I have ten times more fun playing against Demon Hunter than I do against Convincing Infiltrator. That card tilts me more than anything else in the game (when it's summoned 5+ times).

Tempo DH still strongest deck. Doesnt even run 7 mana pew pew demon girl.

So dh went from like a 65%+ class to a 57% class with the nerfs. Warlock is slightly positive I think but only because I think it’s the only deck that goes 50/50ish with tempo DH other than maybe spell druid and people are still trying other things.

I wonder how long we have to put up with this iteration. If it’s more than a week or two I probably dip again, this isn’t a fun deck to play.

exactly. im turned off completely.

Spell druid is fun and broken and seems to stomp DH pretty good. Even crazier tempo swings than that deck can pull off. Thanks ridicurous (not sure his 2p2 name?) for showing me this deck

secret highlander galakrond rogue is fun

lots of cool decks, need to fix that pesky DH problem and we may have a healthy meta

If balanced in a way where the 1 mana hp is half as valuable as a 2 mana hp I think this is definitely wrong. 1 mana hero power really punishes higher curves cos every turn you've nothing to play you're burning one extra mana worth of value and I think it actually does a worse job of smoothing out most curves. I'd argue that for a control class a well balanced 3 mana hp > well balanced 1 mana hp. It obviously depends a lot on the curves a class's set compliments but I don't think it's fundamentally broken.

If it wasnt fundamentally broken then why do they have to basically remove the class from arena?

Who wants to guess what happens when you Maiev a Magtheridon that was already awakened and it wakes up again?

Unfortunate I have to spec out of Magtheridon, sacrificial pact hitting it just too costly, especially when the most popular deck is running it.

Cos every single one of its class cards are op? Also you said the idea of a 1 mana hp is broken which is what I disagree with. i think this the dh one is a little on the strong side.

Yeah, I hope sac pact gets nerfed to only friendly minions in this weeks coming balance patch. The card is a problem as is, especially with every class having access to it via zephyrs.

Agreed with this. The DH hero power is just the rogue hero power divided in 2, which has its ups and downs, comparatively. It’s a good hero power, but in no way broken IMO.

I was going to give it a week, but DH is so busted that it's not even funny.

Their cards are stupidly powerful. The effects that their minons get for the mana cost should come with bodies that have -3/-3 or more.

Priestess of Fury should be 8 mana and a 6/6 if it's going to have that effect. Not as strong as Ragnaros' effect, but it's not a Legendary, iconic character (to me this counts - I'm glad Lich King was really good), and it gets to attack as normal.
Coilfang Warlord could probably be 7/5 and a 5/7.
Hulking Overfiend seems comparable to Living Fountain. It gets +1/+2 instead of Windfury and Lifesteal. Except that often times it has better than Windfury. Not having Lifesteal doesn't seem like much of a drawback since the class has plenty of healing anyway. I don't see any reason for it to have better than 5/8 stats.
Pit Commander seems fine.

I would take in to account that you're often going to be playing these cards at a significant discount of 2 or 3 mana. If the card is OP at 7 mana, then it's stupid at 4 or 5.

The first time I saw the OTK combo, I rolled my eyes and echoed most people that said, "I thought they didn't want OTK's any more?" But once you know the combo and the setup, it seems like you might have some opportunity to set your self up for success. I'd have to play more games against it to really decide how interactive that game feels.

I'm surprised they didn't reprint Illidan Stormrage as a DH legendary. 5 mana 5/5 that summons a 4/4 every time you play a card. **** it, give the 4/4's charge while we're at it.

The very next game I went up against the OTK version.

I was in a good position with 12 health and a board of 4 medium sized minions (3/3's to 5/5's) and thought I was going to win. The DH dropped Altruis in to Spectral Sight (1 damage) in to Twin Slice (2 damage + 2 ATK) in to another Twin Slice (2 damage + 2 ATK). Dude went from no board staring at lethal twice over to AoE'ing my board (and face) for 5, attacking for 4, and second blast of Metamorphosis for lethal.

There's some extreme irony in playing that game directly after my last post. I can't think of any other outs for him than spectral sight in to both Twin Slices. Chaos Nova and Immolation Aura clear the board, but don't hit the opponent for 9.

Part of what makes Hearthstone interesting is the diversity of situations that can arise from the randomness of the game. Say he had 20 cards left -> (2/20 * 2/19 * 1/19 = 5.5e-4) so about 5 hundredths of a percent chance he'd topdeck Spectral Sight in to Twin Slice in to second Twin Slice. Multiply that by the 1/7,300 posts I've made and you get approximately some twisted karma or something. One of the most elegant ways I've seen to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

I can see that kind of reasoning, and maybe I'm confusing the hero power with all the broken class cards.

That being said, a one mana ping in arena seems absurd. I mean, there's a reason why rogues and mage have usually been at the top of arena.

