I've been a bit pessimistic on the hype Frodan was trying to build, and it appears I may have reason to be. Was hoping for a big "re-invention" of the game, maybe a complete overhaul of the Basic/Classic set, or even a move towards the Core Set idea. But likely just some new cards/mechanics.
I'm most excited for another "year" when I won't be playing this game nor give blizzard my hard earned money for something that is not enjoyable nor worth my free time.
:)
Worth enough of your free time to comment here though! So that's cool, I guess...
In response to the actual post, I'm most excited (or maybe interested is a better term) to find out what the changes are coming that "will cement Hearthstone for the next decade" as Frodan stated following the summit. I'm guessing the actual changes won't live up to that level of hype, but I'm mostly trying to stay pessimistic so that I'm either not too let down, or pleasantly surprised if it does end up being a much bigger and better change to the game to keep it feeling fresh for years to come.
I’ve been saying for a while now, the best option to try and balance Wild is to add a third play mode that is either 1) Wild but with bans on certain cards, or 2) a format with rotating cards sets that include a mix of Wild and Standard sets. Could rotate monthly even, or to make it easier, it could just match the set rotation in Arena. I’d actually be fine with either one.
I’ve actually been playing a lot more Wild lately. My favorite deck in the format currently is titled “Galak Gun Priest” in my decks. It’s an old fashioned Mind Blast combo priest, includes Galakrond and Awken the Makers. It’s at 17-14 playing lower ranks, currently rank 9 or 8.
Personally, I feel like if you are just playing for fun in Wild there are a lot of fun decks to play, and to play against. And when your fun deck occasionally crush people playing meta decks that don’t know what they are doing, it feels REALLY good!
You're right about Alex into Alex creating a surprise huge board. That is a different thing.
But Pogos and Tess? You can make a lot of them with the right set up, but not infinite, and you have to draw them. Once you've become Galakrond, your hero power gives you lackeys, plus you can keep invoking to get more. That's a lot of 4/4s. I mean, how many times did they nerf The Caverns Below?
Nonsense.
In this case you defnitely cannot get infinite lackeys, just like you cannot get infinite pogos/Tess from Toggwaggle's Scheme. You have one lackey per turn + few lackeys from invoking (4-6 max)
Getting the Tekahn is really highroll but quite rare one so it is good to have in the game for creating funny stories.
Whether it's infinite in a single turn or just a never ending supply of lackeys by having a 1 mana 4/4 each turn through the hero power (so really a 3 mana 4/4 at that point) they are still technically "infinite". But yeah, that's splitting hairs at this point. I agree though not a huge issue as it will be inconsistent and more of a "let me tell you a crazy story" type of thing like you said.
EDIT: You can get semi-infinite in a single turn through the new legendary Grand Lackey Erkh. If you have to hit the hero power and drop Erkh that is 4+2+1, leaving only 3 more mana to play generated Lackey's that turn unless you've reduce the cost of Erkh or have a Lackey in hand without hitting the hero power button.
I guess the upside is maybe there will be less time between expansion announcement and the regular card reveals if they wait another 2 weeks? Or the first expansion will be slightly later than previous years...
I was actually expecting the first week of March to be the announcement time. But I don't remember if they do a "Year of the X" announcement and THEN the expansion announcement later?! Regardless, if it's not this week, next week for sure we should hear something.
But remember, they also had a summit with various HS pros and streamers in attendance lately, getting people like Frodan on the hype train for how BIG the upcoming news and changes to HS were going to be. So if they are planning some grand announcement involving way more than an expansion and year name, it could also come a little later than normal.
I had a theory a while back that maybe, just MAYBE, the reason we got [Hearthstone Card (Snip-snap) Not Found] added to BDP was because they planned on eventually moving Whizbang into the Classic set. I mean, if you think about it... at the time each set was only supposed to have 135 different cards, 23 of which were legendary. Now you introduce a 24th legendary (that everyone got for logging on) and it's in the same set as Whizbang. So why do that? Well... maybe if you were planning on moving him into the Classic (or even the Basic set, perhaps...) to then reduce BDP back to the standard 23 legendary minions again.
But since that theory they had DoD with 28 legendaries, granted we all got 6 of them for free. Plus a few more from the solo adventure for DoD. So does this mean they aren't concerned with having only 23 legendary cards per expansion?! Apparently, they are not.
Ultimately, there is the potential for some big changes coming soon anyway, which I'm wondering will finally be the end of the Basic/Classic sets' evergreen status in Standard, and perhaps moving to a more "Core Set" model that has been suggested over and over again by guys like Kibler.
What I'm actually expecting to happen though: All this hype of big changes coming soon will amount to nothing more than an Artifact level of payoff...
