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.
I disagree. I'd say his finisher potential is what takes him over the top. It means that if you're playing anything even remotely controlly, which will naturally rely on taunts around midgame to bar enemy progress, Kayn comes in and straight up kills you. Imagine you're under pressure, the opponent just slung down a Glaivebound Adept to your face and is now threatening another 7. You put a Khartut Defender or Sludge Belcher or Convincing Infiltrator down to slow down the pain. If they get to bypass that with Kayn...eh, it's ok, it's pretty much the same as if they silenced your taunt, it's to be expected that this defense won't hold. But when you get into a situation where you've a Sylvanas on board, with Taunt from a lackey, a Khartut Defender, a Draconic Lackey, again with taunt, and the opponent gets to have their Glaivebound Adept and Kayn face you for 10 the next turn past 3 taunts, that's some solid bullshit (happened to me yesterday).
Kayn's design essentially screws any deck that relies on taunts to buy time to get the gameplan going. Just to list a few from what I play: Hadronox Druid, Taunt Quest Warrior, Highlander Quest (Awaken the Makers) Priest, Galakrond Deathrattle Rogue (shuffling N'Zoths with Togwaggle's Scheme), Libram Buff Paladin (taunts from Spikeridge Steed and Libram of Hope). All of these decks, which are otherwise quite effective, get almost entirely neutralised by the ability to ignore multiple taunts at the same time. The moment you fall behind and are forced to leave anything on their board because you don't have the attack numbers to trade into it is the moment you die to Kayn against these DH decks. And it's really easy to fall behind when they get to burn 2 mana off you on key turns.
It's good that they don't immediately resort to double standards the moment they introduce a new class and want it to be powerful. Battlefiend is way out of line in terms of powerlevel, especially when they've been consistently nerfing snowballing early minions, particularly one drops. About the only one left is Northshire and Tunnel Trogg. Glaivebound Adept is also ludicrously powercreeped and way too aggressive and efficient when compared to pretty much anything else around its cost. Hell, it straight up outshines Fire Elemental which costs one mana more. It's not like DH is short on weapons to avoid having to hero power on the same turn.
That said, I'd say there are still outliers in the form of Priestess of Fury and Kayn. Kayn in particular seems like just bad design honestly, as ignoring a fundamental mechanic of the game should not be something you just slap onto an efficient charge minion and call it a day. Now it may look like if they nerfed these, DH would have pretty much nothing going for it anymore but I don't think that's true. The key difference would be, DH decks would not actually just be 30-ish DH cards anymore. When you look at DH builds in Wild right now, there's maybe 4 cards total in these decks that are not class specific (stuff like Hench-Clan Thug, Leeroy and Felwing, depending on the type of deck). Which is ridiculous. Considering the breadth of options in Wild, there's no way DH, after its first expansion, should have such a suite of powerful cards that almost nothing in the neutral collection even bears considering. That's a pretty clear sign that they have too much power in there still. I'd say it is way better for the health of the game if DH takes maybe two or three expansions to become competitive in Wild so that the power is introduced gradually. DH immediately rocketing to a very competitive level in Wild means some serious mistakes have been made.
If you're interested in simply delaying Mechathun, then you're better off with Mojomaster Zihi than Albatross. Albatross delays them two turns at best, probably less if they have access to card draw. There's no way for them to manoeuvre around the fact they just got dropped to 6 mana and need to live for 4 more turns, there's a 5/5 on the board and their Bloodreaver or Twisting Nether is now unplayable.
You're running Mechathun. Your plan is to draw your whole deck anyway. It's not like you're going to combo your opponent to death on turn 9. It will disincentivise the use of Hemet, but most variants don't run that. About the biggest opportunity cost is the one deck slot. And of course, the telegraphing that you have Mechathun in hand for any Dirty Rats roaming around. With having to pop 2 Galvanizers and a Thaurissan on Mechathun to go for that combo without Bloodbloom, you give opposing control ample opportunity to catch you with low minion count in hand.
