Hearthpwn

Small rant on the hogwarts mage (rainbow mage, hogwarts is my stupid name for it) nerf

I honestly can't believe how that could have been (imo) possibly the most fun "pre made" archetype they ever made if it wasn't for the stupid spell damage legendary (I refuse to even look up the name...you know what it is) and instead of nerfing or reworking that idiocy they decide to nerf one of the more healthy payoff cards...

This may be surprising but... Archivist Elysiana

I know what you're thinking and it's none of those reasons... here me out:

I blame this card for the idiotic shift in design the game has shown ever since...Outland really with the Raza the Chained un-nerf.

You see back in the day HS used to be a game played by 2 people in a 1v1, where no "I win lol" buttons existed (meaning there was counterplay that could be played AFTER your opponent's attempts at winning and counterplay to said counterplay) and the few that did exist were either meme tier or nerfed...this card was printed in that era and I beileve it is what caused its end:

On top of being inherently toxic in its design (the fact that in a healthy meta this is a win button vs specific decks while in a meta like today this is worse than useless means it can never find a place to exist without being either toxic or useless), this card was also printed at a very unfortunate time where all decks exept control warrior specifically had lost A LOT of power because of the "normal" standard rotation AND the Genn Greymane / Baku the Mooneater early rotation.

This meant that CW held a pretty fat chuck of the viability cake, meaning control mirrors would not be all that rare...the problem is that (because of this stupid card and NOTHING else) they were also unbearably long and stupid due to their ability to add 20 cards to each deck, meaning fatigue (the single best mechanic in HS, fight me) was a non factor and the game would be decided by the best discovers after like 50 minutes. (sometimes, it could also end in an hour long tie) 

A not-completely-stupid-person's takeaway would be: "fatigue delay needs to be EXTREMELY limited but we can keep doing what we've always been doing" ....the problem is that the design team's takeaway was "obviously the problem is with defensive play so we will remove it completely by doing everything in our power to make sure winconditions become wincertainties after they are played and we will make it technically balanced by adding cards that win or lose the game on the spot through the amazingly fun mechanic of randomly discarding from hand and deck (a.k.a. disruption) so that one player plays solitaire while the other plays conflip simulator"

The timeline also works since by the time they realized this they would have had the entire rest of the year's expasions almost ready so they would have to start from the next one, which I personally like to call the "transition year"....A.k.a. the Outland(testing the waters by un-nerfing Raza the Chained in wild, where disruption still existed)-Scholomance(introducing extremely powerful synergies that could OTK you to next week+possibly the strongest disruption ever in Mindrender Illucia)-Darkmoon(do I even need to tell you what type of stupid bullshit came out that expansion?) year that, to me, marked the end of the era where Heartstone could be considered a 2 player game, after that year it would only OCCASIONALLY be a 2 player game depending on what deck you ended up playing as and against.

Also I find it both hilarious and depressing that people would ever hate Shudderwock and Ice Block when the first one is one of the most fun cards ever designed that got a bad reputation because of VERY few stupid interactions that should have been fixed and the second one is only problematic in the decks that are already toxic without it (any form of OTK) because they basically say "kill me THIS TURN or you instalose no matter what you do...oh wait...you can't"  while any other deck simply says "you have to kill me 2/3 times, hard but you are not under extreme time constraints so it's annoying but doable". I'd say it's easy to see that the problem is the archetype, NOT the card

Also "1 or 2 cards winconditions" are perfectly fine, they only become a problem if they are made to be unreactable

Maybe I phrased it poorly but still...

And that's the exact reason I despise the current design philosophy with a passion, they keep printing "fk you, I win" lategame winconditions that you have NO way to defend against no matter how good you think your survivabilty is so the only cOuNtErPlAy is this stupid diceroll of ...

Was meant to explain how they keep printing "fk you, I win" cards that are toxic to the game and use cards like this one to say "see, cards like Kazakusan , Sire Denathrius , Seek Guidance and more...MANY more, are not inherently flawed in their design because you have disruption cards like this one to beat them" . And the problem with this approach is that this just dumbs the game down to either "powerdraw into wincondition faster than opponent or lose 100%"  or "randomly snipe the opponent wincondition" , neither of which are particularly engaging playstyles since they make the entire rest of the deck completely irrelevant

Quote from Arcengal >>

The beginning of a possible new angle for Warriors, where they hate magic and get a massive toolkit to deal with or disrupt it. A unique concept never seen before in any IP oh wait it's just Khorne's thing from Warhammer.

