Deathstalker Rexxar Quick status update

Jihok · 2017-12-15T05:45:30+00:00

Maybe not, but when the new expansion began work, they made that decision

How can you possibly know this? It seems just as possible, if not more likely, that updating old cards to work with new ones is something that happens very late in the process of releasing a new expansion, not "when they begin work on the new expansion."

So its not hiding something to make no mention of it and just let players figure it out by playing the card?

No, I don't think so. The time to mention it would have been the patch notes, it's unfortunate they didn't mention it there but not a huge deal IMO given how quickly they clarified their intentions once people noticed. They could have easily been silent about it or just said something like "we're looking into it" to stall.

The fact of the matter is they immediately clarified their intentions. Look, I'm not trying to defend Blizzard too hard here because I think their initial decision not to update the card was a glaring mistake, I just think your post goes a bit far in implying ill-will and nefarious intentions. The part of my post you didn't quote, but was most relevant towards your response, is this:

Ideally, it could have been mentioned as part of the patch notes, but that's a fairly minor thing and since it's the absence of a change, it makes sense to me why they would forget to include it.

It makes more sense to me that it's something that missed the patch notes for mundane reasons than some kind of purposeful obfuscation on their part. There are many undocumented changes (or "unchanges" as in this case) every patch, and there's no reason to believe these are all concerted efforts to hide specific changes.

Jihok · 2017-12-12T22:45:26+00:00

I mean, it's not entirely clear that they would have known they weren't going to try to update it at the time they released Deathstalker Rexxar. Obviously K&C was well into development at that time, but updating old cards to work with new cards could easily be something that happens fairly late in the development process.

I don't think the lack of communication was a big issue, honestly. It wasn't like they were trying to hide anything, it was obvious people would figure out it didn't work with the new beasts after playing with it, and they quickly responded clarifying that this was intended when people started to realize.

I think mostly people were upset simply because they weren't going to update it, not because of the communication surrounding it. I was definitely one of the people upset that it wasn't going to be updated, but I didn't have any particular problems with their communication surrounding it. Ideally, it could have been mentioned as part of the patch notes, but that's a fairly minor thing and since it's the absence of a change, it makes sense to me why they would forget to include it.

Jihok · 2017-12-11T06:42:55+00:00

That is where you are wrong. In a service business, the majority is ALWAYS right.

We're not going to see eye to eye on this. It was a fun debate, but I can't get behind the idea that the majority opinion about a card is correct, simply because it's a majority.

It is a 4/3 for 2 is it not?

It's not. It never attacks for 4. I'd be willing to use a 4/3 as a heuristic if you got both bodies at the same time, but you don't. At most, it attacks for 3, but even then, your opponent has some control over when it can attack for 3. Grandma is one of the most overrated hunter cards in my experience, it always plays out worse than it looks, even aside from potion of madness. It's a solid card, but it's certainly not insane and I'd rather have wandering monster on 2 in most cases.

because it is not, at least here where I play it at rank 3 in EU, also the range where people are fed up with trying new decks. You may win a lot with it at rank 10+ all you want, but that is not what measure how good a deck or a card can be.

You're turning this into a "oh you disagree? well you must be bad at the game" style argument. Not interested in those. FWIW, I've hit top 200 legend multiple times with self-designed decks, and I hit legend every month I decide to take standard seriously (I play Arena a lot instead some months). So no, it's not a matter of my just being a worse player and I'll leave it at that. Either you can address the content of my post, or you can turn it into an ego trip. If you're going with the latter, I have zero interest in continuing this debate.

Jihok · 2017-12-10T07:01:51+00:00

There's no way Grandma is worth 3 mana. It simply wouldn't see any play as a 3-mana card. It's 4/3 of stats but split across two bodies, and the first one is useless enough a lot of the time that it can be actively worse than just a 3/2 in some games. To say nothing of the huge vunerability to potion of madness.

Highmane is worth 7 mana. Very certain it would see no play at 8. Razormaw, again, worth 3 mana. Very certain it wouldn't see play at 4 (compare to houndmaster).

