So Dean replied to a Q&A and this was the response...
Quote From Dean Q&A
Mass Nerf
Power creep will always be a decision, though in some ways it will be inevitable.
They have discussed doing a mass card nerf that could be done at the start of a rotation.
Goals would be to lower the power of the core set and the three sets from the previous year.
Dean doesn't think doing one would be unreasonable nor is it a crazy idea..
Dean also thinks that as the next year approaches, they will consider it very closely.
While this makes me hopeful it also makes me concerned we won't see any REAL (aka visceral) balance changes until the core set rotation, where it looks like this entire year's worth of cards may be heavily nerfed in multiple ways. This will help Hearthstone in the long term (which is a good thing) but I'm concerned that in the short term people will become frustrated.
Anecdotally, I don't agree with Meister. The "dogmatic" view of deck archetypes has and will always exist. Just because hearthstone's interpretation of mechanics lends itself to a faster paced experience does not mean that's the way it *has* to be, nor does the existence of poorly balanced metas like Mech/Control Warrior indicate that's the status quo for control metas or decks. (In fact during the Boomsday Project, I think it took them way longer than needed to make balance changes to the cards....that was during a phase of their existence where they were very "laissez faire" in their balance approach to Hearthstone ...hands off if you don't get the insinuation).
To use a turn of phrase: Don't piss on me and call it rain. And don't try to call midrange/tempo decks, control decks. Midrange decks are the "jack of all trades" decks. They exist outside the 3 major archetypes because they have the ability to *possibly* defeat any deck, but at the cost of diluting their gameplan and deck experience to be able to possibly shift gears to take on a different role. A midrange/tempo deck can try to beat a control deck, but they may still end up losing because they don't draw well or lose too many resources. A control deck however, knows that it's chance of beating a OTK deck are slim to none, barring specific tech cards or circumstances which cause the OTK to lose their win condition.
My biggest concern is that even with potential quest/card nerfs for this expansion, we won't see any visceral change until the core set rotation of next year. 5-7 months is a long time to wait for the core set to rotate out all the changes/inherent neutral draw options available.
Also, a comment I meant to make earlier was that my feeling is that Demon Hunter is the problem/crux of all this. Demon Hunter set a "standard" for card draw with their initial release, and since then they've been a powerhouse class becuase of it. Even after multiple nerfs I'd argue that the class is still inherently strong from a combo/aggro standpoint. (Which as an aside, I didn't think we needed another aggro/combo class.)
It's funny to think that the Nzoth/Inquisitor build from last meta, is being completely shut out because the power level of the decks in this expansion is so high it's completely shut down any decks that require turn 8+ win conditions.
I don't feel like typing out a super long reply, but in reply to your Primary post Shuckle, I 100% agree. Right now it feels like card draw is overtuned, and the usual format of Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo doesn't exist. Instead Combo and Aggro vie against one another for meta supremacy between expansions/mini-set releases/balance patches...while Control huddles in the corner in a fetal position.
For the last year-ish, playing control has felt like "did I draw the perfect nuts draw and counter my combo or aggro opponent perfectly with an extremely refined and teched deck" Yes? Congrats. No. You lose.
My biggest issue with the current Stormwind meta is that back and forth interactions are no longer a thing. Standard feels like wild now. The reason I liked standard and play standard is for the back and forth decision making and interactions between two players playing decks. Wild doesn't really care about the opponents deck. It has it's own gameplan, and if it fufills it's gameplan before you fufill yours, you generally just lose....
....which is exactly what is occurring in standard now. I'm honestly fed up with a lot of the design decisions the devs have made. Vanilla statlines haven't moved that much, but extra effects sure have. A 3 mana 3/4 with no special effects (aka spider tank) used to be the gold standard for 3 drops. Now, unless your 3 mana minion has a special passive, deathrattle, battlecry, etc it's usually not worth running (see LuckySoul Hoarder or Razorfen Beastmaster, Dreaming Drake, Pack Kodo, Alliance Bannerman, etc).
Now some of those are 3/3's or even 2/2's but the 3 cost is tied to a super strong effect. I know those are all class cards, but even cards like Archdruid Naralex, or Devouring Ectoplasm exist). Put simply, we don't need to go back to "vanilla" hearthstone like PrivateNightmare was suggesting, but I think we are starting to see too many compounded effects being tacked onto cards.
In short: Too much "word creep" (special effects attached to vanilla or normal statlines). Too much available card draw with little-to-no downsides attached. And control has been pushed out entirely at this point. (the last surviving bastion of control was priest, but after the nerfs to Apotheosis and Renew, the deck has struggled to say the least.)
