This brawl would be so fun. If anyone bothered, at all, to even REMOTELY balance it. Explain to me what Druid or Shaman or, good god, Warrior is supposed to do against Rogue, or Hunter, or Paladin? Or how Shaman vs Shaman is supposed to be fun. It's like...half the classes get to have fun, the other half should get a massive warning sign with "DO NOT PLAY".
Oh no, they cancelled another annual AAA vanity fair. Whatever are we going to do? Read the synopsis of game announcements without the PR bullshit it comes wrapped in is what we're going to do. We don't need Blizzcon any more than we need E3 or Pax. All we need is for developers to just present their games honestly without all the (false) advertising crap. Don't need to wait in lines for that.
I'm having a real hard time deciding on this one, as there are several cards that are generally considered not particularly great that I've spent eons trying to build decks around. My first thought was Iron Juggernaut which has been a must in pretty much every Control Warrior I've ever built. If only he was odd-costed... Then there's Rotface and Blackhowl Gunspire, cards that fit into an archetype I've always wanted to be good, that being self-damage value Warrior. They even had great support with the Warrior DK, Sudden Genesis etc. Plus, King Mosh was there to provide even more payoff for your whirlwind effects.
But my choice would have to go to Stalagg and Feugen. I think I must have spent like 3 years with those cards as an integral part of one of my main decks, originally in Hunter, later in Rogue. I've finally said goodbye to them and no longer include them in my deathrattle strategies but they were super fun. There was nothing more enjoyable than having your N'Zoth board wiped only for several Thaddiuses to drop in for the kill. If only there wasn't that sliiiiight wrinkle that if one of them gets transformed your entire deck stops working....
You've somehow built up this assumption of what goes on backstage and you're painting everything you see in the game with that brush to suit your argument, IMO. You're talking as if the way things were designed previously was better and more refined than it is now and they've just started slacking. Was TGT a more refined product? Was Karazan? Shamans of Shamanstone ring a bell? The difference is, in the past they would release these broken or lackluster expansions and they'd just leave them like that for months. Maybe out of fear of breaking something, they might have held back on power level because their reponse times were so slow. Maybe that's how TGT happened, and how Grimy Goons happened. We can speculate all we want. But we can, I'd say, agree on the fact it sucked. The things that sucked (Grimy Goons, Inspire, Joust) continued sucking forever and the broken things would get nerfed into the ground after a few months at best. If an expansion released weak, boring and underpowered, well, better hope the next one's good in 3-4 months, cause things aren't getting better until then. What's buffing cards anyway?
Are they now swinging for the fences and trying to make things as busted as possible? I'd say evidence speaks to the contrary, seeing the state many classes and mechanics are in this expansion and in expansions prior. I mean, the buffs to Boomsday cards didn't happen for no reason, a lot of Boomsday underperformed. So did a lot of Rastakhan's Rumble. Is the current metagame more busted and imbalanced than Knights of the Frozen Throne? I'd say no. The amount of "I drew it first so I win" and single-card win condition has dropped drastically I'd say. Compare the Death Knight cycle to the Prime cycle. Does that seem juiced to the moon to you?
But even IF they were going for the new MtG approach (as in, make everything broken then completely ban the worst of it), they're also taking the appropriate approach to it by being quick to react if things are busted. And more than that, they're going out of their way to also bring up some of the things that didn't pan out. Where most games would just nerf everything to the weakest class's level, instead classes are getting brought up from the bottom (where was that attitude in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan?). And was DH overtuned? Absolutely. But unless they were releasing it just for standard, it kinda had to be to make any mark on Wild. As much as I hate much of what DH did in Wild, at least it was a presence rather than a complete non-factor that we'd have two wait 2 more years for before it becomes competitive in any way.
This assumption that they're just shoveling these cards out there willy nilly with the attitude "we'll fix it later" is just that. An assumption. One that cannot be proven or disproven either way by hard facts. Which is why it's best to not let your assumptions colour your arguments. Facts are facts. Things were broken, now they're less so. Things were weak, not they're stronger. Past status quo? Things are weak? Eh, whatever. Things are too strong? We'll fix it. In 2 1/2 months. Maybe. Marked improvement for the better that's hard to argue with and a more dynamic meta that keeps things fresh when they'd be getting stale. For my money, that's a win. I'd rather have another DH release with three quick rounds of nerfs than another Naga Sea Witch situation.
Oh you won't be able to find it on any tier lists or anything, it's not really a deck you'd pick to climb with. But every time I take it for a whirl I end up beating some meta deck I never thought I could have a chance against. Quest Mage, Secret Mage, Odd DH, Reno Priest. It's not performing consistently enough and it still has its bad matchups like Cubelock and Combo Druids etc. so it doesn't enter the discussion of top meta decks, but it just keeps on surprising me. There's no point giving you a list now since with the change to Aldor Attendant that deck will need revision. But if you message me over the course of the next week, I can give you my up-to-date list. I expect I'll spend a few hours next week tuning it once the change goes live.
No, you'll both be downvoted because the majority of people just straight up disagree with your opinion. "People like to be overwhelmed and get bitter at broken stuff"...have you even read your own sentence?
People like a living metagame, where things don't just get released and left alone for the rest of eternity. If you play an eternal format in card games, like Legacy in MtG, or Wild in Hearthstone, it is expected that things will change slowly, with like one or two strong things coming in per expansion, if you're lucky. Ever since the release of AoO, the Wild meta has barely had time to become stable, stale and boring. Why? Because the devs keep on meddling in it, changing things up, buffing things that disappointed, nerfing things that got a little too out of hand. I was at a point where I felt I got Buff Paladin kinda figured out, knew where its place was, no point testing it anymore and bam, Libram buff, time to give it another whirl.
It's good for competitive players to keep things fresh, and it's good for brewers like me who like to have things to discover and figure out constantly. It's just good for the health of the game to have an active development team rather than one that releases a 100 % guaranteed balanced and fine tuned set and the next time you hear of them is when the next one is coming up 4 months later. We've been there. We've seen it. We don't need to go back to it cause we know where it leads: the game gets boring and stale about a month into the new expansion.
