Albatross is sure a good tech against highlander decks, but the problem with it reside in the fact that it is also efficient against class that don't have good card draw for instance shaman, priest or paladin.
Some classes have no good card draw? -> To the library!
Only aggro decks can go the library :-)
Only hyper aggressive decks with an extremely low curve can go to the library.
I was one of the many victims of this "turn skip" bug and i'm glad it won't happen anymore. This is a good change in the short term but they should definitely do something about this card. Nozdormu has been an issue for a long time and it's not even a competitive card. It should be reworked. It NEEDS to be changed.
They are going to be a Pogo level strategy. Only work with certain heros and you will still be playing a highly risky game that probably won't pay off in the end. As i said, Murlocs are too dependent on Brann (the minion) to get anywhere. Poison is countered by Divine Shield which means mechs and dragons are now superior to them. Murlocs were always weak and inconsistent in the early and mid game but they had a huge pay off in the late game. The pay off is gone so why bother playing with such a weak and boring tribe and risking an early loss if other tribes can easily outscale and beat them in the late game? It's not worth it anymore. Murlocs were too dominant and needed a change but not giving them any worthwhile compensation was wrong.
Kael'thas Sunstrider was expected already. This will stop extreme combos from happening too early in the game. The best case scenario for an early Kael'thas combo is going to be a turn 4 double Lightning Bloom (8 total mana) into Kael'thas into whatever (Guardian Animals or Survival of the Fittest most likely). The fast ramping won't stop and the deck will still be viable but this will make it less frustrating to deal with. Good.
Mindrender Illucia wasn't expected right now but was expected in the future. The card is simply frustrating to deal with. She is hard to use but when they pull it off it's infuriating. A few days ago i was playing a Priest mirror and i forgot about her. The opponent played her on turn 9 and stole my Galakrond. You can imagine how happy i was. Slowing her down is going to make things a little bit more bearable but i won't be surprised if she takes another hit in the future.
Finally some major changes! I'm really happy that Arcane Cannon is being removed. That card was so obnoxious! It's also good that i won't die to Nat Pagle's s*** anymore.
Moving Rat to Tier 3 is something they should have done a long time ago. Pack Leader on Tier 2 is a little weird. He is only truly good with minions from Tier 3 and above. Saurolisk with 4 attack is... something. Macaw with +1/+1 is okay. Mama Bear on Tier 5 with less stats and weaker buff but it's probably still good. Goldrinn with +5/+5 will improve the Macaw build a lot but it's still kinda slow.
Eudora needed a nerf and this should slow her down significantly. Reno is going to have a much easier time adopting a strategy now. The Lich King is going to become a little better but i don't think it's going to be all that great. I didn't understand some things about the change to Galakrond. The minion is frozen but can i still roll and it will remain frozen in the shop (kinda like Maiev)? And Vashj wasn't very interesting anyway so i won't miss her.
Now, the big one. Megasaur is gone. I'm sure a lot of people is happy about that. I'm also happy because dying to unstoppable Murlocs was never fun. However, no compensation for the tribe? Absolutely nothing? Instead they get another massive nerf with Primalfin Lookout being unable to discover their bigger buffs? Bagurgle is alone on Tier 5 now. I wanted the tribe to be nerfed but this is too much. They look pretty much unplayable, right now. Murlocs are not fun in the early and mid game and only become interesting to play with once you start hitting those big buffs but who's going to bother with the massive risk of playing a boring weak tribe that can get outscaled by other tribes easily? Dragons still have Nadina, Kalecgos and Razorgore. Mechs have a refreshing Divine Shield minion and all of them can obtain Divine Shield through Annoy-o-Module. Demons scale from the very beggining of the game with Wrath Weaver and Floating Watcher comes earlier than Brann + Bagurgle. Pirates will stomp them before they can even start growing. Beasts are getting some big buffs. Murlocs don't even have access to plant tokens anymore (except for Amalgadon but everyone else benefit from it). What is this tribe supposed to do now? Brann isn't even optional anymore. Without him they have no chance whatsoever. Just... wow.
Edit: I made a mistake. Primalfin can still discover Bagurgle but only after you upgrade to 5. It's not as hopeless as i thought but i still think the tribe is going to be too weak and too dependent on Brann to get anywhere.
Last season i almost made to legend using a Highlander version of Quest Hunter that i created. The deck traded the consistency of duplicates for the sheer power of the Highlander cards. Dinotamer Brann is a powerful finisher and is also two bodies in one card. Pre-nerf Dragonqueen Alexstrasza was three bodies in one card and Zephrys just does a lot of different things. I could also experiment with some slower cards like Nagrand Slam and it was a very powerful finisher with a great synergy with the quest. DH was the main problem that prevented me from achieving legend.
I tried rebuilding the deck but this meta has too many giant minions and mana cheating and the deck can't deal with all that stuff. Dragonqueen Alexstrasza is too slow and weak now and we don't have enough time to complete the quest or even get to 10 mana to play Nagrand Slam. I like the idea of having multiple Zixors but those giant boards and big high rolls are really discouraging. Professor Slate could be a decent tech against such big threats but he lacks support to do his job properly. It will take some serious meta shifts for the deck to become a stronger contender once again.