I predict the card will see play even if it's not good, just because of the "hit the right thing and you insta-win" factor.

 To be fair I don't think Khorne/Warhammer is the only time we see that concept

And that's the exact reason I despise the current design philosophy with a passion, they keep printing "fk you, I win" lategame winconditions that you have NO way to defend against no matter how good you think your survivabilty is so the only cOuNtErPlAy is this stupid diceroll of "randomly win or lose because of 1 card while the entire rest of your deck is just a hinderance to get to that card" and this is hurting the game A LOT

The only reason I'm still sticking around (though way...WAY...WAY less than I used to) is that it wouldn't take TOO much effort to fix this, just a rework on some specific cards and/or making drawing cards more puinishing.

Also the card is MEGA toxic

But deathrattles do

I agree that disruption cards are toxic, sadly though, those cards are usually a must unless you want to autolose against all the (even more toxic) fUn AnD iNtErAcTiVe OTK/mill/infinite decks or even all the """"""""""""""control""""""""""""" decks that either play and unstoppable wincondition or just run an ungodly amount of burst (the more recent ones that come to mind are Kazakusan decks and most Sire Denathrius decks)

So while I agree that disruption cards should burn in holy fire, unless the aforementioned cards/decks ALSO do the same I can't bring myself to criticize someone that runs disruption 

Sorry...this is longer than expected :/

It's honestly quite absurd (given all the BS "fk you, I win" stuff in Hearthstone wild right now) that a comparatively tame card powerlevel wise like Daniel (a.k.a. Sire Denathrius, it's just my stupid nickname for the card, don't bother) is destroying my will to play the game relatively quickly.

Let me explain:

I should preface by saying that I loathe the direction that lategame winconditions are going, we are moving further and further away from the (WAY more fun imo) "deal with this" winconditions like:
Hadronox
Deathstalker Rexxar
N'Zoth, the Corruptor
or even the quadruple Mind Blast dealing 22 dmg (max and once per game) in a turn thanks to Shadowreaper Anduin and Shadow Visions
that, while powerful, gave the opponent a way to react so you had to either bait the opponent's answers, get them low enough or have other plans in case these were dealt with like (for example) elemental mage had Frost Lich Jaina to try to "outgrind" the opponent if all the most powerful elementals were dealt with in some way (the most important thing being that even these "backup wincons" were not a guaranteed win in the slightest)

and we are getting pushed deeper and deeper down the (shit)hole of "good luck lol" winconditions like Kazakusan that may not say "win the game" directly but like...come on...you have to be an irl rat to lose from there...or gigantic (25/30 dmg and upwards) burst cards like a well "built" and "Branned up" Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable.

On top of that OTK/mill/infinite decks and disruption cards are just as unfun to face AND play as always. Pretty bad right?

Well surprisingly, thanks to the prevalence of aggro in wild that keeps these last 4 playstyles/cards somewhat (can't stress this word enough) in check, I was able to have some fun b4 Castle Nathria released and even find the rare (quite rare sadly) enjoyable deck to face from time to time so (while nowhere near a healthy metagame) overall I had seen WAY worse so I was looking forward to the expansion MAYBE making things better.

However something changed shortly after Nathria dropped:
Most toxic decks stayed the same, most aggro decks stayed the same, disruption became even more common (and toxic) because of Theotar, the Mad Duke but overall it looked like the situation was going to be bad, yes, but not too tragic so...a repeat of how it was b4 the expantion...until I met my first Hadronox druid. Now...I was playing my (stupid) version of questline shaman that uses the doubled up spells to be able to clear basically any board and Hagatha the Witch to...Idk do some BS and hopefully win (it's actually REALLY fun when you don't get OTK/mill/infinite'd to death) and it had already proven to be able to confortably run several big priests out of threats without transform effects b4 (granted...only if I completed the quest quicky enough) so I was pretty confident going in. The game goes on and my opponent had a version that used Wildheart Guff, Hedge Maze and Carnivorous Cube to play (and destroy) Hadronox an ungodly amount of times, however due to how I built my deck (and a small amount of highrolling) I had managed to run him out of threats completely and the game had been fun but (in my head) it was already mine...and then he played a 60 damage NO-BRANN Daniel and blasted my soul into the loving embrace of Nurgle (if you're not familiar with Warhammer fantasy/40k lore this may make no sense, look it up if you're curious). Then the exact same scenario kept happening where EVERY deck that I could even remotely consider fun to play against would either win via threats (the acceptable, fun way) or get ALL their threats dealt with and then just go "lol here's 60 dmg to face thx for the free stars".

