That completely depends on what decks you want to play. Overall I would say: yes Sylvanas fits in most decks that are generally considered good.
In paladin Tirion though is clearly better.
In mage: Antonidas
Sylvanas over Ragnaros or Ysera depends on your other cards. Its true that a good mid mana cost card can be easier replaced by Skygolem for example while there are very few high mana cost non legendary heavy hitters, which are more important in heavy Control decks. So maybe ragnaros or Ysera might be better for you (also just for the fun factor, you will subjectively likely have more fun playing ragnaros or ysera than sylvanas since her advantage is more subtle).
Sylvanas is such a good 6 drop because it very often forces the opponent to do sub par plays by either: 1. trading into her inefficiently so that she doesnt steal something good. 2. Using silence or if the board is empty using heavy removal so as to not loose a minion if played 3. It has pseudo taunt since its quite important to remove her before you have the chance to do VERY favourable trades. 4. It prevents the oponent of playing big minions his turn if he cant remove Sylvanas out of fear of loosing it.
Definately craft Antonidas. He makes this deck so much better. Once you have him Toshley also becomes good/ok, since those lategame spare parts can be used to trigger him.
Afterwards craft Rhonin that guy is awesome.
ps. now you say you also want to craft neutral legends for other decks, im afraid we cant help you there since we dont know what you have or what you play. So my suggestions are solely based on Tempomage and those cards would make the deck a ton better.
Id go for Ysera. It fits in most decks that you like (control priest, control warrior and Dragonpala)
For tempomage Antonidas would be a real boost.
Your other suggestions: Chillmaw, saaraad and confessor are at best T2 cards or "niche" cards (Im not even sure saraad and confessor have truly proven themselves). Chillmaw, while nice in a dragon deck is also not really necessary.
Ragnaros is all around good but as you mentioned yourself he seems to be phasing out, still good though (would be my second craft choice for you).
One of the great things I love about hearthstone is its incredibly small internet usage (Usually less than 100kb per game) and even with a connection of only 10-20 kb/s you are still able to play the game well.
This last update with a size of a little over 1GB completely kills me... and before you say (just get a better inet connection nub) here my explanation. Im a tropical biologist working at a research station in the savannas of north eastern Ivory Coast, the next city is 200km away and with it electricity etc. Everything we get is through our own solar station and a small satelite dish for internet (via satelite... duh). This allows us a connection of roughly 100kb/s (with good weather) capped at 12 GB per month for the entire station, meaning that each person has roughly 40-60mb they can use per day... The TGT expansion was already pushing it but I managed to pull it off since it was still only a fraction of the size from this patch.
So WHY... WHY is this patch so incredibly large... Guess im gonna have to wait two month to install it when im back in germany... I needs my Hearthstone...
ps. answers like: "you want some cheese with your whine" are completely acceptable
Why don't you get a friend to post you the apk , ipa or exe file. If they sent it today you should have it in two weeks or so. You can simply install it on your device then.
First of all thanks for an actual constructive comment (really didnt expect any), but im not quite sure what you mean: wouldnt that file be just as big (getting a 1gb email is not really gonna help)? If you mean that they should sent it by post that is virtually impossible since the closest postal adress is in the next city and it takes literally months for something to be sent from germany to here (and even then its a 50/50 for it not to get lost or stolen)
One of the great things I love about hearthstone is its incredibly small internet usage (Usually less than 100kb per game) and even with a connection of only 10-20 kb/s you are still able to play the game well.
This last update with a size of a little over 1GB completely kills me... and before you say (just get a better inet connection nub) here my explanation. Im a tropical biologist working at a research station in the savannas of north eastern Ivory Coast, the next city is 200km away and with it electricity etc. Everything we get is through our own solar station and a small satelite dish for internet (via satelite... duh). This allows us a connection of roughly 100kb/s (with good weather) capped at 12 GB per month for the entire station, meaning that each person has roughly 40-60mb they can use per day... The TGT expansion was already pushing it but I managed to pull it off since it was still only a fraction of the size from this patch.
