Hearthpwn

Hey guys, I'm thinking about changing one of my cards but I'm not sure which version to choose and would like to have your opinion.

@Shanksyo

The first version is too strong in spell heavy decks. I like version 2 is good for combo play. Pretty much the same thing as the 3rd version except it must be those spells you drew. Version 3 is good in its own way. Definitely would like someone else's opinion as well.

Quote from Elmo1191 jump

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Again, you brought up Ancestor's Call previously. That is a card a large number of people thought was at least decent, they tried it, it worked kind of but not really can they let it go, and that card was an Epic from and expansion. This card doesn't a similar thing to that. You put some big nasties in your deck, you hope to draw a couple of them and this, and you get a turn 4 Rag, Ysera, Maly, Ony (because you actually get the Battlecry unlike Ancestors), Nefarian, Alex, Dr. Boom. Some of these cards are already playable and you may not need two of them to win the game especially if you're getting one of them on turn 4. Each of these also has advantages and weaknesses. Yes in the base set you're probably not ramping to much, but that's ok, if you're playing base set you can probably ramp to a Boulderfist or War Golem and steal a quick win. 

And lets take a look at some some pretty bad/fringe base cards. Light's Justice, Divine Spirit (since you don't even have Inner Fire until common), Moonfire, Starving Buzzard (though this used to be awesome, nerfbats hurt.), Mind Vision, Vanish, Totemic Might, Sacrificial Pact, Corruption, Succubus, Heroic Strike. Now you can't maybe justify a few of these, but I'd love to see you prove that there aren't some pretty much worthless cards.

 

 I actually don't think most of these are straight out bad cards. Light's Justice, Corruption, Sacrificial Pact, Heroic Strike, Mind Vision and Moonfire fall into the category of well balanced cards that don't do enough on their own to justify a card spot in a deck. To prove my point, i find that Light's Justice can actually be quite useful when i get in off of Muster for Battle, however Muster for Battle is a far more game-impacting card and much more deserving a spot in a deck than the Light's Justice alone.

Moreover, Moonfire WAS a thing when miracle druid was still possible (when Gadgetzan Auctioneer used to be 5 mana). That deck was a very fun one to play with and actually had a decent winrate, it's just that all other druid decks were on average better. Heroic Strike also saw play in the facerush warrior deck, that used to work for a while. Corruption, Sacrificial Pact and Mind Vision are fairly priced for what they do, they just don't do enough to include them in a deck.

Deal 1 damage is worth 0 mana, Deal 4 damage for 2 mana is fair when you do it with your hero's face, Deal 4 damage for 1 mana is fair when you make it over 4 turns and with your own face, Destroy a target minion for 1 mana is fair when that happens at the start of your next turn, Destroy a Demon and heal your hero for 5 is fair for 0 mana... you see my point? Its fair, that doesn't make it desirable.

Divine Spirit relies too heavy on having a good minion to buff with it and when you do that, the result is risky against removal. I guess its similar to Bling Bling where Divine Spirit can be a 2 mana +6 health or even more, but its far less conditional, far less risky and far cheaper than Bling Bling. Divine Spirit > Bling Bling, i think that says a lot!

Totemic Might is a great example of a card that simply does not have enough cards to combo with. Shaman does not have any other totem synergy except Totemic Might. Furthermore, he only has 3 totems outside the ones his Hero Power gives him, and out of those 3 only Flametongue Totem is an actually desirable totem at this point. Vitality Totem is pretty much never a choice over Antique Healbot. That does not mean that if they were to release some other really good totems or cards that interact with totems and an actual totem shaman deck comes around, you won't consider actually playing Totemic Might in that. Also, Vanish IS being played in the new Gang Up mill rogue deck. Its not very effective for meta reasons (too much aggro still), that doesn't mean its a bad deck.

Pretty much the only cards i would call bad out of those you listed are Succubus and the now completely overnerfed Starving Buzzard. But, hey! Keep in mind that Warsong Commander was overnerfed as well and it didn't see any play for a long time, but then they made the Grim Patron which makes an OP combo with the Warsong Commander, and suddenly he's viable again. They can do the same to make Starving Buzzard viable for huntards too.

Also i brought up Ancestor's Call as an example of a card that looked good but turned out not good so i can prove my point against people that were calling Bling Bling a good card, which it is not. I was not comparing the 2 cards. :)

 Ok, you also never replied to any of my examples of what you could actually do with this, some of which seem way way better than anything you can do with Ancestor's Call, at least on turn 4. You seem to refuse to believe this card has any considerations as a Basic card. If Totemic Might doesn't have enough stuff to make it good why can't this be a similar idea for a card? And you should be comparing the two cards, they are very comparable. In fact I'd say in most cases if Bling Bling were a real card it would probably lead to more wins than Ancestor's Call. You also talk about some cards being better or worse at certain times and in certain decks, most notably the current use of Vanish, and the Resurgence of the nerfed Warsong Commander. We are in the stages where we haven't seen more than 13 of his 36 cards, and we don't know everything about the class yet, so your suggestion is to buff it into a card you couldn't help but play. I personally hate the idea of people playing a 7+ mana card on turn 1 or 2. Even double innervate + Coin can jump you 5 mana, this can jump you 6 as it is, and would have the power to jump you 8 or 9 mana, waaayyy too much for 1 card. 

