Hearthpwn

This is very sad to hear, even tho I've almost stopped playing Hearthstone I still visit Hearthpwn from time to time to check up on what's going on in the Hearthstone world.

This site has been just an awesome inspiration regarding Hearthstone in general and if it wasn't for this site I'm pretty sure I'd have quit playing Hearthstone way earlier and also I'd probably never gotten so involved in the game outside the game client hadn't it been for this site.

I'm truly sad about you closing down and I hope you know how much your work has been appreciated by so many people around the world!

2 would be pointless, 5 would have an impact for sure...maybe too much...idk...4 then....3 also seems too inconsequential imo.

Well if they remove the Rush aspect I think they should compensate with something, like giving him a battlecry other than just gaining 7 armor.

Maybe summon 5 Boom Bots or something.

Not exactly good vibes, but wtf!

What are the chances for this? ^^

202 legendaries (196 unique), 14 of them golden and 50k dust :P

I haven't even been crafting many legendaries from the last few expansions, I've lost my excitement for constructed, it took too long to get rid of the aggro meta, I lost hope when it still didn't go away with Karazhan and when it kept going for Gadgetzan and Un'Goro as well it just pushed me so far away from constructed that I've never gotten back into it again.
Pretty much only play arena now, I've played mostly arena ever since Blackrock Mountain, but still cranked out over 6k wins in constructed so far, 7k in arena.

Stupidly I've still bought pre-purchase package every expansion + usually some more card backs because I never get the legendaries I want and I've been kinda hoarding my dust a bit I guess :P
Recently made a rough estimate of how much I've spent on Hearthstone since beta and it shocked me....it's at least 600€, probably upwards to 800€ or maybe even more 

I mostly agree with TheWD987, but I'd place the classes like this:

Tier 1:

Paladin:

With Vinecleaver, Silver Sword and Spikeridged Steed as well as the neutral under-bracketed Paladin legendary Stonehill Defender you will usually do quite well playing Paladin, just make sure you don't go too ham on the big weapons, 1 of each or 2 of either is enough, more makes it clunky.
Steed you can basically take as many as you want :P

Rogue:

For some reason Rogue is great in this meta, Rogue has been a great arena class for a while now, but I feel it may be as good as it has ever been in this meta.
You can skip 2s, but you need quality 3s like Tar Creeper or Hench-Clan Thug and you should aim to make sure you draft some stuff that help fill up your hand such as Elven Minstrel and Stonehill Defender (Pick Pocket is too much of a tempo loss most of the time so don't pick that highly).
Sap is amazing right now, Kidnapper too, Vanish is still bad tho :P

Tier 2:

Mage:

Burn mage seems to be consistently the best Mage archetype right now with 1 or 2 Pyroblast at the top and maybe a Fireball or two you are almost guaranteed to go 7+ wins.
Water Elemental is as good as ever, generally elementals are pretty awesome in Mage at the moment so you should take that into consideration while drafting.
If you get lucky and high-roll a deck with stuff like Flamestrike, Meteor and Blizzard you may try to go for the control route instead and such put higher value to Polymorph than you would normally, though I think I'd still pick the 1st Fireball over 1st Polymorph.
For some reason Blizzard is very common now so everyone plays around it making it less good than it used to be so don't pick that too highly, you'll usually see 2 or 3 per draft.

Druid:

Basically Druid is good right now because greedy control decks are good right now and you can get Ultimate Infestation as well as easily get some quality big drops, tho I usually make sure I don't draft too heavily since I am aiming to draft at least 1, but hopefully 2 Ultimate Infestation.
Of course Spreading Plague helps you get to T10 and there are some other strong tools for Druid to get to that long game such as Witchwood Grizzly into Witching Hour even tho that last one has quite anti-synergy with Spreading Plague I feel there are some nice alternatives for Druid to make the game go long.
Starfall is really key in Druid right now, it's probably the second most important card after UI.

Priest:

Priest is good because greedy control decks are good in this meta and no one does that better than Anduin.
Mind Control is amazing and the Unidentified Elixir is surprisingly good, you should also pick Holy Nova somewhat highly and make sure you either have some strong late game value cards like Temple Enforcer, Bone Drake, Free From Amber, Nightscale Matriarch and Obsidian Statue or have cards that refill your hand such as Thoughtsteal, Devour Mind and to some degree Crystalline Oracle.
Shadow Madness and Auchenai Soulpriest are cards that most commonly help you control the board.

