Druid is not great. You need to draw well and hope ETC draws badly. I have lost 6 in a row to him and am still trying. He has so much more draw that you cannot run him out of threats, and so much life that you cannot aggro him down. I honestly don't know how anyone can win with druid without being incredibly lucky.
Pozzik, Audio Engineer will still be the best card in the game. Played on curve it leaves the opponent with 4 mana and two 3-mana cards they want to get rid of. Playing a 3-mana 3/3 is terrible and doing so on turn 4 is even worse. It wrecks the opponent's curve. I expect it will be nerfed again.
The Tony+Jailer combo is needed against blood dk and control priest. You want to destroy their deck because they can kill your immune minions. Blood dk can put a surprising amount of pressure on making it hard to build up armor.
I think blood dk would happily include Infinitize the Maxitude. But discovering a dk spell is more valuable than discovering a mage spell and mage does not have the survival tools to make a deck that aims to win via attrition. As a mage card, I believe you could remove the finale requirement from it and it would still not see play in any competitve mage deck.
Sadly, mage only has one great spell, which is Frozen Touch (and the only good mage deck is built around it). Otherwise mage has a bunch of good but not great spells, and a lot of low impact or bad spells.
I have been trying all week to make a Lightshow deck work but it ended up with a very low curve because mage has awful survival tools at the moment, and Lightshow wrecks late-game strategies. The Lightshow version is better against blood dk but worse against everything else. Both versions are so heavily dependent on drawing one card though (Frozen Touch or Lightshow).
I've been trying to figure out some way to get Lightshow to work, but without Commander Sivara, I don't even know how to get it to trigger enough to get the accomplishment
I have been trying all week to make a Lightshow deck work but it ended up with a very low curve because mage has awful survival tools at the moment, and Lightshow wrecks late-game strategies. The Lightshow version is better against blood dk but worse against everything else. Both versions are so heavily dependent on drawing one card though (Frozen Touch or Lightshow).
I expect more Death Knight nerfs. I don't think Construct Quarter was that important for them, but it had no runes and I suspect they are reluctant to nerf the two or three rune cards. Death Knight's biggest crime may be using few cards from Festival of Legends.
As an early game removal tool Lightshow looks terrible (and is very bad compared to Relic of Extinction). That Lightshow can hit face is a drawback early on when I probably want it to clear minions. Maybe it has late game value but it would need a lot of strong support. Silvermoon Arcanist doubles the damage and can be cast with 2 copies of Lightshow in one turn.
But any Lightshow deck needs consistent ways to create copies of it. You can with Rewind, Audio Splitter and Volume Up but it would mean limiting the number of spells in the deck.
I just think it is a shocking example of power creep because Dr Boom was included in nearly every deck and many people wanted it nerfed. Now I am not sure it is good enough to be played at all.
Dr. Boom looks so bad now. Compare it to Crabatoa and it is pathetically weak. Dr. Boom is 1-mana more, has no immediate board impact, and the Boom Bots' damage is random.
They gave shaman a quest-line that requires Overload cards, then last year's expansions included 3 cards with Overload (and no other Overload synergy). Now the quest-line will leave standard, as well as the synergy cards from that year - Charged Call, Investment Opportunity, Overdraft - and they make Overload the theme for the next expansion. Were they worried an Overload deck would be too strong?
The version of Astalor, the Flamebringer above is not correct. The manathirst ability actually says "Deal 16 instead." So I think the manathirst ability of Astalor, the Flamebringer changes the battlecry from "Deal 8 damage..." to "Deal 16 damage..." and that modified battlecry is doubled by Brann Bronzebeard to 32 total damage.
When I experimented with Sea Giant I mostly found it to be a "win more" card. I have a similar feeling about Rotgill now too.
Burn decks and combo decks don't put many mininos on the board so I would struggle to get it down for less than 6 mana and a 6-mana 8/8 isn't very good. Attritrion decks - such as blood death knight or pure control paladin - have plenty of board clears so I would prefer more ways of putting multiple bodies on the board. Sea Giant was best against imp warlock which was already a strong match-up for me.
I have found Queen Azshara to be okay. It has some flexibility. The colossus is more minions on the board. An extra Bloodlust can seal a game too. Even the weapon gives a bit of reach.
How good is Sea Giant? I found it clunky unless I was up against a minion-heavy deck like aggro druid. Rotgill has been very good for me as a replacement.
Druid is not great. You need to draw well and hope ETC draws badly. I have lost 6 in a row to him and am still trying. He has so much more draw that you cannot run him out of threats, and so much life that you cannot aggro him down. I honestly don't know how anyone can win with druid without being incredibly lucky.
I know I am late to this but my quick thoughts:
This does not help mage at all.
Pozzik, Audio Engineer will still be the best card in the game. Played on curve it leaves the opponent with 4 mana and two 3-mana cards they want to get rid of. Playing a 3-mana 3/3 is terrible and doing so on turn 4 is even worse. It wrecks the opponent's curve. I expect it will be nerfed again.
