If Dread Infernal were to be 5 mana, I would give it a 6/5 statline and it might be playable.
I think even though Fiery War Axe at 3 mana really sucks, having the ability to remove two early game threats of your choice for 2 mana might be too strong for warrior. If it were 2 mana, I'd give it Battlecry: Deal 3 damage to your hero.
Bump Lightning Bolt up to 4 damage to make up for the 1 overload handicap it carries. Holy Smite is a 1 mana card which deals 3 damage; and yes, I know it can only target minions but the ability to target face means absolutely nothing if Shaman has no other viable threats it can present to the opponent.
And why do you think holy smite was 2 mana when it could target face? Shaman already has an absurdly large amount of burn in wild (as well as ways to cancel overload), lightning bolt is fine as it is, 1 mana deal 4 with a pitiful drawback like omg 1 overload is plain dumb. Christ, warlocks have almost no burn whatsoever and they have to discard a card to deal 4 mana for 1 damage.
I actually like a lot of these suggested changes. Nothing seems overpowered but a few classic cards might become playable. There are too many core set cards that are just in no viable decks at all.
Warlock has a huge amount of mid-game hard removal as it is anyway.
Like what? If he has so good removals, why he sucks so much at controlling the game?
Brawl leaves a minion alive, Shadow Word: Ruin is conditional. Soul Mirror is by no means a hard removal and is a legendary spell for one mana cheaper.
Um, Warlock has lots of removal: Hysteria, Cascading Disaster, Tamsin, Drain Soul. Warlock does not suck at controlling the game. Warlock struggles with early-mid game proactive plays and closing games out until the very late game.
Bump Lightning Bolt up to 4 damage to make up for the 1 overload handicap it carries. Holy Smite is a 1 mana card which deals 3 damage; and yes, I know it can only target minions but the ability to target face means absolutely nothing if Shaman has no other viable threats it can present to the opponent.
And why do you think holy smite was 2 mana when it could target face? Shaman already has an absurdly large amount of burn in wild (as well as ways to cancel overload), lightning bolt is fine as it is, 1 mana deal 4 with a pitiful drawback like omg 1 overload is plain dumb. Christ, warlocks have almost no burn whatsoever and they have to discard a card to deal 4 mana for 1 damage.
Times were different then and the damage increase is only a suggestion in a vacuum assuming shaman has no power increase in the future.
At the present moment, a card like Smite is exponentially more valuable despite its inability to target face as Priest has fairly reliable ways to control the board and regenerate the spell numerous times. Lightning Bolt might as well only target minions because shaman has zero threat to ever establish a decent board combined with the class being weaker in value generation.
If you want to talk about wild then do it on your own time. Wild players are worse then vegan crossfitters in that they can't wait to bring the subject up despite nobody ever asking.
Brawl leaves a minion alive, Shadow Word: Ruin is conditional. Soul Mirror is by no means a hard removal and is a legendary spell for one mana cheaper.
Give Control Warlock a Brawl instead of Twisting Nether and he will immediately become T2 deck. Yes, it's that good, -3 mana for one random minion surviving is totally worth it and sometimes it's even an upside.
Um, Warlock has lots of removal:
Yes, but they are unreliable and mostly too slow.
Hysteria
It's too slow, it's too random and it needs specific board to be effective (and smart enemy can play around it).
Cascading Disaster
Again, too slow. You can kill 3 RANDOM minions, on turn 7, and only after playing at least two cards (5+ mana each), while CD was in your hand. It's only good in the late game with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler.
Tamsin
Same thing, she is very strong but also pretty slow and won't give you any value before turn 5 (which is laughable compared to Priest's card generation and mana cheating).
Drain Soul
It's very good card, but it's not enough to keep Warlock going.
Warlock does not suck at controlling the game.
He does, nowadays controlling game by removing stuff is not enough, because most decks can deal tons of damage straight from hand. That's why reliable healing is a must.
