Hearthpwn

In top legend its almost non existant, in last 3 days at top 200 I saw maybe 1 or 2 murloc paladins and crushed them easily even with mage. Their plan is super linear and is easily countered by board clears if they don't highroll super hard.

Both murloc paladin and quest druid were super popular at start, but quickly fell off in popularity at higher ranks once people realised they are not that great.

I think a lot of the rogue problems come from Preparation and Edwin.

However, this is a bit of a chicken or the egg problem.

They were not completely broken in early hearthstone, because you didn't have rescourse generating cards, so they were all-in plays. Now you have raiding party and miscreant that negate all their downsides.

When you play Edwin with lackeys you didn't sacrifice anything, you played 2 insane 1 drops and got an 6 6 for no reason. When you play prep with raiding party you got a 0 mana arcane intellect (spend 2 cards get 3 ) with crazy tutored effect and tempo (0 mana 3 3s with a truesilver champion).

Why I think prep and Edwin are the problem, is because as a designer it's really hard to always design around these 2 cards. Miscreant and Raiding party while really strong, feel more fair without these 2. Also, I am not a fan of randomly losing games to turn 3 huge Edwin plays forever, those feel like barnes non-games.

We already had Grim Necromancer as a 4 mana 4 6 in theory and it saw 0 play. We also had a 5 mana 6 6 from Rastakhan Rumble ( 1 1 that summons a 5 5 token) and it was only ok in arena.

Stats being split can sometimes be a disadvantage too, so it's not a strict upgrade over yeti.

Also, today's hearthstone is far from a place where 4 mana 4 5 is playable statline.

Cant wait for the trolden video where this pulls out hagatha's scheme and clears entire board of 8 8s for the opponent. :D

This can be discovered by Dr Boom (hero card) and omega asembly to give warrior ways to combat combo decks even if they decide to not run this card.

It also helps with fatigue matches, because warrior can remove anything big this pulls with shield slam and execute, and this also pulls another minion to overextend into brawl. So I think it will be put into that deck as well, not only used from rng discover.

At this point Blizzard is intentionally trolling people playing wild. Tried wild for one season, but quickly realised it will be more and more frustrating as time goes on, because power level of it makes draw order/rng more and more volatile as time goes on.

Thankfully and hopefully, it shouldn't affect standard for now. For standard it looks more like Nzoth/Guldan, rather than otk win condition. Priest theme with currently known cards seems to be more akin to old school control priest, so this card feels unsupported for now and decks this would fit in lose almost everything in rotation.

Design wise this card is completely boring, its just a reprint of 1st upgrade version of spellstone costed 2 mana higher.

On top of that, it's a reprint of already good and oppressive card, so it's not something community enjoyed in the past either.

Quote from C_A_W >>

Amazing card art and animation. Hopefully it sees some play and won't get wasted like every other Hunter legendary except Savannah Highmane.

 Kathreena Winterwisp and Deathstalker Rexxar are one of the most broken legendaries ever printed.

Way too late with the ban, but at least he finally got punished. Hopefully he doesn't win Worlds, or this will get super awkward.

He should have lost his spot in the worlds too as far as I am concerned, but determining his replacement would be controversial too, you would have to organise a mini tournament for it or choose someone from last championship.

As far as I understand, Grand Master tournaments are equivalent to previous year's Worlds, so not being able to participate will at least hurt him financially.

It is rotating because Baku is too. Similar to if they decided to rotate old Cthun, they would rotate his cultists too.

Wow, this is the first time I agree and feel excited for every single change announced:

1) Hall of faming Baku and Genn: Never thought they would do this, but absolutely needed to happen. Saved the new heartstone year and guarantees a different Hs meta next year

2) 700 gold adventure style wings with Pack rewards for pve content are what I wanted to happen for a long time, adventures are what made me addicted to the game in the first place

3) Rotating sets will make arena a completely new experience that will offer people that are bored of standard a new experience without having to craft wild cards and arena being different every 1.5 months will attract people to keep playing. Earning golden heroes through arena is a BIG plus too.

