Now the next expansion is quickly approaching, i wanted to see what other people thought of the WitchWood expansion now that its been out for over two months. This is going to be my own opinion, so please understand that. I am going to rate different things out of 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.
Theme of Witchwood: 7/10
I think the WitchWood had a more of a Warcraft feel than Kolbolds and Catacombs. The feeling of the expansion set in Gilneas, with the extra flavor of having twist from being attacked by a shaman witch was a really nice touch. It captured the creepy vibe of Gilneas, while telling a story which made me rate the theme of the set highly. The mixture of known characters from warcraft with these new characters worked well, instead of Kolbods making up nearly all there characters, which i felt kind of making that expansion worse than Witchwood in theme.
Legendary Rating: 8/10
I Loved the Witchwood Legendaries. In Kolbolds and Catacombs most of the ledgendaries were either too gimicky or just Meh. Rhok'delar, Dragoncaller Alanna and Marin the Fox were the only Legendaries i was excited for as the rest just were pretty underwhelming. Yes Skull of the Man'ari and Rin, the First Disciple were also good, but i found them just more oppressive compared to the rest of the sets legendaries whom all seemed on a much lower power level.
The witchwoods legendaries were alot more playable IMO, yes you still had gimicky and oppressive legendaries in the set like Baku the Mooneater, who turned out to be REALLY good and the two druid legendaries who were joke cards. However, most of the cards seemed more fun and interesting that could be used in many decks. Toki, Time-Tinker andChameleos were really fun! Tess Greymane [/card]made Burgle rogue a thing! [card]Azalina Soulthief worked pretty good in fun decks! Hagatha the Witchis now played in nearly every shaman deck.
The Rest of the card: 5/10
The rest of the set i felt lacked what the Legendaries had. You had good cards in Witchwood such as Blink Fox and Rotten Applebaum, however many of the card lacked power. Some used Echo and Rush, but were too weak. Some were made mostly only for arena and some just were too boring and situational.
Furthermore, i did not like how some classes were supported in this set. For example Mage was given big spell support last set, but got not a single spell over 5 mana this expansion. I know they dont always print cards that support every archetype every set, but i felt like it was very disappointing that they kind of dropped big mage this set, when it needed a few stronger spells to help it.
Also were are the murloc these days? i know that they printed one for shaman, but i feel like they kind of forgot about them in the last 3 sets, which is a bit unfortunate. i loved the flavour of the Ghost murloc, but i feel like they should have printed more murlocs in the set as it would have been nice to see a neutral murloc.
Single player content: 6/10
Now this is a interesting one to rate. The single player adventure was good, BUT it was just good...nothing more. I loved the idea of doing 4 classes that had there own set of cards and hero powers, but by doing that they made the single player content really short. Compared to dungeon runs, it was a bit of a let down as it took half the time to complete.
The final boss was not as good as it should have been IMO. I do have to say that the mini final bosses for each of the classes were really fun and powerful! i loved the TOKI VS TOKI fight , but Hagatha the witch as a boss was a real let down. She felt mostly too generic for a final boss. She was not really too difficult to fight and required only 1 or 2 goes to defeat her for a large amount of people, which should have not been the case.
Overall the Single player content could have been better imo. It was hyped up alot, but fell to deliver the excitement that was needed.
Summary:
What i loved about WitchWood:
Great theme, felt like very World of Warcrafty
cool legendaries (Much better than Kolbolds imo)
Some of the boss fights in the single player was funny and great to play
Set up for the second expansion of the year with a pretty good meta atm
What i did not like about Witchwood:
some cards felt boring, situational or weak
Single player was too short and rushed in some cases
The end fight against Hagatha the witch was Really disappointing
I totally support your summary. Even though I never played WoW it felt like the story was well done.
But what I really want to add that this expansion helped to get the most balanced meta since I started playing HS in March 2016. I really think they finally did the best job to get all the classes viable and there is arguably no brainless deck oppressing the meta.
