Hearthpwn

With the super snowbally shaman pally right now, I don't see Aviana coming into play at all. It's not even relevant to the game.

After playing TGT for 2 days, here's how I feel about the new decks that uses new cards and inspire.

In general, decks become super snowbally and one-sided early on. For example if you play paladin mirror and your apponent curved out perfectly (chow -- minibot -- muster -- any 4 drop) and you can't deal with them chances are you alraedy lost. Against Shaman if you don't have the right hand early on against totem golem and chow you will just get facerolled very soon. This purely comes down to drawing AOE at the right time to hold the board. People mostly play Shaman and pally because they swarm the board most efficiently and easily, AND they have ways to further snowball the board beyond control in just one or two turns. 

I have tried pally, dragon lock, dragon warrior and tempo mage. Most classes I faced are pally and shaman (like 90 percent of the games), the other ones are control warrior and dragon priest. CW still plays the same old crap (scumbags/P2W?), and priests play dragon decks but seems to be kinda weak against good combos, especially the sylvannas+shadowflame combo because you kill their smaller minions and take the one that takes on most life buffs. However, I see pally and totem shaman being the dominating classes now. 

Do I like this current "meta"? No, not at all. Early game is too important because it snowballs so hard and it nearly comes down to only nothing but RNG.

I see this card being a pretty bad outcome for blingtron because it has only 1 attack, needs hero power to charge up, and it has 3 durability for HJ. That's the only case that I will ever see it.

Quote from MisterQuick jump

Patron is bad - most (if not all) streamers ;)

The Patron is indeed bad by itself. If there is no Frothing Berserker in warrior, patron warrior is not even a thing. When they evaluate this card they actually said the right thing about Patron itself, but they forgot the invention of Emperor, which is the biggest tumor in HS. How many OTK decks actually come in to existence because of it? They underestimated Patron warrior because they didn't correctly predict the potential of emperor. And now, it is happening again, and it's possible that they will underestimate the potential of Justicar trueheart, the mistcaller and chillmaw. So I'll hold on to that statement and blame emperor for that OTK crap.

it's definitely true that the inspire mechanic is too slow against the current meta. However, it's actually pretty easy to change the meta with just only one card which is super strong against aggro, and I think that card is Twilight Guardian. This card is actually what Dragon decks excatly needs: a good dragon that can help you through turn 4-turn 6. A 3-6 taunt is very hard to go through and the fact that you can coin it out at turn 3 makes it super strong against aggro. Also considering the fact that you can run chow and early game minions also since you don't have jousting dragons, I see dragon decks doing much better after TGT, and I'm definitely gonna try all kinds of dragon decks, especially warlock, mage and warrior dragon decks. 

Last night Strifecro played a warlock dragon/combo deck which has 6 dragons in deck with Blackwing Technician and Blackwing Corruptor. The biggest problem he has there is that he can't survive against super aggro decks. With this card replacing Imp-losion I see his deck MUCH MORE Competitive. If dragon decks become super strong, I do see the meta slowing down and inspire mechanics may become very strong. 

Also don't forget we have Astral Communion, which might be strong too if you run lots of instant early card draws with it. 

But anyways, I don't like trump's review because he seems lack of deep thoughts and unique ideas on these new cards. Lifecoach made new decks assuming the meta and only fits in 1 or 2 cards per deck, and I think it is a wrong approach to review no matter how it will turn out. You just can't assume the current meta when you have 132 new cards coming in at the same time. Maybe that chillmaw is gonna kill Patron, maybe that ramshield is gonna kill all OTK decks (I seriously see that card doing well on that. Some crazy OTK decks can kill you even when you have 25 health, but this card can actually get your health beyond 30 against OTK, which is actually viable). Anyways, it's just too early to make those judgement until people try them out against the current decks. You will also see that transition yourself because at the start of TGT, lots of players will keep playing the old decks because they are just poor. 

Anyways, don't be upset. Look at Savjz, he was trying all kinds of OTK decks which seems really fun. There is still hope.

What if you wanna build a control hunter after TGT? You don't need to smorc that much anymore.

Next time, I wanna see multiplayer games, like 2v2 and free for all modes, together with cards that are designed for this mode. To be honest, this patch is not too impressive. Even though you guys did a much better job comparing to the Diablo 3 team, you still did badly at evaluating the really value of joust and inspire mechanics.

It is actually not surprising to me that Jousting is garbage in this situation because these decks are so random. If you expect yourself to win Joust constantly, you should try running almost no early game minions and survive early game using some spells, especially summoning spells, not something like these decks.

 BTW, today Amaz just got an epic moment of winning a super close game with lock and load which gives him a misdirection and makes the frost giant attacked mage's own face, that's actually fun. I also see that it somehow brings those bad hunter cards back to the game becase you will get the cards you don't want, but may be useful in certain situation. It's a very good design I would say.