Edit: looks like I ended up typing out a long reply anyways oh well.
It really depends on the meta youre facing. The decklist is fine, but sphere is iffy to me. If its against mage, miracle rogue, questlock, and OTK dhunters, I'd also rather just ditch the cornelius and alliance bannerman for what seems to be the go-to anti-combo tech now: Sneaky Delinquent and Battleground Battlemaster. If this is your game, then conviction should stay, otherwise I'd get rid of it.
There's also a small consideration for Cult Neophyte, but for some reason Im seeing lots of guys fit in SI:7 Skulker into pally decks now. Maybe that's the edge it needs against all these combo decks. Havent tried that myself.
Also, if you're really a gamer, throw in Mutanus. Many quest decks dont tend to play around this card so you may just snipe out their win condition.
I get Battleground Battlemaster as anti quest/combo tech. But how is Sneaky Delinquent anti tech? I've thought about cult neophyte but it requires precise timing to do otherwise. Right now as you saw I'm running robes of protection which is about as good as it gets or constant passive anti-tech. I actually was considering SI7 Skulker so good to know I'm not crazy. I'm a big fan of Mutanus, so yea ... :)
So Conviction is a Holy spell as well. So Knight isn't 100% guaranteed to draw Blessed Goods. Is this just one of those "RNG" things you gotta pray it hits for the deck to do well with? I appreciate the response so far though.
I was testing it out for efficacy's sake. Generally speaking it probably isn't a good card but I ended up getting a sphere of sapience one game off of one of my Blessed Goods cards, and it turned out to be extremely helpful.
I'm questioning a fair amount of cards in the deck at the moment (sphere being one of them)
Sphere of Sapience - (meme testing and seeing if it's worth helping re-draw, but will probably drop it tomorrow)
Alliance Bannerman - Not sure this goes in this deck. I think either Safety Inspector or Hand of A'dal may be better. Further testing needed. It's saving grace is that it specificaly tutors out a minion, while Hand simply draws.
The deck succeeds at an aggro variant, which is helpful in our current quest/solitare meta. But if the quests get nerfed or we get into a more board centric game with some future balance changes, I think the deck will want to lean more towards mid-range and less aggro.
I'm also not sold on the inclusion of Kazakus, Golem Shaper (but he has helped me win a few unwinnable matches) or any of the other high cost cards. The deck suffers from draw, and Taelan Fordring and Cornelius Roame both feel like smart inclusions to help draw, but they often are awkward/hard to play.
Right now I often succeed in having the final stage of the quest completed by turn 5, but my turns are awkward and I can't smoothly play it out on turn 5,6,7 ---which can be game deciding.
I wonder if the new windfury card may not be better, or other cards which can help discount. I'm also debating Wandmaker.
I'm also a little hesitant on how good Conviction currently is right now. Games don't reach 10 mana often, so you're at best giving 2 minions +3 attack (total of +6 attack for 1 mana) which isn't horrible, but it almost feels like something else should be in the deck...
If you have any suggestions I'd be open to trying them!
It's pretty standard, regardless if Brack *actually* was at fault for anything or not. Most companies will ask CEO's to step down when bad PR situations such as these occur, it's easier to have someone in that position be the "fall guy" rather than drag it out and actually find out who/what the real issue is.
Ultimately, we have no idea who else was involved besides that one WoW developer who apparently was in the "cosby room" and had a history of making advances on women at blizzard.
The bad thing about this situation is, most people will go "oh good, now the company will grow" but the true people who were problematic may still end up continuing their career at blizzard (unless they get ousted or also leave).
I think everyone is misconstruing this card. It's not that it was made for a control deck. It's just they printed it with that text so it was NOT used by aggro paladin decks. It could be that attack buffs are coming to paladin in the future, and they want to ensure that aggro paladin can't use a cheap lifesteal weapon to heal up and go face.
To repeat: This is not printed FOR control. This is printed this way to PREVENT aggro from using it. It's honestly one of the first times we've seen blizzard blatantly make awkward wording so it couldn't be used to go face. It's similar in effect to Icehowl, which was printed before rush was a keyword, but also the fact that they didn't want it EVER attacking face. Rush means it attacks the same turn, but the next turn it can go face regardless.
Handbuff generally had issues of not "hitting" enough targets in hand to make the handbuff archetype great. The fact that this draws a minion to replace itself before handbuffing is outstanding.
May or may not see play. Big minions like this are just a tad too high costed to be universally used like tar creeper, and the condition at being half life or less may not be as easy to gimmick, even in warlock, as you might expect.