Not to mention dh has lifesteal/life gain, which rogues do not. Life gain will still be part of the class's identity no matter what nerfs go down I would think, so they can expand a lot of life for tempo and not die because of it like rogues often do.

Blizzard has a sick and twisted sense of humor. This is the game right after my last post.

https://hsreplay.net/replay/crrbsArEgZce8gwAeukRdf

Thinking the dh hero power is just rogue divided by two is a really simplistic and dumb way of looking at this game, sorry. I’m sure that was the developers’ exact reasoning too.

Maybe at some point you’d like to enlighten us all with some actual reasoning.

Also fwiw, I make no comment on the hero power w/rt arena. The format doesn’t exist to me.

The interaction between DH’s lifesteal weapon and all its attack buffs just feels wrong to me. If you’re not buffing the weapon, only the attack of your hero, you should only get heal for the actual attack value of the weapon. I mean, there are even 2 different numbers displayed on screen, one on the weapon, one next to the hero.

Aceium,

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head when you mention how DH is mostly not paying full cost for their minions. Mana cheating continues to be the biggest problem in the game. I think skull is still DH’s best card, even after the nerf, and is responsible for a lot of the broken **** they can do.

Altruis is another big offender. First the obvious - it shouldn’t go face! Beyond that, I’m willing to forgive the devs for this one because it is actually a really hard card to balance. How strong it is is super dependent on other cards. This card reminds me a lot of Edwin - people will complain about the big minion smacking them in the face, but without all the cheap stuff that rogue generates, the card isn’t crazy. I remember plenty of metas when rogue didn’t have infinite resource generation and Edwin wasn’t seeing play.

Same with altruis. Without all of DHs 0 mana stuff (reduced or otherwise) altruis is just a 3 mana 3/2. All that said, holy **** it shouldn’t go face.

Seriously, why does Altruis go face?

I'll lay out my reasons in more detail, I thought they were pretty obvious but I guess they weren't.

First of all, in the hearthstone world since as long as I can remember, the way they designed the cards has been based around a 2 mana hero power. How strong 1, 2, and 3 and probably even 4 drops are balanced around this fact. Not to mention cards that interact directly with hero power - all designed around 2 mana. However, I will admit this is not a huge problem for standard because they can always tweak and balance for it after the fact. For arena and wild though, it is a big issue for them to navigate, balance wise.

So aside from that, 2 mana hero powers are not supposed to be perfect value. They are supposed to be a little bit of a value suck. 2 mana for a 1 dmg ping sucks. That's why they are intended to be used when a) you can interact the hero power with other cards (your own or the opponents) to generate more value, or b) have nothing else to spend your mana on that turn. A big mistake noobs make is hitting hero power way, way too often. A good beginner rule of thumb used to be, only hit hero power as a last option because you usually have something more valuable to do with your mana.

Obviously there are a lot of exceptions.

A particularly sucky situation to face early in a game is when for instance you are at 4 mana, to decide whether to spend 3 mana and leave 1 mana dangling, or spend 2 mana and a hero power. For some classes and situations it is more obvious than others, I am speaking very generally here.

With a 1 mana power, you are for the most part going to be perfectly mana efficient and avoid such situations. This is exacerbated further by how perfectly "valued" the 1 mana hero power is - rogue vs DH power is a sucky comparison, because rogue cannot just tap hero power every turn and get perfect value for their mana spent, because of the charges on the weapon prevent you from doing so and spending your mana perfectly. A 1 mana ping is absolutely insane in arena and in standard.

For the situation I described earlier - you gain value back from your hero power by it interacting with other cards - This happens with DH in 2 ways. 1 from the ping effect (I can remove one of your cards on the board paying no cards of my own, eg a turn one 2/1) and secondly from the effect on your own cards. The 3 mana satyr that spawns minions becomes a 4 mana card with hero power, vs a 5 mana card for any other class. The 7/4 deal 4 damage guy becomes a 6 mana card, vs a 7 mana card for any other class. Any card they print that interacts with hero power becomes insanely more valuable, unless they purposely balance these minions stats to compensate for this mana "boost" which they are not. The 7/4 guy is perfectly vanilla statted and the satyr is nearly so.

The 1 mana ping also gives them the ability to generate insane tempo compared to other classes as well, as I can always ping + develop a minion while only paying 1 mana to do so vs the mage's 2. The fact that the mana value of the ping is so good only exacerbates this problem, but the DH will be able to curve out so much more perfectly and easier than any other class due to the 1 mana ping.

So the DH hero power itself, IMO, is a bit of the problem but not the entire one. It would be far less destructive to the current meta if it was 2 mana, increase attack by 2. In fact, I think that is the only fix.

agreed, and it goes back to the fact that DH hero power is straight up better than druid's and mage in most cases

not considering DH weapon/0 cost synergies, mage is undeniably better

my personal hero power rankings (in a normal meta):

warlock
mage
demon hunter
rogue
druid
paladin
hunter
shaman
warrior
priest