Not in the mood to go deep on all of these but from a Wild perspective, the DH nerfs are huge and absolutely warranted (especially the Priestess, that card was nowhere near reasonable). The Aldor Attendant buff turns the Buff Paladin deck from an archetype that has potential to I'd say an actual competitor in the meta. I've already had some very surprising success with the deck as is and this just kicks its competitiveness up a notch. The Lurker Below buff is just...wow. The card is already surprisingly good in Quest Shaman and Evolve Shaman (not that those are the top of the meta by any means) and now it's essentially a strictly better Fire Elemental. That's kinda crazy. You'd have to have serious reasons NOT to run the card which...I mean that's kinda overdoing it IMO. If Even Shamans were annoying with their "oops Wrath of Air + Maelstrom Portal", they'll now be packing this. We really don't need autoincludes in the game, and we just got one. Hopefully this won't lead to Shamans of Shamanstone. The rest is not a big deal for Wild but I am kinda bummed by the nerf to Scavenger's Ingenuity. Not sure why that was needed. I've had some decent fun with Dire Frenzy + Master's Call Spell Hunter and now it's weaker.
I'm going to try to be positive about this brawl. Um. Well. I guess players that don't have a decent collection have just as good a chance as legend players in this one... Look, that's the best I got, ok?
I...mentioned that exact thing in my first comment... He's useful, no doubt, but quite often I've found I'm in a situation where playing him will pop, say, two of my eggs, while at the same time taking down the Devilsaurs and Nerubians I already got from those eggs previously using Play Dead etc. So, often, playing Teron can make your board position worse, and you're quite literally putting all your eggs in one basket. If your Devilsaur Egg gets silenced, it hurts. If Teron gets silenced, it's disaster. You just destroyed 2-3 of your own minions with promise of more payoff down the line and now you get nothing but a 3/4 body. Unlike Terrorscale Stalker, Teron destroys your eggs, doesn't just trigger them, so now all your eggs are off the board and you got nothing to use your activators on if Teron gets silenced.
So, again, he is good. But he's not the end-all be-all for the deck and if you're short on dust, I think there are better legendaries to craft for a variety of archetypes that you will get more value out of than Teron. In the end, you can achieve much the same thing with Feign Death.
I play it in Egg Hunter, where you'd expect it to be at its best, and even there I'm sometimes hesitant to play it, as it will eat your Devilsaurs and Nerubians that you went through the trouble of popping. I imagine it's even worse with Cubelock. Yeah, it's nice to eat your own Voidlord, but you only get one back instead of two from the Cube and you might incidentally end up eating your Doomguard that you wanted to stay on the board.
The Beardo variant is indeed faster, the reason I switched to the Panda variant personally after months of playing the deck was that the Beardo version folds to Skulking Geist (Jade Druid is currently T1), gets halted by Loatheb and above all, it needs to have all its numerous pieces ready in hand for Thaurissan. Very, very often, at least one of the pieces gets stuck somewhere deep in the deck and then you have to draw it, set up with Thaurissan and then execute it. In the Panda version, if all you're missing is the Garrison Commander, you can execute the combo the instant you draw it and generally, the Panda variant can just play out its combo pieces as it goes along and spends less time treading water. I've found that having to hold the pieces for the Thaurissan tick often prevented me from actually drawing through my deck due to hand size issues.
As for the quest, I'd generally advise against it. Starting hand is important and Novice Engineer goes very nicely together with Crystology. I'd go so far as to disagree that Quest Mage draws through its deck faster. Between Crystology, Novice Engineer, Acolyte, Solemn Vigil, Thalnos and Flash of Light, I've frequently outdrawn Star Aligner Druids back in the day. As in, I was nearing fatigue by turn 9.
For illustration, here are the two Paladin lists I run:
Personally, I don't think Paladin has the tools for a viable control variant, and that's coming from someone who tends to make a control/value everything. In face of Bloodreaver Guldans, N'Zoths, Shadowreaper Anduins, Resurrect Priests, Shudderwock Shamans...Paladin really does not have much to offer. There are essentially four routes I think might be worth considering, but none of these will play out as your classic control/value deck.
1) Mech Paladin with Kangor's Endless Army. This is about as close to a good N'Zoth effect as Paladin can get. Alternatively, the deck can go the route of the Making Mummies quest to keep duplicating Mechano Eggs or Mechanical Whelps, but that goes somewhat against the Endless Army gameplan.
2) Buff Paladin. This is more of a midrange option that lays down early, hard-to-remove minions like Righteous Protector or Argent Squire and then turns them into monsters through Librams, Hand of A'dal, Blessing of Kings, Spikeridge Steed etc. Most of the time the deck will try to end the game early by quickly pushing damage, but if that does not pan out, it can switch to a slower value plan with Lady Liadrin giving you another go on all your powerful buffs such as Libram of Hope, and Lynessa Sunsorrow becoming a huge monster with several Steed deathrattles and Libram of Hope summons generating a sturdy board. Can also be played as Pure Paladin.
3) Murloc OTK Paladin. Generally plays a control gameplan and tries to only land several key murlocs: Ol' Murkeye, Bluegill Warrior and Murloc Warleader, then revives them all, twice, with Anyfin Can Happen for an instant kill.
4) Uther OTK Paladin. Plays a control, draw and survival gameplan similar to the Murloc OTK, but instead OTKs with Uther of the Ebon Blade using Youthful Brewmasters to bounce 2 different Knights from the hero power, then finishes off with Garrison Commander for the remaining two.
Personally only have experience with the Buff Paladin and Uther OTK variants and neither of these play the control/value plan. The only card any of these use from what you listed is Forbidden Healing in the Uther OTK. Coghammer is much better for aggressive/tempo decks, Corpsetaker swings more towards the midrange. Eadric the Pure is more like Eadric the Poor and Enter the Coliseum is generally not used due to Equality, Shrink Ray and now Libram of Justice offering a more reliable board clear.
I can personally recommend Thief Rogue. Pretty much nobody runs weapon removal at the moment, only Highlander decks can potentially wiggle their way into it through Zephrys, which means you get to pound out absurd amounts of damage with Cutlass to opposing face or minions and get very good survivability out of it against aggro. You also have very powerful tempo plays against opposing tempo and aggro in the form of backstabs, vendettas, Underbelly Fences and Saps and get to disrupt opposing combo or reactive play through Loatheb and the back-breaking Zihi battlecry. Plus, you have access to tons of draw through Raiding Party and Elven Minstrel to dig your way to the weapon and card generation. Currently sitting at 64 % winrate with it. It's been performing consistently well against DH, all Mages, Warlocks and Highlander Priests. Haven't been playing it that much in the last few days but gave it a good whirl about a week ago, i.e. before most of the competition got nerfed and went 15-2 with it over the course two days. It's been performing spectacularly for me for several expansions now with little changes.