So WHY... WHY is this patch so incredibly large... Guess im gonna have to wait two month to install it when im back in germany... I needs my Hearthstone...
ps. answers like: "you want some cheese with your whine" are completely acceptable
How did you land that job buddy??
Even though its a bit offtopic: I did my Bachelors and Master in Biology with a focus in tropical biology / behaviour and ecoloy and after conducting my master thesis at the research station in Ivory Coast I managed to secure the financing for a 3 year PhD study in the field, which is what im doing now. If your bored feel free to check out the wiki article about the station :)
Since I dont want to miss a card back (been playing since beta) I have given my acc details to a f2p friend that just started to have some fun with my nearly full collection and to get me my cardback :)
The size probably comes from the upgrade of the game engine to Unity 5 (according to the news). But who knows.
Yeah after doing some research this seems to be the main reason (even though I have no Idear what it does). Its either that or the new animations for Rhonin and Co. now involve a kickass 4k 5minute cinematic trailer (but I guess I would have heard about that by now ^^).
And yes im seriously considering to do the 5 hour trip with the next shopping tour to Bondoukou (the next city) to download the patch overnight by draining the hotels internet, although the next trip will be at the earliest in 2-3 weeks >.<
ps. thanks for the cheese (ironically I could really use some since its really hard to get some over here...)
One of the great things I love about hearthstone is its incredibly small internet usage (Usually less than 100kb per game) and even with a connection of only 10-20 kb/s you are still able to play the game well.
This last update with a size of a little over 1GB completely kills me... and before you say (just get a better inet connection nub) here my explanation. Im a tropical biologist working at a research station in the savannas of north eastern Ivory Coast, the next city is 200km away and with it electricity etc. Everything we get is through our own solar station and a small satelite dish for internet (via satelite... duh). This allows us a connection of roughly 100kb/s (with good weather) capped at 12 GB per month for the entire station, meaning that each person has roughly 40-60mb they can use per day... The TGT expansion was already pushing it but I managed to pull it off since it was still only a fraction of the size from this patch.
So WHY... WHY is this patch so incredibly large... Guess im gonna have to wait two month to install it when im back in germany... I needs my Hearthstone...
ps. answers like: "you want some cheese with your whine" are completely acceptable
Congrats on your goal, next one is probably Legend, which is hard. Reaching rank 5 means Legend is possible, but the grind will be long.
First of all congrats, although i have to strongly disagree. Reaching rank 5 tells you nothing towards reaching legend (since the winstreaks make even "bad" players reach it fairly easily). Going above that takes nearly the same amount of time or more and missplays get punished a lot harder.
I dont feel like priest is a bad matchup. The pressure they apply is minimal due to low atk minions and normal dragonpriests run no heal except for holy nova. Sure their guys have a lot of hp but a well placed doomsayer/nova combo handles it easily, since they normally also dont run any silence its nearly always a hit.
Always happy to face a priest.
Oh yeah on topic: Freeze mage is always good when Controlwarrior (and to some extent combo druid) is underrepresented. Its definately viable at the moment.
Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.
I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.
Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?
Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.
Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.
Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.
Game is fine.
Accepting imbalance in a game or even a life situation because it naturally happens is called a naturalistic fallacy, just because something is the way it is, doesn't mean it ought to be. It's fine to have a get back up off the horse attitude, but accepting gross problems or telling people to get good when mechanical game problems have been plague the game for a long time now really isn't helping the problem.
