Pretty cool card. Excellent if you hit a 2-attack minion (since they will go to 0-attack), but if you use it on something massive like an 8/8 I think you'd rather just remove it with Shadow Word: Death instead.
This is definitely wrong - if you play this on a 2-attack minion, Serena will only steal 1 attack from that enemy (she'll then have 2 attack, and it will have 1 meeting the criteria of "having more" attack).
Seems like a really great card - kind of "2 mana draw 3". The damage output of Sword of the Fallen is appropriately weak, and all of the secret payoff/synergy cards you'd run with this only care about having secrets in play, not having cast them from hand like Secretkeeper did. That should make it highly playable without being oppressive (since it's a very weak top deck in the late game).
Altar of Fire is a decent tech card against combo decks, but will only really see consistent play if this new "Deck Destruction Warlock" archetype is good. The support is there, the payoffs are there, but since you'll be putting yourself into fatigue rather quickly, the big question is "can you get out of fatigue to survive long enough to make the payoffs work?" The "Prime Gaming" package is still available, as is Educated Elekk, so maybe there's something there. Regardless, it looks like a fun archetype to play (although maybe not as fun to play against).
Cheap handbuffs are really good, and this synergizes well with basically any frenzy minion or rush minion, and really shines with Mor'shan Elite and Blademaster Samuro (not to mention that it makes Rokara way more likely to rack up buffs)
Same cost, stats, and mechanics as Xaril, Poisoned Mind, with the added benefit of major Weapon Rogue (and in particular Swinetusk Shank) synergy. Seems great for that deck.
My gut reaction is that Serena Bloodfeather is bad. The Initiation combo in the video is a cool idea that would work on any minion with 10 or less health, but it has the major downside of playing Initiation in your deck. So, you still have to put a lot of work into killing your opponent's minion after this, and if it was big to start, it will still be decently large after you steal from it.
Serena Bloodfeather's saving grace is that she's cheap. Particularly with the loss of Shadow Word: Pain, that might make this a little bit relevant. And it's certainly a cool Shadow Priest type effect, so maybe if they've got other support cards to make this useful it will be good, but on its own it's just a little meh.
Again, this strategy already has success in Arena where outperforming classes have less likely drafts of higher winrate cards.
I think I've already responded pretty fully to your comments about how this would work, but this probably merits further discussion.
This comparison is very bad. All of the systems in place for Arena that do this exist to make drafting more consequential (e.g. the bucket system that uses win rate and pick rate data to group cards and avoid "instant pick" situations where two out of three cards are trash).
Presumably you mean to draw a parallel with your proposal and Blizzard's tinkering with the odds of seeing certain cards in these drafting pools. But there's no proper corollary for that in constructed because the contents of the deck are not determined randomly*. The closest you could get would be something like "At the start of the game, for each card C, you have some probability P(C) that C gets replaced with a random card, where P(C) depends on the win rate of C." But that's obviously terrible.
It makes sense to use these kinds of win rate statistics to ensure a balanced playing field for drafting because players want to feel like their choices matter when they draft their decks; playing Arena should never feel like you're just playing Hearthstone with a random pile of 30 cards. This is basically the same reason Blizzard prints lots of different tech cards to deploy in constructed dependent on the meta - they want you to feel like your deck-building choices matter, and that smart choices will yield better outcomes when you finally play the game. It makes no sense to do this for the game itself, as it would simply punish players for using good cards and make their deck-building/drafting choices less impactful by virtue of making it harder for players to draw the cards they chose to play.
*Technically you could have the deck building randomly fill in your deck, but you'd still be choosing to do that, so it's not exactly random.
Ok, the people have spoken. It's the perfect solution to solve imbalanced cards and allow a little more variety into the game, but I guess not such a good idea. Have fun net-decking the same boring decks that involve cards that carry the win for you like the good little robots that you are : D
Reading your replies you guys seem to think I'm saying to make it the card won't show up at all. Not the case. They would show up less often in a series of games, thus taking down the winrate of deck abusing power cards over time.
