Hearthpwn

Blizzard logic:
Make a blatantly OP card;
People notice;
People complain;
Wait 3 months;
Make a cosmetic nerf leaving the broken mechanic intact;
People notice;
People complain;
Wait 3 months;
Make the card trash-tier;
The End
...
Or is it?

The funny thing is that there is a narrow chance that Patron Warrior will still be competitive (not tier 1 though).

Had Recycle, Coghammer and Mech-Bear-Cat
The deck is terrible. Got my win with this, but I won't go back to this arena just because I don't want to take chances at playing this deck.
It's as if Blizzard wanted to show off cards that most players had forgotten that they exist.

Don't dust, it's one of the best neutral legendaries and unlike many classic cards it's unlikely to loose it's value overtime.

The comment about not playing control isn't a valid one. Top players used to put this even in Face Hunter decks. It's overally OP as long as meta fits it. Any time you're hitting Dragon Priest wall or Druids with Ancients of War it's an auto-include.

I might try it out, though I'm not big on the card, especially in this deck. I mean to me Thunder is better for several reasons.

- It's way harder to kill, in fact 6 health in current meta is so rare that if my opponent is able to clear the valiant I'm almost sure I'm going to lose because he had to have some sort of a tempo answer like a power word or a big board. Mukla's C dies to something as obscure as Velen's + smite or Velen's + Holy Nova, not to mention most competitive weapons, most 2 mana damage spells and many of board clears.
- Thunder is resilient enough to be played on curve, though I do this very rarely. Mukla's C dies to easily therefore you can't count to get a second inspire out of it (or the first if played on curve).
- In the mid-to-late game most of your board will actually be totems so it doesn't matter that much if you're buffing just totems or everything.
- Giving +2 attack to a 0/2 is better than giving it a +1/+1, cause the immediate trades will be better and the immediate damage output will also be better and this deck goes face whenever it can, with this deck you want to close out the game quickly, though I do quite a lot of trading if I can't protect my minions with taunts and weapons.

Doomhammer is a key card here. It's not only a great damage-dealer and a third finisher for the deck, but it's also great at controlling the board when you're ahead after the early-game. Unless you hit into loads of Harrisons and Oozes, this is a core card for the deck, though I think I wouldn't run a second copy.

Hex is definitely something I should try out in this deck, cause a lot of times they are way behind on the board and their first step towards regaining it is dropping a shredder on turn 4. Hex completely negates the Shredder and can cope with some of the mid-range'y stuff on later turns.

The thing is it's a bit of a meta call, especially with cutting the second storm. Storm is good mainly because of pally. Pally's got their board clears and their board floods, if you can't match their clears and their floods, you're out of the game and it's not as much about having two of these as games with this deck don't tend to be long, it's more about increasing the chances of drawing a storm, cause this deck doesn't have much draw power. 

Love the comments.

It's not like Blood Knight, you don't sac an important part of a card for the buff.

This isn't meta breaking, but it's good enough to try out in a variety of decks, mainly Shaman. ATM there are 3/4 spell damage minions in the meta: Bloodmage Thalnos, Azure Drake, Mana Wrath Totem and anything buffed up by Velen's Chosen. The rest of spell damage cards just aren't good enough bodies themselves and it's hard for this single card to suddenly warrant them.

You might think that classes like Mage and Rogue will benefit from this card because they like running tempo decks. This is a tempo card early on and a value card mid-to late game and they sometimes run Drakes and Thalnos. Though for this to be consistent, they would have to add at least 1 more spell damage minion and go pretty spell heavy, plus this card, so they would need to cut some cards from their decks in favor of cards that have been ruled out as less consistent and below the needed value. So probably the resulting decks won't be better than the current decklists in their archetypes and in current decklists this card doesn't get the buff frequently enough so it doesn't make the cut.

Priest ATM is out of the question, they run only Velen's chosen, but what's more important is that there isn't all that much damage spells in Priest to warrant other spell damage minions.

If there's another good neutral/druid spell damage card, there might be a new Druid archetype popping up, they've got some great spell damage spells, they like playing tempo and in the past they were running Drakes and Thalnos, though not recently.

The most interesting option is an aggressive Shaman build with burn spells. Drakes and Thalnos always used to be run in this kind of decks, even more for the draw power than for spell damage. You can get a random spell damage totem and with new Shaman class low-drops popping up this expansion, an aggro Shaman with early strong board presence and burn finishers is something that is bound to be tried out. And this looks like an option for that deck.

So it's currently not broken OP, in many decks it's something that people will try out and fail, but you can easily find an archetype deck for this card and the potential value is there. The only pieces missing are good enough spell damage minions to enable this card and that can still happen even in this expansion. And if not, this is a card to watch out for later down the road.

First thought - aggro decks are going to be great in this format.

Made a face-hunter, met a smorck-a-din and a fellow face hunter. And I read there's loads of mages cause flamewaker's a thing. I guess ZOO should be pretty good in this too, the aggressive one that is.