Although the statistics are based on incomplete data, the imbalance in the current game is huge. While personal accounts throughout several threads on hearthpwn have high lighted the problems of the mass paladin problems, paladin is current sitting on top of a 57.93% constructed win rate according to hearthstats, with the closest class being hunter at 55.79%. These percentages line up with the shear power, availability and ease of use of their top decks. Looking at other classes, rogue is at 46.82% win rate across constructed, with shaman barely touching the 50% margin at 50.76%. Most classes hover around the 52% win rate margin (showing a slight bias to uploading winning game information). However even with that bias shaman isn't doing so well and rogue is still heavily negative, that's over a 10% win rate margin according to a large data pool. While only Blizzard has the entirety of best usable data, they do not publicly share their information and this is the best we can offer to our resources. While being skeptical of the data in how representative it is, how random it is and how bias it is is a healthy criticism of the data, all out dismissing such a large pool of collected data as incomplete and just ignoring statics (the hard factor in determining balance) is dismissing objective balance in favor of subjective personal bias. Also note that these 2 bottom classes were mentioned by the OP as the "trash" classes, while he didn't explain why the data supports his answer as well as secret paladin being so powerful. The outlier in this situation is patron warriors incredible power boasting an average win rate of 52.88%, while one can assume the deck is balanced based on win rate here, a combination of data sources is needed to examine this. As stated before the other top decks are easily obtained and easy to play. Patron warrior requires multiple adventure cards such as grim patron and thaurisan with refined versions often running Grom as well (not even considering control warrior decks diluting the win rate). With the barrier to entry higher for warriors than paladins and hunters, there other factor attributed here would be the skill factor and overall decision making. While Patron warrior is widely considered over the top too powerful, it is a hard deck to play involving long games with large amounts of decision making in short periods of time, as well as multiple physical clicks, it's probably not the hardest deck ever but it has a high skill floor (barrier of entry to newer players of the deck). Also worth noting is look at the rank %s, Paladins make up ~27% of ranks 1-5 while warriors make up ~21% of rank 1-2... Shaman and rogues make up 2.4% of rank 1 and even less in ranks 2-3 near about 1%. The class diversity disparity directly correlated to class popularity is shown in the higher ranks, also worth noting is as you get lower in rank, there is a linear decrease in the number of paladins plated and a positive trend in terms with an increase of rogue play showing a huge boon at rank 20 (6.51%) and rank 21(8.52%) . Could it be people who play rogues just all happen to be rank 20 players in terms of quality (and the fact the classes is so unpopular in general)? Kind of hear to but that, warriors are an odd exception supporting the difficulty of entry though cards / skill floor as rank 20 houses ~20% warriors.
Supporting the analysis of the quantitative data, we can use Tempo Storms analysis of the current meta and statistics. While you may dislike or disprove of reynad, he has his current psotion for a reason, he is good at the game objectively and provides a website and team that offer an authority elite perspective at the game, he's probably one of the several sources that offer top end analysis of the game. Currently the top decks are Patron warrior, Secret Paladin, Mech Mage and Dragon Priest, common decks i'm sure everyone has faced on ladder. The description on their tier 1 tags says they are top level decks closest to full optimization and give the feeling of being "unfair" or "overpowered". It's pretty obvious rogue harbors some pretty horrific decks with 1 at the bottom of tier 3 (a pre-TGT deck) and the other barely even worth mentioning. Mid-Range hunter is tier 2 so there is some merrit to saying losing to hunters could be a factor of player skill as the overall win rate doesn't seam to reflect how strong the deck is, but ignoring the shear power of Secret Paladin at the least (with grim patron also being a contender but less obvious) is really being too optimistic of the current lack luster game balance.
Also while plenty of others have stated, your deck needs to be unfair in constructed and that is true to an extent, unfair advantages still need balancing. Getting a 50% win ratio across all decks is a fantasy but the ideal goal should be to get them as close as possible. As experienced game designers relying on health of the game state improving game balance and features should be one of their top priorities, with no card changes since the under taker nerf post GVG plenty of strategies have gotten out of hand. Star Craft itself was praised for it's good balance while offering asymmetric game play, it wasn't the first game to offer asymmetric game play but when others create such large balance problems people wouldn't catch on as the game becomes boring and repetitive (if one faction wins 80% of the time in some of those failed RTS games, saying oh well life isn't fair you can't balance 50 50 perfectly could be worse isn't a mantra a large corporation selling you a high quality product should do, that's the attitude of an apprentice or young student). Since perfect balance can never truly be achieved and only becomes asymptotically closer to that line, perhaps increasing the degree of proximity to perfect balance is a goal that Blizzard can always improve on.