It would have been good if not for the KAC hangover. Interesting you mentioned mage and murlocs. That combination is really working for me at the moment. Sure, odd paladin out aggros it and sometimes a control or combo player draws the nuts and wipes you out in a big way, but otherwise it's a handful for the decks out there at the moment.
Loved the music, loved the theme, loved the art, liked the single player content, loved the janky legendaries, loved the promotional stuff (Brode and friends exploring spooky woods).
But it failed to even tickle most of the meta in ways that only Karazhan and TGT can compare, and unlike the latter, it had rotations to help it be more relevant. The nerfs and the rotations gave us a balanced meta, not Witchwood itself.
In short, I liked every single non-gameplay aspect of Witchwood.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
It would have been good if not for the KAC hangover.
I think this is a big point. KAC and KOFT still have an incredible influence, and it makes Witchwood feel less like a full expansion, and more like a supplement.
The only Wtichwood cards that made an impact all by themselves appear to be Baku, Genn, Shudderwock, and Wispering Woods (Token Druid was a thing before, but it never hasn't looked this midrange-y combo-y in a long time). In fairness, Baku and Genn's influence is almost as big as the DK's.
And the other Wtichwood impact cards really just supplement a lot of KAC or KOFT decks (e.g. Witching Hour, Godfrey)
I think the game is in a good state. You can argue that it's in too good a state if you want, people do. But every class has a T1 or T2 deck. You can probably make legend playing basically anything.
1) There are some fun legendaries, but very few that are absolutely required or game-breaking, especially the class ones. This is good for the cost of competitive play.
2) I was incredibly skeptical of Genn and Baku, but what I failed to anticipate (aside from the fact that they're viable to begin with) is that the restriction brings a ton of new cards into the meta that we wouldn't normally see. We're suddenly seeing Hooked Reaver, Shroom Brewer, Dread Infernal, Fire Elemental, Raid Leader, and Stormwind Champion in the meta. Some of these are cards I haven't seen played since I first started playing in the rank 25 range. Others would simply be an afterthought if not for the even/odd mechanic (did anyone expect Earthen Might to see play?)
I think it's going to make every expansion more exciting from here on out, too. We're not simply looking for the best cards now, but we have to consider them from an even/odd standpoint.
3) There are a lot of cards that are just well-designed. Arcane Keysmith, for instance, feels to me like the most balanced discover card they've ever released. Witchwood Piper is a pretty cool tutoring tool that helps some decks with consistency. The rush mechanic in general hasn't quite taken off, but cards like Darius Crowley, Scaleworm, and Militia Commander allow you to fight for the board in a way that hasn't really been possible outside of spells in the past.
All in all, it's the perfect expansion to me: one that adds some interesting new concepts and creates a foundation to build upon without rendering every previous card and archetype obsolete.
It was a good expansion overall. The the theme was great, and the cards were consistent. My only complaint is that there wasn't a lot of new or original things added into the game, it was just kind of a vanilla expansion. Most of the cards and legendaries were boring, and the dungeon run was super fun but easy and short.
Loved the music, loved the theme, loved the art, liked the single player content, loved the janky legendaries, loved the promotional stuff (Brode and friends exploring spooky woods).
But it failed to even tickle most of the meta in ways that only Karazhan and TGT can compare, and unlike the latter, it had rotations to help it be more relevant. The nerfs and the rotations gave us a balanced meta, not Witchwood itself.
In short, I liked every single non-gameplay aspect of Witchwood.
I agree with everything you said, but the fact we agree on this kind of issues so often concerns me Morkimus... Are we the same person? Are you sure you're not me but from another dimension or a parallel universe? LOL. :P
Jokes aside, maybe the real reason why we agree most of the time on this kind of issues is just because we are not blind Blizzard fanboys. Yeah, that must be case. ;)
I'm pretty happy with the expansion but I really hate Shudderwock decks, since they beat any control deck 99 % of the time and that's just sad and very bad gamedesign. Also not many people complain about it, so Blizzard won't change it. And all they need to do is freaking nerf Lifedrinker...
