Hearthpwn

Exceptionally well-built for the meta (at the time).  Toshley beats everything by itself at a tempo advantage, and that's really all that matters in many match-ups.

Quote from piscator0 »

a fair card, I wouldnt mind picking it in Arena,

Piloted Skygolem is an amazing 6 drop (6/4 stats) but it doesnt see that much play as it should imo

tl;dr not a card I would play in my constructed, because 4 Health is just not good enough

Piloted Sky Golem is overall the second best 6-drop next to Sylvanas, and sees as much play as it possibly can in any deck that can run more than one 6-drop.  That said, you're pretty much correct in saying 4 health isn't good enough... if it were "just a 6-drop".

As a 4-or-less mana card though, then this card becomes an insanely powerful tempo play, because you would most definitely play it if it were that cheap.  So yes, the card is pretty horrible if it existed in a vacuum, but if more and more aggressive midrange cards like Muster for Battle and Implosion come out, along with better and better synergies, then this card would become more and more consistently abuse-able and see more and more play.

So tl;dr - Don't sleep on this one.  This card's definitely got potential, especially as more cards get released down the road.

If only this were a 5/5 for 5, it'd be soooo much better.

It's a shame, but this is pretty outclassed by Piloted Sky Golem, on the whole.

Should still be pretty decent outside of the Rogue matchup

Quote from master_of_the_universe »

Trade, ping, and suddenly this is 2 mana. Even at 3 mana it's on curve in terms of direct damage spells. I think it's a lot better than most people are saying.

Translation: "Hope for an unfortunate board state where you're even or slightly behind, suffer a likely tempo loss from having to use your hero power, and congratulations!  You now have the privilege of playing a marginally better Shadow Bolt.  At the end of the day, you might just be lucky enough to find yourself only slightly behind again, because if you were ahead, chances are, you would have been better off hard-casting a 5-drop like Loatheb or Sludge Belcher anyways.  Oh, and if the stars don't align, then enjoy sitting around with a 5 mana trash card."

I think it's just as bad as everyone's saying.

Unless more synergistic cards are revealed, this card is a lot worse in practice than it is on paper.  The risk-reward on this card is currently only worthwhile against two other classes, and even then, it's pretty flaky.

As things stand, it's hard to imagine it to seeing any real competitive play at all.

BGH is almost completely irrelevant here because any player worth his salt wouldn't keep BGH in his opening hand against a Hunter, even with this card being a potential threat.  So the chances of an opponent having a BGH to respond to this are exceptionally low, especially since this is turn 4, not turn 7+.

The real issue with this card is that it's difficult to actually drain your entire hand by turn 4 even as a Face Hunter without playing a totally crazy, balls-to-the-wall deck that insta-loses to common answers like Fan of Knives.

Excellent, competitive, high tier card.  Potentially great in both top ranked play and the arena.

How common this thing will actually wind up being is just going to depend on future power creep and meta.

If 4 health minions didn't already kill on you turn 6, and 5 health minions didn't kill you 2 turns later, he might become useful again.

Mechwarper's not utterly unbalanced in and of itself because the chances of it combo'ing into an unbeatable board state are just low enough to be okay.  The fact that it feels overpowered is actually more symptomatic of a much larger, general problem in Hearthstone:
The scarcity of truly good removal cards at any mana cost higher than 2 in Ranked Play.

But considering how the game's designed with a core philosophy of "players hate it when their minions are killed, so let's make minions really hard to kill", this might just be a problem we're going to have to live with.  I mean, its a fundamental flaw in the game that's only gotten worse and worse with each expansion: We've had stickier and snowballier minions like Undertaker and, well, pretty much all of Mechmage, but our removal options, both old and new, have gotten worse and worse.

We now live in a world where the deck with the absolute best removal options (Oil Rogue) is a Tempo deck.  It's not a healthy direction for a game without restricted formats to take in the long run.  A heavy emphasis on minion-based combat to encourage player interaction only works if the responding player has enough viable tools to swing the initiative back into their favor at more points during the game.

1. level 20 to 10 is a walk in the park.  any type of deck (aggro, midrange, control) will easily be able to climb quickly so as long as it's not terribly built for the meta and your skill level meets the required thresholds

2.  for newer players, the biggest skill bump is at around rank 5, as that's when the majority of people start playing good netdecks, card for card. and rank 2, where people start to make noticeably fewer game breaking mistakes.  the meta becomes serious for real at top 200 legend, where people are truly able to identify, create and pilot optimized and/or emergent decks. 

3. you can win-streak for 2 stars up to rank 5, and then it's 1 star at a time from there

Good on Reynad to throw up that YouTube video.  It's not like flying around and participating in live events is free, and we don't know the extent to which she gets sponsored to participate in events, nor do we really know how disruptive a tournament attendance would be to her schedule.  What if she were a part-time real estate agent who worked on the weekends and Hearthstone was really just a hobby for her?  What if she doesn't stream because she already makes so much more working at her day job and she just wants some quiet time to relax without being flooded by offensive messages?  Real adults have responsibilities, commitments, and lives.  People need to get a grasp.

Quote from WtfNerfPlz »

I realize at some level small card changes mean a big difference in win rate just wondering what ranks strategy as opposed to good play starts becoming a determining factor.

Those 2 factors are actually not as exclusive as they may seem.  Rather, both skill sets grow organically at the same time.  To properly build, choose, and tech the right cards (strategy), you need to have a strong understanding of your opponent's most probably deck choices, most likely lines of play, and most favored win conditions at any point in time.

But with that out of the way, technical play is never the critical, determining factor for whether a match will result in a win or a loss.  Match-ups and deck compositions (strategy) are.  Speaking from experience, this has held true whether you're at rank 16 or top 100 legend every season.

Instead, it's more like you have to have be above a certain threshold of technical expertise, or else you're just going to get stonewalled by specific decks because you just don't know how to win against them (this happens more and more as people use better and better decks, which really starts to kick in at around rank 5 or so).  But assuming you're above the required skill threshold, it's again, strategy and tech choices over anything else.

You and every other viewer here must not forget that the meta changes every day and the best players are able to churn out original counters very quickly. I have little doubt this was among the most powerful choices for the meta Tides encountered at the time, which I'm guessing was Hunter/Mech-Shaman, as this deck is one of the strongest possible compositions against those builds.

This deck is pretty much a hard-counter to the aggro builds popular today, being just slightly slower than them. With this in mind, the deck should be classified as a midrange one. It has a poor matchup against Combo decks (Rogue, Druid, Warlock) and all Control decks.

Because, Molten Giant.

And it's a game.