The data doesn't bear this claim out - Pirate Warrior and Galakrond Warrior both have over 50% winrates on HSReplay, but against Shaman they're both around 44% winrates. I don't mean to say that your described experience with aggro vs. Galakrond Shaman is dishonest, but in aggregate most people trying what you're saying aren't having that level of success because Shaman has so many rush minions and so much reload potential.
I'm sorry, I misspoke, what I meant to say was that it wasn't the win condition that made any single Paladin deck work (in the way that it did for Control Warrior with Tank Up), and that's because getting an extra 1/1 in the mid to late game is strong, but not in a way that's entirely degenerative to the meta game. Having access to it on turn 1 is the reason Odd Paladin is overpowered, and Justicar Midrange Paladin's hero power was never a game-ruining problem.
I'm apparently in the minority here, but I really dislike the balance strategy of late. I used to admire what a lot of people have whined about previously - back in the vanilla days, Blizzard were very reluctant to perform any direct balance changes.
That, in my opinion, is the desirable state of affairs. It is a source of continual frustration to me that so many cards have been nerfed - and often not because of any actual balance reason, but because people continually whine about them. The biggest example is probably Quest Rogue on release - barely got above a 50% winrate at any time, and yet got nerfed into non-viability just because people were whining about it. And then ate multiple other nerfs over time, too.
The desirable state of affairs in any card game - hell, any game at all - is for players to find their own solutions. I've gotten to Legend multiple times almost entirely off the back of hating on the most popular decks. Let the meta resolve balance issues, don't just nerf anything that looks like it's doing well before players can react to it.
Unfortunately, that state of affairs is not directly conducive of more people playing (and therefore more money being spent), because people like to whine about things that aren't really problems.
So I was beginning to reply and was intending to say something like "I usually agree with you but in this case Galakrond Shaman according to HSReplay has winrates over 60% which is really oppressive", except then I went there to confirm that it was still the case. It is but... it is steadily trending down. 64.61% on launch (which sounds ridiculous), down to 60.02% now. Still crazy high, but a) early season meta is full of all sorts of homebrew and decks that people are trying to make work but are simply terrible (not sure what the current equivalents are, but many times that Blizzard have pushed Discolock for example and people have tried it to no success at all) so a strong deck will feast on those.
So yeah, I agree with you, it's too early and the meta is finding a way it seems.
That said, I have played with it, and I have played against it, and in both cases I'm no sure how I would have beaten it, it seems to be strong all game long. I really REALLY hope they don't take it to the ground though because it's fun. 1/1 rushing dudes on Invoke would be an option but that would feel SO bad. Capping the battlecry minions to 6/6? Might feel fairer but might also take it to the ground.
I'm entirely unable to find this 60% winrate you've claimed. The best version of this on HS replay has a current average winrate of ~63%, and while it has been trending down, a lot of that is due to mirror matches. Its winrate against most classes is at or above 65% - sometimes dramatically so.
Moreover, you've entirely ignored the play data around Faceless Corruptor. It's super powerful, sees play in a majority of decks today, and forces the meta into a state where everyone has to play a board-centric game with it in order to succeed. Sure, it's a neutral card, but no class is as good as Shaman at supporting its play style right now, and typical tempo-oriented contenders like Hunter and Rogue don't have the AOE they'd need to compete with a late game Galakrond, the Tempest, leaving Shaman the undisputed king of the metagame.
I don't get why people call the warlock galakrond bad... People say getting 2 1/1's is bad.... BUT THATS ODD PALADIN IN A NUTSHELL. I'm having trouble understanding why people call odd paladin a problem (Wild ofc) and the warlock galakrond bad.
Odd Paladin is strong because it has that hero power from turn 1. Justicar Trueheart didn't see play in Paladin when it was in standard because getting that hero power in the mid to late game isn't impactful enough. This is just a repeat of that, but it's extra hard in this meta to find a place for a tempo oriented Warlock.
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to play for tempo against Galakrond Shaman - the constant barrage of 2/1 rush minions (and 5/4 rush minions) during the early and midgame regularly overpowers anyone who's trying to play for board, and their late game is a wall of 8/8 minions that make typical tempo-oriented classes (Rogue, Hunter) irrelevant because they have no good AOE tools to clean up that wall.
