Summary:

• The new format will be called "Standard." Blizzard says that certain card sets will rotate in and out of the cardpool depending on how Blizzard wants to shape the meta. That means that if one card is too overpowered, Blizzard can take the card or an entire set out of the mode and change the meta without adding more cards or changing a card.
• The current format will be called "Wild." This is basically Hearthstone as it is. Anything goes here and there won't be a restriction on which cards can be used.
• There will also be separate ladders for each mode. You will only get 1 chest per season and it will be based on the highest ladder rank you have on either mode. So, you can choose which one you will stick to.
• You will no longer be able to buy expansion or card sets if they are not in the standard mode. However, you can still craft them (including adventure cards)
• The first year of Standard mode will be known as the "Year of the Kraken" The mode will the following sets:
  • Basic
  • Classic
  • Blackrock Mountain
  • The Grand Tournament
  • The League of Explorers
  • The Spring 2016 Expansion
• Curse of Naxxramas and Goblins Vs. Gnomes will not be included in the upcoming mode. (No more Dr. Boom yall)
• The number deck slots will be increased to 18 once you unlock all 9 heroes.

Official Press Release - Link

Exciting changes are coming to the Tavern! We’re proud to announce that we’re introducing game formats to Hearthstone! Whether you’re just getting into Hearthstone or you’re a seasoned veteran, the new Standard format will help keep Hearthstone fresh, exciting, and accessible for years to come, while the Wild format will preserve everything you already know and love about Hearthstone!

The New Standard

Standard is a new format in Play mode that allows players to go head-to-head using only the most recently released Hearthstone cards. You’ll play Standard using a deck built solely from a pool of cards that were released in the current and previous calendar year, along with a core foundation of the Basic and Classic card sets (which will always be valid for Standard). You’ll be matched against other players who are also using Standard decks.

Standard promises a fresher Hearthstone experience!

• Standard will help make for a more dynamic and balanced metagame.
• A select set of cards makes each new card have more impact!
• The developers will have more freedom to design exciting new cards.
• It lets newer players jump in faster without having to collect as many cards.

Standard is only available as a format in Friendly Challenges, Ranked, and Casual play, so it won’t affect Arena, Solo play, or Adventures.

Wild Will Be Wild

Wild is our new name for the Hearthstone you already know, because it’ll be the format where anything can happen. While Standard puts a bright spotlight on recently released cards and brings a more balanced experience, when you queue up for Wild, you’ll be cozying up with the crazy fun of Hearthstone you’re already familiar with. Of course, as more and more cards are added over time, the wilder and more unpredictable Wild will be!

In terms of gameplay, nothing is changing for Wild: you’ll be able to finish quests, earn gold, rank up on the ladder, get card backs, earn Legend rank, and use all the cards you’ve already collected to build a Wild deck, just like you always have. When you queue up for Ranked or Casual play with a Wild deck, you’ll always be matched with other players who are also using Wild decks.

Ranking Up

When Standard is introduced you’ll be able to choose between Standard and Wild for Ranked play, and you'll have a separate rank for each format, so you can earn ranks and hit Legend in both Wild and Standard if you wish! You’ll only collect ranked rewards at the end of the season based on the highest rank you attained in one format or the other, but not both, so feel free to play whichever you like best!

Time for Reflection

The arrival of Standard format will also be an excellent time for us to take stock of Hearthstone. While normally we’re quite conservative about making balance changes to Hearthstone cards (and we’ll continue to be in the future), we’re planning to take the new Hearthstone year as a golden opportunity to re-evaluate a number of cards in the Basic and Classic card sets, including class cards, and make some long-considered adjustments.

More information on which cards are changing and why will be available as we draw nearer to the arrival of Standard format.

More Deck Slots? More Deck Slots!

Yes! More deck slots! Prior to the arrival of Standard we’ve got a buff planned for your Collection Manager! If you’ve unlocked all nine heroes, you’ll also unlock nine more deck slots, raising your total number of deck slots to eighteen.

Release the Kraken!

Standard format will arrive this spring! When the momentous moment arrives, you’ll be able to build Standard decks using the following sets:

• Basic
• Classic
• Blackrock Mountain
• The Grand Tournament
• The League of Explorers
• The Spring 2016 Expansion

Curse of Naxxramas and Goblins vs Gnomes will not be part of Standard. When we release the first new Expansion each year, every set that wasn’t released in the same year or the year prior will cycle out and no longer be part of the Standard format.

