So first of all sorry if this should be in a more specialized sub-form; I put it in general because I couldn't decide if this was "Card Discussion" or "Fan Creation" so I hedged.
I was thinking about meta-limiting cards in Standard and really even potentially in Wild and I think there are two main offenders which rightfully get a lot of heat. They are Jade Idol and The Caverns Below. I'm not exactly a fan of the way Blizz has handled some cards in the past that were seen as meta-harmful by making them purely useless but I do think both of these cards are relatively easy to play and cause stagnation in the meta and utterly make some mega-archetypes like traditional control style decks almost unplayable which is unfortunate. You end up with a lot of aggro decks that try to outrace these 2 decks, and then these 2 decks. The rest are typically the people trying to make due and have fun, but end up hyper-disadvantaged as they basically just straight up lose to these cards without either really bad plays from opponent or like a miracle draw versus opponent's terrible draw. So, without further ado.....
Crystal Core would function much closer to Nether Portal with the effect being similar to Validated Doomsayer. It would be a permanent spot on the board. It would still be extremely powerful and actually operate as a way to pseudo-heal any damaged minions, but it wouldn't allow Preparation into Core be lethal on board and it'd limit the ability of the rogue to be able to threaten OTK lethal from an empty board with charge + bounce effects as the chargers would be 2/1 or 1/1 until EOT. This would also make the rogue player's minion pump susceptible to temporary Silence effects as it would be a buff that is applied, then re-applied each turn. It would still be very strong but it wouldn't allow for the type of solitaire games with cards like Vanish we currently see.
Jade Idol would still be a powerful effect, but it would not allow for itself to be cycled infinitely. Things like Gadgetzan Auctioneer would still trigger off the Jade Idol copies as it'd still be a 1-mana spell, but it would prevent the loop and complete lack of fear Jade Druid has of fatigue. You want to draw your deck and get 3x 1-mana behemoths? Sure, but there should be a drawback that allows for other long game type decks to be able to have some chance. Once Jade Druid hits like 6/6 golems, it's almost impossible for any other type of control deck to compete unless they can manage to outrace a particular slow/bad draw from the druid player and even then Auctioner/Fangrel + Idols quickly regains any lost tempo.
So, these were my ideas. I think they'd both function fairly similarly to the way they were intended, but maybe not as utterly oppressive to entire deck super-types as they've proven to be. They'd still be both very strong effects, they just wouldn't be broken as they seem to be.
Interesting change to Crystal Core. It solves the issue of charge minions, so rogue can still have a strong board but doesn't have the insane level of burst. It makes silence and transform effects (e.g., Hex and Devolve) relevant. It weakens de-buffs without making them totally ineffective. Yet the threat of 5/5s is still present. I kinda like this idea.
I might reword it to "At the end of each turn, your minions become 5/5".
I present the Team 5 Warsong Commander Style Crystal Core Rework no one asked for:
I made this as more of a joke but I do have to wonder if this is actually playable. Silence and Transform would remove Charge, and therefore the +5 attack, but only if it stayed on the board. This only encourages the Bouncing Charge OTK play pattern, but it is still giving up a lot of general power. For example, the leftovers from completing the quest, for instance, wouldn't suddenly become 5/5's. Another thing to observe is that low health Charge minions would allow Dirty Rat to feel better after the quest and might allow the creation of an anti-charge tech card that worked like a miniature Swamp King Dread Crab that attacked Charge minions after they are played. Might need different stats to be effective but it is an idea that could work against Charge if Crystal Rogue wasn't running around with 5 health charge minions.
Interesting change to Crystal Core. It solves the issue of charge minions, so rogue can still have a strong board but doesn't have the insane level of burst. It makes silence and transform effects (e.g., Hex and Devolve) relevant. It weakens de-buffs without making them totally ineffective. Yet the threat of 5/5s is still present. I kinda like this idea.
I might reword it to "At the end of each turn, your minions become 5/5".
