Was playing my control shaman deck against a secret hunter. Hunter had 2 secrets, two snakes, and full CotW on the board. I was at 2HP and had Hallazeal, Totem Golem and a Spell Damage totem on board, no healing or removal in hand.

Cast Yogg, very first card Yogg casts: Excavated Evil. Board Cleared, health back to 30. Then the next card Yogg casts is Vanish, so I got to praise him twice! Needless to say, hunter conceded a few turns later.

As far as sting cards that have randomness backing them up, at least Yogg is better than Dr. Boom.

Yogg going badly for your opponent can be funny/interesting or even beneficial. Dr Boom going bad was just 9/9 stats and 2 damage for 7 mana which is still dumb.

If we have to have a controversial oppressive legendary around at least Yogg is fun to watch. Sucks when you lose but at least it's suspenseful. You get to root for astral communion instead of rooting against a boom bot killing an azure drake.

True story: I had a game today where I played Medivh and followed it the next turn with Moonglade Portal, I got Reckless Rocketeer and Argent Commander.

There are ~ 70 6-mana minions and only 2 of them have charge. They enabled me to immediately clear my opponent's board, they were the only minions I could have gotten there.

There's so much variance in a single 30-card deck game that's it's ridiculous, and in the long run it doesn't matter that much. The fact that Yogg takes a 99.9% win and lets the other guy win maybe 15% of the time is a good thing. It is, again, a card game, not chess.

How many times has someone top decked Reno or Cthun or whoever for a miracle win where no other card would work? It's inherently a part of the game. If there weren't crazy and unique legendary cards with great lore and stories behind them, the game would be pretty boring grinding it down to your Abusive Sergeant out valuing my Dark Peddler or something.

A minion like mana wraith with a perpetual effect that spells cost more might be a good tech that they could add to the game. I bet that if it were reasonably statted for the cost, something like a 3/3 for 3 that made all spells cost 1 more would be hugely played. Somewhere in that ballpark. Can't cost too little or it's too easy to play a couple things and cockblock Flamestrike.

Loatheb was a very interesting tech capability and its absent from the game right now.

Knowing Blizzard they'd make it a Priest Legendary 4 mana 4/5.

lol at complaining about Yogg when you have these Burgle Thief Rogues running all over the place.

I burgled a Highmane in a pretty non-competitive 3 turn stretch where my opponent played Call of the Wild, Ragnaros, Call of the Wild.

I had a rogue get Tirion, Rag and Consecrate in the same game. Needless to say I didn't win.

And then there's the majority of the time when they get divine favor, eye for an eye and warhorse trainer and auto lose. Yogg is much more RNG Fiesta than this.

Just started keeping a Yogg journal. Decided to rate each Yogg on a scale of 1-10.

Not even exaggerating a little, I only used him 3 times but they've all been 10s. That's probably conservative.

1. Looking at a lethal board, so needless to say I need a solid board clear. He kills the board and resurrects Fandral, who ends up destroying the game.

2. Facing a Warrior who has lethal on the board in the form of activated Gromm and Deathwing Dragonlord. Yogg starts by casting Doom, and then he kills the dragons Deathwing summons (Chillmax and Drakonid Crusher) by casting Dark Bargain. Dark Bargain however did cost me an important damage spell, and I lost anyway.

3. The Yogg who kept coming back: Facing a Cthun Warrior who had played Justicar, I wanted to clear the board to set up Medivh. He kills off a couple of minions and Shadowsteps himself and casts several secrets, including Repentance. Only misstep was sapping Ancient Shieldbearer, which enabled him to use his battle cry again.

After Medivh and Moonglade Portal, Warrior lucks out on a brawl and then plays Twin Emperor Vek'lor. I play Yogg, who Polymorphs one Emperor and Hexes the other and then Arcane Missiles them, and burgles Ancient Shieldbearer. The Warrior kills Yogg with Gorehowl but Yogg is reborn via Repentance. Yogg hits Warrior's face and then Warrior has to Gorehowl him again.

I end up winning with 27 damage from Malygos the next turn.

I disagree as I explained before when your opponent plays boom you can still beat that. Before things might get out of hand he passes his turn and you can react. Maybe you can set up beneficial trades, minimize the boom bot impact or just go face and try to race. There is, strategy, decision making and skill involved.
Sure he was a huge power spike but that's all he was.
People were all up in arms about a deck with a super high skill cap that had super oppressive uninteractive turns but yogg is ok because it comes with fun animations and has a super low skill cap?
Sorry I just don't get it.

