffers to raise enough funds to justify its existence.
Without funds, the site cant do as many cool stuff as it would like. But without the cool stuff, it wont get as many funds in as well. A vicious cycle business is indeed.
But at higher MMR its nearly impossible to see a blizz bot. Even at bronze wild I've never encountered them much, or at least Ive never noticed it. Most of the time I'd get player bots, but not an outright blizz bot.
There's likely a trigger for it, like you'd have to have low MMR, at a losing streak, or after a certain queue time. There's also a likelihood its a playerbot masquerading as blizz bots to avoid being reported.
All I say is that if you get a freebie, just enjoy it. Wish I get some of these too, particularly after going 4 losses in a row.
Control warrior's biggest problem right now is not win cons, its speed. Its dreadfully slow, much more so than every other class at the moment. Even pally and priest draw faster than warrior and are better at dealing with boards. I have a feeling that part of the reason for that is that the cards are designed with pre-nerfed From the Depths in mind and they didn't want to revert it back.
Either they slow every class down (which can be possible given that rotation is next) or they give warrior better card draw and cheaper sustain cards.
From the notes, it might be that they're looking at bringing Battle Rage back to standard, and some of the cards that made that card great. Whatever it is, just hope they dont bring back bomb warrior.
Well, I wasn't expecting team5 to completely obliterate the two cards from wild.
Spectral Pillager is so terrible now its almost like a joke card. Might as well just gave it the warsong treatment, because in what world is this a card anyone would be playing? Couldve made it 3 mana to at least make it playable, but I think we all know that the plan is simply to nuke it, not otherwise.
Cataclysm is more reasonable a change, because its not strictly bad, and can still fit into discolock, assuming that deck even needs it. They wanted mechacthun off warlock's list and this change properly does that.
As for standard,
Construct Quarter is well dealt with, because I tested DK and found this card terrible on mulligan. Just too slow now for aggro. I dare say it might still be good enough in blood decks, but I wouldn't bet on it. Egg on 1 into coin this is no longer possible at least.
Goldshire Gnoll nerf is more a nerf to shaman decks, and as a result I dont foresee evolve shaman even being relevant again until the next set of support cards printed for it. Blazing Transmutation just came out a couple of weeks ago and now its completely dead. Is there any reason why this card was printed again?
That said, shaman can still make a comeback via big shaman. Its not great, but its not giga trash neither. More like tier 2-3, and given a good hand can still easy scam games via neptulon-voljin. With more work, it might even be consistently tier 2. We'll have to see.
Without a shadow of a doubt the biggest winners here is paladin. Frost aggro DK takes tempo so well paladin got completely wiped out so no surprise its coming back. I think 70% of all my games recently is just pure or control pure pally.
Shaggro priest is actually pretty decent and might actually be tier 1, depending on how aggro the meta will be.
Warrior? Dont bother, still dead. Far as Im aware there's some concerted effort to make quest warrior good again, but at some point we'll probably just come right back to enrage all over again. Ironically, warrior's best matchup is into frost DK but that's taken down a peg now so Garrosh can go right back into warming benches for another month, when the new expansion comes in. Fingers crossed warrior wont be screwed for the third time in a row.
So, some relief for wild players because there's plenty of OTK in that format. Addressing some of the more annoying ones is the right step. I dont play wild at a high level, but I feel not addressing Twig of the World Tree bs is possibly a mistake.
But for standard, there's two very obvious candidates and a few misses in my opinion.
Construct Quarter spawns a 4/5 rush for 3 mana. That alone is insane enough. Not sure how team5 will address this but if they either remove the rush or lower it down to a 3/4 that would substantially reduce DK's tempo and allow other decks like pally to actually take board. But more likely they'll just nerf it to 2 uses instead.
Goldshire Gnoll nerf is unfortunate, because its one of those cards most control decks would want to help against aggro. But team5 just had to ruin it by printing Blazing Transmutation, a card that would otherwise be unplayable. So we nerf gnoll to 11 mana probably, so where does this leave blazing transmutation at?
Grey Sage Parrot is tricky. They can revert this back to 8 mana and this card becomes unplayable. Or they can change this to cast a copy of a spell that costs 5 mana or more last turn instead of any previous turn. Its probably a nerf more impactful to wild than standard.