What I feel about the new inspire and joust mechanics:

1. If you managed to get your inspire minions survive, it generates INSANE value, and usually may even snowball out of control. Even a Lowly Squire may grow into something like 6/2 with other cards that buff hero powers. If you run into top deck mode and you get a Kvaldir Raider, it probably wins you the game.

2. However, if you only have inspire minions and they get removed each turn, you will get snowballed into turn 6 and turn 7 probably losing hard on the board. The only thing that can get you back to the game is AOE.

3. The dream combo for mage hero power never comes true, but it is the minor combo that makes this playstyle SOMEHOW works. It gets so insane when you already have inspire minions on the board, but it doesn't work that well if you have no minion on the board and what you are playing is constantly getting removed.

4. The risk of running Joust cards is just too high because you always need reliable solution in certain turns. It feels SO BAD when you play Master Jouster not for its value but for the taunt to survive and it actually loses the joust. Now I feel that card is so bad and I will always stick to Sunwalker or Sludge Belcher for stickyness and taunt.

5.  I feel that these two decks both have very slow early game. You may get easily overran by aggro and swarm decks. These decks need heavy early game spell control to avoid losing Joust and survive early game. But anyways, these two Blizzard decks SUCK.

Token Druid and Zoolock are the best decks with this card. Since people are afraid of this card on turn 4, they will try to clear your board if you begin to swarm on turn 2, and forcing them out sometimes can make you in a better position, like using frost bolt or dark bomb on turn 1 against a voidwalker. Like you have a void walker turn one, flame imp and abusive turn 2, imp gang boss turn 3, you probably have 4 minions on the board on turn 4. Even though this is a bit too ideal, you don't actually have to play this card on turn 4 and it is still insane later because there is no direct damage in zoo deck and this card can turn tides easily.

Think about this:

You summon two mirror images. On turn 3 you played the girl and flamewaker. Your opponent burnt spells to clear either your flamewaker or girl, and suddenly you play this on turn 4 with 2 or 3 mana on one mirror. You suddenly have a huffer protected by the other mirror image, like wtf?

I watched the showcase match and I think that if you can actually stablize the board, Justicar Trueheartgives you insane value if you have a decent hero power such paladin or mage. Mid-range and control decks tend to do that, and I think even though it is not strong in terms of instant effects, it is very strong and adds lots of value to your deck. 

I think that people in this thread assumed that there are only 3 kinds of decks: face decks, Patron Warrior and control decks. Please don't forget that there's also a kind of deck called mid-range decks. You will have beast Druid, beast hunter, mid-range paladin, minion-based control decks like dragon warrior, dragon paladin, dragon priest. You even have Druid Communion decks which rushes for 10 mana and start dropping big minions. It will NEVER, EVER be the case where most of your game are spell-based control match-ups because as you can see, most new spells suck, and the new decks are all minon-based mid-range/control decks.

Also, I personally don't see Patron Warrior getting out of the meta. You save one owl for that chillmaw and it's still the same game: you control early, you swarm with patrons in the mid game, you remove with execute, you win the game with 60 damage combo. Especially with those inspire minions who need a solid board to gain value, Frothing Berserker still one-shot you no matter what. Unless they nerf warsong or something like that, I don't see it going out of the meta. Not to metion, some new minions have some bad body stats, and playing them against Patron Warrior can kill yourself very quickly. 

Why are people mad about hunters? Not because it's going face, but it's because it's so frustrating to play against an aggro deck even if you put in so many tech cards and early-anti aggro cards and still lose. As a mid-range paladin, I still lose to aggressive zoo and face hunters even I have double chow, double healbot double belchor, kezan, harrison in the deck just because I can't draw them in time. Oh the other hand, I lose to other greedy decks because I put in too much effort fighting against early aggression. It's a fact that aggro decks curve out much easier beacuse the mana costs are so low that it is almost too hard to draw a unplayable hand. When they swarm the board and kill you on turn 5, the only cards that you count on are still sitting at the end of your deck, how will you feel? Basically in that case you are fked by RNG, and that's why I hate playing against cheap decks. In other words, when you are playing against aggro decks as control/mid-range, are have a worse RNG to start with because you need exactly those cards. But everything in the aggro decks serve the same purpose: stay and SMorc.

In TGT, all kinds of decks got some developments. Even Eboladin got the new secret that boosts the whole board after one turn. Discard Aggro warlock, Pirate Rogue, Murloc Paladin, beast hunter, they are still around and will rush you down like what it is now. A control meta hearthstone is not going to happen next patch. There will be all kinds of decks that you have to play against, and perhaps most of them are still aggro/swarm decks.

But right now? All aggro decks, period. I will wait for TGT and start playing hearthstone again because people are actually abusing the fact that the only way to consistently beat aggro decks is to play Patron warrior. 

In very, very rare occasions, you can do that when you wraith for 1 damage. Also Druids don't run low mana card draws normally, especially when you run two of this card and want your mana curve higher.