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.

But you’ve just proved my point. “X card in basic is too strong? You shouldn’t add X, Y and Z to the expansions!”

That’s now how it should work. Like I’ve mentioned many times, it limits the game design. If Paladin has Divine Favor in Classic, now they can NEVER, EVER add too strong Aggro tools to Paladin. And now Paladin will be always stuck in the Control and possibly Midrange role.

One might perceive it as something okay, I don’t think it’s okay and limiting classes in that kind of way is bad. Because all it takes to lift this limit is to change one card – Divine Favor – that would make this archetype broken as hell if there were strong early game cards for Paladin.

Listen, it’s not something I’ve just made up. It’s their own design philosophy. They don’t want to have cards that will limit their future design. Do you know why they’ve nerfed Master of Disguise? Virtually no one has played it. I haven’t seen it once in Constructed. Yet it deserved a nerf, because it limited design. And just as they’ve nerfed it, they’ve released Scaled Nightmare – a card with infinitely scaling attack. That’s the point – if there was a permanent stealth in the game, they couldn’t release such a card. Even if that combo wasn’t particularly strong, it would be very unfun and uninteractive. I’ve predicted the nerf on Master of Disguise for the exact reason – it limits their design.

Divine Favor or Savage Roar might not be overpowered cards right now. They might not even be played in a single competitive deck. But just like Master of Disguise – they limit the design potential and – in the long run – that’s unhealthy for the game.

Classic set should be a base, should be a core, but shouldn’t be something they will ALWAYS design cards around if it’s going to put up some walls. Not if you can break those walls down so easily.

P.S. Mark my words, some of those cards WILL get nerfed in the future. Maybe not soon, but they will.

Yup, right now it’s not a huge factor, because we don’t have a strong deck to utilize it. But the card itself remains incredibly strong burst tool.

It’s not because Warrior is in a good spot right now. It’s because those cards are too strong. Or in case of Ice Block, it’s not about being strong, but uninteractive.

The thing is, those cards are broken, but you don’t realize it, because they don’t have flashy effects or they don’t win games by themselves. How is 1 mana removal not broken? Sure, it’s conditional, but the condition is very easy to meet in Warrior right now. 2x Ravaging Ghoul, 2x Blood to Ichor, some lists running stuff like Whirlwind, Cruel Taskmaster and a lot of other things to activate it. At this point it’s very easy to activate Execute. And we’re left with 1 mana almost unconditional removal. That’s not good. Tempo-style Warrior decks are too strong right now and that’s one of the main reasons.

PW:S might be the most broken card in the game. If it was neutral, it would be in every deck you face. Maybe outside of hyper-Aggro and mill, for obvious reasons. People don’t realize that only because it’s in Priest, who sucks. But that can change, Priest might get much stronger, and a card will still remain overpowered.

I have thought a lot about those, I didn’t just pull them out of my ass. I know they’re controversial, but I have a lot of arguments to back each of those claims.

I agree with Charge. The card might not be strong, but it might activate some fringe combos (like the Raging Worgen one). Now when releasing each new Warrior/Neutral card Blizzard needs to think about how it might possibly combo with Charge, and if it would be too strong they need to change it.

Yes, you’re right, changing Charge would be good idea. They’ve already did it once – it used to cost 0 mana and just give minion Charge. That one was way more broken than it is right now, but any way to give ANY minion Charge might be abused somehow.

That’s the same reason why they don’t really print any Charge minions – they’ve realized that they lead to pretty “unhealthy” strategies in general.

However, I disagree with Conceal. Since it lasts only a single turn, it’s not that big of a problem. When it comes to the Charge, you have zero ways to react. You can set up the board state with a Taunt or something, but you never know when enemy is going to play it. But when it comes to Conceal, if enemy Conceals a minion there are still some ways to interact with it. You can play accordingly. Some decks can kill them with AoE. If enemy wants to kill you with that minion, you can play defensively, play Taunt, heal up etc. If enemy then wants to combo it with some spells… Yeah, I think something like Loatheb should be in Standard. So you could counter that too.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Conceal gone, honestly, but I don’t think it’s that high on priority list.

I didn’t include all the cards, because that would be way too long. Also, I might have missed some.

I have thought about PO, but I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s only really strong if you build a deck around it – so you play a Zoo-like deck with a lot of small tokens or you play a combo deck with Leeroy + Faceless combo (which will die in Standard after Emperor Thaurissan rotates out anyway).

Given the downside of the card (the minion dying at the end of the turn), I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s just 1 damage over Blessing of Might and 0 damage over Combo’d Cold Blood when it comes to the trading/bursting potential and it doesn’t stay on the minion.

Every strong 1 mana card might be problematic in Zoo, because of the nature of the deck. Drawing 2 cards per turn means that utilizing 1 mana cards is much easier, as you don’t run out of cards after first few turns and can refill easily. But I think PO is just below the line of nerfing it – if you reduce it to +3/+3, it would most likely be too weak.

Yes, that way the meta would be shifting much more often and playing would be more fun. But then again, I don’t see this happening. Hearthstone team is REALLY lazy. And they aren’t the best at balancing things, it takes them really long time to realize what’s wrong and why. This leads me to a conclusion that those 3 months “sets” might not be balanced at all and they would be a complete clusterfuck.

However, that’s a really good idea. And while we’re at it, I’d also increase the length of the seasons. Monthly season are way too short. For casual people they won’t even reach any high rank and it resets. And for pro people, it’s just pointless grinding for the first ~week or so again and again and again. One rotation could be one season and it would be much better in my opinion.

