Hearthpwn

Dark Archon, as much as you say the hype is overrated, it is backed up by the numbers.

For example, the almost 150,000 arena runs recorded by ArenaMastery since GvG came out, show that people tracking their stats go an average of 5.29 wins with mage, 5.11 wins with paladin and 4.99 wins with rogue. The other classes are pretty close together with priest, shaman warlock, hunter and druid all in the 4.77 to 4.6 range. Only warrior is dangling at the bottom with 4.29 wins on average.

These stats are even more impressive if you remember that everyone picks mage and paladin even if they're not very good with the class, just because they've heard it's good; while classes like warlock, hunter  and shaman are mostly picked by people who are specifically good at playing those classes. So that means even when you have relatively clueless people piloting mage and paladin, they still do better than the more specialized people playing other classes.

So the expansion shouldn't just change the hype, it needs to actually make certain classes stronger to compete with the top dogs. So far, it seems like shaman is well on the way with some great new common and rare cards, but we won't know if its enough until we've seen all the cards revealed.

First to neonangel, thanks for putting this amazing thread together, keeping it updated and responding to all the points people are making.

Second, rather than talk about the specific ratings, I'm curious what these new cards so far will tell us about new class balance in arena. A core point for that is their rarity, since that tells us how often we will draft them. And of course neutral cards don't matter at all unless they have specific advantages/disadvantages per class.

So, based on what we know so far:

• Rogue is in trouble, because a lot of the common cards revolve around repeated use of your hero power, which doesn't gell with the strength of theirs: having to use hero power only once for 2 attacks and being able to buff the weapon with other cards, saving it until you need big attacks. Let's hope they get some more help in the other cards than the weak and epic Poisoned Blade.
• Mage got a pretty good extra 2-drop in Fallen Hero and a solid extra secret in Effigy. Both are better than the average rare, but since they are in the rare rather than the common slot, we don't need to worry about being overrun by armies of fallen heroes. Smartly, the powerful Coldarra Drake is epic and thus not too often seen; mage doesn't need help in arena.
• Priest got a solid common 4-drop in sacred warrior that should help the class rise even higher, since it is straight up better than most other picks in that range.
• Shaman got by far the most help so far, with a great low-cost common Totem Golem and a number of other decent picks that'll show up fairly often. I'm hoping that after Fireguard Destroyer gave them the first push, this will finally make them a top tier arena class.

Of course, we have so many cards still to see, and things may change drastically still, but we certainly have the start of a new arena meta and class balance in the works.

Firebolts, the problem is that many of those cheap cards don't get bated out as easily as we'd like. In particular, freeze mage tries to hold on to their Frostbolt for end-game face damage against anything but agro Justicar Trueheart (which would be unlikely to run this card) or a big threat like this one. Quick Shot is often saved by hunter long enough to either get the draw or have enough mana to combo it with a play and a hero power, which often doesn't happen before turn 6. You might pull out a Wrath or a Darkbomb early, but that just leaves you open to a Swipe or Hellfire (the second one being a fine choice, because apparently the warlock doesn't have anything small on the board that can trade with the justicar anyway).

If you're running a deck that is slow and synergy oriented enough to run Justicar Trueheart, while at the same time applying enough pressure to consistently keep the board clear of anything that can trade for your justicar and baiting out all removal your opponent is running, it may be useful to have a stronger hero power. But at that point, why not just run Core Hound and win with that?

Obviously it is never possible to know how good or bad a card will be without playing it, but there are three things we can say:

• Mid- to late-game cards with low health stat lines have traditionally been bad, even with potentially strong effects or high total stat points. e.g. Hemet Nesingwary, Cobalt Guardian, Salty Dog or Stalagg, Rend Blackhand (we're just going to pretend that Kidnapper doesn't even exist). Not just 'too weak for constructed' bad, but 'crappy pick in arena' bad. The only decent ones are more durable that their low health suggests (Piloted Sky Golem), have a direct potentially game-winning impact (Leeroy Jenkins) or both (Argent Commander). In particular, 3 health is weak to all the classic and common cheap removal: Darkbomb, Frostbolt, Wrath and Quick Shot.
• Depending on the class, the 6-mana slot can have some insane cards in it, from the neutral Emperor Thaurissan and Sylvanas Windrunner, to the class-specific Savannah Highmane, Cabal Shadow Priest, Fire Elemental and Shieldmaiden.
• In a meta where agro and OTK-combo decks have a prevalent place, tempo is at least as important in the mid-game as value, while changing your hero power is a pure slow value play.

So for this card to be viable, I would expect one of at least two things needs to happen. We need to either move back to a slower control heavy meta where currently solid decks like control warrior and handlock become significantly more common or new control variants become prevalent. Or the new card based hero power combo's need to be strong enough that this card synergizes with other things worth playing. After all, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting if you can follow it up with Garrison Commander, Maiden of the Lake and coin for double improved hero power. As that example shows though, we are probably going to need a bit more inspire synergy than we've seen in these first revealed cards to truly make it work.

tl;dr: this card is too low health and has too much competition in the 6-slot to be viable as a single card added to the current game. But in an expansion with a new meta and more hero power synergy, it might be a lot better.

