At first I assumed it can survive if it's the only minion left on the board, but indeed the phrasing is different from Deathwing and from Warmaul Challenger, so now I'm not sure. The card would be a lot better if the minion always dies.
Paying 3 to draw 3 is exceptionally good, and is the damage really a drawback? Considering that Warlock has been historically fine with paying 2 Mana to take two damage and draw one card, I think that Gul'dan will be more than happy to draw two more cards for only one more Mana and damage.
Since Backfire itself is also a card, you're effectively drawing just one more than the hero power. That's probably still worth it, but it's a modest rather than a huge upgrade over the hero power.
In Wild, this upgrades the Spellstone, while the hero power does not. The Standard self-damage cards that you listed don't care though whether the damage source is a card or the hero power.
It might also be useful if you run Bloodreaver Gul'dan and want to have card draw afterwards. Usually games end pretty quickly after playing the DK, but if you're already running Backfire because of the Spellstone, it's a nice bonus.
Given how often I see them playing Passage, three cards and then another Passage, it seems quite common. I haven't played much Rogue myself recently though.
Looking at HSReplay lists, Whirlkick Rogue contains 16 cards of cost 0 and 1 (two of which are Passage), with Jandice Barov at the top end, which might be too expensive to play another card after. The card below that is Edwin VanCleef, which is preferably played as the last card of the turn, so also not great for corruption.
Stealth Rogue and Weapon Rogue contain a lot more 2/3-drops though, so perhaps Nitro is useful there.
Nitroboost Poison doesn't synergize well with Secret Passage: you'd have to corrupt it with the other three cards you drew off Passage, but a deck running Passage typically contains a lot of cheap cards, so this may not always be possible. Maybe for Stealth Rogue getting just the minion buff is good enough, but for other Rogue decks it might have to be corrupted to be worth it.
Yes, those were its main uses (buff not so much after the nerf), but I've also seen it used as a filler card to stay alive into the mid-game.
Another comparison would be Phantom Militia, which was mainly used to complete Fire Plume's Heart, but was quite effective as protection and this is gives you 66% off on the second taunt.
I don't think the requirement is much of a drawback when used in slower decks. It does disqualify the card for tempo decks.
If you can snowball hard enough, you don't need draw to win (Hunter style). But when you're just a bit short in damage, tempo Priest indeed fizzles out. I tried adding Galakrond + Kronx as a plan B, but while it allowed me to stay in the game for quite a while, most of the time I still lost in the end.
You don't want to run cards that have no utility outside of a minor combo in a tempo deck. Plus, that would also give enemy minions +2 health.
If you use the Circle of Healing after value-trading, the enemy minions will be dead and won't benefit.
There are quite a few other decent healing effects, like Renew, Power Word: Feast, Neferset Ritualist, Holy Nova and of course the hero power. And there are cards that benefit from healing such as Lightwarden, Injured Tol'vir, Injured Blademaster and anything with Reborn. Whether that's enough I don't know, but I played a Tempo Priest earlier this year that was almost viable, so there is some potential.
Edit:
And then they revealed Rally!. If that doesn't make Tempo Priest viable, the archetype is doomed.
I think Zoolock would only use it in a very aggro-heavy meta, where Zoolock is sometimes the less aggressive deck. But in such a meta slower decks would include Armor Vendor as well, which would decrease the chances of Zoolock against those decks, since they'd have more time to find their AoE.
Yes, and this has better stats than Saronite Chain Gang, which was a playable card even after the nerf. Since it's a spell it can be run in decks built around Commencement or Duel!.
It indeed fills a similar role, but Armor Vendor is probably better in most decks, since its battlecry is not lost if your hero is undamaged. For Warrior it combines very well with Shield Slam and some Wild Druid cards also have armor synergy. Maybe in Warlock you'd want Mistress instead, since it's easy to damage your hero and your opponent wouldn't benefit. You could play one of each in Highlander decks.
Dane plays Trueaim Crescent in his Tonk deck instead of Animated Broomstick. I guess the advantage is that you can set it up in advance, so you can rush your Tonk into something one turn sooner. Not a budget card though.
Recurring Villain is a fun card, but I think it's just a bit too expensive for the amount of trouble you have to go through to make it work versus the pay-off that you get. At 4 mana I could see it get played in competitive decks (Libram Paladin, at the very least).
