Title says everything. Go get your Demon hunters. :)

With the release of the latest expansion closing ever closer, I have started to update my standard decks sans Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, and Rastakan's Rumble cards.  It hinders me in play because others are still using these cards, but for me I am finding new ways to work around not having some cards that I thought were key. 

I also know which cards I am likely to be changing out with Ashes of Outland cards once the rotation has happened.  Has anyone else tried doing this yet?  If you have, what are you finding in your updates?

So the new ladder system kicked off yesterday and there are a few interesting things about it to observe. Personally, my first surprise was when I received a multiplyer of x10 when I "only" finished on rank 2 in march - x10 was communicated to be distributed to players hitting legend. I haven't played more than 10 games yet, but I must say the new system feels very rewarding, especially if you manage to pull off a win streak. Cruising through those ranks, seeing more and more rewards getting added to your chest feels cool (not to mention the first time achievements).

Much more important seems to be this blog post, though:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/faq-ranked-mode-overhaul-matchmaking/27937

One of the key infos is, that your multiplyer is determined EITHER by the rank you achieved the previous month OR your MMR, whichever is higher; now combine that with the statement that your MMR will only change slightly from month to month and you can conclude that you will keep a good multiplyer for a long time if you have a high MMR. On the other hand, having a low MMR but finishing in high ranks only gets you a bonus for the new month, no longtime benefits. 

So if get this correctly, Blizzard has modelled the new ladder system to be beneficial for long time players (who should tend to have a higher MMR than new players) for once.

Anyway, my first impression is very good - at the start of the season everybody gets at least 2 times the profit from winning than the loss from losing a game and that just feels nice to me. What are your thoughts about the new system?

I thought it was strange that all classes received an Imprisoned "Demon" besides Shaman.

So as a fun little challenge I want to see what you guys can come up with for an imprisoned Demon for Shaman!

SHAMAN CORE SET REVAMP

Introduction

Shaman is below average in terms of core set quality. It's not as bad as Paladin, but still bad enough that the class has to rely on expansion cards to ensure its viability.

Shaman has historically been a "swing class", meaning it was often either completely broken (eg 2016 Midrange Shaman or 2019 Evolve Shaman) or completely sucks (eg from the very beginning of the game up to the moment Tunnel Trogg was released). This tends to happen to classes whose identity isn't well-defined, which is clearly the case of Shaman. Blizzard's class identity post about shaman was clearly misleading (card generation a shaman weakness?! Hagatha would have a word with you) and clearly not a good starting point.

This link suggests that a weakness shaman *should* have is no standalone early game minion. "When Shaman gets good early game, bad things happen". Snowballing minions may be fine, but plain OP stuff like Trogg into Totem Golem makes Shaman broken.

But shaman needs more. It needs a consistent class identity. Shaman is a jack-of-all-trades class. That some classes are more versatile than others isn't in itself a bad thing, except when it is too extreme. What could be Shaman's strengths and weaknesses?

There's one aspect that is supposed to be core of its identity yet is underexploited: Totems. The main characteristic of Totems is to have a powerful ongoing effect. A shaman relies on keeping them on the board to snowball.

Do note that I struggled with the "weak at card draw/generation" thing. At first I was going to go completely against it and give plenty of card generation to Shaman. I think that a class needs to have at least one of those two (card draw or card generation) in order to be interesting, otherwise it's going to be a one-dimensional aggro-to-midrange class like pre-2017 Hunter...

...at the end of the day, however, I couldn't fit card draw/generation anywhere, but I thought that value generation is not just about adding new cards to your hand like Rogue and Priest do; it's also about creating new stuff directly on board or good synergies... value ≠ card generation.

Directions

The new core sets

The changes are, surprisingly to me, bigger than the changes I made for Priest.

Hi guys,

will standard and wild still share the same multiplayer after this season?

I was under the impression that Blizzard had patched the interaction between Boompistol Bully and Galakrond, but I was playing on mobile, and my opponent drew with Togwaggle's wand, got Galakrond, and drew 4 cards… all for 3 mana, did I misunderstand the patch, or is that a bug? Has it happened to anyone else after the latest patch?

I’m sure everyone can agree the concept of using the Librams for Paladins feels like a great fit as far as lore goes. Anyone else wondering if Librams could take the place of Secrets for Paladin eventually? Secrets for paladin always felt out of place in identity.

I suppose one could argue secrets are meant to fit in more like Aura’s. But then why not simply design them as such. I’ve been wondering for a while why the paladin hero power couldn’t be an aura that can be changed by cards. Example Pay 2 mana whenever you summon minion this turn give it +1 health, pay 2 mana whenever you summon a minion this turn give it divine shield, etc

You are probably theorycrafting a lot these last days of the Hearthstone year, or at least you are excited about testing some of the most promising revealed cards. What decks are you planning to play?

