In today's Hearthstone AMA, Ben Lee, Game Director, confirmed that the Basic and Classic sets are being looked at in their entirety to potentially give it a more "modern" take. Some changes appear to be arriving with the year rotation in 2021.
What adjustments would you make to the Basic & Classic sets?
Quote From Ben Lee What classes, if any, are being looked at for getting a revamp for their basic/classic set reworked, similar to priest was at the start of Outland?
We're currently looking at the Basic and Classic set in its entirety. Hearthstone has changed a lot in the last six years and we're researching what a more modern take on Basic and Classic looks like.
How soon can we expect replacements for the 5 Neutrals that got HoF’d this year?
There won't be. But we have some exciting plans for the Basic and Classic sets that we hope to launch with the year rotation. We aren't ready to discuss the details just yet though
Comments
I've been playing since naxxramus came out and power creep is really apparent now, all the new sets are so much stronger than basics (and a lot of the classics)
I used to play some ONLY basic decks to see how they'd fare and they do much worse than they did only a couple of years ago, mostly I think it's because the advent of value sets: cards that make other cards and just very efficient aggro tools.
So it'll be interesting to see what they do with the basic set.
Classic i'd like to see it rotate in and out cards each year from old sets. It is a lot of work for somebody however (or multiple people even)
I'd be more excited about this news if I thought that the Priest revamp went well. But as far as I can tell, while it did remove some cards which were degenerate with respect to their play patterns/the class identity generally, the cards that were added in fall into two camps: they're designed for the consistently weak, under-supported Tempo Priest, or they're outclassed control cards.
The former camp is made up of Kul Tiran Chaplain, Power Infusion, and Scarlet Subjugator. The Scarlet Subjugator is garbage in a world with Demon Hunter thanks to the 1 mana hero power, but on paper the other two seem like they should be decent cards - Kul Tiran Chaplain represents 3 mana's worth of stats and can help you make trades, while Power Infusion offers a way to leverage Inner Fire as a finisher. In practice, though, the health buff doesn't do anything to make trading easier because 1-drops usually have 1 attack and therefore can't trade with enemy minions until you play an attack buff, while the finishing power of Inner Fire is largely irrelevant because there's almost no card draw available for in Priest, and therefore very little consistency in the decks. (The card draw thing is really very upsetting here - right now in standard, the average number of class-specific draw effects is 6, but Priest only has 1: Mass Dispel. Shaman is close with only 2, but their hero power and mass buffs make Tempo play easier.) I have tried a lot of different versions of this deck since Scholomance Academy dropped, and they're all wildly inconsistent.
The latter camp is made up of Shadow Word: Ruin, Natalie Seline, and [Hearthstone Card (Pyschic Conjurer) Not Found]. Like the Subjugator, [Hearthstone Card (Pyschic Conjurer) Not Found] sees no play because a random enemy card isn't worth the horrific tempo of a 1/1. And as with the other set of cards, Shadow Word: Ruin and Natalie Seline are strong on paper but don't really see any play (outside of getting pulled from Zephrys the Great). Perhaps with rotation, when Highlander stops being so omnipresent in control, we'll see more of these cards. But right now they're outclassed.
I don't want to be too negative here - a massive revamp might make the Priest revamp more relevant and generally improve the health of the game - but I come at this news with very strong skepticism.
So, what you're saying is... there's hope for Silverback Patriarch!
I wish they'd just HoF the classic set to us in wild and just make an entirely new updated power level classic set for the modern game. Sounds like the effort they're going to have to put in to revamp classic as about akin to replacing it. Plus, I don't want to see any of our favorite cards changed in such a way that it could break some fun meme/classic decks or combos.
I was just thinking about the basic and classic sets recently. I'd say most of these cards are just for new players and they need to do something. I think revamping these sets could be done in place of an expansion. I know that will probably be an unpopular opinion but sometimes I just think there are way too many cards so replacing the current basic and classic cards with new ones plus rotating last years cards could be nice.