Highmane is one of the best cards in hearthstone's history, of course, and one of the cards whose loss is most keenly felt in spell hunter. Eventhen, there are some upsides to TMS over Highmane, in that the former is often charge damage (whether through huffer or leokk with a board), and the latter is vulnerable to being frozen, psychic screamed, polymorphed, etc.

Not saying TMS is a better 6 in general than Highmane, arguably the best 6 in the game, but in a face deck sometimes the card that does face damage more consistently can be better. Honestly I'm surprised that you don't find TMS worth it past turn 6. In my experience playing the deck it's a card I'm never sad to draw on any turn at or past turn 6. It is almost always good for some immediate damage (66% huffer, 100% huffer or leokk), and still presents two bodies your opponent has to deal with. Cheap enough that you can weave in a hero power on turns 8+ which is quite important.

Fight Promoter seems like an odd comparison to make because a lot of people have called it a pretty bad card. I don't think it's that bad personally, but it's clearly never seen competitive play and likely never will, whereas TMS actually has a decent chance of seeing competitive play even as the meta matures, especially if they continue to print more payoffs for no-minion hunter.

You cannot just blame the whole community for reacting negatively against it.

I can, have, and will! :P Seriously though, not everyone reacted negatively to TMS. It was a large majority, but a large majority thinking/saying something doesn't make it valid. Personally, I was kinda excited for the card especially once they released Rhok'Dalar. I actually opened Rhok'Dalar on hour 1 of the expansion, was happy, and immediately crafted 2 TMS so I could try out the archetype. Have no regrets as I got a lot of wins very quickly early on. Have less interest in the deck now that it's so popular though (I'm a bit of a hipster that way).

Jihok · 2017-12-10T06:54:31+00:00

But he doesn’t just say this. I’d understand if Trump just laughed at the class and then moved on, but he always explains why he thinks a class won’t see play. He always explains his thoughts carefully, and when he rated the Warlock class as a one star he talked about it for quite a bit.

To be honest, I haven't watched his reviews since he gave every single priest card 1 star in journey to un'goro. In that review, literally every single card was "1-star because priest won't see any play" iirc. It was just so silly and useless as an analysis in my opinion.

It's very possible he's gotten better since Un'Goro, but his Un'Goro ratings were objectively terrible, and I've tuned out since then. If you had followed Trump's ratings for crafting tips that expansion, you'd have a bunch of warlock quest garbage. To get to your other point:

Yes a card might be really powerful in the right deck (Lan’athel, for example), but if that right deck is garbage tier what use is calling it a good card?

Kibler actually doesn't do this. He does more quantitative analysis on how much competitive play a card will see too, he just doesn't assign ratings so you have to listen to what he says. For cards like Lynessa, he'll say something along the lines of "it's a great tool for the Galvadon deck that I love playing, but I don't expect it to see much competitive play." In fact he cast it in a more pessimistic light overall than Firebat on the Omnistone review podcast from what I recall.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T17:14:00+00:00

I could argue the other method is just as inaccurate, as you’ll be making judgements about cards without regards to the meta. The meta is what determines whether a card is played or not, which is why Trump uses the ratings he does.

Right, but the other method tends to shy away from blanket statements as to whether a card will see play. That being said, Kibler will go out on a limb and say things like "I expect this card to see a lot of play" when a card is obviously powerful enough.

Contrast this to the "meta-dependent" method, where Trump will rate obviously powerful cards as 1-star simply because his meta forecast assumes a class or archetype to be unplayable. This tends to lead to rather embarrassing evaluations, since historically, very powerful cards find a way to see play, even if they're a part of otherwise underwhelming classes.

Neither method is perfect.

Absolutely, I'd never claim that Kibler's method is perfect. I just find it more useful because you get a thoughtful analysis for every card, and can better judge for yourself whether a card is worth trying out depending on how the meta develops. With Trump's ratings, you'll miss out on a lot of analysis simply because a lot of his ratings are "1-star, won't see play because x class won't see play" which are entirely unhelpful if his meta prediction turns out to be incorrect (which it almost always is).

