Hearthpwn

In computing terms, I don't think he actually stores decks, but just pointers to the deck recipes. In any case, his decks will change automatically whenever the recipes do, i.e. at the start of every expansion.

So yes, you'll be able to play with new decks immediately.

Quote from ZisiLeeGit >>

 

i made this in a few minutes and i probably didn't finish. those are my thoughts - what do you guys come up with ?

 The full lists are quite a lot longer, and vary over time. A couple of weeks back I thought I'd dive into this topic but found it interesting to focus on which mechanics have changed over time, especially since the basic and classic sets as any strengths that have been dropped since then still look like they are around now. E.g. paladin was quite able to deal damage like any other class, but has been given absolutely nothing that does that since.

You can take a look here if you are interested: https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/230519-when-class-identity-is-no-longer-class-identity

The Boogeymonster always baffled me. It's not very flavourful or interesting to use, and it is an (almost) strictly weaker Gruul who I like well enough but have never felt I really wanted a second, weaker, less interesting version to play alongside him. Thankfully the Boogeymonster was the one Old Gods legendary I never owned.

I don't normally dislike cards however weak they are - they are just challenges - but in this one instance I appreciate the annoyance felt by anyone who saw the golden glow only to find him when the card turned around.

Quote from Morkimus >>

Why do people call Boom a villain? He's your employer in BDP and a minor character in GvG. He's never played an antagonistic role except in WoW.

Um, because he was trying to take over the world in Boomsday? I think all this really confirms is we were on the side of the bad guys during that expansion.

Certainly in GvG he was not designed as a major villain, but he earned that position by being the villain of the HS ladder (alongside a few others). 

Quote from Majere >>

Im with you. Seems like padding to fill up the time between revealing things that provide actual insight into the new meta, ie card reveals.

 Well, yes. But padding is better than silence which is what we'd be getting otherwise.

With some keywords it is absolutely fine. There's very little design space to work with for 'echo' for example, because it pretty much has to be a low power 2 or 3 mana card (1 if the effect is very weak like Unstable Evolution), and some classes could abuse it really badly if not careful (there was a reason mage and priest weren't given echo spells for example). Similarly the design space for adapt is very small: how many different ways are there to buff minions that weren't already covered in Un'Goro?

With others I never want to see them again (recruit, jade golems). That only really leaves inspire that has never been reused and would be somewhat welcome (magnetic doesn't count yet since there hasn't been time to say whether it is gone or not, and even joust made a reappearance with Raven Familiar).

I think because of inspire specifically people overstate how much gets abandoned, when really most keywords do continue to be used or were pretty much fully explored in the set they appeared in.

Maybe upon learning more about her, Hagatha becomes more memorable. To do that she needs to return.

Not that I don't want to see the older characters to make a return, especially Rafaam since his lore is entirely within LoE (almost. I think Togwaggle referred to him too). Good to see the fortune teller though. Learning anything about her is pretty cool.

You'll probably get mixed advice with this, and I certainly cannot see a strict right or wrong answer here.

But I would say not to. You could view it as doubling the dust value of each card provided you spend half of it on the rotating cards, but that's still a net loss (2 x disenchant value = 1/2 crafting value). Genn allows you to do a few things but so too would the cards you dust, and they would probably open up more options overall.  

Quote from TrevoRaven8 >>

Illidan Stormrage, not only because of the actual character but also because I slipped him in my Evenlock a while ago & he's actually a decent mixup. (You could say he catches opponents unprepared.)

Quote from hillandder >>

Gazlowe.

I try make this card work many times.

 Try both of these together! For years I have slowly been adding to a deck built specifically for these two. The key components are a bunch of cards that fit the bill for this thread: Illidan Stormrage, Gazlowe, Toshley, Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale, Xaril, Poisoned Mind, Lilian Voss, Sherazin, Corpse Flower. Throw in a couple of Razorpetal Lashers and other spare parts generators et voila! At least one of them has to perform well in any given game.

Well in fairness, the whole idea of a cancer is something that grows and spreads, and does so to the detriment of the rest of body (in this case the HS ladder). Any deck that has a major stake in the meta basically fits this description.

Fitting with this, a super strong deck that doesn't get played much (maybe it's too expensive for most players or it just hasn't been made popular yet) is not considered cancerous, while sub-50% win rate decks that still dominate the meta  (e.g. Quest rogue back in Un'Goro) are.

