Useless change that completly miss the point. If that is the best they could come up with regarding Big Priest, they've shown how little they understood of the problem even after countless explanation and analisys from lots of dedicated players.
That Barnes's nerf and its motivation are totally no-sense: the issue was not his mana cost and only partially his battlecry. The issue is still the resurrect mechanic itself, that allows to bring on board high cost minion (with full stats) from just a copy of them. People don't have problem about "dealing with him" but facing an endless army of resurrected minion over the whole match and increasing his cost solve absolutly nothing. On top of that the whole graveyard's function, that can be "exploited" to bring back the same minion over and over again.
This pointless change only highlight how poorly they understand about what is the real issue of Big Priest and why people are calling out for a nerf since years by now (not its win rate, but how polarizing its matchup is).
silencing only stalls you and gives you a turn to possibly even the playing field, but by no means is it going to just "win you the matchup"
The point of tech cards is to have an answer to a specific situation, not to just win the match for you as soon as played. They're meant to mess up your opponent's gameplan and not to just be an istant-win button.
If you think that randomly buffing or nerfing cards without thinking is good, than you should look at how are most of the time correctly handled such problems in bigger games like MTG (it even happened that they printed a new card that was banned from certain format even before its release). What Team5 is doing seems like random changes without any kind of knowledge about what would be the consequences and that is a poor choice in term of design, because it show how little they care about balance.
The game should stay fresh because players should have many different things to do, so that their experience is different and hardly boring allowing them to switch from one mode to another as they please (different formats with their own restrictions, auto-tournaments for those who want a very competitive environment, costume matches and so on). Not just shake the meta by making pointless buffs/nerfs to cards because they've got no better idea.
PS: they obviously can not predict the meta. Noone can. That‘s why nerfs and buffs happen in the first place.
You're contradicting yourself: nerfs and buffs allow Team5 to actually control the meta, deciding which archetype should be abandoned and which ones should rise. So they can indeed force the meta if they want. They've also clearly stated that when they printed Drakonid Operative back in the days, saying that they wanted Dragon Priest to shine again before it rotated out of Standard no matter what so they've decided to make a clearly OP card exclusivly for it.
The meta should keep evolving because players keep thinkering with a well balanced and interesting new set of cards to find new meta-breakers. It should not change just because Team5 has decided what players should play to be competitive.
I totally agree about the risk of having no-stop changes going on every now and then, buffing and then nerfing the same cards. It seems like Team5 cannot even understand how their own game works.
They should rework properly most of the quest, both to make them more flexible and to recalibrate their rewards.
It's another of HS' aspects that seem to have just been forgotten by Team5. They only put efforts in making new expansion sets, while everything else can be ignored: new modes (like Tournament, implemented in China), internal datas and decktracker (already existing in China), changing the Ladder's grind, fixing quests and so on. Ofc is good that they keep expanding the game with more and more cards, but also all this other things will improve HS' experience by a lot instead we're stucked with the same thing since years and they don't even have any plan to actually change something.
I was an avid fan of Feugen and Stalagg and seeing an article that not only talks about them, but even post a new deck has awakened my need to go and play it again. So much nostalgia!
You can see it as another sort of OTK (and not an easy one). And as any combo deck already existent, you can tech against them or lose if they manage to set it up.
Some of the older legendaries have silly effect but they've a lot of flavor linked to what they are into WoW, but going further into more recent sets I agree that Blizzard still printing awful cards just to fill packs and diluite what you may find in them. But recently they've buffed up some cards for the first time ever, so maybe there is a chance that one day we'll see some rework of the most terrible ones that may make them at last playable.
Sadly it seems like they've not fixed the bugged Mecha Jaraxxus starting animation nor Nemsy's potrait. I know that those are not priority bugs, but I find them really annoying considering how polish HS as always been overall.
So many good memories about Vanilla but, as Spookshow as already said, I don't have the time anymore to play it properly.
I would love an old HS Adventure about Scarlet Monastery, with its three wings just like the in-game istance and iconic boss fight (like Herod). But probably all of the level 60 istances of Vanilla would be an excellent themed-expansion set for HS.
Cataclysm is needed because it also discards your whole hand. That way you "only" have to discount Mecha'thun+Bloodbloom and finish off your deck to perform the combo. Plague of Flames will only destroy Mecha'thun but than you'll have to play each remaining card that is sitting in your hand before effectivly close the match.
Useless change that completly miss the point. If that is the best they could come up with regarding Big Priest, they've shown how little they understood of the problem even after countless explanation and analisys from lots of dedicated players.
So disappointing.