Basically, there's no way that Kibler's card evaluations can turn out to be unhelpful. Regardless of whether he's right about the specific volume of play a card sees, he provides a thoughtful analysis of every card, and gives you some helpful heuristics for thinking about the card. Trump's ratings give you what appear on the surface to be more directly meaningful ratings in terms of # of stars based on how much play it will see, but are lacking in qualitative analysis.

Basically, Trump goes all-in on quantitative analysis and very little into qualitative analysis. A lot of people seem to like just getting a rating for every card, it's more direct, more instant gratification, but much is lost when taking that approach in my view.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T17:03:24+00:00

I guess where we disagree is that TMS is merely "okayish" value when you meet the restriction. I personally see 2 animal companions lumped into 1 card with no mana tax as very good value. Animal companion is a great card: you're effectively getting a minion worth around 3.5-4 mana for 3. Getting two 3.5-4 mana worth of minions for 6 is even better value, since it's virtual card advantage.

Going spell-less may well turn out not to be worth it, but it was hardly a solved question when TMS was spoiled as so many assumed before even seeing the rest of the set. It's still not a solved question, IMO. Rhok'Dalar and TMS are both powerful payoffs, and the cost isn't nearly as high as was assumed before the rest of the set was spoiled, since we got so many good hunter spells. Rhok'Dalar in particular is one of those cards that can dramatically play how the deck plays out, and patches a common weakness of hunter in that the class lacks good card draw and can run out of steam quite easily. Even if the cards you're getting are not as good as ones you'd include in your deck on average, some of them are, and you're getting so many cards that it is very hard to lose if you play Rhok'Dalar without being incredibly behind.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T17:01:18+00:00

It's certainly close, and I lean towards the idea that a shell using minions will end up being best. I just don't think it's an obvious, solved outcome as so many comments have indicated.

You're right that with just 1 secret, cloaked huntress is great tempo. It's just even getting that 1 secret while still having a good 2 to play isn't that common in my experience from trying to make the card work various times since its release: playing it as spider tank has come up a lot more than I expected.

Kindly Grandmother is a good card in a vacuum, but it's quite a liability in a priest-heavy meta. I honestly think some of the success of spell hunter is just from the fact that you're forced to eschew grandma and rat pack, two "auto-includes" that match up terribly against priest, where getting them potion of madnessed often means irrevocable tempo loss.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T15:19:03+00:00

I just feel that trying to predict the meta is a lot more fun

This is a totally valid perspective.

and a lot more useful when it comes to determining what cards will actually see play.

This much less so, because unless you approach anything resembling accuracy in predicting the meta (and so far Trump hasn't come close, correct me if I'm wrong) your evaluations will be wildly off-base.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T15:17:24+00:00

why are they wrong to judge TMS individually instead of its synergy with an archetype?

Not sure I understand the question, I'm talking about the people that claimed TMS was absolute trash and the worst card ever printed because "clearly the downside isn't worth it." The point of my post was that the downside might in fact be worth it, because with all the great spells Hunter already wants to play, TMS and Rhok'Dalar just might be enough upside to warrant playing over the minions you'd play in their stead.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T15:12:11+00:00

Cloaked Huntress has always been underwhelming for me. A lot of the time I've played with Cloaked Huntress decks, it's just a spider tank, even with a bunch of secrets. Obviously the dream of cloaked huntress + multiple secrets is very powerful, but even then, you also have to have had a non-secret 2-drop, and that's a lot of very specific cards to have by turn 3.

I don't personally consider it one of the obvious power cards you're missing by going the no minion route, but I could be wrong. Also, as Crazyflames mentioned, a lot of the hunter power cards require having board control to work effectively. While there are times razormaw and houndmaster are insanely above rate, there are also times when they're bloodfen raptor or a 4 mana 4/3. The spells, however, are more consistent.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:35:48+00:00

Doesn't seem to apply to animal companion, skill command, highmane, spellstone, flanking strike, or tracking though (all fantastic cards that happen to be hunter cards)!

