I wonder if they have synergies planned, because that card just seems terrible. Even if it were a 7-Cost it probably wouldn't be worth it.

@noelle808 said:

Would be interesting if it were a 6-mana 6/7, meaning strictly better than Boulderfist Ogre. But at 7 mana or 8 mana I would never dream of playing it because there are so many other better options at those mana costs competing for a spot.

The Boogeymonster: I agree with @fredchuckdave and @turambar. Cool idea on paper, but it's not going to live long enough to matter, most likely. Again, I point out that a card with a power on it which is not immediately viable is basically not going to matter.

Brood of N'Zoth: I WANT TO CUDDLE THAT CUTENESS OMGGGGGGGGGGGG! Beyond that.....eeeeeh? A 2/2 for 3 is an okay value, but I imagine you'll want to kill it off yourself to buff stuff since any opponent will wipe other stuff before taking this guy out. At that point, why not remove the middle man and just made it a buff spell? I don't know. I guess I just don't see what it fits into very well for Standard. Now, for Arena, this thing is the bee's knees!

Renounce Darkness: INTERESTING! Remember that this only replaces your Warlock cards and your Hero power, not all of your neutral cards. It's kind of an "oh shit" button when you are playing against a hard counter class for you. The only issue is the whole thing where you don't know what is actually in your deck, whether all of that synergizes or not, etc. Still, it's a interesting card. I'd be curious to see someone mess around with it in Standard.

@acura_max: I forgot that Classic isn't rotating out. Personally, though...it should. With that said, expect full Legendary decks to become a genuine thing now.

So new Legendary was revealed on HearthPwn, and it's a doozy.

It's a really cool concept, and some of those toxins are real good considering you get two of them along with the 3/2 for 4 mana, but I tend to shy away from things that are that random.

EDIT: I don't play Rogue, so I forgot about the combo potential. That makes this even better.

Ooooh that looks pretty sweet.

@noelle808: That does look interesting. Let's hope rogue gets some combo cards since tinker oil is being rotated out.

And now let me introduce you to the "poisoned blade" of the expansion. As one commenter put it: "Tentacles for arms? More like tentacles for dust" If you're only going for a 2/2 weapon, you might as well use Justicar Trueheart 1 turn later for the same effect and a 6/3 body. Plus you don't have spend 5 mana to reequip your weapon. That and assassin's blade is arguably better for the same mana cost.

edit: it's actually a warrior card, but its still not good.

@acura_max: Blizzard really outdoing themselves in the last couple expansions/adventures when it comes to the category of "making awful equipment no one in their right mind will use, and will see a small amount of Arena use at best."

I feel like Glaivezooka and Powermace were the last equipment they designed that anybody really gave a crap about.

@acura_max: Man, I'd really love to hear the dev's logic behind this card. Spending 5 mana to do 4 points of damage spread out over 2 turns seems real bad, no matter how many times you get to do it.

@noelle808: Wow, that seems incredible. All of the toxins are playable on their own, and you get two of them. Not only that, but they are also one mana spells, which are extra valuable for setting of Combo. It also has synergies with Brann and Raptor, both of which are a possible fit in a rogue deck.

That looks to me like an incredible utility card. I'm also glad that Blizzard has been printing cheap legendaries with unique abilities that aren't just a pile of stats.

@acura_max: I mean, the only justification I can see for this card is if control Paladins become really popular. This is essentially a way of negating their hero power, which has always been extremely tough for warriors to deal with. Yes it is hugely expensive, but many control vs control matchups often times involve multiple 'hero power+pass' turns until either player is forced to play a card. So I wouldn't call this quite as bad as Poisoned Blade. Even when extremely overcosted, perpetual effects always have some inherent value.

@noelle808 said:

So new Legendary was revealed on HearthPwn, and it's a doozy.

It's a really cool concept, and some of those toxins are real good considering you get two of them along with the 3/2 for 4 mana, but I tend to shy away from things that are that random.

EDIT: I don't play Rogue, so I forgot about the combo potential. That makes this even better.

Oh fuck, those herb names just hit my vanilla WoW nostalgia part of the brain hard.

@bisonhero: @noelle808: Ben Brode explained the reasoning for the tentacles for arms card in one of his streams. He says that it is a better headcrack card. With headcrack you pay 3 mana for 2 damage to face. With this card, you pay 2.5 mana for 2 damage. That's 2 damage either to face or to a minion without the need for a combo to return the card back to your hand. The downside is that it is easily countered by taunt. So the question is whether headcrack will work in warrior. So @imsh_pl could be right in what they are saying.