I think Envoy Rustwix could make a nice package with Aranasi Broodmother and Sense Demons. Sense Demons can tutor Rustwix, can get you healing and protection via Broodmother and sometimes can tutor the primes as well, since two of them are demons (Kanrethad Prime and Solarian Prime). The main question is whether you'd play one copy of Sense Demons or you'd play two and some additional demons.
Ice Lance was a problem in particular when played the turn after Alexstrasza. As long as those two cards aren't in Standard at the same time, I don't think it would be overpowered. It would still rate low on the "fun and interactive" scale, in my opinion, but if they want to do something about that, they could just change "character" to "minion" to make it a less flexible but more mana-efficient version of Ray of Frost.
I have used Power Overwhelming in egg decks, together with Void Terror. But those decks were never consistent enough, so in the meta it was indeed only used for burst. I would argue though that Soulfire is a bigger problem, since Power Overwhelming requires a minion in play and can be stopped by a taunt.
The best system, in my opinion, would be to make a combined rotating core set from Basic + Classic + Wild cards and make that core set quick to unlock by game play, like Basic currently is. That would give new and returning players a good base to build decks from. And since the set would be rotating, it won't lead to the same strong cards being played in every meta.
That would be uncharacteristically generous for Hearthstone, so I'm not betting on it happening. But it's not impossible either.
You can't craft extra copies of cards anyway: the game won't let you. So I think he meant there is no benefit to just "crafting" and not "crafting extra".
I think it's safer to not craft a golden Edwin right now, at least if you're doing it for dust value. There will be an announcement of the new system at some point and likely you'll still be able to craft one then if that will be beneficial dust-wise.
The new rewards track launched the week before the expansion. I played a lot in the first week to complete the weekly quests, which means the gold from the first levels of the track was among the gold I spent on DMF packs. So it's certainly possible to not have opened any packs since launch day and be at a lower gold total.
There are other ways to do that, that don't require as much user interaction. For example, they could make a list of the most recent achievements, like Steam's "post-game summary" display.
At first I assumed it can survive if it's the only minion left on the board, but indeed the phrasing is different from Deathwing and from Warmaul Challenger, so now I'm not sure. The card would be a lot better if the minion always dies.
I was thinking Soulbound Ashtongue + Deathspeaker + Treachery + Hysteria, but that wouldn't even work because if Ashtongue is immune the damage will be reduced to zero.
Your combo seems feasible though and not that hard to assemble.
Since Backfire itself is also a card, you're effectively drawing just one more than the hero power. That's probably still worth it, but it's a modest rather than a huge upgrade over the hero power.
In Wild, this upgrades the Spellstone, while the hero power does not. The Standard self-damage cards that you listed don't care though whether the damage source is a card or the hero power.
It might also be useful if you run Bloodreaver Gul'dan and want to have card draw afterwards. Usually games end pretty quickly after playing the DK, but if you're already running Backfire because of the Spellstone, it's a nice bonus.
Are you certain it can only discover class cards? There are quite a few neutral 9-drops.
Given how often I see them playing Passage, three cards and then another Passage, it seems quite common. I haven't played much Rogue myself recently though.
Looking at HSReplay lists, Whirlkick Rogue contains 16 cards of cost 0 and 1 (two of which are Passage), with Jandice Barov at the top end, which might be too expensive to play another card after. The card below that is Edwin VanCleef, which is preferably played as the last card of the turn, so also not great for corruption.
Stealth Rogue and Weapon Rogue contain a lot more 2/3-drops though, so perhaps Nitro is useful there.
Nitroboost Poison doesn't synergize well with Secret Passage: you'd have to corrupt it with the other three cards you drew off Passage, but a deck running Passage typically contains a lot of cheap cards, so this may not always be possible. Maybe for Stealth Rogue getting just the minion buff is good enough, but for other Rogue decks it might have to be corrupted to be worth it.
Titanic Lackey. It should be good with Goblin Lackey as well.
Yes, those were its main uses (buff not so much after the nerf), but I've also seen it used as a filler card to stay alive into the mid-game.