 

 

Ok, you want to compare, lets compare. Ancestor's Call is a symmetrical effect. It will give you a minion and your enemy a minion. Ancestor's Call's pretty much ideal case is when your opponent has no minions. And the card can work that way, its not like you can't cast it if your opponent doesn't have a minion. On average, both of you get a minion. Furthermore, you can use it when you don't have a minion, to try and pull out a big legendary your opponent's been saving for the right moment and hex it immediately. There are a couple of ways that Ancestor's Call can work wonders.
Why does Ancestor's Call not work? IMO its because Shaman simply can't make use of it. Shamans have very poor card draw to support this sort of combo, furthermore Ancestor's Call fits a control style and Shaman is particularly bad at sporting a control style deck at the moment.

Now, Bling Bling... 8,9 mana for 1 card? How is this done by 1 card exactly when it requires you to discard an additional card for it to even do something? Innervate simply gives you 2 mana for 0. It's a good card on its own, and so its a Druid staple. This makes you spend 4 mana, DISCARD A CARD, and then give yourself that much mana for 1 turn. So, you would need Bling Bling, a Dr. Boom and another 7 mana card to get the effect on turn 4. If your hand looks like this... what exactly do you do for the first 3 turns? And then you throw away 1 potential win condition to get out earlier another potential win condition. And if your opponent deals with it, you loose! Its a terrible card outside of extremely specific combos.

Ancestor's Call can be used past turn 4 and can still have an incredible impact. Bling Bling gets substentially worse with every turn past turn 4. Sure, in the late game you can choose to play a 7 mana card, discard another 7 mana card and then play another 7 mana card... i actually can not even realistically imagine this scenario occurring.

Now because i'm on a roll here, lets keep comparing. Let's compare to Nourish, because i think it has more basis for comparison there. Nourish for 5 mana gives you 2 mana crystals. It does cost 1 more and is a rare, but it gives you the crystals permanently. It can't give you more than 2 crystals but it does not require you to discard cards from your hand to be effective. You throw away that Nourish card once, and then turn 6 you can play Ragnaros, turn 7 you can play Cenarius, turn 10 whatever you heart desires. Nourish also benefits from having an additional effect of drawing 3 cards that you can choose instead (and that one is on average the more preferred effect). Nourish sees no play.

I am not saying the idea of Bling Bling is bad. I think its just far too expensive. This makes it far too difficult for the card to do what it's supposed to do. When, IMO, what it could do is nothing too gamebreaking. It's not a V0-L7-TR-0N (or however its spelled), its not a miracle rogue combo... Its pretty much a Dr. Boom potentially 3 turns earlier and ONLY if you discard your Ragnaros before that. The card feels like it's a very high risk very high reward. In truth, its an extremely high risk, very good reward, but nothing too mindblowing. Usually, when a card is unable to perform what its meant to do, its bad. And i do claim that it's a bad consideration for a basic card. Basic cards are meant to be a bit worse than the rest, but not by that much. This is significantly worse than any other similar cards, be it rare or epic. It's far worse than Innervate if you insist on comparing it to a basic. It's not a balanced but useless card, its just a straight out bad card IMO.

Also, keep in mind, these sort of plays are far less strong than they used to be. Long gone are the times when Turn 1 Yeti was an auto-win. That type of Midrange Watcher druid is actually non-existent at the moment. Everyone is running BGH. We have incredible new 3 and 5 drops. Combos are crazy. Druid's turn 3 Innervate Innervate Dr. Boom is not unmanageable. 

 I'll concede that I said 1 card, when I was comparing the amount of mana you can get, and I should have said 2, but still double Innervate costs you 2 cards and can still provide less total mana than this card plus another card, if this card only cost 1 or 2 mana then that ratio would be much much higher. Also, if the card cost 1 or 2 mana you could do other abusing combos by stocking up on cards and having 2 of these. Because of the high base cost you can't abuse it as easily or chain it together for a crazy ass 16 mana combo turn. You mention that one reason Ancestor's Call doesn't really work in Shaman is because it doesn't have good card draw/selection, but this guys Hero Power is exactly that, card selection. That means you could choose to just keep Bling Bling and not keep any big minions and then if you get an aggro opponent just skip that plan and shuffle the card away. 

You specifically shoot down the potential value of a turn 4 Dr. Boom, but what about turn 4 Onyxia, or Axelstrasza, even some aggro deck could lose to something like this. Something like, and those are classic legendaries. Also, we have no idea what his class legendary will do and how great it could be to ramp out. Its true that later in the game this doesn't do as much, but it still lets you play a higher number than average of game enders knowing you can ditch one to jump another out for 4 mana. 

