Hearthstone Players!

Been mostly goofing so far this month. I know I can climb with Even Shaman and Odd Mage, but they are a liiiiiittle snoozy for me right now. I had Rogue and Druid cards quests and basically no Rogue or Druid decks. How to keep this fresh?

With Rogue, I went with Maly, hoping to score a cheap one with Deathrattle tricks from Necrium Blade and that guy that poops out a 1/1 version of a card from my hand. To work, the deck needs to be mostly spells, otherwise you might "hit" the wrong minion with the tricks. So it plays pretty lean and mean, hoping to stave off death until you can draw a bunch of damage and OTK. Sure enough, that's what happens against a Dragon Priest, who played things pretty tame in the early game. Likely looking for better Duskrider boards, she should have played it for tempo, because I only have so many Saps. Nuked her out from 30 Health 5 Armor with a Maly and handful of Razor Petals and Eviscerate.

With Druid, I went to Wild (Druid is very expensive in Standard right now, all the decent decks -require- multiple Epics and Legendaries, and then they are only arguably decent). I played my go-to fun deck: Moonkin. Man, I love this build. Play Raven Idols, draw some cards, have some big Gadgetzan turn, then burn them out with stupid Spell Damage creatures like Jungle Moonkin. It's a romp and folks usually seem genuinely surprised. At least I think they do. Swipe for 6/3 is nuts. Starfall becomes a cheap Flamestrike. Fandral might show up and make Wrath into the best card in the game. 3+ 2 + 1 + 2 + a card for {2}.

Glanced at the Blizzard app and saw that the Euro HS championships were going on, so I decided to watch a bit of it while eating lunch. They were in top 8 and Viper, the best German player, was facing Dawido from Poland. I ended up watching three games so I could see Viper's Peanut Shaman. It's control Shaman and he calls it "Peanut" because sometimes you draw the nuts (Texas Hold'em term for those unfamiliar; typically meaning holding two aces.) But truth is in the labeling, because it is utterly draw dependent without any way of accelerating that. You're often tied to Hagatha spitting out something good or using Krag'wa at the best moment... or at least hoping that's the best moment and that you didn't waste a win opportunity later. It works, but I imagine it takes a lot of practice. I tried a few games with it.

# 1x (1) Unstable Evolution
# 1x (1) Fire Fly
# 2x (1) Earth Shock
# 1x (2) Prince Keleseth
# 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon
# 1x (3) Zentimo
# 2x (3) Stonehill Defender
# 1x (3) Lone Champion
# 2x (3) Healing Rain
# 1x (3) Gluttonous Ooze
# 1x (3) Electra Stormsurge
# 2x (4) Tidal Surge
# 2x (4) Hex
# 1x (5) Zilliax
# 2x (5) Volcano
# 1x (5) Elise the Trailblazer
# 2x (5) Dragonmaw Scorcher
# 1x (6) Rain of Toads
# 1x (6) Krag'wa, the Frog
# 2x (8) Primordial Drake
# 1x (8) Hagatha the Witch
# 1x (9) Shudderwock
#
AAECAaoIDuvCAtPFAs/HAtHTApziAt/pAsPqAqfuAu/3Apn7AqCAA8uFA8GJA/OKAwj+Bf8Fx8ECm8ICscQCyccC8+cC7IkDAA==

I replaced a Haunting Visions with the Unstable, as I like having the additional out of Unstable plus a potential Krag'wa. You can't get too tied to that, though, as the frog is often far more useful recycling a Volcano or Healing Rain. And, yes, that's nine legendaries. It's fucking stupid that the one competitive deck I've seen for Shaman other than Even is basically "Take every legendary the class has and put some other stuff around them. Go!" It's Midrange/Good Stuff Shaman to the nth degree, which means that the class still has no real theme and hasn't since... well, I really can't remember when. As janky as he looks, Zentimo is actually pretty amazing sometimes, especially with Tidal Surge and, of course, Hex. Most of those spells rotate in April, so you gotta hope there's something worthwhile coming up.