For what it's worth, I don't really think Galakrond, the Tempest needs to be nerfed at all. Yes, summoning two 8/8s is huge, and yes, getting it duplicated by Heart of Vir'naal is devastating, but the elementals can't go face immediately, and there's no shortage of big board swing cards that are beatable with AOE (e.g. Dragoncaller Alanna, Chef Nomi, etc.).
The real problem is the combination of Corrupt Elementalist, Faceless Corruptor, and (as usual) Shudderwock. These make it too easy to stop opposing early game pressure, max out your Galakrond on curve (I've played Warlock and Rogue Galakrond, and I regularly find myself stuck playing before maxing out), and then reload your entire hand and board if your opponent was lucky enough to have AOE available to clear your wall of 8/8s.
You're right that the Mutate/Mogu Fleshshaper combo is a problem too, but I doubt it will matter much if you fix the other things, and I'd say rather than change Mutate (which has useful interactions today with cards like Spirit of the Frog and Gadgetzan Auctioneer), they should do an early Hall of Fame for Shudderwock.
Once you break that package up, Galakrond, the Tempest should be beatable because with a strong control deck you can clear out their minions until you reach the late game and win (particularly since the "deal 2 to a minion" hero power isn't really all that good in the late game).
Looking forward to never seeing Faceless Corruptor ever again - a neutral 5 mana get two 5/4 rush minions is totally broken.
I'm honestly a little shocked they didn't see that in testing. Comparing to the Druid's Oasis Surger, to that same level of efficiency, you had to play Quest Druid and make inefficient plays for several turns. By contrast, this neutral card only requires that you play a deck that wants to control the early board (i.e. makes efficient early game plays), and the fact that you're morphing an existing minion is often a bonus rather than a drawback.
Has anyone found any success with Galakrond in Warlock? I've tried some Zoo strategies, but it basically gets blown out by Galakrond Shaman's rush invoke.
I've just started trying to make a more control-oriented Darkest Day Galakrond work with things like Plague of Fire to get value out of the token imps, but so far results are unclear.
I legitimately cannot fathom being this adamantly upset about someone else getting a free, fundamentally useless cosmetic. It's not like you paid forit and now others are getting it for free, or other people are getting packs/legendaries that actually have an impact on the game, or whatever. It's a hero skin and a card back - something nobody will see 95% of the time when you're playing any hero besides Priest or anyone who doesn't use this particular card back on the deck you're playing.
To preface my remarks - I don't support the OP, and I think their anger over something entirely cosmetic is totally unwarranted, especially in the context of the unfairly limited release of the Tyrande hero skin back in 2016.
This is getting way into the weeds of how the business model of the internet works, but I think you could make an argument that people who got Tyrande back in 2016 did actually pay for it. For some, it may have meant getting Amazon Prime/Twitch Prime (which costs money)*, and for everyone it meant linking your Amazon, Twitch, and Blizzard accounts, thereby paying Blizzard with information about you and your Twitch viewing preferences. By contrast, this time around Tyrande is being used as a means of simultaneously fixing the unfairness of the original release while also promoting the new in-game store. It requires jumping through zero hoops and sharing zero data with Blizzard that they don't already have.
Your data has value, and so in that sense, if you have Tyrande already you did pay for it (or at least traded for it). Of course, fixing the online commercialization of personal data is way outside the scope of Hearthstone, and in most cases Tyrande was and remains free in the monetary sense of the word.
*Many people probably already had Amazon Prime accounts, or could have gotten a free trial for the Tyrande promotion, but theoretically this costs money that someone might not otherwise spend, and I have seen nothing in the OP's remarks which specify whether that was the case for them.
You need two dragons in hand before this is better than just running Chillwind Yeti, and its presence on board a) tells your opponent how many dragons you're holding and b) incentivizes you not to play your cards. Seems really awful.
If you are already playing a dragon deck it doesn't really matter as long as you have enough stats. Yetti stats are still not bad this is better.
