Its a decent card for a tempo/aggro dhunter deck. Dealing 10 damage in 2 turns is nothing to be ignored, considering that that's exactly what pre-nerfed Metamorphosis was doing back then.
As for the dredge? Well, maybe play this turn 7 and dredge up Illidari Inquisitor. Basically that's just a neat bonus for a curve play after this card. Nothing special.
Eye Beam on 0 was completely nuts, so there's no reason why this card couldn't do the same. If there's going to be one card that responsible for bringing tempo dhunter back, it'll be this one.
The conditions that a naga has to first be played wouldn't be too much trouble for a tempo deck seeking to curve out. You can play Vicious Slitherspear and immediately swing board on turn 1, or turn 2.
Does well in a spell heavy dhunter too, because we're 100% sure Lady S'theno and Wayward Sage would in there. Even if it doesn't, a spell deck can afford a 3 mana deal 3 anyway.
Demon Hunter - Probably the best thing to happen for this class in core is that Illidari Inquisitor is staying. The rest is not really impactful
Druid - Best cards are Wrath, and Living Roots for some much needed Irondeep Trogg counters. Nourish being 5 mana now to make up for overgrowth having rotated, and curving right after a Wild Growth on 3. But with no lightning bloom, no turn 1 guffs or overgrowth, let's hope we've seen the last of bs ramp until the following year.
Fandral being back is nice. But the game might have moved beyond what this card can offer now. We'll see.
Hunter - Cloaked Huntress inclusion for an obvious face-secret hunter, with Furious Howl reload. No more Trampling Rhino means there's no longer any need to run expensive cards in face hunter, so its full on hyper aggro.
Houndmaster Shaw is nice for big hunter though it clashes with vanndar, so that's mixed at best whether you'll slot him in.
Mage - Got better cards from this core set. And they'll need it since mozaki and cram session are gone, thank god. Anyone's guess if big spell mage would be good in the next expansion.
Paladin - Only card worth mentioning would be Flash of Light. Lightlord is too slow in most games
Priest - Definitely won the lottery this time round. Both good legendaries, plus Drakonid Operative, Northshire Cleric, wild pyro + Acolyte of Pain. Its as though team5 just given up on designing for priest and just brought back all the cards that worked in the past, hoping that priest would actually be in the top half of the meta for more than 2 months in a year.
And they certainly need it. Having lost Renew, Palm Reading, and Raise Dead, you might be tempted to say that without strong support that april fools joke might have just foreshadowed its future. Im not exactly sure if silence priest would be a thing, but the tools certainly are there.
Rogue - The only important thing here is that Shadowstep is still in core. Rogue's sunken city cards looks so good that team5 brought back Tess Greymane knowing full well that she'll only be in meme decks.
Warlock - Brought back Jeklik but with so few discard cards to go with. Nice. Voidwalker and Imp Gang Boss to bring back aggro warlock decks, because its been combo and control for an entirety of 2021 and there's got to be something else other than murlocs.
Warrior - Shield Block is the only card we needed here. With acolyte of pain and pyro back, there's not much else we could ask for, except perhaps Arcanite Reaper.
A slew of good neutrals to boot. No magnetic, or many mechs at all, which is dismaying. But we've got some real good cards here;
The new task change means stranger grinding would be thing of the past, although you still have to get the task started first. In view of the fact that new mercs are constantly being added into the game, I might actually hold off from finishing everything just so I can chance a coin boost for the new mercs rather than get coins for mercs that I dont care about, or have maxed out.
But not having to grind up strangers is at least a welcome change.
- Predation might actually be the card tempo dhunter needs in order to exist. Basically if half your deck is made of nagas then this is just an unnerfed eye beam sans the lifesteal. We have all seen how that card performed in the 1 week before it got nerfed. Granted this is harder to activate, but 0 mana deal 3 cannot be ignored.
- Urchin Spines is your replacement professor slate. Will it be enough for quest hunter? Because this card essentially does nothing before the quest is completed, and there may not be enough draw to justify more than 1 copy of it
- Hydralodon is a cool card but its powerlevel is a bit varied for me given that the big head only has 5 health. But whatever the case, the board will mostly be clean when its down, so your opponent has to skirt past this carefully or they'd summon more 3/1 heads that will certainly go face next turn.
- Rogue has some of the best cards it seems. Swordfish is completely broken, Gone Fishin' is a cheap draw engine, Swiftscale Trickster basically allows unimaginable amounts of mana cheat with Shadowstep. Looks like hooktusk wouldn't be the real threat after all.