I'm going for Libram Paladin, maybe both Pure and "impure", and of course Demon Hunter, probably a midrangeish version. And I'd like to play Priest but I don't know yet what kind of deck, I'll probably wait for others to publish decks. What about you?

I want to start a discussion about how the themes of Hearthstone Expansions and how you like or dislike it.

Firstly, I want to say that, I have been always a fan of card games. I've started to play with Pokemon TCG, then I discovered MTG. Adored MTG when I first met but it started to make me salty because of Land system. I was also a huge fan of Warcraft RTS series (I-II-III), played WoW less than a casual player but always followed its lore.

When I first saw the announcement of Hearthstone, you can't imagine how it excites me. At first glance, Even I don't like some decisions of the first team of hearthstone -like making Anduin the Priest hero- when Blizzard shaped those lores also in the core game (WoW) I liked where it goes -like again, how Anduin's lore grew in time even though we don't know so much about him when Hearthstone first came-

We firstly saw the Naxxramas Adventure as an expansion to the game. I've thought like "Nice that we are seeing dungeons of WoW in the game" and I've thought that they have that idea in long term.

After I saw GvG, I firstly think like "So this is the new path we're going, I really liked how they shaped the expansion to expand some races base in the game" and one of the first thoughts in my mind is how they handled "Professions" of WoW in Hearthstone with Mechs and Spare Parts around and also thought that this is another way that we will see in the game's path but also it felt a bit of random and some cards are thrown to set from out of nowhere (Mal'Ganis for example, what was the point of him being in GvG set ? I mean, I can understand some cards like it should have been in the game for supporting some archetypes but that has been done with some of theme-related stuff instead of throwing high-lore content randomly to the expansion)

So, I felt like Adventures would expand lore-related stuff in game with expansions are expanding some of mechanics of RPG game style also bunch of lore-base like how goblins and gnomes are using same profession with different ways.

And then, we saw BRM which continues with same path, Dungeon-Style Adventure which fits what we saw in Hearthstone before and also fits with WoW well enough. I was quite happy with what I have seen so far in the game.

Then TGT came. I want to speak more than others here because it is one of the best themes for Hearthstone at being first at its style. (Not speaking for game techs, balance or how it doesn't impact metagame here btw, so don't speak about balance stuff in this topic, just themes.) It was completely related with lore while being a minor part of WoW which is great for Hearthstone to draw its own path in my opinion. With its Arena-Style theme which really fits Hearthstone, It was a great canditate that how an expansion should tell the story of it to players unlike GvG. Why is it unlike GVG ? Because GvG has tons of cards that doesn't fit its theme (see Neptulon). That was how you can handle with a seperated games of the same universe. It was drawing its own path while expands the lore of its core game (which we will see it in different expansions as well and also -unfortunately- the vice versa of it). Unfortunately, It was a great failure that this wonderful theme couldn't shine enough thanks to its bad designs. That's a different topic tho.

And then LoE has been released, which I felt like GvG at first glance. Why GvG ? Because of its Discover mechanic being the reflection of how Archeology profession of should be handled in Hearthstone just like Mechs and Spare parts being the reflection of Engineering Profession. It was also like Naxxramas with its theme-shapes, a dungeon of a RPG. It was also a great canditate just like TGT. It helps Hearthstone to draw its own path more than TGT and created iconic Warcraft characters without making people think it is a parallel universe (unlike Year of the Dragon). Some characters (like Brann Bronzebeard) were from the core game while others are just new characters which also fits the core game.

Another good canditate came; WotOG. It really expanded more and more. Told the story about Old Gods and how they corrupted the world with supporting this lore with some cards being corrupted (see Loot Hoarder/Polluted Hoarder, Amani Berserker/Aberrant Berserker etc.). This expansion of the best canditate that tells the story about Warcraft Universe in a Hearthstone-y way. Madame Lazul was a great concept as a fortune-teller which is a shame that she doesn't have a card in her own expansion but also was a good choice that she is only the teller of the story.

Here comes the first corruption comes to Hearthstone; Karazhan. It is the first weird expansion of Hearthstone. I can understand the theme around party and stuff but it was a dumb move to shape that party without considering allegiances, enemies etc. All kind of characters, minions were in this expansion. There is only just the theme "the party", designer team doesn't even care about real lore and just made a silly theme for supporting the idea that "Hearthstone should have its own lore.". I can agree that for some degree but this kind of breaking the existing lore is one of the most silly thing you can do to your game in my opinion. If you want that Hearthstone has seperated lore from WoW, you can always do it like MSoG for example, without breaking the core lore. Karazhan has the one of the biggest failure theme in the Hearthstone in my opinion and things started to corrupt here.

