Hearthpwn

 I am a designer by profession. So perhaps I can weigh in on this a bit.

The stats after day 1 were absolutely substantial. You are right in that they are weighted in an alarming manner. But the truth is that it is day 1 and those stats are not necessarily indicative of oppression. This could be a result of a multitude of factors that really need to have a larger discussion around them by people who are able to analyze a lot more than players can.

I think there are some issues with Shaman at the moment and a lot of that is just overall player experience. A new set dropping and still leaving players feeling like they are behind if they are not playing shaman, doesn't really give players the opportunity to enjoy the new set as a designer may have intended. I think to assume that shaman shouldn't be changed is a bit naive, because it has clearly warped the meta for some time now, in such a way that it is hindering the play ability of a lot of other potential candidates. The last thing you want as a developer and designer is to have a single class stagnating your game when you are injecting fresh content.

He is right to tell you that the statistics are not entirely relevant as you would otherwise suggest. You are not entirely accurate when you suggest that they are.

But he is also not looking at the big picture, where you are on the other end of it as a player.

As for the new expansion, I do believe shaman needs some adjustments to the new cards. The invoke mechanic is overwhelmingly robust for shaman, especially when you can just finish your quest and hit a single Invoke card and your Galakrond is good to go. I don't think the quest itself is really any more powerful than a lot of other things in the game and it will inevitably fade into obscurity after rotation until it crops up every now and then in Wild. The problem with it is that everything else you are doing around it in Standard scales exponentially with it and with some adjustments to THOSE cards, you can really start to rein it in.

Corrupt Elementalist should either be changed to only invoke 1 time, or have an overload cost to it. I have played a good number of games where following that up with anything in the same curve is just absurd sometimes. The card is fine as is, if you don't allow players to snowball immediately afterwards, otherwise you need to scale it down.

Galakrond, the Tempest may be better off scaling to a max of 6/6's.

Mogu Fleshshaper really does not need rush or needs stat adjustments. In a similar sense, Faceless Corruptor should either lose rush or have stat adjustments made. The difference is that you can keep Corruptor the same and just adjust the mana cost as well, where Fleshshaper just becomes a new card entirely if you adjust the mana cost.

At the end of the day, Galakrond Shaman has impressive day 1 stats that have tapered down a bit, but not enough to say that shaman should be left alone. But the stats are not the only important factor here, a majority of it is just how shaman is warping the game mode currently and how that impacts a new set release after previously having strong showings prior to the new set.

deleted due to double post

Quote from Zaywop >>

Will need someone to explain to me how non quest is better.

well the non quest version runs more card draw which is really important on the other hand, quest version runs out of cards really fast. other than that they run that 3/3 legendary that trigger next spell twice which can lead to 4 5/6 minions with taunt at turn 8 or 2 cards drawn with far sight and non quest is simply faster than quest version and that's a big deal since tempo is super important and most games gets decieded by who is the first that plays galk/ shudderwok. and every turn you have 2 extra mana.

Erm...what? How on earth does quest shaman run out of cards? It has a far more powerful, far more efficient draw engine. Being able to run questing explorer, novice, and big ol whelp for draw, as well as double up on any late game lackies for some really insane value generation. Also, since quest shaman gets to run MCT, using electra to double up on dragons pack has led me to just spend 5 to steal two of theirs, and then use my own left over mana to just out tempo them. The only good draw trick non quest has is the ability to use far sight with her to draw two, and get a discount. But given how it is still running low cost cards, that can end up not having the greatest payoff either. Which is one of my main issues with non quest galakrond. Just how reliant it is on good rng with cards like far sight and mutate.

Also the idea that it's whoever plays galk first wins, is absolutely wrong. I will purposefully wait until after they play theirs in a grinder game, and blow them out with the counter. Turns out having 2 8/8s that can't hit face that turn have a habit of losing to 4 that can trade. And as for shudderwock value, quest again will just have the better shudderwock typically. More draw effects, more generation effects. More battlecries in general, and sometimes even the 1-2 aoe damage from sandstorms really help control a late game board if tempo is needed.

