The OP is being EXTREMLY biased how he counts cards. For example:
In this upcoming set he counts cards that "need holy spells" or "need nature spells" but in previous sets he doesn't count items with spell damage or spell burst cards or other cards that obviously will only work with other cards
True, I didn;t count Spellburst legendaries as build arounds, mostly cause I felt you can use any spell you want and it's almost impossible to build a deck without including a healthy amount of spells. I didn;t feel that was quite the specific enough restriction.
I'll give credit to the person above though that mentioned Saviors of Uldum. I had stopped looking through sets at Descent of Dragons, but if you go back to Uldum and Rise of Shadows, there's actually quite a bit of build arounds, with pretty specific restrictions to make Legendaries work. Uldum has the unfair advantage of having Quests, which were automatic build arounds for every class, but there's still quite a few outside of those too. And Rise of Shadows actually has a bunch of them too.
And looking back on those build around legendaries from 2 years ago, some of them never panned out. >.<
So maybe Year of the Phoenix was a deliberate step back in build around cards and a deliberate step towards more stand alone power and we are only now getting back again to previous levels.
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I would need to check the sets to evaluate the claim, but if OP is right, i think it's a good thing. Legendaries should in general define archetypes and not just be overpowered cards. And it's a very good thing for newer players. First it gives them a theme if they want to build a deck of their own and second it reduces the number of decks that run an insane amount of legendaries. When I started the game, facing Highlander Decks was kind of frustrating to me, not because the power level, but because I knew I couldn't afford the 6+ legendaries some of them are yousing. Makes you feel inferior even if you actually have a good chance of beating the opponent.
It's sort of strange how they continue to make so many situational legendary cards when "add a random legendary to your hand" is a common theme. One which is held back continually by the situational nature of the legendary card pool.
Now, I think even removing the low roll chance of getting Lorewalker Cho, Nat Pagle and Milhouse Manastorm improves that pool immensely anyway. To the point that it might be worth it for a card like Brightwing. But... it's still a strange trend.
It's sort of strange how they continue to make so many situational legendary cards when "add a random legendary to your hand" is a common theme. One which is held back continually by the situational nature of the legendary card pool.
Now, I think even removing the low roll chance of getting Lorewalker Cho, Nat Pagle and Milhouse Manastorm improves that pool immensely anyway. To the point that it might be worth it for a card like Brightwing. But... it's still a strange trend.
I'm beginning to think that the current situation is not so much a new direction, as it is one end of a see-saw, with the one end very specific build around legendaries and the other end very generic stand alone power legendaries.
And I think this expansion strikes pretty hard towards one end where the previous Year struck pretty hard towards the other end.
I think this makes more sense than my initial take when I made the post that it was a new, previously unseen direction.
I think the problem is that in my mind's eye there were not that many build around cards from the past expansions in Standard, while actually, there were, but a lot of them just never quite worked. Like Commander Rhyssa and Oblivitron.
I also think there might be an increase in specific-ness of the requirements, where previous build arounds were more loosely worded, like Keeper Stalladris being good with ANY Choose One card, allowing for quite some flexibility still but that is probably explained with the introduction of Spell schools allowing for the more specific nature then was previously seen.
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Isn't every card in this game meant to enable or be enabled by other cards ?
On some cards they force the requirement but it's no different than a Frost Nova or a Self-Sharpening Sword if you know what I mean.
Some cards are worse than others in a vaccum, but all cards are better with synergy
Not quite.
Ysera, Unleashed is good on it's own. You can put it in any deck you wish and it will be a strong card.
Kargal Battlescar is pointless without Watchpost cards and can only be put in decks and function if you include them too.
and
Kurtrus Ashfallen works on it's own in any Demon Hunter deck. You can build various archetypes of decks and include this and it will just work.
Firemancer Flurgl is a pointless card in most Shaman decks. It needs specifically a Murloc Shaman deck to work, which means you need other (Shaman) Murloc synergy cards.
and, pulling away from current expansion:
Soul Mirror can find a spot in any Priest deck and work, doesn't matter much which cards you put in with it.
Shadowjeweler Hanar needs you to specifically run secrets with it, or it is a dead card.