Tier 3:

Warrior:

I was unsure whether to include Warrior in Tier 2 or not, it's actually quite strong....if you get the Spellstones.
You'll pretty much always be offered a whole lot of weapons during your draft so that alone makes Warrior miles better than it has been for most of Hearthstone history, but with 2-4 Lesser Mithril Spellstones in the deck it becomes an easy 7+ win deck.
However, you do need to survive long enough to get value out of those spellstones which can be limiting and is the reason I placed it as Tier 3.
It's easy to get rushed down as Warrior now since you're likely to draft a lot of weapons thus less likely to curve out nicely and more likely to kill stuff using your face, luckily there aren't that many aggressive decks right now.

Warlock:

Personally I have not had much success with Warlock, I've never been great at playing Warlock in arena so not much for me to say here other than I've faced some strong Warlock decks at high wins, they actually quite often use the Possessed Lackey into Doomguard or Voidlord strategy we've seen so much in constructed and they normally have a Twisting Nether which can be quite devastating if you're not careful playing around it.
I've also heard and seen streamers perform good with Warlock which is why I place it higher than Shaman.

Tier 4:

Shaman:

I haven't played too much Shaman this meta because I've quickly noticed it's not exactly great, yeah you see a few strong decks littered with elemental synergy and Volcanos + Lightning Storms whenever they need it, but those are quite rare, mostly Shaman feels like a 3 win class right now.

Hunter:

Hunter is so bad right now that I considered making it it's own tier....tier trash....but I guess sometimes, maybe once every 50 drafts, you'll get a Spellstone Hunter deck which is great and you are lucky enough to get 2 secrets before turn T5 while also having 2 Lesser Emerald Spellstones in hand.
If you can do that you'll probably win, but it's not often you get to do that, not even in constructed so it's not really a reason for playing Hunter.
The aggressive strat doesn't seem to work out too good in this meta so it's hero power is worse than ever and control hunter is...well still not a thing :P

I feel like Naturalize, Mind Blast and Arcane Missiles are kinda ruining this brawl :/

I did have some fun with Paragon of Light and Sound the Bells!/Blessing of Might, but not much fun can be had using minion based decks against Naturalize.
Fun decks that don't heal a ton don't stand a chance against Mind Blast or Arcane Missiles decks so I really feel those cards are quite oppressive.

I sure hope Team 5 will be looking at Hearthpwn and not just as Reddit for responses on the balancing announcement, I don't know where on Reddit I'd post this, I'm not used to using Reddit at all, but it feels that Hearthpwn is a much better place to talk about these things, it's like THE go to site for Hearthstone related stuff....

Anyways I didn't mean to dump on anyone's suggestions with my latest post, I hope I didn't come off as a douche who just defend my own suggestions, I try to be as objective as possible and give detailed feedback, I would very much appreciate if someone would give detailed feedback on my suggestions which is why I feel comfortable giving it to others :)

I don't think we've gotten all the serious suggestions yet so please if you have some good ones that haven't been mentioned yet, do share!

I'm happy to see people are mostly posting serious suggestions and just as I expected, already there have been at least 1 or 2 suggestions on how to nerf some cards that I hadn't even thought about.

• I see some people are suggesting we just increase the mana cost on Spiteful Summoner to 7, I get that since mostly the reason why it is so broken is that you get the huge minion way earlier than usual and for a much lower cost than it has been balanced around, it makes sense that slowing it down a bit would balance it out.
  However I'm afraid it would be too little of a nerf to really make much of a difference, while at 8 mana it would become too expensive to be worth building your deck around....maybe if we made it a 5/5 at 8 mana it could work...I guess that could be an option, but I still don't really like the effect itself in how it's either abused to be overpowered or it's way too random and the outcomes too decisive on the result of the game.
  