Your tone here reminds me of your recent thread where you insisted (without proof) that the pity timer was broken, and everyone told you that you were probably wrong based on all the existing data, so you got mad at everyone.
Your idea of changing card draw odds is not some "nerfing method everyone is oblivious to" - it's just a terrible idea, and that's why people are criticizing it.
The first major problem is a problem of implementation. How do you determine whether a card is OP? There are lots of ways you might imagine doing this, since "OP" is somewhat subjective, but you seem to think the answer to that is to judge based on the "drawn win rate." That's simple and feels good, but it ignores the fact that "drawn win rate" will be impacted by this algorithm because "drawn win rate" depends a lot on - you guessed it - drawing the cards in question. In that way, this is sort of a classic case of Goodhart's Law (when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure). Frankly, there's no way to determine the power level of a card that won't suffer from this problem precisely because you're manipulating draw probabilities. If a card is good its draw odds will drop, and once its odds drop it will be worse, which will in turn drive its odds up. What you end up with is just a mess of probabilities that go up and down arbitrarily.
The second major problem is transparency. Today you know that if you have N cards left in your deck, you have a 1/N chance of drawing any given card. This proposal would make it impossible to know what the odds were of drawing a card because those odds would be constantly changing based on the current prevalence of a given card across all Hearthstone games. Even if Blizzard was explicit about how they calculated these values, you wouldn't have the data needed to determine the true odds. But knowing the odds of drawing specific cards is a big part of "playing to your outs," (that is, it's critical to the skill ceiling of Hearthstone - and CCGs generally, for that matter). If your choices are to try and draw into some burst damage or trade on board and stall your opponent, you need to know the odds of drawing your burn cards in order to make a decision that maximizes odds of winning.
The third issue relates to "cast when drawn" cards. They have no "drawn win rate" in any meaningful sense, but how they're distributed in your deck is super important. For example, this algorithm could result in ruining the Soul Demon Hunter archetype by driving an unusually high number of Soul Fragments to be drawn before you can play the payoff cards. In Wild, you could end up with strange play patterns around The Darkness because of how those cards would interact with your opponent's existing draw odds. And Bomb Warrior would be crazy under this new system.
This probably depends a lot on where you are on the current rewards track. If you're at the point where all levels are 1500 XP for 50 gold, then you probably play enough to get back to that point without the extra boost of delaying your weekly quests. Under that model, the delay really just means you get back to that 1500 point a tiny bit sooner, so it's kind of like trading levels of 50 gold now for levels of 50 gold later. Any difference probably comes out in the wash, so the only factor I'd consider here your answer to the question "am I happy with the amount of gold I have going into the next expansion?"
If you're not at that point yet, and particularly if you're at a point where your weekly quests together only get you about 1 level up, I'd be more inclined to save up the quests and get a head start on the next track.
I'm not sold on the Ogremancer comparison here. The first thing to note is that the 2/2s having taunt is really important because it gets teched into decks to thwart spell-heavy aggro decks. The second thing to note is that its recent prevalence is almost exclusively in Highlander Control decks. But for that deck restriction, those decks would much more happily run a second copy of some class AOE (e.g. Breath of the Infinite or Flame Ward). Highlander decks aren't going to be relevant in Standard after rotation, so many of these control decks will just prefer to run more AOE over convoluted token generation.
Despite Mor'shan Watch Post being decent tech against token generation if it comes down on turn 3, the 2/2 bodies won't be worth nearly as much against midrange or control decks, which makes playing a "Can't Attack" minion a lot more painful.
Tough to say whether Swinetusk Shank is better than Self-Sharpening Sword. The sword is 10 damage over four swings (1+2+3+4), and if you play three poisons, the shank is 10 damage over five swings (2+2+2+2+2). This means that the shank is consistently higher damage at 3+ poisons because you get more buffed swings and equal base damage, and it also means that at 2+ poisons the shank is pretty close to the sword in terms of raw damage output (8 base damage over four swings, so you get the same amount of buffed damage as sword and only 2 less base damage).