Warlock struggles with early-mid game proactive plays and closing games out until the very late game.
Exactly, because he can't control game as good as Priest or Warrior (they both have reliable healing while he doesn't). That's why he heeds either healing, either very effective and cheap removals like Defile or Dark Skies... or both. Hysteria on turn 4 is too slow (at that point you might be already at 15 health, very close to Alex range).
Deathwing: If you remove the discard part, you could just build a control deck with very few minions/minion generation and then Raise Dead/Shadowstep, or whatever copy cards you have in your class to clear the board again...and again...and again...and again. Deathwing Priest would easily be tier 1 because you can heal out of any crap except for OTK decks, which don't really work right now.
King Krush: The only reason to play midrange hunter over aggro hunter is Savannah Highmane at this point and Blizzard clearly wants to push the more aggro playstyle. They added Quick Shot and removed Animal Companion/Eaglehorn Bow from core set. You should get the hint. Also, King Krush is definitely not the reason why midrange hunter doesn't work. You would rather change Highmane to a 4 mana 5/4 or something. Also, Highmane sucks as long as we have cards like 1-mana transform spells or Apexis Blast. And the comparison to Inquisitor is just wrong. There is so much copy and play from your hand support for King Krush and the two cards work very differently, even though people don't seem to get that. Buffing its attack even further, as someone suggested, is also not a great idea. It would only promote OTK hunter with the summon 3 beasts from your hand legendary. That deck would still suck, though, because it is too inconsistent and hunter lacks control tools.
Grommash: Should not be changed + we have enough high-cost warrior minions that are stronger. Grommash is an OTK tool and nothing more.
Natalie Seline: Should rather be a 6 mana 6/1 to be even considered.
Gorehowl: As if +1 attack would be enough to make this card playable in standard. Pointless change. If anything, give it Summon: Gain 10 Armor.
Ancient of War: Would still see no play. Whatever.
Guardian of Kings: Sure, whatever.
Dread Infernal: Funny how I recently met that card in Arena at 5-cost due to a Demonic Study. 5-mana 5/5 maybe, 5 mana 6/6 is very strong, but it would probably still see no play in today's warlock because the 1 damage has little impact and the card has almost no real synergies. Zoolock would rather play the Kazakus golem than this. Arena would be painful, though.
Force of Nature: Would not change its viability in standard or wild, would make the card insane in Arena. There is a 6-mana card with Overload 2 that summons 4 Treants. That's how massive of a power creep your suggestion would be.
Truesilver Champion: I get the new-player argument, but this change would be completely crazy for several reasons. Paladin would completely crap on any aggro list, the 4-attack is extremely relevant in today's meta and the lifegain would be so strong on that card that you would cut Kazakus and the libram weapon. Bonus: any weapon buff for paladin or the neutral set would be extremely scary. Definitely by far your worst idea. If anything, make it "gain 3 health" before your attack goes through, but that wouldn't make it playable. 3/2 with Lifesteal maybe. Remember the 2/3 Lifesteal weapon from dh? Sure, they have more attack buffs, but that card, at a baseline, needed 3 turns to heal for 6 and deal 2 thrice. 4/2 Lifesteal would be extremely scary and paladin is really the last class that needs another strong card.
Dark Iron Dwarf: Neither of your changes makes this card playable in any format, especially not as long as Kazakus is around. Your buffs only increase its strength in Arena, where it is already fairly good. If we are talking about Arena, 5/4 is probably better.
Fiery War Axe: There is a reason why this card is not 2 mana, but if you want to relive the dream, there is a 1-drop pirate that can help you out.
Void Terror: If Flame Imp into Nerubian Egg into Void Terror is too weak for this meta, it probably is too weak with Taunt Terror as well. Also, you sometimes need to sacrifice a higher attack minion and Taunt is a terrible key word in that scenario because you want to protect your big attack Terror. That being said, maybe Rush would be too good?
