I'd also like to gush about how much of a flavour win Soul Fragments are. Yes, they're based on Soul Shards, but their namesake is actually a Demon Hunter mechanic in WoW. Demon Hunters can make Soul Fragments when they kill enemies with certain spells, which will drop them on the ground. What do they do with Soul Fragments? If they pick them up, it heals them. Just like the Casts When Drawn effect.
Warlock: Great 1 drop. Will certainly see play in zoolock, BUT that's only if zoolock even want's the Soul Fragment package.
Not necessarily. 1/3 statline is good enough to see play in Zoo without any upsides, and this strictly has an upside. The upside is of course being a demon, and getting demon synergies. They don't care about restoring 4 health some day, but they certainly care about a premium statline with a premium tribe tag.
This is what Bomb Warrior should have been. No obnoxious RNG kills. Lots of variety in what the shuffles can do. Having the base cards not be horrible so you could actually just run them without parasitic support cards. No SMOrc encouraging. This is awesome.
Spells always create a copy on your side. When I'm in a Priest mirror, I'll sometimes cast Psyche Split on important minions like Convincing Infiltrator or Reliquary of Souls, because stats are meaningless in that matchup, and it's more about what your minions do. Plus, I've used it to put Skeletal Dragons in SW:D range and summon my own copy.
Jinyu Waterspeaker was a great card while it was in Standard, and for just one less healing you're getting Taunt, a better statline, and no Overload.
Granted, Shaman might not be able to fill that condition consistently. They only have Bloodlust, Eye of the Storm, Hagatha's Scheme, Dragon's Pack, and Earthquake to fulfill it (and probably not Dragon's Pack or Bloodlust). However, based on this and Lightning Bloom, I'm willing to bet their cross-class Epic will be a big spell.
I wish they'd bring RegisKillbin to more of these. That guy's like a bundle of joy who just wants to see all the cool things you can do in Hearthstone. That's the sort of energy they should bring to reveal livestreams.
alright, that was pretty lit. Guess I have motivation to play through that story now
I honestly wouldn't recommend it. It's... not great.
I mean, it also takes like two hours to finish, so no harm no foul. It's not very well written or challenging, though. At least the Challenge missions take some creativity, even if they are very easy, since you can't use Wild cards.
Technically this hasn't been a long wait, because the first expansion is usually announced at the end of February but AoO was announced in the middle of March. Everything got shifted forwards half a month.
I kind of prefer this because we get condensed information, instead of that awkward two week period where we know the set but nothing gets announced.
The reason you see complaints is because the brawl is polarizing, and most people come to forums to complain, not compliment. If you liked the brawl passingly, would you have even commented on it? Probably not.
I also firmly believe the outright haters are the minority, where most people are either neutral on it or like it. I mean, why would Blizzard reprise this brawl every year if it wasn't liked? It's the same reason Crossroads and Randomonium get reprised so often - those are two of the most played brawls (as confirmed by Blizzard's internal statistics), and I suspect this is up there too.
Actual hated brawls are things like Banana Brawl or Unidentifibrawl, which have only been used once.
We had Captain Blackheart's Treasure a little under a month ago, which is basically a simplified version of this. That one you had a deck full of Pirates and Discovered cards instead of drawing. This brawl you have an ever-growing deck where everything in your hand and every card you play is shuffled into your deck and you redraw your hand every turn.
I said this before, but I honestly will give Blizz the benefit of the doubt when it comes to DH's initial balance. They legitimately did not expect them to have so much tempo, because of the hero power. For the better part of their development, until three months before the announcement, their hero was 2 mana "Give your hero +1 Attack this. Can be used twice each turn." Giving them a hero power with basically the same effect at half the cost suddenly pushed their tempo through the roof, and most of the cards were probably already past initial design.
Five mana Skull makes sense in a world where the deck was too heavy to guarantee the Outcast. Three durability Aldrachi makes sense when you were probably only swinging for two. 2/2 Battlefiend makes sense when you were paying twice the mana to give it +1 Attack. Five mana 10/10 Imprisoned Antaen (which it was during the streamer summit) makes sense when that was the big finisher.
I agree that the current hero power is more fun, unique, and useful than what they had before. They just strangled themselves with the deadline. Clearly, the class needed more than a year to design properly.
I will say, my solution for Outcast in heavier decks is simple. Make them too slow for aggro decks to use. Four of the cards are card draw, three of them literally say "Outcast: Draw a card", and the other two are instant damage to minions. Give Outcast to card generation effects, big demons, stuff like that. It really shouldn't be on anything cheaper than five mana, at least for a little bit.
Gidra's name is misspelled as Fidra.
I'd also like to gush about how much of a flavour win Soul Fragments are. Yes, they're based on Soul Shards, but their namesake is actually a Demon Hunter mechanic in WoW. Demon Hunters can make Soul Fragments when they kill enemies with certain spells, which will drop them on the ground. What do they do with Soul Fragments? If they pick them up, it heals them. Just like the Casts When Drawn effect.
So good.