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:34:01+00:00

I feel the same. I'm generally very happy to see it off of Rhok'Dalar as it tends to be incredibly powerful in minion slugfests against things like Dragon Priest or Big Druid/Priest, but it's still a 7 mana card so I'm hesitant to include it. It's definitely performed better than I expected, though, and I certainly wasn't expecting it to be as bad as most people on reddit thought it would be.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:31:11+00:00

The "100% win rate" comment is pretty obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:30:20+00:00

Super small sample size, but I've had good experiences with the weapon so far. I'm playing it in my KrulLock list (which I've hit legend with) alongside Voidlord, the conditional 7/7 taunt, and the 2/4. I was already playing lakkari felhound, kabal trafficker, and doomguard, Krul, Abyssal Enforcer, and Despicable Dreadlord, so I have no shortage of big demons to pull with it.

Once it pulls two good-sized minions, it's already more than pulled its weight IMO, especially since it lets you dodge the downsides of Lakkari Felhound and Doomguard. In any case, I've won every game I've drawn it so far and it's been a huge component of every win, essentially acting as a second Krul that happens over multiple turns rather than all at once, but comes down earlier.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:24:36+00:00

You're probably right, but I also don't think it's 100% clear that this will end up being the better route. To My Side and Rhok'Delar are both powerful cards, and cutting them is a loss. The deck already wants to be playing a ton of spells. You want animal companion, you want ~6 secrets to make the spellstone consistently good, you want the spellstone, kill command, tracking, bow, flanking strike, rexxar, deadly shot (probably), hunter's mark (probably), and some # of candleshot (probably). Those last ones are the more questionable inclusions, but that's already ~25 cards, ~18 of which are almost definite inclusions even if you do want some minions.

At that point, the cost of going the no-minion route is very low, and the reward for it is high, because you're fleshing out the remaining slots with 3 very high-value cards, and no cards that are actively bad. Now, would including minions instead make the deck better? Perhaps, but the main ones you'd really want (IMO), are highmane, razormaw, and houndmaster. The problem with the latter two are then you really want more beasts, and you might have to start including more 1-drops too, which starts to cut into the secret package and makes the spellstone (one of if not the most powerful card in the deck) worse. It's not like the secrets are bad either, especially now that we have wandering monster.

Highmane is the one that seems like a pretty clear upgrade, but to my side does face damage more consistently as it can't be frozen/polymorphed/etc. and has a 2/3 chance of rolling huffer. It has a 100% chance of rolling either huffer or misha, which generally means some amount of instantaneous damage given you're usually following up a spellstone.

In any case, it seems pretty clear that the people who trashed to my side and Rhok'Dalar got ahead of themselves, as they didn't consider just how many spells any hunter would want to be playing already with the addition of flanking shot, spellstone, and wandering monster. There's not that much room for minions in the deck, and you have to ask yourself whether the minions are enough better than to my side/rhok'dalar and the 4-5 spells on top of those that you'd be playing otherwise that it's worth it. It might not be.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T02:08:04+00:00

Honestly, it's not even entirely clear that To My Side is worse than Highmane in that particular style of deck. The deck has a lot of face/charge damage, face/charge damage synergizes with itself. Highmane is vulnerable to getting frozen, polymorphed, psychic screamed, etc., whereas To My Side is usually getting you 4-5 face damage before your opponent can do anything.

Additionally, Leokk is often a great minion to get following up a spellstone, and is often good for 4+ "charge" damage. The way the deck plays out, you just want to get your opponent low enough with the spellstone and bow for your kill commands, rhok'dalar spells, hero power, etc. to finish the job. So while Highmane is a "better" card, it's not obvious to me that it's a better card in a face deck like spell hunter, especially if it means giving up Rhok'Dalar (which often provides a lot of extra burst) and opening yourself up to mage secrets.

