Hearthpwn

Quote from user-100394506 >>

Have you having fun with 40 min matches? I am not having fun. Intensive and short I prefer a game in this way. 

 So play Bomb Warrior or Secret Paladin

Quote from YourPrivateNightmare >>

Quote from momowob >>

III) Less Deathkinghts

Dr. Boom is a Herocard and not a Deathknight, all deathknights are in wild

 t'was a joke to make the point that Boom is essentially on the powerlevel of the Deathknight cards, meaning he stands out among other cards as last remnant of a meta with much higher powerlevels overall

 Hagatha is far better than Dr. Boom, Mad Genius.

Quote from TriOptimum >>

Rise of Shadows has this "oh crap I forgot to write that essay let me do it on the bus" look to me. The live videos are not HD, for example, and the latest flag was that they recycled the (albeit unused) artwork from Omega Defender. For the latter, I totally understand the desire to up-cycle an existing resource, so as not to waste effort(s) and cut a corner or two. It's there, use it -- fine.

Another thing is that they are taking characters and ideas that already exist and recycling them. The "bad guys" are all from previous expansions. Instead of creating a new story they borrowed from everything prior. It just seems like it's lacking  that "one hundred and ten percent" caliber of effort. You know what I mean?

I've noticed little things like this since Ben left. Is anyone else noticing these drop-in-quality breadcrumbs?

EDIT: My comments above are 90% about presentation 10% about recycled mechanics. I don't demand that nothing be old and everything be new. I do however think that quality is key.

 It's a Hearthstone anniversary expansion, itsi not lazy, it's a nod. There's plenty of interesting new things in RoS too. I really wouldn't judge it yet, there's so much more left to see.

And in regards to Omega Devastator, the re-used art is a very nice acknowledgement to the Hearthstone community going "Why isn't that a mech? There's no pilot, it should be a mech." And reusing the art for an actual mech.

I'm really excited to see Dr. Boom's Scheme, should be good.

Heck yes. And by the looks of it, this is legitimate.

Quote from Bee >>

Quote from Schranke >>

Would be nice with a special event celebrating, maybe a tavern brawl with only basic and classic cards as they were on launch. all would have acces to all of the cards in that pool for the event to build a deck.

 thats not how tavern brawl works.

 

 Tavern brawl works however they want it to, dude.

Quote from AngryShuckie >>

Mike Donais' recent comments about Mind Blast led to some discussion over whether direct face damage is actually part of the priest class identity. This seems to have changed over time so I thought I would look back through the original cards (i.e. the Basic and Classic sets) to see what has been dropped from each class' identity, and hence identify possible candidates for future changes.

Before going into this one needs to be conscious of what class identity actually is, and I categorise it into 3 different groups for each class:

1. The core mechanics: what the class does and does well. Generally this is where you find overpowered cards because they are the ones giving you a reason to play this class.
2. The support mechanics: what the class can do but not especially well compared to some other classes. This includes fairly generic things like taunt, which most classes have some of but don't have any direct synergies related to it.
3. The absent mechanics: what the class cannot do without using neutrals or badly sub-par class cards. These are perhaps the most important as they really separate the classes from each other.

Even with these, how do we know where each mechanic lies for each class? It is not always as obvious as taunt in rogue (the class has never once had a taunt card). Generally if the class hasn't been given anything for a mechanic in a few years it is pretty safe to say it is no longer part of the class identity, UNLESS it was and still is a core mechanic in Standard in the sense that no other class does it as well. An example includes Sap, Vanish and Kidnapper, which have never been added to but equally haven't been lost to Wild or given to anyone other class.

Anyway, below is a list of Basic and Classic mechanics that were support mechanics initially but seem to have been dropped.

Damage in paladin

 A particularly clean example is that of damage dealing spells in paladin. These are pretty central to most classes but paladin replaces them with de-buffs and minions or weapons to kill things. To date all spells that do damage in paladin were part of the Basic and Classic sets. All of them!

None of them are close to oppressive enough to be candidates for changes any time soon, but don't be too surprised if Consecration gets targeted one day for not being part of pally class identity.

AoE in druid and rogue

Area of effect damage is in a similar spot in druid and rogue. They have been given some extra tools (Dark Iron Skulker for rogue and Poison Seeds for druid) but they are only partial solutions and were added years ago with no sight of replacements since.

I would imagine only Vanish would have to worry much here. 

Edit: The original Blade Flurry was a very powerful card that also happened to be an AoE in rogue. The change to a very weak card (at least until Kingsbane came along) a few years back, helped cement the class identity of having sub-par AoE.

Healing in druid

Nothing is in danger of being changed here, but it is interesting that the side of druid that restored health has been all but replaced by armour gain. For now it seems Healing Touch isn't even teaching new players about what it means to be a druid.

Hard removal in druid and shaman

(Wow, druid again. I suppose it did start out as the Jack of all trades.)