Another comparison would be Phantom Militia, which was mainly used to complete Fire Plume's Heart, but was quite effective as protection and this is gives you 66% off on the second taunt.
I don't think the requirement is much of a drawback when used in slower decks. It does disqualify the card for tempo decks.
If you can snowball hard enough, you don't need draw to win (Hunter style). But when you're just a bit short in damage, tempo Priest indeed fizzles out. I tried adding Galakrond + Kronx as a plan B, but while it allowed me to stay in the game for quite a while, most of the time I still lost in the end.
If you use the Circle of Healing after value-trading, the enemy minions will be dead and won't benefit.
There are quite a few other decent healing effects, like Renew, Power Word: Feast, Neferset Ritualist, Holy Nova and of course the hero power. And there are cards that benefit from healing such as Lightwarden, Injured Tol'vir, Injured Blademaster and anything with Reborn. Whether that's enough I don't know, but I played a Tempo Priest earlier this year that was almost viable, so there is some potential.
Edit:
And then they revealed Rally!. If that doesn't make Tempo Priest viable, the archetype is doomed.
I think Zoolock would only use it in a very aggro-heavy meta, where Zoolock is sometimes the less aggressive deck. But in such a meta slower decks would include Armor Vendor as well, which would decrease the chances of Zoolock against those decks, since they'd have more time to find their AoE.
Yes, and this has better stats than Saronite Chain Gang, which was a playable card even after the nerf. Since it's a spell it can be run in decks built around Commencement or Duel!.
It indeed fills a similar role, but Armor Vendor is probably better in most decks, since its battlecry is not lost if your hero is undamaged. For Warrior it combines very well with Shield Slam and some Wild Druid cards also have armor synergy. Maybe in Warlock you'd want Mistress instead, since it's easy to damage your hero and your opponent wouldn't benefit. You could play one of each in Highlander decks.
Dane plays Trueaim Crescent in his Tonk deck instead of Animated Broomstick. I guess the advantage is that you can set it up in advance, so you can rush your Tonk into something one turn sooner. Not a budget card though.
Recurring Villain is a fun card, but I think it's just a bit too expensive for the amount of trouble you have to go through to make it work versus the pay-off that you get. At 4 mana I could see it get played in competitive decks (Libram Paladin, at the very least).
I think Envoy Rustwix could make a nice package with Aranasi Broodmother and Sense Demons. Sense Demons can tutor Rustwix, can get you healing and protection via Broodmother and sometimes can tutor the primes as well, since two of them are demons (Kanrethad Prime and Solarian Prime). The main question is whether you'd play one copy of Sense Demons or you'd play two and some additional demons.
Ice Lance was a problem in particular when played the turn after Alexstrasza. As long as those two cards aren't in Standard at the same time, I don't think it would be overpowered. It would still rate low on the "fun and interactive" scale, in my opinion, but if they want to do something about that, they could just change "character" to "minion" to make it a less flexible but more mana-efficient version of Ray of Frost.
I have used Power Overwhelming in egg decks, together with Void Terror. But those decks were never consistent enough, so in the meta it was indeed only used for burst. I would argue though that Soulfire is a bigger problem, since Power Overwhelming requires a minion in play and can be stopped by a taunt.
The best system, in my opinion, would be to make a combined rotating core set from Basic + Classic + Wild cards and make that core set quick to unlock by game play, like Basic currently is. That would give new and returning players a good base to build decks from. And since the set would be rotating, it won't lead to the same strong cards being played in every meta.
That would be uncharacteristically generous for Hearthstone, so I'm not betting on it happening. But it's not impossible either.
You can't craft extra copies of cards anyway: the game won't let you. So I think he meant there is no benefit to just "crafting" and not "crafting extra".
I think it's safer to not craft a golden Edwin right now, at least if you're doing it for dust value. There will be an announcement of the new system at some point and likely you'll still be able to craft one then if that will be beneficial dust-wise.
The new rewards track launched the week before the expansion. I played a lot in the first week to complete the weekly quests, which means the gold from the first levels of the track was among the gold I spent on DMF packs. So it's certainly possible to not have opened any packs since launch day and be at a lower gold total.
There are other ways to do that, that don't require as much user interaction. For example, they could make a list of the most recent achievements, like Steam's "post-game summary" display.