Just saying that non quest has 2 more mana is somewhat asinine, as it's implying it's 2 mana wasted, when in reality it is often the most valued 2 mana every turn for quest shaman. And any turn where it isn't (such as turns where I've played dragons pack combined with corruptor), I'm of course not going to press the button. 

TL;DR... playing against shaman, reading about shaman... I'm afraid I'll end up sleeping with a shaman...

Quote from Crawver >>

Quote from Zaywop >>

Will need someone to explain to me how non quest is better.

well the non quest version runs more card draw which is really important on the other hand, quest version runs out of cards really fast. other than that they run that 3/3 legendary that trigger next spell twice which can lead to 4 5/6 minions with taunt at turn 8 or 2 cards drawn with far sight and non quest is simply faster than quest version and that's a big deal since tempo is super important and most games gets decieded by who is the first that plays galk/ shudderwok. and every turn you have 2 extra mana.

 

Erm...what? How on earth does quest shaman run out of cards? It has a far more powerful, far more efficient draw engine. Being able to run questing explorer, novice, and big ol whelp for draw, as well as double up on any late game lackies for some really insane value generation. Also, since quest shaman gets to run MCT, using electra to double up on dragons pack has led me to just spend 5 to steal two of theirs, and then use my own left over mana to just out tempo them. The only good draw trick non quest has is the ability to use far sight with her to draw two, and get a discount. But given how it is still running low cost cards, that can end up not having the greatest payoff either. Which is one of my main issues with non quest galakrond. Just how reliant it is on good rng with cards like far sight and mutate.

Also the idea that it's whoever plays galk first wins, is absolutely wrong. I will purposefully wait until after they play theirs in a grinder game, and blow them out with the counter. Turns out having 2 8/8s that can't hit face that turn have a habit of losing to 4 that can trade. And as for shudderwock value, quest again will just have the better shudderwock typically. More draw effects, more generation effects. More battlecries in general, and sometimes even the 1-2 aoe damage from sandstorms really help control a late game board if tempo is needed.

Just saying that non quest has 2 more mana is somewhat asinine, as it's implying it's 2 mana wasted, when in reality it is often the most valued 2 mana every turn for quest shaman. And any turn where it isn't (such as turns where I've played dragons pack combined with corruptor), I'm of course not going to press the button. 

 you know what, just add me, you play the quest i play the non quest, best of 3 lets go

tip: don't play big ole welp, it's fucking bad.

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

Quote from FTPhack >>

I kinda think if they changed Invoke to not being a battlecry effect then it might even things out enough w/o killing the deck.

 The best version of deck doesn't run quest so this wouldn't really help that much. 

 Shudderwock would get screwed too though.

Quote from SinAscendant >>

Quote from sPacEtiMe19 >>

Quote from Zaywop >>

Honestly I think the deck is no where close to overpowered. 

 And what are you, in the .1% of people who feel this way, playing to beat it consistently while also not losing to everything else? 50% playrate and 64% winrate aren't just bogus stats, it's actually what's happening. 

 Except they are bogus stats. The winrate of the deck was 69% on D1, so it's already gone down by 5% in 2 days, and we don't have today's stats yet. 

 

And HSreplay has it at about 27% playrate, so you're wrong on both counts.

 Winrate went down because playrate skyrocketed, genius! Have you ever heard about "mirror match"?

Look all these shamans trying to defend their op deck XD

Currently it is broken af. It baffles me how the fuck they didn’t attach overload to some of the cards. The 5 mana invoke twice should have 2 overload, taunted wolves as well, 1 mana freeze invoke should overload you for 1.

Love Gala Shaman.

Playing it at Casual. Owning everyone. Bring the nerfs.
Will take the next Tier 1 deck to Casual and continue the pwnage

Quote from yeah2see >>

Love Gala Shaman.

