New Expansion: Whispers of the Old Gods - Page 103

On April 24 2016 11:29 Shikyo wrote:

Or how about turn 4 Fandral Turn 5 Nourish to ramp up to 8 mana and drawing 3 cards, still having 2 mana crystals left over? Or Raven Idol to discover 2 cards? Or Fandral + Mark of Nature to turn it into a 7-9 with Taunt for 8 mana? Darn.

So let's imagine that going first, on turn 2 we innervate this guy and they can't deal with it. Then on turn 3 we innervate a Nourish out, ramp up to 6 mana for the next turn and draw 3 cards, still having 2 mana left over, using those 2 mana crystals to Wrath an enemy minion for 4. Game over?


Will Wisps of the Old Gods summon 7 3/3s by the way?

On April 24 2016 15:53 Nakara wrote:

A lot of Flamestrike's power comes from the fact it is one card though allowing it to easily generate card advantage(will give you a whole card extra compared to Embrace the Shadow combo), auchenai manages to do this as well by leaving what is essentially a 5 power minion on the board after the clear that can contest most follow up plays your opponent has if they don't have a way to remove it immediately. So even if you can get the card draw to make it consistent I'm not even sure that combo is that great and embrace is pretty much a dead card outside of it which makes for a very lackluster card overall.

I'd say rather than 2 mana flamestrike its better to look at it as 2 mana flamestrike discard a card, while this is in your deck you have a 2/30 chance to skip your draw(which is needless to say a huge drawback). Obviously a lot worse than just 2 mana Flamestrike.

On April 24 2016 23:02 Hellonslaught wrote:
If C'thun priest doesn't work, the class is pretty much dead.

On April 25 2016 01:21 Beamo wrote:


Dragon Priest doesn't lose much.

On April 25 2016 02:52 NewSunshine wrote:
They are getting Power Word: Tentacles, which while not as aggresively costed as Velen's Chosen still stands to be an obnoxious card.

Whispers of the Old Gods was designed alongside the nerfs so they could predict slightly how the meta would turn out.

When asked "Do you guys playtest before the sets come out?", he chucked and answered yes.

Ben Brode "freaking loves Hearthstone". He doesn't get burnt out from it and he'll never get tired from it. Besides
Hearthstone, he plays Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft.

"The size of the team doesn't matter, but our quality assurance team is of high quality". Ben Brode himself worked in
Quality Assurance 13 years ago, so he has "like, mad respect for the folks over there".

The craziest idea for a Shaman card they've ever had came from a fan designed card that was originally for Priest. The
card was a 10-mana 7/7 with taunt, saying "Whenever you take lethal damage, summon this minion from your hand instead". (This meant lethal damage was prevented from that source only, not immunity like Ice Block). They found it too infuriating to play against. This minion ended up being the Mistcaller.

"[Nozdormu] is the type of card- it does something unique for Hearthstone. It blows your mind and makes you realize that anything could happen in Hearthstone. Card games are, in some ways, exciting because there's all these different ways you can do things... Nozdormu makes you think on an axis that makes things feel even deeper than you could have possibly have imagined they could have been... that is the kind of thing that inspires you and makes you think what else this game can do."

Nozdormu's bugs are related to the turn timer and not Nozdormu. For example, if Curse of Rafaam is played, players still have time taken off of their turn when they are cursed. Ben Brode thinks Nozdormu is helpful to catching these bugs. They are actively working on fixing the turn timer.

Shifter Zerus is an example of something that can only be accomplished in a digital card game. Ben Brode thinks this is a great example.

The new board was in the board rotation that was available on stream, but it didn't show up, so they had to tweet a picture out instead.

Ben Brode has shifted more from card design to team leadership, but he still designs some cards.

Knife Juggler was nerfed as it was supposed to be used for swarm decks, where many token creatures are played, but
was being used as a card in many decks. Now it's more of a niche card.

Blade Flurry was nerfed as it was a card that defined Rogue in a way that meant that it had to be played as it was so strong. The nerf has allowed for more deck types to open up for Rogue.

Burgle and Undercity Huckster are cards that were added to give Rogue more of a defining flavor.

It is possible that some cards may return, but there are no plans for now. They'd rather make new cards. They will never re-print a set.

Jeeves was supposed to be for card draw in aggro decks.

Divine Favor exists as a way to make sure Paladins can play aggro decks. "The better Secret Paladin decks do not play Divine Favor."

"The Demons and the Old Gods hate each other, so it felt weird to put a bunch of demons in the Old Gods set! We kind of had the anti-Old Gods thing happening in Paladin, so we didn't want to do that again".