Addition to my previous post: I completely missed the fact that Kael'thas going to 7 mana now makes him a viable pull from Juicy Psychmelon. So the various Aviana Kun combo versions of Druid, such as Togwaggle, might become more consistent now by gaining guaranteed access to Kael for deck thinning.
It wasn't the standard because you're now required to have a 9 mana setup turn where before you could play Thaurissan alone and be left with 4 mana to do anything with, such as Dark Skies before the Thaurissan for safety. Which is why I said "in some sense the deck got better". It's not strictly better because of the 9 mana setup, but at least it's not a complete, unambiguous downside. The Warlock no longer needs to pay health for the combo, so getting low doesn't prevent you from going off.
The 1 mana tap prevents you from running Kobold Librarians, which are 1 mana taps with a body, Mortal Coils, which are 1 mana taps with removal without the face damage, Dark Skies, which double as both AoE and spot removal, Godfrey, which is a cheaper Twisting Nether with a body, then there's Plague of Flames...yes, Drakkari Enchanter will take Bloodbloom's slot in most Mechathun Warlocks because those are way stronger than the Even variant. And given that Mechathun Warlock apparently hangs around at tier 4 according to the latest meta snapshot, that'd mean the Even variant is somewhere in tier 5 at best.
Hm. Well...let's take it from the top. The below only applies to Wild.
Kael'thas Sunstrider is pretty much a non-factor already at 6. Few experimental builds use it, there are some nifty shenanigans to be done in Druid but that's about it and even those can generally just switch to a Psychmelon Aviana Kun plan to achieve the same thing faster as is. DH has better decks than the OTK in Wild. The only reason it bore considering was that DH had very little to offer outside of straight aggro, and Inner Demon was the only thing that showed promise. Since the OTK is too slow and unreliable for wild at 6, it's outright useless on 7, when most decks are slinging big meaty taunts or cheating the mana curve to victory by then. So essentially, this does not really impact Wild much.
Bad Luck Albatross now feels right where it should be. Odd decks won't be slamming it down just for the body and tempo with additional screwage on top, now it's a conscious decision to include the card to counter the meta or simply slow opponents down with some dead draw. While it's sad that it might now be too slow for some control Deathrattle builds like Quest Priest, it's better for everyone if this isn't as efficient. I would have preferred a nerf in stats over the nerf in mana though just for Awaken the Makers completion, potential Grave Rune shenanigans for those who like copying the bastard, etc. The important part is that it's getting nerfed at least, though.
Frenzied Felwing isn't really getting hit where it hurts IMO. The problem isn't the difficulty to remove. The problem is the ability to pile this thing up along with other threats early, so that you can't focus on just killing this, you have other problems to deal with alongside it. The proper way to hit it would be through mana, not stats, and least of all health. Nerf its attack, the pressure isn't as high. Nerf its cost, it's harder to pile on the pressure in the first place. Nerf its health and...what? If someone cheated this thing out anyway, it means they had the pressure and the damage output to do so. There are other problems on the board other than what is now a 3/2. And while yes, Consecration and Holy Nova type board clears do kill it now, chances are those weren't good enough to kill the associated problems in the first place so they're about as unattractive of a solution as they were previously. About the only thing the health nerf helps I'd say is Rogue's backstab and unupgraded Druid Spellstone. Not exactly the in-vogue classes at the moment and Felwing isn't the reason.
Altruis the Outcast nerf I'm ok with. If they want to make DH the new Rogue and forget that Rogue was supposed to be one with all the tempo, fine, it's stupid but that's their prerogative. I'd just prefer them not to create a better Odd Rogue. Taking Altruis out of the Odd slot definitely helps in reducing the amount of shit you have to play around against that deck, which is welcome. And while Altruis isn't really as powerful in Odd decks as it is in normal DH decks that can make use of 0 cost cards, the slowdown in speed does make the damage the card can cause just a little bit less threatening, as it makes it harder to play it along with other cards. That might be 1 less damage your board and face have to take and that might be all that's needed to decide the game.
The Battlefiend change is big. Like really big. It's not the fact that it ends up doing 1 less face damage every turn it sticks on the board. It's all about the trades. Previously, a DH going first could drop this down and if you coin a 2/3, they can easily just ignore and go face the turn after because they know you'll do the trade yourself. Now, they have to slam their face and the fiend into the 2/3 just so they aren't forced to hero power your remaining 2/1 the turn after, or worse yet, so you can't heal it if you're priest and seize control of the board for yourself. And if they do just Eye Beam whatever 2/3 you played, well, you've saved yourself some face damage and forced out an outcasted removal for your trouble. Previously, they'd likely save the Eye Beam for something more problematic later, go face and pile the pressure on with another Battlefiend or 1 drop.
Glaivebound Adept....not so much. The cost and the battlecry stayed the same, meaning the reach is there, the tempo is there, the Odd requirement is there and whether it fucks up your face for 6 or 7 the next turn is hardly relevant. If it's minions it's hitting, these die to 6 or 7 damage at that point either way. If it's your face, well, the game is pretty much done regardless because their massive aggressive 5 drop stuck around and got to attack you with impunity. Now if that was a 6 drop, I bet you'd be able to prevent that from occurring. Not as easy to do on 5 mana. The attack here, while painful, isn't as decisive as the timing of the battlecry. A 4 damage battlecry kills most 4 drops or some 5 drops with help from hero power. But a 4 damage battlecry will not nearly as reliably kill 5 or 6 drops. Delaying Glaivebound Adept by a turn would be the decider in whether there's something on the board after the battlecry to kill the Adept before it swings in. And with Adept at 5, there just won't be. So the problem remains and the card will continue to overperform.
Sacrificial Pact is good riddance IMO. There was no reason for that card to hold back Jaraxxus in the first place, but that hasn't been particularly relevant in Wild one way or another. Sitting at a cap of 15 is asking for death since around GvG. But the ability to counter opposing Demons for exactly no mana, get a heal from it to add insult to the injury, on a card that implies a pact with the demon that wasn't even yours...pretty much every part of that card being able to target enemies was a violation. In flavour, in design, in balance. And the fact Zephrys gave access to it to non-Warlock classes just exacerbated the issue. Now the card will be played as intended...in Demon decks, where it will do just fine popping Voidcallers and preventing transformations on Voidlords.
