Ancient Watcher is out, but Humongous Razorleaf is in ... I dunno, seems like we'll need a lot more targets before this becomes good. OK against Frozen, I guess?
Arcane Watcher has been strong in spell damage decks, but spell damage actually advances the goal of killing your opponent. Silence, on the other hand, is mostly defensive, so building a deck around it is awkward.
It looks like they are leaning into the midrange/tempo Priest idea. I suspect that archetype will receive a fair amount of support in the expansions, so I have to believe this is a 4-star card.
Seems good 2 mana destroy a minion is solid. But it's a paladin secret, so i think it might not see that much play. (unless Paladin gets a big pay-off card for secrets like Mysterious Challenger.)
It's 1 mana ...
And Paladin actually has some very strong secrets now. "Get Down" was always great, and Oh My Yogg! is basically a Paladin Counterspell. Even if you choose not to include secrets in your deck, you may be very glad to see it in the Discover pool.
I wonder what exactly "inherits these powers" means. I assume it means "gets +2 spell damage & this deathrattle". That is, I assume it doesn't mean "gets all the enchantments and buffs this card has", because that would snowball--if you drew Sorcerer's Apprentice, then its deathrattle would give "+2 spell damage, spells cost one less, and this deathrattle", and so on.
Note that there's no such thing as Sorcerer's Apprentice in Standard. The "girl" is moving to Wild.
Tutoring is always very strong, even with a puny body like this. If your deck contains only the best Beasts, this is guaranteed to draw the nuts. How about Moonfang, King Krush, Zixor (for example)? Or Trampling Rhinos in a combo deck?
It can generate a body and help keep ramping or whatever you are doing but I dunno, I don't see this in any kind of current druid archetype aside from highlander, which since highlander cards are rotating there isn't any point in playing that.
All of the existing archetypes are about to change drastically. As one of the stronger new Core cards, this will definitely see play, at least during the first expansion of the year.
You might be thinking of their comment about Dragon aspects. Both versions of the Dragons are in Wild because they are considered different cards. If a card's name hasn't changed, I would not expect to see the old version anywhere but Classic mode (and even then, it would be in its original launch form).
And that is what people are putting forth in these articles - the idea that the Core Set will be stronger and more valuable than the Classic/Basic sets ever were.
Well, we know what's in Core now, and all I have to say is LOL.
No one has been using Deathwarden because you may face an opponent who doesn't even use Deathrattles. But if you want to suppress your own Deathrattles, it's suddenly a much better card. It may not always work out, but it may be worth playing if they add additional undesirable Deathrattles. There have been quite a few in the past!
Here's a more concrete example: imagine your local area is decreasing sales tax by 1% effective today. You might say that the sales tax decrease doesn't have any immediate benefit to you because you're not shopping today, but that's an arbitrary and disingenuous way to discuss the impact of such a change.
Similarly, the Core Set change has no immediate financial impact on players because they're not spending money on it. But so long as it decrease the ongoing costs of staying up-to-date with Hearthstone, it will benefit veteran and new players alike. That is what all of these articles are saying - over time, the cost of the game will go down thanks to this change.
Except everyone IS "shopping today" because we are comparing veteran players to newer players at the launch of an expansion at the beginning of a rotation. If anything is arbitrary and disingenuous, it's your irrelevant analogy.
The Core set does have an immediate financial impact on new players because they get a bunch of cards for free. That's the whole point, and it's great. But it doesn't help me personally because in a non-Core world, I already had all the non-expansion cards I would have needed. Giving me something for free that replaces something I already had is not a benefit.
And no, the articles are not saying anything about "over time." And no, you cannot definitively say the cost of the game will go down over time, anyway. Blizzard makes money by selling expansions. They are not going to make the Core set so powerful that it cuts in to expansion sales. Talk about disingenuous.
The current basic/classic set contains very few useful cards. Which means in order to build a decent deck (50% winrate or above) you will have to rely heavily on expansion cards, which cost money. If the new rotating core set gives players useful, playable cards for free, then you will need fewer expansion cards to build a decent deck. Meaning that you can get by climbing the ladder and winning matches for fewer dollars.
