RedDeadFred said:
On the bright side, cards like Bladed Cultist, and Shadow Strike might allow for Tempo Rogue (my favourite archetype of the class) to make a comeback. Deathrattle Rogue might also be strong. Heck, even C'thun Rogue could be quite good seeing as running just one Blade of C'thun and a few of the better C'thun cards would be enough to buff him significantly. Rogue now has the best spot removal and with stickier minions being less common, ensuring 2 for 1's with board clears won't be quite as important.
I REALLY don't think Bladed Cultist is going to be good. It, like so many other rogue cards, is a card you can't actually cast on curve. If anything, it is the MOST uncastable-on-curve card rogue has ever gotten. Because on turn 1 you can not combo it unless you're going second and either backstabbing a 1 drop (which will never be a good use of backstab) or coining into it, which is a waste of the coin since it wastes a mana. You'd be better off just coining out an actual 2 drop. The one exception is if you go second and start with double Bladed Cultist in your hand, which is hardly something that will happen with any reliability. And since casting on curve is what tempo is all about, I don't see Bladed Cultist being good.
The problem with deathrattle is that those sticky minions that aren't around anymore were also the best deathrattles. Losing them hurts deathrattle's early game and makes raptor less of a value play unless you save it til much later in the game to drop it on something that costs more than it. Meanwhile, a combination of blade flurry nerf, and sludge belcher and antique healbot rotating out, means that getting to the late game when you can start making the cool raptor plays becomes more difficult. Not only that, but without sticky deathrattles, the matchup against other control decks, specifically the ones that aren't losing anything like Freeze Mage and Control Warrior, become much more difficult as well.
And finally, C'Thun... is hard to judge right now since it's so different from previous decks. I feel C'Thun might end up becoming the best rogue deck, because the ability to go '25/25 or more C'Thun, clear your board and damage your face, shadowstep, next turn do it again' is going to be really really strong. That said, I suspect it's going to have the same issue, except possibly even more exasperated, of trying to survive against aggro decks. Aggro may have been nerfed, but it's not gone entirely, while the best defenses against it are. Rogue is still the worst class at trying to recover from damage, while taking the most of it from repeatedly smashing your face into things, and now it's undoubtedly the worst class at trying to keep a flood of minions off the board. I suspect a C'Thun deck will have VERY strong matchups against control decks, moderate success against mid-range decks, and just get slaughtered by aggro. So, like a better version of mill rogue then (which is a fun but terrible deck).