Warsong Commander: I don't think this change does anything positive to Patrons again, but a 2 mana permanent Rush-enabler with premium stats looks scary
Shadowform should have never been changed back. I recently randomly created 2 and that felt really sad.
Taskmaster and Dire Wolf Alpha could use a buff. I don't see a reason to not give them 1 more attack.
Abusive Sergeant: Seems like a fine change at first glance. Aggro doesn't really need any help, though, and buffing any 1-drop will probably benefit 1st day of school paladins the most. So...no?
Ritual of Doom: Adding "Draw a Card" to a 0-cost spell is dangerous. You could easily just play this to break any egg and draw a card for 0 mana. That seems extremely good, especially given that the community is mostly (and rightfully so) frustrated by low-cost card draw if you look at the threads.
So yeah, not every core set card has to be good, and re-living the old zoolock days isn't a particularly appealing prospect. And I write that as someone who went legend for the first time with exactly that zoolock deck that you want to push into standard.
Brawl leaves a minion alive, Shadow Word: Ruin is conditional. Soul Mirror is by no means a hard removal and is a legendary spell for one mana cheaper.
Give Control Warlock a Brawl instead of Twisting Nether and he will immediately become T2 deck. Yes, it's that good, -3 mana for one random minion surviving is totally worth it and sometimes it's even an upside.
Um, Warlock has lots of removal:
Yes, but they are unreliable and mostly too slow.
Hysteria
It's too slow, it's too random and it needs specific board to be effective (and smart enemy can play around it).
Cascading Disaster
Again, too slow. You can kill 3 RANDOM minions, on turn 7, and only after playing at least two cards (5+ mana each), while CD was in your hand. It's only good in the late game with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler.
Tamsin
Same thing, she is very strong but also pretty slow and won't give you any value before turn 5 (which is laughable compared to Priest's card generation and mana cheating).
Drain Soul
It's very good card, but it's not enough to keep Warlock going.
Warlock does not suck at controlling the game.
He does, nowadays controlling game by removing stuff is not enough, because most decks can deal tons of damage straight from hand. That's why reliable healing is a must.
Warlock struggles with early-mid game proactive plays and closing games out until the very late game.
Exactly, because he can't control game as good as Priest or Warrior (they both have reliable healing while he doesn't). That's why he heeds either healing, either very effective and cheap removals like Defile or Dark Skies... or both. Hysteria on turn 4 is too slow (at that point you might be already at 15 health, very close to Alex range).
Warlock has lots of healing, but it's tied to removal. So if there's nothing to remove, Warlock has no healing and not much to do. But... that doesn't mean Warlock "sucks at controlling the game". And Hysteria is not a bad card or too slow, that's ridiculous. Between Drain Soul, Soul Shear, Hysteria, Warlock HAS the tools for early game control. Beyond that, buffing Twisting Nether woudln't help with early game control anyway and would just mean you could follow up a Twisting Nether play with a 3 drop.
Brawl is just... a badly designed card in general.
What Warlock wants, and is hopefully getting in the new set is not more removal, but more ways to play for the mid-game. Right now there's Rustwix... and that's about it.
The idea behind core was to give new players a FREE base set to start with. If you want better cards, invest in card packs from Standard. So I don't see any major buffs happen to the core set.
And? It's "Core Set" not "Garbage Set"... Creating cards just for the sake of creating them is never a good idea. Each card should have some real purpose in the game.
The purpose of Core cards is to entice people to play the game. Their purpose is to be just good enough that you can build a deck and eke out a few wins, but not quite good enough to let you build truly competitive decks without expansion cards.
You may not want to believe me, but if you think about it for just a minute, you'll know I'm right.
Core cards do not need to be buffed in order to fulfill their purpose. The fact that you wish they were slightly better proves that they are working exactly as intended.
The point of the core set is to give you a deck skeleton to work from. Basic, strong but generic options. So if say, you want your deck to have some hard removal, the core set gives you some hard removal options.