That’s also when the new Standard year begins. Each new Hearthstone year is symbolized by one of the zodiac constellations twinkling in Azeroth’s night sky. The moment when a new constellation comes into alignment heralds the start of the year and a time of jubilation and raucous revelry wherever Hearthstone is played!

This inaugural Standard year will be known as the Year of the Kraken, so get ready to make some waves!

Gone Wild

Adventures and Expansions that are not part of the Standard format will no longer be available for purchase from the Shop—this year, that includes Naxxramas and Goblins vs Gnomes. If you want any cards you missed out on for Wild play or just to fill out your collection, you’ll be able to craft them using Arcane Dust—even cards from Adventures that were previously un-craftable. Speaking of Adventures, if you’ve purchased at least the first wing of an Adventure before it cycled out, you’ll still be able to finish acquiring and playing the remaining wings.

We’re Pumped!

We’ve worked hard to pave the way for Standard, and we’re really excited about all the great things this new format will bring to Hearthstone: fresher gameplay, more impactful expansions, and—since Standard will become the official format of the Hearthstone Championship Tour—an even more exciting competitive scene. All in all, we believe that Standard will end up being the most fun way to enjoy Hearthstone.

We hope you’re excited too, and we can’t wait to hear what you think.

We’re sure you have questions, so read the FAQ, and if you’ve still got questions, we’ll be happy to help!

That's pretty fucking great.

Blizzard has been really stepping their game up when it comes to Hearthstone during the last couple of months huh.

With so many op cards like Mad Scientist, Piloted Shredder and Dr Boom gone the meta will certainly have a lot more room to breathe and experiment.

I'm just wondering whether they will limit Arena card pack rewards to the expansions in Standard. It wouldn't really make sense otherwise.

Best news I could ever imagine for the game. Can't wait for this roll out. Soooo many cards from GvG and Naxx that are just not fun at all. It will be interesting to see where the meta goes though, but it can't get much worse than it's been the last few months. Also, the re-tuning of Baisc/Classic cards could turn out to be amazing as well.

@imsh_pl: Doesn't look like they're gonna be selling any card packs or single player expansions that aren't standard legal, so it would be weird if they gave out card packs you couldn't get otherwise as a reward.

It is a smart move. I cannot imagine how "wild" the legacy mode will get after the release of more expansions / adventures.

It will be exciting to see new decks / meta appear in this mode with so many cards removed from the standard mode.

I wonder if it will help newcomers come in, knowing they aren't required to buy a years worth of expansions.

Exciting stuff!

You could probably bring back Warsong Commander because cards like Deaths Bite and Unstable Ghoul are gone.

Here is a list of cards from Naxrammas that will not be available:

As somebody who stopped playing this game (I still dip back in every other month to play Arena for a few days then inevitably leave again) but used to be wayyyyyyy into it (easily the game I've put the most hours into and been the best at), this seems cool but also annoys me because if they'd done it earlier I'd have never gotten off the HS train. I'll check out Standard for sure, but I don't think I'll ever obsessively hit Legend every season or anything.

I'm especially curious about the talk of re-balancing older cards. That could be really huge, especially the changes to class cards. It's also a little worrying since their nerfs always seem so drastic, so I hope these changes aren't too ridiculous (but a lot of classic cards are hot garbage so that might be for the best in this case anyway).

@iigrayfoxii: I'm skimming through the GvG cards and things are also looking really interesting... no Shredder, Healbot, Boom, Unstable Portal, Minibot, Muster, Crackle, Implosion... some of the most popular archetypes will be turned on their heads.

What I want to know is..are they doing anything for arena? Like that seems the red-headed stepchild in this situation.

Forgive me if I am missing the announcement somewhere but.

Arena has gotten increasing worse and more random as new card sets have been released. The pool of cards gets bigger, and bigger, and since at least up until this very announcement, they could not go about reprinting cards with essentially identical functions. The number of silences in arena dropped, the amount of removal, the amount of taunt, the amount of decent decks.

For those of you with MTG experience. Arena essentially became draft/limited. Only they use every card every printed, except dublicates in function. So they are unable to print additional copies of key elements. Removal and etc. So your chances of getting say a poly-morph went from 1 in 20 lets say, to one in 25..30..45..

Any card game that goes on long enough needs something like this announcement. Time will tell if there if one mode completely dominates (and since its only one chest not one per it seems like that's likely) but who knows! Its great to see blizzards learning this rule and adopting it like most other card-games with expanding card pools have.