Isn't the quest just a downgrade at that point? The whole point is to get the reward quickly and pressure with it, wouldn't running only 1 of each token card make it kind of...pointless? Dinotamer Brann doesn'T exactly benefit from the Quest in any particular way.
Dinotamer Brann is very commonly used to apply pressure instead of finishing the opponent in regular Highlander Hunter. I decided to take advantage of that as it would be helpful for completing the quest, apply pressure and act as a finisher. Those two points of damage could make a difference. I find regular lists of Quest Hunter to be too dependent on the opponent's mistakes or inability to remove a board to win the game. You have to wait for them to run out of answers or hope they play into your Unleash the Hounds. I decided to go for this route because it provides more ways to reliably finish off the opponent.
My list preyed on slower decks. I had over 90% win rate against Priests and they were responsible for my success for the most part. The quest reward doesn't give them enough time to stabilize. Highlander Mage was also a good prey but they could still find a way out through their RNG shenanigans. Galakrond Rogues were close to 50/50. DH and Warrior were the bad matchups. They were more efficient at applying pressure and dealing damage but Warriors were kinda rare outside legend. DH was all over the place though and that was enough to ruin the dream. It was the first time i got this close to legend. This sealed my distaste toward that class.
I tried a version with some deathrattles like Serpent Egg (to make a stickier board) and High Abbess Alura (for filtering) but the problem is the same: not enough card draw and losing the board once means game over. I wanted to experiment with Disciplinarian Gandling but i can't justify crafting him after my early experiments. He doesn't seem to be doing great either.
I find Voracious Reader to be more of a necessary evil than an actual good inclusion. The minion itself is pretty weak and sometimes the hand gets clogged with buff spells that are hard to get rid of to get a proper pay off from her ability. She can become really awkward to play from time to time. She seems to only be truly great in extreme low curve hyper aggressive decks that can just dump their hands very easily because of all the cheap cards. If you have any conditional cards (like buffs) that costs 4 or more then she can become really hard to play. Also, sometimes you just won't draw her at all. And the games end really fast. You either win very fast because of a big early game snowball or the opponent pushes you off the board and you run out of resources. The deck is full of terrible top decks.
Maybe it's a little early to completely write off the deck but so far it looks like a flop once again. The card draw issue is in my opinion too much of a back breaker for this archetype.
Last season i almost made to legend using a Highlander version of Quest Hunter that i created. The deck traded the consistency of duplicates for the sheer power of the Highlander cards. Dinotamer Brann is a powerful finisher and is also two bodies in one card. Pre-nerf Dragonqueen Alexstrasza was three bodies in one card and Zephrys just does a lot of different things. I could also experiment with some slower cards like Nagrand Slam and it was a very powerful finisher with a great synergy with the quest. DH was the main problem that prevented me from achieving legend.
I tried rebuilding the deck but this meta has too many giant minions and mana cheating and the deck can't deal with all that stuff. Dragonqueen Alexstrasza is too slow and weak now and we don't have enough time to complete the quest or even get to 10 mana to play Nagrand Slam. I like the idea of having multiple Zixors but those giant boards and big high rolls are really discouraging. Professor Slate could be a decent tech against such big threats but he lacks support to do his job properly. It will take some serious meta shifts for the deck to become a stronger contender once again.
Then what do you suggest? What kind of tools Tempo Priest could use that isn't card draw? The archetype has powerful buffs, strong tempo minions, strong value cards and a bit of mana cheating (through Alura). What is missing here other than card draw? I don't see it. I can't see what other tools could compensate for such a massive flaw in the archetype.
I have played Tempo Priest, and the biggest flaw is a fundamental one: it has no comeback mechanism whatsoever. Or at least, it uses no comeback mechanism whatsoever; there's plenty to choose from in priest if you want them. No amount of card draw will make up for the fact that when you have lost the board, you have more or less lost the game already.
Now, card draw would be a help against decks that don't fight for the board, but even then it will be tricky trying to make progress building a board from scratch against control, while you probably have a decent win rate against combo already.
So what do I suggest? Probably to try to make it a bit more midrange-y and less all-in from turn 1. I recall dragon priest in TGT, which got off to a fast start with Twilight Whelp and [Hearthstone Card (Wrymrest Agent) Not Found], and had Velen's Chosen to really hammer in early dominance, but didn't rely entirely on it and had slow cards and AoE like Lightbomb in there as well. It was tier 2 in this particular meta snapshot: https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/legacy/meta-snapshot-33-new-kid-on-the-block
I fully admit a lot has changed for priest since then, and card draw is no small part of that, but I genuinely think the entire philosophy of the all-in Tempo Priest we have today makes its own problems. It is built to win if the opponent has no answer for a few early big minions and doesn't give itself any options if that fails. Coming back to my previous post: a 1 mana change on 1 card can make all the difference on whether that approach is overall a success or a failure, as happened with Extra Arms a year ago.