I played Shudderwock Shaman like this build. Very control-to-midrange, no intent on a OTK, and not even possible, actually. The Shudderwock was used as clears 6 and 7 usually (Primordial Drake and Hagatha BCs) and if I was lucky I could get some copies to stick around as 6/3 Bubbled Taunts (Tol'vir Stoneshaper BC). I would get a couple of slurps, freeze some enemies, but mostly it was about card and board advantage.

That's what happens to a lot of HS decks. They become so focused on an OTK strategy they become fragile to a milled card or disrupted hand. I greatly prefer the toolbox approach where I don't have to concede because Gnomeferatu hit a combo piece.

//edit

I got my 600th Priest win today, with Quest. I thought I would talk about it a little. It's doing well and doesn't seem unfair and dumb like some other builds.

Lx Awaken the Makers (the Quest)
2x Dead Ringer (card draw, Quest)
1x Loot Hoarder (card draw, Quest)
2x Mind Blast (win condition)
2x Plated Beetle (armor, Quest)
1x Seance (utility)
2x Shadow Visions (utility)
1x Spirit Lash (lifegain, AoE)
2x Devilsaur Egg (Quest, tricks)
1x Twilight's Call (Quest, utility)
1x Unidentified Elixir (utility)
2x Voodoo Doll (targeted removal, Quest)
1x Mass Dispel (card draw, Silence)
2x Carnivorous Cube (Quest, tricks)
2x Mass Hysteria (AoE)
2x Reckless Experimenter (tricks)
1x Mechanical Drake (Quest, tricks)
1x Psychic Scream (AoE, pollutes Spell Hunter)
Lx Shadowreaper Anduin (win condition, armor, AoE)
Lx Alexstrasza (win condition)

Things to keep in mind:
16 = Hero Power + Mind Blast + Hero Power + Mind Blast + Hero Power
19 = Mind Blast + Hero Power + Mind Blast + Hero Power + Mind Blast

Alex to get them in range, then one of these to finish them off. This happens a lot. More than half the wins are by this route. The high end of the deck is very high end. You are making big dudes that stick. You will drag an Odd Warrior down. Just deal with the Armor. Their bad choices and Alex will get them in range and this does the rest.

Turn 5 with a Reckless Experimenter is usually nuts. Voodoo Doll is 0. Devilsaur Egg is 0. You can draw cards, make 5/5's, kill their Mountain Giant--all on turn 5 because of Experimenter. Do not sleep on this card. You might be winning the round with Mind Blasts, but you are winning the game with Experimenter plays. Mind you, this is before you need to play Mass Hysteria or Psychic Scream or anything. You can go nuts and contest the board while getting closer to Quest, &c.

Sometimes you want to Seance your Amara. Sometimes you need to Seance a Beetle to GET Amara. Sometimes you can Seance some awesome Rexxar creation or a Lich King.

Elixir makes Eggs interesting, especially if you roll the free 1/1 Egg.

Voodoo Doll dies to Spirit Lash, along with their biggest threat, plus life gain.

Cube usually eats a 5/5 Devilsaur, 2/2 Drake, or 7/7 Drake after they beat on something. Sometimes you eat Amara, whatever suits your fancy. I try not to eat Eggs, because it's hard to buff them and you're relying on the opponent to kill them. (Which they might with Mass Hysteria).

Psychic Scream can be very frustrating for Spell Hunter, as it makes Rhok'Delar and To My Side very bad. You are the Aggro against Spell Hunter though, just rush them with buffed Eggs and have weird Reckless turns. You are usually too fast if they don't roll both Deadly Shots on non-Eggs. Master's Call Hunter, honestly, comes down to Huffer. Huffer is too much damage too early, and/or gets Dire Frenzy and it's too much damage too late.

You'll lose to Odd Mage (burn or Big). You'll lose to Mecha'thun anything.* They play too much removal and armor/lifegain for you to deal enough before they combo you.