I will concede there is a decent chance this doesn't really belong in Basic, since there aren't any basic minions that cost more than 7 which means this isn't ever a more than an average ramp spell in perfect case, but in no way is lowering the mana cost a solution, and I still think with druid having both Wild Growth and Innervate as Basic cards you could still make a solid enough case for this card, mostly because the class is about selection and incremental advantages, IE his other cards like Fresh Meat (Which I think is getting some sort of name change, might I suggest Fresh off the Boat/Dock), Picking, and the hero power itself. This allows you more room in your classic cards to explore or expand concepts. You've got to fit in and balance round your keywords where basic allows you to develop the class idea of basic card selection. Selecting which card is worth using to get out which other card, or if that value is even really worth it. 

Quote from Ethenil jump

  

 "At the next 3 starts of your turn, deal damage to the enemy hero equal to the number of his unspent Mana Crystals." This is just as long but this is how it would be worded when compared to existing cards. I suggest just reworking the concept since it is very wordy for a basic card. How about "At the start of your next 3 turns, deal 3 damage to the enemy hero if they have any unspent Mana."?

@ Ethenil

@ Elmo1191

If you read the rules that is 100% fine, and if you're looked through this post a lot of people have already done that. Its important to note that you need to contribute to other people discussion not just ask for a bunch of help though, this is about working toward everyone reaching their potential.

@Shanksyo

Quote from Shanksyo jump

Hey guys, I'm thinking about changing one of my cards but I'm not sure which version to choose and would like to have your opinion.

 

 

 1. Give it 2 mana cost and i think its balanced.

2. Spells costing (2) less might be too much, imagine if Preparation also drew you a card, (1) less might be better. (This might also depend on how expensive all of the classes other spells will be, the more at 2-4 mana and the more combo potential the more this card needs to be priced i think)

3. I think this is a little bit too powerful (again based on how many spells/combos in the deck) A better version might be "Draw 2 cards, if a spell was drawn gain 2 mana crystals this turn only" for 4 mana, just so it doesnt have the possibility of doubling up.

This ones interesting to think about for balancing I think about "if" effects kind of like rogue combo cards, if this read "4 mana, Draw 2 cards combo: Costs (2) less" i think it would be about right

Edit: Answering your question, I like the second option best (but I'm biased towards cost affecting mechanics myself =P) 

Quote from Kingslayer jump

So, for the people who care about stuff like that ~~~ Where do you get your artwork from? Artwork is really important to me and while I am making good progress with the cards, I got some real problems finding good art for some. I browsed the WoW tcg art - and there is some good stuff there, but most of it doesn't fit my theme. I mostly look for night elf stuff btw, as it fits my class the most.

 The card creation sticky in the fan creations forum has good links to where a lot of the artwork can be found, sometimes you just cant though i know many a times i've been forced to use some grainy card image from the WoW TCG game since many of the actual artworks used arent anywhere online.

Heres a few of the links: Official TCG artworks, WoW Fan art, WoW TCG card viewer

Sometimes you just have to scroll through google images for hours, I find that using the "view similar" (Related images) option that google has been very useful for this. 

@Kingslayer: I always go to wow.tcgbrowser.com and look through all the cards until I find something that fits my taste. Warcraft also has a very unique style, so I wouldn't advice on using D&D or MT:G artwork. Only general fantasy Orcs and Goblins tend to have similarity with those in the game.

Also, one more thing, when I thought about your class: where does all that Attack removal lead to? Better trades only? With Shrinkmeister coming in GvG for the Priest you couldn't instantly see the use of that -2 Attack on some minions: Shadow Word, Cabal Shadow Priest, etc. I'm missing more cards like Death Sentence.

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I'd like to share a preview with you guys in order to make my basic card set a bit better and more balanced. A lot of you commented on Fresh Meat (now Reserves) to be too pricey. But as it seems, it might be an impotant combo card for my class. It's giving me some trouble as to do with it.

These are some minions that work well with the shuffle mechanic and a lot of the draw spells:

 The real difficulties emerge here:

I think I've got a good set of basic cards that kind of represent my class and the mechanics it might use, while maintaining the "basic" feel, Theres a few cards that i need some outside views on however to just figure out the balancing appropriately:

A number of my previous ideas got scrapped, redesigned, repurposed or pushed back to the classic set.

 Trogg Token: 

 Theres one spell that I'm a little hesitant on the balancing in particular:

In theory it functions the same way Wild Growth does (Puts you 1 mana ahead of opponent). The problem with this one is that it has the capability of making the opponent lose a turn if they would have otherwise had a perfect curve (1,2,3,4 drops etc.) and im not sure how to weight the cost against that possibility.

Another interesting consideration is that while Wild Growth can technically help against aggro, I dont think visions helps as much since aggro makes use of early turns with little mana.

Card idea was reworked.