Yeah, I think "printing good cards for bad decks" sums up a lot of this expansion, unless we're all wrong and somehow Elemental Shaman or Elemental Mage or No Minion Hunter or Weapon Rogue actually turn out to be good decks. This whole expansion reminds me of when Blackrock Mountain came out with a Dragon theme except the Dragon synergy wasn't strong enough in any of the classes, and it wasn't until they printed more Dragon synergy cards in The Grand Tournament that Dragon Priest finally became a thing. Almost every new theme they're pushing (or continuing) feels like that, where you can see the vague outline of what Blizzard is going for, but the synergy is not even remotely strong enough for the deck to be worth it right now.

So I guess see everybody in 4 months when Mean Streets of Gadgetzaan rotates out and more deck ideas from Kobolds & Catacombs have room to breathe without that wildly overpowered set dictating the Standard meta. Some individually strong Kobolds cards are certainly going to see play, but there are entire themed blocks of cards in this expansion that seem like they're going to go completely untouched in the next 4 months.

@bisonhero: Yeah, and you mention Mean Streets, I wonder if they realized themselves this expansion that trying to do interesting stuff while that's still in standard is just not smart and are kind of just making interesting cards until next year

That being said, I do like the idea of messing around with these cards, but I don't really know what I want to do? Normally I go Warlock, Hunter and Priest but I feel like stepping out of my comfort zone. The problem is none of the other classes really got anything mindblowing to me unless I just want to play with some really powerful Rogue cards without owning Patches, but that seems sketchy

I also wonder why they didn't just make this guy a Hunter exclusive, seems like the only class you'd play it in

@cesakich: I think there's a case to be made for Dire Mole in Token Druid, since (like Enchanted Raven) you can play Mark of Y'Shaarj on it, but yeah, it's pretty much a Hunter and Druid only card. Though it is significantly better than a lot of 1-mana minions for the purposes of Arena.

Ah right, Druid

I'm just going through some of these off stream reveals and some of them are kind of nifty, nothing too special but some funny stuff

This set has a lot of cards that I want to play that will be bad in the decks I want to play them in. Sadface.

The patch notes have come in and they are making changes to the rate in which certain cards appear in the arena draft. If you look at the patch notes, you will notice that the most recent class spell/ weapon will appear 7x as much in the draft. That's pretty big considering we are getting spellstones and legendary weapons.

Blizzard Notes:

• Arena draft appearance rates have been adjusted.
• Note: Non-Basic Neutral Classic minions represent the baseline for draft appearance rates.
  • Basic/classic neutral minion: .5x
  • Non-basic/classic neutral minion: 1x
  • Most recent set neutral minion: 2x
  • Basic class minion: 2x
  • Basic class spell: 3.5x
  • Non-basic/classic class minion: 2x
  • Non-basic/classic class spell/weapon: 3.5x
  • Most recent set class minion: 4x
  • Most recent set class spell/weapon: 7x
• As part of our ongoing efforts to improve Class balance in the Arena, we are making small, periodic appearance rate adjustments to specific Arena cards.

Opened about 80 packs, didn't get very lucky at all in terms of legendary drop rate. My only legendaries were Dragon Soul and Master Oakheart (and my guaranteed free legendary weapon was Twig of the World Tree). On the plus side, I looked at the legendaries again and none of them really wow me and I don't think there was one I really wanted in the first place, so I'm not that disappointed, and Dragon Soul seems like one of the better ones.

Dungeon Runs are fun as heck.

My earliest of reactions: dungeon runs are really fun, and am enjoying my new buddy voidlord. I wonder how long dungeons runs will stay fun, but it's more fun than I thought it would be so that's already a plus. The warlock spellstone also seems to be pretty good. 7 damage 7 heal is soooo good, it's ok even if it's not upgraded.

Having played dungeon runs all day I'm starting to notice some glaring issues with it. The limited card pool for one is a massive issue for certain classes, with only one or two builds that will ever be able to succeed without insane luck. And speaking of luck, hitting the right treasures (and drawing them) will pretty much make or break most runs. I've also yet to be even close to beating The Darkness. Certain bosses also scale in a way that makes them completely normal at lower levels, but nearly unbeatable at higher levels.

I've had fun with it though, but at a certain point it's starting to feel pretty similar to restarting over and over for the heroic bosses, waiting for the right draw. Except you don't get to pick your own cards and you have to play through five matches that you'll never lose against.

Twilight Acolyte casually soloing this Fatigue/Dead Man's Hand Warrior

I wonder if the Darkness will actually be good, cause my first time playing against it in an actual match went hilariously poorly for my opponent

That might just be because Twilight Acolyte is broken though

Other notes:

Dungeon Run is pretty fun, I've beaten two of the final bosses so far, Vustrasz destroyed me though. I can definitely see it getting old though.

