It's because Warlock has too much healing. I've been saying this since Barrens.
One of the main points of Warlock is that it uses Health as a resource. That's all well and good, and makes for interesting decisions ... until you give the class so much healing that there are no more decisions. Just go ahead and spend that Health willy-nilly in full confidence that you'll have no trouble getting it back.
When you're trying to draw through your entire deck, life tapping and cards like Backfire are not the least bit scary because you are guaranteed to get 12 points of healing from quilboars and two 1-mana 6/6 taunts, not to mention all the lifesteal removal you'll draw along the way, some of which may be doubled by Tamsin.
Warlock may not technically have more healing than Priest, but it definitely has far more efficient healing, and a lot of it.
The problems go hand-in-hand, but I do think the latest "OwlTK" Warlock decks shows that card draw is the biggest issue. It's true that decks that care about self-harm (i.e. Questline Handlock) use Barrens Scavenger and Blood Shard Bristleback to recover, but they're only enabled by drawing your whole deck really fast. Meanwhile the "OwlTK" Warlock doesn't use either of those cards to stabalize, instead getting by with cheap AOE like Grimoire of Sacrifice along with extra card draw like Bloodmage Thalnos and the Tour Guide/Manafeeder Panthara combo.
One funny bug ive seen is rogue discovering rogue cards when shouldn't. E.g. I have been having fun with the 1/4 secret guy (I have him in golden but can't remember his name lulz) and when I play secrets I often get offered rogue secrets. I think it's because Maestra.
+1 to Riffraff here - I think Shadowjeweler Hanar's text refers to the secret you play. The text is "After you play a Secret, Discover a Secret from a different class." So if you aren't playing a Rogue secret, you'll see one in the discover pool.
Honestly, I think it is too early to decide whether or not OTK Warlock is an issue. It absolutely crumples to Libram Paladin and Quest Mage, and I imagine once people start playing Face Hunter it will suffer even more. Currently I feel like it is only good against grindy decks who win through attrition.
This is exactly the kind of argument I and many others were making about Questline Warlock at the start of United in Stormwind, and we all know where that went. That's not to say the Owl OTK will need some kind of nerfs, per se, but it's clear Warlock is a problem. When it was just Questline Warlock, you could at least argue the deck was consistent because it always started with its win condition (i.e. the quest) in hand. But the success of Owl OTK makes it clear that Warlock is just way too good at consistently and rapidly drawing their whole deck.
It reminds me a bit of that brief time when Gonk OTK and Maly OTK Druids were both surprisingly effective decks because they shared a fairly OP shell of draw and defensive tools.
I've certainly seen fewer Questline Warlock decks than before launch, but I've still seen a lot (particularly after Day 1). And Humongous Owl Warlock is a problem for basically the same reason Questline Warlock is a problem - Warlock has way too much card draw, making the deck super consistent and way too good against slower, value-oriented decks. Maybe one overtakes the other, or maybe both continue to see play - I doubt it makes much of a difference for the metagame, because both warp it in much the same way.
Not saying it should be nerfed just yet, but one potential nerf to the Owl deck that I actually think would just make a ton of sense would be to remove the Shadow school from Tamsin's Phylactery. A lich's phylactery is magical, but it's still a physical object - lots of other spells that represent mystical items have no spell school (e.g. Skull of Gul'dan, Moontouched Amulet, Deck of Lunacy). There are certainly counterexamples (Soul Mirror, Amulet of Undying, The Dark Portal), so I guess Blizzard likes to do this in part for flavor and in part for balance. If the deck is getting out of hand, this seems like an easy tweak that could be made to remove the possibility of a free copy from Tamsin Roame, which would make the deck easier to disrupt.
The achievement bugs are annoying, but they're nowhere near as bad as the animation bugs. Several times on mobile I've had to restart the game after my opponent played Celestial Alignment because the game just starts strobing the animation, the Secret Passage animation has often stalled out on me across platforms, and the Sleight of Hand hero power animation seems to trigger more times the more you use it (e.g. the first time you might get one animation, the next time you get several, etc.). And that's just from my games yesterday playing Burgle Rogue - who knows how many other bugs like that are floating around and they all cut into your turn time.