Here's the list of all destroy effects druid has ever had: Naturalize, Mulch, Poison Seeds. So yes, the devs were right that hard removal isn't a druid thing and were giving a valid reason for moving it to the Hall of Fame. There might be some hope for hard removal in the class though as poisonous seems to be a (minor) part of its identity these days.

The story for shaman is even more stark, with the only destroy effect you would use on opponents being attached to Ice Breaker. The reason for bringing shaman into this though is Hex, which aside from Ice Breaker is the only thing that effectively counts as a destroy effect. This goes some way to explaining the mana nerf it received a while back, in line with the explanation the devs gave.

Face damage in priest 

Finally we come to the one that started the discussion: is Mind Blast part of priest identity? Certainly it was never a core mechanic so there is no chance of using the Sap argument to let it stay regardless of whether new cards add to it or not. It stands to reason that it could then fall out of the class' identity.

First, we have to acknowledge the mechanic of turning healing into damage, which was added to as recently as Rastakan's Rumble, is mechanically distinct from pure damage. That leaves Holy Smite, Holy Nova, Shadowform, Shadowbomber, Spawn of Shadows and Shadowreaper Anduin (so many shadows...) as the cards with effects that can damage the opponent's face. The first 3 can be set aside since they were in Basic and Classic, while the next 2 were released more than 3 years ago. Only the DK is recent enough to argue Mind Blast's case, and had it been in any other recent set I would be happy to do so. The problem is KotFT, and the DKs in particular, was notorious for breaking class identity on the basis that they are death knights now, not warrior/rogue/priest/etc. So I cannot reasonably let the DK count.

All in all, it seems plausible Donais was being perfectly honest by saying face damage (and hence Mind Blast) is not part of priest identity.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tl;dr: 

• On the blizz fan-boy side: the devs are not lying when they cite class identity as a reason to change cards, even if the card has been part of the class' arsenal from the very start.
• On the cynic's side: the devs have never said much about what their picture of each class' identity actually is or communicated when or why it has changed. Sets like KofFT only confuse matters and then give players reason to doubt justifications based on class identity.

 You forgot Holy Fire

Well, Warrior is actually Tier 2 right now with Odd Warrior and Odd Quest Warrior. But personally, for the past year, it seems to me like the expansions have really enabled Control Warriors counters. Without giving it much to fight back. Blizz seems to absolutely refuse to help Warrior in the Aggro department, so control is all with which the class is left. And that's going to fall short when you have a meta full of turn 9 80 damage OTKs, cards that read "Win the game", retarded value like Frost Lich Jaina and Zul'Jin. Thankfully Wall Priest is popular and that's something Warrior can beat all day.

Quote from AisuFlamu >>

Frost Lich Jaina is a personal choice of mine (i know you have yours). I do know some people, for some reason, hate this card because she can out value in late game. Although there are plenty of away to go around it... I think this card is the perfect control card for Mage. Im really going to miss this one...

 

Lich King is just... Lich King. He deserves a place on classic set. He is useful and can be clutch..

 Are you high? FLJ staying in Standard would break the game. There's no hero card to stand up to her once the other DKs rotate. The only thing better than her even right now is Bloodreaver or a really lucky Deathstalker. That's insane. Do you want Hearthstone to stay polarized and depressing?

Quote from Nickfuryusn >>

Stop calling it control priest. It's an otk deck. 

 Dragon Control Priest is not an OTK, you nom. It's a control deck with a 16 damage burst finisher. Burst ≠ OTK

Honestly, I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. I have a 50+% win-rate against everyone but Warlock, because Mecha'thun Warlock. And I'm mostly playing my Odd Dragon Warrior, and Big Spell Mage. I don't even do that poorly against Mecha'thun Warlock, Dyno-Matic is excellent for overdrawing idiot Mecha'thun players who don't pay attention to their hand (which is basically all of them) and the dragons can put up some great pressure. There are also things like Zihi, and Skulking Geist which demolish every type of Mecha'thun deck, and with Druid virtually vanished from the meta, there's no other OTK decks apart from Mecha'thun and sometimes a Big Priest here and there. I don't understand the complaints. OTK doesn't make up much of the meta, and there IS counter play if you really want to tech against it.

At least after rotation, Hunter pretty much loses everything. Spellstone, Rexxar, Candleshot, all the deathrattle synergy, Kathrena Winterwisp, etc.

That doesn't make it any more fun right now, however. I mostly play Warrior and Mage and I have a 95% winrate in total against Hunters, it's still boring as s**t to face them, even though they're often a free win.

Fucking Even Shaman :/

Ahem

https://hsreplay.net/replay/CWyfaVcLHwfw535r7RoQ96#turn=2b

This was extremely satisfying.

https://hsreplay.net/replay/eg2cnKWk9gfQ3vpp2enwHS#turn=12a