That Barnes's nerf and its motivation are totally no-sense: the issue was not his mana cost and only partially his battlecry. The issue is still the resurrect mechanic itself, that allows to bring on board high cost minion (with full stats) from just a copy of them. People don't have problem about "dealing with him" but facing an endless army of resurrected minion over the whole match and increasing his cost solve absolutly nothing. On top of that the whole graveyard's function, that can be "exploited" to bring back the same minion over and over again.
This pointless change only highlight how poorly they understand about what is the real issue of Big Priest and why people are calling out for a nerf since years by now (not its win rate, but how polarizing its matchup is).
Always nice to see more story-driven content added to the game.
The point of tech cards is to have an answer to a specific situation, not to just win the match for you as soon as played. They're meant to mess up your opponent's gameplan and not to just be an istant-win button.
That's the whole point.
If you think that randomly buffing or nerfing cards without thinking is good, than you should look at how are most of the time correctly handled such problems in bigger games like MTG (it even happened that they printed a new card that was banned from certain format even before its release). What Team5 is doing seems like random changes without any kind of knowledge about what would be the consequences and that is a poor choice in term of design, because it show how little they care about balance.
The game should stay fresh because players should have many different things to do, so that their experience is different and hardly boring allowing them to switch from one mode to another as they please (different formats with their own restrictions, auto-tournaments for those who want a very competitive environment, costume matches and so on). Not just shake the meta by making pointless buffs/nerfs to cards because they've got no better idea.
You're contradicting yourself: nerfs and buffs allow Team5 to actually control the meta, deciding which archetype should be abandoned and which ones should rise. So they can indeed force the meta if they want. They've also clearly stated that when they printed Drakonid Operative back in the days, saying that they wanted Dragon Priest to shine again before it rotated out of Standard no matter what so they've decided to make a clearly OP card exclusivly for it.
The meta should keep evolving because players keep thinkering with a well balanced and interesting new set of cards to find new meta-breakers. It should not change just because Team5 has decided what players should play to be competitive.
I totally agree about the risk of having no-stop changes going on every now and then, buffing and then nerfing the same cards. It seems like Team5 cannot even understand how their own game works.
It's not good for the game.
Seems like I had to hit quite few pity timers:
But I was also punished with Unseal the Vault.
Nothing special but it was a fun unpack.
Is there any chance we'll see a meta report for Wild also, maybe monthly (since there the meta shift more slowly)?
Such a fine deck! I've returned to Standard just to play it, since on Wild the meta is too aggressive to make it work. But I'm really have fun!
Gj on creating it.
They should rework properly most of the quest, both to make them more flexible and to recalibrate their rewards.
It's another of HS' aspects that seem to have just been forgotten by Team5. They only put efforts in making new expansion sets, while everything else can be ignored: new modes (like Tournament, implemented in China), internal datas and decktracker (already existing in China), changing the Ladder's grind, fixing quests and so on. Ofc is good that they keep expanding the game with more and more cards, but also all this other things will improve HS' experience by a lot instead we're stucked with the same thing since years and they don't even have any plan to actually change something.
I find this situation a bit sad.
I was an avid fan of Feugen and Stalagg and seeing an article that not only talks about them, but even post a new deck has awakened my need to go and play it again. So much nostalgia!
Yes, basically the potrait disappears and you just see a single gear spinning before the potrait shows up properly.
While I'm not a fan of Pandaren, I've found your class pretty charming! Can't wait to see more of it.
Bravo!
You can see it as another sort of OTK (and not an easy one). And as any combo deck already existent, you can tech against them or lose if they manage to set it up.
I don't see any issue.
Some of the older legendaries have silly effect but they've a lot of flavor linked to what they are into WoW, but going further into more recent sets I agree that Blizzard still printing awful cards just to fill packs and diluite what you may find in them. But recently they've buffed up some cards for the first time ever, so maybe there is a chance that one day we'll see some rework of the most terrible ones that may make them at last playable.
Sadly it seems like they've not fixed the bugged Mecha Jaraxxus starting animation nor Nemsy's potrait. I know that those are not priority bugs, but I find them really annoying considering how polish HS as always been overall.
So many good memories about Vanilla but, as Spookshow as already said, I don't have the time anymore to play it properly.
I would love an old HS Adventure about Scarlet Monastery, with its three wings just like the in-game istance and iconic boss fight (like Herod). But probably all of the level 60 istances of Vanilla would be an excellent themed-expansion set for HS.
Another cool feature that has been requested since forever on EU and US, but that will be limited only to China because... Nobody knows.
Cataclysm is needed because it also discards your whole hand. That way you "only" have to discount Mecha'thun+Bloodbloom and finish off your deck to perform the combo. Plague of Flames will only destroy Mecha'thun but than you'll have to play each remaining card that is sitting in your hand before effectivly close the match.
Sweet sweet lore.