Not nerfing Frostwyrm's Fury is probably a mistake. If you want to know why there isn't any other viable aggro or midrange deck around, this is the main reason why. Not only does this immediately flip board, it can be tutored, and it can be discovered - to a frankly ridiculously consistent degree. Its practically Snowfall Guardian that only targets one side, and in a more aggressive class/deck.
Its a frustrating experience going against DK to be honest. You'll never be 100% sure how to mulligan against them and their cards (at what they do) are simply better than everyone else's. Its identity at this point is 'whatever you want to do I can do better'. Another reason why I dont like the rune system.
Assuming you can trigger this easily on 4, its not a bad minion in of itself.
But its spiritual predecessor Oil Rig Ambusher had a better statline and is more consistent. But it saw no play even when barrens were first introduced. Granted that then there wasn't any synergy with combo cards.
The main problem would be figuring out where this card actually fits into. Since both draka and Sinstone Graveyard will still be in standard, its never going into any miracle builds, and tempo rogue has pirates. Unless combo synergy eclipse both, this card doesn't have a chance in hell.
First, a rant.
This is precisely what I thought would be the problem with the rune system. It keyholes players into playing very specific designs of decks. Most likely team5 already figured out the perfect 25 cards, leaving only 5 flexes. In other words, there's no point debating cards like these - its viability is dependent on the deck's viability. You cant play this card in other archetypes like a second win-con (like how you can fit denathrius into implock for that reason). Its either going to work because rainbow DK works, or its going to be unplayable, because rainbow DK sucks.
This card can literally be played in any DK deck, if not for the rune system. And it might make archetypes like blood, unholy or frost less one dimensional.
As for the card, well, its certainly a finisher. There's a good reason why team5 disabled generating/discovering this card and that reason is because its plain insane. Its either going to outright win you the game or build a board that will do it a turn after.
Will it make rainbow DK playable though? Well, Im not that optimistic but it can happen. If we somehow get a rainbow expensive spell, we might even tempt a Barbaric Sorceress build.
Its massive health pool is what really makes this card good. If you can somehow heal it back, like Circle of Healing, or Fan Club, then its an amazing card for its cost.
But more likely someone will find a way to OTK the opponent out from this card. Fortunately, priest does not yet have a card that heals minions multiple times.
Probably crap, but niche crap.
If thief decks are still in, then there's definitely a good reason to play this card. Unfortunately, in every other deck this is just plain inconsistent at best. The real question is why play this instead of a card that does what you want 100% of the time.
I will concede, that against certain classes like DK or warrior, chances are good you'll discover a card you need in that matchup. Because against control warrior you'll likely get a more aggressive spell, vice versa.
Solid card for arena.
In constructed however, the question really is will this actually clear the board? 3 damage is hefty, but most common minions tend to be on 4 health or more so this can clear mostly tokens while leaving the more important minions alive.
Likely its only a real consideration for controlock. In other archetypes its too conditional, too slow, or just plain useless. Auto include in highlander, if nothing else.
Solid card for aggro druid. But unfortunately, aggro druid is not just dead I simply dont see it ever coming back. Because in what world will we play aggro druid and not just plain unholy DK, which is practically the same thing but better.
However, this card is pretty good nevertheless...for a bad deck nobody plays.
Its a better Seance, and you get to choose whether the buff triggers or not.
One of those weird keyword cards that would probably be more often played untriggered. Because I cant see this ever seeing play in a board based priest deck.
Probably see play in control, and nowhere else.
Its the kind of card that makes you want to tear what remains of your hair off your head.
But fortunately, this card is not easy to take full advantage of. Firstly, it needs to be equipped before it improves, and secondly it takes combo cards to improve it. These two conditions, added with the fact that this card is 3 mana, should more or less prevent the usual turn 5 death from draka, or early 10/10s from Sinstone Graveyard. And there's always ooze, if nothing else.
Wont be too surprised to see this nerfed either way. Hearthstone has consistently show that mana cheating, however convoluted, will almost always be broken at some point.
Im pretty sure this card will see play. But not so sure if its ever going to be as good as it looks.
Basically what it essentially does is to negate the self damage from weapon attacks, or force a hp from your opponent. It'll never realistically corner your opponent into suboptimal plays, or negate as much damage as Lightforged Cariel does. But for a 3 mana investment its fine, I guess. Control pally usually plays enough holy spells that we can see this triggering at least 5 times per game.