I like what they did to Priests Core Sets, so further Changes to Basic and Classic sound interesting.
If I had to take a Guess, I'd say Paladin is the Class they're looking into the most. That one has had a lot of Identity Crisis over the Years, a Revamp would really help.
There are just too many cards that need a revamp from being completely useless to know where to begin. What I can say is that ever green shouldn't necessarily over-power the expansions. The mentality of this is that the cards that are used in Standard are meant to be the new mechanics and they are supposed to beat out a number of things that Classic doesn't provide. However, if the expansions are putting out cards that are dwarfed by ever green cards, then why even play them in the first place?
Could this mean unnerfings of cards like Innervate, Ancient of Lore, Keeper of the Grove, Force of Nature, Charge, and Warsong Commander for the sake of their viability in Wild? Truthfully, I think all of them could be reverted to their old versions, and the format wouldn't change very drastically, beyond old school Midrange Druid decks being kiiiinda solid, and Patron/Worgen Warrior decks actually working again, and those both seem fine considering the inevitability and lockdown of regularly dominating decks in the format like Quest Mage, Cubelock, and Big Priest.
I was just looking at my Classic collection recently and I only need 1x of both Bane of Doom and Barrens Stablehand to complete my Classic set. So that means I am not opening another Classic pack I get from brawl or rewards until this overhaul. Got it!
Thanks for the info!
That's 200 IQ response right there :O
Thanks for putting out the idea, I will consider this as well now, writing it down to not forget about it :)
OMG when so many cards will go into Wild... image all the free dust we get! O.O
Dirty dream of getting some (new) Librams into the Paladin evergreen set.
Nobody asked for this, but I'm just gonna list a few class cards from basic and classic I haven't seen played in constructed in a very, very long time because of how bad they are considering the newest sets or they just don't make sense anymore.
Druid: Savagery, Keeper of the Grove, Ancient of Lore, Ancient of War
Hunter: Starving Buzzard
Mage: Ethereal Arcanist
Paladin: Hand of Protection, Humility, Light's Justice
Priest: Lightwell, Lightspawn, Mindgames
Rogue: Patient Assassin, Headcrack, Perdition's Blade, Master of Disguise, Kidnapper
Shaman: Dust Devil, Forked Lightning
Warlock: Corruption, Drain Life, Blood Imp, Felguard, Void Terror, Pit Lord, Bane of Doom
Warrior: Charge, Warsong Commander, Arathi Weaponsmith
There are a lot of potential candidates in my opinion so I'm curious how they plan on solving this. I don't think all of these are necessarily unplayable, just that there are much better options to consider with each expansion or some archetypes have never received the required support to make certain cards work.
Basic and classic set are mess right now. Half of card is used in almost any deck (specially class cards) and second half is useless or so damn boring and does nothing.
Ok maybe not exacly half/half cards but still Basic and Classic are very powerful or useless.
While it's ok to have less powerful common or rare cards when you look at legends they are deck defining or Useless.
Malygos, Ysera, Alexstrasza, Edwin VanCleef are outstanding.
Poor Millhouse Manastorm or The Beast are useless.
This is good news. Only downside is we have to wait so long.
WOW!
this could change....EVERYTHING
I wonder if this is the team's way to make a set of Classic cards for Demon Hunter, since with next rotation the initiate cards will rotate to wild?
No. Demon hunter intial set will be possible till 2022 or forever. It is not decided yet.
Really? Did they change that or something?
All of the information on Initiate set says that they're considered part of the year of the dragon and rotates out at the end of the year
https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1246941993948725249
https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1242524018441256960
that sounds great. Basically all the classes have some really confusing and outdated cards in their base set that could be improved the same way Priest was.
Warlock and Paladin come to mind. There's a lot of really confusing cards in there.
Exciting!
I started a new account and went through all of the new player ranks. During that process I came across a lot of Basic/Classic cards that are just unplayable even with such a limited amount of options.