Putting 'value' minions in your deck is indeed not a good strategy, since spells get so much more value even with a mediocre minion, but why would you argue against using minions that have strong spell interaction like Loatheb, Sorcerer's Apprentice or Gadgetzan Auctioneer?

From playing with both, I find that the main advantage of Chromaggus is that it allows for turn 5 Dragon Consort into turn 6 Chromaggus. While if you played a dragon consort turn 5 with a 9-mana dragon in your hand, it really locks out your turn 6, since you don't want to 'waste' your discount on a cheaper dragon on turn 6, meaning you can't play any dragon cards that round if you are going for the big turn 7 play.

One of the main things I remember from GvG is how long it took people to figure out how to make decks work. Although it was experimented with earlier, a reliable mech mage with non-obvious cards like Annoy-o-Tron was only put together over a week after release. It took multiple weeks for people to see the strength of oil rogue. It took a lot of experimenting with Hobgoblin before it found its place in a decent druid deck and so on. To say the meta hasn't changed a day after all the cards are out makes no sense.

Give it a few weeks to see if grim patron warrior will stick, if freeze mage is really competitive on ladder now, if people can make dragon paladin work. But most importantly: give it time to see what other interesting things good deck builders will come up with.

Quote from Cryshantua »i didnt look for spesific feedback but that is only way i can see it work with cards i have

Fair enough. Good look trying it out then, hope it helps you along the ladder.

If you're looking for specific feedback on your control priest deck, I'd suggest posting it over in either the General Deck Building or the Priest Class Discussion forums.

Cryshanta, you hit the nail on the head. The problem with control priest is that although they have a lot of high value cards, it is hard to pick a good selection to make a high quality deck. That means you have to make hard choices, like running just a single Holy Nova, Dark Cultist or Shrinkmeister; cutting down on 2- to 4-mana drops; or even removing the auchenai-circle combo all together.

Decks that have been successful recently in this style include:

• http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/209309-rank-3-legend-na-taikim13-control-priest
• http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/214591-kolentos-priest-viagame-house-cup-2
• http://www.liquidhearth.com/staff/monk/PowerRank/April2015/Savjz_Chinese_Priest.png
• http://www.liquidhearth.com/staff/monk/PowerRank/April2015/Pavel_Control_Priest.png

One thing to note is that a lot of the 2- to 4-drops you mention see little play in priest for specific reasons. In particular:

• Faerie Dragon has bad synergy with priest because it cannot be healed or targeted by Power Word: Shield or Velen's Chosen. People often opt for Wild Pyromancer or Gilblin Stalker instead.
• Harvest Golem is crowded out of the 3-slot by Dark Cultist and Injured Blademaster.
• Most people prefer Piloted Shredder to either of the yetis.

Good luck deck building!

The value of Prophet Velen compared to Vol'jin is based on both the deck you want to use the card in and the meta in which you are playing the card. What most people are referring to is the fact that Vol'jin is stronger in the most popular and effective priest decks being played in the current meta. The reason for this is four-fold:

1. Vol'jin is much faster than velen, costing only 5 mana, compared to 7 for velen, and having an immediate impact if you have any way at all to deal 2 damage, while velen requires specific cards or a hero power combined with a damaged creature to get value. Vol'jins value is board control though, not direct damage. The idea is to use it to get and keep control of the board so you can stop your opponent from taking you down and to eventually win in the mid- or late-game.
2. The current meta-game is equipped to deal with Dr. Boom and other big minions with Big Game Hunter this reduces the value of minions that have 7 or more attack power, while increasing the relative value of 6 attack and under minions.
3. Velen is strong if you play bursty priest with cards like Mind Blast to take your opponent down from a high health total, but most effective priests currently are more control-oriented, going for late-game strength and survivability + board clears to get there and eventually grind your opponent out. Nobody has been able to achieve high legend ranks with a more burst-oriented priest for months.
4. Vol'jin is a really strong card if people are playing 5+ health minions, because that makes it a 5 mana 6/5 that deals 3 damage at worst (a situational Fire Elemental with a 1 mana discount). Popular cards even in some more aggressive decks currently include Loatheb and Dr. Boom, which are both good targets for Vol'jin.

You make the point that cards like Sylvanas Windrunner and Dr. Boom may be stronger than Vol'jin. This may in fact be true. If you don't want a situational card in the 5-slot and you are survivable enough to play big threats on turns 6 and 7 instead, you can indeed play without vol'jin. This is even more true for Prophet Velen though: why would you ever play him if you can play Dr. Boom on turn 7 instead?

This does indeed sound inconsistent, but the problem might be in a different place than you think. Possibilities include:

• The latest patch introduced the following 'bug fix': Sylvanas will no longer steal a minion that is about to die, which is weird because that’s generally her thing. There might have been complications with the implementation of this.
• It could be that the time Sylvanas B was played is counted as the time Deathlord was played instead, since it 'came out of Deathlord'. This would be easy to test by playing deathlord after sylvanas and seeing if the behavior persisted.