Controllock is great, I got Skull of the Man'ari out of a pack and while I'm pretty sure it's bad I've been having fun cheating out Voidlords early

Like @noobsmog said, Amethyst Spellstone is amazing, highlight of the deck. Kobold Librarian and Vulgar Homunculus also live up to the hype

Dungeon Run is fun but you quickly realize that it is a game of going through a series of extremely easy bosses with little chance of losing while you build a deck hoping that it will actually work against the final boss you will eventually face. If it doesn't, you lose and start over again. For the classes I have beaten the run with, it felt like luck more than anything else. Beating it with all 9 classes will be an exercise in patience more than any kind of skill at playing the game or building your deck.

Thankfully the deck building part is pretty fun and each run feels quite different from the last one, but that isn't always a good thing. Sometimes you just know after one or two bosses that your deck is going to suck and you might as well just retire it and try again.

I did beat one run with a Mage deck that was technically luck since it involved like Primordial Glyphs and Cabalists Tomes but I had so many that the odds were super in my favor to get something useable and I just burned Azari down

I did a Warlock one too where I slapped a bunch of shit together and it beat the beholder boss so that also didn't feel like luck, but considering those are the only two runs I've beaten it probably is luck to a large extent

Well, that and the beholder boss seems super easy compared to all the rest, it's a Discardlock boss so it just ends up discarding most of it's stuff :V

My experience with Dungeon run is getting to the 6th stage and dying, a lot. I don't know if the passives and treasures I've gotten have just been bad, or the directions i choose to build the decks I did were not the correct best choices. I do seem to be getting better, however, though it certainly does feel like certain classes have much better choices in 3-card pack themes then others. Like I've given it a go with Paladin twice and having both a murlock and silver-hand recruit themed set of cards seems..poor. Granted I've given both a try and they worked just fine in the early going, (the first 4 bosses are very easy, I only lost to the 5th with my silver-hand paladin cause it was the 'deal 1 to everything' stomp boss, which really smashed by choice of silver-hand silver-hand and 'upgraded hero power.

Also..is the +1/+1 to all your minions passive still in the dungeon runs? Cause I have yet to see it despite seeing multiple repeats of others.

@bladededge: The +1/+1 is definitely there, I just finished a run and lost on the final boss with that passive in an Evolve Shaman deck.

Most of the Zoo or token decks I have tried so far have been straight garbage unless I started off with +1/+1. There are too many bosses that can efficiently deal with small minions, such as the one you mentioned, the one that deals 2 damage to anything that is played, or anything with AOE. The Stealth passive might be alright in those decks but only if you can buff your minions and then you can run into real trouble against some bosses since you can't taunt. Removal also seems to be at a real premium, so if you are playing decks with small minions and you run into a boss that plays a big minion you often have to just ignore it and hope you can race them to lethal.

I've also gotten to the point now where I will just retire a deck immediately if I don't like the options after the first boss. If I feel like it's going to be a struggle just to beat the next few bosses I don't even want to spend the time to go through the entire run just for an inevitable loss, it is probably more efficient to try again and hope for better cards or passives.

@mike: The removal thing does strike me as weird. Like, Druid starts with a single Swipe, and some of the (bad) card packages can contain Starfire or Starfall, but good luck getting another copy of Swipe ever. And if you want a Wrath it's only in the "Balance" package (iirc) that's just a random grab bag of Choose One or Choose Two cards.

It's especially bad in Hunter, where your deck ends up being like 90% minions because they keep offering you Explosive Shot in the "Shots" package. Well, 90% minions unless you go Secrets, which I never did much of.

You can just forget about playing removal, none of the classes will ever give you any significant amount of it, which makes certain class packages insane gambles. Want to play taunt warrior ? Good luck against any of the swarm bosses. Want to play swarm/zoo ? Have fun facing up against the ooze guy at rank 6+.

I just beat it with my final class, and yeah, some of the classes are absolute grinds. Although it probably didn't help that I started 20+ warrior runs and never ever saw the additional mana bonus. In general what you want to play is big board plays. Going aggro feels right as it demolishes the early bosses, but you're never gonna beat any of the last bosses with it unless you get insanely lucky. Pretty much every run I won was due to either constantly filling the board with big Jades (pick double battlecry if you can get jades) or multiple legendaries. The exceptions were Mage, Priest and Warlock. All of which I beat on the first try because they actually get good cards.

Edit: Went back and tried to beat it with Warlock again. Took me two tries, and I ended up beating The Darkness (for the first time). The difference in viability between the classes is just ridiculous.

big minions or burn definitely seem to be the way to go, the Warlock run I won was big minions, the Mage one was extreme burn and I also got far with both Priest and Hunter with Burn (listen, I tried. It's not my fault I only got Arcane Shot and Explosive Trap)

Welp, that felt good after struggling with making a good rogue deck, haha.

edit: man that gif is annoying as hell, anyone know an easy way to make one? First time trying to make one.

@noobsmog: What a sick way to finish! Did you get the double battlecry passive?

@acura_max yeah I had double battlecry (great because cthun goes twice, but the buffs also hit him twice), all minions over 5 cost 5 (I honestly think this is the best card buff to pick) and wish (full heal and fill board with legendaries, just cast the turn before that).