Hearthpwn

Finally no more waiting to die for like 6 turns straight while getting frozen / Ice Blocked . At least in Standard , and in Wild there is and will be a lot more tech options for that. I don't enjoy that kind of deck but I got 1 golden Ice Block from ranked chest and 1 from a pack so 3200 dust is also very nice :) 

Oh finally...Exciting news :) And people that defended Ice Block and wanted Doomguard HoF-ed can finally shut up now :) Also happy about the Coldlight Oracle HoF . At least in Standard Mill decks will not make my life miserable when I am playing control decks.

Quote from DiamondDM13>> That is where 1 HP comes into effect, since them starting at 1 HP is way less impactful than at 30 HP, just like letting them copy a 1/1 Wisp is much less impactful than letting them copy your Deathwing...

Dark pact is on the strong side I agree. It's funny how it costs 1 ( instead of 3 like the other heal 8 spells ) because you need to sac a minion but in Cubelock sacing a minion is actually a good thing most of the time with cards like Carnivorous Cube and Possessed Lackey . That said...I've been playing since the beta and the Control Warlock archetype only existed when there was good healing options for warlock ( There was one time in the beginning Handlock was thing without really good healing but 20 mana Molten Giant was there and aggro wasn't nearly as powerful ). So powerful healing needs to exist for Control Warlock to be a thing and I and many others enjoy that archetype. Also, maybe just my opinion but strong defensive cards feel a lot better to play against than strong aggressive cards ( I don't know anyone that enjoyed playing against pre nerf Small-Time Buccaneer , Tunnel Trogg , Mana Wyrm  etc ) . I guess it's because defensive cards don't kill you.

Also OP... I do not feel shame for playing an archetype that requires brains , can be countered and doesn't use a toxic strategy (in my opinion) just because it's strong in the meta. Is rushing your opponent down with murlocs before they can do anything fun with their deck more ,,honorable,, ? How about OTK-ing them through taunts and full hp ? I think Cubelock is the least toxic tier 1 deck we've had in a long time.

I think HoF-ing Ice Block is a great idea...2nd only to nerfing the card so it doesn't suck the fun out of Wild.

The issue with it is not the power level ( it is really strong , but not op because of Eater of Secrets ) but the ways you can interact with it as the opponent. The ,,3: The card IS interactive,, from OP was really funny to me so I will focus on that.  How early can you pop it? - As early as possible is the answer in 99% circumstances . How can you push your board advantage without overextending? - This has to do with playing around board clears , NOT playing around Ice Block. Is there a way to make them take damage on their own turn? - Pretty much never unless you are playing a very specific deck / card . How to put the mage at as low health as possible before poping? - Some basic math is all you need and in most cases it DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.

That last one is the core of what makes Ice Block uninteractive...Most Mage decks that play Ice Block are built to kill you after you pop their block , not fight for board / outlast you ( if they tried to do that it would be really risky because anything could kill them at 1 hp ) , so it doesn't make ANY difference if they kill you while they have 1 hp or a few more . So the only way you can interact with this secret ( reducing them to 1 hp before popping ) doesn't even matter in most circumstances. You can say ,,Eater of Secrets counters it,, but EVERY OTHER SECRET in this game get's it's effect almost completely nullified if you play around it. If you play a small minion into Mirror Entity the mage gets a small minion for 3 mana ( really terrible ) , If you play a cheap / not important spell into Counterspell the mage payed 3 mana to do almost nothing ... etc . Only Ice Block requires that specific of an answer to counter it while every other secret you can play around and nullify their effect with most decks. Why is it only Ice Block that even if played around completely the effect is still good enough to see play in so many mage decks ( combo , control , even aggro sometimes ) ? It is because ,,the interaction,, the opponent gets is almost completely irrelevant as the card is played for it's minimum effect which is ,,Get an extra turn no matter your hp / opponent's hand / opponent's board state ,, ( Would you ever play ANY other secret in this game if it pretty much always gets successfully played around? Didn't think so...)