As someone who quite enjoys the idea of Quest Mage, even I have to admit it's gotten way out of hand lately, to the point where a nerf or a good way to counteract them is needed. My guess is the requirement for quest completion will go up to 8, which will leave aggressive and midrange decks enough room to kill the mage off, thus dropping their winrate and, as a result, their attractiveness for spike players. At the same time, this slowdown will mean other combo decks will have more time to get their thing done, and control decks might be able to power up enough to a point where a board of Giants might not be enough for a secure lethal as often as it is now (though that will require some mana cheating on the control deck's part), or at least maybe squeeze in some disruption to mess up the mage's plan.
With Darkest Hour, I'm pretty surprised it's Bloodbloom they're looking at, and not Darkest Hour itself. Obviously, Bloodbloom is the card that allows them to do that dirty thing they do much faster than many decks can answer it (especially if all board-clear suddenly costs 2-4 mana more), but at the same time the card is an integral part of one of the few other Warlock decks that are good right now. The nerf I imagine they might do is restrict Bloodbloom only to spells that cost 4/5 or less mana, to essentially prevent Darkest Hour from existing completely. That I'd be fine with, as that deck simply feels utterly miserable to play against if you lose and completely toothless if you win. My issue is that if they were to nerf the card in this way, it essentially tanks Bloodbloom's conceptual usefulness to almost nothing. You get a two mana discount on a spell this turn at the cost of an extra card and some life. That looks like a terrible deal. Previously, the spell could be included in some niche control warlock builds for surprise emergency Twisting Nethers or to accelerate the Rin rituals (when those were still relevant) etc. Simply put, the card had potential. I don't feel it deserves to be the scapegoat for what is first and foremost a design blunder in the Darkest Hour card itself.
Secret Mage isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. The vast majority of Mages I have faced this season, from Bronze to Legend, have been Quest Mages of both varieties (Highlander and non-Highlander), with Secret Mages being a distant second. And unlike Quest Mage, there are fairly decent ways to combat them through deckbuilding or game-plan changes where Quest Mage offers little to none. A Quest Mage's winrate is almost entirely determined by the order in which they draw their cards. And I mean literally "almost entirely", as a good draw on their part leaves the other player so little time to do anything that it is almost impossible to stop them from pulling it off no matter what you draw as the aggressor. They can have their quest done turn 5 and a suite of giants ready in hand before you even break their ice block with some of the most aggressive decks.
Meanwhile, you can beat a farily decent Secret Mage draw with fucking Libram Pure Paladin (done that consistently multiple times), Inner Fire Priests (in 2020?) which I'm pretty sure don't even make it onto the Meta Tierlists, and even if your deck of choice fares poorly against them, you can tailor the list to better suit the matchup. Outside of turn 5 Loatheb into turn 6 lethal past Ice Block, there's little you can do to specifically target Quest Mage. Just pray to god they draw slow enough that you can kill them or put enough obstacles in their way to prevent lethal. And that's coming from someone who got Legend this season with a custom Quest Mage variant. Even my version, which doesn't run many of the popular cards such as Licenced Adventurer, Questing Explorer or Flamewaker, feels pretty unfair to play.
Kinda surprised but really glad that they're thinking of nerfing Albatross. It seems a relatively innocent card unless you're playing Highlander, but it's actually pretty problematic. Not necessarily because of what it does, but because of the price of including it in your deck. That price being...pretty much nothing. It's such a well-statted card for what's supposed to be a niche hoser that aggressive decks can include it no problem and it doesn't even particularly impede their tempo and strategy. Remember when you had to pay 6 mana for your 4/6 if you wanted a hoser? Or risk giving your opponent a massive minion with an ill-advised Dirty Rat? Albatross laughs at all of that. At worst you get a 3 mana 4/3 which isn't going to set the world on fire but isn't going to lose you the game either. In the better case, you prevent your opponent's key power swings/failsafes, or force them to essentially not draw a card at random at the start of their turn. All for the low low price of having a 4/3 in your deck. Even with relatively mild Highlander presence in Wild, Albatross sees play in Odd decks, some Secret mages, almost all aggro decks (demon hunters, warriors, hunters), highlander decks, slow control decks, Deathrattle decks. It might actually be more concise to list the decks that don't run it. And I honestly have trouble thinking of a deck among those that wouldn't at least consider it (except Res Priest).