^^^^^^

The more I play against Yogg, the more I am coming around to it feeling really bad to lose an otherwise locked-up game to a good Yogg.

Eh, I feel like a 8+ spell Yogg is ~66% to significantly improve your position, 20% to not do much either way and 13% to improve your opponent's position.

Given it's a 10 mana card you might be stuck with from T1, and Yogg decks still lose probably half of the 66% with a positive Yogg, I don't think it's absurd. Yes, a good Yogg can win or lose the game, but there's plenty of times when a good Yogg isn't good enough to turn the tide. And if you're even slightly ahead it's just a dead card most of the time.

Okay but the point is let's say tirion is the best card in the game. You never have a game as paladin where you're at 3 HP, down on board and down cards where you can just plop it down and win. Yogg creates those situations where you can **** up the entire game then go LOL YOLO YOGG! And pull a miniscule chance out of your ass. Yeah it happens rarely, but you're highly underestimating the impact yogg has on a game for game basis. Especially in a game where the skill edge is very minimal even between a "top pro" and a random guy both playing top meta decks.

Furthermore 66% chance to significantly improve your position, by your estimation, is way too high for a random card. How is this good for the game? Mind you I crafted Yogg immediately and love playing the card and decks in general, but it's terrible for the competitive scene.

Anyfin can be rammed down at 3hp to win outta nowhere. Ditto the OTK Worgen combo, or any OTK combo really.

also the 66% stat only applies when you've both got Yogg in your hand and already played 8+ spells

I play mainly tempo yogg mage and Yogg gets played in probably 20% of games at most, and influences the outcome in less than half of those

which, again, for a 10 mana card, doesn't seem absurd

possibly the issue is that there's virtually no other 10 mana cards worth playing

Tirion probably costs the opposition 5 cards on average use.

I think the Yogg deck I have is easily the hardest one I've learned to play (keep in mind I'm not any good).

Before Yogg, I mostly played C'Thun, Renolock and Druid versions. Top-decking an 18/18 C'Thun at 3 hp definitely creates a bigger swing than playing Yogg facing a lethal. The difference is sorta know it's a race against C'Thun.

I would guess C'Thun and Yogg are close over in positive impact. (Part of what helps C'Thun in this comparison is the class C'Thun minions are quite good, like Dark Arokkoa or Klaxxi; Twin Emperor is pretty awesome on its own).

But the Yogg deck is definitely a lot tougher to play, as it needs alternate win conditions and there are really difficult decisions on many, many turns, as I basically have no minions to play before turn 5-6 most of the time.

There are also definitely times to NOT play Yogg, such as when you can't afford to have him cast Astral Communion or make you draw cards into fatigue.

Renolock is similar in that you are constantly skating on the edge of disaster, and Reno definitely changes win equity far more than Yogg.

playing a 20+ spell yogg as your last card vs a mage with 3 health, you have 9 health and 8 fatigue coming next turn

YOLOOOO

he does a bunch of random ****, doesn't draw a single card, gives me a 1 dmg weapon and gives him CURSED! GG

and even though it seems to happen to me a lot you shouldn't worry that much about astral communion. On a 10 spell yogg, the chance is roughly 5%.

These decks have to run very specific cards and build their whole game plan around being able to do that
I don't want to o get into specific numbers lets just assume your numbers are correct for the moment do you not see how extremely impact full a 10 mana card that is played in maybe 20% of the games has to be on average before you can justify running it? Especially when it doesn't even fit the general game plan of the deck?
This might shock you but there isn't such a thing as a yogg deck.
There are spell heavy archetypes that run yogg because its an insane card if you have a enough spells to justify it.
But you do not build a deck around it like with cthun.

every time astral communion comes from yogg i lol

Alas, poor Yogg! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is!

I got absolutely trucked by a ~15 spell yogg. Card still OP.

playing yogg in my reno mage because it runs a bajillion spells and holy **** has he been smiling on me lately.

I swear I haven't had a crappy one yet. I actually just said aloud "yogg just please clear the board" and first spell he shadow flames himself. He's divine shielding himself before dragonfiring, he's DOOMing when my hand is empty, he's playing beneath the grounds against reno priests. I feel like people are forgetting this card, it's still decent for what it was designed to be - a funny hail mary when you've mostly lost the game anyway.

praise him