But, between luck of the draw and weapon removal, you're probably not going to land 3+ poisons on the same weapon. Also, the Self-Sharpening Sword is modestly better synergy for Cutting Class and Steeldancer because it can increase its own attack. That probably means it narrowly wins out over the Swinetusk Shank in terms of overall quality, but if we're being honest, they're so close to each other in terms of power that if you want to run weapons, you're probably happy to run both and have the redundancy.
(This maybe changes a little if they reveal one more poison...more poisons might make the odds of a triple weapon buff more likely, and then shank ends up being better over time.)
The only thing better than Scabbs Cutterbutter's name is the effect - this is going to make for some crazy combo turns. Getting rid of Edwin for this is 100% worth it
I mentioned this above as well, but this misses the most important point here - you do not have to build around Priest of An'she at all. It's good enough as is, and has a decent payoff for things Priest already wants to do with their other cards, and regularly does with their hero power.
By constrast, the Soul Fragment package ends up being around a third of your deck. Since it required so much investment, the Soul Fragment payoffs that saw play were all the proactive ones - Shardshatter Mystic, Soulshard Lapidary, Shadowlight Scholar, and Soulciologist Malicia. That proactivity is critical because if you're going to spend 10 or so card slots on an archetype, it better pay off in terms of tempo, and because the smaller payoff cards weaken the big payoff of a bunch of 3/3 rush minions and effectively lose you 2 health, they need to be even more proactive to make up for that loss. Void Drinker didn't really accomplish any of that, so it didn't see much play.
We haven't seen a ton of frenzy cards yet, so it's still a bit hard to judge exactly how powerful this will be, but clearly [Hearthstone Card (High Overlord Saurfang) Not Found] is great deal of value for the cost. It's so good, in fact, that it makes Razormane Raider - an otherwise boring "mechanic showcase" type card - look like a surprisingly strong in Warrior.
Conviction (Rank 1) is not very impressive, but Conviction (Rank 2) and Conviction (Rank 3) are really strong. In a proper aggro list, the Rank 2 version is basically a 1-mana Fireball right around the turn you're hoping to close the game out. And if the game goes too long, the extra 9 damage burst in the late game can help you close things out even when your opponent is starting to wear down your board.
The worst case scenario here is that you use your hero power to heal for 2, then drop Xyrella for a 2-damage AOE. That's pretty weak, but it's probably comparable to Shattered Rumbler, which was playable.
But realistically, this is much better. Typically you'll play this alongside Desperate Prayer or Renew or even Flash Heal to get a sizable AOE effect alongside the 4/4 body. Or you pair this with Holy Nova or Lightshower Elemental for a massive late game AOE. The fact that this can be effective at multiple points of the game makes Xyrella a very compelling card.
Mor'shan Watch Post is definitely the better of the two Watch Posts. Getting a bunch of 2/2s is just generally better than getting one or two small buffs, and your opponent is way more likely to be playing some minions over spells.
This is probably not a good idea, but one deck that might like this is Silence Priest. Turn 3 play Mor'shan Watch Post. Your opponent plays one or two minions on turn 4, giving you some extra value. Turn 4 play Focused Will and now your Watch Post is a 3/8 that can trade along with those extra 2/2s. You don't get more 2/2s, but the first pass already got you some decent tempo.
The Kargal deck looks like a huge meme, so this is probably a terrible card. In a token/aggro deck where you want this kind of buff, this card is a non-starter. It's a "4 mana do nothing" card that comes packaged with the hopes that your opponent will spend their mana buffing your guys. Maybe it's an okay tech card to resist AOE (kind of like Never Surrender!), but 4 mana is a lot to spend for that kind of insurance.