  By making the battlecry more predictable and in some way less restricted the card could be ran in any big spell deck that just wanted some good value that gave you tempo on board and not restricted to decks that are built around abusing the best possible outcomes.
  That is why I believe it would be best to just make it summon a 5/5 if you reveal a spell that cost 5 or more mana because that would be good enough value for a conditional 6-drop without being too broken and open it up to be played in more decks.
  
  A somewhat similar result could be achieved by making Spiteful Summoner summon a minion with stats equal to the mana cost of the spell you reveal, yes it wouldn't summon Tyrantus anymore but it would still be way broken to summon a 4/4 and a 10/10 on T6.
  So I'm afraid that even tho that change would allow the card to be included in other decks that don't just focus on getting that 10 mana spell revealed, it would still be absolutely broken in the decks that do.
  
  I see someone suggested you make it 8 mana and let you discover a minion that cost as much as the spell you reveal, which does kinda make sense, but if you think about it, most classes don't have a 10 mana minion or even a 9 mana minion, the options would be pulling from too limited a pool and I don't think this is a solution they would go with.
  
  Another popular suggestion I've seen for Spiteful Summoner is that it could reveal a spell from your opponents deck or just reveal any card from your deck and yes that would definitely be a huge nerf to the card, but it would make the card so random and unreliable that it would never be played in any deck ever, especially if it relied on what you reveal from your opponents deck! :P
  Also if it somehow where to be played, the randomness of that card would just not be fun in any way I'm afraid.
  
  
  
• For Sunkeeper Tarim I see some a wondering what if we made it just change the stats on your opponents minions?
  I do see the point in that it would make the card only good in control decks, but I'm afraid that would also render the card pretty much useless as there are already so many cards that are good in control vs control matchups so this one would probably not make the cut.
  Also it would still be a sometimes very broken card to discover with Stonehill Defender which honestly is a big problem in arena and if only for that reason I would at least want Sunkeeper Tarim to lose it's taunt ability which would make it even more useless in control decks.
  I think the effect acting both ways is somewhat balancing in itself and makes the card useful in more situations, mostly for aggressive decks, but even tho I mostly play control decks myself I still think it's cool that aggressive decks have cards they can play that cost more than 3 mana.
  
  If Sunkeeper Tarim no longer had taunt your board would be a lot more vulnerable after you used it while also making the card a lot less effective at creating pressure and more just a tool to give a little bit of burst or create favorable trades for your small minions.
  When we also reduce it's health down to 6 that means you wont have to throw more than 2 minions into it if you absolutely need to remove it from the board using your minions, at 7 health and with taunt it just creates too devastating trades if you have nothing in hand that can help you remove it.
  This in addition to the fact you'd no longer get it from Stonehill Defender would make it a much more balanced card overall I feel.
  
  
  
• A popular suggestion to nerfing Dark Pact is to make it silence the minion before destroying it, I have read this suggestion many times, but always seen it as not being a serious suggestion as that would absolutely kill the card.
  Yes healing for 8 is valuable in Warlock, but sacrificing a minion + using a card to do so is quite severe, you don't always have Kobold Librarian available to sacrifice, which by the way also deal damage to you further restricting the heal option since you'd need to have at least 2 health to even play it, not to mention the heal would then be reduced down to just 6 health.
  
  Doubling it's mana cost should be enough of a nerf to this card in my opinion, that slows down the paotential combos you can have with the card instead of completely removing those uses the card was designed for.
  
  Making it target only demons would make it worse than Sacrifical Pact, enough said :P
  
  
  
• When it comes to changing Call to Arms I think it's important that we don't actually buff it, some are suggesting you make it 6 mana and recruit an additional minion, so 4 minions that cost 2 or less instead of 3 and some are suggesting you make it cost just 3 mana, but only able to recruit 1-drops.
  I don't really know how to say this nicely, but if your plan is to buff the card your suggestions are great, but I for one think there are enough Paladins in the meta, we do not want to buff one of it's very best cards :P
  
  Making Call to Arms recruit only 2 minions instead of 1 would render it unplayable I'm afraid, maybe if you changed it to minions that cost (3) or less, but I'm not sure of the implications that would make, it might be a buff and we seriously don't want that!^^
  
  Making it summon 3 randoms minions that cost 2 mana is interesting, but that would be quite a major change to the card and it's flavor, I don't believe Team 5 would do this, they would rather introduce something like that to a different class than Paladin I feel and instead try to tone down Call to Arms while still keeping it's flavor and general design.
  