Ben Brode likes having things show up sometimes then see them not show up later. Demonlock was powerful, and now it's time for some other Warlock decks to shine.

Yogg-Saron may have been the card that took the longest to program, but Ben Brode isn't too sure.

Chris Metzen has never made a card, but "he did jest-send a card design to us the other day that he was excited about, so maybe we'll print Metzen's first card in an upcoming set".

There may not be anymore cards like Firey Bat anymore, as it was named after the winner of the Hearthstone World Championships, Firebat. This is because Firebat was the first and "you always remember your first".

Divine Favor exists as a way to make sure Paladins can play aggro decks. "The better Secret Paladin decks do not play Divine Favor."

Ben Brode likes having things show up sometimes then see them not show up later. Demonlock was powerful, and now it's time for some other Warlock decks to shine.

Blade Flurry was nerfed as it was a card that defined Rogue in a way that meant that it had to be played as it was so strong. The nerf has allowed for more deck types to open up for Rogue.

Jeeves was supposed to be for card draw in aggro decks.

On April 25 2016 06:37 Hellonslaught wrote:
LoL Drazerk, some of the content in your post tilts me in so many ways...

Divine Favor does not make Aggro paladin viable. It only punishes control decks from being played.
Its a dead card vs aggro decks and there is no way for your opponent to play around it. Its just a bad designed card.
How the developer team fails to realize basic stuff like these bugs me.

The demon deck was only strong because Blizzard wanted it to be, in the same way most secret decks only works because Dr 6 and Mad Scientist are too strong. Void Caller is also OP, take it out and the deck isn't viable anymore.


I get and agree with Blizzard here, but they should at least give rogue some better options right away, since she wasn't seeing play despite the Blade Flurry strength.

I played Jeeves in my Token Druid. Underrated card.

On April 24 2016 15:53 Nakara wrote:

A lot of Flamestrike's power comes from the fact it is one card though allowing it to easily generate card advantage(will give you a whole card extra compared to Embrace the Shadow combo), auchenai manages to do this as well by leaving what is essentially a 5 power minion on the board after the clear that can contest most follow up plays your opponent has if they don't have a way to remove it immediately. So even if you can get the card draw to make it consistent I'm not even sure that combo is that great and embrace is pretty much a dead card outside of it which makes for a very lackluster card overall.

I'd say rather than 2 mana flamestrike its better to look at it as 2 mana flamestrike discard a card, while this is in your deck you have a 2/30 chance to skip your draw(which is needless to say a huge drawback). Obviously a lot worse than just 2 mana Flamestrike.

On April 24 2016 22:01 Seuss wrote:


A couple of points.

We don't need to invent a metric to understand the value of Embrace the Shadow + Circle of Healing because two card combos which clear the board are already a thing (SEE: Wild Pyromancer + Equality). In this case I think the primary weakness is clearly the card inefficiency, for if you have plenty of cards you can make extremely strong tempo plays (e.g. At seven mana you can Embrace the Shadow + Circle of Healing + Darkshire Alchemist). Embrace the Shadow is flexible in ways Equality isn't, it's just on a class that doesn't have decent card draw.

Secondly, in my experience at least half the time you play Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing you're losing your Soulpriest before your next turn. Between Deathrattles, classes that can ping, etc. you essentially have to assume you're losing it. It's nice when you don't, but like a Dr. Boom that doesn't get BGH'd it's more of a pleasant surprise than something you can count on.

Again, I'm by no means certain Embrace the Shadows is a sufficient answer to the question "what does Priest do for board clear without Lightbomb?". I just think it's the closest thing to an answer we're going to get this expansion.

On April 25 2016 07:58 Nakara wrote:

Equality is way more flexible than embrace imo, as long as you have a single minion on board equality is a 2 mana removal while embrace requires you to have drawn specifically a healing card, and your opponent to have a minion with less health than it heals for for it to be useful. Equality also clears the board with both consecration and pyro which makes it more consistent regardless of how much card draw you can fit in your deck. And pyro is needless to say much more flexible, being a 2 mana 3/2 at worst, and working with any spell rather than just a select few.

Yes you do lose your auchenai most of the time, but your opponent has to invest resources be it cards or an even bigger tempo loss to get rid of it or risk losing the game to it, embrace goes away on its own.

On April 25 2016 08:47 sacrilegious wrote:
What a dumb time to do it. 1 win from rank 5 for like an hour trying to beat the luckiest scrubs with aggro druid... then just like that

I mean either announce when you're going to do it, or roll the nerfs when everything is going to be released Tuesday

On April 25 2016 08:59 sacrilegious wrote:
^ umm it forced me to log out and then the download happened...

god I'm really fuckin pissed now, completely killed my momentum