Hearthpwn

So I heard you guys were thinking Shaman should get some cards, huh? I think so too. I'm not a big Shaman player myself, but I think that this class is one of the most overlooked in Hearthstone at the moment - it doesn't have as much relevance in the meta as the other classes, and it's class-specific card text (Overload) is a hindrance in many situations! So like my Call of the Void warlock class expansion (which you can see Here!), I decided to make a class expansion for the Shaman class as well. Many of the cards presented here won't be final, but I'm hoping I can get your feedback to make them better. So here it is:

Might of Elements

"Totally Totem-y!"

Yes, the banner looks a bit like the Warlock expansion banner. Yes that's intentional. Yes that is a theme with these. Yes I will continue to do that with all the other classes.

New Mechanic: Spell Tribes! Specifically: Element!

This mechanic will be introduced in further detail in due course: Suffice to say, Air, Water, Fire, and Earth are the four elemental 'tribes' that will be added. As you would expect, cards like Lava Shock are Element: Fire spells, cards like Forked Lightning and Windfury are Element: Air, cards like Earth Shock are Element: Earth, and Frost Shock is Element: Water! There will be lots of cards that interact with this mechanic, but for now, stay tuned! I have to do some photoshopping.

For now, here are some cards that don't rely on the new Element: x mechanic, and are instead more useful Shaman cards that Blizzard hasn't introduced yet!

 (+basics)

Card/Mechanic Discussion will be in the below posts.

Card/Mechanic Discussion will be in the below posts.

Card/Mechanic Discussion will be in the below posts.

More Legendary! cards to come, soon.

CHANGED CARDS:

New Deck Types will also be in the below posts.

ART CREDITS:

Will be done! Takes time to track down some of the art sources. For the most part, I made use of aiDen's spectacular Hearthstone Art Gallery, which you can find in this subforum. A few of these artworks were discovered through Google Images and DeviantArt (Prince Thunderaan from DeviantArt)

So there you have it. As of now, you may notice that there are a lot of Epic cards and not so many Rares and Commons. This may change as I fiddle with the cards, seeing as some of them need to be rebalanced (or possibly reworked altogether). As mentioned above, I will periodically add Legendary cards to this list. Please leave feedback on the cards that I have for now included, but do remember that soon these cards will make more sense as they will be complemented by a new majority of cards that make use of the Element: x mechanic. :) As with my previous expansion, Call of the Void, I'm not necessarily aiming for all these cards to be included, but for Blizzard to take notice of its community and take heed to the contributions it makes. To the next expansion! (after TGT)

Thanks for reading!

~ Teknician

Changelog:

Common Card Explanations:

Rare Card Explanations:

Epic Card Explanations:

Legendary Card Explanations: 

New Card Mechanics:

Element: x

This mechanic introduces a kind of tribe system for Shaman spells - spells which are "Thematic" to a specific element are listed as being a spell of that element. For instance, Lava Shock is an Element: Fire card, Earth Shock is an Element: Earth card, Forked Lightning is an Element: Air card, etc. In this way, new card possibilities are open. For instance, Tremor Totem only activates when an Element: Earth card is cast. This means that casting a spell from that Element will not only allow you to achieve the spell's effect, but also activate one or more of your minions.

Fire element cards are damage themed: Lava Shock and Lava Burst are direct damage spells. Cards like Lava Lash give your hero extra attack, etc.

Water element cards are themed around limiting your opponent's damage dealing capabilities, or delaying them. Frost Shock is an example of this, as it Freezes an enemy. Rainstorm reduces the attack of all of your opponent's minions by 1-2 points.

Earth element cards are themed around silencing your opponent's minions, and inconveniencing your opponent in other ways (Disintegrate removes your opponent's armor, for example.

Air element cards are themed around the concept of Windfury, as well as around 'blowing back' your opponent, delaying them not by destroying their minions but by removing them from play (See Wind Shock).

These elements have synergy with Totems and other minions, because whenever you cast an Element spell, there's the potential to also activate a minion's triggered effect.