Many ppl are worried that these new cards cannot compete : (
I don't know why. There's a ton of good new cards in this set. Aside from maybe Mage and Druid cards
The worry is that a lot of the archetypes being pushed in Alterac Valley are slower, more value-oriented archetypes (Big Spell Mage, Armor Warrior, Deathrattle Priest, etc.) and that none of those will be able to complete with Questline Warrior, Warlock, and Mage decks that very consistently complete their quests. Slower decks get burned out by the infinite combo decks and trampled on by the aggression of the pirates.
It's true that those archetypes didn't get much support with this latest expansion, but they may be so powerful already that they'll outclass the new archetypes anyway.
The Wing Commander Ichman one seems pretty hard - you need your opponent to have a board full of stuff, and you need to be randomly summoning beasts that are big enough to kill the enemy minions, all without exceeding board space on your side (which could easily happen if you've got deathrattles in your deck that summon more minions). Maybe there are some Wild shenanigans you can do with Terrorguard Escapee and cost reduction, but that seems like a tall order.
They definitely occupy a strange space. If you're more casual about the game you might never complete the legendary questline that would get you the golden copy of the second one, so for those players there's something intuitive about having Drek'thar and Vanndar work like any other legendary from a pack. But for many players who will complete it (but who can't possibly get 7200 honor in the next 3-4 days), it presents a certain duplicate protection problem.
For folks who don't care about golden cards, you could always just dust the golden copy when you get it. Then at least you still net one legendary from the quest (even though technically you're getting less dust on net).
I noticed that after the quest went live, the total honor value being checked for granting golden cards was the quest value, not the total that tracks the achievement.
Given that the achievement tracker knows how much honor you have from the original start, it seems like it should be easy to correct the quest progress. Hopefully they do something like that - it definitely feels a little bad to go from "here's a major grind to get a golden legendary" to "we're starting early!" to "oops, some of that progress doesn't count because it's too hard for us to read data from two places!"
Has anyone experimented with conceding and gaining Honor? I'm not particularly interested in auto-conceding my way to 7200 Honor, but I don't like to feel like I can never concede a game without losing out on some reward.
Unless you're sure you're going to get one or more procs of the Honorable Kill trigger on Direwolf Commander, this is a waste. Even then, I'm not convinced this is all that good. Hunter probably doesn't need it because of how easily they can flood the board with Token beasts already, and Beast Token Druid is probably already getting enough class card support to make this neutral irrelevant. It seems like this card is built to punish token decks, so maybe we'll see it as a tech card for token mirrors, but I don't think it will get much play elsewhere.
All of those seem fine, but even for the big burst effects I'm not convinced this card is necessary or anything more than a meme. What card would you replace in a deck to run this for a little extra face damage or a slightly bigger AOE? I have no idea.
Probably bad. Classes that can utilize 1-damage AOE effects already have plenty of them, and the fail case for this minion is just understated junk. It's probably important to have something like this in a set that includes the Honorable Kill mechanic, as it can help any class line those up, but I doubt it sees any play outside of Arena or newbie ranked ladder where players don't have alternatives.
Probably better than it looks at first glance. It could be relevant to an E.T.C., God of Metal OTK deck, a Beast Token Druid deck, a Token Demon Hunter deck, a Handbuff Paladin deck - heck it could even be relevant to a Cera'thine Fleetrunner Rogue deck. Having relevance for that many classes means this could see a lot of play even though it's a fairly simple, unassuming card.
The four classes that could get any value out of this are Hunter, Mage, Warrior, and Shaman.
Hunter has nearly no Frost spells, so that's never going to happen
Warrior has a decent number of Frost spells, but also has a lot of competition for 4-mana slots (Rancor, Sword Eater, Outrider's Axe, Vanndar Stormpike for Big Warrior), so I doubt it finds room for this.
Shaman seems like the best fit - it has a fair amount of Elemental synergy and a lot of new Frost spells, including the excellent 1-drop Windchill
I'm not convinced this makes the cut in every Frost Mage or Shaman deck, but it has enough potential to grow out of hand while your opponent is paralyzed that it could be a real threat.