Bloodbloom killing Darkest Hour is a beauty to behold and as mentioned by others, Drakkari Enchanter will just take its place in Mechathun to achieve the same effect. Plus, it will no longer cost Warlocks health to pull their combo off, so in some sense, the deck got better because it's less sensitive to pressure than it was before. An excellent nerf on all accounts. It is sad though, that any use Bloodbloom ever saw was specifically in these two combo decks. It was such a neat trick to do on Kazakus potions, Twisting Nethers, Rin rituals, but it never seemed to catch on with anyone but me from what I've seen. We had some good times together Bloodbloom. You'll be missed. Darkest Hour won't though.
The Libram buff is pretty nice, actually, and makes the card a fairly attractive option for Paladins even without the Libram synergy cards. At this point, you're paying one extra mana over Equality to only kill your opponent's side of the board (which is massive) and you get a 1/4 weapon to help poke down some targets yourself, making it, essentially, a kill spell too if you're really desperate for one. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Now with Open the Waygate, I'd say the nerf is actually a bigger deal than it seems. Judging from the opposing side, it seems like the Mage can do 6, 8, 10 of these spells easily and it doesn't make a difference. But the grass is always greener on the other side. It takes personal experience playing the deck to find out how close the quest completion timings can actually get. I'll admit, the Quest Mage build I run is far from the norm, I don't run Flamewakers, Questing Explorers, Banana Buffoons or Licensed Adventurers, so I don't have data for the more typical examples of Quest Mage. Mine is built more to account for a broader portion of the meta. But from my experience laddering with my version this season, if I win, about 4 times out of 6 I complete the quest just one turn before they're either about to kill me or get out of my damage range. Which means about every 4 wins out of 6 that I got would now be losses instead. And while it often seems that the Mage could easily pound out two more spells with that Apprentice they got on the board, it is quite often that you run out of cheap generated spells right around the time the quest reaches 6. Quite frequently you just crest the magical 6 and the other stuff left in your hand are Flamestrikes and Pyroblasts and Cabalist's Tomes and other shit that's way too expensive to use. So delaying the quest by these two cards can quite drastically impact the winrate of that deck even if it may not look like it. That does not, unfortunately, change the fact that Quest Mage will still bully slow, value-oriented control decks, because those don't apply enough pressure for the 2 extra spells to make a difference. Unless the control deck can just wall up hard against the onslaught of giants, nothing is going to save it from Quest Mage whether it takes them two extra turns or not. The difference is though, that with Quest Mage's matchup against aggro getting worse now, Quest Mage is likely to drop in popularity. Which means those enjoying value games, your DMH Warriors, Deathrattle Rogues, Taunt Druids etc. Those will now have much more space to breathe because the SMOrc players will be making Quest Mage's lives miserable. I guess we'll all, for once, be grateful for the existence of mindless face decks, if I'm right.
Oh, and RIP Millhouse. The main reason he was miserable to play in BGs before the buff was that all of his gold totals were extremely awkward. Tavern-ups cost the wrong amounts at wrong turns, his coins just never lined up right, he was always floating gold left and right and getting his ass kicked in the process because of these inefficiencies. Them giving him the normal amount of gold fixed all that. Everything lined up, he could always buy the right amount of minions to keep up and could tavern at the right times to fill out odd gold amounts (cause rolling and buying costs an even amount of gold, odd gold turns were always inefficient). Now, with all taverns costing one more, he gets to buy in the same way he did until now, which means his early boards can be just as sizeable as they are now but now the tavern-ups don't line up anymore, in fact they line up just as badly as they did when he had less gold than everyone else. Like before, they now interfere with his ability to spend his odd gold amounts, it is once again an issue for him to find a convenient and efficient time to tavern up And unlike his previous shortage of gold, the additional tavern costs continue to be a problem even when he reaches 10 gold. So my guess is he's going right back to being the worst hero in the battlegrounds or at last will rank along heroes like Jaraxxus and Galakrond as one of those you just can't expect to do well with most of the time.
That's the problem. If it was just about choice and not about chances to win, it'd be fine. But with how massively the heroes are imbalanced against one another, you're more likely than not gonna end up on the losing side unless you fork out 2.5k gold. So essentially, pay or don't bother playing. And if you're a player who pays for their packs but did not feel like paying for the big preorder bundle, you now have to pay extra just to enjoy your Battlegrounds, where previously you'd have full access just from buying the packs. The tavern pass was a bad decision on their part. They should have kept the option to get it through packs for constructed players or the pass for pure battlegrounds players.
I'm somewhat in the same boat as Avalon. Worse than that, actually. It's not just that I like the underdog decks, it's that I don't like decks that are solved for me by someone else. I have to be the one to build it, to figure it out, to tune it. It is often more enjoyable for me to build and tune the decks in my collection than to play them. The moment what I play becomes part of the meta, it's no longer interesting to me. Seeing as Demon Hunter is currently very limited in what he can do and I hate playing aggro (hate the feeling of running out of steam), I haven't touched him outside of the Tavern Brawl either. But that's not even the main reason. The main thing is, they haven't added deck slots for DH. And I'm not doing extra work backing up my decklists on deck tracker just so I can delete two of my decks to build DH. When they add two deck slots, I start playing DH. Maybe. So 0/1000 on that one for me.
Getting back on topic, I have 1000 wins on every class, some, such as Rogue and Druid even several hundred beyond that, but I'm missing 100 on Warrior. Did I mention I hate playing Aggro or "meta" decks? I think I did. Well, that's pretty much alll that Warrior is good at in Wild right now. You got Pirate Warriors....and then some mostly failed attempts at trying DMH Warriors that inevitably lose to either Quest Mage, Highlander Priest or Mechathun. There is some minor opportunity to do stuff with Odd Warrior or Midrange Taunt Warrior, but it requires specific matchups and it tends to take quite a while. So even though I'm missing only 100 wins, given that it's Warrior, they might actually take me longer to reach than the last 100 did on Mage and Hunter combined.
This brawl would be so fun. If anyone bothered, at all, to even REMOTELY balance it. Explain to me what Druid or Shaman or, good god, Warrior is supposed to do against Rogue, or Hunter, or Paladin? Or how Shaman vs Shaman is supposed to be fun. It's like...half the classes get to have fun, the other half should get a massive warning sign with "DO NOT PLAY".
