Hearthstone's Next Expansion Will Be Revealed This Friday

[Steven Bogos]

Hearthstone's Next Expansion Will Be Revealed This Friday

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Blizzard is planning a special "Nintendo Direct"-style livestream event to reveal its upcoming Hearthstone expansion.

Blizzheart [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/161222-New-Nintendo-Direct-Coming-This-Year], we will get our first glimpse at the expansion this Friday.

"There are whispers around the Tavern..." wrote the letter. "Come listen closely and discover the next Hearthstone expansion at a special live-streamed event!" The event will take place on March 11, 2016 at 1:00 PM EST.

Blizzard hinted at this upcoming expansion back when it announced its new wild and standard formats [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166244-Hearthstone-Introduces-New-Standard-And-Wild-Play-Formats] for the game. All we know for sure is that upon this expansion's release, Goblins vs. Gnomes and The Curse of Naxxramas cards will no longer be playable in standard format.

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You can tune into Blizzard's official Twitch stream here [http://www.twitch.tv/blizzard].

Source: Blizzheart [http://blizzheart.com/en/hearthstone/the-presentation-of-the-next-expansion-confirmed/]

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[InflatableHippo]

Odds are its going to be based around the Old Gods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfIFSZBKKT0

 

[Hawki]

Don't play Hearthstone, but I'll watch it for the trailer.

(Pirates riding parrots. 'Nuff said.)

 

[rcs619]

I'm so looking forward to the druid nerf. I like druid (especially the aggro and egg variants) but midrange druid really does need that nerf. It has really solid minions across the board, and the force-savage combo means that it can just outright win if you let *any* of those minions stay on the board by turn 9. It's also basically existed unchanged through multiple expansions now, which says a lot about how solid it is.

I'm sad to see my sludge belcher and healbot go, but I can see why they need to. Hopefully we get some new control tools in the next expansion to kind of fill in the gaps.

Anyfin Paladin is gonna be fun in standard. Literally the only two cards it loses is belcher and healbot. Those aren't insignificant losses though (especially the healbot) so it really depends what the next expansion has in it. Warlock (my favorite class) looks like it's going to get hard-ish by the changes, but zoo will always be around doing zoo things. Hopefully warlock gets some fun cards in the next set.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Anyfin Paladin is gonna be fun in standard. Literally the only two cards it loses is belcher and healbot. Those aren't insignificant losses though (especially the healbot) so it really depends what the next expansion has in it.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but they're also removing reward cards from standard. That means no more Old Murk Eye. Pretty sure they thought Anyfin Paladin would be too strong, and honestly, they're probably right. With the top decks all taking pretty big hits, Anyfin needed to lose more than just the anti-aggro tools that are sure to be replaced. It's already a pretty great deck, so I could see it being a little too over the top if they didn't nerf it a bit more. Not sure if the deck can work without Murk Eye, but we'll see.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I started playing Hearthstone a month and a half ago.
I invested $10 into the GvG packs and all my coins into Naxx and GvG because they have cards I need for my mage.
And then I found out they will be thrown out of the bus.

I kinda feel scammed despite it being my fault for not knowing better.

 

[rcs619]

Anyfin Paladin is gonna be fun in standard. Literally the only two cards it loses is belcher and healbot. Those aren't insignificant losses though (especially the healbot) so it really depends what the next expansion has in it.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but they're also removing reward cards from standard. That means no more Old Murk Eye. Pretty sure they thought Anyfin Paladin would be too strong, and honestly, they're probably right. With the top decks all taking pretty big hits, Anyfin needed to lose more than just the anti-aggro tools that are sure to be replaced. It's already a pretty great deck, so I could see it being a little too over the top if they didn't nerf it a bit more. Not sure if the deck can work without Murk Eye, but we'll see.

Well shit, I guess I won't be playing paladin any more. I refuse to play secretdin. Way to kill the one other viable paladin archetype. I don't even know if midrange paladin will still be viable with all it's losing (and honestly, it's probably the most boring deck in the game besides control warrior. Boring to me, at any rate).

Oh well. There'll always be a zoolock and handlock variant in any meta, so at least there's that. Dragon priest should be due for a comeback, so my second-favorite class is covered too.

Malygos-rogue looks promising in standard too. I don't even like rogue, but I love me a good control deck with huge burst (there's a reason I play anyfin and malygoslock too ). Malygoslock may still be viable. Losing darkbomb, healbot and belcher is gonna suck though. Depends what kind of tools they get in the next update, really.

Hell, maybe it's time to craft antonidas and play freeze or tempo-mage.