- Druid does druid things. At least there's no more 2 mana ramp. Let's see if team5's smart enough not to bring Overgrowth into core.
- Forged in Flame might end up as one of warrior's best cards this expansion. Much needed card draw, and all that is needed now would be a high attack weapon in core.
- There's going to be some crazy combo with From the Depths and finley. Can smell it a mile away.
- Neutrals feature a 1 mana 1/3 naga (which is predictable given the number of naga synergies), and plenty of mech support. Perhaps we wont be getting magnetic after all, because they've basically printed something close to Zilliax in Sunken Sentinel
To be honest, lord banehollow grinding isn't really all that different from air elemental, with the added bonus that the coins you get from retiring early can actually net you legendary coins rather than the usual rares.
The average number of fights per stranger attempt is about 2, 1 if you're really lucky. If you're using a fire team, you can demolish each fight in one turn, which is the same as air elemental's creeps.
If there's any reason why anyone who has previously grinded strangers would drop this game, its the fact that mercs is a shallow game overall. You can get away with alot doing nothing but queuing the same thing over and over. In fact, the most efficient teams in mercs tend to be just that; doing the same shit over and over.
Apparently there's some rare card named 'mothership', that's not yet revealed for sunken city. We'll find out in 15 hours.
As for the new track. The skins looks interesting, but at this point there's just so many of them that they really just dont stand out as much. Ambassador Faelin as a druid class? I guess you need to put him somewhere.
I'm at Level 186. I have 9,655 gold in the bank, and I would've had 10k+ if I didn't buy some Mercs packs a couple of days ago. I'm seriously thinking whether to splurge my gold for the new expansion or buy Mercenaries packs. The new expansion doesn't excite me, honestly.
Only a week to go until rotation hits and the rewards track resets, so I think I'll be able to accomplish my personal goal of reaching Level 200. I just need to squeeze in time to actually play, because work is coming down on me like a ton of bricks.
Hope everyone else is happy with their progress!
Merc packs aren't really value for money though. Its way easier to just grind up for the merc you want than chancing it on packs. Besides, we're due to get three packs from beating Mi'da on April 5th anyway.
Sunken city may not look good, but its still the first expansion so its cards are likely to see play. Still better than spending it on mercs anyday.
Faerie Dragon was a meta pick during the old Ros-DoD days. It may be hard to believe, but if it were in standard during stormwind, it would be in every minion-based deck around.
Unless team5 is going all out for combo again in the next two expansions, I doubt Dirty Rat would be in core. My guess is that it wont make the cut, simply because the last time it was in standard it was nearly everywhere. A bit like Deathlord, the taunt and high health as well as the potential removal of a core battlecry minion usually outweigh the cons.
Including Altruis the Outcast will also prove to be a mistake. Mostly because its basically a second Lady S'theno, with the potential to be even better. Thereafter all dhunter cards would need to be designed around them both, I dont think team5 needs that right now.
I like the idea of eerie statue. But more likely we'll get Humongous Razorleaf instead
We'll likely see more mechs, murlocs, and dragons. Core tends to be rather bland in general so expansions can look good, and I don't anticipate any changes to that trend. I think a description from the past will be returning, very likely to be magnetize, and that'll be the only exciting thing coming out of core.
One card I'll very much like to see again: Carnivorous Cube. Make it so, team5.
Its actually more interesting to note that there's already a cheating scandal in battlegrounds even before the tournament started. A precarious thing too, because an slight irregularity in minion placing can very well determine winners and losers.
Another day another new bug reveals itself. Its only a visual bug this time, the end of month rewards are still here, though we've been robbed of the slight pleasure of opening those packages ourselves.
Its also a little surprising to me that we got alterac packs instead of sunken city ones. Usually they award us with the new expansion packs in the final season before the expansion hits.
Because dhunter can't actually maintain tempo, having been nerfed so many times and its best cards rotated away from the core set. There's no tempo dhunter in standard, and the only nearest equivalent would be deathrattle dhunter, which doesn't need this because their minions are sticky and Illidari Inquisitor is a thing.
Fel dhunter does way more damage and does not usually require a taunt buster, so no kayn there as well.