I just wish..beg..plead..that they would learn the same lesson for Arena. Limited in magic is an insanely fun alternative way to play. Arena is so close to being a casual easy to pick up equivalent. But there are fundamental aspects of the game (essentially, being unable to 'reprint' cards or functional equivalents) that require they either give Arena some special attention or alter the format completely.

And holy heck they need to stop with the random rarity. That's almost as much a load of shit as the rest of it. Again, the MTG equivalent. Imagine a sealed event where you get only 2 rares and 4 uncommons across all 6 packs of cards..and the person to your right and left get double the standard number instead (6 uncommons and 2 or even 3 rares a pack). Bloody stupid.

Point for Blizzard though. They have the right idea here. Man I just wish I could see it for the part of the game I most enjoy, instead of seeing it continue to get worse the bigger the card pool gets.

So what I'm hearing is it'll be a Face Hunter and Reno Jackson meta.

In all seriousness, very interested in what the nerfs for old cards would be. I can think of some adjustments that have been sorely needed with Force of Nature + Savage Roar being pretty high up there.

@bladededge: Excellent point. They must tinker with the drafting behind the scenes, but it is strange it is not mentioned in this press release.

Since the "standard" play mode is named standard - maybe it applies to arena as well? Maybe you will not see GvG or Naxx cards in there either.

@imsh_pl: Those are a lot of standard cards appearing in a lot of the top decks.

Everyone loses Zombie Chow, Dr Boom, Piloted Shredder.

Zoo Warlocks lose Haunted Creeper, Im-plosion.

Secret Paladins lose Avenge, Shielded Mini bot, Muster for Battle.

Freeze Mages lose Scientist and Healbot.

GvG and Naxx have had such a lasting impact.

@iigrayfoxii: I believe the announcement says it won't be effecting arena.

Sigh.

As for general nerfs. That is one of the..downsides I think of Hearthstone. Its purely digital so unlike a card-game with physical product, the cards can essentially say whatever you want them too. Yes, they are good about letting you trade cards they nerf in for full dust, but..

Its just one of the like 'hearthstone is meant to be casual, concessions are to be made" And there willingness to essentially change a card to a completely different thing, just keeping the name, is one of them. Stats change, cost change, heck entire abilities change (hello warsong commander nerf)

Not to complain about any given nerf. I am sure if Wotc could go back and simple erase lines of text, or entire concepts from existence in their game as they learn better, they would. At the same time though it means everything exists in this fluid state where you can never really be sure that your cards will do anywhere close too the same thing today, as they will tomorrow. For a casual player, that's fine! It means you can expect the game to never get super complicated, or for a single card interaction to overwhelm the game. For people who like brewing and developing affinities for certain decks, the more hard-core crowd though..it means..eh yah. Casual game, concessions must be made.

Oh and no. I don't mean to say "Casual means bad". Just different. Good and bad depending on who you are.

Mage and Hunter are dead.

Goddamnit - I literally just crafted Dr. Boom last week, my first legendary to craft (got a few randoms in card packs), bloody hell :(

Aside from that I think this is a much needed change, the only downside IMO is that you cannot buy the old adventures which I feel were fun to play in their own right.

This is the best news I've heard for Hearthstone in a long time. May actually come back to it.

@iigrayfoxii: Don't forget Sludge Belcher. Is there even a midrange or control deck that doesn't run two?

@countmacula: It is odd to write / voice / create custom battles and get rid of them completely. I am not entirely sure the reasoning behind that.

P.S - That is the first legendary I crafted as well.

Yes. This has me slightly worried. Sludge Belcher is one of the cards that works well against aggro. While the meta has slowed down a bit, aggro decks are still wildly favored, followed extremely closely by midrange decks. Belcher was one of the cards that allowed for more control oriented decks to exist. Which means: I'll probably won't like Standard play.

Here's a real concern though... Standard will limit the options available just by the nature of the mode. Will top Legend players from Standard ladder only be invited to tournaments? That actually sounds like Hearthstone might be getting a whole lot less interesting to watch.

I'm not as excited about this news so far, compared to you guys.

Very smart on their part.

I am REALLY curious to see how this effects the competitive base of this game and people like me who only play on occasion. I've been somewhat overwhelmed by the new sets and I know how the game works. Adding formats, rotating sets, expansions, etc may have the adverse effect they're looking for.

But knowing Blizzard they're pretty good at packaging complicated gameplay ideas into neat and nice UI.

Really interested to see how the new play modes work out. Shaking up the meta every so often sounds like a plus in my book. RIP Dr Boom, we hardly knew ye.... erhm, well... that's totally not true, we saw an awful lot of you, but still, RIP and such!