Correction: it seems you don't lose stars only on Bronze. Once you make it to silver it seems losses count as normal. Haven't seen any mention of this feature in the rank overhaul though.
Seriously, all that needed to be done is for the game to just award "difficult" quests baseline and "easy" quests after a reroll. Those who want more gold get the more rewarding quests right out of the bat, those who have a small collection and don't want to be forced into playing classes they'll just end up losing with can reroll once and bam, they got an easier quest. Sucks every time I open the game and see I have a couple 50 golders cause when I reroll, I often end up with the same 50 gold crap I started with and there goes my one reroll per day. If I started with a 60 golder from the get-go, it would be much better. The players who don't want the more rewarding quests are in the minority and all they would have to do is reroll once to get the 50s.
Hmm, I don't think it's going to make the deck quite competitive yet but Wild Buff Paladin is starting to look really interesting. With the two Liadrins you now have a good bunch of payoff for all your spells, the Libram mechanic makes it much easier to get your buffs out of your hand and into the pool and you can stock up on a bunch of cheap +1/+1 Librams to dump onto your Immortal Prelates. The issue is combo disruption, as that kind of deck intends to win in the long game and it's questionable whether it can keep up on value either considering potential dozens of N'Zoths from Galakrond Rogues or a multitude of powerful board floods should pure Control Warlock make a comeback.
I can absolutely guarantee you, nobody is ever going to break this card in half. Nopes. Zero chance. Mana cheating has never, ever gotten out of hand in the history of card games.
The machine-gun buying strategy should really stay with Millhouse, it's his theme and speciality. To explain a little bit, if you're playing Millhouse, rerolling is so expensive and inefficient that you're often better off just buying up the whole board on most turns in the midgame, replacing what minions on your board are weak, and trying to farm triples on whatever random garbage you can pick up, because then you get to discover a minion tier higher. That is very important for Millhouse because his inability to roll for cheap limits his ability to find those key pieces to build a strategy around. Having a chance to discover these key tier 3-5 pieces is crucial. If you don't find the triple, you resell minions at a really good rate so the opportunity cost is minimal, and you make maximum use of the free tavern refresh every turn if you just buy up the whole tavern all the time in the midgame.
Issue is, if the reroll costs 1 gold as normal then 1) Millhouse becomes the strongest hero in the game instantly. The ability to just grab any buffing battlecries and sell them back at 50 % rate is insane, and the ability to just berserk roll until you get what you want and being able to buy it on the same turn because it's 1 gold cheaper to do so would make him absolutely ridiculous in both early game and late game. He would also be way too efficient not only at buying minions but also at refreshing. Often, you find yourself in situations where you've finally rolled into a board that not only has a minion you want, it sometimes has two or three. Millhouse of all heroes is able to just gobble that shit up last minute without having to freeze, so he gets more rerolls for free than other heroes (except Nozdormu). 2) If he's able to reroll at the same cost as everyone else, there will be little cause to continue using his buy-all strategy, which is what made him unique in the first place.