Sadly, this can never fit into anything outside control. It forces you to give up tempo and for pally that's usually a death sentence. Unfortunate. Because imagine this negating damage from Blood Crusader and cheat out something big with no drawback.
Its a better but less consistent Siamat, and that card only ever saw play in highlander decks
In other words, I dont think this card will make it. Just imagine the amount of bs cards you have to play just for this card to be good. Even in pally, where menagerie builds are possible this card cant fit because of racist discrimination against neutral cards.
Its best fit is highlander, the land where anything stands a chance for a call up.
Its a support card for something warlocks love to do and as such like Malchezaar's Imp it has to be respected despite there not being any obvious combo now.
Of course, this card hasn't a snowball's chance in hell to survive past its first turn, but for what's it worth its still a 1/3 for 1 and that's fine as long as you're not keeping it for some combo.
It has potential but probably shit in practice.
The main problem is its high cost, and there not being any cheap cards that actively allows you to take advantage of it. Assuming that team5 is pushing rainbow DK hard (and it seems like they are) then we can easily assume that there must be some card not revealed that will make this better.
But honestly though, the card is too slow even with a 0 mana card that adds to health.
Unintuitive, sure. But for balance sake I guess we can make exceptions. Especially since it means we dont nerf cards just because one particular card is causing trouble.
I wished they have just done this with Mr. Smite and not nerfed the shit out of him and all the other associated cards like nellie.
The video doesn't generate any hype in me for some reason. Seems underwhelming, or maybe its something I ate while watching it.
Would be nice if certain cards in this expansion can change the hearthstone background music so at the end youre probably listening to some crazy medley of different genres. Would reinforce the theme of the expansion as well.
Finale as a keyword is basically going to succeed if only because its the easiest to trigger. The only bumps being that the higher your maximum mana the harder it is to do it. Ironically it might be the only keyword in hearthstone history that is actually harder to trigger the lower the card's mana cost.
Harmonic spells need to be really good, because otherwise it'll never be played. We've seen this in witchwood and it was crap then because the cards were fairly poor and the lack of consistency doomed whatever hope it had.
I hate the new weapons already. Surely druid will get one, and that's yet another trigger in wild for that bs twig. Looking at Record Scratcher Ive a feeling that the weapons would suffer several nerfs or ooze will once again be in every deck.
All in all, seems like we're heading towards a good start of the new hearthstone year. Let's hope the usual bugs, balancing issues, and druids dont ruin it for me this time.
Well, new cards;
- Starlight Groove is interesting but its so difficult to justify in anything other than control pally. And then there's two other issues with that; first tutoring this because Knight of Anointment wouldnt be in standard anymore, and then having enough holy spells to annoy or deny the opponent. Most of the time its best function would be to negate damage from your weapon swings, because 90% of the time your opponent will simply ping your shield away before stomping your face.
It can also negate damage off the blood pally cards but you'll never run this card just to do that, its neither consistent enough and playing 3 mana no board is kinda harsh.
- Fan Club would probably be one of the more important priest card in this set and beyond.
- The One-Amalgam Band probably cant gain charge, because if it does then it justify playing a bs zoo-like deck. What a shame, because its completely worthless otherwise.
- Void Virtuoso is great in wild, but in standard there's really not many cards that take advantage of it. I'd suspect that this expansion will provide more cards that damages self for warlock.
I think its mostly a response to the lack of viewers and discussion amongst members. I come here mostly for banter and news, and unfortunately that's been far and few in between now.
But I feel any long time member of this site already saw this coming years ago. Hearthstone is a declining game, although still very much on the top. So it makes sense that the associated websites of hearthstone content has also steadily declined over the years. OoC has made the correct move by diversifying away from hearthstone but that is still what most of its base come here for. And with its decline, OoC naturally suffers to raise enough funds to justify its existence.
Without funds, the site cant do as many cool stuff as it would like. But without the cool stuff, it wont get as many funds in as well. A vicious cycle business is indeed.
At lower MMR its possible, especially in classic.
But at higher MMR its nearly impossible to see a blizz bot. Even at bronze wild I've never encountered them much, or at least Ive never noticed it. Most of the time I'd get player bots, but not an outright blizz bot.
There's likely a trigger for it, like you'd have to have low MMR, at a losing streak, or after a certain queue time. There's also a likelihood its a playerbot masquerading as blizz bots to avoid being reported.