That's what I mean. We are getting more Shadowjeweler Hanar's and Kargal Battlescars in this expansion than we are used to seeing.
I do agree with the person above though that mentioned spell schools. That might indeed be part of the reason why we see more specific legendaries now, as a few of them have that stipulation.
Yeah but that's not true (your first sentence), you can indeed put Ysera unleashed in every deck and activate its effect in every deck but it won't be equally strong in every deck. And druid is in kind of a weird place with ramp and Ysera, allowing him to play Ysera even in very aggressive token decks (as a matter of fact I do play Ysera in my token druid, without ramp, that's how good she is), generating essentially a bunch of huge tokens at the end of the curve, or in very heavy control decks to get some free presence on the board over multiple turns, that was a great example for your point but kind of unfair to be honest, Ysera in more the exception than the rule.
I understand what you mean don't worry about that, i'm just saying every card has certain "requirements" to be played optimally and you always try to play optimally, for any given deck you always need 25-29 other cards to build around your win condition and what I mean is that it doesn't really matter if the requirement is a specific card decided by Blizzard or a card of your choice, these 25-29 cards will end up being the same that everyone plays, wether it's built around Firemancer Flurgl or Ysera, Unleashed. However it does matter for deck diversity.
And in every expansion there are plenty of cards that require you to play specific cards instead of letting the community discovers which cards would be the best combination. Cards like OG C'Thun, Mysterious Challenger, Undertaker... It's not new, even in basic and classic set. (doomhammer virtually requiring rockbiter, eaglehorn bow not-virtually requiring secrets, etc)
Maybe there are slightly more in this particular expansion, I haven't noticed, but I don't think this is a trend, there must always be simple cards with very low requirement, cause they are essential to new players and new players are the highest priority of Blizzard by far, so don't worry, there will always be standalone cards in the game.
Think about it the other way, if there were no card with forced requirement or situational effects, there would be far less diversity in the meta, because every one would just play the best combination of 30 cards for every class, each class would essentially have 1 or 2 decks, 1 aggro and 1 control.
Without Shadowjeweler Hanar, would you ever play secrets in your rogue deck ?
Without Kargal Battlescar, would you even care to experiment with the watchpost cards ? In fact I suspect the watchposts to see more play than Kargal but that's a topic for another time.
Of course it's not always true, like demon hunters who can play the cards without Soulciologist Malicia, which is a good thing, it may lower the overall value of Malicia compared to a less restricted legendary, but it increases the value of the soul fragment cards in exchange. And Il'gynoth who can be played in virtually every deck (I don't think there's a single DH deck without any lifesteal) will in the end only see play in a single, extremely specific OTK deck, while specific situationnal Malicia can see play in a variety of decks. Not the best example, because the soul fragment cards are very strong and universal, but still, you get my point.
The cards that have more specific requirements generally have more powerful effects, and my point is that these cards very often require playable common and rare cards to function, and even the most casual of players has all the commons and rares at the end of an expansion cycle. So that is why I said that I don't see these cards as fundamentally different than "normal" cards that require other "normal" cards to function.
In the end it's up to you to play these highly synergistic decks that can completely ruin your game if you draw in the wrong order and require you to unpack specific commons and rares, sometimes epics I guess, or more streamlined, curve-ish decks with more consistent hands but less power plays.
Also, worth mentioning I think, every year it's harder and harder for control decks to keep up with powercreep. They have to print crazy powerful high cost cards, and as a result they have to balance these cards with specific requirements and deck building restrictions so we don't just auto-win be playing the card without doing any work. It's a never ending struggle between aggro and control to keep them fairly balanced against each other.
A lot of legendaries require decks to be built around them. The animal gods and high priests from Rastakhan’s Rumble stand out particularly: Hireek the Bat and High Priestess Jeklik both work in specific archetypes, for example. Ringmaster Whatley exists to facilitate menagerie warrior. There are tons of legendary cards like this going back years; quests, for example, require a specific kind of deck. For a long time they have been very careful about not creating too many cards that are likely to get thrown into every deck of the associated class for the entire cycle, or cards like Zilliax that go into every deck, period.
This coming meta feels very tempo oriented. Midrange style I think. It feels like they are trying to recapture the original game with minion focused tempo plays, with buffs being the deciding factor in who wins.