Careful there. Note that if you set it to trigger at the end of a turn it means it'll REtrigger on extisting minions. Thus if I were to take a 5/5 minion then slam into a 4/4 creature, then end turn my 5/1 would turn into a 5/5. Also, Humility on a minion would eventually turn the minion into a 5/5 once triggered.
Which is interesting. It turns it from an insane burst provider into the ultimate tool for board control as the minions simply ignore chip damage against them, ESPECIALLY if it's 'every turn'.
Honestly I'm good with that.
Though if what you want is a way to create the current quest WITHOUT the ability to charge in, you want this:
"Summoned minions gain this battlecry: become 5/5 at the end of the turn. Then trigger their battlecry"
(the result is similar to Echoing Ooze where the minion becomes a 5/5 at the end of the turn that its played, then doesn't do anything else. Also used the effect that Darkness Calls uses so that summoned minions can trigger battlecries. Though that may not be something the game code can handle given that Played minions might double trigger battlecries. If so might be best just to have it be "played minions.." and just not let Patches get the buff)
I think we can all agree this card has kinda broken the meta recently and it's time for that to change! I was thinking about giving all minions in your deck +5/+5 but then it might still be to powerful so i decided to give the effect to both players so the game will still be fair and this quest will be in line with the other quests in terms of power level.
Another card that is a little powerful is Fire Plume's Heart, with this change to the reward you won't instantly win the game when you play this but you can give your Charge minions +1 attack for the whole game and it's just difficult for new players to understand exactly how good that is.
This card has been keeping control decks from seeing play recently and we at Blizzard thought it would be time to change that, with this card the game won't feel as unfair anymore since you also get the oppertunity to build up an army of Jade Golems to compete with your opponent's. We also increased the mana cost to 2 because we could.
Patches also is keeping the meta from being as slow as we hoped here at Blizzard headquarters for amazing quests like Lakkari Sacrifice and The Last Kaleidosaur to see play. With this change he won't impact the board immediatly and will be much more punishing if you draw him because of pure RNG. But again with this you do give your charge minions +1 attack which is very difficult for a new player to understand how good that is.
Here at team 5 we like to stay consistent. So we're going to nerf this card we nerf as we nerf all the others by making this a really bad 5 drop and even a pretty bad 4 drop. This change will prevent you from drawing your entire deck in 1 turn which could feel very unfair to players. This change will surely fix that!
This card has been controversial for quitte some time now and has been part in many nasty OTK combos which you know we don't like here at Blizzard. With this change it will prevent the user to immediatly kill his opponent in one turn. This card has been restrictive for quitte some time now and at team 5 we're happy to have finally killed it have changed the card so it's slightly less restrictive.
I think we can all agree this card has kinda broken the meta recently and it's time for that to change! I was thinking about giving all minions in your deck +5/+5 but then it might still be to powerful so i decided to give the effect to both players so the game will still be fair and this quest will be in line with the other quests in terms of power level.
Another card that is a little powerful is Fire Plume's Heart, with this change to the reward you won't instantly win the game when you play this but you can give your Charge minions +1 attack for the whole game and it's just difficult for new players to understand exactly how good that is.
This card has been keeping control decks from seeing play recently and we at Blizzard thought it would be time to change that, with this card the game won't feel as unfair anymore since you also get the oppertunity to build up an army of Jade Golems to compete with your opponent's. We also increased the mana cost to 2 because we could.
Patches also is keeping the meta from being as slow as we hoped here at Blizzard headquarters for amazing quests like Lakkari Sacrifice and The Last Kaleidosaur to see play. With this change he won't impact the board immediatly and will be much more punishing if you draw him because of pure RNG. But again with this you do give your charge minions +1 attack which is very difficult for a new player to understand how good that is.
Here at team 5 we like to stay consistent. So we're going to nerf this card we nerf all the others by making this a really bad 5 drop and even a pretty bad 4 drop. This change will prevent you from drawing your entire deck in 1 turn which could feel very unfair to players. This change will surely fix that!
