P.S. I’m also reviewing it for the current state of the game. After Tomb Pillager rotates out of standard and there will no longer be a way to generate coins, this has a higher chance to see play.

It’s one thing when you’re generating them for free, it’s another when you actually have to put a card into your deck. If you’re also playing Backstabs and Preps, possibly some other 1-2 mana spells, the game plan would be “Gadgetzan or bust”. Rogue already runs out of cards pretty fast without Auctioneer, but with 2 of those in the deck, not drawing it would be even more punishing.

I think that it’s really hard to determine whether the card will be good or not without actually playtesting it. I think it might have the potential. But in the end, I gave it 2, because I don’t think that it has high enough value to actually deliberately put it into your deck. And it’s not only my opinion – e.g. Sjow said that the card is very weak on his stream.

Sure, it would work well. But the question is – is his effect strong enough to sacrifice all of the duplicates? Not running 2 Dragonfire Potions or the new 5-drops, it would be a big hit. I think that this Dragon deck might work better with the 2-ofs.

They don’t rotate out. Nothing rotates until first expansion of 2017.

I’ve picked Thijs too :p

You can already pick your Champion for the Finals. Here’s the official Tweet: https://twitter.com/PlayHearthstone/status/793137062903885824

Yes, I know that “negative number” means number below zero. But the word “negative” has a lot of different meaning besides the maths one. When you say that someone is negative, you don’t mean that he’s less than 0. “Negative win rate” brings over 4.5kk results in google, I’ve seen the word used in that context since I remember.

I think that out of those, besides Tuskarr Totemic, the one that deserved the nerf most is Thing from Below. The card is completely broken and very consistent. It was meant as a late game tempo play to offset the fact that playing totems is a tempo loss (you don’t really want to Hero Power every turn), but it turns out that Shaman can pump out so many Totems, that it’s often played for nearly free as soon as turn 4-5.

It was so strong that even Aggro Shaman played it. And it’s clearly a card that wasn’t meant to be played in Aggro. You can’t give Aggro decks nearly free 5/5 minions.

Of course, nerfing Tuskarr will indirectly nerf Thing from Below too. Tuskarr won’t be played in Aggro any more. But it still might in Midrange. Not to mention that the Wicked Witchdoctor lists (like Xixo’s Totem Shaman) might become more popular, and it’s also very easy to get a free Thing from Below in that list.

Innervate or Preparation are insanely strong, because they give you free mana for nothing. 5/5 Taunt is worth ~5 mana. If you can drop that even let’s say for 2 mana (and that’s very easy), that’s 3 mana worth of free tempo and you don’t even need to use any additional card to achieve that. And the biggest problem is that it’s from WoG, so it will stay in Standard for next 1.5 years.

I feel like Thing from Below should be one of the two: cost should be reduced only when it’s in your hand (which might kill the card, but not necessarily – it could still be played in more totem-heavy lists) or make it count only the Basic totems – so Totem Golem, Flametongue, Mana Tide wouldn’t reduce the cost. The second nerf seems better, because in order to make it cheap, you’d have to actually sacrifice the tempo first. For every 2 mana spent on Hero Powering, you’d get 1 mana discount on each of the Things from Below. And in slower Shaman lists it would still make Thing from Below a very good tempo play, but slightly later than it is now.

I thought that Barnes, Arcane Giant, The Curator and Menagerie Warden were going to be the best cards of the expansion.

Barnes – I’ve overrated him slightly, because I’ve overestimated the power of a “failed” Barens (as in vanilla 3/4 + vanilla 1/1). I was like – sure, it’s still not bad. But it is bad. It’s way below average and you don’t want to play way below average cards in your deck. So instead of Barnes going into every second deck, it can be played only in a select few that really run a lot of synergies. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, though, because Barnes in every deck would mean a lot of games ending on turn 4 because of RNG.

Arcane Giant – It was one of my most hyped cards of the expansion. The moment I’ve seen it I knew that it would be amazing. I knew that it would do well in a slower Tempo Mages and in Token Druid. But I didn’t even think about the other decks like Warrior Giants with Charge and/or Blood Warriors. I also thought that it might make into the Miracle Rogue, and while there were some lists playing it, it seems very hard to fit in.

The Curator – I wrote an article about him pre-Karazhan. I was pretty hyped for him, because I’ve realized that it’s really easy to make him work. Playing 2 tribes is very possible in a lot of decks and 4/6 Taunt + 2 card draws for 7 is amazing. I like the card, because it incentivizes creative deck building. And while being very strong, it’s not really broken like let’s say Dr. Boom was back in the day.