Conclusion: "cancer" does not actually refer to the deck, but its prevalence in the meta.

There are a few legendaries you can complain about, but only a few (Harbinger Celestia for example isn't even something you can control). The vast majority find a home with someone somewhere, if not for competitive decks then for home-brews because some players just enjoy the mechanics.

That is what you miss: the devs design cards for all sorts of players, not just the Spikes who refuse to play anything that isn't in the top tiers. In fact not a single one of those cards had a flat 0% play rate on HSreplay, and a lot of the people doing the home-brewing won't be included on HSreplay (I know I'm not).

I don't have time to go through them all in any detail but I will flag up Lorewalker Cho, Illidan Stormrage and Nozdormu as examples with clear evidence. Have a watch through HysteriA's youtube videos and tell me these cards have no use.

Quote from Deliguy >>

There’s 5 cards right? Tog Waggle was the 2nd after 1st being fortune teller. Conveniently, a card very clearly depicting Hagatha another expansion boss was the 3rd. If you start from Kobold’s & Catacombs (tog Waggle) and count forward there is 4 expansions since. Each with a main boss in the story arc.

 Yes, except the fortune teller is from 2016, 5 expansions earlier than Togwaggle, so there's no reason yet to expect them to go with those 4 sets. They could easily jump back further to Rafaam, Nefarian, Kel'thuzad or Prince Malchezzar.

Plus Rastakhan isn't really a boss, nor is he a villain, and nor has he been defeated by hearthstone players, so I don't see any reason for him to join a nefarious team. Boom I can picture being there, but not Rastakhan. 

Even supposing you correctly predicted the cards (and you may well have done), that still leaves "Just shows that her videos are either about the solo content, or a very very very unbelievably horrible expansion coming" to be explained. I don't doubt the solo content will tie into these characters, but hearthstone's main solo bosses have always had a card for the PvP content too, so i would be very surprised if it was only about the solo content.

And then finally, how does one infer from all of this that it will be a very very very unbelievably horrible expansion if it wasn't specifically about the solo content? 

Speculation is fine and fun. Wildly speculating without considering where your immediate assumptions might fail misses the most fun part of it :)

Quote from Deliguy >>

Tog Waggle, Hagatha, Dr. Boom, and King Rastakhan + the fortune teller are all 5 cards she will flip. Just shows that her videos are either about the solo content, or a very very very unbelievably horrible expansion coming. 

Please do give some reasoning for, well, anything you just wrote really. Beyond the fortune teller, Togwaggle and maybe Hagatha I am struggling to work out how you got there.

Rafaam and Nefarian both seem pretty likely candidates, but the real villain of 2015 was Mysterious Challenger. 

The idea of a priest transcends HS yes, and it transcends Warcraft and the fantasy genre beyond that. Heck it even transcends fiction, though I don't suppose the person running your local church would be too keen on the idea of embracing the void and using mind blast on anyone.

I am being facetious of course, but it does help make a point: shadow spells are not a feature common to all versions of priests and we are discussing one particular incarnation of them. That does not take away from the concept -> theme -> mechanic hierarchy, but it does argue that when talking about identity we should be focused on the game at hand, i.e. HS. At which point the following can be said:

• Class identity in HS is built up of all of a concept, themes and mechanics.
• The latter may be the most superficial, but as far as the balance of HS is concerned they are also the most important.
• There is evidence the shifting of identity with time, especially on the mechanics front, has left the face damage spells and battlecries behind.
• What the devs do about it is up to them.

You are welcome to call it gameplay differentiation if you like, but at that point it is just semantics and it is clear the devs include mechanics in identity.

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Regarding weapons: there is a definite distinction between weapons and weapon buffs at both a mechanic and thematic level. Mechanically the buffs are closer to minion buffs than they are to weapons.

The best way I can think of at the moment to show they are thematically different the string of overlapping themes: weapon -> poisoned weapon -> poison -> poisonous minion -> minion. Weapon and poison are thematically distinct, so for poisoned weapon to overlap with both, it cannot lie entirely inside the weapon theme. (Venn diagrams would make this much easier...)

From here the buffs could have landed in any of the weapon classes with a suitable theme yes. I'm not sure if this little weapon discussion was needed at all but it is interesting nonetheless.

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Anyway, we've gone some way off topic given the topic was only meant to be about the mechanics (I added a bit to the original post to make that clearer).