All I say is that if you get a freebie, just enjoy it. Wish I get some of these too, particularly after going 4 losses in a row.
Control warrior's biggest problem right now is not win cons, its speed. Its dreadfully slow, much more so than every other class at the moment. Even pally and priest draw faster than warrior and are better at dealing with boards. I have a feeling that part of the reason for that is that the cards are designed with pre-nerfed From the Depths in mind and they didn't want to revert it back.
Either they slow every class down (which can be possible given that rotation is next) or they give warrior better card draw and cheaper sustain cards.
From the notes, it might be that they're looking at bringing Battle Rage back to standard, and some of the cards that made that card great. Whatever it is, just hope they dont bring back bomb warrior.
Well, I wasn't expecting team5 to completely obliterate the two cards from wild.
Spectral Pillager is so terrible now its almost like a joke card. Might as well just gave it the warsong treatment, because in what world is this a card anyone would be playing? Couldve made it 3 mana to at least make it playable, but I think we all know that the plan is simply to nuke it, not otherwise.
Cataclysm is more reasonable a change, because its not strictly bad, and can still fit into discolock, assuming that deck even needs it. They wanted mechacthun off warlock's list and this change properly does that.
As for standard,
Construct Quarter is well dealt with, because I tested DK and found this card terrible on mulligan. Just too slow now for aggro. I dare say it might still be good enough in blood decks, but I wouldn't bet on it. Egg on 1 into coin this is no longer possible at least.
Goldshire Gnoll nerf is more a nerf to shaman decks, and as a result I dont foresee evolve shaman even being relevant again until the next set of support cards printed for it. Blazing Transmutation just came out a couple of weeks ago and now its completely dead. Is there any reason why this card was printed again?
That said, shaman can still make a comeback via big shaman. Its not great, but its not giga trash neither. More like tier 2-3, and given a good hand can still easy scam games via neptulon-voljin. With more work, it might even be consistently tier 2. We'll have to see.
Without a shadow of a doubt the biggest winners here is paladin. Frost aggro DK takes tempo so well paladin got completely wiped out so no surprise its coming back. I think 70% of all my games recently is just pure or control pure pally.
Shaggro priest is actually pretty decent and might actually be tier 1, depending on how aggro the meta will be.
Warrior? Dont bother, still dead. Far as Im aware there's some concerted effort to make quest warrior good again, but at some point we'll probably just come right back to enrage all over again. Ironically, warrior's best matchup is into frost DK but that's taken down a peg now so Garrosh can go right back into warming benches for another month, when the new expansion comes in. Fingers crossed warrior wont be screwed for the third time in a row.
So, some relief for wild players because there's plenty of OTK in that format. Addressing some of the more annoying ones is the right step. I dont play wild at a high level, but I feel not addressing Twig of the World Tree bs is possibly a mistake.
But for standard, there's two very obvious candidates and a few misses in my opinion.
Construct Quarter spawns a 4/5 rush for 3 mana. That alone is insane enough. Not sure how team5 will address this but if they either remove the rush or lower it down to a 3/4 that would substantially reduce DK's tempo and allow other decks like pally to actually take board. But more likely they'll just nerf it to 2 uses instead.
Goldshire Gnoll nerf is unfortunate, because its one of those cards most control decks would want to help against aggro. But team5 just had to ruin it by printing Blazing Transmutation, a card that would otherwise be unplayable. So we nerf gnoll to 11 mana probably, so where does this leave blazing transmutation at?
Grey Sage Parrot is tricky. They can revert this back to 8 mana and this card becomes unplayable. Or they can change this to cast a copy of a spell that costs 5 mana or more last turn instead of any previous turn. Its probably a nerf more impactful to wild than standard.
Not nerfing Frostwyrm's Fury is probably a mistake. If you want to know why there isn't any other viable aggro or midrange deck around, this is the main reason why. Not only does this immediately flip board, it can be tutored, and it can be discovered - to a frankly ridiculously consistent degree. Its practically Snowfall Guardian that only targets one side, and in a more aggressive class/deck.
Its a frustrating experience going against DK to be honest. You'll never be 100% sure how to mulligan against them and their cards (at what they do) are simply better than everyone else's. Its identity at this point is 'whatever you want to do I can do better'. Another reason why I dont like the rune system.