You're right that with enough stats, it doesn't really matter, but getting to that number is hard. You need a lot of dragons to consistently have 2+ in your hand without also being stuck not playing those dragons. That's gonna mean running some of the weaker dragons and not running some of your stronger spell options. This card is just too close to vanilla too often to make it worth building around.
3 mana 4/4 rush is a very strong card, so if there's a midrange or aggro mech deck in meta looking to play for board early, this will be a serious contender.
Poison and evasion together is very potent, but with only 1 health and no rush your opponent will frequently trade their worst minion into this. It's hard to see how this has a lot of impact, but maybe it's useful in arena?
1 mana 2/2 is a strong play for any token/zoo deck, but not having any tribal tag might mean the opportunity cost of this is too high for aggro archetypes.
Your opponent needs to have more than three cards in hand before you're getting anything out of this. Admittedly, there are probably plenty of cases when that will be true, but getting a minion that's only a bit over vanilla (particularly with only 3 health, leaving it fairly vulnerable) isn't super compelling. This is an elemental, so maybe that will be relevant in a class like Mage with their new sidequest, but I'm not seeing it.
You need two dragons in hand before this is better than just running Chillwind Yeti, and its presence on board a) tells your opponent how many dragons you're holding and b) incentivizes you not to play your cards. Seems really awful.
The data doesn't bear this claim out - Pirate Warrior and Galakrond Warrior both have over 50% winrates on HSReplay, but against Shaman they're both around 44% winrates. I don't mean to say that your described experience with aggro vs. Galakrond Shaman is dishonest, but in aggregate most people trying what you're saying aren't having that level of success because Shaman has so many rush minions and so much reload potential.
I'm sorry, I misspoke, what I meant to say was that it wasn't the win condition that made any single Paladin deck work (in the way that it did for Control Warrior with Tank Up), and that's because getting an extra 1/1 in the mid to late game is strong, but not in a way that's entirely degenerative to the meta game. Having access to it on turn 1 is the reason Odd Paladin is overpowered, and Justicar Midrange Paladin's hero power was never a game-ruining problem.
I'm entirely unable to find this 60% winrate you've claimed. The best version of this on HS replay has a current average winrate of ~63%, and while it has been trending down, a lot of that is due to mirror matches. Its winrate against most classes is at or above 65% - sometimes dramatically so.
Moreover, you've entirely ignored the play data around Faceless Corruptor. It's super powerful, sees play in a majority of decks today, and forces the meta into a state where everyone has to play a board-centric game with it in order to succeed. Sure, it's a neutral card, but no class is as good as Shaman at supporting its play style right now, and typical tempo-oriented contenders like Hunter and Rogue don't have the AOE they'd need to compete with a late game Galakrond, the Tempest, leaving Shaman the undisputed king of the metagame.
Odd Paladin is strong because it has that hero power from turn 1. Justicar Trueheart didn't see play in Paladin when it was in standard because getting that hero power in the mid to late game isn't impactful enough. This is just a repeat of that, but it's extra hard in this meta to find a place for a tempo oriented Warlock.
So, open them...
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to play for tempo against Galakrond Shaman - the constant barrage of 2/1 rush minions (and 5/4 rush minions) during the early and midgame regularly overpowers anyone who's trying to play for board, and their late game is a wall of 8/8 minions that make typical tempo-oriented classes (Rogue, Hunter) irrelevant because they have no good AOE tools to clean up that wall.
For what it's worth, I don't really think Galakrond, the Tempest needs to be nerfed at all. Yes, summoning two 8/8s is huge, and yes, getting it duplicated by Heart of Vir'naal is devastating, but the elementals can't go face immediately, and there's no shortage of big board swing cards that are beatable with AOE (e.g. Dragoncaller Alanna, Chef Nomi, etc.).
The real problem is the combination of Corrupt Elementalist, Faceless Corruptor, and (as usual) Shudderwock. These make it too easy to stop opposing early game pressure, max out your Galakrond on curve (I've played Warlock and Rogue Galakrond, and I regularly find myself stuck playing before maxing out), and then reload your entire hand and board if your opponent was lucky enough to have AOE available to clear your wall of 8/8s.