Playing it at Casual. Owning everyone. Bring the nerfs.
Will take the next Tier 1 deck to Casual and continue the pwnage

 

 look, we have a bamf over here

Quote from jainaishot >>

Look all these shamans trying to defend their op deck XD

 100% accurate.

I don't like it as much as I did love Evolve Shaman

7 wins 0 losses with.

Against, 2 wins and around a dozen losses. Both wins with treant Druid, barely winning by getting wide enough to roar them down before they could play Galakrond.

The deck is broken, being simultaneously agro, midrange, control and combo.

Quote from jainaishot >>

Look all these shamans trying to defend their op deck XD

A lot of it is less about defending their deck and more about calling out this over policing that is based less on facts and more on feels bad statements.

What is more toxic than OP decks, is ignorant players.

Quote from Zaywop >>

Quote from Crawver >>

Quote from Zaywop >>

Will need someone to explain to me how non quest is better.

well the non quest version runs more card draw which is really important on the other hand, quest version runs out of cards really fast. other than that they run that 3/3 legendary that trigger next spell twice which can lead to 4 5/6 minions with taunt at turn 8 or 2 cards drawn with far sight and non quest is simply faster than quest version and that's a big deal since tempo is super important and most games gets decieded by who is the first that plays galk/ shudderwok. and every turn you have 2 extra mana.

 

Erm...what? How on earth does quest shaman run out of cards? It has a far more powerful, far more efficient draw engine. Being able to run questing explorer, novice, and big ol whelp for draw, as well as double up on any late game lackies for some really insane value generation. Also, since quest shaman gets to run MCT, using electra to double up on dragons pack has led me to just spend 5 to steal two of theirs, and then use my own left over mana to just out tempo them. The only good draw trick non quest has is the ability to use far sight with her to draw two, and get a discount. But given how it is still running low cost cards, that can end up not having the greatest payoff either. Which is one of my main issues with non quest galakrond. Just how reliant it is on good rng with cards like far sight and mutate.

Also the idea that it's whoever plays galk first wins, is absolutely wrong. I will purposefully wait until after they play theirs in a grinder game, and blow them out with the counter. Turns out having 2 8/8s that can't hit face that turn have a habit of losing to 4 that can trade. And as for shudderwock value, quest again will just have the better shudderwock typically. More draw effects, more generation effects. More battlecries in general, and sometimes even the 1-2 aoe damage from sandstorms really help control a late game board if tempo is needed.

Just saying that non quest has 2 more mana is somewhat asinine, as it's implying it's 2 mana wasted, when in reality it is often the most valued 2 mana every turn for quest shaman. And any turn where it isn't (such as turns where I've played dragons pack combined with corruptor), I'm of course not going to press the button. 

 you know what, just add me, you play the quest i play the non quest, best of 3 lets go

tip: don't play big ole welp, it's fucking bad.

 Sure friend, sure. Unfortunately, I don't really value your bravado enough to take the bait. Especially since my days off have run out before christmas, so I've got a work to go to now. So I guess either justify your positions, or I'm just not going to take them seriously. Don't really have the time now to waste an hour fighting on a hill that I'm not that invested in.

Quote from Yucca_Colbal >>

they would only really have to change it on the Invoke twice card.

maybe make it a death rattle instead, or bring back inspire.

Inspire: Invoke Gala twice. would be more fair i think

 The double plays are what do it like the card that invokes twice. I think nerfing it would help. I know rogues can get double battlecry from sharks but quest shaman can get 4 invokes off one card. Even the little 1 mana freeze spell being so cheap without overload is just too simple to cast twice with or zentimo it for maybe 3 casts etc.  

I gave into the dark side and made the first shaman I’ve played on ladder. I added [Card] Storm Bringer [/Storm Bringer] in and on the double invokes or from any of the big board swarms it’s insane because I don’t think the shaman deck has even gotten close to optimized and it’s still insane 

Nerf it....and FAST

Quote from Zaywop >>

Honestly I think the deck is no where close to overpowered.