Weapon rogue**

Although warlock questline takes the number 1 spot in my heart too, I’m actually quite skeptical about its viability. Just because I’m pretty sure this is a 0% winrate deck against any strong burst damage deck that plays very few to no minions at all, like spell mage and weapon. If any of these two decks are present at the top of the meta, it’s gonna be borderline unplayable, I’m afraid.

I don’t agree with this article’s conclusion at all. Ranking the Mage quest as not only the worst questline but as the only unplayable one looks like a big mistake to me.

Has the author actually watched this quest in action ? I have, in two different streams. And I can assure you that it is surprisingly easy to complete around turn 6 or 7 in the right deck. This is faaaar from being too slow, let alone unplayable. Good frost spells are the least common ones, so this requires you to hard run Flurry, Brain Freeze and Ice Barrier. You’d probably rather run other spells in your deck given the choice, but these are far from being the worst choice you could make either. They’re all cheap and efficient ways to buy some time, and defend yourself. Perfect to progress your quest. Also the argument of “you won’t have the good cards to play after that” is rendered completely moot by the new, and maybe OP, Ignite spell that provides you with infinite burn damage. So you don’t have to feel bad when throwing it randomly at your opponent’s face just to progress your quest. The more you cast it the stronger it becomes !

I’m sorry but the mage questline seems in fact very well designed and synergises extremly well with most of the new spells. I would actually rank it as one of the best. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna see a lot of play though, since a fully optimised spell mage deck would probably not run any frost spells indeed. The question is, will the payoff for running the quest be enough to compensate for the fact that you have to trade three of your least interesting cards, for three slightly worst ones. Flurry will have to replace devolving missiles, and Ice Barrier will be run instead of Ring Toss, for instance. The answer is probably yes, but we’ll see.

I commented on the Libram of Judgment specific page to say how much I love both the new Libram and Rally! And I’ll say it again here. Since I’m very glad to see that the author shares my love and anticipation for these cards.

As I play mostly Pure Paladin (don’t judge me) these days, I’m really eager to replace Consecration and Libram of Justice by these two new cards, which seem more solid, way more universally useful.

I mean, Consecration, as it stands, is just a bad card. 4 mana for boardwide 2 damages just sucks. Many aggro decks, on turn 4, have minions with more than 2 health, so even against aggro, Rally! can often be the better play, at least defensively, and even better offensively. You could very well out aggro them in the right situation. That’s proactive defense, if you like. And Consecration, contrary to Rally!, is just useless in any other match ups except in a specific combination with Libram of Justice. And this one, without Consecration, again, is very situational. And you can’t risk to run 2 copies of both the Libram of Justice and the Libram of judgment, without cutting the T4 Zealot, which you won’t. Way too many weapons otherwise. So, yeah. Off they go.

Nitroboost Poison, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. I think it will make the cut in Warrior after the rotation, to combo with Sword Eater and Reaper’s Scythe since it’s great with both. It’s a lot of tempo/control added to a deck that runs both. But this is not the dominant warrior deck at the moment, as far as I know. And in Rogue, yeah, it’s a great card, but for aggro weapon/stealth decks only, and these are really not dominant decks for now. Will it be enough to push this archetype closer to tier 1 right now? I don’t think so. Again, I think Nitroboost Poison will only really be a meta staple after the next rotation, probably. Unless it’s immediately powercrept then. Just like Hammer of the Naaru seems to have been already powercrept by the Libram of Judgment!

Also, Sparkjoy Cheat, as you rightly noted, is just a little bit better than Inconspicuous Rider, since you have more control about what is played and when, and also, it can discounts Mage secrets you got with Hanar, so giving you more value. In fact, it’s just better. But is it good enough? Right now, I’m not so sure. I don’t see what you could cut in that Rogue secret list. But, come april, when EVIL Miscreant is gone, and Edwin is gone, yeah, definitely. But there’s always a slim chance for secret Rogue to not be playable then, depending on the meta. So it might not see play even then.

