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I don't think it's direct draw that people should be focusing on. Think about Tol'vir Warden, for example. Turn 4: Stonetusk Boar, Coin, Dire Frenzy. Turn 5: Tol'vir Warden. You now have 2 4/4 chargers in hand that cost 1 mana. Does Stitched Tracker retain buffs (i.e. it will show you a +3/+3 minion in your deck, rather than just a vanilla copy of the buffed minion)? If so, there's another angle.

Oops, Dire Frenzy costs 4 - I don't know why I thought it cost 2 - but it might still be decent with Kathrena.

Good call on the Warden; I've never played with that card so the idea of individual synergies never occurred to me.

As for Stitched Tracker...I want to say that the minion will retain the buffs - because a +3/+3 minion that Tracker shows with its vanilla stats is not a copy, in my opinion - but that's never stopped Blizzard before.

Most people didn't play Warden because it's generally useless by the time you have the mana to play it... unless you're playing Quest Hunter. I think the key design principle to keep in mind for this set is what Donais said: They're trying to reinforce archetypes that haven't done well. That includes the Quests, most of which flopped. Combine 1-cost minions with Quest, Warden, Dire Frenzy, Toxmonger, and Wing Blast, and it seems like you have a decent midrange deck of a very different type than Hunter has played before. One of the main things it does is give the deck other options beyond just playing out a bunch of 1-cost trash and then somehow hoping that a couple 3/2s per turn will save you (Hello? Quest Warlock? Hello?) 1-cost 6/5s that are Poisonous are a thing you can finish a game with.

I've been having a mild argument on Reddit about Holy Water, since the outspoken types are complaining about it being too slow and/or ineffective as direct removal. I keep telling them they're nuts because they're missing the flexibility of the card. It says "minion", not "enemy minion." You have two 5/4s on the board. I hit one with my Statue and then Holy Water the Statue. It kills the other one and- look! -I have another Statue in hand ready to play next turn. Or I hit something with my Coffin Crasher, finish the Crasher with Holy Water, it bring my Statue into play and I have another Crasher in hand to play next turn. That's basically a map for Quest Priest; the main problem of which was finishing, since you're playing a bunch of shitty 1/1s and 2/1s to finsih your quest and hopefully survive until turn 9 with Amara where the highest strength thing you'll ever have on the board is... a 4. I'm still far from sold on the deck, but they're putting in many options that might work out.

Shaman, OTOH... I dunno, man. I mean Bogshaper is interesting and, yes, it's an Elemental (Synergy!) and, yes, it's the counterpart to Hagatha (Synergy!) But, just like the Spellstone, it's also a 7-cost card that sits in your hand, waiting for the Timmy moment to play it. It also doesn't address the awkwardness that is Hagatha: Do you play a bunch of low-costs to try to take advantage of Bewitch, even though you're going to kill them all when you play Hagatha? Or do you play mid-cost or heavier minions that Bogshaper can help you get? Furthermore, there's only 6 cards left in Shaman for the set and we have yet to see the "new ones", meaning spells, that Donais said would help balance the odds of Hagatha's RNG. I suppose you could go full Hagatha and add the Cauldron to your deck so your early Elementals give you spells while getting killed, but no one plays Lightwell, at least in part because it's RNG, too. Plus, as noted before, the 1 in 3 chance of getting something truly useless like Totemic Might and/or something with Overload, which might prevent you from playing Bogshaper or Hagatha next turn when you need them.

Oh. Man. www.hearthpwn.com/news/5326-new-legendar...al-dollmaster-dorian

The control possibilities are insane. This is potentially the Barnes replacement for Big Priest, although the low number of minions in that deck doesn't make it very reliable. But Control Paladin could pull a lot of useful minions like, say, Tirion. There may even be a use for awful cards like Howling Commander and Bolvar.

Makes Sense Demons playable!

Haha, not really. But still, it'll be fun to to play with. In Wild, I will play The Curator to get a mini-Maly and throw 8 + 8 + 9 from my hand, if not more, so that will be nice if I ever live to turn 10. Priest can work this thing with Quest; they just need some "Pay 30 life for 15 damage" effect and they could wins games!

