I don’t get this hoopla over Elysiana.
There’s a simple solution for tournaments – just ban the damn card. They’ve done it last year with Whizbang, and it certainly wasn’t because the card itself was too strong. It just interfered with the format, so they banned it even though no competitive player in their right mind was going to bring a Whizbang deck to a tournament anyway.
Of course the players should be notified of this in advance, and so they missed the opportunity to do that for their upcoming tournaments already, but that’s just another proof of how very stupid it was to delay World Championship of 2018 to the last week of April 2019.

Crystal Power alone is not enough to make this viable. Even if you make an extra copy of it with that new legendary.
Because there WILL be cases where CP will be used for damage, not heal. In fact, I assume it should be more often than not.
Healing Touch is not a good card and that’s the only class heal druid has right now. And the playable neutral heal minions mostly rotate out.
So we’ll see if they release some more actual good heal.

The only “real” way to trigger this deathrattle in Standard will be Fireworks Tech.
So 8 mana 2 card (one of which is a 1-of) combo that puts something like 15/15 stats on board. Assuming you win the coinflip to pull the Mechanical Whelp and not some other cheap mech.
Considering all the busted BS we’ve had past 2 years, that doesn’t even sound good enough. But with power levels down after rotation, and if they release some more strong mechs to go along with this, then maaybe?

Meme way to trigger this would be Boom-Zooka. Pull this, one Whelp and a Necromechanic out of the deck, the second Whelp out of your hand. Profit. (Except probably doesn’t even work in the order that is necessary).

Heh, they really wanted to make sure Blazecaller sees actual play in meta before it rotates out.

Fair enough.

I might in some decks, but this card is actually worse than that.

When going first, on turn 2 right now this would almost always be a 1/4 even vs aggro. Vs slower decks always a 1/4.

The only deck that can put 2 minions out on T1 is Odd pally, with Lost in Jungle; or by coining hero power or double 1 drops (which is usually a bad play, as the coin is better served for coining out Fungal or LevelUp).
Zoo can coin double 1 drops too, but again, it’s not super common;
and anyway if Belligerent Gnome is played in decks, people will play around it.

So it’s a 2/4 half of the time on T2 vs aggro and later in the game when behind on board, which is okay, but what decks would actually play that? And 1/4 taunt is only good enough to be played vs Odd pally.

And as it’s been the case this past year, there’s still the issue of Keleseth being too good so that 2 mana minions like this are just not worth playing until next April.

People were going crazy when that 1/5 mech was announced last expansion, and how did that turn out?

I think the only deck that would play this card is Even shaman. Because they have quite a few ways to buff attack on 3. It’s actually a great card for that deck if there’s a lot of aggro. If the meta is slower then extra value from Nimbus wins out.

I wouldn’t say the cost is by far the worst. It won’t see play even after Keleseth rotates out next spring. If Keleseth wasn’t a card at all, it wouldn’t see play now either.

This card just combines all the bad things about a tribal buff card. Compared to Crystal weaver which had all the right things, and even then wasn’t really busted at all.

Stat line is bad, though that’s not uncommon for buff cards so is not a deciding factor by itself, but it only gets worse from there.
Hand buff is bad, board buff is much stronger as you get the effect immediately, and not have to wait at least 1 turn to use it.
Deathrattle as the trigger for buff is bad, as you have to wait at least 1 turn to benefit from it.
So combine these two and you have to wait at least 2 turns to actually get some use out of the buff. Which for an aggro deck just isn’t an optimal strategy.

Not gonna say how strong this card is or isn’t.
Although I’m pretty sure in most scenarios it’s not (and they do play-test these cards before releasing them, right?).

But the variance of this card is off the fucking charts. 1 mana Blood Imp/Freezing Potion/Innervate/etc. vs 1 mana DK Guldan/Jaina/Ultimate Infestation…
Although even the regular, not that great, 4-6 mana cards can be pretty busted when they only cost 1 and happen to fit the situation perfectly (and the opponent can’t realistically play around them).
And so the highroll game breaking potential is definitely there for people to try to take advantage of it.

So it’s definitely a 10/10 on the stupid, toxic design scale.