Finally, Armor Vendor might also be enough to create some full new archetypes, like enabling a control Rogue or Hunter, just by itself. Maybe. More probably in april though. Indeed, probably the most interesting card, as it’s neutral, in the whole set.

I don’t know. I think people are overhyping this one. For standard, I mean.

Yes, in itself, the card is really good, but you have to consider the decks it goes in. Does Warrior really care about weapon damage? A bit, but not that much. In Warrior, I can only see it played alongside the Reaper’s Scythe atm. It’s a cheap activator for the spell burst that will cleave for 6 damage. Really cool. But not exactly busted. You still need 5 mana and two cards to achieve that.

And in Rogue, this obviously goes in aggro Stealth/Weapon decks. Alright, but those are tier 2/3 decks atm. Is this single card good enough to push this archetype close to tier 1? Huh, maybe, but I’m really not sure…

TL;DR: cutting both Consecration and Libram of Justice in favor of Rally! and Libram of Judgment makes Pure Paladin more agressive in the early game AND in the late game at the same time.

You replace two situational cards, even in combo, by two universally useful cards. So that would be an upgrade almost every day, depending on the meta, of course.

Talking from a Pure Paladin standpoint, the more I think about it, the more I want to replace 2*2 Consecration and Libram of Justice by 2*2 Rally! and Libram of Judgment.

I mean, the combo between the first two cards is a boardwide hard removal, yes, but this is pretty situational and is more relevant in a Midrange / Big meta, which is not the case atm. And a side by side comparison also works in favor of the second pair of cards :

– Even against aggro, sometimes Rally! will be more effective as a 4 drop to protect you from aggression. Especially if enemy minions have more than 3 health… And in later stages of a game, Rally! is always relevant, it puts interesting pressure on the board against any kind of deck. It’s a great board refill that you can always count on as the game progresses, and also very good on curve, if you had a great opening, to give you 3 targets for Blessing of authority on turn 5!

– And if you don’t use Consecration, then Libram of justice just becomes even less relevant. You usually don’t have that many minions on board, so it won’t automaticaly give you excellent value trades, so you’ll have to trade with your face most the time, and that might not always be an interesting move in the long run so… Here comes Libram of Judgment! Which is just a way more useful tool, a universally strong card, in any meta, against any kind of decks, in any situation, at any time of the game. Great to trade with, thanks to the heal, to slow down aggro, to deal with some Big threats also, and to finish off your opponent in slower matchups.

Also, why not run both Librams? Well, that’s just anti-synergetic. Since you already have the Zealot, your best 4 drops always, that gives you a weapon, running six in your deck is just a surefire way to waste those stacks. The Zealot and Judgment being apart from one another in your curve makes it more convenient, they have way less chance to collide with each other, when Libram of justice is stuck in the middle and can screw with both of these.

And also, getting rid of both Consecration and Libram of Justice actually gives more power to Alura. Two less spells in your deck is more chance to trigger the one you really want. And both of these are, most of the time, especially terrible to trigger with her. So now, in exchange, and on curve, you can also trigger Rally! And that’s indeed very interesting! By turn four or five you can often times rebuild a full board presence with only Alura. That’s great.

Reading through the lines, it seems pretty clear to me why there will be no dust refund. The devs never said Van Cleef would go to the HoF, that was an assumption from a sentence that said that he will “rotate”. Knowing now that HoF won’t even exist anymore then, I can confidently speculate that it’s the whole classic set that will rotate out to Wild at the time of the next expansion.

You never get dust for a rotation. No more HoF needed. That’s the only reasonable explanation I can come with. No more classic set in standard.

Also, they talked about a rework of classic/basic set a few times before, and recently they said they want to make it easier for new players to get into the game. And if the classic set rotates out, there needs to be a compensation, in the number of cards available in standard, and leaves only the basic set to be reworked. So what I think will happen is this : an extensive rework and a massive extension of the basic set, providing every player, new and old, with a full new and free set to play with, with its power level updated to current Standard’s expansions level.

At least that’s how I understand/would do it.