Blizzard was like ok lets nerf quest rogue cause it kills control. Little did they know. Or did they?
Honestly there has to exist an opressive deck vs control so that aggro exists. Free wins for control vs aggro free wins aggro vs Shudderwock u get the picture
Loved the music, loved the theme, loved the art, liked the single player content, loved the janky legendaries, loved the promotional stuff (Brode and friends exploring spooky woods).
But it failed to even tickle most of the meta in ways that only Karazhan and TGT can compare, and unlike the latter, it had rotations to help it be more relevant. The nerfs and the rotations gave us a balanced meta, not Witchwood itself.
In short, I liked every single non-gameplay aspect of Witchwood.
I agree with everything you said, but the fact we agree on this kind of issues so often concerns me Morkimus... Are we the same person? Are you sure you're not me but from another dimension or a parallel universe? LOL. :P
Jokes aside, maybe the real reason why we agree most of the time on this kind of issues is just because we are not blind Blizzard fanboys. Yeah, that must be case. ;)
You agree all the time because you are both my hearthpwn waifus. #nohomo
I think I like what they did in this expansion I can see they are working hard to make the game better and more fun .. I mean comon when was the last time you saw all Classes having a competitive Decks to play ?
But it I think the cards are the worst among all expansions .. Maybe some cards will turn out to be op after the full release of Witchwood until then we cant rate this expansion completely ...
Power level feels good this expansion, there are lots of fun tools for deck builders, after the nerfs to older OP cards the meta became pretty diverse.
I mean comon when was the last time you saw all Classes having a competitive Decks to play?
Ungoro. And black rock mountain. And really any meta right after rotation will be diverse because there aren't any extremely game breaking combos released yet. How good was raza priest before shadowreaper anduin was printed? Or how good was cubelock before cubes? The meta will get increasingly less diverse as new expansions add new game breaking interactions, until they all rotate and it becomes diverse again. Its not the expansion that makes the meta diverse, its the rotation.
Loved the music, loved the theme, loved the art, liked the single player content, loved the janky legendaries, loved the promotional stuff (Brode and friends exploring spooky woods).
But it failed to even tickle most of the meta in ways that only Karazhan and TGT can compare, and unlike the latter, it had rotations to help it be more relevant. The nerfs and the rotations gave us a balanced meta, not Witchwood itself.
In short, I liked every single non-gameplay aspect of Witchwood.
I agree with everything you said, but the fact we agree on this kind of issues so often concerns me Morkimus... Are we the same person? Are you sure you're not me but from another dimension or a parallel universe? LOL. :P
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Now the next expansion is quickly approaching, i wanted to see what other people thought of the WitchWood expansion now that its been out for over two months. This is going to be my own opinion, so please understand that. I am going to rate different things out of 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.
Theme of Witchwood: 7/10
I think the WitchWood had a more of a Warcraft feel than Kolbolds and Catacombs. The feeling of the expansion set in Gilneas, with the extra flavor of having twist from being attacked by a shaman witch was a really nice touch. It captured the creepy vibe of Gilneas, while telling a story which made me rate the theme of the set highly. The mixture of known characters from warcraft with these new characters worked well, instead of Kolbods making up nearly all there characters, which i felt kind of making that expansion worse than Witchwood in theme.
Legendary Rating: 8/10
I Loved the Witchwood Legendaries. In Kolbolds and Catacombs most of the ledgendaries were either too gimicky or just Meh. Rhok'delar, Dragoncaller Alanna and Marin the Fox were the only Legendaries i was excited for as the rest just were pretty underwhelming. Yes Skull of the Man'ari and Rin, the First Disciple were also good, but i found them just more oppressive compared to the rest of the sets legendaries whom all seemed on a much lower power level.
