Hearthpwn

Oh, alright then, if you say so all knowing Prophet. Perhaps you'd like to tell me the lottery numbers for next week as well while you are on it making such bold predictions?

In the first place Herald Volazj and Raza are not comparable in the least. Volazj needs set up. Raza gives you the ability to save dozens of mana over the course of the game simply by making all your future hero powers cost less.

2. Not all priest cards have yet been revealed, you might get some more reliable card draw. That's not even counting that, if you play a highlander style deck you're very much able to include such cards as Azure Drake, Acolyte of Pain, Loot Hoarder to give some extra card draw. That's not even counting the kind of "less" reliable carddraw like Powerword:Shield, Northshire cleric or even discovering an Arcane Intellect off a Kabal Courier. There are plenty of option available just because you aren't willing to see them or consider them doesn't mean they aren't there.

3. The simple fact that you have the whole game long free hero powers means that Inspire minions, which normally have a bit more prohibitive cost, can be played on curve without drawback. Saraad, Paletress, Kodo Rider just as the most prolific examples.

4. There were actually a few people that did play Reno Shadowpriest. Brian Kibbler being the most notable example I can think of on top of my head. The other being Savzj. So those type of decks might very well have already been on the cusp of being playable and this might just give them the push in the right direction.

Quote from teh_axi >>

You thought 1 in 4 totem RNG was bad in Shamanstone??

Well get ready for Total RNG in RenoPriestStone bois!!!!!!!!

The question is, does the discount stick around even if your hero power changes? Say, you discount the Lesser heal and then decide to play Justicar or Shadowform, will they too be still discounted or will the buff be lost?

For most weapon 1 durability is the exact same as destroying it so the effect is only marginally weaker than Ooze, particularily when dealing with Ashbringer, Atiesh and Spiritclaws (as far as the current meta is concerned).

That said this is more likely just going to be an arena card. Ooze is stronger and costs less mana and if that's not enough there's always teching in Harrison as well.

So, solid card, not particularily overwhelming, certainly not good enough to make the cut but a solid arena card.

Quote from whythemy >>

This, Dragonfire and Volcanic potion make me wonder why Blizz even created the Grimy Goons. Why spend three turns buffing your hand if your Kabal opponent can just wipe your board anyway? 

3 Mana for a Blessing of Might is simply too much even with a conditional upside. I get how potentially this is too strong if you go turn 1 flame imp turn 2 this and then have a 6/5 on board (demonfuse powercreep kappa).

But not only is this fairly unimaginative in its design it's also atrociously balanced. Definitely the weakest card in this set so far heck I'd probably take any of the filler cards over this simply because at least they aren't poorly statted in their cost. This has no control synergy at all and why run it in Zoolock or a potentially new demonlock when the mana cost make it totally inhibitory?

Since reducing the manacost by 1 makes it entirely insane it should have been more akin to gain (I say tentatively) +5 health on a demon, instead of just being a conditional +3/+3 when Priest had a non-conditional +2/+4 with a huge upside of +1 Spellpower. Yes, Velens was one of their strongest cards but in comparison we can see that easily non-conditional 6 stats are possible for 3 Mana.

Sneaky nerf to Firelands Portal.

I don't get why so many people think this is bad just because there are options to play around it, like sure, you can play around pretty much most if not every card in the game in some form, no card is without any weakness yet those weaknesses don't make them bad, they make them balanced.

Of course this card is very meta dependent, if you got many Zoo/Aggro type decks running around, decks that swarm the field with tokens or lots of small guys then yeah this is unlikely to see much if any play. But the more control decks and the more combo decks are running around, decks with high value minions, deathrattles, high stats or that are integral to their win condition. Heck even against Anyfin Paladin this is good even if you "only" poly a 3/3 or 2/1. But against those decks it's basically a 3 mana polymorph and I think we all agree that that would be a very good card.

This is only really weak vs. aggro. Versus control? Well watch their Ragnaros, Ysera, Grom etc. be transformed into a cuddly, little sheep.

Quote from Zence93 >>

Why would I want to play this unless I have a Pyroblast or Flamestrike in my hand?

Too situational, Its no Flame Levimalus but its still not that great. Seems like a weaker spell version of Aviana tbh.

If the meta remains agressive. Even so you play a 4 mana 3/3 which essentially reads "draw a card" because so far in every class all of the potions seem very good, especially versus aggro. Maybe not the pint sized one specifically because that one is more of a combo piece with Kabal and the Madness stuff but Potion of Madness, Volcanic Potion and Potion of Dragonfire are all premiere anti-aggro options, of course for Potion of madness we will have to see how many <2 attack minions are running around with the Grimey Goon buffs but it shouldn't be impossible and I mean you can more often than not an acolyte in a control matchup. And there definitely is at least one more potion to come for Warlock (maybe more) so I'd say that this effect is more often than not like drawing a card.

And 4 Mana 3/3 Draw a card is pretty good considering many decks play a 5 mana 4/4 draw a card.

We have knuckles but not sonic.

NO BLIZZARD! NO MORE TROGGS! WE ARE DONE WITH THEM! -suffers from Tunnel Trogg flashbacks-

So I created  this one to, first of all, give Rogues some decent boardclear and secondly to solve some problems Rogues have with their current "boardclear".

