Hearthpwn

Apparently, I've "ignored" a bunch of folks contributing to this thread, so it's possible that this has already been explained - the OP's combos don't work, since the cost reductions of Galvanizer and Thaurissan don't stack.

Wild Mech Hunter is already the fastest aggro deck in the format. Snip will be an upgrade for the deck, and sometimes it will combo with Mechwarper to pull off some big turns. But the notion that Wild will be susceptible to an otherwise very slow pseudo-OTK seems pretty optimistic - the top nine decks that VS tracked in their most recent Wild report were all aggro decks. The format doesn't have nearly enough tools for control decks to consistently survive long enough to pull off late-game multi-card OTKs - indeed, if you consider Even Warlock a control deck, then it's the only control deck with a win-rate fractionally above 50% in Wild. Unfortunately, it can't run the Snip combo, for pretty obvious reasons.

It might turn out that aggro Mech decks are simply too powerful, pulling off non-OTKs with cheap multi-Snip turns - in which case, it's likely better to nerf Mechwarper, which allows for early-game snowballs with lots of free Mechs. But there isn't much point in bitching about it now - we'll simply have to wait and see how the meta-game shakes out over the never month or so . . .

Quote from Ilyanthiel >>

Any card modified by Blizzard should give players possibility of full dust refund simply because they sold them something and alter it so the sale is no longer valid (it's up to the customer to decide if he is happy with the change or not).

I can confirm - this is 100% true.

Blizzard is simply following well-established policies in the industry. Over the past quarter-century, Wizards of the Coast has issued errata, banned or restricted hundreds of cards. Each time they've changed a card, or its legality, they've sent cheques in the mail to each of their customers, refunding their purchases. You also get a little letter of apology. Sometimes, they'll give you coupons for toiletries, or those tiny bottles of alcohol you can buy at the liquor store. They once gave me a pet hamster. I called him "Hammy." Nice guys, Wizards!

Quote from Live4vrRdieTryn >>

Thank you, Blizzard : D Hopefully this will be the new implementation and every expansion after Boomsday will be subject to this treatment as well. It will keep the game fresh between releases and will give bad cards a time to shine. Very proud of them for doing this and can't wait to see what happens.

FWIW - if you watch the video announcing "Year of the Dragon," Ben Thompson and his buddy explain that there would be regular events between expansions designed to shake up the ladder and keep the meta-game fresh. There is a livestream scheduled for the Rise of Mechs event - perhaps there might be some clarification regarding whether these events will become the new norm two months after each expansion.

Assuming the deck consistently draws 10 cards by turn five, the odds of having Snip and Experimenter in hand are about 1/3 * 5/9 = 5/27. The odds of having a Mech in play that survived the turn might be 50/50 - that's about five chances in fifty-four of pulling off the combo on turn 5. In the other forty-nine games, you actually have to play a game of HS. Since Snip is a Legendary, the combo seems far more likely to be played as a win condition in a late game Priest deck - half the time, you need to draw considerably more than half your deck in order to play Snip, so if you rely on the card as your win condition, you have to be able to survive long enough to actually consistently draw it and play it.

Currently, the only viable Priest deck on HSReplays runs the DSIF combo - it also runs a fat-assed Mech Taunt. Maybe the combo can squeeze into that deck - but turn five Coppertail lethals seem unlikely. In all probability, the deck will have to play cards that keep it alive long enough to draw its combo and win, and early-game Mechs don't do that.

We'll see in a couple weeks, I suppose . . .

I'm not sure how the new combo is more consistent than Divine Spirit + Inner Fire/Topsy Turvy + Something Healthy. The Divine Fire combos typically run six copies of Something Healthy and four copies of Topsy+Fire, while the new Mech combo runs only two Experimenters and a single Snip. For the most part, Divine Fire decks haven't been close to competitive over the past five years - Topsy Turvy helped out recently, but the combo struggles to be Tier 3. I'm not sure how Snip Priest is meant to be any better - you'll draw all three pieces of the combo by turn five about one game in nine. Since Snip is Legendary, you'll typically have to draw about half your deck to get to him - in which case, why not simply play a combo that has more redundant pieces in the first place . . .

Quote from YololoSwaggins >>

Elysiana should have been nerfed to 10 mana. Now in mirror matches the one who starts with the coin for Elysiana + bounce wins by default.

Elysiana was included in CW for the mirror-match - it's a dead card against most other decks. A lot of the decks pushed out of the meta by Tempo Rogue have heavily favoured match-ups against CW, so it isn't obvious that the deck will see much play post-nerf. CW enjoyed an inflated play-rate because it was the best counter against the most popular deck. CW might not want to include two otherwise dead cards in their lists, just for the 50/50 chance of having the coin when they queue into a less-frequent mirror. Add all those considerations together, and it isn't at all obvious that Elysiana sees any play after tomorrow, let alone that she required a nerf to 10-mana.

We'll see, I suppose . . .

These nerfs were play-rate nerfs, rather than power-level nerfs. HSReplays has consistently tracked Tempo Rogue in the middle of Tier 2 since the new set launched - as of last night, the deck was 7th best on ladder, with a play-rate more than double that of the second most-popular deck. Against the ten most-played decks on ladder, Tempo Rogue is currently favoured against five - it has a win-rate above 54% in only one of those ten match-ups.

It's already a pretty fair deck - apart from Token Druid, its best match-ups are against other aggressive early-game decks. Presumably, the post-nerf meta-game will have a lot more Hunter, Zoo and Murlocs.