Oh no, they cancelled another annual AAA vanity fair. Whatever are we going to do? Read the synopsis of game announcements without the PR bullshit it comes wrapped in is what we're going to do. We don't need Blizzcon any more than we need E3 or Pax. All we need is for developers to just present their games honestly without all the (false) advertising crap. Don't need to wait in lines for that.
I'm having a real hard time deciding on this one, as there are several cards that are generally considered not particularly great that I've spent eons trying to build decks around. My first thought was Iron Juggernaut which has been a must in pretty much every Control Warrior I've ever built. If only he was odd-costed... Then there's Rotface and Blackhowl Gunspire, cards that fit into an archetype I've always wanted to be good, that being self-damage value Warrior. They even had great support with the Warrior DK, Sudden Genesis etc. Plus, King Mosh was there to provide even more payoff for your whirlwind effects.
But my choice would have to go to Stalagg and Feugen. I think I must have spent like 3 years with those cards as an integral part of one of my main decks, originally in Hunter, later in Rogue. I've finally said goodbye to them and no longer include them in my deathrattle strategies but they were super fun. There was nothing more enjoyable than having your N'Zoth board wiped only for several Thaddiuses to drop in for the kill. If only there wasn't that sliiiiight wrinkle that if one of them gets transformed your entire deck stops working....
You've somehow built up this assumption of what goes on backstage and you're painting everything you see in the game with that brush to suit your argument, IMO. You're talking as if the way things were designed previously was better and more refined than it is now and they've just started slacking. Was TGT a more refined product? Was Karazan? Shamans of Shamanstone ring a bell? The difference is, in the past they would release these broken or lackluster expansions and they'd just leave them like that for months. Maybe out of fear of breaking something, they might have held back on power level because their reponse times were so slow. Maybe that's how TGT happened, and how Grimy Goons happened. We can speculate all we want. But we can, I'd say, agree on the fact it sucked. The things that sucked (Grimy Goons, Inspire, Joust) continued sucking forever and the broken things would get nerfed into the ground after a few months at best. If an expansion released weak, boring and underpowered, well, better hope the next one's good in 3-4 months, cause things aren't getting better until then. What's buffing cards anyway?
Are they now swinging for the fences and trying to make things as busted as possible? I'd say evidence speaks to the contrary, seeing the state many classes and mechanics are in this expansion and in expansions prior. I mean, the buffs to Boomsday cards didn't happen for no reason, a lot of Boomsday underperformed. So did a lot of Rastakhan's Rumble. Is the current metagame more busted and imbalanced than Knights of the Frozen Throne? I'd say no. The amount of "I drew it first so I win" and single-card win condition has dropped drastically I'd say. Compare the Death Knight cycle to the Prime cycle. Does that seem juiced to the moon to you?
But even IF they were going for the new MtG approach (as in, make everything broken then completely ban the worst of it), they're also taking the appropriate approach to it by being quick to react if things are busted. And more than that, they're going out of their way to also bring up some of the things that didn't pan out. Where most games would just nerf everything to the weakest class's level, instead classes are getting brought up from the bottom (where was that attitude in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan?). And was DH overtuned? Absolutely. But unless they were releasing it just for standard, it kinda had to be to make any mark on Wild. As much as I hate much of what DH did in Wild, at least it was a presence rather than a complete non-factor that we'd have two wait 2 more years for before it becomes competitive in any way.
This assumption that they're just shoveling these cards out there willy nilly with the attitude "we'll fix it later" is just that. An assumption. One that cannot be proven or disproven either way by hard facts. Which is why it's best to not let your assumptions colour your arguments. Facts are facts. Things were broken, now they're less so. Things were weak, not they're stronger. Past status quo? Things are weak? Eh, whatever. Things are too strong? We'll fix it. In 2 1/2 months. Maybe. Marked improvement for the better that's hard to argue with and a more dynamic meta that keeps things fresh when they'd be getting stale. For my money, that's a win. I'd rather have another DH release with three quick rounds of nerfs than another Naga Sea Witch situation.
Oh you won't be able to find it on any tier lists or anything, it's not really a deck you'd pick to climb with. But every time I take it for a whirl I end up beating some meta deck I never thought I could have a chance against. Quest Mage, Secret Mage, Odd DH, Reno Priest. It's not performing consistently enough and it still has its bad matchups like Cubelock and Combo Druids etc. so it doesn't enter the discussion of top meta decks, but it just keeps on surprising me. There's no point giving you a list now since with the change to Aldor Attendant that deck will need revision. But if you message me over the course of the next week, I can give you my up-to-date list. I expect I'll spend a few hours next week tuning it once the change goes live.
No, you'll both be downvoted because the majority of people just straight up disagree with your opinion. "People like to be overwhelmed and get bitter at broken stuff"...have you even read your own sentence?
People like a living metagame, where things don't just get released and left alone for the rest of eternity. If you play an eternal format in card games, like Legacy in MtG, or Wild in Hearthstone, it is expected that things will change slowly, with like one or two strong things coming in per expansion, if you're lucky. Ever since the release of AoO, the Wild meta has barely had time to become stable, stale and boring. Why? Because the devs keep on meddling in it, changing things up, buffing things that disappointed, nerfing things that got a little too out of hand. I was at a point where I felt I got Buff Paladin kinda figured out, knew where its place was, no point testing it anymore and bam, Libram buff, time to give it another whirl.
It's good for competitive players to keep things fresh, and it's good for brewers like me who like to have things to discover and figure out constantly. It's just good for the health of the game to have an active development team rather than one that releases a 100 % guaranteed balanced and fine tuned set and the next time you hear of them is when the next one is coming up 4 months later. We've been there. We've seen it. We don't need to go back to it cause we know where it leads: the game gets boring and stale about a month into the new expansion.
Not in the mood to go deep on all of these but from a Wild perspective, the DH nerfs are huge and absolutely warranted (especially the Priestess, that card was nowhere near reasonable). The Aldor Attendant buff turns the Buff Paladin deck from an archetype that has potential to I'd say an actual competitor in the meta. I've already had some very surprising success with the deck as is and this just kicks its competitiveness up a notch. The Lurker Below buff is just...wow. The card is already surprisingly good in Quest Shaman and Evolve Shaman (not that those are the top of the meta by any means) and now it's essentially a strictly better Fire Elemental. That's kinda crazy. You'd have to have serious reasons NOT to run the card which...I mean that's kinda overdoing it IMO. If Even Shamans were annoying with their "oops Wrath of Air + Maelstrom Portal", they'll now be packing this. We really don't need autoincludes in the game, and we just got one. Hopefully this won't lead to Shamans of Shamanstone. The rest is not a big deal for Wild but I am kinda bummed by the nerf to Scavenger's Ingenuity. Not sure why that was needed. I've had some decent fun with Dire Frenzy + Master's Call Spell Hunter and now it's weaker.