How often does it happen that one casts a Fan of Knives and then draws into a Backstab, Shadowstrike or even a Dark Iron Skulker(if you are running that card) and then cry because those cards need full health minions to work? As long as quite a bit of Rogues removal cards hinge upon hitting undamaged minions that will always be a bit of a problem. Well, this is going to solve it. If you can combo this card this health of a minion will be set to its  current health which means they will count as undamaged for further effects. This also is a great counter to enrage and minion healing effects.

Unpopular opinion but I liked Yogg'saron. Partly because of it's wild, dramatic effect of "Sometimes you get everything and sometimes MADNESS WILL CONSUME YOU" and the more relevant part being because of how it caused one to structure their decks. Since if one wanted to get a certain effect, like boardclear (which is what Yogg was generally used for), one had to have cast a sufficient amount of spells because statistics and all that nonsense.

As a player I really like spellheavy decks, I like control style games and Yogg fit perfectly into that niche because it was a card that had spell synergy in a non blatantly obvious fashion. It wasn't simply saying "Your spells deal +X damage." looking at you Flamewaker (and every spelldamage minion in the game) it had a huge "WoooooW" effect of "What's in the box this time?", would I get secrets? Would I get cards drawn? A call of the wild? Or would I burn half my deck and die from fatigue?

That said I realize the span between a good Yog and a bad Yogg is too heavy. A good Yog literally can win the game from nothing (casting pyroblast three times into the enemies face as an extreme example) and a bad Yogg loses a won game (dumps your hand with astral communion, fatigues you with 100000 drawn cards etc.) and that span is far too heavy to be acceptable. This change is not to adress any over the top power level Yogg has but to calm down the community in meming everything to death. In effect Yogg still has the RNG gulf between good and bad but it's a placebo to show that something has been done. Of course the card is going to be at a far lower powerlevel because Yogg has a propensity to kill himself (and yay now I can cast my 10 mana Twisting Nether)  but the main issue with the card itself has not been adressed namely the RNG.

However what needs to be acknowledged is the reason why Yogg became such a neccesity in the state of the game. Yes aggro and such are wide spread but it's simply because almost half of the classes lack effecient AoE removal to deal with boardflood effects. Either the AoE is not efficient enough or plain unusable in its state.

For Rogues: Fan of Knives doesn't get rid of any current threat right now as thing moved away from 1 HP minions except for utility ones such as abusive. And even then most 1 HP minions are stick in some form like Argent Horserider having Divine Shield or the Grandma in Hunter summoning the 1/1 Wolf and even the Fiery bat will throw some fire back into your face. Blade Flurry costed at 4 Mana and requiring previous setup (aka Poison+Daggerup).

Druids have a worse consecration in Starfall and Swipe is just a slightly different fan of knives. Heck even Paladins require a two card combo for their removal to be effective (Pyro+Equality Equality+Consec.)

And mages Flamestrike previously regarded as premium removal? Well it doesn't even get rid of a three mana card the Darkshire Councilman on top of costing 7 mana. In comparison for one mana more Warlocks have Twisting Nether and then that card was never even used until Reno Decks were a thing and then only because Warlocks needed cards to pad out the deck.

Yogg was or rather is neccessary because spells plain suck in Hearthstone. The only spell that was really strong or rather is still really strong is Call of the Wild. There is never a bad time to play a card which summons 12/10 worth of stats that protect your face grants immediate damage and is 1/3rd of  Bloodlust (thus serving as finisher or game clincher in the class that is set up to be the most aggressive in the game). Else than that I'd maybe count Brawl at being powerful for what it does but other than that all spells are not good because Hearthstone is suffering from a systemic issue of lacking any agency during the opposing turn (except for secrets but those are confined to three classes and are able to be played around). As long as this is not fixed all spells actually can't ever have a similar powerlevel to Call of the Wild.

Of course there are some workarounds to this which involve breaking up the class system that Blizzard is clinging to. In the effort to give each class their unique identity Blizzard is spreading the cardpool to thin by increasingly stacking redundant effects in the same class.

Give hundred iterations of fireball to mage ( of course all /slightly/ different). Give Priest and Paladin all the Health Restoring spells. Well you get what I am getting at.

Even though Blizzard or Ben Brode (in the wake of purify) stated that each class should have multiple workable archetypes (lets ignore the 50% winratio thing because that is all relatory) the confining of cardpools to so many classes simply leads to each class being forced into a set of one or two archetypes at most. The exception to this rules is more or less Warrior (and maybe Shaman) which seemingly can seamlessly adapt to aggro, midrange and control styles at the same time (and used to be able to run combo which in essence is basically just a variant of control).

Yoggsaron is merely the players trying to compensate the inherent weaknesses in their class that Blizzard isn't willing to adress by giving access to a wider variety of cardpools. And as long as this is not fixed Yogg will remain a neccessity in the game. This current variant of Yogg is certainly a very extreme version of what is needed and I do not dispute the nerf was needed in some form but then Blizzard should start by fixing the underlying issues that drive control oriented decks to including this card as a neccessery panic button over something like Deathwing.