That’s false. You can get any card from your opponent’s class with Hallucination. You can even get Death Knights.

State of the meta: it’s diverse, true, but Giggling and/or Quest Rogue are obnoxious. Giggling is quite better than Sludge Belcher, the latter can always be silenced, or wasting removal on the big Taunt doesn’t feel as bad as wasting removal on an Annoy-o-tron. We would all be fine with nerfing Giggling to 6 mana, that would also be a considerable nerf to Quest Rogue. And what’s worse is that Giggling is available in Arena, where it is basically the best card you can pick. Like seriously, some decks have started running Mossy Horror even when it’s highly anti-synergistic with them (Zoolock, Even Shaman…). What does that tell you?

Wild: just listen to the overall community more for this mode. Barnes and Juicy Psychmelon are a problem. Some rotated cards could be unnerfed (Raza?). It’s fine if it becomes a mode with huge power level, that’s what it will end up being sooner or later. What would be VERY interesting is a new mode with the latest 6 expansion in play (but no Classic cards available). Every time a new expansion releases, the last expansion rotates out, the new expansion rotates in. They could start that mode when the Year of the Raven ends (so standard has 4 expansions + Classic, the new mode has the last 6 expansions).

New Classic cards: they’re all trash. Especially annoying is the Mage epic which will occupy space in Classic packs like Mindgames or Shadowform. Also very lazy design. It would be better to get older cards that were approved by the community back into Standard. Evolve for Shaman. Dirty Rat should replace Molten Giant, etc.

Tournament Mode: bummer. This is the same company that gave us tournament mode in StarCraft II. I don’t believe they can’t give us a simple mode for Hearthstone. The “quality” excuse is just so bad…

New Welcome Bundle: sounds cool to get one of the Dragons. But I’m sorry for the newcomers who get Onyxia or Nozdormu. The class legendaries are all more or less useful, with the exception of Cenarius which has been quite bad for a long time now.

Hallow’s End event: this is a great event, especially the Dual-class Arena. Glad to see it back.

Ranks 50-25: good idea, there should be a mode already that limits the amount of legendaries or epics in a deck, so that newer players can play in more equal terms.

Great, another useless epic from the Classic set to open in packs…

So a weaker Hallucination, great…

I mean, yeah… why would you put this in your deck instead of the spell you want? We don’t want busted cards to replace other busted cards like Ice Block. But we don’t want pack fillers like Shadowform either. Can’t there be a balance?

I’m not saying Wild is not more fun. I believe it actually IS more fun. But it’s not more balanced. Right now if you don’t kill your opponent by the time he gets 10 mana, you get StarAligned. Before you needed to have an answer to a Turn 5 board flood of 8/8s. Sure, there’s counters, but the meta IS warped around the most broken interactions.

I’ve been enjoying Arena quite a lot in Boomsday, except for one little thing: Giggling Inventor. The card is already too good in Constructed, and in Arena it’s bonkers good. And more annoying than MC Tech. By turn 5 you might have one or two minions on board. They drop the Giggling, and it’s a very annoying stall. What usually happens is you can take out one Annoy-o-Tron, and the opponent magnetizes the other Annoy-o-Tron (usually with Wargear) and swings the board in his favor, sealing the game. So either you have a Giggling Inventor of your own, or a hard-counter like Mossy (I’ve been prioritizing crafting it), or you probably lose. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem if classes still had plenty of AOE spells, but since we have less spells now, decks normally have one or two AOEs. Wasting it on a Giggling means you can’t swing the game back in the future, but you’re kind of forced to do so if you don’t want Annoy-o-trons to get magnetized. So yeah, card’s busted. Make it 6 mana already. And offer it less often, just like MCT was adjusted and we see it less often now.

Leeroy wouldn’t be OP after a +3/+3 buff. We’ve seen Leeroy being Cold Blooded and Shadowstepped in Miracle Rogue, and nobody complained that it was broken (well after Leeroy costed 5, when it costed 4 and it could be Shadowstepped twice then yes, it WAS broken). Also, Leeroy would be a dead card before Quest completion.

Yes, because Aviana+Kun or Barnes are perfectly balanced.

You are right, and I would not mind at all that Quest Rogue would change as a deck. If people include higher cost minions with better stats, then the Quest will not be completed as fast as it is completed right now. Leeroy is normally a dead card until you can lethal your opponent, and you’re not going to complete the quest with it. But why not having a new Quest Rogue that completes the Quest with Phantom Militia, for example? It would lead to new, interesting builds. Also, Saronite Chain Gang is much worse even after my proposed change than current Giggling: its stall before Quest is much worse, its bouncing potential is much worse, and after Quest completion it’s still worse (10/12 stats for 4 mana vs 12/12 stats AND two divine shields for 5 mana). I think it would be super interesting to see higher-cost Quest Rogue decks that complete the Quest by Turn 12 or so instead of Turn 6 or 7. The current build with cheap minions that complete the Quest faster would also be viable, just not as outrageously strong as it is right now. But yes, this is all speculation, I trust Team 5 could test my proposed nerf and assess if it’s indeed too strong or not. As I said I believe +3/+3 is correct, but it’s just my gut feeling.

