u/SuspiciousIbex

Seriously, hand-buff is Murloc's most interesting design element and the meta sucks for anything without spell scaling. If Mrrglton focuses on the board can Deepwater Clan at least buff the hand?

There's just so many hand-buff card that are so underwhelming to see right now.

Just got 7 of them in a turn - far too behind because no Chromatic Tear so it's fun to see at least xD

So tier 1 units have naturally gotten stronger over time, just in every way except from stats. I feel like, with so many statistically weaker units in the tier 1 pool, Picky Eater has weirdly only gotten weaker over time to the extent that it feels like it's basically never the right choice on the first turn.

Maybe they could return the 4/4 that deals 1 damage to you so that there's at least one highroll opportunity because it feels like it just takes up a space in the tavern offering the tantalising opportunity to get a vanilla 3/2.

Basically as the title suggests, I find that games not including either Dragons, Demons and to a lesser extent Naga seem to play out completely differently to others due to Fellfire Conjurer and Tranquil Meditative as consistent tavern spell buffers giving scaling that far exceeds anything else that base tribes can do (quilboar being in a weird spot here), leaving other strategies usually looking for a top 4. Possible my perspective lingering around 7000-8000 mmr makes me bias compared to the higher elos where perhaps higher tempo comps perform better.

Certianly, if you're looking at the top comps so far, they've been those reliant on buffing and repeatedly casting spells such as Queen's Command, Butchering, Easterly Winds, Back to Back or Staff of Erinchment (the most exponential of them all) for accumulating strength.

Naturally, you would expect these to be stronger since you're reliant on both picking up engines to buff and cast the spells but it does show that the comps with these strategies seem to be performing higher and it often makes alternative comps feel incredibly underwhelming as you start scaling with your Groundbreaker, Junk Jouster or Bream counter knowing that you're seemingly sizeable +4/+4 per murloc played will completely dwarfed by any strategy that can accumulate a buff/casting combo.

Overall, it seems to lead Demons, Dragons, Elementals, Naga and Undead as considerably stronger than Mechs in particular for example who can't keep up.

Looking at the others, Beasts does much more interesting things either focusing on incredibly spikes of stats with Goldrinn that leaves you way stronger than everyone else before they can outscale you or exponentials with Leapfrogger or Stegadon for which the opponents stats largely do not matter.

Murlocs obviously has scam which will always be strong and then has a handbuff stuff that gets pretty much instantly outscaled by any spells, really cool Mrrglton comps that are one of the few workable non-spell stat options and a couple of second rate spell options. Largely, Mech and Murloc have an issue of their spells being limited by hand size compared to something like Dragons or Naga, Demon's spells contribute to every devour for the rest of the game and they don't get enough spells for that to be a problem anyway.

Quilboar's are the weirdest one in the way that their entire identity was being the slow to scale tribe that focused on buffing a spell but now that's just... everyone else as well? Except they have greater consistency by being able to cross to other tribes spell cards? Certainly the main downside to all of the spell buffing is that Quilboar has become less special; although, their keywords gems are really cool this set. Honestly, maybe they could make gems a tavern spell for a set and see how that opens design space - probably would be a pain to balance though.

Don't know if this is a stupid complaint, it just feels like all tribes have been getting a bit of tavern spell shenanigans and it might be nicer if there was more of a 50/50 split with other tribes being designed to be able to compete eg. volumizers (mechs really need mechagnome to have any place in the midgame). Think something like how if you're planning to do an APM comps, you have to check that you have Elementals and maybe not Demons at times.

I guess it might be less about too many tavern spell buffs as it is designing other comps around the knowledge that they exist.

Stats seem to back this up with it being D tier in HSReplay. I assume this is due to how awfully it has antisynergy with the current Quilboar setup. You're trying to give reborn to a bunch of deathrattle Quilboars and most of the gems come during combat. So what happens is those Reborn Quilboars will likely have at least one gem, and replace itself with a tiny Golem whilst denying the reborn Quilboar to be summoned again. Truely an awful trinket.

This goes into a wider flaw with the trinkets this set in that they seem to be incredibly bloated to just increase the number to make the set feel impressive (even whilst sacrificing design space in some extremely underwhelming tribes in Undead and Mechs). In order to increase the amount of trinkets, a bunch have been left in that simply don't synergise with the current iterations at all.

Blood Golem Sticker is a good example with it being obviously designed for out of combat scaling Quilboars which aren't really the design of this set.

The worst case for this is with Boom's Monster Portrait. Whilst Mech's are generally poorly designed this set, there's a clear focus on fewer magnetic units being produced than when Trinkets were last in the game making Boom's Monster pitiful compared to when it existed with Electron in the set which could output multiple, multiple times the number of magnetics.

There's just a clear lack of thought put into the presence of these trinkets and when to take away previous ones that don't synergise with how the tribes have been changed and it really detracts from the set.

Probably my least favourite iteration of my favourite tribe? It just feels so incomplete I guess because you're filling up so many of the mech cards (already fewer than other tribes) which a bunch of units that aren't supposed to stay on the board.

Can we just take some of these out of the pool, replace them with more interesting cards and have them be produced by them like a factory?

So undead are currently kinda bad currently I think due to Catacomb Crasher having one trinket to synergise with it and the rest of tribe being good early/mid before falling off more and more as the game progresses.

Whilst Skeletal Strafer also falls into the trap of not really benefiting from undead attack bonuses, I assume it's currently very bad, but would it be viable if doubled? Just not sure if that's even enough? It's a fun design comparing to Crasher just in how it's also viable without Beasts/ Naga in the pool.

I'm assuming Undead is the weakest tribe followed by Mech with them both just having a mix of worse scaling and trinket synergy with I think Mech struggling from having only two magnetic generators and an awkward mix of Deathrattles vs End of turn (not sure I've seen a single Moonsteel Juggernaut this set).

Any of these opinions particularly wrong?