Because it cycles itself and is a huge threat to leave on board.
An 1-mana 1/1 that draws a card is already considered good. Here, we have an 1-mana 1/1 that draws a card, and continues to draw additional cards as long as it stays alive.
The card’s impact on the game for just 1 mana is huge. Courier doesn’t even come close.
When we’re looking at vanilla minions, there’s a formula for value:
Total stats = mana cost * 2 + 1
Taunt would be worth 1 additional (which is why senjin shieldmaster is a 4 mana 3/5, not 4/5), divine shield counts as attack (so for 3 mana with divine shield you’d get a 3/1 minion, because 3+3+1 = 2*3+1 =7), etc.
So for example, a good for 4 drop could have 9 stats total, distributed as 4/5 or 5/4 (but generally, health is valued a bit more than attack, so you’d prefer 4/5)
However, since we don’t have vanilla minions anymore, it gets harder to evaluate the stats over mana ratio for value
What we have to do now is dissect a card to 2 similar ones and try to go from there
So for example, we have Alexstrasza 9 mana 8/8 minion which sets a hero’s health to 15. Since we got 16 total stats, which is worth more than 7 but less than 8 mana, we’re paying around 1,5 mana for the effect of setting any here’s health to 15, right?
Contrast that to INFERNAL!, new warlock card, 4 mana 6/6 taunt which does the same, but only to your own hero
Obviously, since you’re only doing it to yourself, so you would gain a half of those 1,5 mana for the effect, let’s say 0,75 mana, rounded up to 1, which means that for 4 mana we should get around 5 mana worth of stats
In conclusion, the card should have stats not higher than 11 total, taunt included, so the best it should be is 5/5 taunt or 4/6 taunt…
…definitely not 6/6 taunt.
So, for me, this refers to the “vanilla test”?
and that isn’t necessarily valid anymore as power has been added over the years?
This one throws me a bit. Doesn’t it benefit a warlock to do this to their own toon, and so wouldn’t the benefit have some bearing on the stats?
It’s still a good measure of value of a card, and a starting point when designing a card
But to evaluate newer cards, its’ necessary to separate their effect from their stats, calculate the stats cost and then you can deduce the effect cost by subtracting stats cost from the card cost
That way it’s easy to calculate how much effects cost on balanced cards, to compare them to cards whose balance we’re trying to evaluate
I misstyped that part - since we’re only able to manipulate our own health like this, we should be gaining a half of 1,5 mana, not pay a half of it
It does in one deck, painlock
But generally it’s more of a limiting condition which lowers the card’s cost. Other warlock decks shouldn’t be able to profit from that card, except maybe some control deck which uses it as a heal and a decent taunt minion in the late game (unfortunately, no such deck can be viable while reno warrior is in full swing)
I’m honestly thinking about including it in more aggro warlock versions which aren’t painlock and that alone shows how broken the card is, lol
It really should have lower stats, as the limiting effect is not that bad - it goes both ways, yes it can damage you for up to 15 hp, but it can also heal you for up to 14
I mean it’s not that complicated xD
We pay 9 mana for 8/8 with similar effect
And we somehow pay only 4 mana for a 6/6 with TAUNT with similar effect
Something ain’t right here lol
It was meant to be a joke Mal, I thought you would’ve chuckled due to your opinion on the devs.
Sorry. My defenses are up. This is the only game I have ever played of this type, and I sometimes feel developmentally disabled when it comes to understanding the fundamentals.