  At 5 mana I believe Call to Arms would be balanced and I see some are worrie there would only be Murloc Paladin decks that would be viable then, but first of all I'm not sure they would even run Call to Arms at 5 mana and second of all I am pretty sure that Odd Paladin would still be a popular deck.
  They have talked about maybe changing the upgraded Paladin hero power, but I don't think they will do that as I don't really see an elegant way for them to do it without the design intruding on other cards in the game such as Uther of the Ebon Blade or Level Up!.
  
  
  
• For The Caverns Below I see some think it would be good to just buff the minions in their deck, like I've said I don't mind killing this specific card, but I don't think we need to go overboard doing so :P
  
  I do see a good suggestion that I feel it's weird I haven't thought about tho and that is to apply a buff of +3/+3 to all of your minions, that would achieve the same as I was thinking with transforming them into 1 mana 5/5s which is that you can hoard up a bunch of tokens in your hand before you play the quest,
  However buffing the minions instead would first of all allow silence to work on them which would make the quest even worse than how I suggested it be and even though it would allow for minions to keep effects such as Charge and Lifesteal it would also make them remain at their current mana cost, which you could argue wouldn't matter that much as by the time they have completed the quest they'll have enough mana to work with anyways, but it is another slight potential downside compared to just making them 1 mana 5/5s.
  I do like it tho and would not be against them going for this change instead of the one I suggested, both should be fine I think.
  
  Some have suggested you delay the effect of the quest when they play it to apply only at the end of their turn or at the start of their next turn and I get that it would clearly help reduce the initial burst potential the quest has, but I don't think that is the reason it has such a crazy winrate against control decks, that comes from just having endless 5/5s that can charge and summon more 5/5s.
  The control decks just can't keep up with that, you can only run so much removal and you wont be able to put up enough defenses to stop the Rogue from rushing you down.
  
  
  
• And then we come to Bloodreaver Gul'dan, Gul'dangerous himself. I've seen a lot of people are suggesting you change his battlecry to only summon 1 copy of a specifc type of demon.
  I can't say for 100% certain, but I am pretty sure that, at least after the Doomguard being nerfed to only gaining charge through it's battlecry, that this would probably be a buff.
  One way to play around Bloodreaver Gul'dan is to try and kill off as many Voidwalkers as possible in order to hopefully make him summon a board full of tiny Voidwalkers instead of Voidlords and cards like Despicable Dreadlord which I assume will be included if they changed Bloodreaver Gul'dan to work like this.
  Maybe it will still be included even if they don't change the DK, it might be that you just want to have 1 or 2 Despicable Dreadlords to make Possessed Lackey more likely to pull a demon in case you'd draw both your Voidlords before the Lackeys.
  Anyways I don't believe this would be a safe way to balance the card as it could end up buffing it and I really don't think the card need to be buffed.
  
  An interesting suggestion I've read is that you could change his hero power to only target the opponent hero, this is one a really liked and hadn't thought about myself. It feels quite fitting and I would not mind it if they made this change instead of changing the hero power to 2 damage instead of 3, doing both would probably nerf it too much tho, either or seems fine to me.

I appreciate all your suggestions and I am excited to read what else people might come up with, thanks to all of you who are posting serious suggestions, I was afraid that the thread would become a shitfest of salty people wanting the cards to be completely destroyed, but I am very happy to see that most of you are not doing that, thanks again :)

Quote from HnsNdjnsn >>

so, I want to ask a question:

What if Sunkeeper Tarim was 2/5 and set all of the minions stats to 2/2? It would still trade with 3 2/2 statted minions but against spells it's weaker and also it is not offensive like normal version because the burst from this one card will be 33% less. Is it too weak? (actually I love paladin as a class but card is a bit broken) 

This is a thread regarding Team 5's announced potential balance patch which you can read about here:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/5536-iksar-on-naga-sea-witch-weve-been-discussing-a

I'd like to see peoples suggestions regarding which of the 9 "Potentially un-fun cards" they would like to see balanced and in what way you'd like to see them balanced....please try to give serious suggestions, it's not about how to completely destroy the cards, just how you can tone them down enough for other classes and decks to become viable options for competitive players trying to rank up.