DeeVeeOus, your explanation would mean that it could be possible to steal the shadowflamed sylvanas A, have it die on the other side of the board and then steal a minion for your opponent... that seems really weird.

I will repeat what many people said before me, but not explicitly enough. It is the answer that after the release of the last two expansions I can safely say is the only correct answer:

"There will be a month and a half until people will figure out what decks they can make with the new BRM cards" - draketalon

"We don't know the power of dragons yet." - dragonspirit

"I'd say wait until a few weeks until the meta settles down a bit and you can see which cards are valuable and which were overhyped" - honj90

None of us have any idea yet how the BRM cards are going to affect the meta, so speculating on that is pointless. If you had asked us before Naxxramas came out which wings to get, nobody would have recommended getting a wing for Sludge Belcher or Webspinner, while top players were saying Spectral Knight and Nerub'ar Weblord were going to be must-haves (hardly anybody plays either).

So while we can give you advice on which Naxx wings are valuable in the current meta - two (plague) and four (construct) as people have mentioned - any advice on which BRM wings to get or answers on how they compare is speculative and unreliable. We won't know until we have seen the cards in action.

Serology, what would you say about these deck examples:

1. Oil Rogue the deck that made rogue playable again after miracle got nerfed and is currently one of the top decks on ladder, named after the GvG card Tinker's Sharpsword Oil.
2. Mech mage is an example of a deck allowing a class to completely re-invent itself and become viable again, but far from the only one, since we also saw:
3. Fatigue mage with Echo of Medivh as a core card, Antique Healbot as an essential part of their strategy and Explosive Sheep often appearing.
4. Flood mage as one of the new mage decks currently being worked on with Echo of Medivh, Duplicate and Unstable Portal to keep the minnions coming.
5. Mech shaman with a lot of the new mechs, combined with Powermace and GvGs Crackle.
6. Midrange paladin a deck that can exist separate from the traditional control paladin only because of Muster for Battle, Quartermaster and Shielded Minibot from GvG.
7. Demonlock that was first introduced by Darkwonyx with everything from mistress of pain to Demonheart.

And that's not even counting more niche and gimmicky decks that still see some play, like:

1. Mill druid admittedly more of a gimmick deck in a fast meta, but one of the first decks that still has some viability despite being way out there.
2. Ancestor's call otk shaman using Ancestor's Call, Malygos and including the new Crackle to kill your opponent in one massive turn.
3. hobgoblin decks we've seen Hobgoblin tried in druid, zoo and paladin among others, with ebola paladin actually still seeing some play on the ladder.
4. any priest deck basically, priest has been in compelte flux since GvG came out, with Shrinkmeister, Velen's Chosen, Light of the Naaru, Vol'jin and Lightbomb all switching in and out of decks from day to day.

Just as important though, is the fact that decks changing up 'just a few cards' does matter a lot. The easiest example of the dark side of this is the way Dr. Boom has warped the meta around itself. However, more subtle choices also keep the game more diverse and fresh, like whether to run Antique Healbot in your control deck, Jeeves in your fast deck, Bomb Lobber for board control or Kezan Mystic for tech; whether to play Recombobulator, where to put Toshley or Sneed's Old Shredder.  Even for cards that are auto-includes in existing decks like Shieldmaiden in control warrior or Darkbomb in handlock, both the question of what to drop and how many of the new card to run keep you thinking.

Just look at the way the meta has changed in the less than four months since the release of GvG, with everything getting a chance at the top spot, from zoolock and control warrior to oil rogue and midrange paladin; from mech mage and fast druid to face hunter and demonlock. If anything, I would say the period since the release of GvG has been one of the most healthy, varied and creative since the official release of the game.

Liang Hu, we were actually having an interesting discussion about the possibility of making Dragon Consort neutral in this thread as well (might be good to merge them actually). In any case, one of the main points there was that this card can survive in paladin because the class has no other synergies with dragons or ramping that would make it get out of control. Basically Dragon Consort is all paladin has to make a dragon paladin viable, which is the only things that keeps the card from being too strong.

Serology, not to get too far off-topic, but talking about the failure of GvG because not every class has a top level competitive mech deck seems really weird to me. Mech zoo was a pretty solid zoo variant, it's just that the zoo archetype itself hasn't worked well enough since the undertaker nerf. Mech shaman is also one of the most commonly played shaman decks, and again, it is the lack of shaman play in general that is the issue. On top of that, plenty of new mechs like Piloted Shredder and Antique Healbot have found their way into decks and class-specific mechs like Shielded Minibot and Goblin Auto-Barber also see play. Besides, the expansion made all kinds of new archetypes like midrange paladin, oil rogue and demonlock viable. Most importantly though, it also allowed for mech decks to be fun options for people not playing to make the best possible deck. For example, I've had a lot of fun playing mech priest and even though it never got me above rank 4, I certainly had a good time playing it, and isn't that the main thing?

There can never be 20 decks at the top of the food chain at the same time, but when there are tons of options that are good enough to be fun to play and do alright on the ladder, I'm pretty happy. That is what GvG gave us.