The second thing I don't like about Ice Block is how bad it feels to play against it, especially with all the Freeze effects the mage class has. I've ,,played,, a lot of games against freeze mage style decks that all boil down to... Play some minions , they get frozen ( especially love the combo with Doomsayer because if you don't have AGAIN - one specific card ( silence ) ( Control decks also have hard removal...but those decks get killed because they can't kill the mage in time ), not only are the minions you played last turn useless but anything you would play that turn is also useless ) , this repeats for a couple of turns ( up to 4! ) and then I pop first block ( at 1 hp...hooray! ) , then I pop the 2nd block , and then they kill me the next turn with spells that don't care about taunts or life total ( Exodia Mage doesn't even care about armor and Freeze Mage in Wild can do 30+ damage easily ) . Those last 4-6 ( depending on amount of freezes ) turns in those kinds of games...I can't even say I played Hearthstone...I just waited to see if I would win or loose while doing mostly useless / obvious turns.

That said I would rather not play against this card in any Hearthstone format but HoF-ing it is the next best thing so at least in Standard I don't have to put up with it...

People just hate on whatever is tier 1 at the moment. I've been playing since the beta and there was never a time when the tier 1 decks were not ,,brainless / op / cancer ... etc ,, according to some people...be it handlock , undertaker hunter , secret paladin , pirate warrior , razakus , cubelock...these people always have something to hate    no matter if the deck requires brains or not , if it can be countered or not , it it kills you fast or slow...etc.

At first I was thinking it was just a toxic vocal minority...But I've seen streamers that are not toxic at all and were loving control warlock before it became tier 1...and now they are bashing it too. It's just human nature that we hate to lose and the tier 1 decks are what's causing us to lose the most ( because they are most powerful and most common in the ladder ) so that leads people to hate the deck.

I play whatever deck I like ( this expack it's mostly Cubelock / Control Warlock ) and I don't care what the community thinks of it. Never have I ever thought of adding someone to friend list to insult them just because they play some specific deck that I hate but it happened twice that I accepted a friend request ( how naive I was thinking people wanted to share deck lists , friendly chat or something ) and got the ,,get cancer,, or something like that. These days I either don't accept friend requests if I am not sure of the person's intentions or if I am pretty sure they added me to spew garbage ( I play some tier 1 deck...they BM during the game...I win ) I accept and copy paste something like ,,GET REKT,, in to their chat only to remove them few sec later. If they are angry enough that they want to insult me over the chat..I like to think that this not only makes them even angrier ( they deserve it ) but also discourage them from ever doing it again because they can get the short end of the stick again. Sadly this is the only thing to do in my opinion when Blizzard doesn't punish the toxic people ( I read somewhere that they don't even save chat logs in hearthstone and they advise not accepting friend requests if you can't take it...lol )

First day of the nerfs so nothing is sure yet. A lot of streamers are experimenting with weird decks like Elemental Shaman , Recruit Warrior , Midrange Hunter etc... A lot of cube / control warlocks though probably because the people that played other tier 1 decks now only play those that were tier 1 before and didn't get nerfed.

Best wishes :)

It's ALWAYS the right decision to dust nerfed cards because you get full dust for them so if they turn out bad you got a lot of dust for cards that will not get used and if they turn out still playable you can just craft them again and you don't lose anything ( you get 1600 dust for dusting it and then use 1600 dust to recraft it ) .

Quote from Matrix801 >>

Would not bet money on Doomgaurd HoF.

Call to Arms :  I agree. The moment I saw 2x of these played even in control decks I knew the card was too powerful. In aggro it doesn't matter that you get closer to fatigue so it's just a 1 (4 mana) card that demands a board clear ( Paladin also has good divine shield minions so it's not always easy to board clear) + thin you deck so you draw better later . I think it would still be played at 5 mana  , just wouldn't be crazy good.

Prince Keleseth : I agree 110% . This card should have never been printed the way it was. It it turns out bad it doesn't matter and if it turns out good it's so stupid that you can instantly have 70-90% chance to lose ( depending on Shadowstep / Patches the Pirate which are also completely random draws ) just because you opponent drew this in the first few cards of their deck which is completely random and has nothing to do with skill . At least the Rogue deck ( which is the biggest Keleseth offender because of  Shadowstep) is getting nerfed hard ( 2 Corridor Creeper , 2 Bonemare and Patches the Pirate are a solid part of that deck ) . The princes all have their flavor regarding stats ( Prince 2 --> 2/2 ) so maybe have him only increase attack.