* I stand corrected. Mecha'Thun Druid is very bad, yikes. Bad deck. Loses to Mass Dispel if they don't preserve Thun, Naturalize, and Innverate; loses to Psychic Scream because cards in their deck are an epic struggle.

# 2x (1) Witch's Apprentice
# 2x (1) Wartbringer
# 2x (1) Lightning Bolt
# 2x (1) Earth Shock
# 1x (3) Zentimo
# 2x (3) Unbound Elemental
# 2x (3) Mana Tide Totem
# 2x (3) Lightning Storm
# 2x (3) Lava Burst
# 1x (3) Healing Rain
# 1x (3) Electra Stormsurge
# 2x (5) Volcano
# 2x (5) Earth Elemental
# 1x (5) Doomhammer
# 1x (5) Bloodlust
# 2x (7) Lesser Sapphire Spellstone
# 1x (9) Baku the Mooneater
# 2x (11) Snowfury Giant
#
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So, I'm trying Odd Shaman because I'm bored and because it addresses one of the signature design problems with the class: RNG. Vicious Syndicate has been saying for months that Shaman has only one viable deck, Even, and no one plays it for some reason. I asserted on the Reddits that the reason was that the deck is boring. It contains 3 or 4 cards from the past year of expansions and is otherwise Good Stuff/Midrange Shaman that people have been playing for 5 years (Hex, Flametongue, Fire Elemental, 2 or 3 dissociated legendaries, and a bunch of neutral minions.) No one wants to keep playing the same cards on a regular basis, but nothing groundbreaking has been made for Shaman other than Shudderwock and that's not even as powerful or interesting as it used to be. The class still utterly lacks identity except for RNG. BOTH Shaman hero cards are intrinsically based on random effects. When your "identity" is basically to roll the dice as often as you can every turn, hoping for something good, people will gravitate toward the reliable cards that always work, which gets boring after 5 years.

Anyway, I figured I'd try Odd, since I could always pull the totem I needed for what was in my hand. Unfortunately, if you're playing Odd, you're playing Overload, which is OK, because I like that deck. But it also means dealing with Overload. I wanted to try Wartbringer, too., and since my deck was so spell-heavy, with both Zentimo and Electra, I figured Wart would be a natural. Played a few games yesterday and won most of them because I'm still at the lower levels and people are not particularly good players there. It functioned like the Overload deck (charge Spellstone, play big creature, wait for a turn because you are rarely able to play both creature and Spellstone in the same turn, hopefully duplicate your creature.) Wartbringer, however, was just bad. Most of the Shaman spells that you actually want to play have a midgame cost (3). Because you're Overloaded so often, it's rare that you're able to (or, often, want to) cast two spells in a turn and still have the mana (even 1) for Wartbringer. You don't want to play her vanilla, because a 2/1 for 1 that does nothing isn't worth the card slot. So you end up with a dead card in your hand (a 1 drop!) for much of the game. Even worse, you get your spells in sequence and because you have Wrath of Air constantly available, your spells end up clearing the board and Wartbringer just pings your opponent. You know... like Steady Shot? That thing that Hunters do only when they either have nothing better to do or are already winning? Yeah. That.

I dumped her for Glacial Shard, since he'll at least keep something from hitting my EEs for a turn (or me) until I can Spellstone them. Witch's Apprentice... eh. It's still the same as when it was announced in Witchwood. It's usually irrelevant to my opponent and occasionally gets me something good. Unbounds are still Unbounds. Most opponents seem to think they're more of a threat than I do. However, being able to select Healing Stream totem to keep them alive does make them nominally more useful. It's funny how many people hover over them, though. "Un-bound Ele-mental? WTF?" I'm like: "Yeah, I know. You're already mystified that I'm playing Odd Shaman (or any kind of Shaman) and then you're seeing totally new cards that the few Shamans you've seen don't play. It's OK."

I see a lot of hovering too with DR Paladin and DR Priest. There are cards in those that can be difficult to assess the risks on. If I play a Dinosaur Egg to an empty board on 4 leaving a mana up–what does that mean? You can see some players really take the time to think about things like this. Is my deck stalled? Am I setting up for Cube? Am I getting Mass Hysteria going?