The 9 cards they mentioned were:

I feel like Team 5 has really hit the spot here with looking at potential balancing for these cards, at least for Standard, but I don't think they should nerf all of these cards, that would be too harsh towards Warlock.
Remember it's not about completely destroying Warlock as a viable class, we just want to drastically tone down certain oppressive deck archetypes by targeting specific cards they run.

My suggestions regarding what cards they should nerf and how are as follows:

• Remove taunt from Sunkeeper Tarim and bring it's health down to 6 from 7, this won't completely kill the card, just balance it a bit...would also make it impossible to discover from Stonehill Defender which is quite important, especially for arena.
  
  
• Make Call to Arms cost 5 mana to avoid it being played in even Paladin, would also make it bad in Odd Paladin since you'd only get 1-drops and you're paying 5 mana for that.
  
  
• Make Spiteful Summoner's battlecry: "Reveal a spell from your deck. If it costs 5 mana or more, summon a 5/5 elemental." 
  Making it an elemental feels thematically fitting for some reason and summoning a 4/4 and a 5/5 for 6 mana makes it still worth running in big spell decks, you just wont be able to abuse it as disgustingly anymore by running only 10 cost spells.
  
  
• Make Doomguard gain it's charge through it's battlecry to make it pointless to run in Cubelock, this change would still leave it a strong addition to Zoolock or other more aggressive Warlock decks that don't plan on cheating it out with Possessed Lackey or Skull of the Man'ari. Without Doomguard the Cubelock deck will take a huge blow for sure, the lists that don't run Doomguard are way more fair in my opinion. Yes they're very defensive and win the long game with Bloodreaver Gul'dan, but I think that's okay since you won't have the disgusting burst potential Doomguard give you when several copies get summoned from Bloodreaver Gul'dan and/or Carnivorous Cube.
  
  
• Double the mana cost of Dark Pact making it cost 2 mana instead of 1. This would push the combo with Possessed Lackey one turn later which means a lot both for aggro decks and tempo decks trying to win before the Warlock get to play their Bloodreaver Gul'dan. It gives you a much better chance to prepare for Voidlord popping out from the Possessed Lackey and makes it harder for Warlock to heal as efficiently.
  
  
• Reduce the damage on Bloodreaver Gul'dans hero power from 3 to 2 damage. This combined with the other two nerfs I've suggested for Warlock would seriously reduce the power level of Warlock and make the class way more balanced, but hopefully not completely remove it from the meta, just make it a lot less oppressive.
  
  
• Make Crystal Core's text be: "Transform all minions in your deck and hand to 1 mana 5/5 Crystalline beasts."
  Of course they don't have to be named Crystalline beasts, I am bad at coming up with names, but they should be vanilla 5/5s, probably with the elemental tag.
  This would obviously make a huge difference and most likely kill the deck wich in this case is okay imo, it's a horrible deck with way too lopsided matchups which is extremely anti-fun. There are lots of bad build around legendaries in the game, I would not mind if The Caverns Below was one of them. Tempo Rogue would of course remain as strong as it currently is so Rogue would still very much be a viable class in the meta.
  
  

I truly feel these changes would be sufficient to shake up the meta without actually killing off any class and only really killing 1 card, but unfortunately I don't know how you can balance The Caverns Below without killing it, would have to make it a completely different card and I know Team 5 don't like doing that, they rather add new cards.
I assume they've tested the quest at 4/4s instead of 5/5s and I suspect it doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth implementing.

Yes Control Warlock might still be viable, yes Paladin might still be viable, especially Odd Paladin which would almost be untouched (only Stonehill Defender got nerfed a little by not being able to discover Sunkeeper Tarim), but this is not about completely removing a class from the meta, just tone them down a little to make other classes and decks stand a chance.
With Quest Rogue gone there would be less incentive to play aggressive decks which actually does make Paladin slightly worse, Control Warlock is a counter to Odd Paladin and I don't think people would completely stop playing that just because Dark Pact cost 1 more mana even though Control Warlock would lose a lot of good matchups if there would be less aggressive decks in the meta.