Granting them taunt effectively gets around the "Can't attack" issue, and once the Watch Posts have taunt, your opponent will have to interact with them, which will help get value out of the effects. But the big payoff for investing so much into those Watch Posts is a slightly worse Chef Nomi, so that's probably way too much work for the payoff.
This is definitely wrong - if you play this on a 2-attack minion, Serena will only steal 1 attack from that enemy (she'll then have 2 attack, and it will have 1 meeting the criteria of "having more" attack).
Seems like a really great card - kind of "2 mana draw 3". The damage output of Sword of the Fallen is appropriately weak, and all of the secret payoff/synergy cards you'd run with this only care about having secrets in play, not having cast them from hand like Secretkeeper did. That should make it highly playable without being oppressive (since it's a very weak top deck in the late game).
Altar of Fire is a decent tech card against combo decks, but will only really see consistent play if this new "Deck Destruction Warlock" archetype is good. The support is there, the payoffs are there, but since you'll be putting yourself into fatigue rather quickly, the big question is "can you get out of fatigue to survive long enough to make the payoffs work?" The "Prime Gaming" package is still available, as is Educated Elekk, so maybe there's something there. Regardless, it looks like a fun archetype to play (although maybe not as fun to play against).
Cheap handbuffs are really good, and this synergizes well with basically any frenzy minion or rush minion, and really shines with Mor'shan Elite and Blademaster Samuro (not to mention that it makes Rokara way more likely to rack up buffs)
Same cost, stats, and mechanics as Xaril, Poisoned Mind, with the added benefit of major Weapon Rogue (and in particular Swinetusk Shank) synergy. Seems great for that deck.
My gut reaction is that Serena Bloodfeather is bad. The Initiation combo in the video is a cool idea that would work on any minion with 10 or less health, but it has the major downside of playing Initiation in your deck. So, you still have to put a lot of work into killing your opponent's minion after this, and if it was big to start, it will still be decently large after you steal from it.
Serena Bloodfeather's saving grace is that she's cheap. Particularly with the loss of Shadow Word: Pain, that might make this a little bit relevant. And it's certainly a cool Shadow Priest type effect, so maybe if they've got other support cards to make this useful it will be good, but on its own it's just a little meh.
Sure makes Lakkari Sacrifice look stupid. The big question is "how easy will it be to stave off fatigue after this?"
I think I've already responded pretty fully to your comments about how this would work, but this probably merits further discussion.
This comparison is very bad. All of the systems in place for Arena that do this exist to make drafting more consequential (e.g. the bucket system that uses win rate and pick rate data to group cards and avoid "instant pick" situations where two out of three cards are trash).
Presumably you mean to draw a parallel with your proposal and Blizzard's tinkering with the odds of seeing certain cards in these drafting pools. But there's no proper corollary for that in constructed because the contents of the deck are not determined randomly*. The closest you could get would be something like "At the start of the game, for each card C, you have some probability P(C) that C gets replaced with a random card, where P(C) depends on the win rate of C." But that's obviously terrible.
It makes sense to use these kinds of win rate statistics to ensure a balanced playing field for drafting because players want to feel like their choices matter when they draft their decks; playing Arena should never feel like you're just playing Hearthstone with a random pile of 30 cards. This is basically the same reason Blizzard prints lots of different tech cards to deploy in constructed dependent on the meta - they want you to feel like your deck-building choices matter, and that smart choices will yield better outcomes when you finally play the game. It makes no sense to do this for the game itself, as it would simply punish players for using good cards and make their deck-building/drafting choices less impactful by virtue of making it harder for players to draw the cards they chose to play.
*Technically you could have the deck building randomly fill in your deck, but you'd still be choosing to do that, so it's not exactly random.
Your tone here reminds me of your recent thread where you insisted (without proof) that the pity timer was broken, and everyone told you that you were probably wrong based on all the existing data, so you got mad at everyone.
Your idea of changing card draw odds is not some "nerfing method everyone is oblivious to" - it's just a terrible idea, and that's why people are criticizing it.
