Let me start off by stating the following fact that becomes very apparent with this card:
COOL =/= FUN
I must agree that this is one of the coolest cards ever designed, and the developers must have had lots of fun developing this, and possibly constantly updating it. I bet there is a person or a team that is constantly working on user stories on their boards related to this damn card. But here is what makes this the worst card ever in this game: it is NEVER fun to play against. This is, by far, the most unfair card ever, as it is practically impossible to play around. Sure you could just not over-extend, but that is the equivalent of intentionally being in 2nd place in Mario Kart until the last moment to play around blue shells. This is a card that literally PUNISHES the player in control of the game (similar to the blue shell in mario kart). I bet by now you know im not a fan of the blue shell either, but there are other design implications on the blue shell which make it less of an offender than this card. Its activation is another thing that is not really counter-able. Sure you can shuffle things into the opponent's deck all you want, but eventually they will be drawn. I guess it is easier if I list the reasons why cards like these have no place in games of competitive nature:
It is never, ever fun to play against this card.
It is not really possible to play around it (meaning it will always provide a large amount of value).
It punishes good play (mario kart blue shell)
It forces decks to be built around a gimmick (looks like they learned nothing from even/odd stuff)
Expanding on the point above, this card later becomes a balance problem to the game and requires (possibly) hundreds of man hours to update/balance/create this card that could be spent on ACTUAL fun mechanics or other issues with the game (such as actually spending time to correctly balance the DH class).
When certain cards/combos become really powerful, the meta tends to shift towards countering these combos, slowly reducing their power over time. This is not the case with this card. The only "fair" match up against this card is this card. I honestly almost feel obligated to run highlander to reduce the anger and frustration games vs this card create.
In conclusion, the title may have been a little dramatic, but I strongly feel that cards like these make this game unfair competitively. This card is the equivalent of being able to transform any one of your chess pieces into any piece once a game (imagine how much of a joke competitive chess would be if there was an unpredictable mechanic like that). Maybe no one will even read this, maybe the few who do will disagree, but putting this in writing has helped me realize that I really do not like the state of the game Hearthstone is currently in, and probably won't play anymore until this card has been cycled out either by rotation, or by a Blizzard miracle where this gets hall of famed.
Your arguments are mostly your personal feelings rather than a real assessment.
Yes, he is a powerful card that potentially turns a game around. Despite being powerful, it requires a certain skill to be played correctly. The turn you play him. The card you aim for by knowing the pool and how to manipulate your odds to get the correct card.
Unpopular opinion: Cards that require build arounds are good incentives to construct decks. Be it highlander or, yes, the unpopular opinion part, odd/even. It's not the mechanic in general that is inherently broken, the problem rather is single cards that turn games upside down.
I do not think Zephrys is such a card. Alexstrasza feels much more broken. She can turn real games by simply giving you incredible cards with no mana cost. There is no skill required other than drop and hope for the best. Zephrys needs much more careful planning when to be dropped and what to aim for. The worst thing you can get is a regular card, fully priced. What's worst? Flamestrike, Fireball and so on and so forth. Nothing inherently broken. Yes, they fit the situation in every case, but only if you manage it correctly.
If highlander decks are worth making, they need some completely broken plays to make up for their inconsitancy and lack of synergy.
The saving grace for Zephrys the Great imo is that your opponent usually gets to play him once, and there is a skill cap to chosing that moment perfectly. His RNG is also limited, which makes him a bit less frustrating to play against.
Among the broken Highlander neutral cards, Kazakus actually has the best deck winrate at higher levels, followed by Dragonqueen Alexstrasza in Wild.
That being said, if Highlander decks are too strong, a stat/cost nerf would do a lot.
Zephyrs and odd/Even are totally different things. Zephyrs and highlander cards are strong cards but they are not the sole focus of your deck. Baku and Genn made everything about the hero power.
It is a strong card with good draw back. Nothinf wrong with it
Zephrys, contrary to DQ Alextrasza, has much less RNG involved and for that reason you actually CAN play around it. Good players always try to play around this card since with a little bit of experience you know pretty much what options he will offer at the various mana levels. So if for example on your turn 6 you go super wide and then the opponent follows up with Zephrys into Brawl, this is not bad luck, this is failure to play around the card. You just have to assume the opponent has Zephrys in his hand and always anticipate it
Zephrys is a fine card. Yes he is strong but at least you know what you're up against because you know exactly what he'll give you similar to your opponent so you can try to play around it.