Hopefully they do something interesting with druid. Shake it up to where some new archetypes can spin off of it. I'm kinda sad that egg-druid won't be standard legal. It's a silly, fun little deck.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I love me a good control deck with huge burst (there's a reason I play anyfin and malygoslock too )

Now granted we have no idea what way the game will take until we see the new cards, but I have the feeling burst-damage style decks are at best going to get next to nothing and at worst going to be hobbled by new countermeasures. Blizzard has said since the start they don't want OTK decks in the game, and while that claim has been a joke up until now they seem to finally be acting on it. Of all the tools they could've taken away from Patron (insane card draw, self-replacing minions, burst damage etc) they chose to obliterate the Warsong Commander not just by making it more expensive or tightening its restrictions, but by straight-up taking charge away from it entirely, on the basis that there can never be a good minion with 3-or-less attack in the Warrior or Neutral pools so long as Warsong existed. Now they're nuking Anyfin's burst by removing Murk Eye as well, ensuring that not just that deck but any future Murlock deck can't use it as burst as well. Ben Brode has all-but said in his videos that charge has not been handled well by the dev team, and while I don't trust 90% of the things he says I'm actually on board with this one. The Pro players who were invited to speak with Blizzard keep mentioning that Alexstrasza's name came up a lot too in these sessions, so I'd be very surprised if she doesn't get hit like Druid will and that could wind up killing off Freeze Mage if it's severe enough.

 

[rcs619]

Now granted we have no idea what way the game will take until we see the new cards, but I have the feeling burst-damage style decks are at best going to get next to nothing and at worst going to be hobbled by new countermeasures. Blizzard has said since the start they don't want OTK decks in the game, and while that claim has been a joke up until now they seem to finally be acting on it. Of all the tools they could've taken away from Patron (insane card draw, self-replacing minions, burst damage etc) they chose to obliterate the Warsong Commander not just by making it more expensive or tightening its restrictions, but by straight-up taking charge away from it entirely, on the basis that there can never be a good minion with 3-or-less attack in the Warrior or Neutral pools so long as Warsong existed. Now they're nuking Anyfin's burst by removing Murk Eye as well, ensuring that not just that deck but any future Murlock deck can't use it as burst as well. Ben Brode has all-but said in his videos that charge has not been handled well by the dev team, and while I don't trust 90% of the things he says I'm actually on board with this one. The Pro players who were invited to speak with Blizzard keep mentioning that Alexstrasza's name came up a lot too in these sessions, so I'd be very surprised if she doesn't get hit like Druid will and that could wind up killing off Freeze Mage if it's severe enough.

Ehh, I think it depends. The problem with patron wasn't the burst, it's that the burst was easy to get. Patron had so much draw in it that it really wasn't hard to get your full combo, and warrior has amazing control options through its removal and armor. Once you played enough games to get a good feel for it, old-patron basically played itself. Also, it had two different burst-combos that could end the game in a single turn. Which only increased the odds of getting at least one of them.

The reason I don't mind freeze-mage is because it's a lot more difficult to play. I don't like playing against freeze-mage, but I can respect the people who play it well. It's a difficult deck. Same with malygoslock and maly-rogue too. They rely on the burst to close out the game, but getting to that point is a lengthy process and your win-condition is very specific. I have no problem with burst decks, as long as they're difficult to play.

That's the reason midrange druid is kind of running rampant at the moment. It has burst damage on par (or nearly so) with some of the hard control decks, on top of having very solid, very powerful minions at just about every point on the curve.

My concern is that they go too far killing off burst and basically turn the game into nothing but aggro. Keep in mind, the reason why freeze-mage and company rely on that burst so much is because they tend to have a lot less purely offensive tools. Freeze-mage barely even runs any real minions in it. It's a hard, almost pure control deck that can only win through a very specific burst combo. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Locking down the board, controlling the game and finishing out with a big combo is just as viable a strategy as flooding the board with minions, or going full aggro.

Then again, I'm primarily a control player, so slightly biased. Handlock, Control Priest, Zoolock, malygoslock, anyfinadin. Aggro can be fun sometimes when I don't feel like thinking, but midrange stuff just bores me most of the time. Assuming they don't nerf Malygos into the ground, I'll probably pick up malygos rogue, since it's the only rogue archetype that is in any way appealing to me.

Some people like hitting face, some people like playing on curve, I like locking down the board and slowly grinding my opponent out of options before I bring the hammer down and put them out of their misery >. I just hope that Blizzard makes a point to nurture a variety of playstyles as they go into a rotating meta.

 

[SecondPrize]

I started playing Hearthstone a month and a half ago.
I invested $10 into the GvG packs and all my coins into Naxx and GvG because they have cards I need for my mage.
And then I found out they will be thrown out of the bus.

I kinda feel scammed despite it being my fault for not knowing better.

If you're going to stick with standard and having just started and not having a decent card collection that's a good plan, the dust from Naxx is worth the gold you spent on it. Don't think of it as a total loss or that you got suckered into spending the gold on something useless because if you're building a specific deck then you will get more than if you were buying packs or entering arena and dusting the stuff to create the Alexstraza or the epics you'd need for freeze mage. Just think of it as regret-free dust to build what you want.