I personally have been having fun with a Galakrond Warrior that is a slight variation of brimful's list from Arlington. It made quick work of Ranks 10-5 a few days ago, which is great for me as I have been a bit busy the past three months and finding little time to play.
My list below. Only difference from brimful's is I took out the [Hearthstone Card (Sky Raider{/card]s and put in two Warpath in their place. Haven't bothered experimenting with the other new cards that weren't released yet when the Arlington stop occurred. My recent success with the list makes me feel like I don't need to make additions like Risky Skipper. It's a fun new card to include, but the Warpaths are often filling the same need for me without throwing minions away to trigger her effect.
Galak'Bomb
A Galakrond Warrior Deck created by
Thonson. Last updated 4 years, 9 months ago
Yes, Boom Bot doesn't need to be bold, but as for the watermark... it doesn't have to be RoS. I almost used RoS, but instead I imaginged it as being a card put into the Galakrond's Awakening after Team5 had time to see just how colossal of a failure that was Dr. Boom's Scheme. I think it may have been the one scheme that never really found a home in at least one deck.
That's not true... Lazul's Scheme was also pretty horrible and never really played. Maybe even played less than Boom's.
Probably not a winning design, but I wanted to try my hand at making a better Dr. Boom's Scheme. Obviously this is a much more playable card (because... anything would be more playable than the actual Scheme card), but it also has a flavor more in line with Dr Boom's personality.
You obviously don't know Mark. His decks are typically low odds of winning, and instead of focusing on high win rates he tends to focus on going for wacky combos. This is the guy who spent a few weeks working towards winning a game with each class through summoning Highkeeper Ra. Pretty sure he managed at least two Highkeepers in almost every class, summoning a total of 7 in one Rogue turn.
The nerf is to warsong commander, if they were to unnerf it it would be "give your 3 or less attack minions rush" but then rush would be a classic keyword and Blizzard is annoying and won't do that cause charge is ok but rush is too complicated for new players.
The real reason? Blizzard has no idea how to balance charge they don't want that design space at all also they don't care.
Basically all this, but mainly the old Warsong Commander effect is something they don't want because Charge = Bad these days. If they ever did decide to un-nerf Warsong, the card would likely be forced into HoF along with reverting the card's effect. They won't though... they'll just let the card continue to be a dead part of everyone's collection.
Side note, I wish they'd be a little more conservative with the use of Rush. They seem to slap it on about 1/3 to half of the minions in every set now. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but... still.
As a Hearthstone player, this card makes me think if Anub'arak was a good card, what would it's effect be? Granted the effect can be very effective in the right situation, in HS the 9 mana minion slow is often one where you either 1) have a powerful effect with an immediate impact or 2) use it as some sort of combo piece. Otherwise, it's usually too slow.
In essence, Ledros is kind of like this. The low health means it can die easily, but it has been given a very powerful effect! I have played him some for this effect alone, but have yet to play him with my opponent at 1 HP. Didn't know that was the result. However, now that I know that I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Going from 1 to zero isn't really cutting in half, it's dealing 1 damage. Perhaps the solution is just to specify "cut the enemy Nexus health in half, but not less than 1." So ultimately you get the same effect, rounding down UNTIL the opponent is at 1 HP.
But also, unless this becomes a very common strategy with people abusing the power of Ledros to win games at an impressively high win rate, or unless the entire meta of the game is forming around stopping Ledros, I'd say leave it. The Runterra team seems set on frequent balance patches and will likely make a change when, or if it's ever needed.
Not played in ALL decks, but it is the second highest played card in the game at 44.3% of decks (according HSReplay at time of this post). Most played card right now is Zilliax in a staggering 60.3% of decks. Again, these stats are from people using Hearthstone Deck Tracker.
I was thinking I've never seen him in builds like Embiggen Druid, but apparently that's just me. When selecting Leeroy in HSReplay and looking at the deck lists he's being used in, it is a very wide variety of builds. So while he may not be in all decks, there do some to be variations of almost every archetype using him.
While I'm not in favor of HoF for Leeroy simply because Charge is a dying mechanic in the game and it can have it's uses, he does seem to be a finishing solution for almost every class/deck IF they choose to include him. If he were to be replaced I would honestly hope they HoF him in favor of adding a new Charge legendary. Maybe slightly higher cost 6/4 or something. But Charge aside, his effect is also a slight counter to Resurrect Priests as he gives them 2 1/1 whelps. Not saying that's why he's being played so much (it's not) but it's one bonus to having him.
My biggest issue with Leeroy, personally... I decided a few years back to finally craft him, then a day later opened him in a pack, then next expansion they added the "no dupe legendary" rule... that bastard!