Reserved for miscellany and New Deck Types.

Thanks everyone for the comments. As we speak, the OP is being edited and cards are being changed to reflect what I actually wanted to do with this expansion: Read the Changelog to see what I mean. Also, I'm editing a lot of spells to include the "Element: x" tag, so that I can reveal the real meat of the cards. 

@Zt1mQ: Thanks for the comments. Changelog shows I've changed Disarm, Disintegrate, Lava Lash, etc. to be better spells. Also, I'll explain what Ascendance does soon! (If you look in my other expansion for Warlocks, it's a bit like "Metamorphosis").

@narf444 I agree with you in most cases. I was looking at the balance chart for Overload and got a bit overzealous. Changes will be made!

@floodhorse: Noted! Thunderaan will lose Stealth in future versions.

CARDS ADDED: 21 July 2015

Additions from V1.0.1

See original post for larger artwork

Quote from T4te jump

Why do you add such hilarious overloads to every card? I really appreciate the job you've done, but sadly the only useful card I see here is Transcendant. Rest would pretty much see 0 play.

 I'm not a huge Shaman player, but I've been playing decks recently with it, and I've gotten to know it better as a class. I've started removing/nerfing overloads from some cards now, as part of the changelog. :D

Quote from Nikolai_9114 jump

Isn't Grace of Air an Air Elemental Spell?

 Thanks for catching that! Changed.

Quote from T4te jump

Underloader is op stat wise, none other 3-drop in the game has that good stat set and it's not even vanilla, but a minion with actual effect.

Yeah it was. I've nerfed it to 3/3 for 3. Somewhat like Questing Adventurer now, except it doesn't gain stats. Most of the cards in this expansion won't be vanilla seeing as there are already a LOT of vanilla cards in the game. The goal for this expansion (and all others) is 46-50 cards.

Thanks for the replies everybody! It means a lot. :)

So I've taken your feedback to heart, and as such this update is focused on Overload synergy. There are more than 5 cards in this update!

CARDS ADDED: 22 July 2015

Additions from V1.0.3

See original post for larger artwork

This update also changes some other cards:

1. Meditative Shaman is now a 4/4
2. Exodar Summoner is now a 3/5
3. Prince Thunderaan loses Stealth and -1 Attack
4. Drek'Thar's flavor is changed completely

So there's that! Changes will be made accordingly in the OP, and card explanations will be added. There'll be more than one update today as there's a lot of hype for the announcement today, and I want to get as many cards out as I can before Blizzard steals my ideas! (lol)

I see where you're coming from with these comments! I'll be sure to remedy some of the cards. For instance, I'm thinking of making Frozen Totem a 1-drop with 4 health instead.

Also Rainstorm: As a thematic thing, maybe I'll make it "reduce the attack of all enemy minions by 2-3". It's also prone to spell damage.

Lava Lash: Did not see that. Ergh. Will remedy.

Tauren Totemcaller will also call upon all of the totems added in this expansion, and some other useful Totems like Mana Tide and Vitality could be summoned as well. 

Thrallmar Spiritcaller: Would Deathrattle be better?

Disarm: Agree in some ways, but this expansion (and my other one) adds more weapons to more classes, so I'm thinking it might be better used. Thinking of changing it to "Silence your enemies weapon" which would be an interesting mechanic.

Disintegrate: I guess, but it could find some use in some metas. Also, there's going to be some cards which add specific types of spells to your hand, so you'll get a random assortment of these cards which may be super useful or not so useful in certain situations. (i.e. getting past a mage's pesky ice barrier). Will drop the cost though.

Totemic Recall: Well, seeing as it COULD kill a 1-2 health totem, but it could also kill a 4-6 health totem (see introduced), I think it's a good balance, because you can end up drawing massively, potentially filling your hand. I will consider recosting however.

Bloodfury axe: Think of it as pairing with Southsea Deckhand. If you go second, you Southsea Deckhand, coin, drop this on turn 1 and you have a 7 damage burst. 