The point of set cards is to create more specific deck archetypes with more extreme power levels.
But like... King Krush for example is not a garbage card just because it's not meta. If your deck wants a big, end-game threat to close out games, he exists.
Ysera is another perfect example. If your deck needs a little extra end-game value. There's Ysera. Same with Malygos if you want card draw. Alexstrasza if you want a finisher.
I actually think the core set hits a pretty sweet balance between being useful without being full of staple cards that every single deck always wants.
About King Krush, I do not like the idea of it being 8 Mana. The better buff would be 9 Mana 9/8.
I like Natalie Seline to be 5 Mana 6/1 instead. 7 Mana is still too expensive for just destroying a minion.
It's not Grommash that needs to be buffed, it's Cruel Taskmaster. Make it 1 Mana 2/1, so that it becomes the same as the Augmerchant cards, instead of your idea.
Guardian of Kings is fine. Maybe +1 Health is enough. No need to be 6 Mana.
Dread Infernal is probably a little bit OP at 5. Maybe make the effect "Battlecry and Deathrattle" instead of just Battlecry and keep it at 6.
Just make Force of Nature at 4 Mana. I know it was nerfed FROM 4 Mana, but the powercreep should allow it to be back at 4 Mana.
Truesilver Champion is fine. The reason is doesn't see play is because there currently isn't any synergy for the card.
Giving +4 Attack for Dark Iron Dwarf looks better. So, it's still 4 Mana 4/4, but it gives +4 Attack this turn only instead of +2.
I like the Void Terror buff, helps Control to fight aggro.
Ritual of Doom is fine. It's a 0 Mana 4/4, pretty much. Maybe reduce the amount of minions required to 4 instead of 5.
The reason i went with mana cost on King Krush is because the only reason it ever sees play is when it's cheated out. either way, i think your proposal is fine
It would diminish the power Dinotamer Brann. I guess Dinotamer Brann could be buffed to 6 mana. Not sure how these interactions would look like in odd/even hunter though
I like your suggestions for Truesilver Champion, Dark Iron Dwarf and Void Terror.
If Dread Infernal were to be 5 mana, I would give it a 6/5 statline and it might be playable.
I think even though Fiery War Axe at 3 mana really sucks, having the ability to remove two early game threats of your choice for 2 mana might be too strong for warrior. If it were 2 mana, I'd give it Battlecry: Deal 3 damage to your hero.
Ye, same as Brawl, Shadow Word: Ruin or Soul Mirror. Oh, wait...
Like what? If he has so good removals, why he sucks so much at controlling the game?
And why do you think holy smite was 2 mana when it could target face? Shaman already has an absurdly large amount of burn in wild (as well as ways to cancel overload), lightning bolt is fine as it is, 1 mana deal 4 with a pitiful drawback like omg 1 overload is plain dumb. Christ, warlocks have almost no burn whatsoever and they have to discard a card to deal 4 mana for 1 damage.
I actually like a lot of these suggested changes. Nothing seems overpowered but a few classic cards might become playable.
There are too many core set cards that are just in no viable decks at all.
It’s buffs oh my Yogg!
Nightblade Argent Lance Flame Imp
Argent Watchman Argent Squire Frost Giant
Aviana Hogger Snipe Sea Giant
Brawl leaves a minion alive, Shadow Word: Ruin is conditional. Soul Mirror is by no means a hard removal and is a legendary spell for one mana cheaper.
Um, Warlock has lots of removal: Hysteria, Cascading Disaster, Tamsin, Drain Soul. Warlock does not suck at controlling the game. Warlock struggles with early-mid game proactive plays and closing games out until the very late game.
Times were different then and the damage increase is only a suggestion in a vacuum assuming shaman has no power increase in the future.
At the present moment, a card like Smite is exponentially more valuable despite its inability to target face as Priest has fairly reliable ways to control the board and regenerate the spell numerous times. Lightning Bolt might as well only target minions because shaman has zero threat to ever establish a decent board combined with the class being weaker in value generation.