So yes I agree with the OP. It does feel like a change in design philosophy, trying to recapture former glory with recycled ideas grafted onto new cards, but thats HS for the past few years anyways. Only so many ways you can spice up a card game thats basically the olf game of War we played as kids, where a 4 beats a 3, and a 3 beats a 2. So Hearthstone game design is fairly limited, so I like the new ideas they are bringing to the table.
I don't think there is enough proof for your idea OP but it would be good if true.
I think more synergistic and themed decks are more fun. Plus less general value cards, especially less general value Legendaries makes the game more easy to play. Deck costs have been going up over time, And Blizz printing more Legends is a big part of it.
Legendary cards have often been this kind of synergystic build-around cards (in order for them to realise their potential at least), I don't think that's something new in the Barrens expansion.
Looking at DMF + mini-set we have: Il'gynoth (buildaround card, needs lifesteal spells/weapons to make use of its power), Maxima Blastenheimer (another buildaround card that only works in decks with expensive minions with powerful deathrattles), Deck of Lunacy (only makes sense in very spell-heavy decks), Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon (not buildaround, but only playable in decks that run secrets), Lothraxion the Redeemed (requires you to play cards that summon dudes to get value from him), High Exarch Yrel (not sure it belongs in the same category, but running it comes with severe deck restrictions), Dark Inquisitor Xanesh (only makes sense in decks with lots of corrupt cards), Grand Totem Eys'or (useless outside of totem Shaman), Inara Stormcrash (only makes sense if you run weapons), Deck of Chaos (bad card, but the definition of a buildaround legendary), E.T.C., God of Metal (either a buildaround card for the ETC combo OTK deck, or a key card in an aggro deck with tons of rush minions), Ringmaster Whatley (needs specific menagerie builds) and of course 3 of the 4 old gods (outside C'Thun), so that's a grand total of 15 out of 29 legendaries.
In Scholomance Academy it is somewhat similar, without going into detail the following legendaries require specific synergies to make sense in a deck: Malicia, Shan'do, Slate, Mozaki, Ras, Alura, Gandling, Krastinov, Willow, Kel'Thuzad, Vectus, so 11 out of 25
In Ashes of Outland only there were not so many, mainly because we got the primes which, for most classes, are powerful cards on their own without requiring any synergies (Kanrethad and Vashj being the only exceptions)
I think having legendaries do very specific things is good. It makes them valuable in the deck they are designed to support, and makes players have to choose which legendaries to include in their deck to support its theme or win condition.
When you have cards that are just good by themselves without any restriction, you get metas where every deck for a specific class will include it (See: Jandice Barov). Or if it's neutral, then you get every deck running it/them. See: Zilliax.
So, I'd say this is a good thing for the game, and it's not especially new, but maybe they are pushing it more this expansion than before.
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True, I didn;t count Spellburst legendaries as build arounds, mostly cause I felt you can use any spell you want and it's almost impossible to build a deck without including a healthy amount of spells. I didn;t feel that was quite the specific enough restriction.
I'll give credit to the person above though that mentioned Saviors of Uldum. I had stopped looking through sets at Descent of Dragons, but if you go back to Uldum and Rise of Shadows, there's actually quite a bit of build arounds, with pretty specific restrictions to make Legendaries work. Uldum has the unfair advantage of having Quests, which were automatic build arounds for every class, but there's still quite a few outside of those too. And Rise of Shadows actually has a bunch of them too.
And looking back on those build around legendaries from 2 years ago, some of them never panned out. >.<
So maybe Year of the Phoenix was a deliberate step back in build around cards and a deliberate step towards more stand alone power and we are only now getting back again to previous levels.
If you see a bad post on the forum use the report function under it, so I or someone else of the moderation team can take care of it!
I would need to check the sets to evaluate the claim, but if OP is right, i think it's a good thing. Legendaries should in general define archetypes and not just be overpowered cards. And it's a very good thing for newer players. First it gives them a theme if they want to build a deck of their own and second it reduces the number of decks that run an insane amount of legendaries. When I started the game, facing Highlander Decks was kind of frustrating to me, not because the power level, but because I knew I couldn't afford the 6+ legendaries some of them are yousing. Makes you feel inferior even if you actually have a good chance of beating the opponent.