On the other hand, uhhh whats the point of removing old adventures? My guess is the two rationales would be 1) the cards rewarded from it will no longer be available in one of the play modes so the value of an old adventure like Naxx goes down. And 2) they don't want the store to become too crowded. But it seems like a better solution would just be to drop the price of old adventures or put them up for free in a separate legacy area for people who just want to experience the content (some of those boss fights are really well designed and fun). It's purely anecdotal but the way I've convinced a few friends to try hearthstone recently is to tell them that there is a large catalog of fun solo content at this point. Some people just have no interest in PvP no matter how "safe" hearthstones version of it is. I'm sure Blizzard feels they will still have plenty of solo stuff, but flat out removing content seems like a strange choice to me.

This doesn't seem like a great move to me.

Tournament wise, I can see blizzcon being a Standard Only situation. For other tournaments, they can really do whatever they want.

@iigrayfoxii: I imagine (although I haven't seen it said anywhere) the reasoning is to prevent new players from spending their money on cards that cannot be used. Although if that is the reason, a more elegant solution would have been to display a large warning when trying to purchase an expired expansion.

Yup. The FAQ says this is pretty much the case.

A format of this type is pretty much standard operating procedure for any TCG that plans on continuously releasing cards. Otherwise, the card pool really does get too complex to balance properly.

@zevvion: I think it's kinda presumptuous to make assumptions about the standard meta, no offense. So many cards that are centerpieces of current archetypes will just disappear; combine that with the fact that the new format will launch in tandem with the new expansion and it's just too early to place your bets imo. It's also kind of a given that Blizzard will use this opportunity and release scaled down versions of now staple cards.

When it comes to high level play, I kind of agree that at the beginning things will probably seem more shallow because of the decrease of viable cards. However, if you consider the fact that Blizzard is expecting to support Hearthstone for the years to come, there's just no way that they would not introduce formats at some point. There's only so many cards you can put into your deck, meaning that the only decks to survive in Hearthstone Year Five would consist only of the most ridiculously overpowered cards cherrypicked from the expansions and adventures released over the years. I don't want to speak for high level players but in the following weeks we will pretty much know what their stance on this is, and my personal bet would be that they will deem this healthy to the long term state of the game.

Time will tell, I guess.

Ah, thanks for explaining. This seems like a great move to me.

Yeah, I just read the FAQ. Pretty much pointless to play Wild unless you don't like interacting with the Hearthstone community. Which I do, so that's kind of fucked? Without Naxxramas, I can see aggro and face decks dominating pretty hard. At least they are rebalancing existing basic, classic and class cards. Hope they make Ironbark Protector an 4-mana 3 / 12 with Deathrattle: reduce the opposing hero's health to yours and equally share damage between both heroes for 2 turns. Let me battle this damn aggro. I need Sludge.

I'm not making any assumptions? Wild is not the competitive scene and Standard will cycle out the cards that work well against aggro currently. Which means when this change comes into effect, since the meta is already favoring aggro decks and will effectively nerf control further, aggro will be even more prevalent. In a years time, sure. Maybe they add cards like Sludge or perhaps even better. But right now, it doesn't sound great.

@zevvion: Aggro is also getting a big punch in the gut. The lack of Mad Scientist will be a huge tempo loss for Hunters and Tempo Mages, who will probably be forced to reconsider using any secrets at all, not to mention no Unstable Portals, Flamecannons and Webspinners. Haunted creeper, Nerubian Egg and Implosion are staples in Zoo. Even though Paladins will still have Challenger, it's important to remember that before GvG it was one of the worst classes because of the lack of early game, which will again be a thing because both Minibot and Muster will be a thing of the past. No Crackle and Zapomatic greatly reduces aggro Shamans' burst. Mech decks, most of which tend to be aggressive, will practically disappear.

That's pretty much every aggro deck played currently, save for Aggro Druid. As is, Druids and Priests seem to be getting the best deal out of standard. Still, I think things are looking up.

So ti will help with keeping the game fresh and battle stagnation, new player will have an easier time getting into game, balancing will be easier and there will be more creative space for printing new cards. All in all this is a welcome addition to the game. I will miss cards, but I also cannot wait to see how this will impact the meta. For me the fact that Blizzard will have more freedom when designing new cards is the best thing coming out of this news.

