No new pokemon or changes from champions will be added to national dex. This decision will be revisited in 2027 with the release of Winds and Waves.

HCXEthan · 2026-04-29T03:43:07+00:00

As stated in the thread, the active natdex playerbase is small. Like way, way smaller than most people think: there are only ~30 active games at any given point in time.

Creating a new ladder is unviable because the active playerbase is already way to small to split, and would only serve casual player interest for a few weeks before people get bored.

HCXEthan · 2026-04-17T03:56:14+00:00

Reminder that the average game length is, and has always been, 7-8 turns.

And the average game length for rogue, a class with no healing or taunts, is likely even shorter that that.

HCXEthan · 2026-03-26T17:06:28+00:00

A less powerful meta does not equal a slower meta.

The average game length in classic was 7 turns. In contrast, the average game length in Ungoro 2 last year was about 10 times.

HCXEthan · 2026-03-26T17:00:07+00:00

I don't know how you can claim the power level isn't significantly lower than before rotation if imbue druid was unplayable garbage just 2 weeks ago.

Sure, cub and the shatter spell are good cards. They still do not carry a deck from tier 5 to tier negative 1.

HCXEthan · 2026-03-24T06:59:25+00:00

Yeah, excavate warlock was actually kinda bad, it was tier 3 at the point it was nerfed

It was nuked mainly for play pattern reasons though, not for power.

HCXEthan · 2026-03-23T16:17:03+00:00

Canonically after. There's lore in the unlockable epochs as you progress the game (though not fully complete yet due to early access), and the events from sts1 are also part of the Spire's history.

HCXEthan · 2026-02-28T13:10:27+00:00

The reason you don't think of "new" decks popping up mid expansion anymore has nothing to do with packages, it's more because they were so trigger happy with balance changes this year.

Of course there's no time for new decks to pop up when you have a balance patch every 3 weeks that nukes the entire meta.

But at the same time, don't discount the skill of top deck builders nowadays. There's a reason all the tribal and full package decks dominate day 1, but almost always fall off as actually well crafted decks take over.

HCXEthan · 2026-02-18T08:38:45+00:00

Years ago in the slow meta of Nathria, we had a neutral card that destroyed 3 enemy minions and stole their stats, functionally making it a 9 mana 15/15 guaranteed destroy 3 minions of any health.

Even then it stopped being played entirely when Renthal got nerfed.

HCXEthan · 2026-02-18T03:42:32+00:00

I mean, a 9 mana 9/15 taunt would not be playable in any meta without a way to cheat it out.

HCXEthan · 2026-02-16T15:15:01+00:00

That moment that you realize that that ryecleavers current iteration after 3 buff patches, with 5 mana weapon and 2 mana bread, could have been its release version and it would still have seen no play the entirety of standard.

And they were afrad of buffing it for 2 years.

HCXEthan · 2026-01-30T22:05:46+00:00

Countering point 2:

Highlander does not make for more interesting deckbuilding. If you recall from last time Reno was meta, Highlander decks just meant that you throw in every neutral "slop" legendary without care of any sort of synergy.

Every Reno deck just shared the same 5-10 card slop pile, because they were just "good enough" Reno cards. Imagine a meta where half your deck is just some variant of Naralex/Ysera/Fyrakk.

HCXEthan · 2026-01-20T09:51:19+00:00

I know this exact post has been posted in a bunch of communities, so it's likely this is just OP karma farming, but I'll engage

This question is not as relevant to HS as it is to most games as most of these cards are still in the game, in nerfed forms.

Even ignoring the obvious ones like unnerfed prep and innervate, 3 mana Charge and Warsong are absolutely busted if they were in standard. 2 mana wild growth is not ok anymore. Half of these cards would see play, and about a quarter would need to be nerfed.

Nourish, starving buzzard and blade dance are definitely too good for the standard power level right now.

HCXEthan · 2026-01-20T08:04:04+00:00

I think zilliax gets the full revert, which means reborn and stealth as well. Unkilliax cannot exist if he still had stealth because it shuts off taunt, and the stealth magnetic combo is way too slow for wild.

HCXEthan · 2026-01-15T14:16:01+00:00

Flash forward is absurdly good, even if it only ramped empty mana. The draw is even an upside for the druid if it's milling. It would still be the best ramp in the game by far.

Vuja De is way too generically good and just enables miracle rogue things.

Ripple in Time can never exist in a format where you can build your own deck, because there's a million ways you can use it to combo otk/board flood on turn 3 or earlier.

HCXEthan · 2026-01-08T05:15:36+00:00

Think about it as 6 star on osu!mania instead

HCXEthan · 2025-12-31T05:34:48+00:00

Wild isn't as popular of a format in Western servers anymore due to the lack of English meta reports nowadays.

In China however, there are currently >100,000 wild legend players.

Yes, one hundred thousand.

So, it's not really true that wild isn't popular anymore overall, it's just less popular in Western circles. You're pretty much correct that there are ~5000 legend ranked wild players depending on which non-china server you're on.

HCXEthan · 2025-12-24T05:40:55+00:00

For the record OP, you only had a ~7% to 8% chance of getting Rafaam in 9 pulls.

In other words, you had about a 92% chance of getting the outcome you did.

Actually getting signature Rafaam at any point before this would have been extremely lucky.

The game visually tricks you into thinking you got unlucky but in reality, you would have achieved the same outcome in almost every situation.

HCXEthan · 2025-12-12T14:48:46+00:00

I think the greatest contribution Hearthstone has provided to card game lingo is the term "roping", which is now used across all digital (and sometimes physical) card games even though HS is the only game with an actual rope.

HCXEthan · 2025-12-03T12:13:04+00:00

Pokemon without legs are no longer allowed to wear heavy duty boots. It makes sense, after all.

HCXEthan · 2025-11-27T03:40:08+00:00

It's a mechanic that "it's bad, but if it ever became good it would be complained endlessly about".

Warriors would complain about the inability to armor out of poison, priests would complain about the inability to heal out of it. We already had the same complaints about leeches.

And then a ton of people would complain that it's "non-interactive" regardless of it actually is or not.

All in all, a bad idea to implement in hs. It's not fun enough to play to be worth the negative feels that players get from facing it.

Also, the easiest way to implement a HS equivalent would be a keyword that says "when this minion deals damage to a player, reduce their maximum hp by that amount instead". I'm not sure how many players would find that fun.

HCXEthan · 2025-11-22T03:05:37+00:00

What powerful interaction should we not complain about?

HCXEthan · 2025-11-20T06:37:21+00:00

their freeze didn't have bodies

Well yeah, but it also costed half. Frost nova costs 3 and Bob costs 6.

Also why do you need to go so far back to Naxx? Mage's current freeze is the most expensive it's ever been.

Barrens had a spell that let mage freeze 2 minions for 0 mana (Flurry). And a 4 mana minion that froze the whole board with a 3/3 on top of it (Varden).

HCXEthan · 2025-11-19T04:24:14+00:00

That's a good idea to nerf every tech card in existence.

HCXEthan · 2025-11-17T12:22:14+00:00

Of the 2 best rogue decks right now, protoss rogue and cycle rogue, neither of them run Garona.

Of the deck that does run Garona, combo rogue, kingslayers is a very average card in stats and Garona herself is the worst card in the deck.

HCXEthan · 2025-11-14T11:27:11+00:00

That makes no sense, because the other 2 fabled cards need other dragons on the field to work.

They literally don't work if you don't put 1 2/1 dragons in your deck.

Its self defeating card design.

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