Oh, sure. It's overwhelmingly draw reliant, just like Lady in White is. If the latter is in the last few cards of your deck, she's a waste of a deck slot. If Dollmaster sits there waiting for you to draw something good, he's also a waste. There's no way you can build a deck around either of them. But as a kind of alternate win condition, I think the potential is pretty massive.

www.hearthpwn.com/news/5387-new-shaman-c...eveal-totem-cruncher

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

So, Thing from Below has been in every, single Shaman deck of any type since Whispers was released. Why? Because it's an almost-always useful card. Every time you hit that button, no matter what situational tackling dummy it puts out, you're lowering the cost of your two Things, no matter where they are (/C'Thun.) Even if you do nothing but totem on turns 2 and 3 (Hear the 'plaint of Shamans everywhere...), on turn 4 you're dropping a 5/5 Taunt, which is pretty good value. Later in the game, you're dropping that 5/5 for (likely) free. That's amazing value because, unlike Crystal Lion, it just might save the game for you, since someone will have to punch it before they can punch your face. But silence, you say! That's right it's currently everywhere. But even if Thing got silenced, it's still a 5/5, often for free.

If Totem Cruncher gets silenced, it's not only a 2/3 that you paid 4 mana for, but it also probably removed a chunk of your own board. Assuming you can't keep a board full of dummies in the first place ('Lo, the 'plaint resounds...), this will be a dead card in your hand for who knows how long, because you'll always want to play something better than a fucking 2/3 Taunt on turns 5-10, assuming you live that long. This is basically the more expensive version of 'Lil Exorcist. No one played that card, either, because the ideal circumstances for it to actually have value almost never occurred. Same thing here. If you have only one totem, it's a Yeti-sized Taunt. You know what else is a Yeti-sized Taunt? Rotten Applebaum, which is more mana-efficient than this (5 in one turn, rather than 6 over two turns on turn 5), doesn't destroy any of your own minions, and heals you when someone punches through it. Oh, and if it gets silenced, it's still a Yeti, rather than a River Crocolisk.

This is a control card that is supposed to make use of the collection of trash that Shamans put on the board in lieu of an actual hero power. But you know what else it destroys? Mana Tide. And Flametongue. Oh, and Nightmare Amalgam, if you've decided to try that. And this isn't just silence effects that make this awful. Wreck a chunk of your board for that sweet 8/9 Taunt for 4 mana? Hex. Polymorph. Both in active use these days because of Voidlords. To say nothing of Vilespine Slayer, Naturalize, Execute, and every other version of single-target removal. Just gave your opponent a 4 for 1 and he didn't have to AoE his own board, either! Yay.

Four control Shaman cards revealed so far: One costs 7 and requires other cards to provide value. One's an irrelevant Taunt and Ben Brode's favorite thing (RNG!.) One is a hero that destroys all your totems when you play it and both requires other cards to provide value AND is beholden to RNG. And then there's Totem Cruncher. Still searching for that identity, Mike. Unless said identity is "uncompetitive."

Jackwraith wrote: www.hearthpwn.com/news/5387-new-shaman-c...eveal-totem-cruncher

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

So, Thing from Below has been in every, single Shaman deck of any type since Whispers was released. Why? Because it's an almost-always useful card. Every time you hit that button, no matter what situational tackling dummy it puts out, you're lowering the cost of your two Things, no matter where they are (/C'Thun.) Even if you do nothing but totem on turns 2 and 3 (Hear the 'plaint of Shamans everywhere...), on turn 4 you're dropping a 5/5 Taunt, which is pretty good value. Later in the game, you're dropping that 5/5 for (likely) free. That's amazing value because, unlike Crystal Lion, it just might save the game for you, since someone will have to punch it before they can punch your face. But silence, you say! That's right it's currently everywhere. But even if Thing got silenced, it's still a 5/5, often for free.

If Totem Cruncher gets silenced, it's not only a 2/3 that you paid 4 mana for, but it also probably removed a chunk of your own board. Assuming you can't keep a board full of dummies in the first place ('Lo, the 'plaint resounds...), this will be a dead card in your hand for who knows how long, because you'll always want to play something better than a fucking 2/3 Taunt on turns 5-10, assuming you live that long. This is basically the more expensive version of 'Lil Exorcist. No one played that card, either, because the ideal circumstances for it to actually have value almost never occurred. Same thing here. If you have only one totem, it's a Yeti-sized Taunt. You know what else is a Yeti-sized Taunt? Rotten Applebaum, which is more mana-efficient than this (5 in one turn, rather than 6 over two turns on turn 5), doesn't destroy any of your own minions, and heals you when someone punches through it. Oh, and if it gets silenced, it's still a Yeti, rather than a River Crocolisk.