Well I played one game, conceded the second after getting a shitty enough opening hand (pure 3-drops) to loose the mirror, got my card pack, that's it for me, I'm off to do something else.

This weeks brawl is basically ladder, only it sucks more cause there's more rng because of the bananas and their quality/relevance.

I guess you could try and make a mill deck. I guess you could fine-tune the aggro with drakes and giants. But, really - why bother? There's no ranking, there are no rewards and most people will be playing the same stuff as in ladder, only with a greater rng factor.

Really, really dissapointed.

***WARNING - here begins the rant why Hearthstone is DOOMED***
Well not doomed, but the thing is that Hearthstone encourages to play aggro. Not because of the time limits, not because aggro is cheaper to craft or it requires less skill. It's because of the tempo of the game, of the deck sizes and deck requirements and your win condition - the life pool, capped at 30. Aggro cards are efficient enough to win games and actually aggro decks are less susceptible to bad draws than control or especially mid-range. Yeah, I know, I'm raising eyebrows now. But it's true, it's more likely to get a good or decent opening hand with an aggro deck, and the thing is that decent is enough to put you at that winning spot, cause there's loads more ways to deal damage and finish off the game than to regain health and stabilize on the board. Moreover it's rare that you draw really, really badly with real aggro (I'm thinking the likes of face hunter or old ZOO). And though combo archetypes eventually beat the aggro archetypes on ladder when the meta cycle draws to a close (old Miracle Rogue, old 0TK Hunter, old 0TK Warrior, old Freeze Mage, combo oriented Face Hunter, Gadgetzan Miracle Rogue, Patron Warrior) when the things get stirred up, aggro is the best way to go. It even works in solo adventures, apart from few select challenges that required specific approach, I've defeated most of the bosses with aggressive Hunter builds that focused on face damage and card cycling, because I didn't care about the opponent's tactic, I cared about my tactic - hitting face and drawing more cards to hit face with. And Hearthstone makes that a valid tactic. And Hearthstone encourages you to try out that tactic. And Hearthstone rewards you for using that tactic in almost every game mode. And in fact I think Hearthstone wants you to play using that tactic. And concerning gameplay experience, that makes me a saaaaad panda.

Quote from Prime17 jump

It's 100% fanmade, there is more of that on reddit. IMO that's how golden legendaries should look like. (iz blizzard want lazy)

 HS was never intended to be a PC/Mac exclusive, it was intended to hit mobile devices pretty much from the start. On top of that also the accessibility on the PC/Mac platforms was of great significance to the design. HS doesn't have cooler golden cards because Blizzard's set itself a goal of delivering very similar experience to players across multiple platforms and device standard ranges. If they were to introduce these fancy effects en masse (more shaders, bone transformations, animated particles etc.) many of the low-end or even middle-tier devices wouldn't be able to handle the game or would have had to settle for inferior replacements. That would mean that users of such devices would feel excluded and treated as inferior. All in all it boils down to money. If they had done the cards that way, the game would had had less users, thus it would have made less money, while probably costing significantly more in terms of development (though the larger part of HS's cost is probably in upkeep).

If they were 1-2 bucks each, I'd buy several, probably most of them avoiding only those that I wouldn't care about because of a combination of a class that i rarely play and an aesthetic that doesn't go with me.

If they were 4-5 bucks each I'd buy one from time to time, but it would have to be something I definitely want.

In order for me to buy a hero for 10 bucks... Well, first of all I'd have to be seriously drunk, because no hero, no matter how awesome, is worth that kind of money. It's not a matter of earnings, it's just common sense. Secondly, if I don't have all the cards yet, spending 10 bucks on a portrait that doesn't affect the gameplay seems retarded.

Actually I have the same observation, roping recently again became a thing and no, it has absolutely nothing to do with skill levels, these guys are roping just to rope. Turn 1 - play nothing, rope; turn 2 - hero power, rope. turn 3 - insert horrible play (like naked si:7), rope. 

I faced Gnimsh in the Arena and won.

Spell-burst hunter? 2xCobra shot + 2x this + 2x Kill Command + 2x arcane shot + hero power + weapons + removal + obligatory Emperor Thaulrissian

Insane version of Echo of Medivh. If control decks become dominant, this is a card that gives rogue the edge - 3 legendaries for 2 mana. Though if the control decks are still outpaced by aggro this is just a crad to remember about in the future. Value-wise this is OP, but pretty lousy tempo-wise.

Easy auto-include in any control/combo deck. This might revive many insane decks like Miracle Rogue and the old combo Hunter, the OTK variation of Handlock (basically any archetype that went away because of upping the cost of a combo piece). This card's only weakness is that it's slow. Also card-hoarding decks might make some GvG cards surprisingly viable (Goblin Sapper anyone?). Either way this card will probably get nerfed some time after the launch, it has just too much impact on the game.