The Tony+Jailer combo is needed against blood dk and control priest. You want to destroy their deck because they can kill your immune minions. Blood dk can put a surprising amount of pressure on making it hard to build up armor.
Anub'Rekhan is a big change too. You can no longer follow it with Underking without having armor already. That can slow down the big Anub'Rekhan into Underking and Zok Fogsnout turn. It also makes it harder to get the armor necessary for The Jailer and Tony, King of Piracy.
Expired Merchant and Cruel Dinomancer works similar to Kangor. Unkillable Dinomancer.
I think blood dk would happily include Infinitize the Maxitude. But discovering a dk spell is more valuable than discovering a mage spell and mage does not have the survival tools to make a deck that aims to win via attrition. As a mage card, I believe you could remove the finale requirement from it and it would still not see play in any competitve mage deck.
Sadly, mage only has one great spell, which is Frozen Touch (and the only good mage deck is built around it). Otherwise mage has a bunch of good but not great spells, and a lot of low impact or bad spells.
Infinitize the Maxitude is bad because the pool of mage spells is bad. There are spells that do nothing but generate more spells (eg Tear Reality, Vast Wisdom), spells that rely on synergy to be good (eg Seafloor Gateway), spells that are incredibly low impact (eg Flame Geyser, Snap Freeze), and spells that are outright bad eg (Synthesize).
There are not enough good spells to make up for the large number of bad spells.
I've rarely got Commander Sivara to work. (I also cut Audio Splitter.) Most of the time my additional copies of Lightshow are created by Volume Up or Rewind. With spell damage from Silvermoon Arcanist or Aegwynn I have not needed more than 4 or 5 copies of Lightshow.
It is far more common to die before then though.
I have been trying all week to make a Lightshow deck work but it ended up with a very low curve because mage has awful survival tools at the moment, and Lightshow wrecks late-game strategies. The Lightshow version is better against blood dk but worse against everything else. Both versions are so heavily dependent on drawing one card though (Frozen Touch or Lightshow).
I expect more Death Knight nerfs. I don't think Construct Quarter was that important for them, but it had no runes and I suspect they are reluctant to nerf the two or three rune cards. Death Knight's biggest crime may be using few cards from Festival of Legends.
Deepwater Evoker and Balinda Stonehearth are also leaving standard. Big Spell Mage will be gutted.
As an early game removal tool Lightshow looks terrible (and is very bad compared to Relic of Extinction). That Lightshow can hit face is a drawback early on when I probably want it to clear minions. Maybe it has late game value but it would need a lot of strong support. Silvermoon Arcanist doubles the damage and can be cast with 2 copies of Lightshow in one turn.
But any Lightshow deck needs consistent ways to create copies of it. You can with Rewind, Audio Splitter and Volume Up but it would mean limiting the number of spells in the deck.
I just think it is a shocking example of power creep because Dr Boom was included in nearly every deck and many people wanted it nerfed. Now I am not sure it is good enough to be played at all.
Dr. Boom looks so bad now. Compare it to Crabatoa and it is pathetically weak. Dr. Boom is 1-mana more, has no immediate board impact, and the Boom Bots' damage is random.
They gave shaman a quest-line that requires Overload cards, then last year's expansions included 3 cards with Overload (and no other Overload synergy). Now the quest-line will leave standard, as well as the synergy cards from that year - Charged Call, Investment Opportunity, Overdraft - and they make Overload the theme for the next expansion. Were they worried an Overload deck would be too strong?
Without quests there is once again a massive disparity in the strength of heroes. I would rather they do something about hero balance.
Oh, I didn't know that's what happened. Thanks for telling me.
The version of Astalor, the Flamebringer above is not correct. The manathirst ability actually says "Deal 16 instead." So I think the manathirst ability of Astalor, the Flamebringer changes the battlecry from "Deal 8 damage..." to "Deal 16 damage..." and that modified battlecry is doubled by Brann Bronzebeard to 32 total damage.
When I experimented with Sea Giant I mostly found it to be a "win more" card. I have a similar feeling about Rotgill now too.
Burn decks and combo decks don't put many mininos on the board so I would struggle to get it down for less than 6 mana and a 6-mana 8/8 isn't very good. Attritrion decks - such as blood death knight or pure control paladin - have plenty of board clears so I would prefer more ways of putting multiple bodies on the board. Sea Giant was best against imp warlock which was already a strong match-up for me.
I have found Queen Azshara to be okay. It has some flexibility. The colossus is more minions on the board. An extra Bloodlust can seal a game too. Even the weapon gives a bit of reach.
I have seen Shadow Hunter Vol'jin used to cheat out the bigger minions, with Neptulon the Tidehunter as a big threat.
How good is Sea Giant? I found it clunky unless I was up against a minion-heavy deck like aggro druid. Rotgill has been very good for me as a replacement.