Hearthpwn

Ah. Fair enough. You're right. It's targeted. That's vastly better.

JFC. I will never understand why they persist in putting in spells that damage or impede all minions in a class whose hero power is... to create minions. This in the same vein as Totem Cruncher, except that it can actually affect opposing minions. It's basically another attempt at Cryostasis: Do a good thing, but only if you also potentially do a bad thing. 

Well, it doesn't have to be strictly a 2 health minion, since it could be reduced to 2 health by your other minions and its Battlecry and then this could kill it. But it's an awful cost for what it does; too expensive for Zoo; not big enough and lacks Taunt for control. It's just a tweener card that doesn't even fit in some kind of midrange demon deck (not that those exist) because it's not a demon. Will Honorable Kill work multiple times? As in, if it kills off a bunch of things with 1 health, does it gain ALL of their attack value? That would be kind of amazing against Quest Paladin... which no one plays.

JFC. It's not even a "failed archetype." It was never an archetype in the first place. Six of 10 cards from Knights were mechanically "Freeze"-themed. The only card that didn't use the mechanic but had that element was Snowfury Giant, which was yet another poor attempt to use Overload as a central function for Shaman. The only Freeze card that saw any use at all was Brrrloc, because Shaman Murloc decks were still a mild thing then. The rest of them were complete wastes of time and dust because they included stuff like Cryostasis (buff your minion but make it useless for a turn) and Ice Breaker (freeze a really dangerous minion but use your face to remove it.) If they're trying to revive that awful approach, Shaman may end up just like it did post-Knights, which was using only cards from other sets.

I think they're playing the long con, which is that they're upping the power of aggro against the Questline combos, so that there will be even more aggro in the environment and, thus, open the door for control decks to come back in. That's in an ideal world. But I think the problem with that approach is that it only increases the polarity of the matchups: Aggro > Quests > Control > Aggro. That's the way the rock-paper-scissors is supposed to work. But when it's taken to this degree, it basically means that you should concede, rather than just accept that it's a bad matchup. It genuinely makes it into a roshambo situation (paper ALWAYS beats rock, etc.), rather than just making it more difficult. They've been here a couple times before and I remember Iksar speaking about trying to avoid that kind of extreme polarity in the future, but I guess it was more important to him to get everyone playing Quests and turns HS into a 5-turn game. Or something.

That last point is the biggest problem. I only play four classes because of the expense (Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Warlock) because those were my favorites in WoW and I STILL can't get a complete set of what I want without spending too much money. Add in the combo/no minions allowed feeling of Stormwind and this is the most discouraged I've ever felt in the first couple weeks of an expansion. Been playing since the closed beta, but I think I've finally opted out for good. It's just not worth it for me anymore.

This card is a fundamental misunderstanding of human psychology. They just changed Tracking because, while it's a great card, many players were reluctant to use it for fear of the "bad beat." People will always remember the one time that Tracking destroyed two crucial cards in their deck, as opposed to the other nine times when it got them a good card that they might not have otherwise drawn (and got rid of two other cards that weren't important to the game in front of them.) It's human nature to always remember that one time when something was a disaster, as opposed to all of the other times when things went right. In poker, it's routine that people remember the bad beats, as opposed to the regular wins.

Soul Rend is a "bad beat" card. No one will want to play it because of the risk of destroying key elements of your deck. It's the same reason that Warlock discard has never been a viable mechanic. Sticking with our Tracking example, that at least allows you the choice of what to lose. Discard was random up until the last year ( highest-cost, lowest-cost, etc.) which is when it became somewhat workable with Hand of Gul'dan and Wicked Whispers. This is a totally random effect again which is the LAST THING YOU WANT as a control player, who tend to value each card in their deck moreso than aggro players. If you're facing a board full of Chillwind Yetis that require this much damage to remove, something has already gone wrong and you'll be even less likely to want to destroy a significant part of your deck in order to correct it. I don't see the point in producing this card, unless they're still on the Ben Brode model of producing "fun" cards that won't see play like Purify.

One assumes that said "small fortune" is exactly what they're targeting, given the number of regular streamers (aka Blizzard's primary advertisers (for free!)) that have recently been citing the main problem of growing the game's audience, which is the ridiculous cost. It's why I got out after having started in the open Beta.

My suspicion remains that this is all still just a redirect on how damn expensive the game is. Outside of other factors, like how demoralizing losses feel compared to other games and how deeply flawed I feel that Shaman class is, I don't play anymore primarily because I simply can't justify the cost. Among the rants from various streamers about the new rewards track, many of them mentioned that you're paying over $100(US) for a pre-release and STILL only getting 1/4 to 1/3 of the cards basically required to play the new decks. And THEN you're paying more to get the bonus XP in the underwhelming rewards system that still doesn't bring it up to the level of the previous much-criticized system. That cash outflow is the problem, which has very little to do with how much gold you're earning. No game is worth spending several hundred dollars a year on and STILL not having a "complete" game. You can spend $180/year on WoW and have access to anything you want, as long as you have the time to spend. Technically, that's the same for HS... if you spend 3 or 4 times more AND you're still not guaranteed to get everything you want without spending even MORE money.

When you look at it in those terms, all this furor over the reward system is really misplaced.

Felguard hasn't seen play since the Beta because its effect is completely detrimental to normal gameplay (building into bigger cards or combinations of them (aka why Overload sucks.)) The only reason that Felguard was even vaguely viable, but not competitive, was because it's a 3/5 Taunt for 3 mana. This is a vanilla 3/3 that impacts your opponent... but does the same thing that Felguard does, which is why it will never see play; on top of the fact that it's not a Demon, so it's not even useful in Demon decks. Plus, it's time-based (i.e. its effect is useless after turn 9.)

Clearly, there must be some other card(s) being released to make this even semi-viable because this is close to being one of the worst cards that's been produced in the last few years and is for a class that's the farthest thing from competitive at the moment.

The key, as with most Overload cards, is tempo. Totem Golem was an acceptable Overload card because it created a tempo advantage. You could put a Spider Tank out on turn 1, so it was OK to pay for it again on the following turn. But most Overload cards ruin tempo play because you can't keep up with what your opponent is playing next turn. They're not catching up to you. You have to catch up to them because most Overload cards are only barely worth the mana you're paying in the first place and certainly not the extra. Goliath was insult to injury, because first you were overpaying for a Chillwind Yeti and then you were paying two MORE for it next turn. Even if your opponent was a fool and decided to kill the Goliath and gave you your board of totems, you couldn't Bloodlust to take advantage of them. With the buff, you'll be able to do that and your opponent will actually have to pay attention to a 5 strength minion, which means you might actually get to take advantage of the deathrattle, where you almost never would have before. I think they fundamentally misunderstood both this particular card and the way Overload is currently functioning in the game. You would think that Shaman's performance for the past year (since the Galakrond nerfs) would be a clue.

Appreciate these, but how is it Quest MURLOC Shaman when the deck uses all of 4 Murlocs?

On the one hand, no Hunter decks, since the class didn't get a ton of love in this expansion at first glance.

OTOH, continuing the streak of no Paladin or Shaman, either. I'm a little surprised at the lack of Paladin, considering the showering of excellent cards they received. But I'm completely unfazed by the lack of Shaman, which is still too slow in almost every fashion (totem, spell damage) to be competitive.

This is the Brainstorm-like effect I've been pining for the last six years. So much of HS is limited by the draw and, with little to no way to manipulate that draw, it often detracts from the actual skill level involved in playing your deck. These kind of effects should have been in the game from the beginning.