Watching the Asian Championship, and this card was revealed. I'm not *too* familiar with hunter, but this card would be way stronger if haunted creeper was still in the game. Interesting to see new cards coming in to fill the design space the opened up by rotating out Naxx and GvG.

@noelle808 said:

Watching the Asian Championship, and this card was revealed. I'm not *too* familiar with hunter, but this card would be way stronger if haunted creeper was still in the game. Interesting to see new cards coming in to fill the design space the opened up by rotating out Naxx and GvG.

That seems to be intended to be comboed with Unleash the Hounds.

@noelle808: It still combos well with Unleash the Hounds, almost restoring the old Starving Buzzard/Unleash the Hounds combo, except you're going to be gaining random garbage beasts instead of any of the carefully chosen minions and spells in your actual deck.

It seems decent, but I guess Blizzard has decided that they just aren't going to give Hunter consistent card draw of any sort because it would just make face Hunter decks more disgusting. Instead, they're doing weird effects like Webspinner, Tomb Spider, Lock n' Load, and Infest. It seems the only other card draw Hunter will get will be one at a time, like on Quickdraw or King's Elekk.

Face Hunter basically ruins everything, because it seems like that's the reason they're afraid to give Hunter anything too strong. The side effect is that I feel like midrange Hunter has been really underpowered since it lost Starving Buzzard/Unleash the Hounds, and eventually lost Undertaker due to Undertaker nerf.

@noelle808 said:

Watching the Asian Championship, and this card was revealed. I'm not *too* familiar with hunter, but this card would be way stronger if haunted creeper was still in the game. Interesting to see new cards coming in to fill the design space the opened up by rotating out Naxx and GvG.

So it's basically a Ball of Spiders that's cheaper but requires you to have a big board. Which might turn out more difficult because of Creeper rotating out. The plus side is that you can immediatelly suicide your minions for the draw, but that doesn't seem that relevant.

Yes, the possible combo of Unleash+Infest exists... but for Infest to be decent you need to draw at least three beasts off of it. Which means that you have to be behind on the board to summon at least three hounds. And when you are behind on the board, drawing random beasts is not something you want to spend your mana on.

It just doesn't seem worth it. As I said, drawing less than three cards off of it is really bad, and drawing three isn't actually that easy. If you really want to build a hunter deck around replenishing resources, you would much rather just add three mana for three 1/1 bodies and have a guaranteed effect. I can't really imagine a world where you put this in your deck before Ball of Spiders, and putting both is just overkill.

I like the card a lot in a vacuum. Neat idea, cool art, and sounds fun. However, compared to the way hunter currently is I just don't see it having a place. Maybe if hunter shifts away from face in this expansion, but I highly doubt it.

I don't think the lack of something like haunted creeper is going to hurt this card much actually. I know I brought up the unleash the hounds combo potential, but thinking more about it, this card really isn't meant to give you a bunch of extra creatures early on, but rather give you an extra boost when you're punching it out in the mid game and you're starting to run low on cards.

How often does a highmane die with both hyenas still on the board? That might be the actual thing that determines how viable this card is.

@turambar said:

The more I think about it, Infest is almost definitely worse than Cult Master. There's a one mana difference, but you would almost always much rather draw cards from your deck than just draw random beasts. Also one gives you a 4/2 body, the other is just a spell.

I mean..we are all assuming that unleash the hounds will even be the same card when this expansion releases. Maybe its mana cost goes up, maybe they end up removing charge, etc. That's one of my issues with evaluating any of these cards. You can't really say "x and y will play together well/be bad' because..like a whole bunch of cards we currently have are going to potentially completely change (See warsong commander). Its not magic, where they just make a rules clarification. Blizzard has, and will completely remake old cards as they see fit.

Oh and a side note. FaceHunter isn't a major problem..the major problem is the lack of viable alternatives. Just check the dustcost for FaceHunter vs every other major deck archtype. Something like 1200 for FH to 2000 at the bare minimum for some of the others, and more like 4-5k for the more popular decks. People don't play facehunter because it crushes every other deck in the format..people play it cause its cheapest option you have that is competitive.

And that, I fear, it going to be the big lose for this expansion. People see a lot of face hunter and think 'overpowered! Nerf!' as opposed too "Well what else am I suppose to play!" And, since the complaints are stronger then the majority..blizzards is likely to listen to the people complaining about the deck Which will put people who haven't played for 2+ years or spent hundreds of dollars at an even bigger gulf than they already were.