Similarly in Paladin, I will eventually DK Uther and you can see the panic that making those little 2/2s causes. I don't have any game plan for them, my deck can't exploit them except as 2/2s, but the opponent vastly overemphasizes their removal, usually to their detriment as I mostly want the 30pt swing from sword hits on their face.

Glad to see you trying Odd Shaman. I never bothered with that one—it just seems so bad. I play all kinds of Shaman (including Even!) but that's one I never even attempted because it just seems so clunky. If I was to try it would end up a Shudderwock deck, but with less to do. Bleh.

One of my more favorite builds is Heavy, which leans in on the whole Earth Elemental, Ancestral Spirit stuff and then goes nuts with a Spellstone. But Silence is coming back, I am seeing Owls and Spellbreakers again, so it's lost its allure.

Fer reals on the Silence. I played an Odd Paladin the other day who topdecked Owl not once but TWICE against taunts that I was using to absorb Dudes. Couldn't believe it. Thankfully, Silencing an EE still leaves a 7/8 on the board who can be Spellstoned like 8/8 Snowfalls. Apprentice gave me a Spirit Echo in one of those games last night, too. Of course, it's a 3 mana spell and I had Wartbringer in my hand and, yeah. Just couldn't make it work. I think they thought that she'd somehow be useful like Eel (deck condition), but she's not because she's a TURN condition. If she was: Deal 2 damage if you've cast two spells in a turn while she was in hand, that might work. But it's also wonky to fit that on a card.

It is funny if you're playing Heal Pally and bring Uther out and they're suddenly panicking about your horsemen. I had someone concede when I got two of them in play one time. They must have figured I was just being risky with Zola or the Brewmasters.

Playing Priest in this new nerf meta (Odd Rogue took lumps, losing Cold Blood; and Hunter moved... sideways? Anyway, Spellstone costs 6 now. Oh and Equality is fairly costed.)

There are still a LOT of Odd Paladin, so I had to skew my Priest deck lower to ensure timely arrival of Amara.
Lx Awaken the Ancients
2x Crystalline Oracle
Lx Bloodmage Thalnos
2x Dead Ringer
2x Loot Hoarder
2x Mind Blast
2x Plated Beetle
2x Seance
2x Shadow Visions
2x Spirit Lash
2x Gilded Gargoyle (new win condition = Prophet Velen, Mind Blast, Coin, Mind Blast for 20)
2x Shadow Word: Death (tons of Warlocks)
2x Twilight's Call
2x Mass Hysteria
Lx Prophet Velen
1x Psychic Scream
Lx Shadowreaper Anduin
Lx Alexstrasza

Set up with two Mind Blasts and either Alex them to 15 and hit with SR Anduin HP, MB, HP, MB, HP for 16; or use the Velen + Coin for 20. I usually cast Seance on Amara. Twice. Mass Hysteria math can make your head hurt.

Coolness. I thought Kibler's video about the new changes (but really about the other problem) yesterday was spot on about my concerns:

When Kibler says he's losing interest in your game, is it a problem?

Kibler has a good point about OTK—the game really lacks any decent way to deal with them in Standard. He even notes how good Dirty Rat was as a tool to deal with these minion sensitive OTKs like Mecha'Thun and Topsy Turvy. Those decks were playable (tons of Combo decks counted on a Thaurissan tick when Dirty Rat was around), but the pilot knew she was taking a chance. You could get totally smoked if Dirty Rat pulled the wrong thing. So even the Combo decks had to play a little thinner to avoid the insta-loss. Like Kibler notes, playing/holding extra creatures to avoid a devastating Rat. Standard also HoF'd Coldlight Oracle, another card that broke Combo hearts, which runs full hands and could see important cards burnt with overdraw. Apparently Blizzard sees only Warlock as being worthy of disrupting Combo, leaving it Demonic Project and Gnomeferatu for chancier effects.*

Like Kibler (I assume), I like midrange-to-control decks that gain small advantages that steamroll into wins. For example, my Priest games are effectively over by turn 7; but it might take me 15 more turns to convince the opponent that's the case. Sometimes it's not! That's why we play it out.