So now I'm starting to lose hope...not only are the stupid OTK/mill/infinite decks STILL a real, almost prevalent force in the metagame, only kept in check by "all out aggression" decks but also all the decks I used to really enjoy playing against (rare as the may be) now run a free 50/60 dmg OTK button with Daniel. I am currently in a state where I love seeing big priests and pirate rogues as my opponents just because with them I know I'm not facing something else so yea...not ideal.

I've recently found out that many people hate him as well (for slightly different reasons) and that he seems to be overperforming (in standard at least) so...how likely do you think a "infuse 2" or "enemy minions" style nerf is?

What the hell?? an actual, real control deck in wild Hearthstone 2022? what is this sorcery? you're not going for infinite shudder, you're not going for 60 dmg on Denathrius, you're not going "lol Kazakusan" ...I have to assume you only win via boardclearing aggro, disrupting all the BS and transforming big priest

Regardeless if I could upvote multiple times I would, even though you run Mutanus/Rat/Theo (sadly they're a must these days so I can't really blame you)

I really, really, really dislike that they're making 'have your opponent discard a card' a common theme now.

It's the most un-fun thing I can imagine to be played against me, like Call of Duty perks that make your opponent's guns have a 20% chance of not firing or FIFA making your opponent's players trip over the ball. .

I do not understand why the game has turned into this.  No one likes this kind of gameplay.

More inevitability... Blizzard really insists on games never ever going long, and I'm not a fan.

A 40 card control deck with no Mutanus the Devourer or Theotar, the Mad Duke. Faith in humanity restored! Cool deck.

I think Sire Denathrius should only affect enemy minions. That would still make it stronger than Raid Boss Onyxia, which was previously considered the strongest standard 10 drop in the game. The results are similar, it would be a board clear with a strong body left on the board. Only with Denathrius, it would also provide healing, and that body also has lifesteal.

The current issue is that the person who draws Denathrius earliest and avoids having it stolen usually wins the game.

I feel you, worst thing imo is that it’s a one card win the game play. I feel like those are more and more prevalent. They just ruin the game, you’re dealing with all their threats and then they play one card and they win…… it’s just a no brainer to play it too. I have no problem with OTK decks that need like 4 or 5 cards to work. Those take time to build up and you can counter them. This feels like the quest mage era where they were just playing with theirselves. 

I agree about the larger issue. Blizzard seems to want games to always end in a timely manner, so win conditions have become harder and harder to counter. OTKs used to be niche and specifically played to counter slow attrition, now it's just a regular part of like 50% of decks.

And since this is a systemic issue that goes beyond just Denathrius, I don't think nerfing him solves anything. Sure we'd see less of specifically him, but I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing right now considering he's supposed to be the main star of the set.

However I think Blizzard is actually doing some things to improve the situation. Consider what inevitable win condition have been introduced this year. Sunken City has Abyssal Curses, Nathria has Denathrius and Kel'Thuzad, and... that's it. Compare that to last year which had both the quests and the hero cards. Not only are there fewer sources of inevitability but they are all minion-based, meaning they are much easier to disrupt. Things might not feel great right now but I have high hopes for next year.

My issue with the card is the fact that it's essentially an OTK card for the most part. OTK cards tend to go into a slower, heavy control deck that struggles against aggro but denathrius essentially goes into spammy/swarmy faster decks. Not only does it do well as a deck but to also plop a card that can board clear and take out the opponent is problematic for me in those types of decks.

I don't like OTK and I know generally, the public doesn't either but at least they struggled against faster decks, denathrius goes into fast decks that handles fast decks well enough, making it a sort of best of both worlds. 

Making it an 8 mana 8/8 that only targets minions would be better imo. Still fast enough to pull back a losing game without flat out destroying the opponent, and it would calm druid down without guff needing a touch up

Yeah, the card is pretty weird. You lose if you can't clear their boards and you also lose if you clear it.