The more I read and think about this the more I realize that the most exciting thing is actually the expansion that's gonna come out alongside the changes. With so many dominant cards being gone it opens up a lot of room for Blizzard to go crazy with putting in a lot of strong cards in the expansion. Basically with this policy change it encourages Blizzard to make expansions that could almost be the entire collection all by themselves. It might be sad to see zombie chow and belcher go for control, but it only means it allows Blizzard to put in other as good or better taunters.

But they're cycling out a lot of the most used aggro cards too...

Good idea in theory, but now the game will depend even more on getting balanced expansions. This is all going to heavily hinge on the Spring expansion I think. Giving up zombie chow, sludge belcher, healbots, etc etc is going to be weird. Hunters gave up few cards, druids gave up almost none (although it sounds like combo may be getting a nerf), freeze mages gave up very little. Yeah we'll see what the spring expansion brings I guess.

I was about to say, this seems like a great solution to people constantly bitching about popular decks. I couldn't think of a single flaw until I realized that this likely means no more nerfs to cards since they can just be taken out of standard rotation. And no more card nerfs means no more free dust. That's pretty lame, but it's cool that they are including a whole new mode for people who don't like the regular ladder.

While aggro gained tools, midrange and control gained far more tools by comparison. The general domination of aggro decks before Naxx shows their strength with just classic cards.

Arena will let you use "Wild" cards but you will only be getting "standard" card rewards. It makes sense considering they are removing the adventure mode for Naxx.

While I really like the idea on the whole, as someone who just saved up their gold over the past month or so to buy all of the Nax wings.... (Screams into pillow)

I couldn't be more thrilled with the news. Just last night, I was talking with a friend about the game and expressed that I felt like I couldn't play more than a game or two in a single sitting anymore without wanting to cut my wrists. I'm a filthy, netdecking ladder player and the game got to the point where if you weren't playing a tier 1 or tier 2 deck, it wasn't necessarily a great use of your time.

I don't think any of us at pro players here, so there is absolutely no drawback to this at all since you can get the same rewards in Wild as you can in Standard sans Blizzcon points. While it puts more of an onus on Blizz to make meaningful, balanced expansions - this is the answer the game needed to ensure it's long term viability.

Just want to point out that nobody in this thread has pointed out that Warlock is losing Darkbomb, which is almost as big of a loss as Imp-losion (or however you spell it). Welcome back, Soulfire!

I've secretly been Trump this whole time.

This is a cool idea but I don't have the faith that 2-3 classes won't be dead each year. Also with hearthstone being hearthstone I'm sure aggro/tempo will be very prevalent early on/possibly always every year.

Also hey guys remember Inspire?

@bisonhero: Tuck Frump

I do hope some of the class cards and basics get revisited. Druid is still going to do Druid things. Priest needs better AOE losing Lightbomb. Freeze Mage is pretty much untouched. We need a Loatheb replacement.

@c0v3rt: There are still basic mechanical tenets of certain classes that I wish they would fix at all. Remember how in Classic it looked like Druid would have some theme of shapeshifting and attacking things, only it turns out Claw and Bite aren't very good and Savagery got nerfed out of existence, so Savage Roar is the only surviving card of that nature, and then they made a halfhearted attempted to return to that mechanic with Savage Combatant. 3 adventures and 2 full expansions, and Savage Combatant is the only card they even tried to make in that vein.

I just think these are amazing news for the game.

Finally no Dr 7, or Shredder, or Belcher in almost every deck.

It will really shake up the core of a lot of decks, which I think will be extremely healthy for the game. As it has been getting stale lately.

You're naming cards that work well in control and anti-aggro decks though. Shielded Minibot isthe Paladins chance to deal with aggro decks. Haunted Creeper is used in Zoo which is a board control deck. This is why Haunted Creeper was also used in many anti-aggro decks and still is in some. The fact they can be used in aggro decks doesn't mean they are aggro cards. Muster too. Just because it is used in Secret Paladin doesn't mean it is an aggro card. Control and midrange Paladin used it all the time. As is, Paladin will have almost no tools left to be a viable class unless you specifically play Secret Paladin.

Lastly, who cares about the Shaman face deck? It is the first Shaman deck that is actually somewhat viable in months.

I really hope they will add great cards to the Spring expansion. I especially hope they will rebalance the class cards well. I hope they won't nerf Druids too much. Rather, I'd like to see them change it to a more control oriented style than the combo finisher.

@c0v3rt That's not fair. That's like saying playing Dark Souls without interacting with the community doesn't affect you. When you really like a game and you are dedicated to playing it, you often want to play what you see and what happens in the community. That will be 98% Standard.

