"Forks to the left, knives and spoons on the right!"
- Knights of the Round and Elegantly-Set Dinner Table
Armor Up! is the Warrior power, of course.
This spell is named after the WoW Paladin ability. Paladins in WoW have access to the best, heaviest armor in the game, and yet Paladins in Hearthstone currently have zero ways to get Armor. So, I thought a card like this might be cool to give Paladins more potential build options that can use their Hero Power to focus more on survival in exchange for no longer producing board presence on demand.
The start-of-game effect is internally balanced, in isolation with the rest of the card, and I don't believe Armor would be particularly problematic in Paladin because, with only this card, they just can't stack Armor as high as Warriors can, and they also don't have any armor synergy effects like Warriors do. Plus, the Paladin's existing survival cards are all health restoration, which Armor actually conflicts with. This does nothing balance-wise but potentially increase the variety of viable Paladin play-styles.
As a quirk, the start-of-game effect here can actually only take place once, so you only need one of these in your deck to benefit, but the second copy, just like the first, is still a 1-Cost spell that'll get you 4 Armor anyway, so it's not like two copies aren't worth playing. I could have avoided this redundancy by attaching the effect to a Legendary minion, but thematically plate armor is a basic feature of Paladins. Also, I like the idea that, as a Common card, this opens up options to lower-budget players.
12
I've never played WoW, but overall, I'm very excited.
Valeera wears red, which reminds me of Warrior, my least favourite class. Black and green is a great combo, and matches better with Rogue's card border.
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What? You were expecting some less shallow reasoning?
As someone who cares more for aesthetics, I fully approve of this hero.
5
I like this card. A lot. I'm actually a little surprised by that.
We're talking about replacements a lot, but I think this might be good for Rogue when Tomb Pillager rotates out.
1
*looks at Dragon deck*
"As Coroner I must admit,
I thoroughly examined it.
And it's not only merely dead,
it's really most sincerely dead."
3
A while ago, I looked up some older hearthstone highlights videos. I was surprised at just how many times the old druid combo showed up.
To this day, I'm still seeing "sick Rag hits", "sick Sylvanas steals", and "sick Rag hits into Sylvanas steals/sick Sylvanas hits into Rag steals" in these videos.
Not to mention, everyone in the legendaries thread who says "I have no legendaries, where should I start?" gets mostly the same answer, "Sylvanas or Ragnaros".
They've had their fun for quite a while now, but a breath of fresh air sounds nice to me.
1
I'm really not feeling this thread, sorry. Often I look at "rebalancing" attempts to see how people go about balancing cards. The best ones are downright thought-provoking, making me think, "What is it that really makes this card good or bad, and why do I agree/disagree with this idea?"
A lot these changes, however, seem to be based on arbitrary stat distribution, ignoring how they would actually play in practice, and other things like synergies. Not to mention that a card's ability is often the deal breaker for viability in one's deck, and some abilities are hard to really quantify according to cost.
But, even in regards to vanilla-ish cards, nerfing things like Goldshire Footman and Wisp seems downright nonsensical. It's one thing to say a card is balanced, but really, is anyone going to bother trying to make a 0 attack Wisp work when the card already sees no play?
2
Hey guys, I got a great idea for nerfing Shaman. Instead of making the 3/3 weapon cost 2, how about we get rid of Wrath of Air Totem because BOTH OF THEIR CHEAP AS DIRT AOES ARE TOO STRONG WITH SPELLPOWER YOU BRAINDEAD BABOONS.
The nerf to STB was well done too, now we can make sure those darn pirates won't survive Coin Maelstrom Portal. Those poor underprivileged Shamans can finally come out from under their rocks.
But I suppose we should be happy about Spirit Claws nerf regardless. 2 mana is likely FAR too expensive to see any play in Midrange decks, and I'm sure the high durability, power enough to destroy premium 1/3 1 drops, and ease of activation were never a problem at all. Good work overall, great job.
4
This, I see as being on par with the Execute or Knife Juggler nerfs. If it can get nerfed and still see lots of play, it just shows that the original version was too good.
This change hardly matters at all for any Control Shamans out there, but makes it more unwieldy for early aggro shenanigans, especially with overload in the mix.
Still doesn't excuse Cogmaster's Wrench, but what can you do?
3
Grobbulus was Rogue, Shaman was Nazjar.
1
Just today, I was looking over some of the changes that basic/classic card underwent in early alpha/beta. A few of them were quite interesting.
For instance, Pit Lord used to be 4 mana 7/7: Deal 7 damage to your hero. It got its health reduced, and then finally changed around to what it is now, since even with a big drawback, a 4 mana 7/7 was too powerful.....
Leper Gnome and Abusive Sergeant were originally 1/1 minions, which were then buffed to 2/1.
Starving Buzzard, among other cards, activated when a card was played, not summoned. In its original form, the problem with Unleash the Hounds wouldn't even exist.
And finally, Blade Flurry. Was at one point, "2 mana: destroy your weapon, damage all enemy minions." The ability to hit heroes was actually added later.
I have no real problem with cards getting nerfed to keep them from being overpowering. I do have a problem when evergreen cards are nerfed to oblivion just to make them go away. "You shouldn't expect Blade Flurry to ever be un-nerfed", is basically saying, "We're gonna leave this over-priced, useless card in the classic set for some poor schmuck to get out of a pack, instead of trying to make it work or removing it, because we don't remove cards. Because."
11
Cast Demonheart on a Mistress of Pain.
What are her stats?