Hey, let’s make a pure RNG card that’ll either roll complete trash or give some busted cards that cost 1 mana each and single-handedly win the game that should’ve been lost otherwise.
Let’s also maintain the facade that we care about the competitive scene, and push for HS becoming an Olympic sport.

It doesn’t even matter if the card sees zero competitive play, it’s still dumb. And if it does see competitive play, then it’s also pure cancer.

If the f2p player is serious about being competitive, this definitely should not be the first craft.
The recipies are rather weak to begin with (some are straight up bad) and only updated on expansion release.
Also a lot of new f2p players like to complain how hard it is to complete the class specific daily quests, and this card doesn’t help in that regard either.
But for the truly casual players this is great.

And I agree, brilliant design.

I’d go as far as saying that this should actually be the free legendary that everyone gets, but it probably won’t be which is a shame.

Yea, Wild is different, but I don’t think it’s fair to say all the good-old 2-drops is the reason against Keleseth there.

If we look at the strongest strategies in Wild, most of them don’t benefit from or can’t run Kel even if they wanted to.

Jade decks, Barnes decks, Baku/Genn decks – all pretty self-explanatory, not an option.

So what else is there left in Wild that actually plays “good 2 drops” rather than Kel? Aggro mage, which admittedly has way too many juicy 2 mana class cards… and the old aggro pally with minibots, creepers and eggs, which got superseded by Bakadin anyway.

Reno decks could if they wanted to, but obviously they’re too focused on control tools and/or more beneficial greed cards (ie their choice of 2 mana cards is not based on good stats or minion synergies).
They’re already operating under the singleton restriction, adding another is currently not worth it. But it’s not completely out of the question that eventually they might run Kel – if at some point there’s enough alternatives for the 2 mana cards of their choice at 1 and 3 mana, why not, as long as the deck plays minions?
Same reason why it makes sense to expect that more and more Baku/Genn decks of all kinds will appear in time – with the ever-increasing card pool, in Wild such mana cost based deck-building restrictions will keep trending towards negligible.
Of course, no matter what card pool, Baku/Genn will always have the downside of making the deck 29 good cards + 1 bad minion which you never want to draw, but that is relatively minor price to pay for a straight up better hero power;
and Kel will always have the downside of making you hero power or play double 1s on T2 more often than not, but for some classes and in some metas this is also acceptable price for having stronger minions than opponent.
Though it does seem that Baku/Genn benefit outclasses Kel overall. Which doesn’t bode well for Kel in Wild. But that has more to do with guaranteed upgraded hero powers vs less reliable minion buff, rather than amount of good 2-drops available.

I’ll admit I haven’t played Wild in a long time, so I’m basing my opinion purely on replay data analysis on vSyndicate and HSreplay, but such data is more legitimate than anecdotal evidence from personal experience anyway.

Before hyping this up (gonna get nerfed, really?), lets pause to consider that every proactive deck that even remotely cares about playing 2-drops, right now is better off playing Keleseth instead. Unless they want to play Genn as well, of course.

See Zoolock, “old” tempo rogue, Spiteful priest/druid, the list goes on. Heck even Shudderwock shaman and recruit hunters run Keleseth, since it’s just better than Doomsayers or any other 2 drops.

For example Zoo could play demon 2/4s with taunt (so also 6 stats) but it’s been proven over and over again that prince2 just makes the deck win more (even when before rotation there still was a 3 mana +3/+3 demon buff on curve).

The mech legendary is 5 mana, so there probably won’t be a mech Genn deck. Some Genn decks like shaman might consider running this purely for stats, but it’s a consideration not a gimme gimme.

So there has to be something insane to compete with Keleseth. Like multiple ridiculously strong 2 drops (something we haven’t seen in a long ass time), or a crazy good reason to be playing a mech on 2, and low amount of 1 mana mechs forcing people into 2s.
Which might happen, with so little of the set revealed so far, but come on.

Random class cards are actually pretty trash on average (also depends on the class somewhat, of course).
Way more difficult to highroll something game changing (or even playable) than with cards that narrow down the selection, like Pavel’ing book and this one.

Swashburglar only saw play because of Patches, and was the worst card in the deck outside of that synergy role. Fox is pretty meh as well, and only sees some play because other possible proactive 3 drops right now are rather meh too.