Carnivorous Cube : I somewhat agree. It's a combo card, so it should be pretty bad when you can't combo it, and 4/6 stats for 5 mana is not bad. Faceless Manipulator has a pretty similar effect but it has 3/3 stats . 3/3 would make it really easy to proc with Hellfire so maybe 3/4? 4/4? Not sure but I think the mana cost is okay.

Spiteful Summoner : I agree. Mainly talking about the Priest deck here...because it's a tempo deck that can outvalue control and that shouldn't happen. If you have two Mind Control and two Free From Amber you shouldn't be a tempo deck but this card allows it. Thing is this card is built for tempo but tempo decks don't run that many spells ( except mage ) so the cost of ,,you can only play big spells,, is not high enough for the reward it gives ,,6 mana 4/4 + 8drop / 10drop,, . It's also dangerous in Druid because it has Ultimate Infestation, maybe 1 more good expensive spell and few more tempo tools next expack and Spiteful Druid might be annoying too. It would have been an okay mage card (Never had a problem with it in Big Spell Mage  because it doesn't pressure you with tempo before playing it ) . Now that it's neutral I think it should cost 7 mana so the insane tempo comes a bit later. At least next rotation priest looses some really good tempo tools Kabal Talonpriest and Drakonid Operative ( cards which Blizz made op on purpose because priest was bad then lol ) so maybe it will be ok then but Blizz will have to be really careful to print good tempo cards for classes with good expensive spells until Spiteful also rotates.

Psychic Scream : One card op didn't mention. Not sure if it's just me but I don't think the ultimate ,,I don't care about your board,, card should cost only 7 mana.  I mean sure..it's weak against decks that don't rely on minions but so is every board clear . The downside that ,,You can draw you minions back and then Psychic Scream does nothing,, only matters in fatigue matchups that are very rare to begin with + ofc you wouldn't play Psychic Scream if your goal is to win in fatigue. Priest can use it's own win condition to win before you can draw back your minions and while the biggest offender of this ( Razakus ) is getting nerfed there will surely be priest decks in the future with win conditions other than fatigue in which the card is a stronger , cheaper Twisting Nether that also sometimes corrupts your opponents draws with tokens . If you ask me minimum 8 mana is what this should cost   maybe 9 .

Yogg was fun to play because you could at least somewhat expect what would happen (probably clear the board,probably draw some cards etc) This was because before you play Yogg you play a lot of spells so he casts a lot of spells and then because he does a lot of stuff it kinda dampens the rng factor ( Yogg has a lot of chances to get you that draw you need   or that board clear...etc ) With this hero power however you only do it once per turn and the rng could really ruin it if it goes bad a couple of turns in a row.

So while it doesn't seem that fun to me in practice , I can see some people having fun with this . I like the art though!

Blizz did say that those two are mainly nerfs for wild mode. Really not sure why Patches wasn't nerfed earlier though.

Hello :)  Can I have my name changed to Banelocky?   Thanks!

Corridor Creeper is just not a fun card to play against. It's like this most of the time ,,I HAVE TO clear this board or I die. Oh he had 2 creepers, I guess I die anyway... ,, It's not like you have the option NOT to clear the board against aggro decks to play around this being in their hand. So I am happy to see it unplayable.

Patches, I am honestly kinda concerned that this nerf Blizz did is not enough ( I was kinda thinking a good nerf would be that Patches gets summoned if you play 2 pirates in a turn, so it only gets played in actual pirate decks and not classes that have nothing to do with pirates but run a few just cause of Patches) . So the one the OP suggested seems too mild for sure.

Raza, The nerf OP suggested would be just a mild slap on the wrist to the strongest deck in the meta (that also can't really be teched against) . I mean in a good amount of games you draw Shadowreaper before Raza anyway so this wouldn't do anything in that case. I guess it would make it awkward against aggro/midrange when you draw Raza first and play it to stabilize but can't finish them effectively because Shadowreaper hero power can't cost 0 any more . You pretty much win against those when you stabilize though. And against control it would give 1 extra turn I guess but it would still be hopeless if a control deck can't be aggressive enough (which is often the case). I actually think the nerf Blizz did is pretty fair, no more OTK  but a high amount of sustained damage , no more free healing against aggro but pretty cheap healing.  I think the deck will still be playable.

Quote from SnarkLord1980 >>

Doomguard doesn't need to be changed.

next.