The issue with Big Priest has never been related to its power level, as the deck has consistently found itself well down the Tier List in both the VS Wild Report, and the numbers posted by HSReplays. It's a Tier 2 deck with a Tier 1 play-rate, and it feels bad to play against because a single card in the deck spikes the win-rate of the archetype by over 20% when it hits the board.

But to put things in perspective - currently, the Wild meta-game is completely dominated by Aggro. The top nine decks in the most recent VS Report are all Aggro, and sixteen of the top twenty decks VS tracks are either Aggro or Combo - only two non-Aggro, non-Combo decks in the format have win-rates (fractionally) above 50% (Even Shaman and Jade Druid.) Big Priest has the highest play-rate in the format, by far, but it's only 13th best in terms of win-rate. Big Priest could be nerfed to oblivion, and Wild would still be dominated by Aggro and much better Combo decks - Control and MR simply lack the tools to either interact with the speed of Wild Combo, or stabilize early enough against the tide of Zergs in the format.

Quote from Helweek >>

Man i constantly forget how many trolls are on this site. OP has an opinion, all the comments are in the camp of " you are wrong, your opinion is stupid, Here is  my clearly superior opinion expressing why you have no business having an opinion,". Like chill if the OP doesn't like it that's fine.

It's perfectly appropriate and acceptable to criticize vapid posts. It's also worthwhile recognizing that the OP wasn't simply "expressing his opinions," but intentionally misrepresenting the cost of the new adventure - nothing is "hidden behind a paywall" as he pretended.

If I were Supreme Dictator of the Universe, I would make the following changes -

• Waggle Pick - 3 Attack.
• Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - Battlecry: Mechs in your hand have Rush.

I mostly play Wild -

• Bloodbloom - 4-mana.
• Barnes - 6-mana.
• Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater - Like Quests, they start in your opening hand, and if you mulligan them, you lose their effect.

Hmmm . . .

I'm not convinced that the OP has identified a "paradox" - he played 50+ games every day for eight or nine months, turning HS into his full-time job. Presumably, over-playing the game for the better part of a year explains his current lack of motivation to continue with the game. I'd recommend taking some time off - the game doesn't make any promises that it will remain as fresh as a daisy if you play it six or seven or eight hours every day.

FWIW - none of the sites which track the game are posting data which would support any nerfs for "power level" reasons. While VS has Tempo Rogue at the top of their tier lists, the deck's win-rate is among the lowest the site has ever tracked for "best deck." HSReplays, in contrast, has Tempo Rogue squarely in the middle of Tier 2 - VS records only a fraction of the games HSReplays tracks, and lacks any data at all for the deck HSReplays currently ranks as best on ladder.

There are plenty of considerations for "quality of life" nerfs - but there always are. QoL nerfs are a matter of taste - however, it's likely that the devs will prioritize "play-rate" nerfs over all others. Tempo Rogue is played more than twice as often as the next-most-popular deck, despite its otherwise good-but-not-great performance on ladder. It's also warping Specialist format, which is a further consideration - while the tournament meta-game has always been somewhat different from ladder, the new competitive format has exaggerated those differences considerably. How do the devs handle problematic cards in eSports that aren't honestly problematic on ladder? Needless to say, there aren't any correct answers to any of this, though the devs will likely steer the course of least resistance. It will be interesting to see what happens . . .

To be fair, the nerf to Warsong Commander didn't kill Patron Warrior - a bunch of players piloted the deck at Worlds in 2015, well after the nerf, including the champion, Ostkaka. While the nerf eliminated the OTK, the deck remained among the best in the meta. Oil Rogue was never nerfed. Tinker's Sharpsword Oil rotated with the arrival of the format split. Blade Flurry was nerfed at rotation, but TSO has continued to see play in just about every Wild Rogue deck apart from Mill and Odd.

FWIW - Iksar has often cited HSReplays data when posting on the subreddit. Presumably, the data is pretty legit.

I'd advise not paying too much attention to the HSReplays homepage - overall class win-rates are essentially meaningless. Mike Donais was a guest on the Omni podcast about a year ago - he explained why class win-rates don't reflect game balance very well, since lots of people play good decks poorly, or simply enjoy playing shitty decks (his example was Mill Rogue - at the time, about 10% of the Rogue player-base was tanking the overall class win-rate by 2%, simply by playing the deck.) From the point of view of game balance, the devs don't look at class win-rates, and focus on whether or not each class and archetype are viable.

As far as Priest goes - if you look deeper at the numbers, about half of all Priest decks are Resurrect Priest. It has a win-rate just below 49%. All the rest of the Priest decks are as shitty as the OP seems to think, with win-rates bottoming out well below 40% - the net result is a class win-rate of 44%.

FWIW - the new Specialist format is the format which virtually every IRL card game employs at tournaments - players bring a deck, and play a bunch of games with it. There are some pretty good arguments for HS not employing this kind of format, but it's also worthwhile actually seeing what happens, rather than pretending that the end is clearly nigh . . .

It should go without saying - bringing a deck, and playing it hasn't exactly killed the CCG genre. Often, one deck is really good, and the tournament meta-game is quickly pared down to the really good deck, and the deck that beats the really good deck. It regularly happens with just about every game, and just about every expansion, to one degree or another - not because devs in every CCG are lazy and stupid, but because they make a bunch of really cool, powerful cards. Once the tournament meta-game shakes out, the devs ban cards that warp the competitive format - again, not because they are lazy and stupid, but because they want the tournament meta-game to be as diverse as possible.

If there is any value in pretending that this process heralds the end times, then the OP is perfectly justified in being its prophet.