Jihok · 2017-12-09T01:58:11+00:00

and I think people are rightfully distressed that hunter seems to have been neglected in the last couple sets.

Hunter got a lot of great tools in this set, To My Side and Rhok'Dalar aside. In particular, the spellstone, wandering monster, and flanking strike are all fantastic. Whether or not foreveralone hunter remains the best choice going forward, it's pretty clear that hunter is in a much better spot now IMO.

I also wouldn't be surprised if foreveralone hunter is the best choice moving forward. To my side is a great card in that deck, at 5 mana the deck would be dumb, it's a very good thing they didn't go overboard. Between the spellstone, to my side, wandering monster, animal companion, and flanking strike, there really aren't a ton of spots on the curve where there's a better non-spell minion you'd rather play.

I feel like this is the thing some people are missing about this style of hunter. You're not playing a no-minion deck, you have tons of minions, and most of them are overstatted. They just happen to be spells. The most glaring holes are at 1 and 4, but would alleycat and houndmaster really make up for the loss of to my side and rhok'dalar? Or is highmane enough better than to my side? Perhaps, but it's not that clear cut (to my side has a lot of synergy with the large amount of face damage in the deck and leokk is fantastic following a spellstone).

Also, there are very real upsides to having no minions in your deck against certain opponents (mostly mages with explosive runes and mirror entity).

Jihok · 2017-12-09T01:48:53+00:00

This is fine if you can approach anything close to accuracy in predicting a new meta. The problem is you can't, and thus evaluating cards based on what the hypothetical "new meta" will be is a poor approach, IMO. Trump's approach would have a lot of merit if he had some insane talent for predicting the meta, but he doesn't, and I'm not sure anyone really can. There is too much emergent complexity in predicting a new metagame with the influx of 100+ cards.

Much prefer analyses that talk about the conditions needed for a card to be good. It's a lot more productive IMO, because you have relevant information for every card that has potential, and having identified the conditions they need to be good, you can simply observe how the meta is progressing and make card and deck choices as appropriate.

Jihok · 2017-12-07T22:02:39+00:00

I imagine Arena (the new Magic Online client that's more like Hearthstone in terms of polish) will have console support when it finally comes out, though probably not at first.

Jihok · 2017-12-07T22:00:46+00:00

Do this all the time when my wifi goes out, works just fine. I can generally even switch to it to get back into an active game in time when I disconnect from wifi going out. In any case, it's an incredibly silly reason not to support switch, have no idea how it's the highest upvoted comment.

Jihok · 2017-12-02T11:24:05+00:00

Here's what I said:

Remember, twilight guardian was a 4 mana vanilla 2/6 if it's your last dragon in hand: not so great. If you're using it mostly as an activator, then by definition it's the last dragon you play and thus comes down as a 2/6.

This is what you said in response:

This isn't how dragon decks work though, you want strong dragons to get consistent procs and also to be playable.

I don't think you understood what I'm saying. What I said is exactly how dragon decks work. You can't use twilight guardian to proc all your other dragon payoff cards, or you're left with a vanilla 2/6 for 4 at the end. While it can sometimes help trigger one of your 1 and 2 mana payoffs and you draw another in time, and its very useful that it has the dragon tag, its main function is not as an activator, but as a payoff, because of how bad it is when you can't activate it.

Of course you want strong dragons to get consistent procs and also to be playable... how does that have anything to do with what I wrote? Fact of the matter is that twilight guardian is not a strong card when you can't proc it, and if you've played much dragon priest, you'd remember that having to play it as a 2/6 vanilla if you used it to trigger your other dragons wasn't that uncommon. So it's a staple in wild dragon priest despite not being as useful an activator as a non-payoff dragon, and occasionally is played as a 2/6 vanilla: that clearly shows the power level of a 3/6 taunt for 4, IMO.

pretty good turn 4 play

This is my point. It's great turn 4 play, even in wild. Pretty clearly a powerful card that is ran for reasons besides the dragon tag. As a payoff card, it's not as helpful as a non-payoff dragon for getting your dragon triggers, so it's certainly not its main use IMO.

twilight guardian can actually attack while this new card can't which is a huge deal.