MILLHOUSE REBALANCE
I really don't know how to rebalance him and preserve his playstyle at the same time so I'm going to try something different instead. How about he rerolls as normal, buys at a normal rate but: his tavern ups cost two more gold and he gets triples out of doubles instead. So the idea would be instead of jumping up tiers easily, he is forced to stay low, but compensates for it by discovering the minions from these higher tiers he cannot reach much easier than others through doubling. He should, in theory, struggle in the early game because he has to hang around low for a loong time, but his minions will generally be stronger by being all tripled very quickly to compensate, and he'll be able to discover some of those key higher tier pieces by doubling instead of buying up-front. If he makes it to the lategame, he becomes one of the craziest heroes in the game because he'll be able to get golden tier 6s like nobody's business, issue is getting there. So, sorta like George in terms of late power and early weakness.
It's immediately obvious you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You're putting all decks on the same level of brokenness as if decks were only divided into "fair" and "broken" and nothing in between. There's a reason why Darkest Hour Warlock isn't being yelled about everywhere as the most unfair thing in the history of the game. Cause the deck is not nearly consistent enough for that to be the case. There's a reason why Quest Mage hasn't been nerfed into the concrete yet and isn't 50% of the meta. Because there are enough decks out there it has a hard time against and it can lose even favourable matchups with a poor draw.
Half the decks and cards you'd want unnerfed are way above Darkest Hour highroll and Quest Mechalock that you seem to be putting on the same level. If you unnerfed Leeching Poison today, the entire meta would have to rebuild itself tomorrow because now value means nothing and you're either playing aggro or Kingsbane. Reno decks cease to exist while Kingsbane + Leeching poison is a thing. You unnerf Raza and you replace all control decks with exactly Raza Priest. It doesn't matter if the machine gun kills you next turn or 5 turns from now. Everything you play is now mincemeat because every card the Raza Priest plays comes packed with free removal. The free Dragons Raza Priest gets from Alex are now two extra pieces of removal to boot. The two one mana spells off of Spellkin? More machine gun ammo. If you have nothing on board to remove, it goes to your face (unlike Priest's usual removal options). You're dead within 4-5 turns in a control v control matchup. Hell, Spellkin alone takes 1/3rd of your starting health just on its own within one turn, not even including what potential effects the 1 mana spells have.
So no, Aviana, Raza, Kingsbane and Naga Sea Witch are not even in the same solar system as Darkest Hour and Genn/Baku (who even plays Genn and Baku anymore? Even Shaman is the last one holding the fort with any success) when it comes to power level.
Man, people must think Wild is a really broken place if they're calling for a Raza unnerf. Razakus Priest was the worst thing to happen to Wild until Naga Sea Witch came around to take that spot for itself. If they unnerf it, I guess I'm going to live in Battlegrounds until they come to their senses.
Are you trolling? He's been up for several months, you've had plenty of chances. And he's been arguably the best hero in battlegrounds ever since he was introduced.
Whew that's a lot of stuff. Don't like how many heroes are suddenly trying to invade Toki's territory with replacing minions in the tavern and I'm kinda sad they removed Phalanx, Tortollan, Boogey AND Festeroot, which pretty much removes most mid-game alternatives Tirion had aside from deathrattle divine shields and demons. The unnerf on Mama Bear was much needed, though I don't think it's enough. Usually the issue is even making it to the Bear as beasts. Nice to see a tier 6 demon added, it was pretty weird that you wanted to stick around on 4 for triples because any discover on 6 was worthless. The removal of a bunch of divine shield Mechs makes the good mechs you'd want in a mech build even more contested, on the other hand, with a whole new minion type added, that might actually open up more space for you to go mechs because it's not what everyone else will be doing. One thing I was hoping for that's missing though is an unnerf to Lightfang. All these dragons seem to just be feeding off each other, so they don't seem to fit into menagerie, Lightfang doesn't buff dragons either, so assembling a good menagerie comp is going to be harder than before, and it's pretty weak to begin with these days.
Then I must be really lucky cause I haven't had a single 50 gold quest since the latest quest changes went live. And that's been what, like two months?
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.
