All Card Changes! - Hall of Fame and Priest - Coming March 26th!
One of the main recurring themes of a new rotation year is that several cards will be moved to the Hall of Fame. These changes will go into effect on Thursday March 26th 2020. Here are the affected cards for this year:
Hall of Fame
- Leeroy Jenkins
- Leeroy Jenkins is one of Blizzard’s most beloved characters, but his time has come. He just ends too many games, with too much neutral face damage, and hinders class identity.
- Mountain Giant
- Mountain Giant has been around as a deck enabler for a long time and Blizzard enjoys the decks he helped create. By rotating it allows them to fill that design space with new cards.
- Mind Control Tech
- Mind Control Tech is the kind of random effect that Blizzard no longer wants to promote in Standard, because it often brings out very negative feelings and big swings in game state.
- Acolyte of Pain
- Acolyte of Pain is one of the most popular forms of Card Draw in the game and it makes it hard to differentiate between classes.
- Spellbreaker
- Much like Acolyte of Pain, rotating Spellbreaker will allow Blizzard to fill the design space with different Silence cards.
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!Dean: Cards like Leeroy and Mountain Giant and Sylvanas and Ragnaros, are cards that are good in every Meta and as a result of that every expansion people are playing those same cards.
The whole point of doing an expansion is that you log in and things feel fresh and different and if the Basic and Classic set have those more universally strong cards that game play experience feels more stale.
Priest Changes
Blizzard had already hinted at this several months ago when Divine Spirit was a much used card in Standard at the end of Saviors of Uldum, but changes are coming to the Priest Basic and Classic set.
The main reason for this is that some of the cards in the Basic and Classic set no longer align with the class identity that Blizzard set out for the Priest class. They want Priests to be strong at control and fighting on the board. They hope to get closer to that vision with these changes they are making.
It starts with cards that need more change than just mana changes. They simply do not fit any longer with the class identity or are limiting design space. That is why the following cards will be moved to the Hall of Fame and replaced with new cards.
Replacements
These are the cards they are being replaced with:
Mana & Mechanics Changes
That is not all however. To complete their vision, Blizzard also announced changes to the following cards, most of them are mana changes, but there’s some mechanical changes too, like Power Word: Shield no longer providing card draw:
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!HearthPwn: [Are you keeping a close eye on Priest performance, and would you be willing to make more aggressive changes if it turns out it’s necessary?]
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. I think we will make a little more aggressive changes than we have done in recent memory and this is even more true for Demon Hunter.
Ashes of Outland Card List & Expansion Details
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
Haven't been playing much of late, but guessing it would be wise to log in and craft golden versions of the 5 neutral cards. Should I go and craft golden versions of the priest (craftable) cards too?
do we get refund for all copies?
Previous Hall of Fame rotations have given us dust for the amount you can put in a deck. So the dust of 1 for Legendary cards, 2 for everything else, and it was based off the most valuable cards (so 2 gold and 2 normal of a rare would give 800 for the golds, but not the 200 for normals). What I don't know, is how the Priest cards will work. Whether our cards will transform into the new cards, or if they go to HoF as normal, and new cards enter rotation.
Leeroy is so far past time to go.
Acolyte of Pain seems odd, but I guess they don't want multidraw available for everyone?
Spellbreaker is the real head scratcher, since it's barely if ever played, and Owl is not touched.
Malygos needs to go too. Not sure how they've rationalized keeping it around. They intentionally just axed Velen for the same reason - multiplicative or massive spellpower boosts are no good.
Spellbreaker is just a very solid silence which makes it hard to design other silence cards, especially minions that ppl will use. For 4 mana they would have to add a class minion of at least 4/4 with that battlecry so that it makes sense to play it and soon we enter the realm of OP ness. Same with Acolyte, any multidraw has to be straight up better than him to be used and they do not want to create cards even more powerful. They put a lot of good thought into these HoF rotates.
About Malygos (and Alexstrasza as some ppl suggested): Remember they are 9 mana...pocket galaxy will go too soon. So the combo potential with these cards is limited and if any you need to set up the OTK with discounts and stuff which is not very efficient in ranked. Unlike Leeroy who just has so many crazy support cards where your opponent just cant do anything against it if you just have him+shadowstep or galakrond warrior to draw him and bloodsworn mercenary and have inner rage in hand....Malygos at least needs a lot more cards than 1-2 for an OTK which I guess justifies his freedom from HoF. But I would understand it too if he goes one day.
I mean it makes sense. It is stupid as hell for these cards to be used every single year since beta. Acolyte has been a staple in decks like control warrior since literally beta Hearthstone. Cleric for priest is the same. The card was too damn good. I do agree though it hurts to have priest lose BOTH shield and cleric at the same time but it is needed.
Acolyte and Cleric are gone and shadow word shield lost it's draw. Which means they killed all priest draw mechanics basically. They just disarmed many priest deck options. Another hit in the face of priest IMO.
They disarmed the ones they wanted to disarm, I think, especially OTK memes
How do Cleric and Acolyte make OTK memes?
So does the HoF work like usually that we get full dust for 2 ''best copies'' of the card? Does this apply to the normal rotation cards (Leeroy, MCT tech, etc.) and the priest cards as well?
Sure. You will have dust for all cards except basic ones (for certain).
xskarma Do we have a confirmation of dust refunds working the same as the past years? It is for both neutral cards and priest cards? Please update us with this info.
+1 for visibility.
If i have a normal version of a card should i dust and craft golden version of it? s1 explain plz
Just if you need a golden copy of it as n your wild collection.
E.g. I have a normal Leeroy. I want to craft a gold one, so I spend 3200 dust on it and I shall get 3200 back when the rotation comes. And then I will get 400 dust for dusting a normal Leeroy.
just common cards, if you plan disenchant it
so, we can craft all these hall of fame cards now, and get the refund in 26march?
Yes.
Do I craft golden leeroy/velen now? what if i have normal leeroy, will i get dust for golden and normal leeroy?
Yes I am curious about that.