Hearthpwn

I'm sure it won't, because Blizzard will do some backend code to prevent it, but theoretically this card should give you infinite "Dies" triggers. It would hit 0/0, instantly die, then become a -1/-1, instantly die, and so on. 

Kinda a shame that Blizzard will put a stopgate in there, since that makes this card terrible forever. If it had the dies triggers, maybe it could have found a place in a weird combo deck in Wild later on, but 9 mana cards have to be incredibly broken to see any play.

I think my biggest issue with this is that the reasons they gave for the nerfs (aside from Corridor Creeper) are not new. The Raza/Shadowreaper combo has been known since the launch of KotFT. Everyone and their grandmother has been trying to shove Patches into any aggressive deck since KotFT. Bonemare has been a scourge of Arena, so much so it's occurrence rate was nerfed, since KotFT. Notice a pattern here? All three of these cards haven't suddenly become a problem in the last month, but have been plaguing Standard and Arena for two entire expansion cycles now. Why did we have to wait for the rotation for Blizzard to FINALLY make changes? Maybe Blizzard should have thought about all of these very obvious issues in the post-KotFT balance patch? Sure, it's nice that Blizzard is recognizing they've made a mistake and are swooping in to keep Wild safe, but it feels like for Standard it's a bit of too little too late. For Patches to reign supreme for two whole years and only just now get nerfed feels shameful.

They talked a whole bunch on how they like change and how they dislike doing the same thing over and over, and yet I'm pretty sure that until Mean Streets rotates out next year we won't actually see any changes at all. Jade Druid will continue forcing the meta to choose between the fastest aggro deck, a recursive control deck, or an oppressive combo. People really don't seem to understand just how toxic this class is to game design. Control already, paradoxically, loses to aggro. Forcing Control to tech against recursive threats that will force them out of the game means they have to sacrifice the aggro matchup. This really heavily limits control decks down to ones that can either instantly win the game through highrolling, or ones that have an oppressive combo. Neither of these make fun games. Midrange is just straight up dead, neither aggressive enough or controlly enough to beat either of the above. We NEED fixes to Jade, or expect the meta to continue being the exact same with a few new broken cards.

We'll see how quickly Brode and the team change their tune on the Dungeon Run reward structure when they notice that ~10% of players are playing it after launch. If players have literally no incentive at all to play a mode they won't. How often have the players replayed Adventure content after obtaining all it's rewards? The thing is, Team 5 was making it sound like they really want dungeon runs to be a seperate mode that they'll continually update, hell it even sounded like they wanted it to replace Adventure content for expansions. If there is no reward structure at all they're gonna learn pretty quickly that's just not gonna fly, because Hearthstone players are always gonna be forced to work on grinding out cards for their collection.

Quote from Excellent20 >>

I've been spending my gold on packs to get cards. Is this dumb and should I only play Arena with my gold for better reward long-term???

Great, this'll be the only Warlock skin we'll get for ages, and it's a completely made up Hearthstone character. Seriously, gimme an actual Warlock from the lore like Cho'gall or Ner'Zhul, hell I'd even take something like Willfred Fizzlebang. Just someone recognizable. Priests have Anduin Wrynn and Tyrande Whisperwind, Hunters have Rexxar and Alleria Windrunner, Mages get Jaina Proudmoore, Medivh and Khadgar, but you're gonna give Warlocks Gul'dan and who-even-cares? Like, at least Rogue's first hero was someone who was big in the lore. This just feels dumb and kinda lazy. 

"Well maybe new players should just expect to suck if they don't want to spend money."

This is the most toxic way of thinking, and is the quickest way to kill the game. If new players are constantly getting destroyed by extremely powerful decks that will take them months to obtain, they're not gonna keep playing. Hell, I have a fairly hefty collection and I usually end up just not playing for days on end. You can't just say "Well they don't want to pay money so they'll have a substandard experience" because then we'll never get any new players, which will lead to this game dying a slow and painful death. 

There definitely needs to be some fixes. Other games are just way more generous than Hearthstone is. I've been playing Eternal for a week and I have more legendaries and cards in that game than I recieved in my first year playing Hearthstone. Shadowverse gives you like a 100 packs when you start just as a backlog of all the free packs they've given out. These games' packs are also filled with more cards than Hearthstone's measly 5.

However, more important than generosity these games are fairly balanced. Cheap aggro decks can perform well, expensive control decks can do well, cheap and expensive combo can work, cheap and expensive midrange is fun. Games that have healthy metas where there are a large number of good decks but no absurd decks are great for new players. If Hearthstone's meta was good enough that you could throw the three legendaries a new player might have into a deck and perform reasonably well the current reward system would be fine.

This leads to two possible fixes:

- Give far more rewards for playing than 1/10 of a pack every 3 wins + meh quests.

- On the next rotation have a metagame that isn't just a crazy aggro deck vs a crazy control deck. 

We do definitely need fixes though. As it stands I literally can't recommend my friend's play Hearthstone, but I'm more than happy to tell them to play other card games.