If you want to talk about wild then do it on your own time. Wild players are worse then vegan crossfitters in that they can't wait to bring the subject up despite nobody ever asking.
Give Control Warlock a Brawl instead of Twisting Nether and he will immediately become T2 deck. Yes, it's that good, -3 mana for one random minion surviving is totally worth it and sometimes it's even an upside.
Yes, but they are unreliable and mostly too slow.
It's too slow, it's too random and it needs specific board to be effective (and smart enemy can play around it).
Again, too slow. You can kill 3 RANDOM minions, on turn 7, and only after playing at least two cards (5+ mana each), while CD was in your hand. It's only good in the late game with Y'Shaarj, the Defiler.
Same thing, she is very strong but also pretty slow and won't give you any value before turn 5 (which is laughable compared to Priest's card generation and mana cheating).
It's very good card, but it's not enough to keep Warlock going.
He does, nowadays controlling game by removing stuff is not enough, because most decks can deal tons of damage straight from hand. That's why reliable healing is a must.
Exactly, because he can't control game as good as Priest or Warrior (they both have reliable healing while he doesn't). That's why he heeds either healing, either very effective and cheap removals like Defile or Dark Skies... or both. Hysteria on turn 4 is too slow (at that point you might be already at 15 health, very close to Alex range).
So essentially op, let's make all cards broken. When everything is broken, nothing is broken, that's your idea ?
And of course Gorehowl gets left behind again with a trash buff. Just give it 1 more durability.
King Krush: The only reason to play midrange hunter over aggro hunter is Savannah Highmane at this point and Blizzard clearly wants to push the more aggro playstyle. They added Quick Shot and removed Animal Companion/Eaglehorn Bow from core set. You should get the hint. Also, King Krush is definitely not the reason why midrange hunter doesn't work. You would rather change Highmane to a 4 mana 5/4 or something. Also, Highmane sucks as long as we have cards like 1-mana transform spells or Apexis Blast. And the comparison to Inquisitor is just wrong. There is so much copy and play from your hand support for King Krush and the two cards work very differently, even though people don't seem to get that. Buffing its attack even further, as someone suggested, is also not a great idea. It would only promote OTK hunter with the summon 3 beasts from your hand legendary. That deck would still suck, though, because it is too inconsistent and hunter lacks control tools.
Grommash: Should not be changed + we have enough high-cost warrior minions that are stronger. Grommash is an OTK tool and nothing more.
Natalie Seline: Should rather be a 6 mana 6/1 to be even considered.
Gorehowl: As if +1 attack would be enough to make this card playable in standard. Pointless change. If anything, give it Summon: Gain 10 Armor.
Ancient of War: Would still see no play. Whatever.
Guardian of Kings: Sure, whatever.
Dread Infernal: Funny how I recently met that card in Arena at 5-cost due to a Demonic Study. 5-mana 5/5 maybe, 5 mana 6/6 is very strong, but it would probably still see no play in today's warlock because the 1 damage has little impact and the card has almost no real synergies. Zoolock would rather play the Kazakus golem than this. Arena would be painful, though.
Force of Nature: Would not change its viability in standard or wild, would make the card insane in Arena. There is a 6-mana card with Overload 2 that summons 4 Treants. That's how massive of a power creep your suggestion would be.
Truesilver Champion: I get the new-player argument, but this change would be completely crazy for several reasons. Paladin would completely crap on any aggro list, the 4-attack is extremely relevant in today's meta and the lifegain would be so strong on that card that you would cut Kazakus and the libram weapon. Bonus: any weapon buff for paladin or the neutral set would be extremely scary. Definitely by far your worst idea. If anything, make it "gain 3 health" before your attack goes through, but that wouldn't make it playable. 3/2 with Lifesteal maybe. Remember the 2/3 Lifesteal weapon from dh? Sure, they have more attack buffs, but that card, at a baseline, needed 3 turns to heal for 6 and deal 2 thrice. 4/2 Lifesteal would be extremely scary and paladin is really the last class that needs another strong card.