This is a control card that is supposed to make use of the collection of trash that Shamans put on the board in lieu of an actual hero power. But you know what else it destroys? Mana Tide. And Flametongue. Oh, and Nightmare Amalgam, if you've decided to try that. And this isn't just silence effects that make this awful. Wreck a chunk of your board for that sweet 8/9 Taunt for 4 mana? Hex. Polymorph. Both in active use these days because of Voidlords. To say nothing of Vilespine Slayer, Naturalize, Execute, and every other version of single-target removal. Just gave your opponent a 4 for 1 and he didn't have to AoE his own board, either! Yay.

Four control Shaman cards revealed so far: One costs 7 and requires other cards to provide value. One's an irrelevant Taunt and Ben Brode's favorite thing (RNG!.) One is a hero that destroys all your totems when you play it and both requires other cards to provide value AND is beholden to RNG. And then there's Totem Cruncher. Still searching for that identity, Mike. Unless said identity is "uncompetitive."

They don't know how to deal with Shaman and it shows. They can make it incredibly overpowered, or completely useless, and almost nothing in-between. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but they NEED to expand the basic toolkits. Either give Shamen Evolve as a baseline card, or give it a mechanism similar to Jade, because those work. Everything built around controlling (controlling, not summoning) x totems sucks because they're fragile and easy to eliminate. The overload cards are too prohibitive early game, and not strong enough late game, and without stuff like tunnel trogg that builds off of the mechanism the cards are actively bad. The freeze mechanism is terrible. Windfury is like the coolest keyword but they don't do anything with it because, again, it quickly becomes too powerful, Pally does murlocs better, mage does elementals better.

The class is bad and they don't seem to care.

I think the problem is that they're still wedded to their original mechanics (Overload, totems) despite repeated proof that one doesn't work without OP cards (Overload) and the other just doesn't work because the originator is random, which doesn't allow you to play with the same level of strategy as the other eight classes. They haven't yet wanted to do a sweep through base mechanics and cardsets (how many video games go four years without doing that? WoW did repeated class and talent changes from 2005 to 2009 and overhauled the entire world of Azeroth in 2010.) and, until they do, they're going to keep trying to "patch" those systems with varying degrees of card quality. That latter phrase is exactly what Ben Brode said he wanted to avoid during the Purify debacle when it came to determining which classes were in the ascendant, but it's exactly what's happening to Shaman. It's been clear since the beginning of the game that the class largely lagged behind the others. It was never competitive until TGT, when Totem Golem and Tuskarr Totemic arrived. Then it became dominant with the emergence of Tunnel Trogg. As soon as those two cards rotated out, it disappeared again. That's as obvious an example of the situation he said they wanted to avoid as you can get. The class simply isn't competitive while burdened with Overload and the only RNG hero power. But until they decide to make a basic revision, it's not going to change.

Now THIS is a Control Paladin card: www.hearthpwn.com/cards/89433-paragon-of-light

2/5 statline for 3 is already solid, but dropping this on 5 with a Sound the Bells and you have a 3/7 Taunt with LIfesteal. Even better, drop it on 3 and hit it with StB twice for a 5/9 Taunt Lifestealer. Almost as good as Obsidian. If it gets silenced, it's still a 2/5 (which is, y'know, better than a 2/3 that also wrecked half your board) and if you're playing Lynessa, you still get all of those StB applications.

I think people are really overlooking the potential of Echo in this set and this is an ideal card for it.

So, there's the expansion in all its spooky glory: www.hearthpwn.com/guides/4441-the-witchw...nes-eighth-expansion

There was some interesting stuff in the final reveal. Shudderwock got spoiled a couple days ago, so I was prepared for it in the stream, but seeing it in action kind of made me cringe. It's Yogg again, but just more targeted to benefit the Shaman player, since it's not totally random spells and only uses your Battlecries and apparently only on your side of the board. You could have named the card "Alternate Control Deck Win Condition" and no one would have noticed.