You're right that the Mutate/Mogu Fleshshaper combo is a problem too, but I doubt it will matter much if you fix the other things, and I'd say rather than change Mutate (which has useful interactions today with cards like Spirit of the Frog and Gadgetzan Auctioneer), they should do an early Hall of Fame for Shudderwock.
Once you break that package up, Galakrond, the Tempest should be beatable because with a strong control deck you can clear out their minions until you reach the late game and win (particularly since the "deal 2 to a minion" hero power isn't really all that good in the late game).
Looking forward to never seeing Faceless Corruptor ever again - a neutral 5 mana get two 5/4 rush minions is totally broken.
I'm honestly a little shocked they didn't see that in testing. Comparing to the Druid's Oasis Surger, to that same level of efficiency, you had to play Quest Druid and make inefficient plays for several turns. By contrast, this neutral card only requires that you play a deck that wants to control the early board (i.e. makes efficient early game plays), and the fact that you're morphing an existing minion is often a bonus rather than a drawback.
Has anyone found any success with Galakrond in Warlock? I've tried some Zoo strategies, but it basically gets blown out by Galakrond Shaman's rush invoke.
I've just started trying to make a more control-oriented Darkest Day Galakrond work with things like Plague of Fire to get value out of the token imps, but so far results are unclear.
To preface my remarks - I don't support the OP, and I think their anger over something entirely cosmetic is totally unwarranted, especially in the context of the unfairly limited release of the Tyrande hero skin back in 2016.
This is getting way into the weeds of how the business model of the internet works, but I think you could make an argument that people who got Tyrande back in 2016 did actually pay for it. For some, it may have meant getting Amazon Prime/Twitch Prime (which costs money)*, and for everyone it meant linking your Amazon, Twitch, and Blizzard accounts, thereby paying Blizzard with information about you and your Twitch viewing preferences. By contrast, this time around Tyrande is being used as a means of simultaneously fixing the unfairness of the original release while also promoting the new in-game store. It requires jumping through zero hoops and sharing zero data with Blizzard that they don't already have.
Your data has value, and so in that sense, if you have Tyrande already you did pay for it (or at least traded for it). Of course, fixing the online commercialization of personal data is way outside the scope of Hearthstone, and in most cases Tyrande was and remains free in the monetary sense of the word.
*Many people probably already had Amazon Prime accounts, or could have gotten a free trial for the Tyrande promotion, but theoretically this costs money that someone might not otherwise spend, and I have seen nothing in the OP's remarks which specify whether that was the case for them.
You're right that with enough stats, it doesn't really matter, but getting to that number is hard. You need a lot of dragons to consistently have 2+ in your hand without also being stuck not playing those dragons. That's gonna mean running some of the weaker dragons and not running some of your stronger spell options. This card is just too close to vanilla too often to make it worth building around.
3 mana 4/4 rush is a very strong card, so if there's a midrange or aggro mech deck in meta looking to play for board early, this will be a serious contender.
Poison and evasion together is very potent, but with only 1 health and no rush your opponent will frequently trade their worst minion into this. It's hard to see how this has a lot of impact, but maybe it's useful in arena?
1 mana 2/2 is a strong play for any token/zoo deck, but not having any tribal tag might mean the opportunity cost of this is too high for aggro archetypes.
Frequently a free 2/2, super powerful on turn 1. Totally insane pirate card.
Fun with Skyfin, and it's always cool to see more menagerie support. Maybe this can be good in wild.
Your opponent needs to have more than three cards in hand before you're getting anything out of this. Admittedly, there are probably plenty of cases when that will be true, but getting a minion that's only a bit over vanilla (particularly with only 3 health, leaving it fairly vulnerable) isn't super compelling. This is an elemental, so maybe that will be relevant in a class like Mage with their new sidequest, but I'm not seeing it.
SI:7 Agent is a strong staple for Tempo Rogue, so this will probably be good in at least one class's dragon archetype.
You need two dragons in hand before this is better than just running Chillwind Yeti, and its presence on board a) tells your opponent how many dragons you're holding and b) incentivizes you not to play your cards. Seems really awful.
Seems like a solid neutral version of Flanking Strike that won't see play in constructed because random damage is too risky.