Meditative Shaman: Well, I gotta tell you that a lot of shaman spells that are used in current meta will be 'Element' type spells in this expansion, so it will end up being more useful then you might think. If this gets Thaurissan'd along with other spells, it can really become beefy (i.e. like Twilight Drake).

I'll make Spirit Link totem a 3-drop with 6 health.

Tremor Totem should probably have 4 health. Works with spells like Lightning Storm, Crackle, Lightning Bolt, and Forked Lightning btw which are all Shaman staples.

Air elemental: True, I'll drop the health quite a bit.

If you click on the link in my signature for my Warlock expansion pack, it explains in great detail how the "Turns Active" system would be implemented. Although it's not in the game, I'd like to think that making up new mechanics is a great way to get other players/Blizzard thinking about what they might add in future expansions.

Wind Shock: True. I might just drop it, but I feel like there needs to be four "element shock" cards. I'll look into changing the effect. 

Exodar Summoner: Ok, I'll do that! :) Sounds like a good idea.

Prince Thunderaan: Was planning to nerf the stealth and health of this but didn't get around to it yet. Will do.

I might make it Deathrattle for Drek'Thar, as that will increase the amount of time it takes to get the benefits of the card.

NEW CARDS ADDED: July 22 2015

The "inb4 Argent Tournament" Update, V1.0.4

Argent tournament is coming really soon I can feel it in my bones so here's literally all of the rest of the cards that I made for this expansion + rebalancing of cards that I mentioned above please comment I want to go watch the announcement weeee

UNITY SPELLS: (ADD SPECIFIC ELEMENT CARDS TO YOUR HAND)

LEGENDARY SPELL!:

LEGENDARY OF THE YEAR: THERAZANE!

*Al'Akir the Windlord is now a 3/8 instead of a 3/5.

Changelog (v1.0.4):

Tomorrow I will elaborate on "Ascendance" as a card and the effects it has on your hero.

For now enjoy the card deluge and look forward to Blizzard's coming announcement!

So that was "The Grand Tournament". Coo'. Shaman's getting some love. Not the cards I expected from this expansion, but then again they're going in a completely different mechanical direction. The hero power interaction is nice, but centering an expansion around it seems like it could become tired quickly.

Anyway, I'm not going to give up on this because this is how I feel the Shaman class should be developed in the future. And I also did say that I was talking about the next expansion cycle for these ideas. Obviously I'll have to take into account the new mechanics and cards being introduced for future imaginings (Rogue expansion for example) so there's that. In the meantime, here's an explanation of Ascendance:

So you get two Hero Powers: You can't equip a weapon in this state and you can use both hero powers in one turn. With the new cards that interact with Hero Powers such as Garrison Commander you might be able to cast 4 hero powers in a turn. (2+(1overload)+2+(1overload)+1-(1overload)+1-(1overload)), thus using 6 mana in that turn. You can cast spells and summon creatures - it's basically like a timed Lord Jaraxxus that doesn't change your health and gives you 10 armor. With the new expansion, these cards won't really be balanced against it, so there's that. But for now, Ascendance as a spell gives you the ability to become pretty tanky as a Shaman for two turns. Not only that, it's lore-friendly.

Please leave feedback!

Al'Akir: I guess, but my main point was that he's a bit too similar to Air Elemental otherwise.

Might change Therazane to random Taunt every turn.

Wolf pack: Realize it uses the same art as Bestial Wrath now... Also, I don't want it to be too OP especially seeing as Shaman doesn't really have beasts. More of a niche card.

Exodar Summoner: Should really clarify: Can give you Fire Elemental, Frost Elemental, Water Elemental, Earth Elemental, Air Elemental.

Surging Axe: Sure, I'll see if 1/3 would do it.

Magnetic Totem: Well you've always got to have one bad totem to RNG (see Totemic Flood)!

With the situational cards that you can draw from RNG (Disarm, Disintegrate, Lava Shock, Lava Lash, Rainstorm), I reason that the Unity spells are OK... Most of them have overload as well. With disarm, I was more or less looking at Truesilver, Doomhammer, Rogue weapons, Death's Bite etc.