This card has been controversial for quitte some time now and has been part in many nasty OTK combos which you know we don't like here at Blizzard. With this change it will prevent the user to immediatly kill his opponent in one turn. This card has been restrictive for quitte some time now and at team 5 we're happy to have finally killed it have changed the card so it's slightly less restrictive.
We hope you all agree with these changes!
To be fair, that Jade Idol change looks pretty cool. It's a risk/reward type of thing.
Still, I agree that the biggest concern with these cards is limiting the design space and killing the control archetype, so I definitely agree on people realising there is an issue with them.
And regarding 's idea, it's interesting since it will no longer mean winning the fatigue match-ups, but it would make the midrange Jade decks even stronger, since Jade Idol starting at 1/1s is horrendously weak without an Auctioneer. So, personally, not a fan of the idea.
I had an idea about the Crystal Core's nerf. Before I spill it out, I want to say, that I understand this nerf may not be the appropriate one, but it was a thought, that I wanted to share.
Make the reward: "Your played minions are now 5/5s". What does this change? - more than you would imagine. Now the nerf wont solve the charge issue, it makes a solution about the token summoning cards like Bilefin Tidehunter or pulling out Patches the Pirate, or the spells from other classes, that also summon tokens like Forbidden Ritual, Unleash the Hounds etc, a little bit more fair. Or the transformation part. Because the minions you will transform aren't considered to be played, they will lose the buff.
+ I would also make the quest could not be prep-ed anymore.
Hmm, this idea is quite interesting. It doesn't remove the charge burst potential, but definitely limits the strength of the reward. For instance, the "I play 4/5 tokens the turn before the quest" would no longer represent such an OTK threat.
Everyone thinks they know better than Blizzard, but you just don't. None of you do.
Crystal Rogue, Jade Druid and Miracle Rogue have a 48% across all ranks. That doesn't change at Legend so you can't claim skill as the deciding factor. While I get that Miracle Rogue has spent a lot more time in the sun than any other deck, the other two have no reason at all to be changed whatsoever. Keep fighting over who can yell the loudest in your echo chamber and call me a shill if you want but what you think is best for Hearthstone is not what is best for Hearthstone. The best thing Blizzard can do right now is leave the game alone.
Likewise, if you think these decks killed the Control archetype then you must've been playing a different game since Beta because Control has been dead for a long time.
This one is interesting, but you'll never be choosing the second option more than one time in a game, and that doesn't feel too right. But I like the non infinite-deck :) NB: upload your cards to imgur after creating them, else they'll disappear once hearthcards deletes it (they don't host images forever, unlike imgur).
@eddiefiv design space is not about winrates, so sorry to say that VS data reports are not such strong compelling arguments as you think.
The fact that it shuffles into both decks makes the card even stronger. Now you are shuffling 3 garbage cards into your opponents deck in addition to fuelling your Jade Golem army.
As for the quest rogue card, yeah I hate playing against it and think it's super annoying, but the only thing really wrong with it is that it upgrades minions already on the board. If they changed it so only minions in the deck would be upgraded, or in deck and hand, it would be fine. This is currently the way the druid quest completion is, i.e., only minion cards in the deck become 0 mana cost, but not those in your hand, so there is precedent for this type of moderate nerf.
As for fixing other mechanics, I really like the addition of elementals as a minion, um, race I guess, and wish Bliz would introduce more minion races to the game that have certain innate abilities. Something I would like to see are minion races that maybe have bonus attack or resist against certain other minion races. For example, mechs would be strong against beasts but weak against elementals, or something that eats all the f'ing annoying pirates in meta these days. Whatever. I think it would add a ton of flavor to the game, and allow for way more cards you don't normally see in play getting used.
