Hearthpwn

Imho it's not about Inspire being a bad mechanic by itself, but Inspire minions being poorly designed. For example you had bad cards like Brave Archer, and OP cards like Thunder Bluff Valiant, that gave way too much value for their cost. Just look at Confessor Paletress with Raza the Chained now.

I think it's a good mechanic, and something that should return to the game at some point. But it's very hard to balance at the outset. Because of the snowball potential (see thunder bluff), most the minions were incredibly conservatively statted. Now that Blizz has seen how things play out a bit, I hope they keep going to this well. (And it appears they have with cards like Raza and Beardo).

Quote from Urungulu >>

Imho it's not about Inspire being a bad mechanic by itself, but Inspire minions being poorly designed. For example you had bad cards like Brave Archer, and OP cards like Thunder Bluff Valiant, that gave way too much value for their cost. Just look at Confessor Paletress with Raza the Chained now.

Quote from aleathas >>

Quote from Urungulu >>

Imho it's not about Inspire being a bad mechanic by itself, but Inspire minions being poorly designed. For example you had bad cards like Brave Archer, and OP cards like Thunder Bluff Valiant, that gave way too much value for their cost. Just look at Confessor Paletress with Raza the Chained now.

 If you are suggesting, Confessor Paletress is a good card, I only look at you with an expression of ultimate exhaustion. This card is merely designed for fun and can screw you up most of the time. The amount of Anomalus that you summon is enough to hate that card.

Inspire is ok in theory, the problem is so much card tempo oriented make inspire useless.

It is hard to use a 5 manas card in turn 7 to get a free spell when your opponent put 2 or 3 pirates in turn 1 and kill you in turn 5...

Inspire as a mechanic is amazing, and something I wish would have been part of the game since the beginning. However, the minions with Inspire are mostly terrible, with few exceptions.

I hope the Devs learned their lesson and bring back Inspire with a fresh set of eyes. The glaring weakness to the Inspire cards is the massive tempo loss. You basically use a whole turn setting up a board, which is only a good play when you're ahead. If they do decide to bring Inspire back, I hope they think of some that can effect board state (aside from just plopping minions down) and/or have mana costs that are more easily manageable with immediately using HP afterwards.

I think that's where Blizzard messed it up: they made it so you HAVE to use the Inspire mechanic to get value out of the minions, effectively making every Inspire card over-costed by 2 (or at least 1 for certain, given the effect of the Inspire trigger in relation to the minion's stats). Possibly they should have made the Inspire effects more powerful for their minion's mana cost, or alternatively they should have reduced the minion's mana cost. One or the other would have made Inspire a much loved mechanic I suspect. As it is now, it was a failed attempt (so far).

Inspire was a really innovative, genuine mechanic, for the idea that long drawn out control games would be taking place. The problem is, and always will be, is that Blizzards 1 and 2 drops are insanely overpowered, which make most of these late game cards "that are great concepts, and look good in theory", just dead cards that have minimal chance of making an impact. The risk of running most of the inspire cards, just doesn't outweigh or even balance the reward.

Things will always be this way until Blizzard decides to give every class, a cheap legit way to kill off early aggro. I feel like TGT was Blizzards way of listening to the players who wanted to see a more control oriented game, but it was poorly executed. The inspire cards are fun, cool, the idea was genius, and had tons of potential. This is why a dislike cancer aggro decks.

Quote from Nightillus >>

Inspire was a really innovative, genuine mechanic, for the idea that long drawn out control games would be taking place. The problem is, and always will be, is that Blizzards 1 and 2 drops are insanely overpowered, which make most of these late game cards "that are great concepts, and look good in theory", just dead cards that have minimal chance of making an impact. The risk of running most of the inspire cards, just doesn't outweigh or even balance the reward.

Things will always be this way until Blizzard decides to give every class, a cheap legit way to kill off early aggro. I feel like TGT was Blizzards way of listening to the players who wanted to see a more control oriented game, but it was poorly executed. The inspire cards are fun, cool, the idea was genius, and had tons of potential. This is why a dislike cancer aggro decks.

I think the downfall of Inspire is rooted deeply in the very concept. 

Using your Hero Power is something you do often! Heck, most classes will use their HP nearly every single turn of a game past T4-5.

Because of this, it is impossible to properly balance Inspire. If I don't need to do anything special to get a benefit, then that means that benefit has to have a downside included. E.G Dragons can be overstated because they have a downside - you have to build your deck around them and you often can't fit lots of powerful spells because you need to have plenty of dragons. Inspire has no such thing. This resulted in all Inspire minions being either massively understated, or having niche almost negligable effects. 

And there is no middleground. Unfortunately, the Inspire mechanic is either broken op, or useless. 

It is by no means BAD, but it is to slow for constructed play since inspire might as well be read as "do this once for the price of 2 more mana" sure sometimes you could do it for 1 or 0 with two cards who are way too insignificant to even remember their name, i think one was maiden of the lake, BUT  with the recent addition of Mr. Unchained some decks have arisen using this mechanic since now it makes it kinda free, for example kibler's shadow reno priest, or kripparian's OTK one. Where inspire has always chinned is in arena were you often find yourself with enough room to hero power and since arena cares not about standard format it will continue to do so in the future.

The inspire effects were just poorly balanced. They offered less tempo when played on curve, less tempo when played +2 than other drops, and like other minions they don't survive past the turn they are dropped unless you are already winning.

Other than the few that are by themselves win conditions, none were played. Joust was another terrible mechanic. The whole expansion sucked imo.

Inspire was a great mechanic but there were two flaws with it:

1.) Blizz introduced it after GVG and BRM, two extremely powercreeped add-ons. TGT was supposed to slow down the meta, but at that time Blizz didn't realize people would just ignore the slower cards that required a gamble to swing (so yes i'm also talking about the Joust mechanic), and keep playing the faster ones. It was a valiant but useless attempt.

2.) It was really not balanced. Not only Inspire itself but the entire expansion. Boneguard Lieutenant and Nexus-Champion Saraad were in my opinion the best balanced cards this expansion, because they had abilities that didn't require too much. Stuff like Confessor Paletress were cool ideas but because their effect was so big and your hero power only cost 2, they had to compensate with stats, along with the other Inspire cards, leading to small minions with big requirements in a fast paced meta. I get they were ambitious with it but if they had toned it down a bit it could've been a greater success...

Along with the lack of balance with the Inspire cards, there were also frequent balance complaints (I'm sure you've all heard of the Mysterious Challenger v The Mistcaller situation?) where some cards were given rarities and stats that didn't seem to match up with other cards at all, and it seemed to enrage some players.

Overall the expansion was fun, but Blizz was a little too eager to stuff it with really cool effects that the meta and players' playstyles just couldn't fulfill at the time (Anub'arak will forever still be my favorite card tho #neverdusting). I really hope they make more though I have faith they can make better Inspire cards by now.