Drakonid Operative: Pushing Priests to Dragons One Last Time
Hearthstone Game Designer, Max McCall, shed some light on Drakonid Operative's inclusion in the Gadgetzan set as being a last hurrah for Dragon Priest as many cards will be rotating out soon when Blackrock Mountain leaves Standard. They hoped the archetype had of been more powerful and wanted to provide a final solid midgame card for it.
No mention was given regarding what the future holds for this archetype, but we're hoping this won't be the last we see of Dragon Priest in Standard.
Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and The League of Explorers are set to rotate out of Standard early this year.
Quote from /u/mbmccallIs [Drakonid Operative] Blizzard's way of saying 'we have no idea how to balance a class so the weak classes get op cards in rotation'?No. The idea is that Dragons in Priests were never quite as powerful as we had hoped for, and the Blackrock dragons will rotate soon, so Mean Streets was our last opportunity to push the deck for a long time. We didn't want to improve the deck's early game, and the Jade decks are supposed to have the strongest late game, so we made Operative a strong midgame option.
Operative is a class card that you have to build a deck around, so it has quite generous stats. It could perhaps have done the job of 'push Dragon decks before they rotate' at 6/5 or 6/4, but we were more confident in our estimation of the Dragon deck's power level than we usually are, and we knew that if we were wrong, the problem would fix itself after rotation.
If you think 'well Azure Drake is neutral and almost as strong as Operative and goes in more decks so what are you thinking' the answer is that I think Azure Drake is extremely generous, which isn't to say that it should or should not be changed.
Well it happens all the time. The thing is how to make profit of knowing this.
So, every time some old archetypes nearly destroyed, and some new archetypes dominate.
It is obviously done so people forcibly change archetypes (people won't get bored playing the old one, people won't get bored playing against the old one and so on...).
Can't actually say if it is good or bad. This can also piss someone off, but Blizzards make drastic changes for this: like introducing a dragon and Reno decks that powerful they 100% eliminate Control Warrior archetype from the ladder and so on. This is why they are simply introducing some overbuffed stats I guess.
Now an important observation of mine (you may refute ofc): an archetype survives at least several expansions changing it's power level over time, before destroyed abruptly when new archetype is ready to replace it. (otherwise designers would have to fully balance power of new archetypes each expansion which is just too much of work I believe)
This makes me think, since Dragon Priest is at good power level now and they've just started - it won't be eliminated right in next expansion when the old dragons rotate out. Which on it's turn makes me think it can become even stronger with some NEWLY introduced dragons.
The profit is if I want to play the deck and consider crafting some key cards - I would not be afraid that it will become wasted right in the next expansion. Another thing is looks like Control Warrior is not reviving any time soon.
Yes, the card is ridiculously overpowered. But at least it's not in some oppressive deck that absolutely dominates the meta. This is the only solid and consistent deck that Priest players have had in the past year.
"If we were wrong, the problem would fix itself after rotation."
And blizzard wonders why we question their balancing habits.
Translation: "we have no idea how to balance a class so the weak classes get op cards because Dragons rotate out soon anyway, enjoy this insane version of Azure Drake while it lasts.