I can't say same for MSoG tho. Even though it is not so related with WoW Lore, it had a succesful theme in my opinion. This expansion's theme is one of the good examples of how you shape your game's lore if you want to spare it from the universe (Warcraft) which Hearthstone has been based without breaking the core lore. But well, something weird happened with this expansion which is the exact opposite of what happened in TGT. Broken designs haunted the game even though the Lore isn't good enough.

After Karazhan and MSoG's theme mistakes, Designers realize that (at least i thought it like that at that times) breaking the core lore of the universe won't help. Drawing its own path of Hearthstone is a good idea "only" when you don't shape the theme in extreme edges. So they thought (for my impressions -again-) LoE-like own path and characters would be good which is mirrored in the community as well. Un'goro is a good way to handle in my opinion until KotFT came...

KotFT was a missed opportunity in my opinion. It shares same content with WotOG which was thematically perfect with its bad handling. Corrupting the existing characters is good "only" if you don't break the core dynamics. It felt funny at first glance that Death Knight versions of Iconic Characters but after realizing that it breaks all of the rules of core lore, it felt stupid only (for me again). I always think that KotFT shouldn't be the stuff that you did to your own lore. Some might think that the idea is fun but its theme was a great failure for me which I've ended up leaving the game at the first time of my Hearthstone life.

With the reval of new expansion; K&C, I had returned to the game. With its Adventure and Dungeon related content, I felt like it could give the old Hearthstone experience that I like to feel Warcraft-Related content and I really like the theme. The theme was also a success like how WotOG's theme was. It was not the greatest one but was not like KotFT-degree disappointing.

Here comes Year of the Raven and Witchwood which was also a good canditate that has its own expanded lore which WoW doesn't have. A witch haunts the woods and Gilneans fight with her. A good concept that doesn't spare from Warcraft universe exteremely which I would say almost same about The Boomsday Project too.

Even There are some kind of weird stuff in TBP (gnome druids !?) it was also a good concept which is a minor thing in WoW. It has its own characters and some existing Warcraft characters which is appreciated for both. Nothing to say more.

Rastakhan's Rumble is one of the most exciting expansion for me because the reveals felt like TGT and GVG times at the first time. It was like TGT because of its Arena-Style theme, it was like GvG because it would tell the story of a race's origins ( I mean, it was shaped around Zandalari Trolls, just like how GvG was shaped around Gnomes and Goblins) without GvG's unrelated contents (Vol'jin, Demonheart, Ogre Ninja !?). All cards are related with theme and i really enjoyed enough with this expansions' theme after those years. I'm not talking mechnanically here again. Metagame is a thing which I really don't care.

And here is the last year, Year of the Dragon, which is the total failure of Hearthstone's themes in my opinion. Year of the Total Corruption. Again, it feels like funny at first impressions that all of the old friends of ours who are the most iconic characters of hearthstone are coming back with this year, just like how it feels funny at KotFT at first glance. Some might think that this is funny how they play around lore and "Steal Dalaran !?" and stuff but it was not funny for me. We got finally some of the most iconic warcraft characters, such as Khadgar, Kalecgos, Alleria Windrunner etc. but for what ? Protecting Dalaran from most childish evil thing ever.

It was like a cartoon that evil characters are "evil" just because they are "evil". That being said there is a master plan for whole year which ends up summoning Galakrond for what !? For Rafaam proves that he is the only strong-enough person in Warcraft Universe that can save world from Galakrond !? Is his masterplan just summoning it to kill it again ? I can understand that Togwaggle is one of Rafaam's servant already and doing it just because Rafaam wants and Dr. Boom is doing that for his experiments (It doesn't feel ok enough already, but can be ignored) but what Hagatha and Lazul exaclty gain from this ? Why Old Gods just helped a maniacal and cartoonish Villain Rafaam ?

The whole year felt like it was a parallel universe that is completely disconnected from Warcraft. It is the most frustrating year for me to bare personally. So I quit the game after first month of DoD. I came back with Reveal of AoO and played the adventures of Galakrond's awakening and I'm shocked to see that really and opened this thread. The only good thing I can think of about Year of the Dragon is that; They finally showed that Reno Jackson is a Dragon.

AoO in the other hand, I feel like designer team thinks that people is bored to see this kind of disconnections (I really desperately hope). It seems like thematically great and I really wonder what is waiting for us to discover in future. I hope there won't be expansions which are far more disconnected from Warcraft Universe. I feel like designer team also thinks like me here (I really desperately hope, again) with AoO reveals. Most iconic Warcraft characters are coming back which are iconic for both Warcraft III and WoW at the same time. That feels so classic and i really hope it is the decided path of future of Hearthstone.