I disagree. I'd say his finisher potential is what takes him over the top. It means that if you're playing anything even remotely controlly, which will naturally rely on taunts around midgame to bar enemy progress, Kayn comes in and straight up kills you. Imagine you're under pressure, the opponent just slung down a Glaivebound Adept to your face and is now threatening another 7. You put a Khartut Defender or Sludge Belcher or Convincing Infiltrator down to slow down the pain. If they get to bypass that with Kayn...eh, it's ok, it's pretty much the same as if they silenced your taunt, it's to be expected that this defense won't hold. But when you get into a situation where you've a Sylvanas on board, with Taunt from a lackey, a Khartut Defender, a Draconic Lackey, again with taunt, and the opponent gets to have their Glaivebound Adept and Kayn face you for 10 the next turn past 3 taunts, that's some solid bullshit (happened to me yesterday).
Kayn's design essentially screws any deck that relies on taunts to buy time to get the gameplan going. Just to list a few from what I play: Hadronox Druid, Taunt Quest Warrior, Highlander Quest (Awaken the Makers) Priest, Galakrond Deathrattle Rogue (shuffling N'Zoths with Togwaggle's Scheme), Libram Buff Paladin (taunts from Spikeridge Steed and Libram of Hope). All of these decks, which are otherwise quite effective, get almost entirely neutralised by the ability to ignore multiple taunts at the same time. The moment you fall behind and are forced to leave anything on their board because you don't have the attack numbers to trade into it is the moment you die to Kayn against these DH decks. And it's really easy to fall behind when they get to burn 2 mana off you on key turns.
It's good that they don't immediately resort to double standards the moment they introduce a new class and want it to be powerful. Battlefiend is way out of line in terms of powerlevel, especially when they've been consistently nerfing snowballing early minions, particularly one drops. About the only one left is Northshire and Tunnel Trogg. Glaivebound Adept is also ludicrously powercreeped and way too aggressive and efficient when compared to pretty much anything else around its cost. Hell, it straight up outshines Fire Elemental which costs one mana more. It's not like DH is short on weapons to avoid having to hero power on the same turn.
That said, I'd say there are still outliers in the form of Priestess of Fury and Kayn. Kayn in particular seems like just bad design honestly, as ignoring a fundamental mechanic of the game should not be something you just slap onto an efficient charge minion and call it a day. Now it may look like if they nerfed these, DH would have pretty much nothing going for it anymore but I don't think that's true. The key difference would be, DH decks would not actually just be 30-ish DH cards anymore. When you look at DH builds in Wild right now, there's maybe 4 cards total in these decks that are not class specific (stuff like Hench-Clan Thug, Leeroy and Felwing, depending on the type of deck). Which is ridiculous. Considering the breadth of options in Wild, there's no way DH, after its first expansion, should have such a suite of powerful cards that almost nothing in the neutral collection even bears considering. That's a pretty clear sign that they have too much power in there still. I'd say it is way better for the health of the game if DH takes maybe two or three expansions to become competitive in Wild so that the power is introduced gradually. DH immediately rocketing to a very competitive level in Wild means some serious mistakes have been made.
If you're interested in simply delaying Mechathun, then you're better off with Mojomaster Zihi than Albatross. Albatross delays them two turns at best, probably less if they have access to card draw. There's no way for them to manoeuvre around the fact they just got dropped to 6 mana and need to live for 4 more turns, there's a 5/5 on the board and their Bloodreaver or Twisting Nether is now unplayable.
You're running Mechathun. Your plan is to draw your whole deck anyway. It's not like you're going to combo your opponent to death on turn 9. It will disincentivise the use of Hemet, but most variants don't run that. About the biggest opportunity cost is the one deck slot. And of course, the telegraphing that you have Mechathun in hand for any Dirty Rats roaming around. With having to pop 2 Galvanizers and a Thaurissan on Mechathun to go for that combo without Bloodbloom, you give opposing control ample opportunity to catch you with low minion count in hand.
