Just because a card is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Anyway, I agree the card is broken, not because of the comparison with yeti(which like I said is irrelevant), but simply because put into practice it's an insanely good card, and face shaman was already going to be one of, if not just THE best deck in standard due to healbot,belcher,deathlord,etc(basically all the anti aggro cards) leaving the game. The fact blizzard gave the deck a 4 mana 7/7 on top of it just shows how clueless they are about balancing their own game. Evolve, master of evolution etc were good cards for other shaman variants that FS would never run, they should have just added more of those if they truelly meant to bring back other shaman archetypes, which was probably what they were aiming at.
Every single class actually have a counter to this, wich will leave the shaman with 3 mana losing alot of tempo wich can turn the game around for your opponent
So, what you're saying is that a card that costs 5, is more powerful than a card that costs 4. And a card that costs 6 is just as big of a power gap between that 5 card as that 5 card is to a 4 card? So, what's the problem?
The problem is you're making a comparison of 4 drops and not properly accounting for the cost difference of overload into it.
They certainly made sure that BGH keeps being played even at 5 mana. You kind of have to have a way to deal with it the turn it falls. If you do the overload is a pretty significant tempo loss for the shaman player the next turn. I do think the card is a little undercosted, it could have a been an overload 3
Wait, did you really see Fireguard Destroyer played in competitive? I never did.
Even being an awesome card, it did not see play, because shredder... and probably Flamewreathed Faceless could have ended like that if it were'nt for shredder going off... and having synergy with trogg.
So, what you're saying is that a card that costs 5, is more powerful than a card that costs 4. And a card that costs 6 is just as big of a power gap between that 5 card as that 5 card is to a 4 card? So, what's the problem?
The problem is you're making a comparison of 4 drops and not properly accounting for the cost difference of overload into it.
Yeah this is kind of the flaw in OP's argument. Its like saying its okay for a vanilla 5 mana card is better than a vanilla 4 mana card. But its not okay that a vanilla 6 mana card is waaaayyy better than a 4 mana card!
If OP were to mention how much easier it is to unlock those Overloaded mana crystals these days, I think the argument would have been a little more sound.
Just because is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Really? Did you just use that example? Magma Rager is a joke card, of course that another one with only one more health than it, for the same mana cost, is not OP. Also, after the release of Whispers of the Old Gods, Ice Rager is no longer strictly better than Magma Rager, because of the new paladin class card Steward of Darkshire. Yeah, no longer power creep there! :)
Just because is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Really? Did you just use that example? Magma Rager is a joke card, of course that another one with only one more health than it, for the same mana cost, is not OP. Also, after the release of Whispers of the Old Gods, Ice Rager is no longer strictly better than Magma Rager, because of the new paladin class card Steward of Darkshire. Yeah, no longer power creep there! :)
If you want a better example, check out mortal strike and fireball. Funny part is that MS still sees play in aggro warrior. Also frostbolt and dark bomb.
Anyway, my point is that it's dumb to make comparisons like this. A card like flamewreathed faceless could never be allowed to be a neutral card. Just think about the implications involved. Would you enjoy watching a druid play it against you with innervate?
The complaints with the Flamewreathed Faceless is so overblown it's hilarious. Warlocks have been dropping turn 4 giants since vanilla, Druids are almost as bad with Wild Growth/Innervate. It used to be that everyone had to run at least 1 BGH, but now that BGH is 5 mana they just have to run 2 class removals. And class removals are garbage unless you're a Warrior. Blizzard knew this, which is why BGH was 3 mana to begin with.
Everyone wanted a "slower" meta, and this is what you get!
Just because is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Really? Did you just use that example? Magma Rager is a joke card, of course that another one with only one more health than it, for the same mana cost, is not OP. Also, after the release of Whispers of the Old Gods, Ice Rager is no longer strictly better than Magma Rager, because of the new paladin class card Steward of Darkshire. Yeah, no longer power creep there! :)
If you want a better example, check out mortal strike and fireball. Funny part is that MS still sees play in aggro warrior. Also frostbolt and dark bomb.
Anyway, my point is that it's dumb to make comparisons like this. A card like flamewreathed faceless could never be allowed to be a neutral card. Just think about the implications involved. Would you enjoy watching a druid play it against you with innervate?
I know that Fireball is better than Mortal Strike, and Frostbolt is better than Darkbomb (the same could be said about other cards like Living Roots, which is strictly better than Arcane Shot and Holy Smite), although that really doesn't matter because they are class cards, and classes are supposed to have different strengths and weaknesses; and no, of course I would not like Flamewreathed Faceless to be a neutral card, that would be terrible.