While not all decks posted by the OP would be considered OP (his freeze mage comment related to the unfun aspects of the deck and non interactivity, not the strength of the deck which is true) there are plenty of truths involved. Not all of the decks need changes but saying the game is currently balanced and "get good" is the solution s a subjective comment that doesn't answer the current problems. The mentality itself is noble but isn't logical sometimes or used in absurd situations. A metaphor would to this would be if in a competition say 2 people competing for strength or speed in a race, one person has a 5 KG weight attached to them while the other has a 30 KG weight to them. While objectively one has a clear advantage and will win more often if they are evenly matched, instead of losing the imbalance in the competition of the weights you simply say no it's fine just train more get stronger when a quantifiable measurement is provided contradicting that statement that there is an advantage at hand, that argument doesn't hold up.
I'm sorry if you disagree and would be very welcome to a counter point but please try to take not just this OP, but the myriad of similar posts on the general hearthpwn forums as a signal that perhaps this could possible be a signal of something wrong. And to others in the thread, your opinion is just as important to this website as the OP, however committing ad hominem and bashing him for his skill is an irrelevant factor here when discussing the balance of the game. It is worth noting however that the OP could be a little less emotional and construct his argument better for future reference, but his point is still reasonably valid in terms of balance problems (although not everything he mentioned really needs to be nerfed). Thank you for taking the time to read this post and please keep this conversation civil.
*Edit* This isn't even addressing the gross arena problems. While weaker constructed classes like shaman and rogue shine more in arena (shaman is still worse than paladin and rogue is a counter pick) warrior has an abysmal performance, paladin again tops the charts in arena with a 62.71% win rate, that's absurd. Arena balance is also important, highly experienced arena players such as Ratsmah and Kripparian have advocated numerous times that paladins are now the strongest class by quite a margin, even topping rogue (Kripp used to think mages were top but swapped opinions) as well as support warrior being by far the weakest. ADWCTA another highly rated arena player and co-runner of the site "HearthArena" has a campaign #arenawarriosmatter due to their very poor performance. In addition to poor expansion card rarity releases and poor hero power not altering the board there are plenty of reasons warrior are so poor in arena atm, Kripaprian alone has several videos in this exact topic (a recent prominent one provided in the source links).
Indeed a very long text. Though I'll try to touch up on some of your points.
First off some clarification to my points: I never stated for people complaining to "just get better" thats not the point im trying to put across.
I think you misunderstood also what I meant as a rule of life. I dont mean that life in itself is unfair or anything like it (on the contrary I agree that we should try to keep improving it), my argument was rather towards deck building or "skill" in general and why amateur created decks are inherently worse than ones created by pros (in general). Someone that doesnt play this game 8 hours a day (so lets say 99% of the playerbase) is inherently going to have less experience and less insight towards the power level and synergies between cards and also have less time to refine a deck to perfection and get a proper picture of the meta. Therefore he will most likely create a worse deck that wont be able to compete at top level. That is just something one has to accept, and its ok to do so. Sure you can work on improving your skill but to expect to be as good as a pro is not realistic. If I build a table in my free time I will most likely do a worse job than a carpenter, simply because I invest less time into it. That is what I meant with what needs to be accepted.
On the Statistics part I would truly be careful not to trust them too much. Especially the win% of classes, since just about every class has multiple decktypes (many of which are sub par sure), also im pretty certain the data is skewed towards more skilled players (since they are more likely to be active in sites like this one or tempostorm). That being said I find a win% between 45-55% to be completely acceptable and I find it too optimistic to believe to gain better results.
The statistic that could be considered a problem is the representation of different classes in the meta, with rogue and shaman being underrepresented (here we should indeed try to reach a balanced representation of all classes). Although Blizzard is clearly trying to adress the problem (atleast in Shaman) by trying to make totemshaman viable. The method Blizz is using to balance the game is in my opinion good. Nerfing or buffing cards takes away control from us, making us doubt the "stability" of a card. Its much better to try to adress these problems through expansions.
Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.
I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.
Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?
Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.
Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.
Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.
If you dont care about golden animations you have literally nothing to loose. Trade em up, especially if it makes some decks viable you wanna play (like dragon decks, secretadin or shaman)
card draw is definately more important. So either go for loot hoarder, or if you already run them get an azure drake or antique healbot in there. Really depends on the slight deck variations you may run.
1
Actually as long as you innervate BEFORE playing the card it works perfectly fine (so long as you have less than 8 mana crystals)
0
That completely depends on what decks you want to play. Overall I would say: yes Sylvanas fits in most decks that are generally considered good.
In paladin Tirion though is clearly better.
In mage: Antonidas
Sylvanas over Ragnaros or Ysera depends on your other cards. Its true that a good mid mana cost card can be easier replaced by Skygolem for example while there are very few high mana cost non legendary heavy hitters, which are more important in heavy Control decks. So maybe ragnaros or Ysera might be better for you (also just for the fun factor, you will subjectively likely have more fun playing ragnaros or ysera than sylvanas since her advantage is more subtle).
Sylvanas is such a good 6 drop because it very often forces the opponent to do sub par plays by either: 1. trading into her inefficiently so that she doesnt steal something good. 2. Using silence or if the board is empty using heavy removal so as to not loose a minion if played 3. It has pseudo taunt since its quite important to remove her before you have the chance to do VERY favourable trades. 4. It prevents the oponent of playing big minions his turn if he cant remove Sylvanas out of fear of loosing it.
Hope that helps
5
Everything is always worse than it was before and will keep getting worse. Ah yes the good old days...
- Everybody who cant differ between how things actually were before and their idealisation of the past.
0
Definately craft Antonidas. He makes this deck so much better. Once you have him Toshley also becomes good/ok, since those lategame spare parts can be used to trigger him.
Afterwards craft Rhonin that guy is awesome.
ps. now you say you also want to craft neutral legends for other decks, im afraid we cant help you there since we dont know what you have or what you play. So my suggestions are solely based on Tempomage and those cards would make the deck a ton better.
0
Id go for Ysera. It fits in most decks that you like (control priest, control warrior and Dragonpala)
For tempomage Antonidas would be a real boost.
Your other suggestions: Chillmaw, saaraad and confessor are at best T2 cards or "niche" cards (Im not even sure saraad and confessor have truly proven themselves). Chillmaw, while nice in a dragon deck is also not really necessary.
Ragnaros is all around good but as you mentioned yourself he seems to be phasing out, still good though (would be my second craft choice for you).
0
Not sure if you havent read the threat or if your sarcasm level is OVER 9000!
I have a very large external hard drive... enough said.
First of all thanks for an actual constructive comment (really didnt expect any), but im not quite sure what you mean: wouldnt that file be just as big (getting a 1gb email is not really gonna help)? If you mean that they should sent it by post that is virtually impossible since the closest postal adress is in the next city and it takes literally months for something to be sent from germany to here (and even then its a 50/50 for it not to get lost or stolen)
Even though its a bit offtopic: I did my Bachelors and Master in Biology with a focus in tropical biology / behaviour and ecoloy and after conducting my master thesis at the research station in Ivory Coast I managed to secure the financing for a 3 year PhD study in the field, which is what im doing now. If your bored feel free to check out the wiki article about the station :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoé_National_Park_Research_Station
Since I dont want to miss a card back (been playing since beta) I have given my acc details to a f2p friend that just started to have some fun with my nearly full collection and to get me my cardback :)
0
Yeah after doing some research this seems to be the main reason (even though I have no Idear what it does). Its either that or the new animations for Rhonin and Co. now involve a kickass 4k 5minute cinematic trailer (but I guess I would have heard about that by now ^^).
And yes im seriously considering to do the 5 hour trip with the next shopping tour to Bondoukou (the next city) to download the patch overnight by draining the hotels internet, although the next trip will be at the earliest in 2-3 weeks >.<
ps. thanks for the cheese (ironically I could really use some since its really hard to get some over here...)