So overall I think the archetype just needs to consider the full Priest toolkit better, and at worst it is in a bucket alongside a huge number of decks that are in that unfortunate window where they are fine but their win rate is a couple of per cent too low for ladder climbers and they get called 'unplayable'.
I don't know man. This seems kinda hopeless. Adding removals and board clears will make Alura a bad card in the deck. The current dragon synergies aren't as good as the ones from previous years. There's Disciplinarian Gandling for deathrattle synergy but looking at the current state of the meta it seems too slow. I'm hitting my head against a brick wall trying to break through but it seems the only thing i'm going to achieve is a headache. Thanks for the constructive discussion.
No, I don't see it as unfair. The majority of supported mechanics and archetypes in every class fall by the wayside and disappear from the meta after a week or two. E.g. Rogue has all these fancy tools for shuffling insane cards into their deck, and has Anka, the Buried to make deathrattle decks do some ludicrous things, but they have no presence in the meta whatsoever. But remember when Unlicensed Apothecary cost 4 mana and Necrium Blade was around? Then we definitely saw deathrattle rogue.
My point is that 1 mana made the difference between deathrattle rogue being OP and practically unplayed at the end of the DoD expansion cycle. That is how fine a line archetypes' success or failure is determined by (at least to players who care about win percentages; casual players don't care whether it is 45% win rate or 55%, but that's a separate discussion). Notably, deathrattle rogue had exactly the same amount of card draw available to it (in fact it even had more options after Galakrond's Awakening), so you have to find other reasons than card draw for why it ended up 'weak'.
Applying this to tempo priest and shaman, I would argue that what they are lacking is not card draw, but effective tools to compensate for them not having strong card draw. If a class is good at something it should be weak elsewhere, and vice versa. The times classes have been poorly designed are when they have too few weaknesses, or their strengths are not sufficient to overcome their weaknesses. Control priest does have such tools, but the tempo archetype is not quite there yet.
Then what do you suggest? What kind of tools Tempo Priest could use that isn't card draw? The archetype has powerful buffs, strong tempo minions, strong value cards and a bit of mana cheating (through Alura). What is missing here other than card draw? I don't see it. I can't see what other tools could compensate for such a massive flaw in the archetype.
Card generation for the 3 classes it is actually meant as a strength for does make thematic sense:
Rogue is literally stealing from everyone else;
Priest is probing their opponent's mind;
and Mage is so skilled with arcane magic that it can call upon spells it hasn't prepared.
I think these 3 should keep it as is, although not necessarily in the same form as it sometimes is right now, especially Mage whose casting of random spells with Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron, The Amazing Reno and now Trick Totem is just plain dumb. The important part is that these classes are designed with this in mind, and we can handle 3 classes doing this.
For everyone else however it should be reduced, and hopefully the next set rotation cycling out the Year of the Dragon will help.
However, I don't think every class should have access to great card draw. It is good for the diversity of the game if some classes do have to work out how best to use an emptying hand, without the answer just being to draw more cards. Plus card draw would have to replace something else in the cards they are given, so it is directly bad for diversity.
I was talking specifically about Priest and Shaman because these classes have no reliable card draw. That doesn't apply to Mages and Rogues as they have both card generation and good card draw. Do you see how unfair this is? Priest has no choice but to play a slow paced control/stall style because they don't have the means to quickly assemble a win condition. His combo tools were taken away completely and tempo will always be a complete flop without card draw.
I have tried Tempo Priest (i crafted Alura to experiment with this) and it still sucks because you have no way to draw cards and that makes it impossible to make a comeback in case you fall behind. Lose the board once and you are done. DH has no such issue because they can constantly refill their hand and replenish the board. Priest has to get on the board immediately and snowball. It's like playing with Murlocs. You need to create a massive snowball early because you have no way of getting back on the board if you fall behind. It feels really bad trying to make this work and seeing it fail every time simply because of the lack of draw. And no, Voracious Reader isn't even close to being enough. Voracious Reader is good for those ultra low curve hyper aggressive decks that vomit their hand on the board extremely quickly and Tempo Priest can't do that because of the buff spells (the majority costs 3 or more). The cards end up stuck in your hand and it makes playing Reader really awkward from time to time. Also, sometimes you just won't draw her in time because the game ends around turn 5 with you being extremely ahead or completely behind with no chances of making a comeback and having no choice but to concede.
Right now, Tempo Priest is tier 4 according to Vicious Syndicate's Meta Report. It will most certainly disappear when the meta finally settles and Priest will remain the most hated slow class that has no other choice other than to steal, stall and generate random garbage in order to win Hearthstone games. Oh, and Shaman is a complete flop as well. Totem Shaman is the only competitive archetype and it's losing percentages really quickly. What a surprise.
This is a really major change. It will impact card generation in a very meaningful way and it will stop some really busted things like chain Magic Tricks and Nature Studies. The only problem is that some classes are too dependent on random generation and this will definitely impact them negatively. I wish they would stop this bs about card generation being a strength and just give card draw to all classes so that we could play with the cards we added to our decks and not random junk.