Most minions in the deck have a statline that with the +3/+3 buff they would be close to the 4/4 they are today (Stonetusk Boar, Novice Engineer, Wax Elemental…). Notable exceptions are Elven Minstrel and Brewmaster. But a few extra stats on those minions up-front won’t be that problematic in my opinion. I’d rather face a 4/6 Scalehide + a copied 1/3 from the DK, than a 4/4 and a copied 4/4 from the DK (or several 4/4s from Sonya, which with my proposed nerf they would only be 1/1). It would require a bit more testing, of course, but my intuition says that +3/+3 is the reasonable buff, especially since you are NOT buffing your current board when casting Crystal Core.

Druid has the big problem that it cannot outvalue other Control decks. Druid has no Build-a-beast, no army of Water Elementals… The closest thing to it is the refill board from Taunt Druid, which is actually more of a Combo of Hadronox + Cube. Druid is powerful because it has some end-game combo which keeps him competitive. But if Dirty Rat were still in Standard, non-Token Druid would be Tier 2, and Combo decks would beat its Combo decks consistently. Wild is different because Druid has Aviana + Kun there, which is something else. But seriously, with Dirty Rat in Standard, Control decks wouldn’t care that Druids gain so much armor, cycle and stall so well. They would just outvalue them every game.

The BIG problem with Quest Rogue is – and has always been – design space. Since the opponent has very few disruptive tools at his disposal, and the Quest reward is sooo powerful (only Quest Mage gives a similar advantage/swing that normally wins you the game after completing it), printing a perfectly balanced card with synergy with the Quest totally breaks the deck. This has been the case with Zola and Sonya, for example, two cool and perfectly balanced cards in any other deck, but that are too strong in Quest Rogue. If you add Giggling Inventor, which we all know is busted, the deck just becomes waaay too consistent. We can nerf Giggling to 6 mana, and it might restrain Quest Rogue once again, but as it is right now, it will still have the potential to be broken when new cards are added in new expansions.

I think there is an elegant way to nerf Quest Rogue one last time which would free a lot of design space. Basically, the inner problem is that bounce cards that help you complete the Quest (Youthful Brewmaster, Vanish, Sonya…) get EVEN BETTER after Quest is completed. We don’t see that in other Quests: Taunt minions don’t have more value after equipping a Ragnaros HP, randomly generated spells are not better after taking an extra turn, discarding extra cards after putting down a portal doesn’t bring any new reward… So my proposed nerf is that Crystal Core should read: Give minions in your hand and deck +3/+3. We accomplish A LOT with this: (1) Rogue’s current board doesn’t get auto-buffed, which is big; (2) Giggling Inventor doesn’t summon huge Annoy-o-tron’s; (3) extra bouncing value from Sonya, Vanish or DK Valeera is negated. With that change, I’m pretty sure Control decks can grind the Quest Rogue down. As compensation, we can go back to the 4-minion requirement instead of 5. But right now it’s kind of pointless that a Big Spell Mage can Flamestrike the Rogue board, and the Rogue puts 3x Zola the Gorgon on board again without using up resources. That’s just BS.

Giggling also has good synergy with Blood Knight. It’s definitely not a bad Turn 8 play.

A Resurrect on demand? No, thanks, Big Priest was already oppressive enough in Wild not that long ago (now it’s not oppressive anymore because Star Aligner and Togwaggle Druid beats it hard, but before Boomsday we were all begging for a nerf to Barnes, because it’s BS to lose a game on Turn 3/4 because the Priest was lucky enough to draw Barnes early enough).

Pure RNG, yay! /s

I don’t think so. Magnetic is the keyword associated to Boomsday, and we will probably not see new cards with this keyword in the near future (if ever again). It’s the Echo of Witchwood or the Recruit of KnC.

I agree that Magnetic cards are generally underwhelming, and probably because if they were OK when played by themselves, they probably would be busted when Magnetized onto something. The glaring exception to this is Zilliax, which sees play almost everywhere. And it’s not too oppressive because it’s legendary and thus only a one-of. Adapt has seen more play before, but in the last few metas it has been reduced mainly to Vicious Fledgling. In any case, these keywords have generally been very underwhelming when compared to something like Recruit.

Kind of ridiculous that current Giggling Inventor (hopefully it gets nerfed to 6 mana) is only on the third bucket. It’s the new MCT in Arena: horrible to play against. I’m always happy to craft a Mossy Horror because I know I’m always going to get value of him with GIs all over Arena.

Supercollider was the sleeper of the set. I thought it was a garbage weapon. I’m glad to be wrong. But I’m very sad that I was generally right about Magnetic cards: the mechanic is just not good enough in Constructed. Something similar to Adapt, I guess – most of the cards with that keyword don’t see play in Constructed.