Kinda glad to see them remove synergy picks, but I do hope they revisit the idea. I think if they put the synergy picks at the end of the draft it would be much better. Having combos and synergy in arena can help make it a little bit less curvestone-y, or at the very least can raise the floor of the deck rating so that there is less of a gap between the best and worst deck.

Quote from Hannya >>

Quote from YamaHs >>

Ben Brode stop talking bs and try to work together with the communtity its not that hard to nerf a card  without killing it

 

 They DID nerf the card without killing it.

Because of all of the weapon buffs that Warriors have, Fiery Waraxe is still extraordinarily stronger than cards like Eaglehorn Bow, when they're in decks which don't buff the effect.

Sure, control warrior vs other control matchups doesn't get changed by war axe. But who cares? The point of control isn't to beat other control decks, it's to beat Aggro and Tempo decks by removing their board and gaining life faster than the opponent can kill you. In that sense, making Fiery War Axe 3 mana does definitely kill the card. The point of War Axe is to play it on turn 2 and slow down the aggressive opponent building up a board. You get to take the damage of a card once instead of taking it multiple times, and you get to kill the card before it gets buffed up to deal even more damage. At 3 mana the aggressive deck has played a both a one drop and a two drop, perhaps even a three drop or more likely a two drop and a one drop. Most of the aggressive decks are either highly synergistic like pirate warrior or murloc paladin, or very buff reliant like Token Shaman and Aggro Druid. Having to wait until turn 3 for your first weapon hit pretty much guarantees that your opponent will be able to take advantage of the synergy of their deck. Additionally, your second swing of War Axe will now be on turn 4, which is primarily when you would want to play Blood Razer to get the whirlwind effect. In Wild you would prefer to use Death's Bite, but in Wild you will never play War Axe over King's Defender so the card is completely dead there as well. Additionally, Warrior really has some good defensive tools on 3 mana that are a good way to recover after taking the damage on turn 2. Being able to play cards like Ravaging Ghoul and Tar Creeper on 3 have been pretty important to deal with aggro. 

On top of all of this, War Axe really isn't that crazy of a weapon. The community as a whole may have dubbed it Fiery Win Axe, but against aggressive, tempo and midrange variants you really need that second hit of war axe to get value. Decks running weapon removal like the Ooze's can really wreck a warrior's early tempo. Additionally, decks that play early minions with 4 health and larger, or minions with deathrattle can also reduce the effectiveness of War Axe. All in all, it was a really fair card at 2 mana, and now at 3 mana it's going to be hard finding warriors who will willingly include it. I think after Whispers of the Old Gods rotates out we might see a resurgence if Warriors don't get any good cards in the 3 cost slot, but War Axe is definitely dead forever in Wild. 

• Changing the cost makes it immediately obvious a card can't be cast at that same cost anymore - no green outline.

Right, so players aren't stupid, but we aren't smart enough to read a number on a card? We need to rely on whether or not there is a green outline on whether or not we can play?

I feel like this didn't help Blizzard at all. Ben doesn't think this makes War Axe EXCESSIVELY weaker, to the point of being unplayable. At the very least in Wild, War Axe is actually now completely unplayable, as everyone will run King's Defender over it. Additionally trying to backpedal on things like the Warsong Nerf, saying that Classic and Basic cards that are too frequent need to be nerfed to "shake up" Standard...these aren't good justifications. They're still not addressing the core of the problem, which is that this nerf is fundamentally bad and should have been "Can't Attack Heroes" on War Axe. I'm glad that we get to see more into Team 5's thought process, but it's only gone to make me more uncertain about the game's future than I was before.

Turns out Ultimate Infestation is a pretty good card! Jade Druid is much more focused on tempo now than ever before. They don't need a big Gadgetzan turn to refill their hand, they just have to play one card. The new Druid Death Knight also helps Druid go on the offensive or the defensive really well, something Jade likes. All of this means that even if you do get Skulking Geist off, you probably just lost anyway from the tempo suicide you just committed. We need an actual nerf if Blizzard wants to stop another expansion cycle of Jade Druid.

I think the worst thing is that nothing looks like it will change. The meta is starting to settle, and it looks like evolve token shaman is still the best midrange deck, Jade Druid is still gonna crush control, and Pirate Warrior is gonna keep on being Pirate Warrior. The worst part is that unless Blizzard actually starts nerfing or banning cards, we could see this happen to the next expansion as well. Imagine a full year of Patches, because we're only one expansion away from it being a reality.

The answer is because she's not a demon, and people would be fuckin pissed if she was. Wrath of the Lich King was the most popular expansion in World of Warcraft history, which means people were really hesitant about whether Hearthstone could be true to the source. We've already seen people ask these questions on cards before, Icehowl being one, so Blizz decided to not fuck around and just make sure everything was exactly right. You can click on Blood Queen Lanathel in WoW and it won't say she's a demon, so she's not a demon in Hearthstone either.

The issue with this deck is that people are trying greedy control deck. This will crush any aggro deck, 50/50 midrange, and loses against greedier control. Take this against a pirate warrior or aggro pally and you'll find it's pretty good