Menagerie Warden – Yeah… I’ve also jumped into hype train too soon. The card is indeed amazing, but it’s just that Beast Druid really wants to be a fast deck. And Menagerie Warden fits heavy Midrange decks much more. I think it might still be good in the future, as the card itself is amazing, but not right now.

On the other hand, I’ve underestimated a few cards too. Just like you, I’ve looked down on both Babbling Book and Ivory Knight thinking that both of them will be “average”. Babbling Book – sure, you can drop it on t1 and it has some late game scaling, but a random Mage spell can’t always be good. As it turned out, it makes it really hard to play around stuff. Just like Cabalist’s Tome, you have no clue what Mage can drop. Mage plays Secret? I’ve played Mark of Y’Shaarj into Spellbender twice in the same game, both Spellbenders were from random effects :/ And Ivory Knight – I thought that it’s going to be one-of in some decks maybe. It was okay, but nothing special. My reasoning was that Paladin has a lot of 1 mana spells AND that the class doesn’t really need more healing. But things that do multiple things in one are good and Discover is proving again and again that it’s a very fun and strong mechanic.

I’ve also underestimated Spirit Claws. Or rather, I didn’t underestimate the card, but the Shaman’s ability to play it right now. I thought that the card has INSANE potential, but won’t likely see play yet, because we have only 3 good Spell Damage cards – Thalnos and 2x Azure Drake. But as it turns out, even a 1/3 weapon that sometimes randomly becomes a 3 damage weapon (thank you, Wrath of Air Totem) is pretty good in a class that can’t easily ping. I was like “maybe if they release another Spell Damage minion…”. But it didn’t need it. A potential 1 mana Pyroblast is too good to pass up, even when it’s slightly RNG. But it makes me hate playing against Shaman even more. It’s RNG after RNG after RNG. “I hope he doesn’t roll Totem Golem from Tuskarr”, “I hope that he won’t roll Taunt/Healing this turn”, “I hope he will have low rolls on Lightning Storm”… Now there is also “I hope he won’t get Spell Damage totem” every damn time when he has Spirit Claws equipped. The amount of RNG Shaman has and how important it is is tearing me apart.

Besides that, I have rated most of the cards about right. Sure, it wasn’t perfect – I’ve slightly overestimated Discard Warlock, slightly underestimated Fool’s Bane, but those were still close to how they turned out to be.

I’m pretty happy with rating Priest cards – Priest of the Feast and Onyx Bishop – correctly. Everyone was like “hurr, durr, Priest, Blizzard sucks, give Priest op cards, those suck” and I was like “whaat? those cards are good”. While obviously they weren’t broken (Priest didn’t get so-called Shaman treatment of getting broken cards every expansion until it’s on the top), they were solid and heavily underrated.

Okay, sorry, I got a bit frustrated. It’s just that some people seem to assume that I’ve pulled those “overrated cards” out of my ass, while in reality I just analyzed what people have said about them. I didn’t make anything up.

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/card-category/set/adventure-mode/one-night-in-karazhan/ – cards from Karazhan with their rating.

Malchezaar is now rated at 3.9 out of 5.0. I remember it was way over 4.0 when the card was first revealed (but since people can still vote, it has gone down over time). But even 4 out of 5 means a good/strong card. Barnes is 3.9. Firelands Portal is 3.9. Both Maelstrom Portal and Spirit Claws are below it. The Curator is below it. Priest of the Feast/Onyx Bishop are below it.

I’ve gathered my community reaction from reddit and multiple fan sites, including HearthstoneTopdecks. Well, I was writing an article for HStopdecks so it would be weird if I didn’t include the site in my research.

I obviously agree with you that the pros have rated it more correctly. Because they understand that diluting the deck with random Legendaries is not a good thing. But the card is clearly terrible. Even dropping the “meta-defining” thing completely, if the card was received as a “good” card it was already overrating it.

I find it really amusing that I face it on the ladder. I haven’t played a lot this season, so I haven’t hit Legend yet. I’m around rank 2-3 right now and people play Malchezaar here. I don’t know why. I’m like “okay man, sure, make your deck worse if you want”. My win rate against Malchezaar decks is pretty high so I don’t mind that, I just don’t know why people STILL think that the card is good.

Erm, but that’s exactly what this article is about? About how community, normal players received the cards, not pros.

“Also PWS is universally accepted to be busted, I don’t really know why you’re pretending it not to be.” – Because I have a lot of writing experience and most of the times I mention that PW:S is one of the most broken cards in the game people disagree? Just to give you a very recent example, check out one of my previous articles on this site: http://bit.ly/2c3V22p Quite a lot of people in the comment section have argued that PW:S is very balanced, it’s good and it’s not too strong at all. After all, it just gives a minion +2 health, that’s not a big deal.