Walking Fountain's little brother, seems like it'll be a staple in arena drafts. Will most likely be included in most mid-range/control shaman decks. Not sure it's needed or wanted in aggro/doomhammer/curve elemental shaman.
So Dean replied to a Q&A and this was the response...
While this makes me hopeful it also makes me concerned we won't see any REAL (aka visceral) balance changes until the core set rotation, where it looks like this entire year's worth of cards may be heavily nerfed in multiple ways. This will help Hearthstone in the long term (which is a good thing) but I'm concerned that in the short term people will become frustrated.
Anecdotally, I don't agree with Meister. The "dogmatic" view of deck archetypes has and will always exist. Just because hearthstone's interpretation of mechanics lends itself to a faster paced experience does not mean that's the way it *has* to be, nor does the existence of poorly balanced metas like Mech/Control Warrior indicate that's the status quo for control metas or decks. (In fact during the Boomsday Project, I think it took them way longer than needed to make balance changes to the cards....that was during a phase of their existence where they were very "laissez faire" in their balance approach to Hearthstone ...hands off if you don't get the insinuation).
To use a turn of phrase: Don't piss on me and call it rain. And don't try to call midrange/tempo decks, control decks. Midrange decks are the "jack of all trades" decks. They exist outside the 3 major archetypes because they have the ability to *possibly* defeat any deck, but at the cost of diluting their gameplan and deck experience to be able to possibly shift gears to take on a different role. A midrange/tempo deck can try to beat a control deck, but they may still end up losing because they don't draw well or lose too many resources. A control deck however, knows that it's chance of beating a OTK deck are slim to none, barring specific tech cards or circumstances which cause the OTK to lose their win condition.
My biggest concern is that even with potential quest/card nerfs for this expansion, we won't see any visceral change until the core set rotation of next year. 5-7 months is a long time to wait for the core set to rotate out all the changes/inherent neutral draw options available.
Also, a comment I meant to make earlier was that my feeling is that Demon Hunter is the problem/crux of all this. Demon Hunter set a "standard" for card draw with their initial release, and since then they've been a powerhouse class becuase of it. Even after multiple nerfs I'd argue that the class is still inherently strong from a combo/aggro standpoint. (Which as an aside, I didn't think we needed another aggro/combo class.)
It's funny to think that the Nzoth/Inquisitor build from last meta, is being completely shut out because the power level of the decks in this expansion is so high it's completely shut down any decks that require turn 8+ win conditions.
I don't feel like typing out a super long reply, but in reply to your Primary post Shuckle, I 100% agree. Right now it feels like card draw is overtuned, and the usual format of Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo doesn't exist. Instead Combo and Aggro vie against one another for meta supremacy between expansions/mini-set releases/balance patches...while Control huddles in the corner in a fetal position.
For the last year-ish, playing control has felt like "did I draw the perfect nuts draw and counter my combo or aggro opponent perfectly with an extremely refined and teched deck" Yes? Congrats. No. You lose.
My biggest issue with the current Stormwind meta is that back and forth interactions are no longer a thing. Standard feels like wild now. The reason I liked standard and play standard is for the back and forth decision making and interactions between two players playing decks. Wild doesn't really care about the opponents deck. It has it's own gameplan, and if it fufills it's gameplan before you fufill yours, you generally just lose....
....which is exactly what is occurring in standard now. I'm honestly fed up with a lot of the design decisions the devs have made. Vanilla statlines haven't moved that much, but extra effects sure have. A 3 mana 3/4 with no special effects (aka spider tank) used to be the gold standard for 3 drops. Now, unless your 3 mana minion has a special passive, deathrattle, battlecry, etc it's usually not worth running (see LuckySoul Hoarder or Razorfen Beastmaster, Dreaming Drake, Pack Kodo, Alliance Bannerman, etc).
Now some of those are 3/3's or even 2/2's but the 3 cost is tied to a super strong effect. I know those are all class cards, but even cards like Archdruid Naralex, or Devouring Ectoplasm exist). Put simply, we don't need to go back to "vanilla" hearthstone like PrivateNightmare was suggesting, but I think we are starting to see too many compounded effects being tacked onto cards.
In short: Too much "word creep" (special effects attached to vanilla or normal statlines). Too much available card draw with little-to-no downsides attached. And control has been pushed out entirely at this point. (the last surviving bastion of control was priest, but after the nerfs to Apotheosis and Renew, the deck has struggled to say the least.)
Edit: looks like I ended up typing out a long reply anyways oh well.