If they changed it so only minions in the deck and would be upgraded, or in deck and hand, it would be fine. This is currently the way the druid quest completion is, i.e., only minion cards in the deck become 0 mana cost, but not those in your hand, so there is precedent for this type of moderate nerf.
That is a very interesting suggestion, not heard anyone mention that before. Minions already on the board would be unaffected, and this would include the 4th minion used to complete the quest unless you had another bounce effect to replay it for the fifth time as a 5/5.
Something to think about, but I think the biggest issue is that all Crystal Rogue match ups are pretty much just face races. Making this change would lessen the immediate power spike but it wouldn't change the nature of the match ups outside of giving Crystal Rogue a larger handicap. Most people just go face against Crystal Rogue, and they certainly won't be trading and interacting with the board if those minions can never become 5/5's without Vanish. Still, it was interesting to consider, though it isn't clear whether summoned minions would gain the benefit as they are neither in your hand or in your deck.
I don't understand why would people nerf rogue quest. It's a crappy t3 deck with <50% win rate.
Average winrates are influenced by meta and matchups. It's not such a good argument as you think. Quest Rogue counters slow decks in a very strong harsh fashion, thus limiting design space. The fact is gets rekt by aggro decks means the issue is currently hidden by the meta, but it's still there nevertheless
I don't agree that quest rogue is particularly strong. Sure, it does very well against control decks, but gets absolutely crushed by anything fast. Pirate warrior, mid-range hunter, zoolock (yeah I know no one plays it), murlocadin, etc eat quest rogues for breakfast 9/10. The issue is, if you nerf the quest rogue so that it is just fair against control decks, you are basically making the deck unplayable.
Then again, I do hate the mechanic of the rogue quest for obvious reasons, so nerfing it into oblivion might not be a bad idea.
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So first of all sorry if this should be in a more specialized sub-form; I put it in general because I couldn't decide if this was "Card Discussion" or "Fan Creation" so I hedged.
I was thinking about meta-limiting cards in Standard and really even potentially in Wild and I think there are two main offenders which rightfully get a lot of heat. They are Jade Idol and The Caverns Below. I'm not exactly a fan of the way Blizz has handled some cards in the past that were seen as meta-harmful by making them purely useless but I do think both of these cards are relatively easy to play and cause stagnation in the meta and utterly make some mega-archetypes like traditional control style decks almost unplayable which is unfortunate. You end up with a lot of aggro decks that try to outrace these 2 decks, and then these 2 decks. The rest are typically the people trying to make due and have fun, but end up hyper-disadvantaged as they basically just straight up lose to these cards without either really bad plays from opponent or like a miracle draw versus opponent's terrible draw. So, without further ado.....
Crystal Core would function much closer to Nether Portal with the effect being similar to Validated Doomsayer. It would be a permanent spot on the board. It would still be extremely powerful and actually operate as a way to pseudo-heal any damaged minions, but it wouldn't allow Preparation into Core be lethal on board and it'd limit the ability of the rogue to be able to threaten OTK lethal from an empty board with charge + bounce effects as the chargers would be 2/1 or 1/1 until EOT. This would also make the rogue player's minion pump susceptible to temporary Silence effects as it would be a buff that is applied, then re-applied each turn. It would still be very strong but it wouldn't allow for the type of solitaire games with cards like Vanish we currently see.
Jade Idol would still be a powerful effect, but it would not allow for itself to be cycled infinitely. Things like Gadgetzan Auctioneer would still trigger off the Jade Idol copies as it'd still be a 1-mana spell, but it would prevent the loop and complete lack of fear Jade Druid has of fatigue. You want to draw your deck and get 3x 1-mana behemoths? Sure, but there should be a drawback that allows for other long game type decks to be able to have some chance. Once Jade Druid hits like 6/6 golems, it's almost impossible for any other type of control deck to compete unless they can manage to outrace a particular slow/bad draw from the druid player and even then Auctioner/Fangrel + Idols quickly regains any lost tempo.