I'm going to try to be positive about this brawl. Um. Well. I guess players that don't have a decent collection have just as good a chance as legend players in this one... Look, that's the best I got, ok?
I...mentioned that exact thing in my first comment... He's useful, no doubt, but quite often I've found I'm in a situation where playing him will pop, say, two of my eggs, while at the same time taking down the Devilsaurs and Nerubians I already got from those eggs previously using Play Dead etc. So, often, playing Teron can make your board position worse, and you're quite literally putting all your eggs in one basket. If your Devilsaur Egg gets silenced, it hurts. If Teron gets silenced, it's disaster. You just destroyed 2-3 of your own minions with promise of more payoff down the line and now you get nothing but a 3/4 body. Unlike Terrorscale Stalker, Teron destroys your eggs, doesn't just trigger them, so now all your eggs are off the board and you got nothing to use your activators on if Teron gets silenced.
So, again, he is good. But he's not the end-all be-all for the deck and if you're short on dust, I think there are better legendaries to craft for a variety of archetypes that you will get more value out of than Teron. In the end, you can achieve much the same thing with Feign Death.
I play it in Egg Hunter, where you'd expect it to be at its best, and even there I'm sometimes hesitant to play it, as it will eat your Devilsaurs and Nerubians that you went through the trouble of popping. I imagine it's even worse with Cubelock. Yeah, it's nice to eat your own Voidlord, but you only get one back instead of two from the Cube and you might incidentally end up eating your Doomguard that you wanted to stay on the board.
The Beardo variant is indeed faster, the reason I switched to the Panda variant personally after months of playing the deck was that the Beardo version folds to Skulking Geist (Jade Druid is currently T1), gets halted by Loatheb and above all, it needs to have all its numerous pieces ready in hand for Thaurissan. Very, very often, at least one of the pieces gets stuck somewhere deep in the deck and then you have to draw it, set up with Thaurissan and then execute it. In the Panda version, if all you're missing is the Garrison Commander, you can execute the combo the instant you draw it and generally, the Panda variant can just play out its combo pieces as it goes along and spends less time treading water. I've found that having to hold the pieces for the Thaurissan tick often prevented me from actually drawing through my deck due to hand size issues.
As for the quest, I'd generally advise against it. Starting hand is important and Novice Engineer goes very nicely together with Crystology. I'd go so far as to disagree that Quest Mage draws through its deck faster. Between Crystology, Novice Engineer, Acolyte, Solemn Vigil, Thalnos and Flash of Light, I've frequently outdrawn Star Aligner Druids back in the day. As in, I was nearing fatigue by turn 9.
For illustration, here are the two Paladin lists I run:
Buff Paladin
AAEBAZ8FBLnBAuPjAvy4A4TBAw3cA68H7Q+BvQKIxwLjywLZ/gKcrgPKuAPquQPruQPsuQPKwQMA
Uther OTK Paladin
AAEBAZ8FBu0F+wzVE4quAo7TAv37AgycAp8D3AP0Bc8G9gfiEePLAoT8Atn+As+GA+yGAwA=
Personally, I don't think Paladin has the tools for a viable control variant, and that's coming from someone who tends to make a control/value everything. In face of Bloodreaver Guldans, N'Zoths, Shadowreaper Anduins, Resurrect Priests, Shudderwock Shamans...Paladin really does not have much to offer. There are essentially four routes I think might be worth considering, but none of these will play out as your classic control/value deck.
1) Mech Paladin with Kangor's Endless Army. This is about as close to a good N'Zoth effect as Paladin can get. Alternatively, the deck can go the route of the Making Mummies quest to keep duplicating Mechano Eggs or Mechanical Whelps, but that goes somewhat against the Endless Army gameplan.
2) Buff Paladin. This is more of a midrange option that lays down early, hard-to-remove minions like Righteous Protector or Argent Squire and then turns them into monsters through Librams, Hand of A'dal, Blessing of Kings, Spikeridge Steed etc. Most of the time the deck will try to end the game early by quickly pushing damage, but if that does not pan out, it can switch to a slower value plan with Lady Liadrin giving you another go on all your powerful buffs such as Libram of Hope, and Lynessa Sunsorrow becoming a huge monster with several Steed deathrattles and Libram of Hope summons generating a sturdy board. Can also be played as Pure Paladin.
3) Murloc OTK Paladin. Generally plays a control gameplan and tries to only land several key murlocs: Ol' Murkeye, Bluegill Warrior and Murloc Warleader, then revives them all, twice, with Anyfin Can Happen for an instant kill.
4) Uther OTK Paladin. Plays a control, draw and survival gameplan similar to the Murloc OTK, but instead OTKs with Uther of the Ebon Blade using Youthful Brewmasters to bounce 2 different Knights from the hero power, then finishes off with Garrison Commander for the remaining two.
Personally only have experience with the Buff Paladin and Uther OTK variants and neither of these play the control/value plan. The only card any of these use from what you listed is Forbidden Healing in the Uther OTK. Coghammer is much better for aggressive/tempo decks, Corpsetaker swings more towards the midrange. Eadric the Pure is more like Eadric the Poor and Enter the Coliseum is generally not used due to Equality, Shrink Ray and now Libram of Justice offering a more reliable board clear.
I can personally recommend Thief Rogue. Pretty much nobody runs weapon removal at the moment, only Highlander decks can potentially wiggle their way into it through Zephrys, which means you get to pound out absurd amounts of damage with Cutlass to opposing face or minions and get very good survivability out of it against aggro. You also have very powerful tempo plays against opposing tempo and aggro in the form of backstabs, vendettas, Underbelly Fences and Saps and get to disrupt opposing combo or reactive play through Loatheb and the back-breaking Zihi battlecry. Plus, you have access to tons of draw through Raiding Party and Elven Minstrel to dig your way to the weapon and card generation. Currently sitting at 64 % winrate with it. It's been performing consistently well against DH, all Mages, Warlocks and Highlander Priests. Haven't been playing it that much in the last few days but gave it a good whirl about a week ago, i.e. before most of the competition got nerfed and went 15-2 with it over the course two days. It's been performing spectacularly for me for several expansions now with little changes.