This, from someone who plays FaceHunter who wishes, very much, to play something else, but isn't willing to buy another 50-100 packs in order to get the dust to make the legendaries. Blizzard is going to end up favoring the long-term players+the rich ones vs the newer players+the poorer ones, because "This is the only deck I can play, not having it is not fun" is trumped by "This deck is everywhere I don't like playing against it!" as far as the understood/expressed outrage goes.

@bladededge: I agree that for players just starting out, there aren't a ton of cheap deck archetypes other than Face Hunter, some form of Warlock Zoo, and maybe one or two other aggro options like a budget version of Dragon Priest or something.

Unfortunately, I think it is hard for Blizzard, or any CCG company, to guess exactly what deck archetypes are going to arise and become effective once a new set comes out. They hope that numerous common and rare cards will be viable, but sometimes they end up with a set like The Grand Tournament where a lot of the cards just aren't quite powerful or synergistic enough, so Mysterious Challenger is one of the only cards that really sees a ton of play. I know you've looked up some dust costs, and I won't debate them, but I will say you really only need a handful of certain epic and legendary cards; they certainly aren't all very good. For every Mysterious Challenger or Twilight Guardian there are a dozen Bestial Wrath, Astral Communion, Kidnapper, etc. that just aren't worth the time. I guess when starting out you have to be willing to work with what you've got, and hopefully within your first few dozen packs you open some kind of epic or legendary that at least pushes you in a certain class direction and you can look at what that class is doing these days and try to make something of a deck.

Also, while I don't enjoy dusting cards unless they're duplicates, it's not the worst thing to do to help buy some rares and such that you're missing when you're just starting out. The first legendary I opened was Harrison Jones, and I dusted it almost immediately, because it's only really used in pretty expensive control decks that I was months and months away from possibly having all the cards for, and even then Harrison Jones isn't necessarily an autoinclude. I don't miss it for a second, because I can guarantee I almost never would've used it in the past couple years. So take a hard look at some of the legendary or epics you get early on and whether you actually want to play the deck that would use them.

As for what information Blizzard is using, they listen to more than just community feedback; I'm sure they have all kinds of metrics measuring the inclusion rate of various cards in both constructed decks and arena decks. I'm sure they have an entire subset of data that shows how many players are just battling it out in rank 20 and 19 every month because they've just started out and don't have a lot of options. I at least believe that they're trying, but I also think Blizzard's top brass are more in love with the concept of Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch as their real flagship games from the past couple of years, leading to the Hearthstone dev team still feeling kinda light on manpower from the sounds of things. Frankly, Hearthstone should have a balance patch every 1-2 months, but for whatever reason they only have the playtesting resources to playtest new cards they're designing and not the playtesting resources to go back and tweak old cards around, at least until this rebalancing of Classic cards. Thus you end up with the retarded year-and-a-half reign of Dr. Boom in nearly every deck that can afford him.

Not gonna debate that the good doctor is OP, but anecdotally I haven't been seeing him as much on ladder recently. I mean I tend to hang around the rank 12-8 range so maybe he sees more play above or below that, but yeah, he's not as big an issue for me recently.

@planetfunksquad: Yeah, it varies, but I still see him plenty in the 15-10 ranks that I usually hover around most months.

With forbidden healing and this card, could healadin become a thing?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/03/28/ign-reveals-a-new-legendary-hearthstone-card

"Now imagine a world where Ragnaros says 'Live Insect' at the end of your turn and heals you instead of dealing 8 damage to your opponent! This is a better world is it not?"

@acura_max: I love this card for no reason other than how mad it's making WoW lore fanatics on reddit.

It's their own damn fault for expecting a card game to be canon.

Seems like a fun card, and the art is really cool!

@acura_max said:

With forbidden healing and this card, could healadin become a thing?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/03/28/ign-reveals-a-new-legendary-hearthstone-card

"Now imagine a world where Ragnaros says 'Live Insect' at the end of your turn and heals you instead of dealing 8 damage to your opponent! This is a better world is it not?"

This seems really strong for a control paladin. For all intents and purposes, this is a strictly better Lay on Hands, and Lat on Hands is a one of in Control and even Midrange Paladins. The problem with Lay on Hands is that the three cards are actually a detriment against control decks, since LoE significantly lengthened control vs control games with cards like Eloise and Reno, making them almost always go to fatigue. Against more aggressive decks the card suffered from giving you no tempo and wasn't really that good a catch-up mechanic unless you already had a firmly taunted-up board.