I'm very surprised with Mozaki being this popular. The card isn't easy to use at all. Too many aggro decks on ladder to play a combo deck with her without having a miserable time. Ras Frostwhisper is much easier to use and is a nice addition to Highlander Mage. I don't have Evocation, Chenvaala or Astromancer Solarian and i'm not very interested in making such a big investment so i'll probably just ignore Mozaki.
I certainly underrated Rattlegore and i'm tempted to craft the card but i'm still being careful around it. I'll probably craft Alura for Priest but i don't have Lady Liadrin so Libram Paladin is off limits. I have tried Polkelt in Highlander decks and it's nice to have a guaranteed draw on a big late game card. I'm still not very comfortable with the appropriate time to play him though. And i took 22 damage from Gidra yesterday. That card is a must remove threat. If you fail to deal with it then it can actually kill you from out of nowhere.
Can I just say its kinda interesting you classify Glide as an anti fun card and to screw over control decks. While you classify Mindrender Illucia as an interesting tech card.
I should have mentioned that Glide is an anti-control tech for aggressive DH decks. And Illucia is indeed an anti-combo tech for control priests. Both are techs and both seem situational. I like slow strategies that rely on resource management and having a card that interferes directly with that while i'm unable to do anything about it is not fun for me. But i don't play exclusively control decks. I prefer those decks but i play everything and i understand everyone's perspective. It feels awful to play an aggro deck while a control player just turtles behind taunts and remove everything you play until you have no choice but to concede. It also feels terrible when i lose a combo piece because my opponent just played some weird tech that just wins the game instantly for them. It's also not fun trying to survive against face decks while they just ignore everything you do. It's all a matter of perspective.
I decided to leave my impressions and thoughts about these first few days of the expansion and an analysis of the legendary cards i've got. The thread is long so bear with me.
Glide is a card that i despised upon first glance. I mostly play slow decks and it looked like something designed to completely screw over with them in aggro DH which is supposed to be weak to Control decks. I only played against two DH with Glide so far. The meta isn't favorable for the card but it's awful if you are trying to keep resources in hand. They vomit everything on their hand and then they play this and refill their hand while discarding yours (it's not true discard but it feels like that). It may not be as op as i thought but it's as anti-fun as i thought.
I got Lorekeeper Polkelt from the bundle and i've been testing him mostly in highlander decks. It's an interesting card that has its uses but it can be a liability as well. You can play him one turn before you get to your big cards and you are guaranteed to draw them on the next turn. I have used it to have Dinotamer Brann consistently in my hand by turn 7 but if you don't draw Polkelt in time then he just becomes useless. Also, he's bad for specific card combinations. I've been testing Professor Slate in the deck as well and it's not good to have both him and/or Rapid Fire at the bottom of your deck. Polkelt is a little tricky to use properly and not as much of a meta breaker as people thought.
Speaking of Professor Slate, that's a card i haven't seen at all. Not in ladder, not in videos, absolutely nothing. I decided to test the card and it's quite good. Hunter doesn't lack hard removal. In fact, they have a lot of it right now with both Slate and Krolusk Barkstripper joining his arsenal alongside Deadly Shot and Rotnest Drake. The key difference is that Slate isn't random. You can choose your destruction target and that's relevant against wider boards. The problem is the lack of good spells to use with the card. Rapid Fire is good with Slate and... pretty much nothing else. Well, there's Vereesa Windrunner but nobody uses her so... Yeah. Besides that, we have Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot. These are not good enough. There will be people making the atrocious mistake of running into an Explosive Trap before removing Slate but i can't really count secrets as those are very easy to play around. In the end, the card lacks proper support but he can easily become great with a decent and cheap Multi-hit/AoE spell (like Grievous Bite in Wild).
Mindrender Illucia is another card that's really hard to utilize properly. She is mostly good for disrupting combos but those are extremely rare because the ladder is full of aggro decks. In my experience, she isn't great in control or midrange games because even if you waste your opponent's resources they can do the same to you. You don't want to play her with your big cards in hand and if you wait too much then there won't be much left to disrupt. In aggro games you can actually use her more effectively because your opponent is mostly holding low cost cards and you are holding high cost cards. If you play her early you can screw them and they won't be able to do much with your hand. Overall, she is another card that's really tricky to play with and she gives me the tech card vibe.
The meta isn't great on my end as i'm facing Druid all the time. There are a lot of Face Rogues (ugh...) and all sorts of Hunter decks as well. I rarely see Paladins and Warriors and not much else. Druids tend to fall apart pretty quickly against any aggression. However, it's undeniable that Lightning Bloom is a liability and it's just going to cause problems for the remainder of the year and the next one. Secret Passage is also pretty ridiculous. Voracious Reader is only good in extreme hyper aggressive decks that vomit their hands very quickly but the card isn't very good in any deck with cards that costs 4 or more. I think it will be fine if Face DH and Face Rogue fall from the meta.