Dropping this on 5 feels bad. Maybe your opponent attacks it, but more likely you're getting no impact from it up front and your opponent will just trade into your board to limit its impact before you can pick up any buffs. It does buff itself, so that's kind of interesting, and it pairs well with Rocket Augmerchant to create a decent 6-mana AOE buff if you're trying to push for lethal with an aggro deck that lacks that kind of finishing power, but most decks that want that kind of buff (e.g. Token Druid) already have better class options. Maybe there's a Warrior deck that could proc this a bunch without a ton of effort? Probably won't see much play.
Seems like the definition of a win more card; it has zero impact the turn it's played, if you're behind on board this will often give you below-average stats, and if you're ahead on board this will often give you above-average stats. I expect this to see basically zero play outside of Arena.
Did you try it as both an honorable kill off the battlecry and an honorable kill as an attack? Seems like maybe that could make a difference.
The problems go hand-in-hand, but I do think the latest "OwlTK" Warlock decks shows that card draw is the biggest issue. It's true that decks that care about self-harm (i.e. Questline Handlock) use Barrens Scavenger and Blood Shard Bristleback to recover, but they're only enabled by drawing your whole deck really fast. Meanwhile the "OwlTK" Warlock doesn't use either of those cards to stabalize, instead getting by with cheap AOE like Grimoire of Sacrifice along with extra card draw like Bloodmage Thalnos and the Tour Guide/Manafeeder Panthara combo.
+1 to Riffraff here - I think Shadowjeweler Hanar's text refers to the secret you play. The text is "After you play a Secret, Discover a Secret from a different class." So if you aren't playing a Rogue secret, you'll see one in the discover pool.
This is exactly the kind of argument I and many others were making about Questline Warlock at the start of United in Stormwind, and we all know where that went. That's not to say the Owl OTK will need some kind of nerfs, per se, but it's clear Warlock is a problem. When it was just Questline Warlock, you could at least argue the deck was consistent because it always started with its win condition (i.e. the quest) in hand. But the success of Owl OTK makes it clear that Warlock is just way too good at consistently and rapidly drawing their whole deck.
It reminds me a bit of that brief time when Gonk OTK and Maly OTK Druids were both surprisingly effective decks because they shared a fairly OP shell of draw and defensive tools.
I've certainly seen fewer Questline Warlock decks than before launch, but I've still seen a lot (particularly after Day 1). And Humongous Owl Warlock is a problem for basically the same reason Questline Warlock is a problem - Warlock has way too much card draw, making the deck super consistent and way too good against slower, value-oriented decks. Maybe one overtakes the other, or maybe both continue to see play - I doubt it makes much of a difference for the metagame, because both warp it in much the same way.
Not saying it should be nerfed just yet, but one potential nerf to the Owl deck that I actually think would just make a ton of sense would be to remove the Shadow school from Tamsin's Phylactery. A lich's phylactery is magical, but it's still a physical object - lots of other spells that represent mystical items have no spell school (e.g. Skull of Gul'dan, Moontouched Amulet, Deck of Lunacy). There are certainly counterexamples (Soul Mirror, Amulet of Undying, The Dark Portal), so I guess Blizzard likes to do this in part for flavor and in part for balance. If the deck is getting out of hand, this seems like an easy tweak that could be made to remove the possibility of a free copy from Tamsin Roame, which would make the deck easier to disrupt.
The achievement bugs are annoying, but they're nowhere near as bad as the animation bugs. Several times on mobile I've had to restart the game after my opponent played Celestial Alignment because the game just starts strobing the animation, the Secret Passage animation has often stalled out on me across platforms, and the Sleight of Hand hero power animation seems to trigger more times the more you use it (e.g. the first time you might get one animation, the next time you get several, etc.). And that's just from my games yesterday playing Burgle Rogue - who knows how many other bugs like that are floating around and they all cut into your turn time.
The worry is that a lot of the archetypes being pushed in Alterac Valley are slower, more value-oriented archetypes (Big Spell Mage, Armor Warrior, Deathrattle Priest, etc.) and that none of those will be able to complete with Questline Warrior, Warlock, and Mage decks that very consistently complete their quests. Slower decks get burned out by the infinite combo decks and trampled on by the aggression of the pirates.