So, In my opinion and for my personal experiences, Hearthstone's expansions should be connected with Warcraft's Lore. I mean, They might be like LoE which is also related with Warcraft lore and expands the minor stuff or like Witchwood, but shouldn't be like Year of the Dragon. "Some unrelated characters bands up to do weirdest things." I personally think that it is Karazhan-level failure for theme-shaping. I really hated the theme of Year of the Dragon which excited me most with its name but ended up a disappointment for me. Ok, I might have been playing with so much dragon stuff at the end of year, I might be filled with all of dragon synergies but the theme really disappointed me so I quit the game after first month of the DoD. Some might not care about theme but it is an important factor for me to decide to play the game.

So I wrote almost all stuff that I feel about Hearthstone's themes. What do you think ? What do you prefer ?

I hope you can come to discuss because i really want to learn what people feels about themes etc. and please don't speak about mechanics, game balance etc. These are different topics which I don't want to discuss in this thread.

Competition Theme: Demonic Obsession

With Demon Hunters soon to be upon us, it only seems fair that they get some more Demons to hunt! Demon Hunter and Warlock are already chock full of them, so let's give the other classes a chance to play.

• You must create a minion that has the minion type Demon
• Your card must be a class card for any class except Demon Hunter or Warlock

Hordaki has asked for us to summon some demons, so we're happily obliging this week.

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Mar 30 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Apr 4 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Apr 4 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Apr 5 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Apr 5 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Apr 6 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

So we know how the duplicate protection works for regular cards -- once the cards are all marked as "collected" in a given set, whether you dusted them or not, that rarity becomes totally random with no duplicate protection.

My question is -- do we know which order the duplicate protection happens in for golden cards? What I mean is, does it first check your collection to see if you have collected all the commons, then roll for whether you're getting a regular or golden common, and then choose which card? Or does it first check for whether you're getting a regular or golden common, then check if you have all the golden commons "collected" from this set, and then choose which card? In which case you can effectively not open duplicates of golden cards unless you already collected them all?

My first guess was "definitely not", but since the patch I have opened six golden cards (four commons and two rares), as well as getting a golden Bronze Gatekeeper as an arena reward, and none of those seven were duplicates. The sample size is really small, obviously, so I'm guessing the community as a whole will know?

Even with the pre-order packs from Outland, it's pretty unlikely to get a 3rd golden common or rare to disprove the duplicate protection is happening for golds. Anyone out there experienced this yet?

So ever since Blizzard revealed the Priest Core Overhaul I was hoping that this would indicate that they may do a similar thing for the other classes in the future. In light of this, i've decided to brainstorm a few suggestions for the other classes (with varying detail because I'm more familiar with some than others)

Anyways, before we start I'd like to set up a few rules that I took into consideration before doing this. These rules are based on the standards that Blizzard has set for themselves when doing the Priest overhaul and the new Demon Hunter Basic set:

1) I will rework existing cards in order to better fit with the basic theme of the class (see Holy Smite)

2) I will buff existing cards in order to bring them in line with the current powerlevel without making them essential (see Thoughtsteal and Temple Enforcer)

3) I will entirely HoF cards that have an interesting premise but don't fit with the class identity that Blizzard is trying to establish (see [Hearthstone Card (Mindblast) Not Found] and Shadowform)

4) I will make use of keywords like Rush and Lifesteal since they have been added to the basic set via Demon Hunter

5) I will NOT remove clearly terrible cards as long as they fit with the class identity (see Mindgames, which is a clearly terrible card that will never see play but still embodies the Priest fantasy of using your opponent's deck against them)

With these in Mind I'm gonna go through the classes and make notes on each one. Some of them will only be suggestions for a direction while others will be more concrete.

Druid

Now Druid has been one of the first things I played in this game. Unfortunately their basic and classic set is kind of a mess at this point, a lot of which is due to rampant abuse of OTKs and other shenanigans. I genuinely don't feel qualified to do a full rework of this class because I'm still not sure which strategies the devs are actually comfortable with, but here are a few things:

Ancient of Lore: Now I really like this dude and it's kind of a shame what happened to him. Back in the day when Force of Nature still gave you treants with charge he was part of a nasty Combo deck that terrorized the meta for a while until it got absolutely destroyed through a number of nerfs to several cards, this one included.

Back in the day, this made sense. AoL was basically an auto include for ramp decks because back then, a /-mana 5/5 with Arcane Intellect was a very strong play...so strong in fact that to this day, people still compare new cards to this guy to demonstrate how good they are. Cards like:

-[Hearthstone Card (Hexlord Malacrass) Not Found]

-Countess Ashmore

Now those really weren't all that good now where they? The reason for this is because at this point, stats have been powercreeped so hard that playing a vanilla minion for 7-mana that only draws cards is a HUGE tempo loss and therefore only justifiable in very few situations (Hell, even Valdris Felgorge is hard to get on the board and he draws twice the amount that AoL did)

Basically AoL with 2 cards drawn would no longer be a problem so he should be reverted. Even then he probably wouldn't see that much play, but he would actually become an option for when Druid really needs card draw. It's just sad to see the card be completely underwhelming by any metric when it's technically one of the most iconic cards for the class.