This is first time I feel excited for HS in 2 years and its great. They made some bold and great changes here and we as a community should applaud them for it.

Powerful effect but the stats are so bad

Determined to make DH unplayable right?

This card has a really interesting interaction with Commanding Shout and Frothing Berserker. If you can stick a berserker and they have a huge blocker, you can play Commanding Shout to make your Warmaul Challenger unkillable, chip down their taunt 1-hp at a time, then hit them in the face with your giant Berserker. If there is enough support for a tempo pain build (maybe difficult with Acolyte of Pain leaving standard), this could be a good removal/finisher combo.

Quote from Wingdude22 >>

Backstab and Sap are just ridiculous if you take a closer look at them. 

Blizzard tryed and probably will try to make cards with those effects on minions ( like that pirate that saps a guy , but I cannot remember the name atm), but makeing a card that could replace those would be powercreep beyond all madness. 

Everytime i play Tirion, and he gets Sap‘d I think " Hmm 2 Mana: make your opponent skip a turn and make his Tirion cost 16 Mana... seems  balanced...." 

Its an extreme example for sure, but it shows how polarizing the card is. 

 This is exactly it. It's amazing that of all the hearthpwn complaints, you never hear anything about sap. Sap is probably the single best card in hearthstone, but is just so straightforward it doesn't seem like it is. Anything you cast it on more expensive than itself is tempo advantage for the rogue, and at 2 mana that's most of the game. It is a pseudo "silence and destroy a minion" for two mana. Now, obviously it isn't this exactly because the drawback is it generates a two card advantage for your opponent. Rogue, however, generally doesn't care about this, because rogues only care for tempo, and sap is the ultimate in tempo cards against slower decks. 

Backstab and Sap are just ridiculous if you take a closer look at them. 

Blizzard tryed and probably will try to make cards with those effects on minions ( like that pirate that saps a guy , but I cannot remember the name atm), but makeing a card that could replace those would be powercreep beyond all madness. 

Everytime i play Tirion, and he gets Sap‘d I think " Hmm 2 Mana: make your opponent skip a turn and make his Tirion cost 16 Mana... seems  balanced...." 

Its an extreme example for sure, but it shows how polarizing the card is. 

Quote from darkprime140 >>

They did fix prep, and shadow step is a fair card for a tempo-driven class because it reduces board presence. Your point that rogue always has a place in the meta is valid, however, but that’s because of a decent classic and basic set in backstab, Edwin, etc. The power of the class lies in swingy tempo plays and staying on the board so it’ll always be there to beat certain Aggro or midrange decks. It’s not unbeatable

 I would agree with you that the class relys in swingy tempo plays and staying on the board if that last expansion didn't exist because Rogue have NOTHING to do about tempo anymore, nothing. It's all about insanely retarded card generation, highrolls every turn with lackey mechanic, HUGE , exaggerated amount of cheating mana.

We all know Edwin was never a real problem before even with the rise of Spirit of the shark which was popular for some time, but now this is just ridiculous man, i dont want him to get HoF because i'm main rogue and almost never played any other class in the game so i obvsly love the card but i dont think this is going to happen because the dev team seems to have no clue what they are doing. I see people saying HoF Leeroy all the time, dude Leeroy sucks put that in your mind there is a lot of broken stuff going on and it's not because of Leeroy it's because of powercreep every stupid expansion.

Why do all classes see good and bad times except for rogues????

Why is it the only class that ALWAYS has some good to disgunstigly OP deck no matter what the expansion is like?

Because it has the most broken classic card set of all. This is why. Is it so hard to realize? Why is it so difficult to balance once and for all?

Why can't they fix shadowstep? Why can't they fix preparation?

Why is VanCleef the ONLY class specific legendary that no matter what ALWAYS sees play?

The world champion is top of his group.  If you're referring to Firebat and Pavel they are former world champions who don't play at the top level so much any more.  Just like in any sport, just because you were World Champion 5 years ago doesn't mean squat today.  Just ask the Denver Broncos.

People really think this is op lolwat