I did notice that the only deck they didn't play was Warlock, which also had the most cards left to reveal. It's probably because they didn't want people to immediately freak out about Curse of Weakness: 2 mana, Echo, Give all enemy minions -2 attack until your next turn. That's insane. Almost quantifiably insane. So insane that Zoo decks are going to run it because it lets them make the most efficient trades of all time and be utterly unconcerned about any response. Until your next turn. It's late game. I have a couple minions on board. I've Life Tapped down to 8 life. You have stuff that's going to overwhelm me. No problem. I'm just going to cast Curse of Weakness 2, 3, maybe 4 times and your board is either going to die to mine, in the case of any Taunts, or I'm just going to beat your face in for free for a turn, with no threat to me whatsoever unless you're a Paladin (buffs), Mage (DD), or Rogue (DD.) Even then, in the late game, a lot of those options are probably already gone.

I kept getting downvoted on Reddit because I kept warning people that they're overlooking the power of Echo and the flexibility that it grants you. This card is a great example of that. You don't have to cast it more than twice (i.e. turn 4) for it to have a huge impact on the game. And anytime you cast it in the late game, it's potentially devastating; same with Sound the Bells, Squashling, even things like Ghost Light Angler and Hunting Mastiff.

Anyway, lots to look at. Two more days.

Curse of Weakness with Mossy Horror will probably be a thing.

I agree, Echo is way more important than people think

What pros are saying is. Warlock is two tiers above everything else. Control and cube anyhow. Nobody knows if zoo will be good yet. There is some optimism that odd hunter and maybe odd warrior can work. There will be some tempo warrior. Druid got nothing. Shaman will be the most fun class, if your goal is fun and not winning.
But mostly that warlock is the meta and your deck needs to beat that somehow. Purple says he is probably going spiteful priest day one, that there are enough new cards to fit it and it wrecks warlock

It looks like Shaman will have two archetypes to flail around with: Casino and Elementals. Wax Elemental + Earthen Might looks like a cross between Jeweled Macaw and Enchanted Raven + Mark of Y'Shaarj so, despite Wax Elemental being a crappy topdeck, those are the first two cards I'm putting in my for-quests-only Elemental Shaman deck.

But as Jackwraith and I were discussing last night, those amazing Shaman spells to make Hagatha viable never materialized, and the lack of dragon support - hell, Hunter of all classes got a class dragon - means that Cathedral Gargoyle won't see play until the next expansion, at best.

I predict that they'll wait, and wait, and wait for people to counter Warlock before nerfing their cards about three weeks after it's clear that the class is OP.

What are some of the answers now for Cube/Controllock?

• Skulking Geist takes their lifegain/sac effect away. That stays (Frozen Throne).
• Playable Silence effects stay (e.g., Spellbreaker, Ironbeak Owl, Mass Dispel, Hex), except for Devolve (MSoG).
• Dirty Rat would mess up Cube plays, rotates away (MSoG).
• Weapon removal loses Gluttonous Ooze (Un'Goro), but keeps Acidic Swamp Ooze.

What does Cube/Controllock lose?

• N'Zoth (WotOG) was often a devastating reload.
• Mistress of Mixtures (MSoG) managed the early board and set up some nice Defiles on the cheap. Could switch to Plated Beetle for similar effect.
• Tar Creeper (Un'Goro)/Stonehill Defender (Un'Goro) would be seen in Control builds

What does Cube/Controllock gain?

• Dark Possession ({1} Rare Warlock spell: Deal 2 damage to a friendly character. Discover a Demon). Weak to Geist, worse Defiles/early board, but sets up Weapon and defends against Counterspell better than Kobald.
• Curse of Weakness ({2} Rare Warlock spell: Echo. Give all enemies -2 Attack until your next turn.) That's rough. Let's them trade "for free" and likely gain a turn against a lot of decks. Rush minions might help a little, but this is a tough card. Combine with:
• Mossy Horror ({6} Epic Neutral 2/7: Battlecry: Destroy all other minions with 2 or less Attack).
• Lord Godfrey ({7} Legendary Warlock 4/4: Battlecry: Deal 2 damage to all other minions. If any die, repeat this Battlecry.) Solid clear , Voidlord has 9 health and might not die, for good or ill.

What does everyone else gain to beat them?
Uh. Hard to say? Nothing really jumping out at me. Lifedrinker gets over the Taunt wall, I guess?