The witchwoods legendaries were alot more playable IMO, yes you still had gimicky and oppressive legendaries in the set like Baku the Mooneater, who turned out to be REALLY good and the two druid legendaries who were joke cards. However, most of the cards seemed more fun and interesting that could be used in many decks. Toki, Time-Tinker andChameleos were really fun! Tess Greymane [/card]made Burgle rogue a thing! [card]Azalina Soulthief worked pretty good in fun decks! Hagatha the Witchis now played in nearly every shaman deck.
The Rest of the card: 5/10
The rest of the set i felt lacked what the Legendaries had. You had good cards in Witchwood such as Blink Fox and Rotten Applebaum, however many of the card lacked power. Some used Echo and Rush, but were too weak. Some were made mostly only for arena and some just were too boring and situational.
Furthermore, i did not like how some classes were supported in this set. For example Mage was given big spell support last set, but got not a single spell over 5 mana this expansion. I know they dont always print cards that support every archetype every set, but i felt like it was very disappointing that they kind of dropped big mage this set, when it needed a few stronger spells to help it.
Also were are the murloc these days? i know that they printed one for shaman, but i feel like they kind of forgot about them in the last 3 sets, which is a bit unfortunate. i loved the flavour of the Ghost murloc, but i feel like they should have printed more murlocs in the set as it would have been nice to see a neutral murloc.
Single player content: 6/10
Now this is a interesting one to rate. The single player adventure was good, BUT it was just good...nothing more. I loved the idea of doing 4 classes that had there own set of cards and hero powers, but by doing that they made the single player content really short. Compared to dungeon runs, it was a bit of a let down as it took half the time to complete.
The final boss was not as good as it should have been IMO. I do have to say that the mini final bosses for each of the classes were really fun and powerful! i loved the TOKI VS TOKI fight , but Hagatha the witch as a boss was a real let down. She felt mostly too generic for a final boss. She was not really too difficult to fight and required only 1 or 2 goes to defeat her for a large amount of people, which should have not been the case.
Overall the Single player content could have been better imo. It was hyped up alot, but fell to deliver the excitement that was needed.
Summary:
What i loved about WitchWood:
What i did not like about Witchwood:
Overall expansion rating: 7/10
I totally support your summary. Even though I never played WoW it felt like the story was well done.
But what I really want to add that this expansion helped to get the most balanced meta since I started playing HS in March 2016.
I really think they finally did the best job to get all the classes viable and there is arguably no brainless deck oppressing the meta.
1/10.
-Those who do not understand true pain, can never understand true peace.-
It would have been good if not for the KAC hangover. Interesting you mentioned mage and murlocs. That combination is really working for me at the moment. Sure, odd paladin out aggros it and sometimes a control or combo player draws the nuts and wipes you out in a big way, but otherwise it's a handful for the decks out there at the moment.
Loved the music, loved the theme, loved the art, liked the single player content, loved the janky legendaries, loved the promotional stuff (Brode and friends exploring spooky woods).
But it failed to even tickle most of the meta in ways that only Karazhan and TGT can compare, and unlike the latter, it had rotations to help it be more relevant. The nerfs and the rotations gave us a balanced meta, not Witchwood itself.
In short, I liked every single non-gameplay aspect of Witchwood.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
In my opinion, the Gilnean theme is cool, but its realisation lacked the depth reached by, say, Whispers of the Old Gods.
Gameplay is just great, candidate for the best ever, with only Un'Goro as a challenger.
I think this is a big point. KAC and KOFT still have an incredible influence, and it makes Witchwood feel less like a full expansion, and more like a supplement.
The only Wtichwood cards that made an impact all by themselves appear to be Baku, Genn, Shudderwock, and Wispering Woods (Token Druid was a thing before, but it never hasn't looked this midrange-y combo-y in a long time). In fairness, Baku and Genn's influence is almost as big as the DK's.