Sadly, it’s not going to happen. Because it’s Blizzard we’re talking about.

Ice Block – yes, I’m not saying that there is no strategy and ways to play around it. And I don’t think the card is too strong. The problem is that it’s very uninteractive and thus not really fun to play against. Yes, another way would be adding more Secret interaction, but if you add too efficient ones (something like Ooze for Secrets), then they would become nearly unplayable.

The cards you said you don’t have problem with are hard to evaluate, because the advantage they give you is very subtle. For example, Fiery War Axe – like I’ve mentioned in the article – might be the single most impactful card in the game. And sure, it’s fine right now, but do you want to see FWA in virtually every Warrior deck 2 years from now? 5 years from now? That might happen, and that’s my main concern. Obviously, there will always be “best” cards, but I don’t think a single card should have 100% inclusion into every deck of a certain class.

When it comes to Azure Drake, I stated that it shouldn’t be nerfed, but rather more Midrange card draw options should be added. Because right now it’s the most played card in the whole game.

And about PW:S – yes, I wouldn’t even dare to touch it right now, considering how weak Priest is. But I was talking about general situation. Priest is weak right now, but it might be the strongest class one year from now. Remember what happened to Shaman? It was considered the worst class in the game, 2-3 expansions and it became one of the strongest.

Murloc Paladin already runs Stampeding Kodos (not every list, but they’re quite common). So it’s already good, actually. Adding a Dragon like Azure Drake wouldn’t be too big of a stretch, as it’s also a cycle tool that Murloc Paladin really needs. So I guess Curator will work really well in Murloc Pally.

It would be one of the most broken outcomes if that was the case, but no, it doesn’t work like that. Minions summoned through effects like that still can proc, but only if their card text stays “AFTER you play” a spell. So for example, Wild Pyromancer would still proc. But then again, Summoning Portal is “WHENEVER you play a spell”. It means that it will only proc when it’s already on the board when you cast a spell.

If you don’t believe me, you can try it with Resurrect. Pyromancer will proc after you resurrect him, Portal won’t.

You’re right, there are more ways to get a card from other class. The most basic way to get any minion is let enemy play it, steal it with Sylvanas and bounce it back with Shadowstep or Brewmaster. Or you can get any class spell with Nexus-Champion Saraad. But like you’ve said, those are all unreliable ways. I understand that this game allows you to get pretty much any card from your opponent’s class in many different ways, but I was mentioning only the ones that actually might see play AND are reliable enough to build a deck around it.

Shifter Zerus is a good point, however. I think that in case the deck like that would work, Shifter Zerus might make sense. After all, if it will keep the discount through the shifts, if you play Peddler while you have Zerus (as other class card) in your hand, now it changes to random minion that costs 2 less. It allows Rogue to make some cute tempo plays. I was playing around with Zerus for a bit and it was always underwhelming, because often when it changed to something good I couldn’t play it that turn, because I didn’t have enough mana or I had to do something else. With -2 mana it would be much easier. Plus, getting a 2-drop or 3-drop (so 0 and 1 mana after discount) would make for a great combo activator.

However, I still think the Rogue would need to get INSANE card that steals from enemy right now for this card to see play.

You can NEVER discover cards from other class. Discover pool is cards from your class + neutral cards (so basically anything you can put into your deck in a given class). But there are no neutral spells, so it’s impossible to discover that. If the card discovers a minion (e.g. Tomb Spider), you can get class minions and neutral minions. If a card discovers a spell (e.g. Ethereal Conjurer) you can only get class spells. That’s how the mechanic works.

If you don’t believe me, look at the Ethereal Conjurer. The card’s text is “Discover a spell”, NOT “mage spell”. Because there is simply no need to say that + there are some cases of enemy getting that card through different ways (e.g. Priest Thoughtstealing it) and then he rolls cards from his own class.

That’s true, I’m really surprised at the first batch of cards. And I REALLY hope that the trend will continue. Right now there are no cards that are ourtight terrible. It’s true that some of them won’t likely see play, but they all make sense and fill some niche or might work in certain archetype (that’s not necessarily popular now, but might be in the future). So I second that, keep it up Blizzard.

Yes, Mage card will be bonkers in Arena. It’s a class card, common and it will get latest expansion bonus (as far as I remember, cards from the latest expansion have +50% rate to show up in arena). So expect to see it in pretty much every Mage deck.

I think that Barnes will definitely be used in Constructed. Curator PROBABLY too, but it requires some testing, so it’s impossible to theorycraft now.

I actually agree that Barnes is more balanced then Shredder. Not only it’s Legendary (so you can’t have 2 copies, unlike Shredder) and you can’t just throw him into pretty much any deck that needs a 4-drop. Here, you need to think about the potential synergies, maybe build a deck around it and include more Deathrattles/effects, things like that. But I still think it’s on the stronger side. What I dislike about it is not how strong it is, but how RNG will win a lot of games again so early. Just like Tuskarr Totemic sometimes wins you the game just because you win a 1/8 roll (Totem Golem).

Loot Hoarders are the most flexible slot in the deck. While they do cycle, they don’t really have any synergy with the rest of the deck. They die to Ravaging Ghoul and Pyromancer, you can’t Cruel Task them, they have no synergy with Battle Rage. They’re good for early cycling, but later in the game when you can set up multiple draws from Acolyte or Battle Rage, they aren’t that useful.

One Blood to Ichor or Ravaging Ghoul can also be removed. They are not vital part of the deck, they don’t synergize extremely well with it, they’re there just because they’re strong individually.

But I’d pick Loot Hoarders as the first to get rid of.