Just as i expected, Mozaki, Master Duelist is extremely difficult to utilize as she is a combo card and the ladder is infested with aggression. Combo decks just fall apart very easily because of that. So far, she seems like a big meme that's going to see play just because combo lovers will never give up on making cards like that work. Ras Frostwhisper is much better and can be slotted into Highlander Mage without any other support cards. I don't play Shaman so i don't know how he's doing in that class. Btw, Ras is the only dual class legendary i've got so far. Really unlucky.
Finally, there's Sphere of Sapience. The card is very good in specific decks. I utilize it in my Wild OTK Miracle Priest. The deck always ran into the problem of drawing my big key minions before i could play Zerek's Cloning Gallery and the weapon prevents that which greatly increased its consistency. The weapon is good in Big Warrior and Duel Paladin as well because you really want to keep the big minions in the deck so you cheat them out. Sphere is pretty good, especially in decks that want to keep certain cards inside the deck.
Edit: I completely forgot about Infiltrator Lilian. I guess that's how much i care about aggressive cards. I tried her in a Secret Passage Stealth Rogue and it was fine. The deck has a lot of damage. Self-Sharpening Sword and Vulpera Toxinblade are really strong. Sometimes i didn't even need Secret Passage to win but that card just improves the deck's consistency a lot. Drawing 5 cards for so little just leaves a ton of flexibility and you can make the most out of your mana because of it. Also, if you draw Eviscerate the combo is going to active already. Lilian itself is just okay. The guaranteed damage can make the difference occasionally but she isn't needed to play a deck like this.
So far, the expansion just feels okay. There's some big mana cheat shenanigans happening (mostly because of Lightning Bloom but High Abbess Alura also contributes to the issue), lots of aggro decks, combo decks dying to aggro decks (as always) and Control decks seem to be AFK (at least, i haven't seen a lot of them). Let's see what's going to happen next week. Any thoughts? Thanks for reading!
With what is shown in this survey it looks like a really bad deal for F2P players. Capping their gold earnings is going to make their life extremely difficult. I managed to farm 3000 gold in one month of diligent play before this expansion came out. That's almost the total value the players could get if this system was implemented this way. Unless they just decide to give their soul to Blizzard and play like 10+ hours per day they aren't going to be able to purchase enough packs for a comfortable start on a new expansion. These numbers need some serious tweaks. Otherwise, i'd say this is most certainly a trap. In my case, i give the paid pass a pass. These cosmetics don't interest me and a non disenchantable legendary isn't a good deal as the card could just suck and rot in the collection without any use. I wish i could disenchant Zayle, Shadow Cloak as i never used that card since the decks it provides just suck.
I got Lord Barov (pretty good), Disciplinarian Gandling (good for experimentation) and Chenvaala (pretty good as well).
Only hyper aggressive decks with an extremely low curve can go to the library.
I was one of the many victims of this "turn skip" bug and i'm glad it won't happen anymore. This is a good change in the short term but they should definitely do something about this card. Nozdormu has been an issue for a long time and it's not even a competitive card. It should be reworked. It NEEDS to be changed.
They are going to be a Pogo level strategy. Only work with certain heros and you will still be playing a highly risky game that probably won't pay off in the end. As i said, Murlocs are too dependent on Brann (the minion) to get anywhere. Poison is countered by Divine Shield which means mechs and dragons are now superior to them. Murlocs were always weak and inconsistent in the early and mid game but they had a huge pay off in the late game. The pay off is gone so why bother playing with such a weak and boring tribe and risking an early loss if other tribes can easily outscale and beat them in the late game? It's not worth it anymore. Murlocs were too dominant and needed a change but not giving them any worthwhile compensation was wrong.
Kael'thas Sunstrider was expected already. This will stop extreme combos from happening too early in the game. The best case scenario for an early Kael'thas combo is going to be a turn 4 double Lightning Bloom (8 total mana) into Kael'thas into whatever (Guardian Animals or Survival of the Fittest most likely). The fast ramping won't stop and the deck will still be viable but this will make it less frustrating to deal with. Good.
Mindrender Illucia wasn't expected right now but was expected in the future. The card is simply frustrating to deal with. She is hard to use but when they pull it off it's infuriating. A few days ago i was playing a Priest mirror and i forgot about her. The opponent played her on turn 9 and stole my Galakrond. You can imagine how happy i was. Slowing her down is going to make things a little bit more bearable but i won't be surprised if she takes another hit in the future.
Finally some major changes! I'm really happy that Arcane Cannon is being removed. That card was so obnoxious! It's also good that i won't die to Nat Pagle's s*** anymore.
Moving Rat to Tier 3 is something they should have done a long time ago. Pack Leader on Tier 2 is a little weird. He is only truly good with minions from Tier 3 and above. Saurolisk with 4 attack is... something. Macaw with +1/+1 is okay. Mama Bear on Tier 5 with less stats and weaker buff but it's probably still good. Goldrinn with +5/+5 will improve the Macaw build a lot but it's still kinda slow.