It's true that those archetypes didn't get much support with this latest expansion, but they may be so powerful already that they'll outclass the new archetypes anyway.
The Wing Commander Ichman one seems pretty hard - you need your opponent to have a board full of stuff, and you need to be randomly summoning beasts that are big enough to kill the enemy minions, all without exceeding board space on your side (which could easily happen if you've got deathrattles in your deck that summon more minions). Maybe there are some Wild shenanigans you can do with Terrorguard Escapee and cost reduction, but that seems like a tall order.
They definitely occupy a strange space. If you're more casual about the game you might never complete the legendary questline that would get you the golden copy of the second one, so for those players there's something intuitive about having Drek'thar and Vanndar work like any other legendary from a pack. But for many players who will complete it (but who can't possibly get 7200 honor in the next 3-4 days), it presents a certain duplicate protection problem.
For folks who don't care about golden cards, you could always just dust the golden copy when you get it. Then at least you still net one legendary from the quest (even though technically you're getting less dust on net).
I noticed that after the quest went live, the total honor value being checked for granting golden cards was the quest value, not the total that tracks the achievement.
Given that the achievement tracker knows how much honor you have from the original start, it seems like it should be easy to correct the quest progress. Hopefully they do something like that - it definitely feels a little bad to go from "here's a major grind to get a golden legendary" to "we're starting early!" to "oops, some of that progress doesn't count because it's too hard for us to read data from two places!"
Has anyone experimented with conceding and gaining Honor? I'm not particularly interested in auto-conceding my way to 7200 Honor, but I don't like to feel like I can never concede a game without losing out on some reward.
They probably won't be uncraftable, so if you don't care at all about cosmetics and golden cards then this is a free 2800 dust.
Unless you're sure you're going to get one or more procs of the Honorable Kill trigger on Direwolf Commander, this is a waste. Even then, I'm not convinced this is all that good. Hunter probably doesn't need it because of how easily they can flood the board with Token beasts already, and Beast Token Druid is probably already getting enough class card support to make this neutral irrelevant. It seems like this card is built to punish token decks, so maybe we'll see it as a tech card for token mirrors, but I don't think it will get much play elsewhere.
Not completely awful, but certainly too frail to see any kind of constructed play.
It's a neat effect. Some ideas on how you might use it:
All of those seem fine, but even for the big burst effects I'm not convinced this card is necessary or anything more than a meme. What card would you replace in a deck to run this for a little extra face damage or a slightly bigger AOE? I have no idea.
Probably bad. Classes that can utilize 1-damage AOE effects already have plenty of them, and the fail case for this minion is just understated junk. It's probably important to have something like this in a set that includes the Honorable Kill mechanic, as it can help any class line those up, but I doubt it sees any play outside of Arena or newbie ranked ladder where players don't have alternatives.
Probably better than it looks at first glance. It could be relevant to an E.T.C., God of Metal OTK deck, a Beast Token Druid deck, a Token Demon Hunter deck, a Handbuff Paladin deck - heck it could even be relevant to a Cera'thine Fleetrunner Rogue deck. Having relevance for that many classes means this could see a lot of play even though it's a fairly simple, unassuming card.
The four classes that could get any value out of this are Hunter, Mage, Warrior, and Shaman.
I'm not convinced this makes the cut in every Frost Mage or Shaman deck, but it has enough potential to grow out of hand while your opponent is paralyzed that it could be a real threat.
Dropping this on 5 feels bad. Maybe your opponent attacks it, but more likely you're getting no impact from it up front and your opponent will just trade into your board to limit its impact before you can pick up any buffs. It does buff itself, so that's kind of interesting, and it pairs well with Rocket Augmerchant to create a decent 6-mana AOE buff if you're trying to push for lethal with an aggro deck that lacks that kind of finishing power, but most decks that want that kind of buff (e.g. Token Druid) already have better class options. Maybe there's a Warrior deck that could proc this a bunch without a ton of effort? Probably won't see much play.
Seems like the definition of a win more card; it has zero impact the turn it's played, if you're behind on board this will often give you below-average stats, and if you're ahead on board this will often give you above-average stats. I expect this to see basically zero play outside of Arena.