Kayn Sunfury is only ever useful not because it has charge but because it allowed you to ignore taunts. During stormwind, when Lion's Frenzy OTK was still meta, kayn was used precisely for this purpose. Outside of that, let's be honest here, kayn only deals 3 damage. Even a simple Relentless Pursuit does more damage.
Its actually funny, because the class started out being viable in nearly every archetype imaginable, particularly in dishing out tempo. Then after barrens its like team5 just gave up on them being an aggro class and suddenly its all combo and spells. Even if you're wanting to build a minion-based deck it'll nearly always be a deathrattle archetype with boars. Looking at the sunken city set, I doubt that will change anytime soon
Its kinda like Abyssal Wave, in that both cards' viability is largely determined by the performance of the abyssal curses. The problem is that we dont know how the curses work, or the number of cards that apply these curses, because there's another 4 more warlock cards left unrevealed.
It is implied that the curses work like rafaam's curse, in that you can dispel it by playing the card off your hand. If that is true, then the viability of this card goes down pretty hard. Because in what world will the opponent not dispel the curses within 2 turns? The ideal would be giving curse cards while building tempo, which this card provides, but judging from the only other revealed card Abyssal Wave, it is implied that this is not how team5 have designed the archetype to work.
So against aggro decks, they will simply shrug at the curse ticks and dispel it at a later point of the game, while control/combo decks will simply spend their mana to immediately get rid of it. Tempo decks will probably have enough board to discourage you from playing these curse cards. At the end, exactly what kind of deck is this, and what is it expecting to beat?
All this can change, and immediately win this card the lady liadrin award in the Sunken City expansion, by revealing either; a card with a massive battlecry enabled by curses, or a card that puts multiple curse cards into your opponent's hand. Until then, the curse cards looks bad, and will likely follow the same fate as the fel archetype team5 wanted us to play in Alterac.
Can you cancel the free trial after taking the rewards? to stretch the 7 days long enough to cover until September? I wouldn't think that's possible, but if it is that's basically giving everything away for free.
Subscription to prime is 6 bucks per month. Just curious, is there anyone here who would spend 6 bucks just to get these things?
Its a decent card for a tempo/aggro dhunter deck. Dealing 10 damage in 2 turns is nothing to be ignored, considering that that's exactly what pre-nerfed Metamorphosis was doing back then.
As for the dredge? Well, maybe play this turn 7 and dredge up Illidari Inquisitor. Basically that's just a neat bonus for a curve play after this card. Nothing special.
Eye Beam on 0 was completely nuts, so there's no reason why this card couldn't do the same. If there's going to be one card that responsible for bringing tempo dhunter back, it'll be this one.
The conditions that a naga has to first be played wouldn't be too much trouble for a tempo deck seeking to curve out. You can play Vicious Slitherspear and immediately swing board on turn 1, or turn 2.
Does well in a spell heavy dhunter too, because we're 100% sure Lady S'theno and Wayward Sage would in there. Even if it doesn't, a spell deck can afford a 3 mana deal 3 anyway.
Yeah, Im a bit baffled too by the lack of mechs in core. I mean, are we really going to build mech mage without Snowchugger and its cute entrance cry?
Fortunately sunken city has a few good mechs too, but a bit disappointed all the same.
Demon Hunter - Probably the best thing to happen for this class in core is that Illidari Inquisitor is staying. The rest is not really impactful
Druid - Best cards are Wrath, and Living Roots for some much needed Irondeep Trogg counters. Nourish being 5 mana now to make up for overgrowth having rotated, and curving right after a Wild Growth on 3. But with no lightning bloom, no turn 1 guffs or overgrowth, let's hope we've seen the last of bs ramp until the following year.
Fandral being back is nice. But the game might have moved beyond what this card can offer now. We'll see.
Hunter - Cloaked Huntress inclusion for an obvious face-secret hunter, with Furious Howl reload. No more Trampling Rhino means there's no longer any need to run expensive cards in face hunter, so its full on hyper aggro.
Houndmaster Shaw is nice for big hunter though it clashes with vanndar, so that's mixed at best whether you'll slot him in.
Mage - Got better cards from this core set. And they'll need it since mozaki and cram session are gone, thank god. Anyone's guess if big spell mage would be good in the next expansion.
Paladin - Only card worth mentioning would be Flash of Light. Lightlord is too slow in most games
Priest - Definitely won the lottery this time round. Both good legendaries, plus Drakonid Operative, Northshire Cleric, wild pyro + Acolyte of Pain. Its as though team5 just given up on designing for priest and just brought back all the cards that worked in the past, hoping that priest would actually be in the top half of the meta for more than 2 months in a year.