Eudora needed a nerf and this should slow her down significantly. Reno is going to have a much easier time adopting a strategy now. The Lich King is going to become a little better but i don't think it's going to be all that great. I didn't understand some things about the change to Galakrond. The minion is frozen but can i still roll and it will remain frozen in the shop (kinda like Maiev)? And Vashj wasn't very interesting anyway so i won't miss her.
Now, the big one. Megasaur is gone. I'm sure a lot of people is happy about that. I'm also happy because dying to unstoppable Murlocs was never fun. However, no compensation for the tribe? Absolutely nothing? Instead they get another massive nerf with Primalfin Lookout being unable to discover their bigger buffs? Bagurgle is alone on Tier 5 now. I wanted the tribe to be nerfed but this is too much. They look pretty much unplayable, right now. Murlocs are not fun in the early and mid game and only become interesting to play with once you start hitting those big buffs but who's going to bother with the massive risk of playing a boring weak tribe that can get outscaled by other tribes easily? Dragons still have Nadina, Kalecgos and Razorgore. Mechs have a refreshing Divine Shield minion and all of them can obtain Divine Shield through Annoy-o-Module. Demons scale from the very beggining of the game with Wrath Weaver and Floating Watcher comes earlier than Brann + Bagurgle. Pirates will stomp them before they can even start growing. Beasts are getting some big buffs. Murlocs don't even have access to plant tokens anymore (except for Amalgadon but everyone else benefit from it). What is this tribe supposed to do now? Brann isn't even optional anymore. Without him they have no chance whatsoever. Just... wow.
Edit: I made a mistake. Primalfin can still discover Bagurgle but only after you upgrade to 5. It's not as hopeless as i thought but i still think the tribe is going to be too weak and too dependent on Brann to get anywhere.
Dinotamer Brann is very commonly used to apply pressure instead of finishing the opponent in regular Highlander Hunter. I decided to take advantage of that as it would be helpful for completing the quest, apply pressure and act as a finisher. Those two points of damage could make a difference. I find regular lists of Quest Hunter to be too dependent on the opponent's mistakes or inability to remove a board to win the game. You have to wait for them to run out of answers or hope they play into your Unleash the Hounds. I decided to go for this route because it provides more ways to reliably finish off the opponent.
My list preyed on slower decks. I had over 90% win rate against Priests and they were responsible for my success for the most part. The quest reward doesn't give them enough time to stabilize. Highlander Mage was also a good prey but they could still find a way out through their RNG shenanigans. Galakrond Rogues were close to 50/50. DH and Warrior were the bad matchups. They were more efficient at applying pressure and dealing damage but Warriors were kinda rare outside legend. DH was all over the place though and that was enough to ruin the dream. It was the first time i got this close to legend. This sealed my distaste toward that class.
I tried a version with some deathrattles like Serpent Egg (to make a stickier board) and High Abbess Alura (for filtering) but the problem is the same: not enough card draw and losing the board once means game over. I wanted to experiment with Disciplinarian Gandling but i can't justify crafting him after my early experiments. He doesn't seem to be doing great either.
I find Voracious Reader to be more of a necessary evil than an actual good inclusion. The minion itself is pretty weak and sometimes the hand gets clogged with buff spells that are hard to get rid of to get a proper pay off from her ability. She can become really awkward to play from time to time. She seems to only be truly great in extreme low curve hyper aggressive decks that can just dump their hands very easily because of all the cheap cards. If you have any conditional cards (like buffs) that costs 4 or more then she can become really hard to play. Also, sometimes you just won't draw her at all. And the games end really fast. You either win very fast because of a big early game snowball or the opponent pushes you off the board and you run out of resources. The deck is full of terrible top decks.
Maybe it's a little early to completely write off the deck but so far it looks like a flop once again. The card draw issue is in my opinion too much of a back breaker for this archetype.
Last season i almost made to legend using a Highlander version of Quest Hunter that i created. The deck traded the consistency of duplicates for the sheer power of the Highlander cards. Dinotamer Brann is a powerful finisher and is also two bodies in one card. Pre-nerf Dragonqueen Alexstrasza was three bodies in one card and Zephrys just does a lot of different things. I could also experiment with some slower cards like Nagrand Slam and it was a very powerful finisher with a great synergy with the quest. DH was the main problem that prevented me from achieving legend.
I tried rebuilding the deck but this meta has too many giant minions and mana cheating and the deck can't deal with all that stuff. Dragonqueen Alexstrasza is too slow and weak now and we don't have enough time to complete the quest or even get to 10 mana to play Nagrand Slam. I like the idea of having multiple Zixors but those giant boards and big high rolls are really discouraging. Professor Slate could be a decent tech against such big threats but he lacks support to do his job properly. It will take some serious meta shifts for the deck to become a stronger contender once again.
I don't know man. This seems kinda hopeless. Adding removals and board clears will make Alura a bad card in the deck. The current dragon synergies aren't as good as the ones from previous years. There's Disciplinarian Gandling for deathrattle synergy but looking at the current state of the meta it seems too slow. I'm hitting my head against a brick wall trying to break through but it seems the only thing i'm going to achieve is a headache. Thanks for the constructive discussion.