@zevvion: While I agree that the vast majority will play Standard straight off the bat, I think as time goes along Wild will grow its own community as well. I was just thinking about how the upcoming changes will make my rogue pirate deck (that I love playing) obsolete. While there might be a period of time where there's actually a good pirate deck that's part of the meta, a few years down the line there will be an even better one only playable in Wild. And the same thing will happen over and over, "good" and fun decks being part of the meta and when they cycle out you can make the ultimate version in Wild and have fun with it there.

Well, this is pretty much what WoTC do with MtG. They've standard which is the latest cards available and they've other modes where everything is available. The one difference here is MtG current rotates every couple of months and they genuinely don't have to ban or remove already released cards from the meta.

From a competitive standpoint it keeps the game fresh and allows everyone from the top tier players to the casual players to only have to remember a limited amount of cards to be competitive rather than an ever expanding amount. Again, it's pretty much what WoTC and every other CCG/LCG card game does. They all do fine with it. Would you rather have a standard card pool size of 500 cards or 5000 cards?

This was always going to happen in Heartstone, because if it didn't eventually the sheer volume of cards would put people off and would make power creep unmanageable.

@bisonhero: I'm not a fan of his stream, but Kibler is super qualified to comment on the changes and feel like his thoughts echo a lot of my concerns are are in line with what you're saying.

@c0v3rt: Oh yeah, this guy. Yeah, I find his personality grating (in a different way from the arrogance of Kripparian, but I can't quite articulate what I don't like about Kibler), but I agree with most of his points in that video. I'm glad he kinda touched on Druid and the idea of each class having its identity, but then he kinda rambled on about wishing Standard played around with which Classic cards are available instead of always making all of Classic available. I see his complaint, but also Blizzard is still not interested in ramping up the Hearthstone dev team, and I feel like most of Kibler's suggestions would only work if the Hearthstone team were bigger. They would need a lot more manpower to constantly massage which Classic cards get taken in and out each year, plus they don't want to throw off all of the more casual, infrequent players who might have a hard time understanding why arbitrary parts of Classic are and are not legal in Standard. Nerfing Force+Savage is probably too far, but I agree that it would be interesting to just remove it from Standard somehow and see what people did without it. It's also probably not going to happen.

I guess I feel like the identity of some classes is still just bad? As Kibler points out, very few of the new Druid cards see much play compared to all of the high value or tempo swing Druid cards in Classic (the mana cards, Wrath, Swipe, Keeper of the Grove, Druid of the Claw, Ancient of Lore, then Force+Savage to finish). Barring an inconsistent Druid mill deck, Druid decks have been varying versions of "use mana cards to play a bunch of random value cards sooner than you should, hope that gives you just enough of an advantage to get them to around 14 HP, then finish with Force+Savage." Force Savage is like, the only thing that class has going on, because everyone is forever playing Big Game Hunter so Ramp Druid always has that to contend with and a lot of your big minions may never stick around, especially with the occasional addition of things like Entomb. The Claw/Bite/Savagery themed cards basically don't see play. The minor theme of sharing/balance (Naturalize, Grove Tender, Tree of Life, Recycle, Mulch) is underdeveloped and sees little use outside of mill decks or something. Mech Druid didn't have enough going on. Blizzard is really trying to make Beast Druid happen, but I dunno, it's merely alright. Then in a weird twist Druid became the only class where Stealth cards see any play (Druid of the Saber, Shade of Naxxramas) as a way to increase the value of Savage Roar, even though that's ostensibly meant to be one of Rogue's big mechanics (though almost every Rogue Stealth card has never been used very much).

On that note, I kinda lament the loss of Mad Scientist, because that card propped up the use of secrets in Hunter (where it acts as card draw in a class that is sorely lacking it now that Starving Buzzard is dead) and Mage, and I really wonder what those classes will look like when it becomes harder to justify including secrets in decklists because you don't have this minion that finds and plays them for you. It made more of the Hunter and Mage card pool viable, and was just a good utility card that expanded the number of viable cards for those classes but wasn't as stupidly overpowered as Piloted Shredder or Dr. Boom.

Rogue also feels really underdeveloped thought at least they kinda figured something out when they made Tinker's Sharpsword Oil, so we'll see what happens in Standard once Oil Rogue completely disappears. Also Shaman is forever hampered by its hero power which all but forces you to include certain buff cards in your deck so that those totems do anything at all aside from spell power totem. At least they printed Charged Hammer and Sir Finley Mrrgleton to address this problem with Shaman.

There are several classes that I wish they would figure out something big and new to do with.