And the other Wtichwood impact cards really just supplement a lot of KAC or KOFT decks (e.g. Witching Hour, Godfrey)
I think the game is in a good state. You can argue that it's in too good a state if you want, people do. But every class has a T1 or T2 deck. You can probably make legend playing basically anything.
I'm a fan.
1) There are some fun legendaries, but very few that are absolutely required or game-breaking, especially the class ones. This is good for the cost of competitive play.
2) I was incredibly skeptical of Genn and Baku, but what I failed to anticipate (aside from the fact that they're viable to begin with) is that the restriction brings a ton of new cards into the meta that we wouldn't normally see. We're suddenly seeing Hooked Reaver, Shroom Brewer, Dread Infernal, Fire Elemental, Raid Leader, and Stormwind Champion in the meta. Some of these are cards I haven't seen played since I first started playing in the rank 25 range. Others would simply be an afterthought if not for the even/odd mechanic (did anyone expect Earthen Might to see play?)
I think it's going to make every expansion more exciting from here on out, too. We're not simply looking for the best cards now, but we have to consider them from an even/odd standpoint.
3) There are a lot of cards that are just well-designed. Arcane Keysmith, for instance, feels to me like the most balanced discover card they've ever released. Witchwood Piper is a pretty cool tutoring tool that helps some decks with consistency. The rush mechanic in general hasn't quite taken off, but cards like Darius Crowley, Scaleworm, and Militia Commander allow you to fight for the board in a way that hasn't really been possible outside of spells in the past.
All in all, it's the perfect expansion to me: one that adds some interesting new concepts and creates a foundation to build upon without rendering every previous card and archetype obsolete.
It was a good expansion overall. The the theme was great, and the cards were consistent. My only complaint is that there wasn't a lot of new or original things added into the game, it was just kind of a vanilla expansion. Most of the cards and legendaries were boring, and the dungeon run was super fun but easy and short.
I agree with everything you said, but the fact we agree on this kind of issues so often concerns me Morkimus... Are we the same person? Are you sure you're not me but from another dimension or a parallel universe? LOL. :P
Jokes aside, maybe the real reason why we agree most of the time on this kind of issues is just because we are not blind Blizzard fanboys. Yeah, that must be case. ;)
This expansion is a blast, I hope Blizzard will make every expansion like this and forget about broken stupid cards.
Top deck is cheat
When is the next expansion arriving?
Blizzard was like ok lets nerf quest rogue cause it kills control. Little did they know. Or did they?
Honestly there has to exist an opressive deck vs control so that aggro exists. Free wins for control vs aggro free wins aggro vs Shudderwock u get the picture
You agree all the time because you are both my hearthpwn waifus. #nohomo
And ofcourse i agree with you.
I think I like what they did in this expansion I can see they are working hard to make the game better and more fun .. I mean comon when was the last time you saw all Classes having a competitive Decks to play ?
But it I think the cards are the worst among all expansions .. Maybe some cards will turn out to be op after the full release of Witchwood until then we cant rate this expansion completely ...
Power level feels good this expansion, there are lots of fun tools for deck builders, after the nerfs to older OP cards the meta became pretty diverse.
9/10 for me, great balance and fun.
Toki MH 2/10, everything else 7/10.
Ungoro. And black rock mountain. And really any meta right after rotation will be diverse because there aren't any extremely game breaking combos released yet. How good was raza priest before shadowreaper anduin was printed? Or how good was cubelock before cubes? The meta will get increasingly less diverse as new expansions add new game breaking interactions, until they all rotate and it becomes diverse again. Its not the expansion that makes the meta diverse, its the rotation.
It wasn't horrible as everyone expecting it to be but it's still nowhere near loe quality or bad as tgt i'd rate it a 5/10
i play cubelock and lose 5 games in a row then i play odd paladin and get my stars back wash rinse repeat
I am obviously your Portuguese Doppelgangster.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Care to elaborate?