The first major problem is a problem of implementation. How do you determine whether a card is OP? There are lots of ways you might imagine doing this, since "OP" is somewhat subjective, but you seem to think the answer to that is to judge based on the "drawn win rate." That's simple and feels good, but it ignores the fact that "drawn win rate" will be impacted by this algorithm because "drawn win rate" depends a lot on - you guessed it - drawing the cards in question. In that way, this is sort of a classic case of Goodhart's Law (when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure). Frankly, there's no way to determine the power level of a card that won't suffer from this problem precisely because you're manipulating draw probabilities. If a card is good its draw odds will drop, and once its odds drop it will be worse, which will in turn drive its odds up. What you end up with is just a mess of probabilities that go up and down arbitrarily.
The second major problem is transparency. Today you know that if you have N cards left in your deck, you have a 1/N chance of drawing any given card. This proposal would make it impossible to know what the odds were of drawing a card because those odds would be constantly changing based on the current prevalence of a given card across all Hearthstone games. Even if Blizzard was explicit about how they calculated these values, you wouldn't have the data needed to determine the true odds. But knowing the odds of drawing specific cards is a big part of "playing to your outs," (that is, it's critical to the skill ceiling of Hearthstone - and CCGs generally, for that matter). If your choices are to try and draw into some burst damage or trade on board and stall your opponent, you need to know the odds of drawing your burn cards in order to make a decision that maximizes odds of winning.
The third issue relates to "cast when drawn" cards. They have no "drawn win rate" in any meaningful sense, but how they're distributed in your deck is super important. For example, this algorithm could result in ruining the Soul Demon Hunter archetype by driving an unusually high number of Soul Fragments to be drawn before you can play the payoff cards. In Wild, you could end up with strange play patterns around The Darkness because of how those cards would interact with your opponent's existing draw odds. And Bomb Warrior would be crazy under this new system.
This probably depends a lot on where you are on the current rewards track. If you're at the point where all levels are 1500 XP for 50 gold, then you probably play enough to get back to that point without the extra boost of delaying your weekly quests. Under that model, the delay really just means you get back to that 1500 point a tiny bit sooner, so it's kind of like trading levels of 50 gold now for levels of 50 gold later. Any difference probably comes out in the wash, so the only factor I'd consider here your answer to the question "am I happy with the amount of gold I have going into the next expansion?"
If you're not at that point yet, and particularly if you're at a point where your weekly quests together only get you about 1 level up, I'd be more inclined to save up the quests and get a head start on the next track.
I'm not sold on the Ogremancer comparison here. The first thing to note is that the 2/2s having taunt is really important because it gets teched into decks to thwart spell-heavy aggro decks. The second thing to note is that its recent prevalence is almost exclusively in Highlander Control decks. But for that deck restriction, those decks would much more happily run a second copy of some class AOE (e.g. Breath of the Infinite or Flame Ward). Highlander decks aren't going to be relevant in Standard after rotation, so many of these control decks will just prefer to run more AOE over convoluted token generation.
Despite Mor'shan Watch Post being decent tech against token generation if it comes down on turn 3, the 2/2 bodies won't be worth nearly as much against midrange or control decks, which makes playing a "Can't Attack" minion a lot more painful.
Tough to say whether Swinetusk Shank is better than Self-Sharpening Sword. The sword is 10 damage over four swings (1+2+3+4), and if you play three poisons, the shank is 10 damage over five swings (2+2+2+2+2). This means that the shank is consistently higher damage at 3+ poisons because you get more buffed swings and equal base damage, and it also means that at 2+ poisons the shank is pretty close to the sword in terms of raw damage output (8 base damage over four swings, so you get the same amount of buffed damage as sword and only 2 less base damage).
But, between luck of the draw and weapon removal, you're probably not going to land 3+ poisons on the same weapon. Also, the Self-Sharpening Sword is modestly better synergy for Cutting Class and Steeldancer because it can increase its own attack. That probably means it narrowly wins out over the Swinetusk Shank in terms of overall quality, but if we're being honest, they're so close to each other in terms of power that if you want to run weapons, you're probably happy to run both and have the redundancy.