Ceterum censeo classum magi esse delendam.
It's sort of strange how they continue to make so many situational legendary cards when "add a random legendary to your hand" is a common theme. One which is held back continually by the situational nature of the legendary card pool.
Now, I think even removing the low roll chance of getting Lorewalker Cho, Nat Pagle and Milhouse Manastorm improves that pool immensely anyway. To the point that it might be worth it for a card like Brightwing. But... it's still a strange trend.
I'm beginning to think that the current situation is not so much a new direction, as it is one end of a see-saw, with the one end very specific build around legendaries and the other end very generic stand alone power legendaries.
And I think this expansion strikes pretty hard towards one end where the previous Year struck pretty hard towards the other end.
I think this makes more sense than my initial take when I made the post that it was a new, previously unseen direction.
I think the problem is that in my mind's eye there were not that many build around cards from the past expansions in Standard, while actually, there were, but a lot of them just never quite worked. Like Commander Rhyssa and Oblivitron.
I also think there might be an increase in specific-ness of the requirements, where previous build arounds were more loosely worded, like Keeper Stalladris being good with ANY Choose One card, allowing for quite some flexibility still but that is probably explained with the introduction of Spell schools allowing for the more specific nature then was previously seen.
If you see a bad post on the forum use the report function under it, so I or someone else of the moderation team can take care of it!
Yeah but that's not true (your first sentence), you can indeed put Ysera unleashed in every deck and activate its effect in every deck but it won't be equally strong in every deck. And druid is in kind of a weird place with ramp and Ysera, allowing him to play Ysera even in very aggressive token decks (as a matter of fact I do play Ysera in my token druid, without ramp, that's how good she is), generating essentially a bunch of huge tokens at the end of the curve, or in very heavy control decks to get some free presence on the board over multiple turns, that was a great example for your point but kind of unfair to be honest, Ysera in more the exception than the rule.
I understand what you mean don't worry about that, i'm just saying every card has certain "requirements" to be played optimally and you always try to play optimally, for any given deck you always need 25-29 other cards to build around your win condition and what I mean is that it doesn't really matter if the requirement is a specific card decided by Blizzard or a card of your choice, these 25-29 cards will end up being the same that everyone plays, wether it's built around Firemancer Flurgl or Ysera, Unleashed. However it does matter for deck diversity.
And in every expansion there are plenty of cards that require you to play specific cards instead of letting the community discovers which cards would be the best combination. Cards like OG C'Thun, Mysterious Challenger, Undertaker... It's not new, even in basic and classic set. (doomhammer virtually requiring rockbiter, eaglehorn bow not-virtually requiring secrets, etc)
Maybe there are slightly more in this particular expansion, I haven't noticed, but I don't think this is a trend, there must always be simple cards with very low requirement, cause they are essential to new players and new players are the highest priority of Blizzard by far, so don't worry, there will always be standalone cards in the game.
Think about it the other way, if there were no card with forced requirement or situational effects, there would be far less diversity in the meta, because every one would just play the best combination of 30 cards for every class, each class would essentially have 1 or 2 decks, 1 aggro and 1 control.
without Firemancer Flurgl, would anyone play murloc decks ?
Without Shadowjeweler Hanar, would you ever play secrets in your rogue deck ?
Without Kargal Battlescar, would you even care to experiment with the watchpost cards ? In fact I suspect the watchposts to see more play than Kargal but that's a topic for another time.
Of course it's not always true, like demon hunters who can play the cards without Soulciologist Malicia, which is a good thing, it may lower the overall value of Malicia compared to a less restricted legendary, but it increases the value of the soul fragment cards in exchange. And Il'gynoth who can be played in virtually every deck (I don't think there's a single DH deck without any lifesteal) will in the end only see play in a single, extremely specific OTK deck, while specific situationnal Malicia can see play in a variety of decks. Not the best example, because the soul fragment cards are very strong and universal, but still, you get my point.
The cards that have more specific requirements generally have more powerful effects, and my point is that these cards very often require playable common and rare cards to function, and even the most casual of players has all the commons and rares at the end of an expansion cycle. So that is why I said that I don't see these cards as fundamentally different than "normal" cards that require other "normal" cards to function.