Trust me, I have probably written more articles about HS than you have read. I know very well what people think about certain cards and how is the general attitude towards something.

You seem to miss the big part of how Arena works. Draft consistency. Best classes are usually the ones that are most consistent. Every class has some very strong cards. Priest isn’t the worst class in the Arena because it has no good cards (hint: SW:D, PW:S, Dark Cultist, Velen’s Chosen just to name a few). It’s worst class, because the drafts aren’t consistent – the class has TONS of situational/useless/combo cards. So while each class has top tier cards (and I mean it – number of strong cards in each class is roughly the same), the one with most bad cards gets the short end of the stick, because the whole card pool gets diluted by trash cards. The removed class cards are exactly that (mostly, at least) – cards you want to get out of your drafting pool.

Since class cards have much higher offering rate than neutral cards, removing the weakest class cards will make the good ones show more consistently. And thus, average draft with a given class will be stronger.

Balance-wise, removing the best cards from top classes does roughly the same as removing the worst classes from bottom classes. It brings them closer together. But since choosing between 3 weak cards always feels bad, the second option might even be better.

Not to mention that Rogue got hit really hard – removing two very strong common cards, both of which are 2-drops, will hurt the early game consistency. And removing Faceless Summoner from Mage will turn the class late game power a little. What more would you want? I mean, Mage could get one more strong card – like Firelands Portal – removed, but that’s about it. Removing more would hit the class to much.

I don’t think that those changes are going to ultimately balance Arena. It’s just a short-term remedy. A step in right direction. But it’s definitely well-thought and it’s MUCH more logical than just removing a bunch of strong cards from top classes. If they won’t stop with that and give more love to Arena, I might get back to playing it regularly.

I agree, 1-drops are often underestimated, because they rarely have “amazing effects” like Tunnel Trogg. But it only takes a solid 1-drop to change a lot of things. Both Swashburglar and Babbling Book are good cards, because they can be dropped on turn 1, but they also have some late game scaling. It doesn’t feel that bad to topdeck one in the late game if it gives you a big card by itself – it’s way better than most of the 1-drops.

Arcane Anomaly I haven’t tested myself and I honestly have seen it only once on the ladder. It was played in a gimmicky Inner Fire Priest. The deck seemed pretty fun. Around turn 5-6, he played Arcane Anomaly with 2x Power Word: Shield and followed by Divine Spirit. A freaking 2/16 minion, lol. Luckily he didn’t get Inner Fire or it would quickly get out of hand. I drew removal like 3 turns later, so one Inner Fire would probably close the game at that point.

I feel like Barnes lacks the consistency to match the “broken” predictions. Even if you have half of your deck full of Deathrattles and such (which is very, very rare), it still will pull a blank half of the time. If you only run 1/4 great targets, that’s 3/4 of the times it’s a very mediocre card.

And I think that’s completely fine – it means that people have to build their decks around it, it promotes thinking and innovations instead of just throwing him into any deck and expecting it to work (remember Shredder?).

I feel like he had a big start on the ladder, because people didn’t expect him that much. For example, the only reason why “Fun and Interactive Hunter” really took off was a surprise factor. No one have expected something like that. But when it was all over the ladder, just one Execute kept in mulligan meant that your main game plan will fail.

So overall I like Barnes and I really like his desing. But I still think it was overhyped. Most of the pros rated him close to 10/10 (e.g. it was the only card from the whole set Thijs gave max score). People have basically said that he will fit into most of the decks and even if not, you will want to alter the deck to fit it in. And after seeing him a lot on the ladder and playing around with him I’d say that he’s about 7/10.

And yes, luckily Menagerie Warden also turned out to not be broken. While I love playing Beast Druid myself (I even wrote a deck guide here for it), I’m glad that it doesn’t dominate the whole meta.

Sadly, Shaman turned out to be stronger than predicted, with all his new cards (especially Maelstrom Portal and Spirit Claws) seeing play. Yesterday on the ladder, around ranks 4-3, 55% of my matchups (11 out of 20) were Shaman. At least that’s what the tracker shows, because it felt like I faced only Shaman 🙁

Yeah, that one was weird. I mean, the card itself makes a nice tech in some weapon lists and I like the combo with Fool’s Bane, but that’s about it.

Some people might overestimate effects that save your health. For example, some thought it would fit into Warlock because of life taps, Flame Imp, Pit Lord etc. I mean, the reason why Zoo can tap so much in the first place and play Flame Imps is because the deck rarely cares about health total. Playing a 4/3 for 3 with no effect (as opposed to something like Imp Gang Boss or Darkshire Councilman) just to save few life points might be good against Aggro decks and that’s about it. But I’d still rather have a stronger board presence, which would save more life in the long run.