And they certainly need it. Having lost Renew, Palm Reading, and Raise Dead, you might be tempted to say that without strong support that april fools joke might have just foreshadowed its future. Im not exactly sure if silence priest would be a thing, but the tools certainly are there.
Rogue - The only important thing here is that Shadowstep is still in core. Rogue's sunken city cards looks so good that team5 brought back Tess Greymane knowing full well that she'll only be in meme decks.
Warlock - Brought back Jeklik but with so few discard cards to go with. Nice. Voidwalker and Imp Gang Boss to bring back aggro warlock decks, because its been combo and control for an entirety of 2021 and there's got to be something else other than murlocs.
Warrior - Shield Block is the only card we needed here. With acolyte of pain and pyro back, there's not much else we could ask for, except perhaps Arcanite Reaper.
A slew of good neutrals to boot. No magnetic, or many mechs at all, which is dismaying. But we've got some real good cards here;
Plated Beetle, Tar Creeper, Faerie Dragon, Beaming Sidekick, Escaped Manasaber, Sir Finley Mrrgglton
Best ones: Wild Pyromancer, Acolyte of Pain, Zola the Gorgon, Doomsayer, and of course, Brann Bronzebeard, ensuring that all cards would now need to be balance around a possible brann. Pretty sure there's already some sick combo available somewhere with this card.
The new task change means stranger grinding would be thing of the past, although you still have to get the task started first. In view of the fact that new mercs are constantly being added into the game, I might actually hold off from finishing everything just so I can chance a coin boost for the new mercs rather than get coins for mercs that I dont care about, or have maxed out.
But not having to grind up strangers is at least a welcome change.
My comments on the new cards;
- Predation might actually be the card tempo dhunter needs in order to exist. Basically if half your deck is made of nagas then this is just an unnerfed eye beam sans the lifesteal. We have all seen how that card performed in the 1 week before it got nerfed. Granted this is harder to activate, but 0 mana deal 3 cannot be ignored.
- Urchin Spines is your replacement professor slate. Will it be enough for quest hunter? Because this card essentially does nothing before the quest is completed, and there may not be enough draw to justify more than 1 copy of it
- Hydralodon is a cool card but its powerlevel is a bit varied for me given that the big head only has 5 health. But whatever the case, the board will mostly be clean when its down, so your opponent has to skirt past this carefully or they'd summon more 3/1 heads that will certainly go face next turn.
- Rogue has some of the best cards it seems. Swordfish is completely broken, Gone Fishin' is a cheap draw engine, Swiftscale Trickster basically allows unimaginable amounts of mana cheat with Shadowstep. Looks like hooktusk wouldn't be the real threat after all.
- Druid does druid things. At least there's no more 2 mana ramp. Let's see if team5's smart enough not to bring Overgrowth into core.
- Forged in Flame might end up as one of warrior's best cards this expansion. Much needed card draw, and all that is needed now would be a high attack weapon in core.
- There's going to be some crazy combo with From the Depths and finley. Can smell it a mile away.
- Neutrals feature a 1 mana 1/3 naga (which is predictable given the number of naga synergies), and plenty of mech support. Perhaps we wont be getting magnetic after all, because they've basically printed something close to Zilliax in Sunken Sentinel
Lol 25 bucks for diamond drekthar.
Too bad April 1st has gone past.
To be honest, lord banehollow grinding isn't really all that different from air elemental, with the added bonus that the coins you get from retiring early can actually net you legendary coins rather than the usual rares.
The average number of fights per stranger attempt is about 2, 1 if you're really lucky. If you're using a fire team, you can demolish each fight in one turn, which is the same as air elemental's creeps.
If there's any reason why anyone who has previously grinded strangers would drop this game, its the fact that mercs is a shallow game overall. You can get away with alot doing nothing but queuing the same thing over and over. In fact, the most efficient teams in mercs tend to be just that; doing the same shit over and over.
Apparently there's some rare card named 'mothership', that's not yet revealed for sunken city. We'll find out in 15 hours.
As for the new track. The skins looks interesting, but at this point there's just so many of them that they really just dont stand out as much. Ambassador Faelin as a druid class? I guess you need to put him somewhere.
Merc packs aren't really value for money though. Its way easier to just grind up for the merc you want than chancing it on packs. Besides, we're due to get three packs from beating Mi'da on April 5th anyway.