Most of your arguments are also non-sensical. It requires 100s of man hours - do you actually work for Hearthstone? It's never fun to play against this card - entirely subjective, I don't mind it - HL cards only become problematic if you have multiple of them (Zephrys say in HL Warrior was never a problem). Zephrys has no counter? Only 2 meta decks (maybe also throw in Quest Warlock for 3 decks) use Zephrys. Other decks do just fine w/o him.
Yes sometimes you can die due to some combo such as Unleash the Hounds + Bloodlust from 20HP but the majority of times Zephrys is a defensive card or lethal. Deal with your opponent's minions and don't overcommit and you won't see him played as often.
I don't mind Zeph at all in highlander decks like Mage or Hunter but I hate when non highlander deck like Quest Maly Warlock, Druid, DH play Zeph.
This, the card is fine in highlander decks since the "no duplicates" rule balances it, but is ridiculous when some decks that have duplicates include it, since they can draw their entire deck quickly.
Can't agree with the OP here. I play a lot of highlander decks, and I can promise you ZTG is not an autowin card, nor is it even that difficult to play around. As was mentioned earlier, you can generally predict at any given point what it'll give your opponent and you can play around it. It's primarily used as a finisher, a board clear, or a single target remove. With that in mind, you can at least attempt to counter it.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I think zephyrs is fine because you can in fact play around it. You know pretty fast if the opponent is highlander. Further, if you are a really good player you know at least about what they can do with zephyr at any time in the game. It's restricted to basic and classic cards and usually 8 or less save for pyroblast sometimes being offered (but they won't ever get plague for example). It becomes second nature after a while (if you have played HL decks anyway). For example, you may say "oh well he could have zephyr shadow word ruin or zephyr brawl here". It gets easier if you know they are going into turn 7 and if you have lots of 4 health stuff you are at risk of chaos nova or higher health at risk of brawl (or if you have lots of 2hp stuff of course consecration or holy nova). so you should be aware of board clears. You should also be aware zephyr can heal someone for 8. It can also kill one big target or offer a silence. Further, you should know if your opponent has lots of tokens on the board and it's turn 7 or more the opponent can get bloodlust for 5 and be aware of savage roar which costs 3 which can be used as little as turn 5. You should also be aware of the windfury lethal that only costs 2. Further, you can be aware that they can get a full board clear with twisting at 10.
Because zephyrs is more or less predictable, you can play around it.
thebitterfig is right. To add to that, It is also worth noting that a huge part of Baku and Genn's balance issue was they always gave you the hero power buff. Zeph is not always going to be in your hand, nor will he help you if you misplayed, He does require a bit of skill checking: when to play him, guessing and setting up possibilities for the best outcome, asking if it is worth torching the one off get out of a pinch situation card now or later, should he be saved to finish the game, etc.
I think Zephs swing potential is astronomical, there is no denying, but it does not make him a terrible card, just a very powerful one, which is what you would want in a deck full of one off cards. I would go so far as to say DQ alex might need a revist to give each of her dragons 1 mana because the swings off her can basically end the game. Zeph cant do that unless you were about to lose anyway.
Fairness is such a human concept !! (pun intended :P~~~)
the problem with this card is that :- "without obvious weakness on the battlefield" is the key problem. especially after the nerf of the Albatross card, which has little counter effect to Zephyrs. Nearly no one play Albatross now
that is, if this kind of perfect counter card ability ever exists in the real world, where competition is real and will bring actual losses, the existence of this card will make everyone playing this, and no one can relate the win and loss to the skillfulness of a player anymore. i.e. tournament results become uninteresting, much less skill is involved.
this is why we saw everyone, even non-highlander deck, will include Zephyrs for this perfect effect at a later stage of the game.
fortunately, this card is only 1 in the 30, so the temper on the overall game is not very high.
the ladder prize is not a problem, the problem is it reduces the color of skills of players, you appreciate less for a legend now than at the time of vanilla-HS era.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I, for one, don't dislike the hero power stuff. I agree, odd/even went out of blizzards hands, but I feel like, it was the community that disliked the mechanic and not a broken power level. Hall of Faming those cards still was the easy and bad way to drop an otherwise interesting mechanic. I loved using cards that were okay-ish in regular decks but suddenly excelled in odd/even decks (looking at stuff like Raid Leader or Argent Commander.
And that is the essence why highlander also is great. You actually see and play cards that do not have a top tier power level but still manage to work out because it is balanced by other cards/mechanics. Remember: OG Reno singlehandedly made highlander viable for a year up until MSoG.
Yesterday I set up Zepherus to give me wild Roar, had 3 mana left, enough damage to lethal from hand+ minions. It gave me power of the wild. I lost the game. That card is pure trash after last expansion.