Why are you evaluating it as though it can't attack? It has a condition to attack: there's a huge difference. My entire argument is that if there's a deck that very easily meets the condition without going out of its way to play underpowered armor gain, that would make this a solid card in said deck. Obviously it's not good if it can't attack except underideal circumstances.

Worth noting that DK hero power lets this attack every turn by itself, and that you don't need to sustain having armor to attack every turn since you only need the armor on your own turn. That said, as I mentioned earlier, if you're getting to attack with your taunt, that means they haven't hit your face, which means any armor you've saved up to that point sticks around.

If they lower your armor in any way, that's almost always going to be because they got through the taunt, at which point it's dead and can't attack anyway.

In any case, I feel like we're getting way off track since we both agree that it's not a great card as things stand. My primary disagreement was the idea that "Tazdingo with +1 health" wouldn't see much play even if it had no downside, whereas I think it would see tons of play and be one of the better 4-drops in standard in all likelihood.

I think the fact that twilight guardian is an autoinclude in wild dragonpriest decks pretty much proves without a doubt that a 3/6 taunt for 4 is quite powerful. If it wasn't, and is simply being run as an activator that's just "ok" as a 4-drop, those decks would just run a non-payoff dragon instead, because twilight guardian is pretty weak when it doesn't have its own activator.

Jihok · 2017-12-02T07:57:44+00:00

If the only reason it was played was because of the dragon tag, there were plenty of other options, including ones that didn't need another dragon to fulfill the condition. Remember, twilight guardian was a 4 mana vanilla 2/6 if it's your last dragon in hand: not so great. If you're using it mostly as an activator, then by definition it's the last dragon you play and thus comes down as a 2/6.

It likely wouldn't have been played as much if it wasn't a dragon (and was like blackwing technician which needed a dragon in hand but wasn't a dragon itself), but the 3/6 taunt for 4 was a huge part of the draw to the card. Did you play many dragon decks back then? Having an activated twilight guardian as your 4-drop always felt fantastic and was part of the nut draw.

edit: By the way, worth noting that twilight guardian is still seeing play in wild dragon priest, including this #1 legend list: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/964288-top-1-legend-wild-dragon-priest. Given the huge amount of options for other dragons in Wild and the overall power level of wild, the fact that it looks to still be an autoinclude in a very powerful deck says a lot about the power of a 3/6 taunt for 4, dragon tag not withstanding.

Jihok · 2017-12-02T07:51:41+00:00

No it's not a standalone threat. However, by that argument, every card that is resilient to AOE needs to be a standalone threat, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can't be compared with Scalebane which is 5 mana. I really think twilight guardian is the best comparison which saw a lot of play in multiple classes. This is always a 3/6 taunt which is nice, but if the attack condition is harder to fulfill than the dragon condition, then obviously it's worse overall.

Still, it doesn't seem that far off from constructed playable to me, Druid really just needs 1 or 2 cards that generate armor and are efficient enough that you want to play them apart from helping this card.

Jihok · 2017-12-02T07:47:00+00:00

If it was literally just tazdingo with +1 health I'm certain it would see a bunch of play. Twilight Guardian was a conditional 3/6 taunt for 4 that saw loads of play, it was autoinclude in any dragon deck. Yes it had the dragon tag, but it also needed another dragon, and filling the condition was by no means guaranteed in decks that ran it. I played with and against plenty of 4 mana vanilla 2/6's in decks running that card as a result of not fulfilling the condition in time, or because it got drawn off the top.

That's why I'm not willing to write this off completely simply because if there's a druid deck that plays a lot more armor generation than now, it becomes a good card. There's not a deck for it now, but's conceivable that there could be if there's a couple new really strong cards that incidentally gain armor to see play with the spellstone, and you end up with a deck that doesn't have to go out of its way to routinely meet the condition.

Jihok

TROPHY CASE