Hearthpwn

We're back to that part of standard again where Priest has:

Cheap silence, nearly 10 AOE class cards, a handful of single target removal... I mean I shouldn't be surprised as a Paladin my board got cleared 7 times in a row. I clearly got outplayed and their deck was just built to disrupt aggro. This game sometimes...

Christ, OP, you seem toxic as hell…

--Quote from Finalstan >>

Balance Changes Coming Tomorrow - 8 Changes In Total! - News - HearthPwn

My takes (I mostly ignore stat changes on minions):
- Incanter's Flow for Mage to 3 mana - big thumbs up. Round 3 to do nothing and then another for another nothing. It's a huge deal.
- Darkglare in Warlock to 3 Mana - again, good change
- Flesh Giant to 9 Mana - not sure if this will matter that much but it does mean that you won't be able to drop them as consistently as before so should slow down games without killing the card
- Battleground Battlemaster to 6 Mana - the best change but it's still strong at 6
- Conviction (Rank 1) to 2 Mana for Paladin - fantastic change, it was a long time coming. For what this card does it was undervalued
- Kolkar Pack Runner to 3 mana for Hunter but stickier at 4 health- another great change, will this slow Hunters down? YES!
- Granite Forgeborn health down to 4 from 5 - totally irrelevant change, to show that they're doing something about Elem Shaman without actually doing it. This deck will pop even more due to other nerfs
- Il'gynoth from 4 to 6 mana to hit DH - the true solitaire deck of this expansion, hopefully dead an buried. With all the quest discounts I am not so sure but thinking it through it would rely on drawing Il'gynoth early for the discounts to apply to it and all combo pieces to come together in any reasonable time. I hope this will become a meme fringe deck at best. I will dust it and craft something I like.

Notable absentees:
- The Demon Seed - oops! We thought that moaning has started, leaving this alone will cause an uproar. People forget that the pure Quest version isn't THAT strong and the Zoolock variant just got hit so I think we should wait and see what happens
- Stealer of Souls - it's not nice to lose against it but in Standard it is really not that much of a problem at the moment. Now, because meta should (will?) slow down it might become a problem but again, we have to wait and see.

What are your thoughts?

 Reacting to your takes by each dash:

-Incantor’s really just made Mage viable against face and competitive against Warlock. Not sure why everyone is jumping for joy. Would call it an overall average nerf that I guess did what it was supposed to do: make Warlock better.

-Darkglare to 3 mana 3/4: TERRIBLE change. 3 for 3/3 was the reasonable edit and now it’s out of range for early damage. Nerf a card by mana but make it more survivable?

-Flesh Giant change was mostly insignificant. Less turn 3s is a plus but when draw nuts it nuts. 

-I agree with you on battlemaster.

-Conviction got a shadow nerf in the Paladin quest deck and I think that’s way more interactive than buff and slap. Kind of good and kind of bad for a nerf. More good than bad.

-Kolkar: Another great change. Will this slow down Hunter? NO. Who fucking trades when playing face Hunter? Once more, nerf mana + buff health = pretty much the same card.

-I agree with you on Granite. Waste of a nerf.

-Il’gynoth: I personally enjoyed the old OTK DH and liked that it improved slightly with Quest. I feel like Rogue shouldn’t get away with keeping its combo unchanged and the most expensive card in the DH combo goes +2? Seems like overkill.

Final Thought: Blizzard really managed to fuck this one up royally and I’ve been playing since Old Gods and haven’t said that yet.

Rogue is struggling more than I expected. I kind of figured keeping its combo intact means we may be able to race the miracle before Warlock or aggro goes off, but face is too much the place and warlock really just got stronger. Mage seems to be the only healthy nerf so far. However the Mage nerf gave Warlock less counters. Paladin still does fine as long as the weapon is played early enough. I rarely see situations where they can’t stick at least one minion and pop 15+ to finish the opponent. Both Rogue and Paladin are performing slightly worse against warlock. The extra health “nerf” to darkglare put it out of range of rogue until turn 5 or too heavy commitment by damage. The giant nerf seemingly did nothing. It’s still possible to stick a giant turn 4 and I wonder why the nerf wasn’t to 10 to avoid that just about outright. Overall, I’d suggest probably Paladin, Hunter, and Warlock to climb.

I, for one, welcome our Paladin overlords. It wasn’t fun and interactive to lose to combo decks so now it’s fun to lose to Paladin as a combo deck buffing minions all game and then sticking 1-2 minions to deal 20+.

44 no BP, lots of play week 1, mostly just quest and out as of week 2.

Can’t wait to watch the pros win with meta decks from the last expansion that sub in 1-3 new cards and a pair of robes to destroy quest decks.

Garotte Rogue doesn't even need to put minions on the board to kill you. It's insane the amount of cast from hand damage rivals Mage. I'm pretty sure the most optimized lists only play 2x Octo-bot, 1-2xAuctioneer, Tenwu, 1-2x Augmerchant and you are good to go, the rest is pretty much pure damage.

Control is going to be in a weird place for a few weeks. There are a handful of aggro decks that absolutely do not care about the board. Hell some of them don't even need minions...

LOL you think Mage is the problem this xpac...

Answer is in the name of the genre- CCG: Collectible. Personally the reason I like Hearthstone the best is because I’ve played so long that I can play whatever deck I want for free with all the saved up dust I have. I only play standard and have only 1 wild deck for flavor. Classic is meh. I also love the cartoonish design, but I will give props to runeterra. That is some immersive art and I do think in time it could take the lead over other CCGs. HS has been such a flagship that it’s going to take a while for others to gain the level of popularity HS had at its peak.

I’m generally not a fan of any card design that reads “literally win the game” regardless of how competitively viable it is. It once more is a counter to control and there are some fun looking control quest decks with the new expansion that will get stomped by this card solo. At least with Ebon Uther we had to survive while piece 4 unique horsemen together…

 Studies, Skull, and Hoarder should assist to do what the deck needs. Are you running into a lot of instances where the Studies isn't giving you draw when needed and/or Skull isn't showing up? Maybe silence can be tech'd for Chaos Strike? I really don't think its that void of gas.

Quote from Mexiito >>

I've never hit legend because im always trying to play only with priest... so is a slow process..

i always hit diamond 5 and above and thats it.. :( 

someday ill have the patience to play enough and hit legend lol  

 You know Priest is like one of the easiest classes to grind with right now in standard?

Hard agree with the comments that exemplify what’s different between the rank you earned and the rank you grind to monthly. I never thought it was fair I had to spend most of the month in the old system making it back to rank 5. (Somewhat casual player.) Now that the star bonuses exist, I feel motivated to push to legend instead of stop at D5/Rank 5. Within a week I’m back to D5 and from there I can play however I want to for the rest of the month. The system rewards you for the spot you earned, if you are making it to legend easily it’s because you do deserve to be there. The system finally is built to recognize your progress as a player. Imagine playing League of Legends and everybody goes back to Wood/Bronze every season. Would you honestly grind all the way back to your previous season rank?