The complaints with the Flamewreathed Faceless is so overblown it's hilarious. Warlocks have been dropping turn 4 giants since vanilla, Druids are almost as bad with Wild Growth/Innervate. It used to be that everyone had to run at least 1 BGH, but now that BGH is 5 mana they just have to run 2 class removals. And class removals are garbage unless you're a Warrior. Blizzard knew this, which is why BGH was 3 mana to begin with.
Everyone wanted a "slower" meta, and this is what you get!
The difference is that you dont have to skip 3 turns to play a flamewreathed. It's basically a turn 4 answer it or you're done kind of question...thats way too early to decide a game.
Just because a card is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Anyway, I agree the card is broken, not because of the comparison with yeti(which like I said is irrelevant), but simply because put into practice it's an insanely good card, and face shaman was already going to be one of, if not just THE best deck in standard due to healbot,belcher,deathlord,etc(basically all the anti aggro cards) leaving the game. The fact blizzard gave the deck a 4 mana 7/7 on top of it just shows how clueless they are about balancing their own game. Evolve, master of evolution etc were good cards for other shaman variants that FS would never run, they should have just added more of those if they truelly meant to bring back other shaman archetypes, which was probably what they were aiming at.
I'd disagree with you on this, I say they've done quite a good job of improving shaman. Rather than just giving them several evolve themed cards, giving them something like flamewreathed faceless promotes both an evolve archetype AND the face shaman archetype. I've been winning quite a fair amount of standard games with evolve shaman already, and tbh, if they had more cards with the evolving theme, I feel that it'd be quite broken. Throwing evolve down on a board with 3-4 totems is already massive. Evolving Thing from Below with master of evolution or evolve is another obvious, solid play. Neither of them is hard to accomplish.
I don't think you can call it a matter of opinion when 50% of the decks you face at the higher rankings right now are face shaman.
I have nothing against the deck and I played it myself loads before WOTOG, but claiming it's not broken right now is just silly.
I don't think you can call it a matter of opinion when 50% of the decks you face at the higher rankings right now are face shaman.
I have nothing against the deck and I played it myself loads before WOTOG, but claiming it's not broken right now is just silly.
Re-read my argument to find that my point wasn't that face shaman wasn't OP. My point is that its good that they made a card like flamewreathed faceless because of the fact that it does fit into face shaman. If they had made more cards that support evolve and master of evolution, then I'd assume that people would be favoring the evolve-shaman archetype a great deal more than they already are.
Yes, face shaman is very powerful, but I'm considering the possibility of more support overall for the currently only 2 archetypes that shaman can play decently. If we just got more and more support for evolve shaman, I worry that face shaman would become less popular.
At least from my standpoint, with this, shaman has 2 decent archetypes to play when before LOE they were shit and after LOE they got face shaman, which at the time lacked flamewreathed and again, from personal experience, I didn't find face shaman too difficult to play against. I've already had the (dis)pleasure of playing against flamewreathed turn 4 and have to say that it is indeed quite difficult to deal with without hard removal ready, but thats just something I believe we'll have to learn to play around just like everything else. Honestly, I don't mind it being powerful since shaman has gotten the shaft for so long. In any case, face shaman wasn't going to outright disappear, and making enough class cards to promote 2 new archetypes for shaman with just 1 expansion...I think they'd be pretty hard pressed to do so. I think realistically speaking, with the design space they had, they've done a fairly decent job and there is ofc, always room for improvement in future patches.
The thing is, FS was already a pretty good deck before WOTOG, and it was already going to become really good just from the fact they removed all the anti aggro tech from the game. Believe it or not there are other ways to buff a deck than to just add stuff to it, you can also just change the environment in which the deck plays.
This combined with the fact they released a busted card that fits extremely well in the deck just made the deck broken. The deck would have been fine without the card, it was the other shaman archetypes that needed buffing. You can claim anything you want, but the fact is basically the entire competitive/high level HS community agrees blizzard screwed up and I honestly can't say I disagree with them.
The drawback for the shade is so much worse and the health is lower, I'm not sure how Team 5 came up with the stats being a 7/7. I think the least they could have done was lower the health, much like the shade. Although in comparison to Earth Elemental, this card has 1 less health and no taunt (which doesn't really matter too much). So maybe it's okay as is, especially with the fair amount of overload, plus it's obviously not too hard to remove.