I get Battleground Battlemaster as anti quest/combo tech. But how is Sneaky Delinquent anti tech? I've thought about cult neophyte but it requires precise timing to do otherwise. Right now as you saw I'm running robes of protection which is about as good as it gets or constant passive anti-tech. I actually was considering SI7 Skulker so good to know I'm not crazy. I'm a big fan of Mutanus, so yea ... :)
So Conviction is a Holy spell as well. So Knight isn't 100% guaranteed to draw Blessed Goods. Is this just one of those "RNG" things you gotta pray it hits for the deck to do well with? I appreciate the response so far though.
I was testing it out for efficacy's sake. Generally speaking it probably isn't a good card but I ended up getting a sphere of sapience one game off of one of my Blessed Goods cards, and it turned out to be extremely helpful.
I'm questioning a fair amount of cards in the deck at the moment (sphere being one of them)
Sphere of Sapience - (meme testing and seeing if it's worth helping re-draw, but will probably drop it tomorrow)
Alliance Bannerman - Not sure this goes in this deck. I think either Safety Inspector or Hand of A'dal may be better. Further testing needed. It's saving grace is that it specificaly tutors out a minion, while Hand simply draws.
The deck succeeds at an aggro variant, which is helpful in our current quest/solitare meta. But if the quests get nerfed or we get into a more board centric game with some future balance changes, I think the deck will want to lean more towards mid-range and less aggro.
I'm also not sold on the inclusion of Kazakus, Golem Shaper (but he has helped me win a few unwinnable matches) or any of the other high cost cards. The deck suffers from draw, and Taelan Fordring and Cornelius Roame both feel like smart inclusions to help draw, but they often are awkward/hard to play.
Right now I often succeed in having the final stage of the quest completed by turn 5, but my turns are awkward and I can't smoothly play it out on turn 5,6,7 ---which can be game deciding.
I wonder if the new windfury card may not be better, or other cards which can help discount. I'm also debating Wandmaker.
I'm also a little hesitant on how good Conviction currently is right now. Games don't reach 10 mana often, so you're at best giving 2 minions +3 attack (total of +6 attack for 1 mana) which isn't horrible, but it almost feels like something else should be in the deck...
If you have any suggestions I'd be open to trying them!
https://hsreplay.net/replay/gWoU9NZZEV3h4Fn4DNa6i8
The replay is worth a few laughs. :)
Sorry the screenshot isn't better, tried to snap it before he conceded...but still got the history bar on the left.
It's pretty standard, regardless if Brack *actually* was at fault for anything or not. Most companies will ask CEO's to step down when bad PR situations such as these occur, it's easier to have someone in that position be the "fall guy" rather than drag it out and actually find out who/what the real issue is.
Ultimately, we have no idea who else was involved besides that one WoW developer who apparently was in the "cosby room" and had a history of making advances on women at blizzard.
The bad thing about this situation is, most people will go "oh good, now the company will grow" but the true people who were problematic may still end up continuing their career at blizzard (unless they get ousted or also leave).
Feels too low impact to see play in token druid, there are better cards which buff or summon without being low impact like this.
I think this quest is meant to help bridge the archetypes between bubble paladin and dude paladin.
I think everyone is misconstruing this card. It's not that it was made for a control deck. It's just they printed it with that text so it was NOT used by aggro paladin decks. It could be that attack buffs are coming to paladin in the future, and they want to ensure that aggro paladin can't use a cheap lifesteal weapon to heal up and go face.
To repeat: This is not printed FOR control. This is printed this way to PREVENT aggro from using it. It's honestly one of the first times we've seen blizzard blatantly make awkward wording so it couldn't be used to go face. It's similar in effect to Icehowl, which was printed before rush was a keyword, but also the fact that they didn't want it EVER attacking face. Rush means it attacks the same turn, but the next turn it can go face regardless.
Handbuff generally had issues of not "hitting" enough targets in hand to make the handbuff archetype great. The fact that this draws a minion to replace itself before handbuffing is outstanding.
Good combo with equality/Barov. Can also be combined with spell damage sources (neutral sources) to make the aoe/heal improved.
Reverse defender of argus. Arena viable. Doubt it will see standard play.
May or may not see play. Big minions like this are just a tad too high costed to be universally used like tar creeper, and the condition at being half life or less may not be as easy to gimmick, even in warlock, as you might expect.
Walking Fountain's little brother, seems like it'll be a staple in arena drafts. Will most likely be included in most mid-range/control shaman decks. Not sure it's needed or wanted in aggro/doomhammer/curve elemental shaman.
Seems like a bit of a win more card to me, but could be broken given certain boards.
Shredder 2.0. Making arena drafts drool since 2016.
Woo, I'm excited for this expansion!
Druid/Shaman support. More likely druid. This doesn't seem great. Will scare people into removing it though.