AAEBAaIHBMgD+g7r8ALAjwMNtAHLA80DrxCStgKbyALb4wLq8wLVjAOQlwP7mgP+mgOtqAMA
Yeah. I feel betrayed on a deep, personal level. How could they?
Addition to my previous post: I completely missed the fact that Kael'thas going to 7 mana now makes him a viable pull from Juicy Psychmelon. So the various Aviana Kun combo versions of Druid, such as Togwaggle, might become more consistent now by gaining guaranteed access to Kael for deck thinning.
It wasn't the standard because you're now required to have a 9 mana setup turn where before you could play Thaurissan alone and be left with 4 mana to do anything with, such as Dark Skies before the Thaurissan for safety. Which is why I said "in some sense the deck got better". It's not strictly better because of the 9 mana setup, but at least it's not a complete, unambiguous downside. The Warlock no longer needs to pay health for the combo, so getting low doesn't prevent you from going off.
The 1 mana tap prevents you from running Kobold Librarians, which are 1 mana taps with a body, Mortal Coils, which are 1 mana taps with removal without the face damage, Dark Skies, which double as both AoE and spot removal, Godfrey, which is a cheaper Twisting Nether with a body, then there's Plague of Flames...yes, Drakkari Enchanter will take Bloodbloom's slot in most Mechathun Warlocks because those are way stronger than the Even variant. And given that Mechathun Warlock apparently hangs around at tier 4 according to the latest meta snapshot, that'd mean the Even variant is somewhere in tier 5 at best.
Hm. Well...let's take it from the top. The below only applies to Wild.
Kael'thas Sunstrider is pretty much a non-factor already at 6. Few experimental builds use it, there are some nifty shenanigans to be done in Druid but that's about it and even those can generally just switch to a Psychmelon Aviana Kun plan to achieve the same thing faster as is. DH has better decks than the OTK in Wild. The only reason it bore considering was that DH had very little to offer outside of straight aggro, and Inner Demon was the only thing that showed promise. Since the OTK is too slow and unreliable for wild at 6, it's outright useless on 7, when most decks are slinging big meaty taunts or cheating the mana curve to victory by then. So essentially, this does not really impact Wild much.
Bad Luck Albatross now feels right where it should be. Odd decks won't be slamming it down just for the body and tempo with additional screwage on top, now it's a conscious decision to include the card to counter the meta or simply slow opponents down with some dead draw. While it's sad that it might now be too slow for some control Deathrattle builds like Quest Priest, it's better for everyone if this isn't as efficient. I would have preferred a nerf in stats over the nerf in mana though just for Awaken the Makers completion, potential Grave Rune shenanigans for those who like copying the bastard, etc. The important part is that it's getting nerfed at least, though.
Frenzied Felwing isn't really getting hit where it hurts IMO. The problem isn't the difficulty to remove. The problem is the ability to pile this thing up along with other threats early, so that you can't focus on just killing this, you have other problems to deal with alongside it. The proper way to hit it would be through mana, not stats, and least of all health. Nerf its attack, the pressure isn't as high. Nerf its cost, it's harder to pile on the pressure in the first place. Nerf its health and...what? If someone cheated this thing out anyway, it means they had the pressure and the damage output to do so. There are other problems on the board other than what is now a 3/2. And while yes, Consecration and Holy Nova type board clears do kill it now, chances are those weren't good enough to kill the associated problems in the first place so they're about as unattractive of a solution as they were previously. About the only thing the health nerf helps I'd say is Rogue's backstab and unupgraded Druid Spellstone. Not exactly the in-vogue classes at the moment and Felwing isn't the reason.
Altruis the Outcast nerf I'm ok with. If they want to make DH the new Rogue and forget that Rogue was supposed to be one with all the tempo, fine, it's stupid but that's their prerogative. I'd just prefer them not to create a better Odd Rogue. Taking Altruis out of the Odd slot definitely helps in reducing the amount of shit you have to play around against that deck, which is welcome. And while Altruis isn't really as powerful in Odd decks as it is in normal DH decks that can make use of 0 cost cards, the slowdown in speed does make the damage the card can cause just a little bit less threatening, as it makes it harder to play it along with other cards. That might be 1 less damage your board and face have to take and that might be all that's needed to decide the game.
The Battlefiend change is big. Like really big. It's not the fact that it ends up doing 1 less face damage every turn it sticks on the board. It's all about the trades. Previously, a DH going first could drop this down and if you coin a 2/3, they can easily just ignore and go face the turn after because they know you'll do the trade yourself. Now, they have to slam their face and the fiend into the 2/3 just so they aren't forced to hero power your remaining 2/1 the turn after, or worse yet, so you can't heal it if you're priest and seize control of the board for yourself. And if they do just Eye Beam whatever 2/3 you played, well, you've saved yourself some face damage and forced out an outcasted removal for your trouble. Previously, they'd likely save the Eye Beam for something more problematic later, go face and pile the pressure on with another Battlefiend or 1 drop.
Glaivebound Adept....not so much. The cost and the battlecry stayed the same, meaning the reach is there, the tempo is there, the Odd requirement is there and whether it fucks up your face for 6 or 7 the next turn is hardly relevant. If it's minions it's hitting, these die to 6 or 7 damage at that point either way. If it's your face, well, the game is pretty much done regardless because their massive aggressive 5 drop stuck around and got to attack you with impunity. Now if that was a 6 drop, I bet you'd be able to prevent that from occurring. Not as easy to do on 5 mana. The attack here, while painful, isn't as decisive as the timing of the battlecry. A 4 damage battlecry kills most 4 drops or some 5 drops with help from hero power. But a 4 damage battlecry will not nearly as reliably kill 5 or 6 drops. Delaying Glaivebound Adept by a turn would be the decider in whether there's something on the board after the battlecry to kill the Adept before it swings in. And with Adept at 5, there just won't be. So the problem remains and the card will continue to overperform.