I think what Kibler misses, honestly, is skill-testing. The de rigeur Combo decks do not require skill. They require patience, and in the case of Topsy Turvy and Mage Quest, APM. You don't need a practiced eye to draw your deck as fast as possible and win with Mecha'Thun. Sure, you might have to cast Spreading Plague or Psychic Scream or whatever, but that's just road bumps. Ye Olden Combo decks usually had a couple of inflection points—do you drop Thaurissan now or wait to see if you can get an extra tick on a needed card. Can the opponent kill a stealthed Gadgetzan or not? These used to be things that mattered. Now it's just gogogogogoYOU'REDEAD. It doesn't really matter what you do. There aren't any tools to shake things up enough to be concerned about.

*You can make arguments for Priest with Mojomaster Zihi, Paladin with Time Out!, and Nerubian Unraveler in Neutral too. But these are expensive and/or limited in their disruptive impact.

You're right that he does like midrange/controlly decks that require give-and-take with the opponent (Interactive!) and tends to reject combo decks that are OTK, precisely because there is no interaction. Once the combo starts, you're dead. This objection goes all the way back to the ProsBloom decks where your opponent would "go off" and you'd just have to sit there and take it. I agree with him in that respect, which is why I kind of thought that the Uther Death Knight was a bad design from the outset. It took four(!) more sets to make it even close to workable and it's still a type of deck (dual solitaire) that I don't think adds anything to the game. The sole redeeming feature is that it requires a certain combo of cards and a little bit of luck to preserve the Horsemen until you can execute the kill. In that respect, there is player skill involved in knowing when to perform certain actions. The Paladin DK deck ISN'T OTK, since you have to set it up over the course of two or three turns, but it's still not a very elegant approach and pales in comparison to the design, whether power or interest or both, of most of the rest of the DKs.

But I think his main argument is what mine has been: Genn and Baku aren't good for the game in a design sense, because they halve the available card pool, which makes all games with and against those decks extremely similar. The devs created those cards to do three things; 1. Create more deck archetypes by introducing a new restriction and a new bonus. 2. Expand the use of cards that rarely see competitive play, whether ever (Amani Berzerker) or recently (Argent Commander.) 3. Make hero powers more impactful than they had been in TGT (the last time hero powers were a real focus.)

What they didn't anticipate/remember was that Inspire effects turned out to suck in TGT because they toned them down in testing. Hero powers plus Inspire was actually too good of a combination most of the time. How they forgot this kind of mystifies me. Justicar Trueheart was dependent on drawing her but still became a ladder-worthy card because of what she did. They evaded that draw requirement by making Genn and Baku list-conditional. And the bonus of either halving the cost of most hero powers or giving them double the effect (This is where I shake my head in contempt about the person arguing with me on Reddit that Paladin has the worst hero power in the game...) is enormous, because that, too, isn't draw-dependent. The button is always there. It also creates decks that are boring to play against because the list of optimal cards is half of what it normally is, so you'll see them over and over. Plus, there are design hurdles created for the devs because they have to think about how every, single card introduced will impact odd/even, rather than just how they'd impact class parameters and current archetypes.

It was just a really bad direction to take because it created interest in the short term, albeit skewed (Remember when the only Witchwood cards being included in decks were Genn and Baku? Oh, wait. That still happens.), but created a real damper on interest for the long term. From the moment Rumble was released, people have been talking about just waiting for the rotation in April. That's not exactly a selling point for either set or game as a whole.