The best thing about this card, and the reason why it might see play, IS the elemental tag. So if you play it later in the game you automatically meet the requirement for some of the strongest elementals to be able to play them for profit on the next turn. So it can be considered even in decks that don’t go full retard on elementals (those decks haven’t been good so far, and honestly, probably won’t be), just have a few good ones already, like Genn shaman.

This could fit in a Spiteful Summoner druid – early game minion that can be either removal or taunt seems playable.

Other than that it’s just a typical decent card, and decent is not good enough in constructed.

I really don’t get the hype.

I think a lot of people here underestimate meeting the condition. It’s not gonna be that easy and/or convenient to do a lot of the time. And for 4 mana wouldn’t you rather have Flanking Strike (a card which didn’t become core in midrange hunter as some people thought either)? And even if it’s 1 mana – wouldn’t you rather have a fucking Hunter’s Mark instead (that does essentially the same except for infinite damage instead of 4?)

But the main issue is as always with hunter – with no card draw to speak of the class can’t afford to play removal cards like this that doesn’t have the option of going face.

As for Ice block, it’s the only reason why there ever have been more than 1 viable archetype of Mage.

Without it, the class would have been as one dimensional in deck building as Hunter, with the only viable deck being the aggressive; “hope to highroll Mana Wyrm on T1, into 2 drop into 3 drop, do enough face damage with them and finish off with Fireballs” kinda mage (the minions can change – mad scientists and flamewankers, mech tribe, or arcanologist and kirintor, etc. – but the essence is the same).

I know the frustration of losing to Ice blocks and freezes as a minion based deck, but the hypocrisy of wanting more variety in the game (the usual argument for further nerfing/retiring of Classic set) and yet lobbying to actually reduce it, is pretty funny (for the lack of a better word).

Yea, there’s also the “hurr durr design space” argument, but the thing is they haven’t even tried giving mage any good control tools besides Ice block. Most of the effort on expansion cards for Mage were spent on propagating the random “created by X” cancer (which ironically, makes you people even more salty about Ice block due to the extra Ice blocks).

Arcane Artificer is the first actually good control card in forever – and despite the combination of the two with Ice block, it hasn’t really made the archetype too strong or too oppressive. Big mage doesn’t play Ice block just “because it’s too good not to include”, but because they actually _need_ it; just like every previous effort at making a slow mage viable depended on it.

TL;DR – Let’s hope they continue gutting the Classic set into irrelevancy.
Can anyone explain the logic, why even have an evergreen set that supposedly the new/poor players can safely invest in and returning players base their decks off of, if there’s gonna be nothing worth playing left in it?
I can understand such motion from Blizzard’s perspective, that’s greed hoping to make the players buy more and more packs each expansion (however how long that’s gonna work out for them or just make a lot of people eventually move on from the game remains to be seen).
I don’t however understand why the actual players of the game would be so excited about it, if they really paused to think about the implications.

I mean, it’s obvious he’s targetting Jade druid with that line up – aggro druid and tempo rogue generally do well vs it, this “endless Voidlord value” control warlock has Geist (although that endless value seems a bit excessive and somewhat highrolly), he brought dragon version of Razakus and that deck has Geist too.
Unlucky for him only Kolento in his group plays Jades.

Cubes don’t really help to beat aggro. And neither does 1 Gnomeferatu. And neither does cutting 1 Defile.
His list is so greedy (Umbra, Taldaram, Nzoth, double Faceless) but in a weird way, it’s kind of a head scratcher. I’m really rooting for him to draw both Voidlords, have the weapon in bottom 5 of his deck and get punished. But knowing how good at HS he is he’s gonna draw his gimmicks perfectly, and all the casters are gonna go gagga about how amazing and next level Muzzy is.

You can play Argent Squires (or Dire Moles, these might be even better) and Cold Bloods instead of the 1 mana pirates; and Tar Creepers or Vicious Fledglings instead of Captains (taunts a safer choice, cold blood’ed flappy birds can win some games here or there if opponent doesn’t have the answer); and whatever you want instead of Patches, as long as it makes sense in the deck.

As long as you understand that this isn’t optimal and adjust your expectations accordingly. On the bright side, at least you won’t be vulnerable to golakka tech that some smartasses run even on ladder…

And by cry, you mean will play a Twilight Acolyte that becomes a 4/4…