So, these were my ideas. I think they'd both function fairly similarly to the way they were intended, but maybe not as utterly oppressive to entire deck super-types as they've proven to be. They'd still be both very strong effects, they just wouldn't be broken as they seem to be.
Balancing busted cards version 1.0.
Interesting change to Crystal Core. It solves the issue of charge minions, so rogue can still have a strong board but doesn't have the insane level of burst. It makes silence and transform effects (e.g., Hex and Devolve) relevant. It weakens de-buffs without making them totally ineffective. Yet the threat of 5/5s is still present. I kinda like this idea.
I might reword it to "At the end of each turn, your minions become 5/5".
I present the Team 5 Warsong Commander Style Crystal Core Rework no one asked for:
I made this as more of a joke but I do have to wonder if this is actually playable. Silence and Transform would remove Charge, and therefore the +5 attack, but only if it stayed on the board. This only encourages the Bouncing Charge OTK play pattern, but it is still giving up a lot of general power. For example, the leftovers from completing the quest, for instance, wouldn't suddenly become 5/5's. Another thing to observe is that low health Charge minions would allow Dirty Rat to feel better after the quest and might allow the creation of an anti-charge tech card that worked like a miniature Swamp King Dread Crab that attacked Charge minions after they are played. Might need different stats to be effective but it is an idea that could work against Charge if Crystal Rogue wasn't running around with 5 health charge minions.
If there had to be a change to Crystal Core, make it a 5 mana Minion so you can't Prep it out. Anything else is dumb.
And Jade isn't even worth discussing anymore, that horse has been dead for months.
Make the Card: The biggest thread on the site!
My mandibles which are capable of pressing down and tearing, my talons which are known to intercept and hold.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Thought i'd do some Blizzard style nerfs...
I think we can all agree this card has kinda broken the meta recently and it's time for that to change! I was thinking about giving all minions in your deck +5/+5 but then it might still be to powerful so i decided to give the effect to both players so the game will still be fair and this quest will be in line with the other quests in terms of power level.
Another card that is a little powerful is Fire Plume's Heart, with this change to the reward you won't instantly win the game when you play this but you can give your Charge minions +1 attack for the whole game and it's just difficult for new players to understand exactly how good that is.
This card has been keeping control decks from seeing play recently and we at Blizzard thought it would be time to change that, with this card the game won't feel as unfair anymore since you also get the oppertunity to build up an army of Jade Golems to compete with your opponent's. We also increased the mana cost to 2 because we could.
Patches also is keeping the meta from being as slow as we hoped here at Blizzard headquarters for amazing quests like Lakkari Sacrifice and The Last Kaleidosaur to see play. With this change he won't impact the board immediatly and will be much more punishing if you draw him because of pure RNG. But again with this you do give your charge minions +1 attack which is very difficult for a new player to understand how good that is.
Here at team 5 we like to stay consistent. So we're going to nerf this card we nerf as we nerf all the others by making this a really bad 5 drop and even a pretty bad 4 drop. This change will prevent you from drawing your entire deck in 1 turn which could feel very unfair to players. This change will surely fix that!
This card has been controversial for quitte some time now and has been part in many nasty OTK combos which you know we don't like here at Blizzard. With this change it will prevent the user to immediatly kill his opponent in one turn. This card has been restrictive for quitte some time now and at team 5 we're happy to
have finally killed ithave changed the card so it's slightly less restrictive.We hope you all agree with these changes!
I have some déjà-vu here...
Still, I agree that the biggest concern with these cards is limiting the design space and killing the control archetype, so I definitely agree on people realising there is an issue with them.
And regarding 's idea, it's interesting since it will no longer mean winning the fatigue match-ups, but it would make the midrange Jade decks even stronger, since Jade Idol starting at 1/1s is horrendously weak without an Auctioneer. So, personally, not a fan of the idea.