Then what do you suggest? What kind of tools Tempo Priest could use that isn't card draw? The archetype has powerful buffs, strong tempo minions, strong value cards and a bit of mana cheating (through Alura). What is missing here other than card draw? I don't see it. I can't see what other tools could compensate for such a massive flaw in the archetype.
I was talking specifically about Priest and Shaman because these classes have no reliable card draw. That doesn't apply to Mages and Rogues as they have both card generation and good card draw. Do you see how unfair this is? Priest has no choice but to play a slow paced control/stall style because they don't have the means to quickly assemble a win condition. His combo tools were taken away completely and tempo will always be a complete flop without card draw.
I have tried Tempo Priest (i crafted Alura to experiment with this) and it still sucks because you have no way to draw cards and that makes it impossible to make a comeback in case you fall behind. Lose the board once and you are done. DH has no such issue because they can constantly refill their hand and replenish the board. Priest has to get on the board immediately and snowball. It's like playing with Murlocs. You need to create a massive snowball early because you have no way of getting back on the board if you fall behind. It feels really bad trying to make this work and seeing it fail every time simply because of the lack of draw. And no, Voracious Reader isn't even close to being enough. Voracious Reader is good for those ultra low curve hyper aggressive decks that vomit their hand on the board extremely quickly and Tempo Priest can't do that because of the buff spells (the majority costs 3 or more). The cards end up stuck in your hand and it makes playing Reader really awkward from time to time. Also, sometimes you just won't draw her in time because the game ends around turn 5 with you being extremely ahead or completely behind with no chances of making a comeback and having no choice but to concede.
Right now, Tempo Priest is tier 4 according to Vicious Syndicate's Meta Report. It will most certainly disappear when the meta finally settles and Priest will remain the most hated slow class that has no other choice other than to steal, stall and generate random garbage in order to win Hearthstone games. Oh, and Shaman is a complete flop as well. Totem Shaman is the only competitive archetype and it's losing percentages really quickly. What a surprise.
This is a really major change. It will impact card generation in a very meaningful way and it will stop some really busted things like chain Magic Tricks and Nature Studies. The only problem is that some classes are too dependent on random generation and this will definitely impact them negatively. I wish they would stop this bs about card generation being a strength and just give card draw to all classes so that we could play with the cards we added to our decks and not random junk.
I was really expecting them to say something about that horrible Cannon but nothing, it seems. I wish that thing was nuked out of existence.
I'm very surprised with Mozaki being this popular. The card isn't easy to use at all. Too many aggro decks on ladder to play a combo deck with her without having a miserable time. Ras Frostwhisper is much easier to use and is a nice addition to Highlander Mage. I don't have Evocation, Chenvaala or Astromancer Solarian and i'm not very interested in making such a big investment so i'll probably just ignore Mozaki.
I certainly underrated Rattlegore and i'm tempted to craft the card but i'm still being careful around it. I'll probably craft Alura for Priest but i don't have Lady Liadrin so Libram Paladin is off limits. I have tried Polkelt in Highlander decks and it's nice to have a guaranteed draw on a big late game card. I'm still not very comfortable with the appropriate time to play him though. And i took 22 damage from Gidra yesterday. That card is a must remove threat. If you fail to deal with it then it can actually kill you from out of nowhere.
I should have mentioned that Glide is an anti-control tech for aggressive DH decks. And Illucia is indeed an anti-combo tech for control priests. Both are techs and both seem situational. I like slow strategies that rely on resource management and having a card that interferes directly with that while i'm unable to do anything about it is not fun for me. But i don't play exclusively control decks. I prefer those decks but i play everything and i understand everyone's perspective. It feels awful to play an aggro deck while a control player just turtles behind taunts and remove everything you play until you have no choice but to concede. It also feels terrible when i lose a combo piece because my opponent just played some weird tech that just wins the game instantly for them. It's also not fun trying to survive against face decks while they just ignore everything you do. It's all a matter of perspective.
I decided to leave my impressions and thoughts about these first few days of the expansion and an analysis of the legendary cards i've got. The thread is long so bear with me.
Glide is a card that i despised upon first glance. I mostly play slow decks and it looked like something designed to completely screw over with them in aggro DH which is supposed to be weak to Control decks. I only played against two DH with Glide so far. The meta isn't favorable for the card but it's awful if you are trying to keep resources in hand. They vomit everything on their hand and then they play this and refill their hand while discarding yours (it's not true discard but it feels like that). It may not be as op as i thought but it's as anti-fun as i thought.
I got Lorekeeper Polkelt from the bundle and i've been testing him mostly in highlander decks. It's an interesting card that has its uses but it can be a liability as well. You can play him one turn before you get to your big cards and you are guaranteed to draw them on the next turn. I have used it to have Dinotamer Brann consistently in my hand by turn 7 but if you don't draw Polkelt in time then he just becomes useless. Also, he's bad for specific card combinations. I've been testing Professor Slate in the deck as well and it's not good to have both him and/or Rapid Fire at the bottom of your deck. Polkelt is a little tricky to use properly and not as much of a meta breaker as people thought.
Speaking of Professor Slate, that's a card i haven't seen at all. Not in ladder, not in videos, absolutely nothing. I decided to test the card and it's quite good. Hunter doesn't lack hard removal. In fact, they have a lot of it right now with both Slate and Krolusk Barkstripper joining his arsenal alongside Deadly Shot and Rotnest Drake. The key difference is that Slate isn't random. You can choose your destruction target and that's relevant against wider boards. The problem is the lack of good spells to use with the card. Rapid Fire is good with Slate and... pretty much nothing else. Well, there's Vereesa Windrunner but nobody uses her so... Yeah. Besides that, we have Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot. These are not good enough. There will be people making the atrocious mistake of running into an Explosive Trap before removing Slate but i can't really count secrets as those are very easy to play around. In the end, the card lacks proper support but he can easily become great with a decent and cheap Multi-hit/AoE spell (like Grievous Bite in Wild).
Mindrender Illucia is another card that's really hard to utilize properly. She is mostly good for disrupting combos but those are extremely rare because the ladder is full of aggro decks. In my experience, she isn't great in control or midrange games because even if you waste your opponent's resources they can do the same to you. You don't want to play her with your big cards in hand and if you wait too much then there won't be much left to disrupt. In aggro games you can actually use her more effectively because your opponent is mostly holding low cost cards and you are holding high cost cards. If you play her early you can screw them and they won't be able to do much with your hand. Overall, she is another card that's really tricky to play with and she gives me the tech card vibe.
The meta isn't great on my end as i'm facing Druid all the time. There are a lot of Face Rogues (ugh...) and all sorts of Hunter decks as well. I rarely see Paladins and Warriors and not much else. Druids tend to fall apart pretty quickly against any aggression. However, it's undeniable that Lightning Bloom is a liability and it's just going to cause problems for the remainder of the year and the next one. Secret Passage is also pretty ridiculous. Voracious Reader is only good in extreme hyper aggressive decks that vomit their hands very quickly but the card isn't very good in any deck with cards that costs 4 or more. I think it will be fine if Face DH and Face Rogue fall from the meta.
Just as i expected, Mozaki, Master Duelist is extremely difficult to utilize as she is a combo card and the ladder is infested with aggression. Combo decks just fall apart very easily because of that. So far, she seems like a big meme that's going to see play just because combo lovers will never give up on making cards like that work. Ras Frostwhisper is much better and can be slotted into Highlander Mage without any other support cards. I don't play Shaman so i don't know how he's doing in that class. Btw, Ras is the only dual class legendary i've got so far. Really unlucky.
Finally, there's Sphere of Sapience. The card is very good in specific decks. I utilize it in my Wild OTK Miracle Priest. The deck always ran into the problem of drawing my big key minions before i could play Zerek's Cloning Gallery and the weapon prevents that which greatly increased its consistency. The weapon is good in Big Warrior and Duel Paladin as well because you really want to keep the big minions in the deck so you cheat them out. Sphere is pretty good, especially in decks that want to keep certain cards inside the deck.
Edit: I completely forgot about Infiltrator Lilian. I guess that's how much i care about aggressive cards. I tried her in a Secret Passage Stealth Rogue and it was fine. The deck has a lot of damage. Self-Sharpening Sword and Vulpera Toxinblade are really strong. Sometimes i didn't even need Secret Passage to win but that card just improves the deck's consistency a lot. Drawing 5 cards for so little just leaves a ton of flexibility and you can make the most out of your mana because of it. Also, if you draw Eviscerate the combo is going to active already. Lilian itself is just okay. The guaranteed damage can make the difference occasionally but she isn't needed to play a deck like this.
So far, the expansion just feels okay. There's some big mana cheat shenanigans happening (mostly because of Lightning Bloom but High Abbess Alura also contributes to the issue), lots of aggro decks, combo decks dying to aggro decks (as always) and Control decks seem to be AFK (at least, i haven't seen a lot of them). Let's see what's going to happen next week. Any thoughts? Thanks for reading!
With what is shown in this survey it looks like a really bad deal for F2P players. Capping their gold earnings is going to make their life extremely difficult. I managed to farm 3000 gold in one month of diligent play before this expansion came out. That's almost the total value the players could get if this system was implemented this way. Unless they just decide to give their soul to Blizzard and play like 10+ hours per day they aren't going to be able to purchase enough packs for a comfortable start on a new expansion. These numbers need some serious tweaks. Otherwise, i'd say this is most certainly a trap. In my case, i give the paid pass a pass. These cosmetics don't interest me and a non disenchantable legendary isn't a good deal as the card could just suck and rot in the collection without any use. I wish i could disenchant Zayle, Shadow Cloak as i never used that card since the decks it provides just suck.
Can't believe i didn't notice that... Problem solved! Thanks!
I was expecting a pack with 4 Desk Imps. Disappointed.