As someone who quite enjoys the idea of Quest Mage, even I have to admit it's gotten way out of hand lately, to the point where a nerf or a good way to counteract them is needed. My guess is the requirement for quest completion will go up to 8, which will leave aggressive and midrange decks enough room to kill the mage off, thus dropping their winrate and, as a result, their attractiveness for spike players. At the same time, this slowdown will mean other combo decks will have more time to get their thing done, and control decks might be able to power up enough to a point where a board of Giants might not be enough for a secure lethal as often as it is now (though that will require some mana cheating on the control deck's part), or at least maybe squeeze in some disruption to mess up the mage's plan.
With Darkest Hour, I'm pretty surprised it's Bloodbloom they're looking at, and not Darkest Hour itself. Obviously, Bloodbloom is the card that allows them to do that dirty thing they do much faster than many decks can answer it (especially if all board-clear suddenly costs 2-4 mana more), but at the same time the card is an integral part of one of the few other Warlock decks that are good right now. The nerf I imagine they might do is restrict Bloodbloom only to spells that cost 4/5 or less mana, to essentially prevent Darkest Hour from existing completely. That I'd be fine with, as that deck simply feels utterly miserable to play against if you lose and completely toothless if you win. My issue is that if they were to nerf the card in this way, it essentially tanks Bloodbloom's conceptual usefulness to almost nothing. You get a two mana discount on a spell this turn at the cost of an extra card and some life. That looks like a terrible deal. Previously, the spell could be included in some niche control warlock builds for surprise emergency Twisting Nethers or to accelerate the Rin rituals (when those were still relevant) etc. Simply put, the card had potential. I don't feel it deserves to be the scapegoat for what is first and foremost a design blunder in the Darkest Hour card itself.
Secret Mage isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. The vast majority of Mages I have faced this season, from Bronze to Legend, have been Quest Mages of both varieties (Highlander and non-Highlander), with Secret Mages being a distant second. And unlike Quest Mage, there are fairly decent ways to combat them through deckbuilding or game-plan changes where Quest Mage offers little to none. A Quest Mage's winrate is almost entirely determined by the order in which they draw their cards. And I mean literally "almost entirely", as a good draw on their part leaves the other player so little time to do anything that it is almost impossible to stop them from pulling it off no matter what you draw as the aggressor. They can have their quest done turn 5 and a suite of giants ready in hand before you even break their ice block with some of the most aggressive decks.
Meanwhile, you can beat a farily decent Secret Mage draw with fucking Libram Pure Paladin (done that consistently multiple times), Inner Fire Priests (in 2020?) which I'm pretty sure don't even make it onto the Meta Tierlists, and even if your deck of choice fares poorly against them, you can tailor the list to better suit the matchup. Outside of turn 5 Loatheb into turn 6 lethal past Ice Block, there's little you can do to specifically target Quest Mage. Just pray to god they draw slow enough that you can kill them or put enough obstacles in their way to prevent lethal. And that's coming from someone who got Legend this season with a custom Quest Mage variant. Even my version, which doesn't run many of the popular cards such as Licenced Adventurer, Questing Explorer or Flamewaker, feels pretty unfair to play.
Kinda surprised but really glad that they're thinking of nerfing Albatross. It seems a relatively innocent card unless you're playing Highlander, but it's actually pretty problematic. Not necessarily because of what it does, but because of the price of including it in your deck. That price being...pretty much nothing. It's such a well-statted card for what's supposed to be a niche hoser that aggressive decks can include it no problem and it doesn't even particularly impede their tempo and strategy. Remember when you had to pay 6 mana for your 4/6 if you wanted a hoser? Or risk giving your opponent a massive minion with an ill-advised Dirty Rat? Albatross laughs at all of that. At worst you get a 3 mana 4/3 which isn't going to set the world on fire but isn't going to lose you the game either. In the better case, you prevent your opponent's key power swings/failsafes, or force them to essentially not draw a card at random at the start of their turn. All for the low low price of having a 4/3 in your deck. Even with relatively mild Highlander presence in Wild, Albatross sees play in Odd decks, some Secret mages, almost all aggro decks (demon hunters, warriors, hunters), highlander decks, slow control decks, Deathrattle decks. It might actually be more concise to list the decks that don't run it. And I honestly have trouble thinking of a deck among those that wouldn't at least consider it (except Res Priest).
