Hearthpwn

Is it just me or is burndown terrible?  Sure it's 3 mana, draw 3, but mage can often get 0 mana draw 2. 

Is there's some interaction I'm missing which makes this playable outside something like an aggro deck?

Alloy advisor is potentially a good board stall tool (or wipe) after you've played Odin.  If they attack it you get armour which gives your hero attack.  Minions which attack you then take damage. 

It's a fiarly niche interation which I don't think has really existed much in standard - certainly not as a result of a taunt (I think armour vendor played by the opponent might have been one of the few cases where this mattered).

Not sure if it's good enough to see play though, but interesting none the less.

also...how did Horizon's Edge skip the nerf bat?  15 damage for 4 mana?  It's brutal when both are in play.  Might as well just concede

I take your point, but lets look at the past. 

We had a whole rotation where Astalor Bloodsworn killed you from hand by being bounced multiple times (or activated multiple times).  It wasn't fun (imo) and it eventaually got nerfed (although still saw play in pretty much every deck).  Astalor Bloodsworn rotated and we got Sire Denathrius who was able to reliably kill you from hand by being bounced (or activated) multiple times.  It wasn't fun (imo) and it eventaually got nerfed (although still saw play in a wide variety of decks).  Now we have Lamplighter which is able to reliably kill you from hand by being bounced multiple times.  It wasn't fun (imo) and it eventaually got nerfed (although still saw play in a wide *variety* of decks). 

Do you see a pattern here?  Maybe you're right though.  Maybe this is by design and they knowingly release broken shit just to sell stuff.

Blizz have obviously attmpted to tweak Lamplighter and lower the winrate of the decks it's in, but problem I have with this approach is that balance becomes binary problem.  Deck A beats deck B which beats C (which in turn beats deck A).  It's perfectly balanced and called rock-paper-stone.  You win or lose by the deck you bring to the match-up and the one you're drawn against, and very little (often nothing) you do in-game matters.  That is poor game design imo and it's the Dev's that keep pushing the game in this direction.

Their near obsession with OTK (or huge burst from hand) is bizzare in a game where you can't interact with the opponent in a meaningful way on their turn (imo extreme mana cheat also falls into this category because if you do enough cheating on your turn your opponent will be unable to respond if their turn is "fair").

I get that it's hard to design new, interesting and fun cards, make them relevant enough to see play over what's gone before, and prevent the game from turning to poo, but it feels like there's no real attempt at the last bit.  Honestly if Lamplighter had had a genuinely new effect (like give friendly elementals a deathrattle that does X) or something like that and it turned out OP I could see how they might miss in the original design of the card.  Lamplighter is a lazy designed card which is clearly broken and definitely not fun by any metric I can think of.

I agree, it's not easy to balance a game.  Every change you make creates the possibility that another deck rises to the top and people complain about that instead.  I get it.  But to repeat the same mistakes of the past over and over again and somehow expect a different outcome isnt the best strategy.

This game has been plagued by problematic boucing (or multiplied battlecries) and mana cheat repeatedly, yet a 9 mana Reno was a problem?  Dying on turn 4 should not be the norm, yet aggro can easily do that (and OTK can occasionally do it). 

At the end of the day it seems like the game blizz wants to make isn't the same one I want to play.  We've gone through so many metas which were aggro or OTK, with multiple classes not represented.  This meta is shaping up much the same, but at least we have class diversity (3 lamplighter decks!!!). 

Not to worry though...i'l shut the door on the way out.

They don't just feel uninteractive...they are uninteractive.  You can't do anything meaningful to stop the inevitable combo (or burst finish depending on how you view these things).  Arguably the druid combo has some defence (build a board to soak the damage), but they can output such a large amount of damage due to a zero mana spell (that they can copy multiple times) you would need an absurd board to deal with it.  I've died from 40+ health state quite easily.