I get where you are coming from since taking away cards from players collections just to add cards to their collection for free doesn't really gain you anything, and there are still just as many expansions and mini-sets to purchase. But if the new core set gives players useful, playable cards then it means that the average player (whether veteran or new) will be required to spend fewer dollars on expansion cards to stay competitive.
That point has already been discussed, and I pointed out that it was pure speculation. You have no idea what the meta will be like or what the mix of cards will be in the top decks. Blizzard makes money by selling cards, so my thought is that it's a pretty safe bet the expansion cards are still going to fill the lion's shard of slots in most of the competitive decks.
I don't get why we would handle certain quests differently just because some players dislike the objective of some quests more than others.
In the past, all quests were related to Hearthstone, so no matter what the quest was, you were still playing Hearthstone. Everyone playing Hearthstone got quests for Hearthstone.
These weekly quests can now send you to Battlegrounds or Duels, which are arguably not even the same game as Hearthstone. A lot of people do not play Battlegrounds or Duels, so it's a lot different than being asked to play a few games as Priest when you prefer Hunter.
Moreover, the rewards from the rewards track don't really do much for you if you are primarily a Battlegrounds player, but that's a different topic.
I think you've largely side-stepped my point about sunk cost by saying that the value of these Classic cards has decreased. That's entirely true, but has nothing to do with the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is treating the value of a veteran player's full set of Classic cards as a relevant input for the decision to spend money on Hearthstone expansions simply because they've spent resources (money, time, etc.) on getting it.
But I never said anything about decisions to buy more cards, so sunk cost is 100 percent beside the point. You're building straw man after straw man. It's better if you respond to my actual comments, not these anticipated counterarguments you keep concocting.
My only point here is that veteran players gain no immediate financial benefit from the introduction of a Core set. Several writers have stated or implied that they will, and that is incorrect. if you don't want to talk about that, please make your own thread.
As for the theory that the game might seem less expensive because Core cards will make up a larger proportion of any given deck, that is pure speculation, and very dubious at that. Expansion cards always have been and always will be stronger than base cards, and it is in Blizzard's best interest to continue that trend. If you're hoping to see a bunch of budget decks at the top of the tier list, I suspect you'll be disappointed.
I think it is fine that some of the quests want you to play a specific mode. You get 3 quests and 7 chances to re-roll them, which makes it very easy to avoid doing any quests you don't want.
As I already pointed out, it is not "very easy." The pool of weekly quests is extremely small -- there are only nine of them if you don't count the permanent Ranked quest. Three of the nine have to do with Battlegrounds and/or other modes. That means every time you reroll, you have a 25% chance to get another Battlegrounds quest, and there's no failsafe in place to keep you from getting a quest you abandoned earlier in the week. So a string of slightly bad luck can leave you having to finish the entire weekly quest in just a few days.
While I agree that all quest should be able to be reroll, I wonder if there's gonna be any use for the 4th slot in the weekly quest. So far, Legendary quests always placed in the daily one.
Sometimes UI designers wisely choose to leave space for unspecified future content.
Shockingly good.
Ah hah. Ah ha-hah. Yes.
Nah, they look somewhat similar, but spirits and shades are a different kind of monster. Compare Shifting Shade, for example.
Yes.
Tools like this one are extremely valuable in combo decks, but they are also good for just finding answers.
Ancient Watcher is out, but Humongous Razorleaf is in ... I dunno, seems like we'll need a lot more targets before this becomes good. OK against Frozen, I guess?
Arcane Watcher has been strong in spell damage decks, but spell damage actually advances the goal of killing your opponent. Silence, on the other hand, is mostly defensive, so building a deck around it is awkward.
It looks like they are leaning into the midrange/tempo Priest idea. I suspect that archetype will receive a fair amount of support in the expansions, so I have to believe this is a 4-star card.
Just gonna put this out there ...
Stand Against Darkness is in Core.
It's 1 mana ...