OFF TOPIC: Is it just me or is Rush a bit overused right now? I hope we'll see a little less of it going forward.
I think I've seen something similar if you hover over the icons on the left, it might show your new health total, or the new total of your opponent. But honestly I'm not much of a BG player. Think I saw something like that once while watching a stream on Twitch. It's another type of spoiler if I saw what I thought I saw.
I've been a bit pessimistic on the hype Frodan was trying to build, and it appears I may have reason to be. Was hoping for a big "re-invention" of the game, maybe a complete overhaul of the Basic/Classic set, or even a move towards the Core Set idea. But likely just some new cards/mechanics.
Worth enough of your free time to comment here though! So that's cool, I guess...
In response to the actual post, I'm most excited (or maybe interested is a better term) to find out what the changes are coming that "will cement Hearthstone for the next decade" as Frodan stated following the summit. I'm guessing the actual changes won't live up to that level of hype, but I'm mostly trying to stay pessimistic so that I'm either not too let down, or pleasantly surprised if it does end up being a much bigger and better change to the game to keep it feeling fresh for years to come.
I’ve been saying for a while now, the best option to try and balance Wild is to add a third play mode that is either 1) Wild but with bans on certain cards, or 2) a format with rotating cards sets that include a mix of Wild and Standard sets. Could rotate monthly even, or to make it easier, it could just match the set rotation in Arena. I’d actually be fine with either one.
I’ve actually been playing a lot more Wild lately. My favorite deck in the format currently is titled “Galak Gun Priest” in my decks. It’s an old fashioned Mind Blast combo priest, includes Galakrond and Awken the Makers. It’s at 17-14 playing lower ranks, currently rank 9 or 8.
Personally, I feel like if you are just playing for fun in Wild there are a lot of fun decks to play, and to play against. And when your fun deck occasionally crush people playing meta decks that don’t know what they are doing, it feels REALLY good!
This hero portrait is the only reason I wish I had purchased the Warcraft movie when it was released on Bluray...
Whether it's infinite in a single turn or just a never ending supply of lackeys by having a 1 mana 4/4 each turn through the hero power (so really a 3 mana 4/4 at that point) they are still technically "infinite". But yeah, that's splitting hairs at this point. I agree though not a huge issue as it will be inconsistent and more of a "let me tell you a crazy story" type of thing like you said.
EDIT: You can get semi-infinite in a single turn through the new legendary Grand Lackey Erkh. If you have to hit the hero power and drop Erkh that is 4+2+1, leaving only 3 more mana to play generated Lackey's that turn unless you've reduce the cost of Erkh or have a Lackey in hand without hitting the hero power button.
I guess the upside is maybe there will be less time between expansion announcement and the regular card reveals if they wait another 2 weeks? Or the first expansion will be slightly later than previous years...
I was already expecting first week of March for expansion news, but I guess it'll be more like second week? The anticipation is killing me.
I was actually expecting the first week of March to be the announcement time. But I don't remember if they do a "Year of the X" announcement and THEN the expansion announcement later?! Regardless, if it's not this week, next week for sure we should hear something.
But remember, they also had a summit with various HS pros and streamers in attendance lately, getting people like Frodan on the hype train for how BIG the upcoming news and changes to HS were going to be. So if they are planning some grand announcement involving way more than an expansion and year name, it could also come a little later than normal.
Let's be honest... the replacement for Ragnaros the Firelord was Brightwing. LOL
I had a theory a while back that maybe, just MAYBE, the reason we got [Hearthstone Card (Snip-snap) Not Found] added to BDP was because they planned on eventually moving Whizbang into the Classic set. I mean, if you think about it... at the time each set was only supposed to have 135 different cards, 23 of which were legendary. Now you introduce a 24th legendary (that everyone got for logging on) and it's in the same set as Whizbang. So why do that? Well... maybe if you were planning on moving him into the Classic (or even the Basic set, perhaps...) to then reduce BDP back to the standard 23 legendary minions again.
But since that theory they had DoD with 28 legendaries, granted we all got 6 of them for free. Plus a few more from the solo adventure for DoD. So does this mean they aren't concerned with having only 23 legendary cards per expansion?! Apparently, they are not.
Ultimately, there is the potential for some big changes coming soon anyway, which I'm wondering will finally be the end of the Basic/Classic sets' evergreen status in Standard, and perhaps moving to a more "Core Set" model that has been suggested over and over again by guys like Kibler.
What I'm actually expecting to happen though: All this hype of big changes coming soon will amount to nothing more than an Artifact level of payoff...
I personally have been having fun with a Galakrond Warrior that is a slight variation of brimful's list from Arlington. It made quick work of Ranks 10-5 a few days ago, which is great for me as I have been a bit busy the past three months and finding little time to play.