Correction: it seems you don't lose stars only on Bronze. Once you make it to silver it seems losses count as normal. Haven't seen any mention of this feature in the rank overhaul though.
Aaand what a surprise, it's completely broken. Can't lose stars even if you're not on a rank floor.
Seriously, all that needed to be done is for the game to just award "difficult" quests baseline and "easy" quests after a reroll. Those who want more gold get the more rewarding quests right out of the bat, those who have a small collection and don't want to be forced into playing classes they'll just end up losing with can reroll once and bam, they got an easier quest. Sucks every time I open the game and see I have a couple 50 golders cause when I reroll, I often end up with the same 50 gold crap I started with and there goes my one reroll per day. If I started with a 60 golder from the get-go, it would be much better. The players who don't want the more rewarding quests are in the minority and all they would have to do is reroll once to get the 50s.
Hmm, I don't think it's going to make the deck quite competitive yet but Wild Buff Paladin is starting to look really interesting. With the two Liadrins you now have a good bunch of payoff for all your spells, the Libram mechanic makes it much easier to get your buffs out of your hand and into the pool and you can stock up on a bunch of cheap +1/+1 Librams to dump onto your Immortal Prelates. The issue is combo disruption, as that kind of deck intends to win in the long game and it's questionable whether it can keep up on value either considering potential dozens of N'Zoths from Galakrond Rogues or a multitude of powerful board floods should pure Control Warlock make a comeback.
I can absolutely guarantee you, nobody is ever going to break this card in half. Nopes. Zero chance. Mana cheating has never, ever gotten out of hand in the history of card games.
The machine-gun buying strategy should really stay with Millhouse, it's his theme and speciality. To explain a little bit, if you're playing Millhouse, rerolling is so expensive and inefficient that you're often better off just buying up the whole board on most turns in the midgame, replacing what minions on your board are weak, and trying to farm triples on whatever random garbage you can pick up, because then you get to discover a minion tier higher. That is very important for Millhouse because his inability to roll for cheap limits his ability to find those key pieces to build a strategy around. Having a chance to discover these key tier 3-5 pieces is crucial. If you don't find the triple, you resell minions at a really good rate so the opportunity cost is minimal, and you make maximum use of the free tavern refresh every turn if you just buy up the whole tavern all the time in the midgame.
Issue is, if the reroll costs 1 gold as normal then 1) Millhouse becomes the strongest hero in the game instantly. The ability to just grab any buffing battlecries and sell them back at 50 % rate is insane, and the ability to just berserk roll until you get what you want and being able to buy it on the same turn because it's 1 gold cheaper to do so would make him absolutely ridiculous in both early game and late game. He would also be way too efficient not only at buying minions but also at refreshing. Often, you find yourself in situations where you've finally rolled into a board that not only has a minion you want, it sometimes has two or three. Millhouse of all heroes is able to just gobble that shit up last minute without having to freeze, so he gets more rerolls for free than other heroes (except Nozdormu). 2) If he's able to reroll at the same cost as everyone else, there will be little cause to continue using his buy-all strategy, which is what made him unique in the first place.
