I mean, i like that they're doing *something* to make the game different, but i can't say that they were the changes that I would have made.

Think I'm going to put together a long post about the changes, specifically w/rt Rogue. More later.

Yea they're free to craft now basically

Me back in January.

People have been saying it for a while, but honestly it's because it's the only good card to play in the 5 slot

There's nothing about that card that's innately overpowered it's just good

There are good 5 drops; they just aren't neutral. We lost HealBot/Loatheb/Belcher in the last switch which were played in a ton of decks.

Right now the only other neutral 5 drop that's played is BW Curruptor which is only used in dragon warrior/dragon priest. Occasionally, Stranglehorn is played; Leeroy is played but just as a finisher, same thing with Faceless; Harrison is played but only in a few decks. All of these are tech cards and a lot less flexible than Drake.

Druid: Druid of the Claw/Nourish
Hunter-Rhino-hardly played in general
Mage-Etheral-not anymore
Priest-Drakonid--might be the best card in the game/Nova/Evil/Raza
Shaman-TBV--really 7 mana/Bloodlust/Doomhammer
Warlock-Doomguard
Warrior-Reaper/Alley Armorsmith

In conclusion, the bigger issue is lack of non tech 5 drop in why Drake is so readily played; the best neutral 5 drops were dropped in the last switch. There are enough 5 drops for many classes especially priest.

Most of those are spells

Of the minions/spells/weapons, I listed 14 were standard minions, 2 were weapons and 4 were spells and 3 were wild minions....so hmmmm...if you're talking about the priest 5 drops, I listed 2 spells and 2 minions.

I'm talking how a lot of them arent minions

I actually do think moving troublesome cards to wild is better than nerfing. obviously their process is pretty arbitrary but wild would be interesting if it was similar to magic's older formats and all the broken decks of years past are duking it out.

Are you using the Trump definition of most?

I'm saying your point is valid but there's a reason why so many decks play Drake and it's because of lack of options on that slot

I think mostly too is because of the dragon tag

Don't they have 2 goals, 1 to make most of the top decks near ~50% win rates. I think we have that now. The 2nd is to have the classes balanced near 1/9th (11%).The issue is, it's come at a huge price; we have 2 classes that have been totally ignored and 2 classes that make up way too much of the meta (one especially)

The issue is they are ignoring that each class should have a few viable options ala what Shaman had and what Warrior had last meta. And replayability. It's more fun to play against a variety of decks/classes then Shaman/Warrior consisting of 48% of the decks and even worse at higher ranks. Ideally you'd want a number of classes not sharing a number of OP cards but that's exactly what you have now with the pirate package and the reno package and the jade package but I guess that comes with the "gangs" mentality.

That's what I said, Azure drake is basically the only neutral 5 drop that isn't tech. Harrison makes sense in a weapon meta, Faceless/LeeRoy are in aggro/combo, etc. All of the good 5 neutral, non tech drops were rotated out. I definitely miss BELCHER and Loaethb.

Moving meta-stifling cards to wild and giving free dust is good. I'm assuming they tested miracle rogue and without Tomb Pillager and conceal it's not so bad. Login bonuses is a nice plus.

The bad news is that the price of HS just went up by a little less than 50%. Adventures were always the most cost efficient way to keep up with the content releases, but I guess people just love spending money on virtual slot machines. :rolleyes

It depends on the quality of the content they release. Will they keep releasing OP early drops? Will they keep releasing OP neutrals that go into 50% of the meta decks? Is the game going to get super power creeped before the standard rotation like this year and last year?

I assume that they will continue to release xpacs with 80% filler garbage (especially epics and legendaries) so hopefully the 20% that is meta defining is fun and balanced.

Even if i play in the expansion i will never spend a dime on this game again

I admit I haven't been playing nearly as much as 2016 but I still think most of the complaints about the meta are overdone...EXCEPT for the fact that shamans can do whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of which archetype they're playing.

I'll concede that having Control Warrior absent from the meta is probably baddish, but CW mirrors are the most boring games ever. The only thing that would be worse would be a heavy Jade druid meta.

I'm happy to see Rag and Sylvanas go. I think having Azure Drake in the game is good and it's not even one of the 5 most OP cards in the game.

it's not overdone man. it's really not. if anything it's understated

CW mirrors are so ****ing awesome I love them, except when it comes down to two monkey rolls and whoever has the best monkey wins. but it's not always. there are so many levels of play and so much going on. it may look boring on the surface, but it's a chess match.

cw mirror was better with elise than without imo

and ive played like 1500 games of control warrior

Just got my first golden hero. Warrior. Doubt I'll ever get another.

At least you got the best one! Congrats

I really wish they had relegated innervate to wild. Im sick of druids doing the same bs forever. If anything is allowing broken garbage and restricting design space its that OP garbage card

I hate innervate too but it wouldn't make sense to dumpster it when they just released all those kewl gadgetzan ramp cards

OTOH, the finally release other Reno-type cards just before Reno rotates out of Standard

ya to this. havent dropped money on hearthstone in a long while and i feel good about that decision

Yea I'll still do my quests here and there but lol at spending money, although no adventure this year helps a lot imo.