Gift of the Wild: I know this was just a throwaway replacement for Naturalize but this should really just be 7-mana. NOt because that would make it more playable, but because it would actually make it usable when randomly generated.

Keeper of the Grove: another victim of the old Combo Druid. He used to be pretty essential as a 2/4, but nowadays even that wouldn't be all that impressive. Still I would just buff him to a 2/3 so he actually is a valid tech choice instead of being strictly worse than Owl. If Silence is going to be part of the Druid identity then at least their one Silence minion should be reasonably statted for its cost.

Savagery: I like the card, and Blizzar clearly wants to keep supporting Attack Damage Druid in some form, so I wish it had something that actually made it worth playing. Part of me really wants to make it able to target face so Attack Damage Druid can actually become its own thing with an aggro gameplan, but in that case you'd have to increase it's cost to at least 3-mana so it doesn't get misappropriated by Malygos Druids.

Moonfire: Speaking of Malygos Druid. Despite nerfing the Archetype in the past and abstaining from printing cheap damaging spells Bliizz still wants to keep this archetype around if Imprisoned Satyr is anything to go by. I'm personally not a huge fan of the archetype, but I respect that people enjoy it, so if anything, I would suggest rotating Moonfire entirely and replace it with something that fits Druid better (such as small removal in a similar fashion)

Swipe: As with Moonfire I think this card is a constant looming threat. At the same time there's no real way to deal with it other than making it completely unusable which would make Druid even worse at retaking the board than it already is. Maybe a solution would be to turn it into something like "deal 4 damage to a minion and 2 to adjacent ones"

Druid of the Claw: A relic of when Charge was still intended as removl. Not only is it essentially pointless these days, but also the charge aspect doesn't fit Druid whatsoever. Instead I propose to make the Cat a 6/4 with Rush, essentially modernizing it and adding some nice symmetry.

Hunter

Bestial Wrath: I do not understand what they ever intended to do with this card, but clearly it hasn't work. There has been virtually no support for it and even when dropped randomly it's rarely useful. However, I still feel it's not nearly useless enough to warrant removing and it still somewhat works with the identity of Hunter using minions as removal (which Rush emphasized even more). If anything I would just buff it to +3 attack. People still won't run it, but it's a lot better as a random drop and would at least make sense to combine with certain minions.

Scavenging Hyena: I don't think this really needs fixing, but it's something to keep an eye on because it just so dam frustrating when it snowballs to victory. If need be it would be changed to a 2/3 that only gains attack instead of health (effectively the Hunter equivalent of Frothing Berserker)

Explosive Shot: I'm not sure this really needs to be buffed because I fear it would become somewhat of a staple if you reduced its cost by 1, but I'm still mentioning it as something that isn't exactly up to the modern standards of cost efficiency

[Hearthstone Card (Gladiator's Bow) Not Found]: I honestly just want this to see play and I think aat 6-mana it potentially would. It's such a cool concept and it's wasted by being just a tad too slow. Once again, this is mostly preference though and it's not nearly as necessary as other stuff

Animal Companion: I have a long standing hatred for this card. It's the ultimate example of bad RNG in Hearthstone. In a tempo deck this is  basically a 1/3 to give you the perfect answer to your current situation, while the other two probably lose you the game. However, due to it giving you slightly overstatted minions it'S always going to be included in Hunter decks that need a turn 3 play and as such it hogs the 3-mana spot for itself (when that slot is already crowded as hell).

My solution is simple: 4-mana: Choose an Animal Companion to summon. Will that see play? Probably not, but it actually gives it some actual value and lets you build around it. Need token buffs? Pick Leokk. Need removal/reach? Pick Huffer. Need a taunt or just a solid minion? pick Misha. This way it actually fits the style of a Basic card that's not exactly the optimal choice and outclassed by more specialized cards form expansions while still being worth running if your deck can use the flexibility. If necessary you can always buff the individual companions in stats to make up for the mana increase.

And no, it's not bringing Discover to the BAsic set because it basically uses the same mechanic as Tracking.

Starving Buzzard: Once an essential part of Hunter decks it got nerfed into complete submission, without ever addressing the real issue.

The problem with Buzzard was its synergy with stuff like Unleash the Hounds, which relied on the fact that BUzzard would draw on SUMMON instead of just PLAY. With that change you could easily buff it to a 4-mana card. Draw is no longer a complete weakness in Hunter anyways, but it's a shame that this card isn't at least on the level of Arcane Fletcher. Alternatively you could just rotate the guy, but I don't see the reason for that.