And Paladin actually has some very strong secrets now. "Get Down" was always great, and Oh My Yogg! is basically a Paladin Counterspell. Even if you choose not to include secrets in your deck, you may be very glad to see it in the Discover pool.
Note that there's no such thing as Sorcerer's Apprentice in Standard. The "girl" is moving to Wild.
I'm sure there will be at least a few burn spells in the Barrens. I'm not too concerned about it.
Tutoring is always very strong, even with a puny body like this. If your deck contains only the best Beasts, this is guaranteed to draw the nuts. How about Moonfang, King Krush, Zixor (for example)? Or Trampling Rhinos in a combo deck?
All of the existing archetypes are about to change drastically. As one of the stronger new Core cards, this will definitely see play, at least during the first expansion of the year.
You might be thinking of their comment about Dragon aspects. Both versions of the Dragons are in Wild because they are considered different cards. If a card's name hasn't changed, I would not expect to see the old version anywhere but Classic mode (and even then, it would be in its original launch form).
Well, we know what's in Core now, and all I have to say is LOL.
No one has been using Deathwarden because you may face an opponent who doesn't even use Deathrattles. But if you want to suppress your own Deathrattles, it's suddenly a much better card. It may not always work out, but it may be worth playing if they add additional undesirable Deathrattles. There have been quite a few in the past!
Except everyone IS "shopping today" because we are comparing veteran players to newer players at the launch of an expansion at the beginning of a rotation. If anything is arbitrary and disingenuous, it's your irrelevant analogy.
The Core set does have an immediate financial impact on new players because they get a bunch of cards for free. That's the whole point, and it's great. But it doesn't help me personally because in a non-Core world, I already had all the non-expansion cards I would have needed. Giving me something for free that replaces something I already had is not a benefit.
And no, the articles are not saying anything about "over time." And no, you cannot definitively say the cost of the game will go down over time, anyway. Blizzard makes money by selling expansions. They are not going to make the Core set so powerful that it cuts in to expansion sales. Talk about disingenuous.
That point has already been discussed, and I pointed out that it was pure speculation. You have no idea what the meta will be like or what the mix of cards will be in the top decks. Blizzard makes money by selling cards, so my thought is that it's a pretty safe bet the expansion cards are still going to fill the lion's shard of slots in most of the competitive decks.
In the past, all quests were related to Hearthstone, so no matter what the quest was, you were still playing Hearthstone. Everyone playing Hearthstone got quests for Hearthstone.
These weekly quests can now send you to Battlegrounds or Duels, which are arguably not even the same game as Hearthstone. A lot of people do not play Battlegrounds or Duels, so it's a lot different than being asked to play a few games as Priest when you prefer Hunter.
Moreover, the rewards from the rewards track don't really do much for you if you are primarily a Battlegrounds player, but that's a different topic.
But I never said anything about decisions to buy more cards, so sunk cost is 100 percent beside the point. You're building straw man after straw man. It's better if you respond to my actual comments, not these anticipated counterarguments you keep concocting.
My only point here is that veteran players gain no immediate financial benefit from the introduction of a Core set. Several writers have stated or implied that they will, and that is incorrect. if you don't want to talk about that, please make your own thread.
As for the theory that the game might seem less expensive because Core cards will make up a larger proportion of any given deck, that is pure speculation, and very dubious at that. Expansion cards always have been and always will be stronger than base cards, and it is in Blizzard's best interest to continue that trend. If you're hoping to see a bunch of budget decks at the top of the tier list, I suspect you'll be disappointed.
Maybe Stowaway can come back in Core. He'd be pretty nice with Mankrik.
As I already pointed out, it is not "very easy." The pool of weekly quests is extremely small -- there are only nine of them if you don't count the permanent Ranked quest. Three of the nine have to do with Battlegrounds and/or other modes. That means every time you reroll, you have a 25% chance to get another Battlegrounds quest, and there's no failsafe in place to keep you from getting a quest you abandoned earlier in the week. So a string of slightly bad luck can leave you having to finish the entire weekly quest in just a few days.
Sometimes UI designers wisely choose to leave space for unspecified future content.