EDIT: Actually it is a little busted now that I think about it.
So, I'm going to quickly explain why I believe Flamewreathed Faceless is such an OP card. So first, remember Chillwind Yeti. Then, think about Fireguard Destroyer. So, Chillwind Yeti has 4 attack, Fireguard Destroyer has an average of 5.5 attack, and Flamewreathed Faceless has 7 attack. Next, Chillwind Yeti has 5 health, Fireguard Destroyer has 6 health, and Flamewreathed Faceless has 7 health. Also, Chillwind Yeti has no Overload, Fireguard Destroyer has Overload(1), and Flamewreathed Faceless has Overload(2). Have you noticed something? They line up perfectly! Comparing Flamewreathed Faceless to Fireguard Destroyer is almost exactly the same as comparing Fireguard Destroyer to Chillwind Yeti! And guess what? Chillwind Yeti is just under playable, while Fireguard Destroyer was a very powerful inclusion in almost Shaman decks before Flamewreathed Faceless came around! This means that to recap Flamewreathed Faceless is the same relative power level to Fireguard Destroyer as Fireguard Destroyer is to Chillwind Yeti, and that is a pretty large gap, and Fireguard Destroyer was already powerful, therefore Flamewreathed Faceless is broken.
TL;DR Flamewreathed Faceless is to Fireguard Destroyer as Fireguard Destroyer is to Chillwind Yeti. It's a big gap. Fireguard Destroyer was already good. This means Flamewreathed Faceless is broken.
I'm way more concerned about Darkshire Council than this card, seriously zoo is just so strong right now, it shits on this card easily
Just because a card is strictly better than one which is never used in ranked it doesn't make it op. See ice rager.
Anyway, I agree the card is broken, not because of the comparison with yeti(which like I said is irrelevant), but simply because put into practice it's an insanely good card, and face shaman was already going to be one of, if not just THE best deck in standard due to healbot,belcher,deathlord,etc(basically all the anti aggro cards) leaving the game. The fact blizzard gave the deck a 4 mana 7/7 on top of it just shows how clueless they are about balancing their own game. Evolve, master of evolution etc were good cards for other shaman variants that FS would never run, they should have just added more of those if they truelly meant to bring back other shaman archetypes, which was probably what they were aiming at.
Every single class actually have a counter to this, wich will leave the shaman with 3 mana losing alot of tempo wich can turn the game around for your opponent
So, what you're saying is that a card that costs 5, is more powerful than a card that costs 4. And a card that costs 6 is just as big of a power gap between that 5 card as that 5 card is to a 4 card? So, what's the problem?
The problem is you're making a comparison of 4 drops and not properly accounting for the cost difference of overload into it.
They certainly made sure that BGH keeps being played even at 5 mana. You kind of have to have a way to deal with it the turn it falls. If you do the overload is a pretty significant tempo loss for the shaman player the next turn. I do think the card is a little undercosted, it could have a been an overload 3
Wait, did you really see Fireguard Destroyer played in competitive? I never did.
Even being an awesome card, it did not see play, because shredder... and probably Flamewreathed Faceless could have ended like that if it were'nt for shredder going off... and having synergy with trogg.
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The complaints with the Flamewreathed Faceless is so overblown it's hilarious. Warlocks have been dropping turn 4 giants since vanilla, Druids are almost as bad with Wild Growth/Innervate. It used to be that everyone had to run at least 1 BGH, but now that BGH is 5 mana they just have to run 2 class removals. And class removals are garbage unless you're a Warrior. Blizzard knew this, which is why BGH was 3 mana to begin with.
Everyone wanted a "slower" meta, and this is what you get!
Keep calm and use your hero power
in all honesty i believe this card would be fine with 1 less health or attack.
It's not about playing shadow word death.. It's about drawing it by turn 3 or 4..
Even if we run two the probability of drawing it so early in the game is low as compared to turn 6 or 7 where a minion of such stats is played.
So what about Ancient Shade, in comparison to Flamewreathed Faceless?
The drawback for the shade is so much worse and the health is lower, I'm not sure how Team 5 came up with the stats being a 7/7. I think the least they could have done was lower the health, much like the shade. Although in comparison to Earth Elemental, this card has 1 less health and no taunt (which doesn't really matter too much). So maybe it's okay as is, especially with the fair amount of overload, plus it's obviously not too hard to remove.
EDIT: Actually it is a little busted now that I think about it.