Tundra Rhino: Just yeet this thing already. I don't know why they insist on keeping this around when it's never going to do anything other than enable some abusive combo. Now that Leoroxx is a thing w'll probably see this show up a lot more and it's going to be frustrating every time. Degenerate combo enablers like this should just be Hall of Famed and be replaced with something more fitting for the class and the core set in general.

Mage

There's honestly not much to say about Mage, it has one of the most solid and coherent core sets out of all the classes. Only one card really sticks out and that's

Icicle: this card was used to replace Ice Block and just like it's Druid equivalent it was kind of a rush job. It honestly should either deal 3-damage or cost 1-mana. It's just so awkward compared to Frostbolt and Mage really needs more help in the draw department anyways.

Paladin

Guardian of Kings: Much like Temple Enforcer this just doesn't line up statwise anymore. They could buff the heal up to 8 (which is the typical baseline anyways) or just reduce its cost down to 6. It's never going to see play in any case since Paladin gets consistently better healing options, but it's still awful when it shows up from something like Lightforged Crusader.

Hammer of Wrath: this falls into the same category as [Hearthstone Card (Mindblast) Not Found]. Face damage isn't really Paladin's identity and the card is pretty awkward in any case. I'd rather they make it minion-only and reduce its cost to 3, so it can actually see play as an efficient cycling tool in Control decks while not being that useful for more aggressive strategies. This is especially needed seeing howAcolyte of Pain is no longer available.

Avenging Wrath: is the same scenario, however here I actually intend to make a genuinely powerful card. Removing the ability to damage face obviously makes this a more powerful removal tool. The simplest approach is to make it a 5-mana deal 8 split among all enemy minions. This would probably make it an autoinclude in most Slower Paladin decks (and even some midrange ones). A different idea would be to go down to 4-mana but reduce the damage to 6-mana, which makes it similar to Consecration but better against a single big target.

If both of these would end up too powerful, leaving it at 6-mana with only minion damage would still be an overall buff although the card would probably not see play.

Holy Wrath: Just rotate it. It's never really been part of any legit strategy and only popped up to abuse an OTK scenario, which is not something we'll probably see again in Standard, so just put this into Wild and make room for a card that fits better with the Paladin identity.

Rogue

Betrayal: I'm not saying this card needs to be changed, but I don't understand what kind of Rogue strategy it's supposed to represent. it's never really gotten any legit support and only showed up as a recycled effect in stuff like [Hearthstone Card (Unknown Contract) Not Found] or Sudden Betrayal.

Blade Flurry: Only 90s kids will remember that this used to be one of the most broken cards in the game and allowed Rogue to deal ridiculous burst damage. It's not wise to ever revert this to its former state but I believe that due to the nerf to Preparation it should be adjusted down to 3-mana. This way it also supports Weapon Rogue, a playstyle we haven't really seen in a while. I don#t want rogue to have a reliable boardclear, but there should be some sort of payoff for playing Bazaar Burglary or any type of deck that features multiple weapons with decent attack.

Master of Disguise: Already got nerfed once and I really like the overall falvour of the card, but at the same time rogue really doesn't give stealth anymore..they just play Stealth minions. Maybe this would be better in a reworked form, although it's not really necessary.

Kidnapper: Alright now this guy is something else. He's probably the ABSOLUTE WORST card ever created. It's actually baffling how garbage he is. Even when you consider it as Sap on a stick it's still just a 4-mana 5/3, which is far below vanilla...and on top of that he requires you to combo so you're effectively spending a huge amount of money on an effect you can get way more easily...from a basic card. Even further, his name makes NO SENSE! Since when does kidnapping mean returning a minion to its owner? He doesn't even give a cost increase or anything that could be interpreted as "ransom".

I propose this rework: Instead of being a shitty Sapman make him a 5-mana card with "Battlecry: Return a friendly minion to your hand, it costs (3) less". The idea is to emphasize the self bouncing theme in Rogue and give a counterpart to Shadowstep to teach players the difference between using a spell or a minion to achieve a similar effect and how they have different applications. He still won't see play, but he now has a purpose of being able to set up certain combos with more cost reduction than Shadowstep (in exchange for being much more expensive).

Edwin VanCleef: Now I'm a firm believer that edwin isn't actually in need of being HoF'd but just in case it ever happens I propose that we replace him with Vanessa VanCleef, just for the sake of the lore. No idea what her effect would be, but I want her in the game, damnit!

Fan of Knives: Should deal 1-damage to the enemy face also. Okay, hear me out on this one: It's by no means a bad card even though it's much more niche after Prep lost it's staple status. However, I still think it's a very interesting card to be used with Spell damage and giving it the ability to also chip at your opponent's health would make it more attractive for aggressive decks and fit with Rogue's identity of leveraging tempo and aggressiveness in exchange for not having much defense. Also, since Leeroy rotated Rogue has lost a lot of burst potential so a bit more damage would be appreciated.