Ragnaros, Lightlord (why didn't they throw a 'the' in there?) seems to solve both of those problems. Originally the problem with healing cards was that they didn't restore enough life and didn't impact the board state. Cards like Reno showed us just how powerful a large health swing can be. Lightlord allows you to both heal for a large amount and put an 8/8 on the board at the same time. Furthermore, it's an 8/8 that they just have to kill immediately, because it will perpetually heal either your face or your damaged big minions (presumably itself). This makes it much more valuable and threatening than a one time heal of 8 with Lay on Hands or Healbot.

Against aggro decks this card can spell disaster since it's very likely they don't run hard removal at all. This means that they will probably have to run their board into Ragnaros, which effectively heals you for 16 and destroys most of their minions. That's huge impact for just one card.

Against control decks the threat is probably not as hard to address; nonetheless, the initial heal of 8 is a nice plus. It's likely they will just have removal for Lightlord if it ever becomes a playworthy card. However, this is also a huge advantage for Paladins. The fact that this card exists means that control decks have to save up a removal for it until the end of the game, since it looks to me like Ragnaros, Lightlord is the single most powerful card in the game during fatigue if left unanswered. If you manage to have it survive on the board when your opponent has no cards left, you win. Even facing a Control Warrior with 40 armor, the health swing of 16 every turn is just too much. Alternatively, you can just not play the card and essentially render one of your opponent's removal a dead card for the entire game. That's a huge deal.

Furthermore, this punishes Elise decks hard since they often lack removal after they play the monkey, leaving Ragnaros to either keep healing you or himself while he's fighting for the board.

Now, the biggest downside of this card is, of course, having 8 attack. Because if BGH will still be a thing, this card loses a lot of viability. With Boom rotating out even a control Paladin will have almost no other targets for BGH in their deck. The consensus in the HS community is that BGH is one of the biggest cards limiting design space, and it's pretty much a given that Blizzard will address it. To assess the viability of Ragarnos, Lightlord we'll have to just wait and see.

It's funny seeing the "lore" complaints against this card, considering the theme of the set. There's this common thing in western fantasy where we don't bat an eyelash at beings of good being corrupted (The "fallen angel" type), but the idea of someone like Ragnaros being redeemed is too much for us.

That said, this card seems cool. At 8 mana, it comes in pretty late, but considering that it will almost always get off one heal and basically needs to be dealt with immediately, it could easily give a control paladin the breathing room to close out the game.

I guess this is going to be the Antique Healbot of the expansion. Not as good though.

Someone on reddit found some unreleased card art on the battle net website voting app. Looks like deathwing will be making an appearance and he will be...even more corrupted? The name of the file is titled Kibler. It's rather fitting because he loves dragons and hates BGH. Expect this card to have over 7 attack..

And in this week's voting poll thing there's another dragon. So Blizzard has fulfilled their promise of more than one dragon.

@acura_max: Dragon tomorrow, thanks China.

@turambar: Apparently my hearthstone reddit fu is strong, I should've been making meaningless quips there all along!

@acura_max:Here's a link to thumbnails of all the cards that will get voted on.

Another new legendary revealed, decidedly meh outside of maybe tempo mage.

@turambar: At 5 mana I could've liked it, but at 6 mana it doesn't have anywhere near the power of Sylvanas or Thaurissan or other notable 6-mana 5/5s. Unless the Bananas have some crazy effect like the brawl bananas, instead of the usual +1/+1. You're right, though, could see some use in Tempo Mage.

@turambar said:

I guess this is going to be the Antique Healbot of the expansion. Not as good though.

Yeah, that doesn't seem really good. Healbot already wasn't optimal because he did nothing to affect the board; this is even worse since the 8 heal isn't guarnateed, and anything more just means you're losing severely. It's also absolute trash versus control; healbot was at least useful against classes that use Alex.

@turambar said:

@acura_max:Here's a link to thumbnails of all the cards that will get voted on.

Another new legendary revealed, decidedly meh outside of maybe tempo mage.

I don't think it's nearly good enough for tempo mages. Toshley wasn't being run and he has two more health. The bananas aren't even that much better than spare parts, if at all (getting the stealth one and slapping it onto Antonidas often times wins you the game).

It just doesn't seem at all significant. At 5 mana it would maybe be good enough, but the bananas just don't impact the game in any significant way, and it's not even like they're free.

Yeah, basically all of the non-God neutral legendaries are underwhelming. At least the class ones seem good.

More AOE for priest! Note that the card also affects your minions as well.