I hadn't heard that Inspire cards were watered down in development. It makes sense, because they sucked; but I thought this was more an intentional design decision to avoid power creep in what-would-become-Standard. I looked at Inspire cards and came up with a list of them I saw used in competitive decks:
Legit Good
Murloc Knight
Thunder-Bluff Valiant

Pretty Good
Savage Combatant
Mukla's Champion

Playable
Kodorider showed up once or twice
Silver Hand Regent was a thing, no?
Brave Archer appeared in a few FaceHunter builds

They had cards that made spells, healed, made Legendaries, buffed weapons, buffed themselves, and those weren't worth it. The good cards made dudes or buffed bad dudes into good dudes. A small carve-out for dealing damage for Druid, that has always struggled to control the board; and FaceHunter that was desperate for fast damage in the age of Refreshment Vendor and Justicar'd Armor/Healing. These cards are all still available in Wild and how many see play there?

I remember Warrior Armor and Priest Healing being oppressive for some strategies, and I worried about them being available by default to them with Baku. But the Odd-requirement does prevent the biggest abuses.

Putting Kibler into perspective, Blizzard is also publishing for the more casual player. There, Genn and Baku are really cool and the deckbuilding ideas are interesting. There's really only one competitive Baku Paladin deck, and that's White Weenie. But you know there are folks out there trying to make Holy Wrath work. You yourself looked into Odd Shaman to see if it was worth it. That's all good from Blizzard's perspective, even if it makes Kibler sad. I am reminded of WotC publishing True-Name Nemesis in Commander. In that format, it's really neat. The decks are 100 cards and highlander, and games are often multiplayer; so the effect is muted. But it also became legal in Standard and it's broken as all hell as a 4x in a 60-card deck. Baku and Genn are probably worth it, on balance, in the grander scope of Hearthstone, even if they are oppressive on the Competitive scene.

One thing Kibler pointed out (without saying it) is that Aggro decks are extremely boring to play against. When he talked about Quest Rogue and Odd Paladin as "Combo-like," his complaint is that the opponent isn't super concerned about what you have going on. They have only one way to win: "Make my things and hit your face." It was the same complaint about Face Hunter and Miracle Rogue when Leeroy cost 4. You actually being there and doing stuff didn't really have a big impact on how they played their game out. There wasn't some big adjustment to "oh man, this is a Zoo Warlock, I need to..." It was just make things, hit faces. They cleared my things? I will make more things. Again, the skill-testing element of the game is de minimus. This is from a Reddit post I made in April 2017 that got downvoted into oblivion:

I think the {Rogue} Quest is "broken" in that it reduces YOUR play to just reach. Just lay out as much damage as possible and race, hoping they didn't draw the nuts. The deck does not test skill to play and it makes the opponent not test skill to play against.

The Quest isn't "broken" by being too strong, it's "broken" because it makes the game not fun.

I played against an Odd Paladin yesterday that I thought was maybe a bot. I dropped to 8, then Amara'd and Seance'd her. They stormed back, got me to, say, 13 or so, and I did it again. They are now in top-deck mode, both of their Frostwolf Warlords are gone, their Stormwind Champion is gone. Fungalmancers, gone. I stuffed their deck with seven 1/1s or whatever--they're dead. There's no coming back. But they just kept going. I needed to draw Alex or Velen to actually win, but it was weird to see them just keep playing. It made me think they have no concept of the game at all, beyond their side of the board.

Totally agree with all of that except Thunder Bluff Valiant being good. It's a win-more card, because you really have to have totems already in play to make it worthwhile or your opponent just kills Valiant and you end up with a single 2/2 Healing Totem. Like most Shaman cards trying to make totems useful (Totem Cruncher, Windshear Stormcaller, Totemic Might, Primal Fusion, Draenei Totemcarver, etc., etc.), it was just too slow/clunky/situational to ever be viable unless you were already in control of the board.

And I realize that there's still the casual player to be heeded. But how many of them do you think are excited by bringing their Timmy decks into an environment where they're going to get eaten alive by Odd Paladin 99 times out of 100? Even Timmy has to think that OCCASIONALLY he's going to get the win. I see that True Name Nemesis was originally created for 2-headed giant. Even then, that's an obviously onerous card. But your point about face decks only knowing one thing (cue Tunnel Trogg...) is accurate (as was your Reddit post) and it's a codicil to what Vicious Syndicate was saying a few weeks before Rumble emerged: there are too many games where you simply have no chance, which means that the counters to decks are too strong, which means that the game balance is seriously flawed somewhere. There are two very obvious culprits for this...