Sprint: 6-mana to adjust it to the Prep nerf. I know that makes it a better Nourish, but Nourish pays for also being a ramp tool so that doesn't really compare. I just think that at least Rogue's core cards should be adjusted to the new Prep, especially since new Rogue cards are being designed with that nerf in mind.

Assassin's Blade: Swap the stats to a 4/3 weapon. The reason is the following: Originally the wanted you to equip this and then buff it for damage over multiple turns. However, buffing large weapons isn't exactly a good strategy in this game because of weapon removal. Rather it makes sense to get more damage over fewer turns. This also combos better with Blade Flurry (buffed or not) because it allows you to equip and swing into swing and Flurry on the next turn, which is more obvious and teaches players to use weapons for tempo and not to stack them up for later use. Probably won't make the card any more viable, but at least more in line with how weapons are designed nowadays.

Shaman

I honestly have no idea what to do here, it's kind of a mess. A lot of cards feel really awkward but they still support stuff that Shaman does to this day such as Overload or Totems. A few things:

Forked Lightning: Is just kind of pointless seeing how at turn 1 there'll almost never be two targets to hit. It would make much more sense for it to cost 2-mana but deal 3 each, that way it has some justification for existing.

Dust Devil. Is kind of iconic but also complete garbage. Shaman never really played this hyper aggressive style of trying to stick an early drop to immediately push face and they also don't really get buffs that would really support this. I'D rather they replaced this with something like a 1-mana Murloc 3/2 Overload (1) so the whole Murloc theme is rooted in the core set seeing how it's a staple these days.

Al'Akir the Windlord: he's just outdated. Rockbiter got nerfed so there's no wombo combo anymore and he was clearly designed as removal anyways. It would probably make sense to replace Charge with Rush, buff his stats and reduce his cost, but I don't feel qualified to come up with a concrete solution.

Warlock

Not gonna do Warlock here, because someone already did. Here's his thread:

https://outof.cards/forums/fan-creations/custom-hearthstone/3588-neogulis-warlock-core-set-changes

I left a comment down there which basically sums up my ideas for Warlock, although that class is such a clusterfuck that it's hard to really pinpoint where to start.

Warrior

Charge and Warsong Commander have already been confirmed to be changed at some point so no use in discussing them here.

Cleave: A bizarre card that doesn't really connect with any of Warrior's themes and I feel it could be more practically. Possibly as a 1-mana "deal 1 to two minions" as an activator for damaging synergies or as a 3-mana "deal 2 to 3 minions". I honestly don't know what to do with it, but it just feels so out of place and outdated.

Mortal Strike: Also a really weird card. Warrior really doesn't have any synergy with being low on health and this really only supports blind aggro and feels out of place by being one of the only face damaging spells of the class. I'd rather they'd rework it into some sort of removal that synergizes with having taken damage (maybe "deal x damage to a minion for missing health", but then again Warrior doesn't exactly need even more removal)

Brawl: My ancient arch nemesis. I just really hate the random factor and the fact that it's always going to be the go-to boardclear for Warrior and every new one is just an afterthought.

I'd rather the card would always have the minion with the highest attack survive so you eliminate RNG and give some interactivity with Warrior's Attack buffing shenanigans. In any case it limits design space, but I really like the flavour and I would love for it to be more tied into the Warrior aesthetic outside of just being the best thing available at all times.

Neutral

Since these are mostly just filler I'll only mention a few that could use some sort of update to better reflect how stat distribution works.

Ironforge Rifleman: 2/3 or 3/2 since he's just a worse version of Elven Archer. Alternatively up his battlecry damage to 2.

Dragonling Mechanic: 3/4 because at this point, minions that have their stats split into multiple bodies always end up with an above average statline to compensate for the split.

[Hearthstone Card (Stonetusk Board) Not Found]: Changed to Rush so the keyword has more representation in Basic so it doesn't appear like a Demon Hunter specific keyword. Possibly also buff the attack to 2. Also gets rid of the pesky Charge keyword to avoid future OTKs. this change could possibly be applied to any of the remaining Neutral Charge minions, but none of them ever really see play so I don't see the need.

Nightblade: Deal 4 damage. More symmetry and less obvious powercreep.

Stormpike Commando: Health to 3.

Lord of the Arena: Health to 6, taunt usually only subtracts one statpoint from the vanilla average.

War Golem: Health or Attack to 8 to be a better example of asymmetrical vanilla stats

Arcane Golem: give your opponent a card. this should be an example of a minion that gets increased stats in exchange for giving benefits to your opponent. Giving a Mana crystal is such a horrendously terrible thing that this is effectively just lying to new players about what is considered  equivalent exchange in this game.

