Hearthpwn

General lack of interactivity is the problem. OTKs, from-hand wombo combos, lack of minions (it seems like the majority of decks these days have fewer than 5 minions in them.. remember when spells were rare and not the norm unless you were playing mage?).. it's more like two people playing solitaire at each other than an actual interactive card game.

If I had to point out two culprits in particular as for where it started to all go wrong, I'd say Rush and Discover. Now, on their own, these two mechanics are solid concepts; the problem is the lack of restrictions with both.

Rush itself was a good idea. They needed something that was Charge-like, but not as powerful as Charge. The problem with Rush is two-fold: it's too cheap and too prevalent. Every card with Rush could probably stand to be at least 1 mana higher. The other issue is they started slapping Rush on -everything-, and as a consequence, board presence mattered less and less. That Animated Broomstick ever got printed absolutely boggles my mind.

As for Discover, it's a fun idea, but the problem lies in its impact on the importance of deck construction, and its inherent limitations. Each Discover you're able to place in a deck, especially if the pool of discoverable options isn't sufficiently limited, compounds the restricting factors that deckbuilding is supposed to have.

I did the banner one with Cariel/Anduin/Tirion.

I lucked out into a treasure that gives Cariel divine shield any time she's attacked, so that made this a whole lot easier.
Kill the adds, have Cariel and Tirion pump up the banner's attack whenever they can, resist using the banner's damage reduction skill unless you really have to, have Tirion drop Smolderwing's attack to 1 every turn Smolderwing is about to attack, Bob's your uncle. 

I certainly don't, but Wild's already a mess where no one plays minions and this is just gasoline to the fire.

Radiant Elemental, Sethekk Veilweaver, Lyra the Sunshard, Nazmani Bloodweaver...

then there's the Priest of the Feast/Psyfiend combo..

you could also extend your turn if you have brewmasters

How do you kill that which does not live?

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

Well, the streak of expansions where a priest card that I absolutely hate gets printed remains ever unbroken.

So many people wearing their babyrage as a badge of honor is amusing.

The questline has you doing one thing in 5 different modes, so chances are everyone is going to have at least one mode they don't like (for me personally, it was Battlegrounds and Duels, but at least I only had to slog through one game of Battleground and not "place in top 4" like the weekly I have to reroll every week).

The people proudly proclaiming that they're deleting the quest out of spite remind me of the people who "protested" Keurig by smashing their expensive Keurig machines (that, yanno, they already paid for).

Quote from jazzfan27 >>

I tried the mode a little.  Didn't seem at all fun to me.  

My thought was that 2 high level players playing with all the goods could probably tell you with 80% accuracy who was going to win before the match even started.  I could be totally wrong on that, but it just felt like a glorified version of tic tac toe where other than a little RNG there wasn't going to be much point in playing as the outcome was basically a foregone conclusion assuming neither player was playing poorly.

 The thing is.. the pvp isn't the point.. They've explicitly stated that Mercenaries pvp is a side mode of a side mode

Please stop printing hand druid cards that are spells. Thank you.

Quote from SoundwaveVR >>

Is there a quest after the Mercenaries ones and what does it give?

 The entire questline (I forget the order) is:
-Play 1 Brawl
-Complete 3 bounties (mercenaries). Reward is Vanndar in Mercenaries
-Play 2 ranked standard
-Play 1 Battlegrounds. Reward is a Vanndar portrait for Battlegrounds
-Play 3 Duels

Dawngrasp looks so good in this art. Non Binary icon

Only smooth brains are underestimating this. If you hit a large minion it gains charge and hits the opponent. Also they gave warrior hunter hero power. This is sick 

PRAISE YOGG!

I already want to delete priest from the cards they revealed.

Again a card for the same frustrating Priest win strategy - annoy the opponent to death.

Its like there's some law that says that every priest card has to be unfun to play play against.

Aside from coins on maxed mercs, I think this is a good overall patch addressing most of the issues. So we know at least Blizzard isn't blind to it. Whether they actually DO the changes is another story. But for now I think its some nice QoLs, especially with the training arena, task board changes, and obtaining portraits OUTSIDE of just packs. 

"Man, I missed priest's rezz mechanic in standard!"

-No one