Also, two balance changes in one month. This is a sign of a couple possibilities:

1. Blizzard has finally acknowledged that playing the all-wise/worst case scenario role for a digital card game is faltering. Their argument against balance changes in the past is Casual Player. CP doesn't play every day or even every week. If CP comes back and finds his Cold Blood double in cost, he's going to be hurt/confused/traumatized and will give up playing safe, secure Hearthstone. That is, of course, total bullshit, since the card set changes every four months and CP will have to take the horrible step of reading on the Internet to see where the game has gone in his time away. Blizzard always used to plan changes based around CP's worst case scenario and/or always appearing as the all-knowing devs who were confident that their changes would be the right ones for the game and wouldn't need to be reverted. You'd think that approach would have been dispelled after rapid-fire changes started being made in other games like WoW, but apparently not.

2. The number of games played has been seriously impacted by the monotone nature of the meta (Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, Paladin, Paladin, Priest, Hunter, Hunter, Paladin, Paladin, Priest, Hunter...) and they're scrabbling around looking for a way to liven things up before temporarily absent players until the rotation become permanently absent even after April. Unfortunately, with the exception of Emerald Spellstone, they're still changing Basic and Classic cards, which means that they're still hewing to old thought processes.

On the darkly humorous angle: Flametongue Totem. It's one of the cards I've decried that make playing Shaman boring, since the class' good cards have largely been Basic and Classic ones for most of the past two years. But it's also a card that makes Shaman decks borderline competitive. The only Shaman deck being consistently played has been Even, since it's the only one you can win with. They just took away one of the best early-game cards for that deck (totem on 1, Flametongue on 2, hit/trade for 2 or 3.) This is going to be just like a year ago, when the class basically didn't exist until its brief moment in the sun with Shudderwock.

I poked around on HSReplay and tallied up the % of decks that are these hateful, low-interaction experiences for folks looking for back-and-forth on the board. So, Odd Pally, Odd Rogue, Cloning Gallery, Mecha'Thun flavors, Topsy Turvy, and Maly Rogue: 24.1% of decks. One in every four from Ranks 10+ (accounting for the kinds of players that would use HSDeckTracker) is a "Watch This!" shit show. Of the remaining, more than 10% of decks are Midrange Hunter alone. Control Priest and Aggro Odd Mage each clock in at about 5.5% too.

Lumping all the OTK/Low-Interactions together, you have almost HALF your games as just: OTKishnonsense, Midrange Hunter, Control Priest, Odd Mage. This isn't even including Spell Hunter (3.2%) DR Hunter (2.6%), and Secret Hunter (2.2%).

That's not super healthy.

Not surprising. I also question just how much the card changes are going to limit Hunter. The problem with Spellstone has never been its cost. Producing a late game 12/12 is often almost as daunting as producing one on turn 5. Producing one a single turn later for one more mana is no less problematic for many decks. The real problem is something you've noted before: getting shit for free, which is what Emerald Spellstone does. It's true that slowing that down AND making Hunter's Mark much more difficult to justify will make playing Hunter more difficult, in general. But from my perspective, the problem with both cards isn't when they're played in the course of a tempo-based game. It's what they do in the first place. Is it still worth three mana and two cards (Mark, Candleshot) to remove any large creature in the game for no damage to yourself or your board? I think a lot of Hunter players would still say: "Yes.", especially if said player is the big taunt that you were hoping would soak up 4 3/3s. Even aside from that, it's still an easily justified response to something like 4th turn Mountain Giant from Even Warlock; one of their only significant threats in the deck that they've been sitting on their hands for the first three turns in order to bring out. This is putting aside the obvious advantage that most Hunters have against Warlock, in that their capability for direct damage reduces the ability to Life Tap. (Kibler's point about Warlock cards having to be generally shittier than other classes because of Life Tap, leading directly to the rise of Zoo, is poignant here.)