Once again: Zephrys doesn't know what is in your hand. You need to help him in order for him to help you...Play the cards from your hand that deal damage and only then drop him
Let me start off by stating the following fact that becomes very apparent with this card:
COOL =/= FUN
I must agree that this is one of the coolest cards ever designed, and the developers must have had lots of fun developing this, and possibly constantly updating it. I bet there is a person or a team that is constantly working on user stories on their boards related to this damn card. But here is what makes this the worst card ever in this game: it is NEVER fun to play against. This is, by far, the most unfair card ever, as it is practically impossible to play around. Sure you could just not over-extend, but that is the equivalent of intentionally being in 2nd place in Mario Kart until the last moment to play around blue shells. This is a card that literally PUNISHES the player in control of the game (similar to the blue shell in mario kart). I bet by now you know im not a fan of the blue shell either, but there are other design implications on the blue shell which make it less of an offender than this card. Its activation is another thing that is not really counter-able. Sure you can shuffle things into the opponent's deck all you want, but eventually they will be drawn. I guess it is easier if I list the reasons why cards like these have no place in games of competitive nature:
In conclusion, the title may have been a little dramatic, but I strongly feel that cards like these make this game unfair competitively. This card is the equivalent of being able to transform any one of your chess pieces into any piece once a game (imagine how much of a joke competitive chess would be if there was an unpredictable mechanic like that). Maybe no one will even read this, maybe the few who do will disagree, but putting this in writing has helped me realize that I really do not like the state of the game Hearthstone is currently in, and probably won't play anymore until this card has been cycled out either by rotation, or by a Blizzard miracle where this gets hall of famed.
What do you guys think?
As mostly a highlander player myself I enjoy zephrys and I want to see more - if your deck has no duplicates” cards.
I see your point though that once you figure out your opponent plays a hl deck then zephrys shifts the entire game until your opponent plays it
Your arguments are mostly your personal feelings rather than a real assessment.
Yes, he is a powerful card that potentially turns a game around. Despite being powerful, it requires a certain skill to be played correctly. The turn you play him. The card you aim for by knowing the pool and how to manipulate your odds to get the correct card.
Unpopular opinion: Cards that require build arounds are good incentives to construct decks. Be it highlander or, yes, the unpopular opinion part, odd/even. It's not the mechanic in general that is inherently broken, the problem rather is single cards that turn games upside down.
I do not think Zephrys is such a card. Alexstrasza feels much more broken. She can turn real games by simply giving you incredible cards with no mana cost. There is no skill required other than drop and hope for the best. Zephrys needs much more careful planning when to be dropped and what to aim for. The worst thing you can get is a regular card, fully priced. What's worst? Flamestrike, Fireball and so on and so forth. Nothing inherently broken. Yes, they fit the situation in every case, but only if you manage it correctly.
If highlander decks are worth making, they need some completely broken plays to make up for their inconsitancy and lack of synergy.
The saving grace for Zephrys the Great imo is that your opponent usually gets to play him once, and there is a skill cap to chosing that moment perfectly. His RNG is also limited, which makes him a bit less frustrating to play against.
Among the broken Highlander neutral cards, Kazakus actually has the best deck winrate at higher levels, followed by Dragonqueen Alexstrasza in Wild.
That being said, if Highlander decks are too strong, a stat/cost nerf would do a lot.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
Zephyrs and odd/Even are totally different things. Zephyrs and highlander cards are strong cards but they are not the sole focus of your deck. Baku and Genn made everything about the hero power.
It is a strong card with good draw back. Nothinf wrong with it
Zephrys, contrary to DQ Alextrasza, has much less RNG involved and for that reason you actually CAN play around it. Good players always try to play around this card since with a little bit of experience you know pretty much what options he will offer at the various mana levels. So if for example on your turn 6 you go super wide and then the opponent follows up with Zephrys into Brawl, this is not bad luck, this is failure to play around the card. You just have to assume the opponent has Zephrys in his hand and always anticipate it
Zephrys is a fine card. Yes he is strong but at least you know what you're up against because you know exactly what he'll give you similar to your opponent so you can try to play around it.
Most of your arguments are also non-sensical. It requires 100s of man hours - do you actually work for Hearthstone? It's never fun to play against this card - entirely subjective, I don't mind it - HL cards only become problematic if you have multiple of them (Zephrys say in HL Warrior was never a problem). Zephrys has no counter? Only 2 meta decks (maybe also throw in Quest Warlock for 3 decks) use Zephrys. Other decks do just fine w/o him.
Yes sometimes you can die due to some combo such as Unleash the Hounds + Bloodlust from 20HP but the majority of times Zephrys is a defensive card or lethal. Deal with your opponent's minions and don't overcommit and you won't see him played as often.