Sacrificial Pact is good riddance IMO. There was no reason for that card to hold back Jaraxxus in the first place, but that hasn't been particularly relevant in Wild one way or another. Sitting at a cap of 15 is asking for death since around GvG. But the ability to counter opposing Demons for exactly no mana, get a heal from it to add insult to the injury, on a card that implies a pact with the demon that wasn't even yours...pretty much every part of that card being able to target enemies was a violation. In flavour, in design, in balance. And the fact Zephrys gave access to it to non-Warlock classes just exacerbated the issue. Now the card will be played as intended...in Demon decks, where it will do just fine popping Voidcallers and preventing transformations on Voidlords.
Bloodbloom killing Darkest Hour is a beauty to behold and as mentioned by others, Drakkari Enchanter will just take its place in Mechathun to achieve the same effect. Plus, it will no longer cost Warlocks health to pull their combo off, so in some sense, the deck got better because it's less sensitive to pressure than it was before. An excellent nerf on all accounts. It is sad though, that any use Bloodbloom ever saw was specifically in these two combo decks. It was such a neat trick to do on Kazakus potions, Twisting Nethers, Rin rituals, but it never seemed to catch on with anyone but me from what I've seen. We had some good times together Bloodbloom. You'll be missed. Darkest Hour won't though.
The Libram buff is pretty nice, actually, and makes the card a fairly attractive option for Paladins even without the Libram synergy cards. At this point, you're paying one extra mana over Equality to only kill your opponent's side of the board (which is massive) and you get a 1/4 weapon to help poke down some targets yourself, making it, essentially, a kill spell too if you're really desperate for one. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Now with Open the Waygate, I'd say the nerf is actually a bigger deal than it seems. Judging from the opposing side, it seems like the Mage can do 6, 8, 10 of these spells easily and it doesn't make a difference. But the grass is always greener on the other side. It takes personal experience playing the deck to find out how close the quest completion timings can actually get. I'll admit, the Quest Mage build I run is far from the norm, I don't run Flamewakers, Questing Explorers, Banana Buffoons or Licensed Adventurers, so I don't have data for the more typical examples of Quest Mage. Mine is built more to account for a broader portion of the meta. But from my experience laddering with my version this season, if I win, about 4 times out of 6 I complete the quest just one turn before they're either about to kill me or get out of my damage range. Which means about every 4 wins out of 6 that I got would now be losses instead. And while it often seems that the Mage could easily pound out two more spells with that Apprentice they got on the board, it is quite often that you run out of cheap generated spells right around the time the quest reaches 6. Quite frequently you just crest the magical 6 and the other stuff left in your hand are Flamestrikes and Pyroblasts and Cabalist's Tomes and other shit that's way too expensive to use. So delaying the quest by these two cards can quite drastically impact the winrate of that deck even if it may not look like it. That does not, unfortunately, change the fact that Quest Mage will still bully slow, value-oriented control decks, because those don't apply enough pressure for the 2 extra spells to make a difference. Unless the control deck can just wall up hard against the onslaught of giants, nothing is going to save it from Quest Mage whether it takes them two extra turns or not. The difference is though, that with Quest Mage's matchup against aggro getting worse now, Quest Mage is likely to drop in popularity. Which means those enjoying value games, your DMH Warriors, Deathrattle Rogues, Taunt Druids etc. Those will now have much more space to breathe because the SMOrc players will be making Quest Mage's lives miserable. I guess we'll all, for once, be grateful for the existence of mindless face decks, if I'm right.
Oh, and RIP Millhouse. The main reason he was miserable to play in BGs before the buff was that all of his gold totals were extremely awkward. Tavern-ups cost the wrong amounts at wrong turns, his coins just never lined up right, he was always floating gold left and right and getting his ass kicked in the process because of these inefficiencies. Them giving him the normal amount of gold fixed all that. Everything lined up, he could always buy the right amount of minions to keep up and could tavern at the right times to fill out odd gold amounts (cause rolling and buying costs an even amount of gold, odd gold turns were always inefficient). Now, with all taverns costing one more, he gets to buy in the same way he did until now, which means his early boards can be just as sizeable as they are now but now the tavern-ups don't line up anymore, in fact they line up just as badly as they did when he had less gold than everyone else. Like before, they now interfere with his ability to spend his odd gold amounts, it is once again an issue for him to find a convenient and efficient time to tavern up And unlike his previous shortage of gold, the additional tavern costs continue to be a problem even when he reaches 10 gold. So my guess is he's going right back to being the worst hero in the battlegrounds or at last will rank along heroes like Jaraxxus and Galakrond as one of those you just can't expect to do well with most of the time.
That's the problem. If it was just about choice and not about chances to win, it'd be fine. But with how massively the heroes are imbalanced against one another, you're more likely than not gonna end up on the losing side unless you fork out 2.5k gold. So essentially, pay or don't bother playing. And if you're a player who pays for their packs but did not feel like paying for the big preorder bundle, you now have to pay extra just to enjoy your Battlegrounds, where previously you'd have full access just from buying the packs. The tavern pass was a bad decision on their part. They should have kept the option to get it through packs for constructed players or the pass for pure battlegrounds players.
I'm somewhat in the same boat as Avalon. Worse than that, actually. It's not just that I like the underdog decks, it's that I don't like decks that are solved for me by someone else. I have to be the one to build it, to figure it out, to tune it. It is often more enjoyable for me to build and tune the decks in my collection than to play them. The moment what I play becomes part of the meta, it's no longer interesting to me. Seeing as Demon Hunter is currently very limited in what he can do and I hate playing aggro (hate the feeling of running out of steam), I haven't touched him outside of the Tavern Brawl either. But that's not even the main reason. The main thing is, they haven't added deck slots for DH. And I'm not doing extra work backing up my decklists on deck tracker just so I can delete two of my decks to build DH. When they add two deck slots, I start playing DH. Maybe. So 0/1000 on that one for me.
Getting back on topic, I have 1000 wins on every class, some, such as Rogue and Druid even several hundred beyond that, but I'm missing 100 on Warrior. Did I mention I hate playing Aggro or "meta" decks? I think I did. Well, that's pretty much alll that Warrior is good at in Wild right now. You got Pirate Warriors....and then some mostly failed attempts at trying DMH Warriors that inevitably lose to either Quest Mage, Highlander Priest or Mechathun. There is some minor opportunity to do stuff with Odd Warrior or Midrange Taunt Warrior, but it requires specific matchups and it tends to take quite a while. So even though I'm missing only 100 wins, given that it's Warrior, they might actually take me longer to reach than the last 100 did on Mage and Hunter combined.