Hearthpwn

Should have been 2 mana, then it would be perfect. Even if this wasn't conditional and always gave +3 health, it still wouldn't be very good. At 2 mana the condition makes sense, and it would have been good demon synergy for once.

Fuck sake, make demon decks viable and stop giving Warlock's trash like this please Blizzard.

Yes, and Loatheb should be moved there with him.

I think this is something Blizzard should have planned to do from the beginning. I would love to see a lot of the tech cards (Like Loatheb) and the unique deck defining cards (Like Reno) be playable in the standard format. Creating deck's with those cards in mind is just more fun.

 Yes, there are many old legendaries and old cards in general that should be buffed. But it likely won't happen, because the dev team are under the misguided belief that a lot of people who play this game "enjoy winning with bad cards" and think that having bad cards with interesting effects somehow add's variety to the game and makes it more fun. Yes, that totally makes sense Blizzard, if you give us bad cards that never see play and we end up fighting the same group of net decks over and over made from the small pool of cards that are actually good, that somehow makes the game have more variety. Mhm.

Also from a slightly more "tinfoil hat" perspective, if the old cards from the classic and basic set are good, then what incentive does anyone have to buy the expansions? That'd be the F2P players dream, to make a 30 card deck entirely from basic and classic cards that's still competitively viable. Then they could save their gold and dust to get the few, *ahem,* fun cards from the expansions that they want and never have to spend money on the game.

Hey guys, I discovered this one crazy trick that ANY class can use to kill a Flamewreathed Faceless, Shaman's hate it!

It's an old card from the classic set that never saw much use called Big Game Hunter. At 5 mana it comes out the very turn after your opponent plays a Flamewreathed Faceless. I think it's very unique ability is perfect for countering those 7 attack minions, and on top of that you get a 4/2 minion on the board so it's great value for the mana.

Handlock has been playing 4 mana 8/8's since the dawn of time, without the overload drawback. There are counters to big minions. Put more removal in your deck. BGH can be played the very turn after your opponent plays their Flamewreathed Faceless. Anyone calling BGH "dead" is over reacting immensely.

Not quite sure what you meant by "a berserker" so I hope this works:

Next, a rogue card based off of Dark Souls, or Bloodborne.

A card that synergizes with Overload:

Next, a hunter weapon with a Deathrattle.

A Shovel Knight card, the man himself:

Next, a mage weapon with some kind of spell synergy.

I've thought for a long time that Elemental's should become a new tribe. It would be a natural fit for Shaman, and a much better synergy for them to work with than Murlocs. Among the cards you've designed, I really like how a lot of them have Battlecries to synergize with Rumbling Elemental. If Elemental's ever did become a thing I'd hope some of them would have spell synergy as well, since so many Shaman spells are elemental attacks, like Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Earth Shock.

I do have one question though. What's the advantage to Elemental Ascendant? I can't really imagine one. If he has to destroy a friendly elemental to gain it's effects, wouldn't that be far too much of a downside to using him, being forced to destroy one of your own minions? With the recent release of Unearthed Raptor, I don't think it would be too powerful for Elemental Ascendant to simply copy the effects of a friendly Elemental, with no downside and keeping the solid body.

Well, I can't really argue with that, most of my points have already been made. And thank you for the solid reasoning in your arguments, this is the kind of discussion I was hoping for. I would like to add something however.

Firstly, I somehow forgot to mention anything about Crackle. That's another card I think could probably use a change. The comparison between it and Lava Burst is apt, but currently I don't feel like Crackle is such a great option for board control either. Again, like Lightning Storm, it's because of the randomized damage. It makes it hard to use reliably. And yes, Shaman has the spellpower totem, which again is unreliable, though admittedly "easy" the way you put it. This has made me realize, I think some of the problems with Shaman could be resolved if they got a class specific spell damage minion. Something like a 2 mana 2/3 with spellpower, 3 mana 1/5 totem with spellpower maybe? Their hero power is too random to ever count on getting the spellpower totem, crackle's damage is too random to reliable take out minions with 5 or more health, lightning storm is too random to reliably take out minions with 3 health, and Earth Shock would probably be too powerful with 2 base damage. Yeah, I'll admit you convinced me on that, I forgot just how many 2 health minions with Deathrattle there are. Though at the same time, a hard counter to Mad Scientist would be more than welcome.