MILLHOUSE REBALANCE
I really don't know how to rebalance him and preserve his playstyle at the same time so I'm going to try something different instead. How about he rerolls as normal, buys at a normal rate but: his tavern ups cost two more gold and he gets triples out of doubles instead. So the idea would be instead of jumping up tiers easily, he is forced to stay low, but compensates for it by discovering the minions from these higher tiers he cannot reach much easier than others through doubling. He should, in theory, struggle in the early game because he has to hang around low for a loong time, but his minions will generally be stronger by being all tripled very quickly to compensate, and he'll be able to discover some of those key higher tier pieces by doubling instead of buying up-front. If he makes it to the lategame, he becomes one of the craziest heroes in the game because he'll be able to get golden tier 6s like nobody's business, issue is getting there. So, sorta like George in terms of late power and early weakness.
So what you're telling me is I'm a god at this game? Makes me feel a lot better about losing 500 MMR in the last two days alone.
It's immediately obvious you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You're putting all decks on the same level of brokenness as if decks were only divided into "fair" and "broken" and nothing in between. There's a reason why Darkest Hour Warlock isn't being yelled about everywhere as the most unfair thing in the history of the game. Cause the deck is not nearly consistent enough for that to be the case. There's a reason why Quest Mage hasn't been nerfed into the concrete yet and isn't 50% of the meta. Because there are enough decks out there it has a hard time against and it can lose even favourable matchups with a poor draw.
Half the decks and cards you'd want unnerfed are way above Darkest Hour highroll and Quest Mechalock that you seem to be putting on the same level. If you unnerfed Leeching Poison today, the entire meta would have to rebuild itself tomorrow because now value means nothing and you're either playing aggro or Kingsbane. Reno decks cease to exist while Kingsbane + Leeching poison is a thing. You unnerf Raza and you replace all control decks with exactly Raza Priest. It doesn't matter if the machine gun kills you next turn or 5 turns from now. Everything you play is now mincemeat because every card the Raza Priest plays comes packed with free removal. The free Dragons Raza Priest gets from Alex are now two extra pieces of removal to boot. The two one mana spells off of Spellkin? More machine gun ammo. If you have nothing on board to remove, it goes to your face (unlike Priest's usual removal options). You're dead within 4-5 turns in a control v control matchup. Hell, Spellkin alone takes 1/3rd of your starting health just on its own within one turn, not even including what potential effects the 1 mana spells have.
So no, Aviana, Raza, Kingsbane and Naga Sea Witch are not even in the same solar system as Darkest Hour and Genn/Baku (who even plays Genn and Baku anymore? Even Shaman is the last one holding the fort with any success) when it comes to power level.
Man, people must think Wild is a really broken place if they're calling for a Raza unnerf. Razakus Priest was the worst thing to happen to Wild until Naga Sea Witch came around to take that spot for itself. If they unnerf it, I guess I'm going to live in Battlegrounds until they come to their senses.
Are you trolling? He's been up for several months, you've had plenty of chances. And he's been arguably the best hero in battlegrounds ever since he was introduced.
Whew that's a lot of stuff. Don't like how many heroes are suddenly trying to invade Toki's territory with replacing minions in the tavern and I'm kinda sad they removed Phalanx, Tortollan, Boogey AND Festeroot, which pretty much removes most mid-game alternatives Tirion had aside from deathrattle divine shields and demons. The unnerf on Mama Bear was much needed, though I don't think it's enough. Usually the issue is even making it to the Bear as beasts. Nice to see a tier 6 demon added, it was pretty weird that you wanted to stick around on 4 for triples because any discover on 6 was worthless. The removal of a bunch of divine shield Mechs makes the good mechs you'd want in a mech build even more contested, on the other hand, with a whole new minion type added, that might actually open up more space for you to go mechs because it's not what everyone else will be doing. One thing I was hoping for that's missing though is an unnerf to Lightfang. All these dragons seem to just be feeding off each other, so they don't seem to fit into menagerie, Lightfang doesn't buff dragons either, so assembling a good menagerie comp is going to be harder than before, and it's pretty weak to begin with these days.
Then I must be really lucky cause I haven't had a single 50 gold quest since the latest quest changes went live. And that's been what, like two months?