And I don't think I need to mention why it's good that we no longer face a 4/4 that summons a 12/12 on turn 6.

Reason I don't think we should nerf Possessed Lackey is simply because I don't think it's necessary if we remove the disgusting potential it has from pulling out Doomguard while also slowing down the Dark Pact combo by increasing Dark Pacts mana cost by 1.
Dark Pact is a much more flexible card than Possessed Lackey so if I had to choose between which of those two cards I'd want to increase the mana cost by 1 on I'd choose Dark Pact as I think that would have a much greater effect on the balance of both Cubelock and Control Warlock.
Combined with the slight nerf to Bloodreaver Gul'dans hero power I think these changes would bring the class down to a more balanced power level compared to all the other classes.

Kobold Librarian is an auto-include in pretty much any Warlock deck, but hey so is Fireball in Mage and that is a card that will never go away, the Kobold Librarian will eventually rotate out. I think it's impact is low enough that I don't see a reason to not leave it at it's current power level, it's okay to have some universally strong cards as long as they are not too oppressive.

Alright so that are my thoughts, I'm not saying this is the only way to achieve a more balanced game, but hopefully some people agree with me and of course as with everything in life there will be some that disagree.
In any case please share your own thoughts and feel free to post your own suggestions, it's very interesting to read and you'll probably have some suggestions that I may not even have thought about, please share! :)

Make Doomguard gain charge only through it's battlecry.

Make Dark Pact cost 2 mana.

Remove taunt from Sunkeeper Tarim.

Make Call to arms cost 5 mana to avoid it being played in even Paladin, would also make it bad in Odd Paladin since you'd only get 1-drops and you're paying 5 mana for that.

Make Spiteful Summoner's battlecry: "Reveal a spell from your deck. If it costs 5 mana or more, summon a 5/5 elemental."
Making it an elemental feels thematically fitting for some reason.

Make Crystal Core's text be: "Transform all minions in your deck and hand to 1 mana 5/5 Crystalline beasts."
Of course they don't have to be named Crystalline beasts, I am bad at coming up with names.
This would make a huuuge difference and most likely kill the deck wich is okay imo, it's a horrible deck with way too lopsided matchups which is extremely anti-fun.

These changes would without a doubt make a big difference and really shake up the meta.
Yes Control Warlock might still be good, but it's not about completely killing a class, just reducing the disgustingness that comes when Cubelock is bursting you down with endless Doomguards.
With Quest Rogue gone there would be less incentive to play aggro decks which makes Paladin slightly worse, the fact Control Warlock would still be good is another reason Paladin would be slightly worse.
And I don't think I need to mention why it's good that we no longer face 6 mana 4/4 summon Tyrantus.

That is your deck right now, from how it is when I am writing this I would at least remove Lesser Ruby Spellstone, Potion of Polymorph and Volatile Elemental.

Then I'd add in another Kabal Courier and 2x Dragon's Fury.

You might also look into removing the Volcanic Potion due to being such a low mana cost and the Acolyte of Pain as well as Deck of Wonders for another Flamestrike, a Cabalist's Tome and another Arcane Tyrant.

This is assuming you don't have and don't want to get the third wing of Karazhan in order to get Babbling Books.

When a streamer or a group of streamers arrange a giveaway that require you to follow their twitter, subscribe to their youtube channel etc. etc., it is always considered a giveaway...not a lottery.

It just requires you to perform an action, it's not the same as paying a virtual price...
While very often virtual currency is earned by performing an action it is still distinctly different as the action you are asked to perform is either not the same as what you would need to do in order to earn said currency or it's just an added bonus if you do go ahead and perform the actions required to earn it, you'll still keep your virtual currency.

If it's a price you feel you need to pay it is at least not virtual, it's the opposite (actual?) in the form of you having to physically perform an action that may or may not yield some kind of virtual reward in addition to giving you inclusion in the giveaway.

What virtual price?

It cost you exactly 0 money and 0 gold to complete a quest a day....actually you earn gold by doing so....

I do understand why we all didn't get a consolation price tho, that would make it less special for the ones that won 3 packs.