I don't mind Zeph at all in highlander decks like Mage or Hunter but I hate when non highlander deck like Quest Maly Warlock, Druid, DH play Zeph.
This, the card is fine in highlander decks since the "no duplicates" rule balances it, but is ridiculous when some decks that have duplicates include it, since they can draw their entire deck quickly.
Personally, I find both versions of Alexstrasza to be more of a pain than zephyrs.
Can't agree with the OP here. I play a lot of highlander decks, and I can promise you ZTG is not an autowin card, nor is it even that difficult to play around. As was mentioned earlier, you can generally predict at any given point what it'll give your opponent and you can play around it. It's primarily used as a finisher, a board clear, or a single target remove. With that in mind, you can at least attempt to counter it.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I think zephyrs is fine because you can in fact play around it. You know pretty fast if the opponent is highlander. Further, if you are a really good player you know at least about what they can do with zephyr at any time in the game. It's restricted to basic and classic cards and usually 8 or less save for pyroblast sometimes being offered (but they won't ever get plague for example). It becomes second nature after a while (if you have played HL decks anyway). For example, you may say "oh well he could have zephyr shadow word ruin or zephyr brawl here". It gets easier if you know they are going into turn 7 and if you have lots of 4 health stuff you are at risk of chaos nova or higher health at risk of brawl (or if you have lots of 2hp stuff of course consecration or holy nova). so you should be aware of board clears. You should also be aware zephyr can heal someone for 8. It can also kill one big target or offer a silence. Further, you should know if your opponent has lots of tokens on the board and it's turn 7 or more the opponent can get bloodlust for 5 and be aware of savage roar which costs 3 which can be used as little as turn 5. You should also be aware of the windfury lethal that only costs 2. Further, you can be aware that they can get a full board clear with twisting at 10.
Because zephyrs is more or less predictable, you can play around it.
Fuck class identity!
Fuck class weaknesses!
Fuck this game's logic!
thebitterfig is right. To add to that, It is also worth noting that a huge part of Baku and Genn's balance issue was they always gave you the hero power buff. Zeph is not always going to be in your hand, nor will he help you if you misplayed, He does require a bit of skill checking: when to play him, guessing and setting up possibilities for the best outcome, asking if it is worth torching the one off get out of a pinch situation card now or later, should he be saved to finish the game, etc.
I think Zephs swing potential is astronomical, there is no denying, but it does not make him a terrible card, just a very powerful one, which is what you would want in a deck full of one off cards. I would go so far as to say DQ alex might need a revist to give each of her dragons 1 mana because the swings off her can basically end the game. Zeph cant do that unless you were about to lose anyway.
Fairness is such a human concept !!
(pun intended :P~~~)
the problem with this card is that :-
"without obvious weakness on the battlefield" is the key problem.
especially after the nerf of the Albatross card, which has little counter effect to Zephyrs. Nearly no one play Albatross now
that is,
if this kind of perfect counter card ability ever exists in the real world,
where competition is real and will bring actual losses,
the existence of this card will make everyone playing this,
and no one can relate the win and loss to the skillfulness of a player anymore.
i.e. tournament results become uninteresting, much less skill is involved.
this is why we saw everyone, even non-highlander deck,
will include Zephyrs for this perfect effect at a later stage of the game.
fortunately, this card is only 1 in the 30,
so the temper on the overall game is not very high.
the ladder prize is not a problem,
the problem is it reduces the color of skills of players,
you appreciate less for a legend now than at the time of vanilla-HS era.
:P~~~
I, for one, don't dislike the hero power stuff. I agree, odd/even went out of blizzards hands, but I feel like, it was the community that disliked the mechanic and not a broken power level. Hall of Faming those cards still was the easy and bad way to drop an otherwise interesting mechanic. I loved using cards that were okay-ish in regular decks but suddenly excelled in odd/even decks (looking at stuff like Raid Leader or Argent Commander.
And that is the essence why highlander also is great. You actually see and play cards that do not have a top tier power level but still manage to work out because it is balanced by other cards/mechanics. Remember: OG Reno singlehandedly made highlander viable for a year up until MSoG.
Yesterday I set up Zepherus to give me wild Roar, had 3 mana left, enough damage to lethal from hand+ minions. It gave me power of the wild. I lost the game. That card is pure trash after last expansion.
Once again: Zephrys doesn't know what is in your hand. You need to help him in order for him to help you...Play the cards from your hand that deal damage and only then drop him
Partielly agree with the title.
Good card to defend yourself. Boring when he give the lethal the opponent don't have.
I prefer Reno. He was a strong card in standard who help you to survive.