In the end it's up to you to play these highly synergistic decks that can completely ruin your game if you draw in the wrong order and require you to unpack specific commons and rares, sometimes epics I guess, or more streamlined, curve-ish decks with more consistent hands but less power plays.
Also, worth mentioning I think, every year it's harder and harder for control decks to keep up with powercreep. They have to print crazy powerful high cost cards, and as a result they have to balance these cards with specific requirements and deck building restrictions so we don't just auto-win be playing the card without doing any work. It's a never ending struggle between aggro and control to keep them fairly balanced against each other.
I think this is a good direction. Synergies allow for counterplay and a varied meta.
A lot of legendaries require decks to be built around them. The animal gods and high priests from Rastakhan’s Rumble stand out particularly: Hireek the Bat and High Priestess Jeklik both work in specific archetypes, for example. Ringmaster Whatley exists to facilitate menagerie warrior. There are tons of legendary cards like this going back years; quests, for example, require a specific kind of deck. For a long time they have been very careful about not creating too many cards that are likely to get thrown into every deck of the associated class for the entire cycle, or cards like Zilliax that go into every deck, period.
This coming meta feels very tempo oriented. Midrange style I think. It feels like they are trying to recapture the original game with minion focused tempo plays, with buffs being the deciding factor in who wins.
So yes I agree with the OP. It does feel like a change in design philosophy, trying to recapture former glory with recycled ideas grafted onto new cards, but thats HS for the past few years anyways. Only so many ways you can spice up a card game thats basically the olf game of War we played as kids, where a 4 beats a 3, and a 3 beats a 2. So Hearthstone game design is fairly limited, so I like the new ideas they are bringing to the table.
I don't think there is enough proof for your idea OP but it would be good if true.
I think more synergistic and themed decks are more fun. Plus less general value cards, especially less general value Legendaries makes the game more easy to play. Deck costs have been going up over time, And Blizz printing more Legends is a big part of it.
Legendary cards have often been this kind of synergystic build-around cards (in order for them to realise their potential at least), I don't think that's something new in the Barrens expansion.
Looking at DMF + mini-set we have: Il'gynoth (buildaround card, needs lifesteal spells/weapons to make use of its power), Maxima Blastenheimer (another buildaround card that only works in decks with expensive minions with powerful deathrattles), Deck of Lunacy (only makes sense in very spell-heavy decks), Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon (not buildaround, but only playable in decks that run secrets), Lothraxion the Redeemed (requires you to play cards that summon dudes to get value from him), High Exarch Yrel (not sure it belongs in the same category, but running it comes with severe deck restrictions), Dark Inquisitor Xanesh (only makes sense in decks with lots of corrupt cards), Grand Totem Eys'or (useless outside of totem Shaman), Inara Stormcrash (only makes sense if you run weapons), Deck of Chaos (bad card, but the definition of a buildaround legendary), E.T.C., God of Metal (either a buildaround card for the ETC combo OTK deck, or a key card in an aggro deck with tons of rush minions), Ringmaster Whatley (needs specific menagerie builds) and of course 3 of the 4 old gods (outside C'Thun), so that's a grand total of 15 out of 29 legendaries.
In Scholomance Academy it is somewhat similar, without going into detail the following legendaries require specific synergies to make sense in a deck: Malicia, Shan'do, Slate, Mozaki, Ras, Alura, Gandling, Krastinov, Willow, Kel'Thuzad, Vectus, so 11 out of 25
In Ashes of Outland only there were not so many, mainly because we got the primes which, for most classes, are powerful cards on their own without requiring any synergies (Kanrethad and Vashj being the only exceptions)
I think having legendaries do very specific things is good. It makes them valuable in the deck they are designed to support, and makes players have to choose which legendaries to include in their deck to support its theme or win condition.
When you have cards that are just good by themselves without any restriction, you get metas where every deck for a specific class will include it (See: Jandice Barov). Or if it's neutral, then you get every deck running it/them. See: Zilliax.
So, I'd say this is a good thing for the game, and it's not especially new, but maybe they are pushing it more this expansion than before.