I had an idea about the Crystal Core's nerf. Before I spill it out, I want to say, that I understand this nerf may not be the appropriate one, but it was a thought, that I wanted to share.
Make the reward: "Your played minions are now 5/5s". What does this change? - more than you would imagine. Now the nerf wont solve the charge issue, it makes a solution about the token summoning cards like Bilefin Tidehunter or pulling out Patches the Pirate, or the spells from other classes, that also summon tokens like Forbidden Ritual, Unleash the Hounds etc, a little bit more fair. Or the transformation part. Because the minions you will transform aren't considered to be played, they will lose the buff.
+ I would also make the quest could not be prep-ed anymore.
Hmm, this idea is quite interesting. It doesn't remove the charge burst potential, but definitely limits the strength of the reward. For instance, the "I play 4/5 tokens the turn before the quest" would no longer represent such an OTK threat.
Would this be a good fix for Jade Idol?
Everyone thinks they know better than Blizzard, but you just don't. None of you do.
Crystal Rogue, Jade Druid and Miracle Rogue have a 48% across all ranks. That doesn't change at Legend so you can't claim skill as the deciding factor. While I get that Miracle Rogue has spent a lot more time in the sun than any other deck, the other two have no reason at all to be changed whatsoever. Keep fighting over who can yell the loudest in your echo chamber and call me a shill if you want but what you think is best for Hearthstone is not what is best for Hearthstone. The best thing Blizzard can do right now is leave the game alone.
Likewise, if you think these decks killed the Control archetype then you must've been playing a different game since Beta because Control has been dead for a long time.
http://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-49/
NB: upload your cards to imgur after creating them, else they'll disappear once hearthcards deletes it (they don't host images forever, unlike imgur).
The fact that it shuffles into both decks makes the card even stronger. Now you are shuffling 3 garbage cards into your opponents deck in addition to fuelling your Jade Golem army.
As for the quest rogue card, yeah I hate playing against it and think it's super annoying, but the only thing really wrong with it is that it upgrades minions already on the board. If they changed it so only minions in the deck would be upgraded, or in deck and hand, it would be fine. This is currently the way the druid quest completion is, i.e., only minion cards in the deck become 0 mana cost, but not those in your hand, so there is precedent for this type of moderate nerf.
As for fixing other mechanics, I really like the addition of elementals as a minion, um, race I guess, and wish Bliz would introduce more minion races to the game that have certain innate abilities. Something I would like to see are minion races that maybe have bonus attack or resist against certain other minion races. For example, mechs would be strong against beasts but weak against elementals, or something that eats all the f'ing annoying pirates in meta these days. Whatever. I think it would add a ton of flavor to the game, and allow for way more cards you don't normally see in play getting used.
That is a very interesting suggestion, not heard anyone mention that before. Minions already on the board would be unaffected, and this would include the 4th minion used to complete the quest unless you had another bounce effect to replay it for the fifth time as a 5/5.
Something to think about, but I think the biggest issue is that all Crystal Rogue match ups are pretty much just face races. Making this change would lessen the immediate power spike but it wouldn't change the nature of the match ups outside of giving Crystal Rogue a larger handicap. Most people just go face against Crystal Rogue, and they certainly won't be trading and interacting with the board if those minions can never become 5/5's without Vanish. Still, it was interesting to consider, though it isn't clear whether summoned minions would gain the benefit as they are neither in your hand or in your deck.
I don't understand why would people nerf rogue quest. It's a crappy t3 deck with <50% win rate.
I don't agree that quest rogue is particularly strong. Sure, it does very well against control decks, but gets absolutely crushed by anything fast. Pirate warrior, mid-range hunter, zoolock (yeah I know no one plays it), murlocadin, etc eat quest rogues for breakfast 9/10. The issue is, if you nerf the quest rogue so that it is just fair against control decks, you are basically making the deck unplayable.
Then again, I do hate the mechanic of the rogue quest for obvious reasons, so nerfing it into oblivion might not be a bad idea.