Dark Iron Dwarf: Neither of your changes makes this card playable in any format, especially not as long as Kazakus is around. Your buffs only increase its strength in Arena, where it is already fairly good. If we are talking about Arena, 5/4 is probably better.
Fiery War Axe: There is a reason why this card is not 2 mana, but if you want to relive the dream, there is a 1-drop pirate that can help you out.
Void Terror: If Flame Imp into Nerubian Egg into Void Terror is too weak for this meta, it probably is too weak with Taunt Terror as well. Also, you sometimes need to sacrifice a higher attack minion and Taunt is a terrible key word in that scenario because you want to protect your big attack Terror. That being said, maybe Rush would be too good?
Warsong Commander: I don't think this change does anything positive to Patrons again, but a 2 mana permanent Rush-enabler with premium stats looks scary
Shadowform should have never been changed back. I recently randomly created 2 and that felt really sad.
Taskmaster and Dire Wolf Alpha could use a buff. I don't see a reason to not give them 1 more attack.
Abusive Sergeant: Seems like a fine change at first glance. Aggro doesn't really need any help, though, and buffing any 1-drop will probably benefit 1st day of school paladins the most. So...no?
Ritual of Doom: Adding "Draw a Card" to a 0-cost spell is dangerous. You could easily just play this to break any egg and draw a card for 0 mana. That seems extremely good, especially given that the community is mostly (and rightfully so) frustrated by low-cost card draw if you look at the threads.
So yeah, not every core set card has to be good, and re-living the old zoolock days isn't a particularly appealing prospect. And I write that as someone who went legend for the first time with exactly that zoolock deck that you want to push into standard.
Warlock has lots of healing, but it's tied to removal. So if there's nothing to remove, Warlock has no healing and not much to do. But... that doesn't mean Warlock "sucks at controlling the game". And Hysteria is not a bad card or too slow, that's ridiculous. Between Drain Soul, Soul Shear, Hysteria, Warlock HAS the tools for early game control. Beyond that, buffing Twisting Nether woudln't help with early game control anyway and would just mean you could follow up a Twisting Nether play with a 3 drop.
Brawl is just... a badly designed card in general.
What Warlock wants, and is hopefully getting in the new set is not more removal, but more ways to play for the mid-game. Right now there's Rustwix... and that's about it.
The purpose of Core cards is to entice people to play the game. Their purpose is to be just good enough that you can build a deck and eke out a few wins, but not quite good enough to let you build truly competitive decks without expansion cards.
You may not want to believe me, but if you think about it for just a minute, you'll know I'm right.
Core cards do not need to be buffed in order to fulfill their purpose. The fact that you wish they were slightly better proves that they are working exactly as intended.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
The point of the core set is to give you a deck skeleton to work from. Basic, strong but generic options. So if say, you want your deck to have some hard removal, the core set gives you some hard removal options.
The point of set cards is to create more specific deck archetypes with more extreme power levels.
But like... King Krush for example is not a garbage card just because it's not meta. If your deck wants a big, end-game threat to close out games, he exists.
Ysera is another perfect example. If your deck needs a little extra end-game value. There's Ysera. Same with Malygos if you want card draw. Alexstrasza if you want a finisher.
I actually think the core set hits a pretty sweet balance between being useful without being full of staple cards that every single deck always wants.
It would diminish the power Dinotamer Brann. I guess Dinotamer Brann could be buffed to 6 mana. Not sure how these interactions would look like in odd/even hunter though
I'd love to see a game mode where cards are balanced by the hearthpwn forums. Can you imagine?
just have a sandbox mode and you could have that
This is exactly equivalent to Blizzard flushing all their money down the toilet, so don't hold your breath.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland