For years? The last time mage got secret deck support was during the Darkmoon faire expansion, and the last time before that was even more years ago. You are also heavily overestimating how much impact a single dev has.

I only followed the development briefely, but there have been a couple betas during the last year in some few selected countries. There has recently also been a blog post about some reworks they have done since the last beta and confirming that they are still aiming at a release during 2022.

The "theme" of the next year is certainly going to be interesting. Not only do we know that the name will hint at old faces, but also that the last Expansion of the next year is going to be bigger than usual.

I also remember that (Iksar I belive) once talked about them brainstorming a alternative timeline expansion. Maybe they expanded that Idea and build a whole year around that idea? "Year of the Toki" incoming? The last expansion could then be something like a "clash of timelines" kind of thing with cards that are a mix of multiple past expansions (E.V.I.L Reno, Headteacher Mecha-Jaraxxus, Baku the Loa etc.). The possibilites are certainly enough to make the expansion bigger than usual.

Oh, well I'm probably dreaming of too much fan service here, but I'm very excited for the announcement of the next HS year (which should be very soon TM. I expect a stream announcement during the next week for the week after that)

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Mercenaries is meant to be a game where you can keep coming back whenever you want. A focus on single player gameplay played at your own pace.

I think this is the part that many people misunderstood during the announcement stream. It's a pve mode with added pvp, not the other way around and it's completely valid to not play pvp at all if you don't want to.

In fact I'm pretty certain that most merc players ignore pvp, or maybe only try to get the daily 1. win reward (especially the newer ones who joined because they don't find the other modes fun anymore).  That's why I'm also not a fan of people who argue that the mode is "dead" because there are 30 sec pvp que times. Even I who really enjoys pvp still spend most of my time in pve.

Oh, seems like there is going to be a new maze. Except that this time it also includes enemies, shops and treasure chests and more. Whoever designed and programmed this had way too much spare time.

I never had a problem there. Are you sure that Yulons 2. ability(+10 for board and blocks taunt\stealth for 2 turn) wasn't active?

I really hope that Pit commander will be part of the next core set. It is simple enough for it and yet it is one of, if not the best, enabler for big Deamonhunters. I just can't imagine the deck working without him.

I still think that it's way more likely that all that pandaria stuff was simply added as a theme for this years lunar new year event, instead of being teasers for the next expansion. Mainly for 3 reasons:

1. they have never teased Expansions with skins in advance (remember Lunara which was announced before the Witchwood expansion?)

2. Why would they tease a expansion over 2 months in advance?

3. Most importantly: Why else release all of that pandaria stuff now, instead of saving it to release it during the expansion, or at the very least for after the expansion announcement.

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I mean, it's been 7+ years, and not a single sale has happened.

Isn't that pretty much what pack bundles are? Instead of paying 20$ for 15 packs you can buy a bundle with, let's say 20 packs and a skin, for the same price.

I actually like the Battle.net launcher. It's pretty clean, I have all of the Blizzard games I play in one place and represented with big Icons (and don't have to search their names in a library) and I like the ability to see news of other Blizzard games too.

I'm also not sure what featues the Bethesda launcher has (other than being buggy as I heard), but all of the Blizzard games use the Battle.net account name and friendlist, which presumably would also not be transfer over to another launcher.

One cool thing to note here is that Android users can also use this wallpaper on their phone with the official app. You can also automatically change wallpaper based on various rules, like real life time (so you don't have this bright wallpaper during night time for example).

Heal power is a keyword just like Spell damage is, but instead it increases your healing abilities by 1 for each stack

Uhm, Deck of Lunacy was nerfed specifically because it saw too much play in a high winrate deck.

"You Discover and pick 5 treasures and get 2 copies of each. It replaces your deck, and you cannot pick the same treasure twice."

https://twitter.com/Songbird_HS/status/1492245051434430466?cxt=HHwWhMCrifq9wrUpAAAA

It's basically Archivist Elysiana, but it discovers Duels treasures.

This actually works really well with Lady Prestor. Absolutely awesome card in terms of flavor.

The mercs Story should be done after this year, so putting them into the next reward track seems extremely unlikely.

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Why should I spend two turns to wipe a fight with Demons when I can do it in one with Fire?

Maybe because you don't have any fire synergy in your comp because it sucks against most bosses. Demons on the other hand have more sustain with the abilitiy to summon minions, gives your whole team extra health and have scaling attack damage.

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You either oneshot LOkholar on turn 1 or you get destroyed by him

Or you build a slow team to not trigger his passive like with Orcs or maybe even dragons. Alternatively there are also reliable ways to kill him before his passive can do anything significant, like with Brukan and Guff 2. abilities.

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The whole fantasy of Mercs was supposed to be to build your party of synergistic mercs but instead everyone just runs the handful of top mercs that are just independently strong and synergy is largely out of the window.

Is that really the case? You already mentioned frost, fire and nature comps who obviously rely on synergy. Then there is also the occasional Anduin holy/heal, shadow and orcs teams I see in pvp.  Not to mention the ability synergy, like the famous Endurance Aura/Fire Stomp combo or Primal Power + Apex Predator.

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This isn't going to get better unless the rampant abuse of speed manipulation is addressed

Isn't that exactly what they did with Lokholar? They introduced a merc that is especially effective against speed heavy comps (and valeera in particular), which forces the meta to adapt. There are also a couple more mercs that reward you for going last.

I honestly don't think that the powercreep is as bad as you make it out to be. Yes, there are some power outliers in the post-launch mercs, but those also existed within the release mercs. There also is the opposite with mercs that are fun for pve, but not strong enough for pvp like Wrathion, Balinda, Galvangar, Trigore, Vanessa etc.

The current top-meta comp also mainly contains release mercs and all of them are perfectly usable in pve. I'd even go as far as to claim that Lokholar isn't even that strong in itself, but was just a direct counter to the previous Valeera that will loose its relevance once the meta focuses on slower abilities.

in the book of Mercenaries.