Not necessarily. 1/3 statline is good enough to see play in Zoo without any upsides, and this strictly has an upside. The upside is of course being a demon, and getting demon synergies. They don't care about restoring 4 health some day, but they certainly care about a premium statline with a premium tribe tag.
This is what Bomb Warrior should have been. No obnoxious RNG kills. Lots of variety in what the shuffles can do. Having the base cards not be horrible so you could actually just run them without parasitic support cards. No SMOrc encouraging. This is awesome.
Spells always create a copy on your side. When I'm in a Priest mirror, I'll sometimes cast Psyche Split on important minions like Convincing Infiltrator or Reliquary of Souls, because stats are meaningless in that matchup, and it's more about what your minions do. Plus, I've used it to put Skeletal Dragons in SW:D range and summon my own copy.
Jinyu Waterspeaker was a great card while it was in Standard, and for just one less healing you're getting Taunt, a better statline, and no Overload.
Granted, Shaman might not be able to fill that condition consistently. They only have Bloodlust, Eye of the Storm, Hagatha's Scheme, Dragon's Pack, and Earthquake to fulfill it (and probably not Dragon's Pack or Bloodlust). However, based on this and Lightning Bloom, I'm willing to bet their cross-class Epic will be a big spell.
Chillwind Yeti is a good card if you play it on exactly turn 4. I'd play a Yeti that gives me better draws.
Phantom Militia is a better tribute in Chinese, where it's name is pronounced similarly to Tom's and Tom even provides the voice acting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/85rcx1/the_card_of_tom60229/
I wish they spread it over two weeks. Basically, cut out last week where they announced nothing and just halve the reveal rate.
Otherwise, faster reveals are better in my opinion.
I wish they'd bring RegisKillbin to more of these. That guy's like a bundle of joy who just wants to see all the cool things you can do in Hearthstone. That's the sort of energy they should bring to reveal livestreams.
(I also miss Day9)
Samwise Didier hides pandas in most of his art. It's the whole reason Pandaren are even a thing.
Granted, I don't think there are pandas in any of his Hearthstone artworks, but I have a Warcraft III art book with pandas all over it.
Hopefully an interesting mix of Priest upside and Warlock (potentially abusable) downside.
I see what you've done here, Blizzard.
I honestly wouldn't recommend it. It's... not great.
I mean, it also takes like two hours to finish, so no harm no foul. It's not very well written or challenging, though. At least the Challenge missions take some creativity, even if they are very easy, since you can't use Wild cards.
Here's praying that it's KT as a Lich and not as a Necromancer. I mean, necro KT as a Dumbledore would be hilarious, but his lich form is so iconic.
They don't want him in Odd DH I'm guessing.
Technically this hasn't been a long wait, because the first expansion is usually announced at the end of February but AoO was announced in the middle of March. Everything got shifted forwards half a month.
I kind of prefer this because we get condensed information, instead of that awkward two week period where we know the set but nothing gets announced.
The reason you see complaints is because the brawl is polarizing, and most people come to forums to complain, not compliment. If you liked the brawl passingly, would you have even commented on it? Probably not.
I also firmly believe the outright haters are the minority, where most people are either neutral on it or like it. I mean, why would Blizzard reprise this brawl every year if it wasn't liked? It's the same reason Crossroads and Randomonium get reprised so often - those are two of the most played brawls (as confirmed by Blizzard's internal statistics), and I suspect this is up there too.
Actual hated brawls are things like Banana Brawl or Unidentifibrawl, which have only been used once.
We had Captain Blackheart's Treasure a little under a month ago, which is basically a simplified version of this. That one you had a deck full of Pirates and Discovered cards instead of drawing. This brawl you have an ever-growing deck where everything in your hand and every card you play is shuffled into your deck and you redraw your hand every turn.
I said this before, but I honestly will give Blizz the benefit of the doubt when it comes to DH's initial balance. They legitimately did not expect them to have so much tempo, because of the hero power. For the better part of their development, until three months before the announcement, their hero was 2 mana "Give your hero +1 Attack this. Can be used twice each turn." Giving them a hero power with basically the same effect at half the cost suddenly pushed their tempo through the roof, and most of the cards were probably already past initial design.
Five mana Skull makes sense in a world where the deck was too heavy to guarantee the Outcast. Three durability Aldrachi makes sense when you were probably only swinging for two. 2/2 Battlefiend makes sense when you were paying twice the mana to give it +1 Attack. Five mana 10/10 Imprisoned Antaen (which it was during the streamer summit) makes sense when that was the big finisher.
I agree that the current hero power is more fun, unique, and useful than what they had before. They just strangled themselves with the deadline. Clearly, the class needed more than a year to design properly.
I will say, my solution for Outcast in heavier decks is simple. Make them too slow for aggro decks to use. Four of the cards are card draw, three of them literally say "Outcast: Draw a card", and the other two are instant damage to minions. Give Outcast to card generation effects, big demons, stuff like that. It really shouldn't be on anything cheaper than five mana, at least for a little bit.