8
First of all: Yes this is purely a whine threat.
One of the great things I love about hearthstone is its incredibly small internet usage (Usually less than 100kb per game) and even with a connection of only 10-20 kb/s you are still able to play the game well.
This last update with a size of a little over 1GB completely kills me... and before you say (just get a better inet connection nub) here my explanation. Im a tropical biologist working at a research station in the savannas of north eastern Ivory Coast, the next city is 200km away and with it electricity etc. Everything we get is through our own solar station and a small satelite dish for internet (via satelite... duh). This allows us a connection of roughly 100kb/s (with good weather) capped at 12 GB per month for the entire station, meaning that each person has roughly 40-60mb they can use per day... The TGT expansion was already pushing it but I managed to pull it off since it was still only a fraction of the size from this patch.
So WHY... WHY is this patch so incredibly large... Guess im gonna have to wait two month to install it when im back in germany... I needs my Hearthstone...
ps. answers like: "you want some cheese with your whine" are completely acceptable
0
First of all congrats, although i have to strongly disagree. Reaching rank 5 tells you nothing towards reaching legend (since the winstreaks make even "bad" players reach it fairly easily). Going above that takes nearly the same amount of time or more and missplays get punished a lot harder.
0
I dont feel like priest is a bad matchup. The pressure they apply is minimal due to low atk minions and normal dragonpriests run no heal except for holy nova. Sure their guys have a lot of hp but a well placed doomsayer/nova combo handles it easily, since they normally also dont run any silence its nearly always a hit.
Always happy to face a priest.
Oh yeah on topic: Freeze mage is always good when Controlwarrior (and to some extent combo druid) is underrepresented. Its definately viable at the moment.
1
Indeed a very long text. Though I'll try to touch up on some of your points.
First off some clarification to my points: I never stated for people complaining to "just get better" thats not the point im trying to put across.
I think you misunderstood also what I meant as a rule of life. I dont mean that life in itself is unfair or anything like it (on the contrary I agree that we should try to keep improving it), my argument was rather towards deck building or "skill" in general and why amateur created decks are inherently worse than ones created by pros (in general). Someone that doesnt play this game 8 hours a day (so lets say 99% of the playerbase) is inherently going to have less experience and less insight towards the power level and synergies between cards and also have less time to refine a deck to perfection and get a proper picture of the meta. Therefore he will most likely create a worse deck that wont be able to compete at top level. That is just something one has to accept, and its ok to do so. Sure you can work on improving your skill but to expect to be as good as a pro is not realistic. If I build a table in my free time I will most likely do a worse job than a carpenter, simply because I invest less time into it. That is what I meant with what needs to be accepted.
On the Statistics part I would truly be careful not to trust them too much. Especially the win% of classes, since just about every class has multiple decktypes (many of which are sub par sure), also im pretty certain the data is skewed towards more skilled players (since they are more likely to be active in sites like this one or tempostorm). That being said I find a win% between 45-55% to be completely acceptable and I find it too optimistic to believe to gain better results.
The statistic that could be considered a problem is the representation of different classes in the meta, with rogue and shaman being underrepresented (here we should indeed try to reach a balanced representation of all classes). Although Blizzard is clearly trying to adress the problem (atleast in Shaman) by trying to make totemshaman viable. The method Blizz is using to balance the game is in my opinion good. Nerfing or buffing cards takes away control from us, making us doubt the "stability" of a card. Its much better to try to adress these problems through expansions.
0
Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.
Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.
Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.
Game is fine.
0
If you dont care about golden animations you have literally nothing to loose. Trade em up, especially if it makes some decks viable you wanna play (like dragon decks, secretadin or shaman)
2
killing off my own baron geddon (1hp) with the whirlwind effect of my deathsbite to miss lethal...
0
card draw is definately more important. So either go for loot hoarder, or if you already run them get an azure drake or antique healbot in there. Really depends on the slight deck variations you may run.