Sunken city may not look good, but its still the first expansion so its cards are likely to see play. Still better than spending it on mercs anyday.
Faerie Dragon was a meta pick during the old Ros-DoD days. It may be hard to believe, but if it were in standard during stormwind, it would be in every minion-based deck around.
Certainly not useless.
Unless team5 is going all out for combo again in the next two expansions, I doubt Dirty Rat would be in core. My guess is that it wont make the cut, simply because the last time it was in standard it was nearly everywhere. A bit like Deathlord, the taunt and high health as well as the potential removal of a core battlecry minion usually outweigh the cons.
Including Altruis the Outcast will also prove to be a mistake. Mostly because its basically a second Lady S'theno, with the potential to be even better. Thereafter all dhunter cards would need to be designed around them both, I dont think team5 needs that right now.
I like the idea of eerie statue. But more likely we'll get Humongous Razorleaf instead
We'll likely see more mechs, murlocs, and dragons. Core tends to be rather bland in general so expansions can look good, and I don't anticipate any changes to that trend. I think a description from the past will be returning, very likely to be magnetize, and that'll be the only exciting thing coming out of core.
One card I'll very much like to see again: Carnivorous Cube. Make it so, team5.
Its actually more interesting to note that there's already a cheating scandal in battlegrounds even before the tournament started. A precarious thing too, because an slight irregularity in minion placing can very well determine winners and losers.
My humble opinion on the patch.
Expansions out in 2 weeks. Might as well wait it out so your packs are more valuable.
Another day another new bug reveals itself. Its only a visual bug this time, the end of month rewards are still here, though we've been robbed of the slight pleasure of opening those packages ourselves.
Its also a little surprising to me that we got alterac packs instead of sunken city ones. Usually they award us with the new expansion packs in the final season before the expansion hits.
Because dhunter can't actually maintain tempo, having been nerfed so many times and its best cards rotated away from the core set. There's no tempo dhunter in standard, and the only nearest equivalent would be deathrattle dhunter, which doesn't need this because their minions are sticky and Illidari Inquisitor is a thing.
Fel dhunter does way more damage and does not usually require a taunt buster, so no kayn there as well.
Kayn Sunfury is only ever useful not because it has charge but because it allowed you to ignore taunts. During stormwind, when Lion's Frenzy OTK was still meta, kayn was used precisely for this purpose. Outside of that, let's be honest here, kayn only deals 3 damage. Even a simple Relentless Pursuit does more damage.
Its actually funny, because the class started out being viable in nearly every archetype imaginable, particularly in dishing out tempo. Then after barrens its like team5 just gave up on them being an aggro class and suddenly its all combo and spells. Even if you're wanting to build a minion-based deck it'll nearly always be a deathrattle archetype with boars. Looking at the sunken city set, I doubt that will change anytime soon
Im aware of that. Two cards related to the abyssal curse just isn't enough to make an archetype is my point.
Its kinda like Abyssal Wave, in that both cards' viability is largely determined by the performance of the abyssal curses. The problem is that we dont know how the curses work, or the number of cards that apply these curses, because there's another 4 more warlock cards left unrevealed.
It is implied that the curses work like rafaam's curse, in that you can dispel it by playing the card off your hand. If that is true, then the viability of this card goes down pretty hard. Because in what world will the opponent not dispel the curses within 2 turns? The ideal would be giving curse cards while building tempo, which this card provides, but judging from the only other revealed card Abyssal Wave, it is implied that this is not how team5 have designed the archetype to work.
So against aggro decks, they will simply shrug at the curse ticks and dispel it at a later point of the game, while control/combo decks will simply spend their mana to immediately get rid of it. Tempo decks will probably have enough board to discourage you from playing these curse cards. At the end, exactly what kind of deck is this, and what is it expecting to beat?
All this can change, and immediately win this card the lady liadrin award in the Sunken City expansion, by revealing either; a card with a massive battlecry enabled by curses, or a card that puts multiple curse cards into your opponent's hand. Until then, the curse cards looks bad, and will likely follow the same fate as the fel archetype team5 wanted us to play in Alterac.
Can you cancel the free trial after taking the rewards? to stretch the 7 days long enough to cover until September? I wouldn't think that's possible, but if it is that's basically giving everything away for free.
Subscription to prime is 6 bucks per month. Just curious, is there anyone here who would spend 6 bucks just to get these things?