My list below. Only difference from brimful's is I took out the [Hearthstone Card (Sky Raider{/card]s and put in two Warpath in their place. Haven't bothered experimenting with the other new cards that weren't released yet when the Arlington stop occurred. My recent success with the list makes me feel like I don't need to make additions like Risky Skipper. It's a fun new card to include, but the Warpaths are often filling the same need for me without throwing minions away to trigger her effect.
I pessimistically feel like we are getting hype over some changes that won't end up being as big as advertised. However, there is always a chance.
Yes, Boom Bot doesn't need to be bold, but as for the watermark... it doesn't have to be RoS. I almost used RoS, but instead I imaginged it as being a card put into the Galakrond's Awakening after Team5 had time to see just how colossal of a failure that was Dr. Boom's Scheme. I think it may have been the one scheme that never really found a home in at least one deck.
That's not true... Lazul's Scheme was also pretty horrible and never really played. Maybe even played less than Boom's.
Probably not a winning design, but I wanted to try my hand at making a better Dr. Boom's Scheme. Obviously this is a much more playable card (because... anything would be more playable than the actual Scheme card), but it also has a flavor more in line with Dr Boom's personality.
You obviously don't know Mark. His decks are typically low odds of winning, and instead of focusing on high win rates he tends to focus on going for wacky combos. This is the guy who spent a few weeks working towards winning a game with each class through summoning Highkeeper Ra. Pretty sure he managed at least two Highkeepers in almost every class, summoning a total of 7 in one Rogue turn.
But yes, your observation is correct. :)
Basically all this, but mainly the old Warsong Commander effect is something they don't want because Charge = Bad these days. If they ever did decide to un-nerf Warsong, the card would likely be forced into HoF along with reverting the card's effect. They won't though... they'll just let the card continue to be a dead part of everyone's collection.
Side note, I wish they'd be a little more conservative with the use of Rush. They seem to slap it on about 1/3 to half of the minions in every set now. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but... still.
As a Hearthstone player, this card makes me think if Anub'arak was a good card, what would it's effect be? Granted the effect can be very effective in the right situation, in HS the 9 mana minion slow is often one where you either 1) have a powerful effect with an immediate impact or 2) use it as some sort of combo piece. Otherwise, it's usually too slow.
In essence, Ledros is kind of like this. The low health means it can die easily, but it has been given a very powerful effect! I have played him some for this effect alone, but have yet to play him with my opponent at 1 HP. Didn't know that was the result. However, now that I know that I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Going from 1 to zero isn't really cutting in half, it's dealing 1 damage. Perhaps the solution is just to specify "cut the enemy Nexus health in half, but not less than 1." So ultimately you get the same effect, rounding down UNTIL the opponent is at 1 HP.
But also, unless this becomes a very common strategy with people abusing the power of Ledros to win games at an impressively high win rate, or unless the entire meta of the game is forming around stopping Ledros, I'd say leave it. The Runterra team seems set on frequent balance patches and will likely make a change when, or if it's ever needed.
First character I ever made in WoW. Name stuck. Human Paladin.
Not played in ALL decks, but it is the second highest played card in the game at 44.3% of decks (according HSReplay at time of this post). Most played card right now is Zilliax in a staggering 60.3% of decks. Again, these stats are from people using Hearthstone Deck Tracker.
I was thinking I've never seen him in builds like Embiggen Druid, but apparently that's just me. When selecting Leeroy in HSReplay and looking at the deck lists he's being used in, it is a very wide variety of builds. So while he may not be in all decks, there do some to be variations of almost every archetype using him.
While I'm not in favor of HoF for Leeroy simply because Charge is a dying mechanic in the game and it can have it's uses, he does seem to be a finishing solution for almost every class/deck IF they choose to include him. If he were to be replaced I would honestly hope they HoF him in favor of adding a new Charge legendary. Maybe slightly higher cost 6/4 or something. But Charge aside, his effect is also a slight counter to Resurrect Priests as he gives them 2 1/1 whelps. Not saying that's why he's being played so much (it's not) but it's one bonus to having him.
My biggest issue with Leeroy, personally... I decided a few years back to finally craft him, then a day later opened him in a pack, then next expansion they added the "no dupe legendary" rule... that bastard!
OFF TOPIC: Is it just me or is Rush a bit overused right now? I hope we'll see a little less of it going forward.
I think I've seen something similar if you hover over the icons on the left, it might show your new health total, or the new total of your opponent. But honestly I'm not much of a BG player. Think I saw something like that once while watching a stream on Twitch. It's another type of spoiler if I saw what I thought I saw.