There is nothing meaningful you can do against lamplighter decks other than kill them first.  The decks are all minion heavy, so dirty rat has very little chance of hitting the correct target.  Excluding rogue, they are actually quite good board-centric tempo decks in the first instance, so controling the board can also be challenging.  And while you're doing that you know you're just going to die to a lamplighter if the game goes on too long.  There is no "running them out of resources (certainly not mage)".  The fact that rogue can run an elemental deck at all (given they have no synergy in their class cards) just shows how busted lamplighter is.

It's such a stupid design for cards in general - the idea that a card has a detrimental condition in exchange for it's pay-off seems fair in theory, but in practice the pay-off is either so shit that no one plays it, or so good that entire decks are built around it.  It's like Quest mage, or no-minion mage - the pay-off's were (and still are) just busted. 

For lamplighter decks we have the condition "if you played an elemental...".  Turns out it's pretty fuckin easy to meet that condition when your whole deck is elementals. So the battlecrys end up being:

Overflow Surger - summon a board of 3/2's

Tainted Remnant - deal 7 damage split amongst...

Unchained Gladiator - draw 1-3 cards.

Aqua Archivist - the next minion you play costs 2 less

Living Prairie - summon two 3/3's with rush.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point. 

Coming back to your original point, I don't think just lowering the win-rate of a given deck is a clever way to design a game.  Either the deck still ends up viable and does it's thing, or it doesn't and it dies.  Look at wheel lock - it was everywhere, got nerfed, then it was nowhere to be seen.  Problem with wheel lock (imo) is that that type of card doesn't belong in hearthstone.  If it works it's really un-fun and people call for nerfs.  If it doesn't, no one uses it and it might as well not exist. 

The only quest people didn't really complain about was the priest quest.  It granted by far the least interactive card ever designed - a literal "I win".  The reason why no-one complained is that it was by far the most difficult quest to complete and even then you still had to draw the card.  My point being that it's a terrible design irrespective of whether it ends up good or bad. 

I would say wild is the only mode Blizz has been honest about.  They stated it wasn't going to get regular balance passes and the nature of the cards meant it would be "wild".  That's exactly what you've got.  An overpowered mess of broken interactions.

I don't play Wild, but given the state of standard (which Blizz do profess to trying to balance), I can only imagine wild is a shit-show.  If people enjoy it - thats up to them.  Not sure why you think they should take away their rewards though.  It seems very much like "I'm not having fun - you shouldn't either".

I genuinely think Blizz either hasn't got a clue about their own game, or they want the game to be mindless, uninteractive shite. 

I'm leaning towards the latter, because you would have to be a different level of stupid not to understand the problems in the game given they've repeated them multiple times already.  These "nerfs" don't really address anything except warrior, and I would argue that of all the problem decks, warrior was the one you could interact with the most.  Just "kill them before ...." that's what people say.

OMG - how will rogues cope having only...*counts*...7 potential copies of lampligher excluding Sonya copying lamplighter or bounce effects...

*plays tiny violin*

Nothing against you (or rogues) but I really wish lamplighter had been nuked.  Nothing about that type of gameplay is fun.  It wasn't fun when Astalor killed you from hand (got nerfed), it wasn't fun when Denathrius killed you from hand (got nerfed) and it's not fun when Lamplighter does it either (got nerfed).  You see a pattern here?  Shame Blizz didn't.

Dont worry - lamplighter is fixed now.  I only got hit for 26 in one turn against a mage but he didn't have any mana left so that was OK.  Shame really - it was an interesting game with a lot of back and forth..and then it wasn't.

Sigh...

I wonder if the change to Nightshade Tea will enable another burst deck with Concierge and Aranna, Thrill Seeker.

Probably not any better than the fatigue version but who says you cant do both.

Sure would be fun if it did..../s

My comparison to Nagrand Slam was strangely prophetic....

I cant see what else they would change.  Making it summon 4 elemenetals would be pretty busted (see Nagrand Slam).

I'm slightly concerned about the buff to Tsunami as I think this is already quite a powerful card and the reason it doesn't see play has nothing to do with this card.

That said, I much prefer the timing between the announcement of card changes and the actual card changes.  Nothing more irritiating that playing against decks for a whole week which you know are going to be nerfed.

Are you smoking something or hiding under a rock?