Like I’ve mentioned in the article itself – overrated =/= bad. The card turned out to be solid, but not broken as hell, as a lot of people have predicted.

Barnes is really cool in Resurrect Priest, but it really depends on the exact list you run. I was playing the one very similar to Eyecelenace’s (he hit top 30 Legend in NA with it) and that’s the reason I cut Barnes. I was running 2x Forbidden Shaping instead of Rag & Ysera, which heavily reduced the number of amazing targets Barnes can pull.

It’s good in Priest, but I don’t think it’s a staple.

Good card that doesn’t fit into a lot of decks. It’s definitely strong in slower Tempo Mage or Control Mage and possibly in Token Druid, but that’s about it (right now at least).

I’d say that if you make a really spell-heavy deck, with some 5+ mana spells, Medivh can give you a win condition that’s more consistent than Yogg. You still want to play Yogg for the huge swings it can provide, but with Arcane Giants and Medivh you can actually build a nearly full spell deck, play just those few minions and have a win condition.

With those cards, I suspect the “heavy spell” decks to be more popular in the future, and so Medivh will probably find its place in a lot of those decks.

I don’t think that Fandral is a staple, but I definitely like him. He synergizes with 12 cards out of 30 and that’s quite a lot. I won some games by simply Innervating him early and then following up with Living Roots, Druid of the Saber, Wrath, Druid of the Flame etc. I especially love the Druid of the Flame synergy. Sure, giving Druid of the Saber (Stealth) or Druid of the Claw (Taunt) Charge on top of those effects is nice, but summoning a 3 mana 5/5 is insane tempo. Oh, and I like how he works with PotW. If you Innervate him on t2, he survives and you play Living Roots + PotW, that’s basically game over. You deal 2 damage and you end up with a 4/6, 4/3 and 2x 2/2 on the board on turn 3.

He’s much worse if you cut stuff like Druid of the Flame (and play Raptor) or Wrath. If you run less things with “Choose One” in general.

Well, I thought this one was obvious – you replace it with one of the cards in “Alternate/Tech Cards” section, depending on how you feel like about the deck 🙂 Violet Teacher is a pretty universal replacement. You can play Sir Finley, Mounted Raptor or Leeroy if you want to make the deck faster. Or Onyxia / Mulch if you want to take things slower.

Oh no, I’m not saying that Blizzard is completely incompetent and they can’t balance their own game. Obviously, they can, but they simply refuse to. For some reason, I’m still not sure what it is, they’ve decide to not change anything EVEN if it’s broken and “let people play with it and try to adapt”. Sure, it works sometimes when people have no clue. For example, Flamewreathed Faceless – the card isn’t overpowered. It’s very strong, but it’s not broken. It has clear counters. People have learned how to play around it and don’t complain about it so much now.

But there were some cases where extremely broken cards were shaping the meta and that went for months. Remember Undertaker? Old Buzzard + Unleash combo? Warsong Commander + Frothing Berserker shenanigans? Heck, even Dr. Boom? That card was clearly broken, people haven’t learned how to counter it, because you just couldn’t. All you could do is play BGH in every deck and play Dr. Boom yourself.

Blizzard refuses to change cards unless they’re COMPLETELY broken and even then it takes at least a few months for them to do so. They might know how to balance the game, but they don’t do that. That’s their policy. We don’t change stuff even if they’re a problem. And that’s really wrong in my opinion.

Imagine card like Dr. Boom was in Classic. Luckily for us, it was in GvG, so it already rotated out in Standard. But if it was in Classic, that would be terrible. Now, let’s say another card of the Dr. Boom level is in Classic. What do you do? Leave it alone? No, you should nerf the hell out of it, because it won’t go away. Some of the cards I’ve mentioned in article are Dr. Boom level of broken, but they’re still looking for a right deck to play them in.

And now, Blizzard has two options. Design AROUND them, meaning don’t ever release cards that would activate them and make them ever more broken. Or another way would be to change them.

Sure, you might not want the game to be completely balanced. But there are people playing it competitively. There are thousands of dollars on the stake for people playing in tournaments. Then there are people who value the games that are balanced more – after all it’s more fun . They sure as hell want every class to be as close as possible. Your comparison to chess makes zero sense. It’s the other way around – the game is much closer to the chess when it’s imbalanced. If everyone plays the same broken deck, like Secret Paladin after TGT, THEN you get to see mirror matches all the time and it looks like chess. The more balanced the game is, the more diversity you see.

P.S. I’m not saying that the game is not balanced. A lot of guys here in comments have completely missed my point. But I guess it’s hard to imagine that a card might be broken if it’s not played in a top level deck and you don’t lose against it all the time.