Silvermoon Guardian: 4/2. To better correlate with Scarlet Crusader

Priestess of Elune: 5-mana, restore 5 health. I would like this to be the basic Healing card that's good enough to use if you're desperate and currently it's just absurdly understatted for no reason at all.

Xavius: 5-mana, I mean for fuck's sake, it's XAVIUS, he deserves better than to just replace Illidan as wasted potential.

Final thoughts

Honestly I got pretty into this while writing. It made me realize how there's a lot of stuff in the core set that could be very easily fixed and I do hope the devs continue what they did with Priest for other classes, because it would help the game in the long run.

Either way, tell me what you think about any of my changes, I'm sure a lot of you have had similar thoughts at some point.

I don't know if this has been posted already but I have a feeling that Blizzard is going to change the way that they refund dust for nerfed cards from now on. Here's the reason why...

With the new changes to packs not giving duplicates of any rarity until all cards are acquired, this will allow people to gather a huge amount of dust by dusting their rares and commons that got nerfed, then opening a pack to get those cards again, dust them again and repeat. This nets a guaranteed minimum of 190 dust per pack if a rare and common got nerfed (100 from rare, 40 from each nerfed common, and 5 from the non-nerfed commons) but possibly more. 

I'm guessing they'll put a fix forward for this and my best guess is that they'll limit the number of cards you can DE for full dust value to the number that you can put into a deck (1 legendary, 2 of each other rarity). I know that this could screw over people who mass collect copies of cards in anticipation of nerfing or never mass disenchant (I'm in this group) as you won't benefit from dusting all the extra copies, but I think it's a solution that's fair and consistent with their intention for providing dust refunds. The dust refunds are to benefit people who may have crafted the cards to use them in a deck or didn't DE them for dust to use on other decks as they were good at the time. Nobody would intentionally keep more copies than they could use in a deck if there wasn't a chance for extra dust on them upon nerfing. Also, they definitely have the coding to check this already as HoF only gives dust for the number of copies that could be used, similar to this solution.

So whether Blizz does this before or after the first round of nerfs and subsequent dust abuse for Outland, I feel fairly confident that they will implement a solution of sorts. I personally wouldn't mind this as I'm sitting on 13.5k worth of undusted cards that I'm holding onto in case of nerfs and it would stop my hoarding mentality from kicking in knowing that there's no consequence for dusting the extras.

What do others think? Has this been mentioned by the Hearthstone team already?

Greetings there! I'm here to present you my version of how I would change Warlock's Core Sets. I'm jumping the bandwagon a bit with the changes after seeing some other people trying their reworks and generally accepting classes may need some updates.

I've decided to try out Warlock, because Gul'dan also seems to have too many bad cards in his Core sets, and while it has core staples like Flame Imp, other cards haven't got much time to shine... maybe Sacrificial Pact, which only sees play now with Galakrond Warlock. Some cards do need changes or replacements as I said despite some cards being already HoF'd before (hello Power Overwhelming and Doomguard).

Strengths and Weaknesses

New Sets

Explanations

Hall of Fame

Some cards that were considered, but didn't make the cut

AoO Reliquary of Souls Shaman

Wild · Galakrond Shaman · by Doctorpoptarts · 5 years, 11 months ago

• 1 Earth Shock x 1
• 1 Frost Shock x 2
• 1 Lightning Bolt x 2
• 2 Bonechewer Brawler x 2
• 3 Far Sight x 2
• 3 Hex x 2
• 3 Lady Vashj x 1
• 3 Overconfident Orc x 2
• 4 Devoted Maniac x 2
• 4 The Fist of Ra-den x 1
• 5 Corrupt Elementalist x 2
• 5 Dragon's Pack x 2
• 5 Hagatha's Scheme x 2
• 5 Shield of Galakrond x 2
• 7 Earthquake x 1
• 7 Galakrond, the Tempest x 1
• 10 Eye of the Storm x 2
• 10 King Phaoris x 1

9,020 Dust 1,570 0 Copy Deck Code

You can make this in a non-galakrond version but I love the value that you get from Galakrond.

You use Fist of Ra-Den with 1 mana spells to summon the only 1 cost legendary in the game next expansion, reliquary of souls.

Pretty simple with control support to help you survive.

Since last patch.. You were guaranteed a 60 gold quest per day and only got 50 if you re rolled..

Edit: the title have a typo, I am aware..

I just played against a Shaman who discoverd the Demon Hunter Hero Power through Sir Finley Mrrgglton. Just wanted to let you know. It looks pretty cool :-)

Idk why, all I was doing was playing Galakrond Awakening and now I own the  initiate set. I cant even use them cuz I don't  have  the class or the class basics.

So, easy thread. How's life without Leeroy?

Me: "So far so good!"