I really don't like Kibler'S tone in this one. He sounds so aggressive and annoyed that the devs aren't doing what he suggested.
Rotating core sets is a shit idea. The devs are finally taking closer looks at some classic/basic cards that are just way too powerful and have defined deckbuilding forever, while at the same time there will always remain some familiarity (not to mention more variety in Wild).
He also acts like all these nerfs completely kill these cards instead of just making them more situational and, guess what, dependant on support from new expansion.
Like, we had nerfs like this in the past with Hex and FWA and everybody was complaining about how terrible they were, when said cards have been complained about way before and for good reason.
Kibler's idea just means pushing these cards out of sight instead of actually addressing the problems, which is what happens every rotation and most of the time needs to be addressed retroactively anyways (Aviana, Naga Sea Witch, and eventually Barnes).
Core exists for a reason and that reason is to have a thematical frame that can be built upon. If we just change the foundation with every rotation every new archetype needs to be able to stand on its own and we all saw how well that worked with Freeze Shaman. if the core set rotates every year then every single expansion each classs will have their new card dedicated to a sepcific archetype to make sure it works.
But hey, it'S easy for Kibler who just throws money at the game to craft golden legendaries for crappy meme decks, which is not something the broad community can afford to do so the concept of an evergreen set at least helps people catch up.
2
Patches was broken because he provided great board control early game for "free". Giving him Rush just reverts him back to being overpowered. Nobody cared that he could deal face damage the turn you played another pirate, it was the ability to attack into a creature and trade with it on turn 1 or 2 that made him so good.
Even with the nerf he still sees play, giving him rush effectively undoes the reason he was nerfed in the first place.
2
The idea is that learning soft skills in a professional setting is much easier to teach than learning how to code. You are right that excelling at both things is rare; those people generally become managers and there aren't as many of those.
That doesn't mean developers at these companies need to raise their Charisma score to 20 to be successful, it just means they need to write unit tests for their code and learn how to write user stories for the work they do and maybe take social media training. It's not that big of an ask.
1
In many tech companies there is a shift to make almost everyone on staff a developer. Then the developers are expected to take on extra roles that otherwise might be filled by extra staff: Quality Assurance, Product Management, Project Management, and Community Management.
Riot has been doing this for a few years now, and a lot of other tech companies are making a similar shift. The idea is that if you staff your entire company with developers you indeed have to pay individual employees more money but those people are more versatile. 2 Developers that do coding, QA, project management tasks and community relations are more efficient than 1 developer, 1 QA engineer, 1 PM and one CM doing the same thing.
When you see someone like Iksar on Reddit answering questions that's a bi-product of this line of thinking.
I'm not saying my specific examples are exactly what Blizzard is doing here, but it's not surprising they are laying off non development staff. Blizzard is an old company with an older culture. This appears to be a big cultural shift for them that a lot of Silicon Valley has already adopted.
4
This isn't a nerf. 5 mana 4/4 is way too few stats even with the value. A 4 mana 4/3 is a much better card since it let's you trade effectively. Compare to Elven Minstrel which sees plenty of play.
-1
They can't win. If they release too few cards the meta is stale and everyone gets bored. If they release too many it's too expensive.
2
Sort-of. Spider Tank can't get eaten by crabs. This thing can.
0
This is an arena card. It's not meant for constructed.
2
Fixed
3
2
You can craft them.