Secondly, a smaller point. I agree that, in the grand scale of things, none of these changes are strictly necessary. I'm familiar with the Ben Brode school of thought that it's better to add new cards which enable previously "useless" cards to find a niche, rather than updating old cards to become better and risk upsetting the balance even more. However, I personally find this way of keeping the game balanced and keeping old cards relevant to be inefficient. I prefer a more proactive approach, I think it would be more effective. Obviously I'm not in charge of the game's design choices, which is yet another reason why I had to make this thread to vent and dream. I also understand that when I propose changes like these, it can look as if I'm making the cards more "samey" and therefor diluting the elements of what makes each class unique (1 mana 2 damage spells across the board, etc). That's merely because I feel like things such as mana cost and damage should be more or less equivalent across all the different cards. I think it should be in the unique additional effects, or lack thereof, that makes the cards stand out, and from there the strategies form. Although I'm no psychic, I feel like that would be the best step towards making a wider range of deck types viable. If every class has a solid base to start with, cards that aren't complicated, still a bit different from the other class options, but over all just "get the job done" so to speak, then I think that would widen the range of viable deck types.

Okay, I was wrong. That wasn't a small point.

Quote from ShadowsOfSense >>

So, all I'm seeing is needlessly buffing cards because you think they are weaker than another classes counterpart. The problem with this is that each class has cards of a specific power level because of the tools available to the class, and most of the changes you've made to cards have made them far too good for their mana cost, and you still end up with some cards that are clearly more powerful than their counterparts.

The change to Earth Shock, for example, is ludicrous, as is the change to Frost Shock, and both changes make them much, much better than the proposed Arcane Shot and Holy Smite. You seem to misunderstand the value of Freeze and Silence, and also the fact that Shamans don't need inherently powerful spells, because they have easy access to Spell Damage. This is an example where the Hero Power of the class helps define the cards available to it.

You also suggested changes to cards that are already run - Consecration, Darkbomb, Lightning Storm, Lava Burst and Slam are all run in various decks, so why do they need these arbitrary 'buffs'? I say 'buffs' because the change to Slam doesn't make it better for its most common use, which is the card draw, and arguably the Darkbomb change would make people less likely to run it in Handlock, making it a 'worse' card.

In general, I just genuinely don't think that cards need to be changed because another class has a better version of it. If every class had the same tools available to it then why would there ever be any need for classes in the first place?

Updating for weapon ideas:

Quote from Hatchie_47 >>

 Class cards and classes hero power define what decks are played by that class

Quote from Hatchie_47 >>

I think you kinda misunderstood my point. The context of other same class cards, hero power and played decks styles is crucial when evaluating any class card.

Why no Warrior deck runs Mortal Strike? Because no Warrior deck have place for such a card! All Warrior decks are either Control (different versions of CW) or Combo (Patron is still out there even tho not FotM anymore). Both of those decks have cards that helps them achieve their goal which is kinda simillar - to stall the game - either until they get all the combo pieces, they get to overwhelm the opponent with huge threats or exhaust and outsurvive the opponent and win the fatigue wars. Dealing damage using spell for 4 mana won't help them achieve that goal be it 4, 6 or 8 damage, not next to Death's Bite. Thats why no Warrior plays Mortal Strike and no Warrior would play Fireball right now even if they could.

Shaman is not very good example for any analysis right now since there are virtualy no Shaman decks played at all (at least not consistently). Closest to that is now a Murloc Shaman which gets another 2 potentialy good cards in LoE. That deck tries to swarm their board with multiple minions buffing each other and overpower their opponent with aggression. No need for weapons at all since the deck wants to spend every single mana to swarm the board. Won't use the Stormforged Axe for sure, but wouldn't use Fiery War Axe if they could either!

Quote from Hatchie_47 >>

By the very definition you can't say that one card is objectively better than another if those two aren't from the same class (or both neutral) since they don't share the same context of cards/decks they can be played with/in.

E.g. Ice Rager is objectively better than Magma Rager, but Fireball is NOT objectively better than Mortal Strike.