(This maybe changes a little if they reveal one more poison...more poisons might make the odds of a triple weapon buff more likely, and then shank ends up being better over time.)
The only thing better than Scabbs Cutterbutter's name is the effect - this is going to make for some crazy combo turns. Getting rid of Edwin for this is 100% worth it
I mentioned this above as well, but this misses the most important point here - you do not have to build around Priest of An'she at all. It's good enough as is, and has a decent payoff for things Priest already wants to do with their other cards, and regularly does with their hero power.
By constrast, the Soul Fragment package ends up being around a third of your deck. Since it required so much investment, the Soul Fragment payoffs that saw play were all the proactive ones - Shardshatter Mystic, Soulshard Lapidary, Shadowlight Scholar, and Soulciologist Malicia. That proactivity is critical because if you're going to spend 10 or so card slots on an archetype, it better pay off in terms of tempo, and because the smaller payoff cards weaken the big payoff of a bunch of 3/3 rush minions and effectively lose you 2 health, they need to be even more proactive to make up for that loss. Void Drinker didn't really accomplish any of that, so it didn't see much play.
We haven't seen a ton of frenzy cards yet, so it's still a bit hard to judge exactly how powerful this will be, but clearly [Hearthstone Card (High Overlord Saurfang) Not Found] is great deal of value for the cost. It's so good, in fact, that it makes Razormane Raider - an otherwise boring "mechanic showcase" type card - look like a surprisingly strong in Warrior.
Conviction (Rank 1) is not very impressive, but Conviction (Rank 2) and Conviction (Rank 3) are really strong. In a proper aggro list, the Rank 2 version is basically a 1-mana Fireball right around the turn you're hoping to close the game out. And if the game goes too long, the extra 9 damage burst in the late game can help you close things out even when your opponent is starting to wear down your board.
The worst case scenario here is that you use your hero power to heal for 2, then drop Xyrella for a 2-damage AOE. That's pretty weak, but it's probably comparable to Shattered Rumbler, which was playable.
But realistically, this is much better. Typically you'll play this alongside Desperate Prayer or Renew or even Flash Heal to get a sizable AOE effect alongside the 4/4 body. Or you pair this with Holy Nova or Lightshower Elemental for a massive late game AOE. The fact that this can be effective at multiple points of the game makes Xyrella a very compelling card.
Mor'shan Watch Post is definitely the better of the two Watch Posts. Getting a bunch of 2/2s is just generally better than getting one or two small buffs, and your opponent is way more likely to be playing some minions over spells.
This is probably not a good idea, but one deck that might like this is Silence Priest. Turn 3 play Mor'shan Watch Post. Your opponent plays one or two minions on turn 4, giving you some extra value. Turn 4 play Focused Will and now your Watch Post is a 3/8 that can trade along with those extra 2/2s. You don't get more 2/2s, but the first pass already got you some decent tempo.
The Kargal deck looks like a huge meme, so this is probably a terrible card. In a token/aggro deck where you want this kind of buff, this card is a non-starter. It's a "4 mana do nothing" card that comes packaged with the hopes that your opponent will spend their mana buffing your guys. Maybe it's an okay tech card to resist AOE (kind of like Never Surrender!), but 4 mana is a lot to spend for that kind of insurance.
The dream deck for Kargal Battlescar is something like Kargal Taunt Druid, where you use various buffs (e.g. Ironbark, Mark of the Spikeshell, Germination, and maybe even Mark of the Wild) to summon a bunch of Watch Posts and charge up your Kargal battlecry.
Granting them taunt effectively gets around the "Can't attack" issue, and once the Watch Posts have taunt, your opponent will have to interact with them, which will help get value out of the effects. But the big payoff for investing so much into those Watch Posts is a slightly worse Chef Nomi, so that's probably way too much work for the payoff.