Hey it's mark of the wild 2.0: beast edition. Will people use this now that you can draw a card instead of getting taunt? Will people finally use beast druid? Probably not.

Source: espn

Hmm, the Priest card is interesting because it seems to be a direct counter to highly aggressive decks. Considering how a lot of these new cards seem to be a little too slow to use in the current meta, I wouldn't be surprised to see more cards that attempt to slow things down.

The new dragon is out. Official translation is not out yet, but people are saying the effect is this: "at the start of your turn, double the attack of this minion". Essentially it's Klvadir Raider for stats more favored in health and costs 1 more mana. But the bright side is that you don't need to spend 2 mana to upgrade its attack. The downside is that it starts out with 2 attack, vulnerable to cabal and and its health does not increase.

Edit: added the english translation

I'll say it again, they really really must think the meta is going to slow down and become more board oriented. A good deal of the effects we've seen involve buffing a board of minions or or gaining value passively over time. Not sure if that style of play is going to stick, but I guess it's impossible to say until the set is out and the changes are made.

I also wonder if they'll make some sort of surrogate for Mad Scientist.

@captain_max707: Mad Scientist was on the strong side, but it was basically necessary for secrets to be relevant. Curious to see if Hunter and Mage keep playing secrets very much once they lose Mad Scientist.

If there was ever a card to make Magma Rager playable, this is it.

@noelle808: Certainly stands to make Bluegill Warrior, Wolfrider, Abusive Sergeant, and Worgen Infiltrator more annoying, though I'm not sure Face Paladin would bother running the card. Seems like it would mostly just apply to Silver Hand Recruits.

Nightmare Dragon seems cool but unreliable. I'm imagining it in a dragon priest with inner fire and/or divine spirit. Probably just a win more combo, but its something I'm going to mess around with. Big problem I see with it is starting at 2 attack. It's very hard to play against priests with it being vulnerable to cabal, shadow word pain, and the new shadow word as well. It has to survive one turn with two attack which can give your opponent plenty of opportunity to trade minions into it.

Steward is interesting. I didn't play a lot of Paly back when I played so I can't comment too much. I would imagine its almost never going to be played on turn 3 though. You would want to get the guaranteed value of being able to drop at least one 1 health minion on the same turn I would think. And at that point you have to question if there's a better way you could be using mana in the later turns.

@mezza: Yeah, if you only get one divine shield out of it, it's no better than Argent Protector (I think that's the name?).

@bisonhero: You can definitely run that card in ebola, though its existence loosely implies a divine favor nerf because the card is really insane if ebola remains more or less unchanged.

@noelle808:For the sole purpose of buffing your recruits, this card isn't good enough. You can compare it to Silver Hand Regent who never saw play, and another 1/1 is better than a divine shield on an existing one imo.

The only exception is if you want to employ some buff shenanigans. That is possible (maybe in an Eggladin to buff the whelps), but the card is too conditional and would be a dead card most of the match. For this to be better than Argent Protector you would need to buff at least two creatures, which isn't at all easy. And Argent Protector isn't being played, even though he's a much more flexible card, can protect key targets and be used to immediately get better trades.

Even a turn 8 Steward+Stand Against Darkness doesn't really seem too exciting. Muster+Quartermaster was impactful because it put 11/14 of stats split accross multiple creatures on the board and required immediate answer. 5 1/1s with divine shield and a 3/3 is a significantly smaller threat. Yes you make a really sticky board, but not a really threatening one. I'm open to surprised on this point though.

For any version of aggro Paladin this is just trash. Ignoring for the moment that an aggro Paladin deck will be pretty much impossible to make in standard with Minibot, Muster and Coghammer gone, no aggro deck can afford to play a 3 mana 3/3 and just hope for it to stick to get value. A possible combo of, say, Steward+2 one drops is also unfitting of an aggro playstyle, which doesn't want to hoard minions but instead stick them to the board and overwhelm the opponent. This type of play also messes up your Divine Favors. Again, we have to remember that even many Eboladin lists skipped Argent Protectors who is just so much more flexible.

Maybe in a Token Paladin deck in Wild with Justicar, Muster, and Quartermaster. Not standard viable.

@imsh_pl: Blizzard just confirmed that you can use the steward with Twilight Drake since it originally has 1 health. Dragon Paladin hype.

This thread is the best.

Seems like a C'thun deck is just gonna involve generic but fairly strong cards. Probably gonna see a bunch of it lower on the ladder but unless C'thun ends up being crazy powerful, I don't think it's ridiculous enough to see super high level play.