Will the cards that combine choose one powers have any effect on your choose thrice card? Is there a way to combine the effects in the game right now?
I don’t understand how these druid cards are made, honestly. Maybe we are missing something, but this looks just ridiculously over powered.
Degenerate. Stay in MTG where the developers intentionally ruin balance to sell card packs.
Without digging into reddit threads where the devs actually show up on occasion, I’m not sure how Disciple of Eonar will interact with sleep under the stars.
Will it affect only the first choice, or all 3, or none at all since it’s a “Choose Thrice” and not a “Choose One”?
They release broken cards intentionally, because they believe that they can nerf them later on.
They want to scam people into spending resources into getting these broken cards, and after a couple of months they nerf them. The problem is that by that time a portion of the fanbase has taken a break or flat out retired permanently. This is especially true when degenerate strategies like control warrior are meta.
That’s my question there, will it have any effect at all because it’s technically not a “choose one” card.
No, it wont have any effect. They dont work with Branching Paths.
No. Choice one cards are clear on that.
Only choice one cards are affected, no choice twice or whatever.
So far…
I haven’t played standard for a couple of months, so I missed this druid deck people talk about, but it sounds to me like the real problem there was:
a) Druid’s dragon package lets them hide behind a pile of taunt dragons while ramping with little to no tempo loss. With each of these new ramping additions they need to drop dragons and if they drop enough dragons then they need to drop the entire synergy and rely on something else. Deck size is 30 after all.
b) This rotation has been literally nerfed to oblivion. Ramp druid was at no point a problem until aggression in the format lowered. Which still proves the point that having access to ramp isn’t a problem per se; you need to be able to survive aggression. Looking at druid survival tools, there’s nothing really outstanding there. Reading all this talk about doomkin is actually kinda funny because until now this card has always felt too slow to use in most decks, particularly in druid. This tells me aggression is now pretty tame in the format.
Again tho, I have been taking a long break from standard so I might be completely wrong. But looking at what is available to druid I don’t really see it being this menace everyone seems to expect. Warrior tho… That’s going to be funny.
The problem with ramping is two fold.
The ramp
The payoff
Previously, Druid did not have a #2. You could ramp, but that ramp only did so much. So you ramped into a Dragon Nest. Now you start your value before your opponent does. This was strong, but other decks could play catch up.
What has changed was the introduction of Marin AND the nerfing of Reno/Unkilliax.
Keep in mind, the counter to Unkilliax was Yogg for most decks.
Once Reno went to 10 and Unkilliax went to 9, it made it harder for other decks to play.
Except for Druid. It’s as if the nerf never happened for them.
So now, Druid has ramp, then holds you to your low mana with Doomkin, and while you are at 5 and they are at 10, they are playing Marin and getting a massive advantage. Think of Marin like a massive mana ramp card. The faster you play him, the faster you get a 3 mana spell that draws cards and sets them to 0. The faster you play your high cost stuff for free, the faster you take control of the board before your opponent has enough mana to react.
And, if you are able to do something with 6 mana vs their 10 mana board, they can just spit out a Yogg faster than you can and steal whatever board you have.
This has been the problem. The insane ramp into Marin ramp for free cards into a Doomkin chain that lets Druid play end game stuff while you’re barely at mid game power.
And since Druid has this faster access to higher cost cards while keeping you at bay from playing those same cards, they push the ceiling of broken stuff by running Dorian because they can afford it and that allows them to maintain board and cheat mana even more.
So now, with the new set, Druid is getting more Ramp, even upping the game by making their mana go even higher, and now they have MORE payoff cards.
It’s not just ramp, but ramp is the enabler.
We’re going to see this just get worse with the expansion.
That’s because that card is an incredibly power crept version of multiple cards. You no longer will play Ignis in an Odyn Warrior deck hoping to randomly get the best weapon when you have a spell in deck that does it for less and is harder to prevent. Worse is that Odyn on 6 is a real possibility.
Just imagine that card played after you play
It is probably marin if we really gonna point a culprit.
Still that nerf a neutral because one class broke the game with it is bad and the whelp is a very powercrept card.
In the end of the day it does not matter that much how much conditions you put under a card but how much that condition hinder other aspects of the deck.
And for whelp the math just don’t fit.
I would even go as far as suggest that not today but from next rotation onwards we get wild growth out of the core and focus on printing 3 mana ramp.
I didn’t account for Marin, which is fair, but all that still ignores the fact druids still seem to be facing a lot less aggression to begin with, which allows them to pull this off.
They can ramp and take mana from you, then go ballistic on value with Marin and their mana advantage and kill you with owl or whatever else, but how do they stay alive until that point? I am guessing it’s the dragon package doing the real work in the deck. Doomkin is a pretty bad tempo play, even with a mana advantage. I don’t think the deck you describe could thrive in the early days of this expansion. And again, to include all the new ramp + possibly new mage spells to make the combo easier, they’d have to drop something. And if they drop dragons, the deck starts falling apart quickly. That dragon package is insane but it does eat a lot of deck space.
Meanwhile warrior has all the tools it needs to just pull these in with ease and cruise through the game easily. I think it’s a massive difference.
P.S: Good wishes to yall americans tonight.
So here’s the thing with aggression. Aggression is here, it’s strong (see Flood Paladin) and combo Druid had next to no issues with it. Swipe at 3 just needs to help you survive just long enough to put your opponent at 4-5 mana when you’re at 7 or 8. Then it’s game over.
So before Splish Splash was banned, Flood Paladin, arguably the best aggro deck in the meta and one of the best we’ve seen in a long time, is a 50/50 match. This alone tells you all you need to know about how strong Combo Druid is.
Token Hunter, Swarm Shaman and whatever other aggro you can think of gets obliterated by Druid.
The only thing that was beating Combo Druid was Pain Warlock and Treant (aggro) Druid and those were only 45% matches. Combo Druid essentially had zero hard counters.
Swipe, Free Dragon Taunts, Gemtosser and the early Dragon package. That’s all it needed to get to turn 5 and then blow up.
I think this is the misnomer but I can only speak from someone who plays non-aggro decks. Doomkin, in my opinion, IS the culprit card. Without Doomkin basically making the game out of reach the turn it’s played, creates such a fall behind issue that it’s nearly impossible to recover from. If Doomkin was gone, it would allow slower decks to go toe to toe. Doomkin is the highest play win rate card in the deck. Usually, those are reserved for end game cards like Sif, right? Not for Druid. It’s 100% Doomkin. If you play Doomkin and the opponent isn’t aggro, it’s extremely hard to come back from.
Doomkin is a 2 mana ramp + 1 turn major swing. It’s not just a 2 mana ramp like people think. Even if you copy it and play it yourself, you still lost a turn because you started your turn with less mana already. The effect is felt immediately.
If Druid is at 6 and you are at 4 and they play Doomkin, they are now at 8 on their next turn and you start your turn with 4. You can’t do anything significant with 4 mana to combat the 8 mana turn coming.
If Druid is at 6 mana and you are at 4 and they play Doomkin that sets them at 7 and you at 3. Then on your turn you play Doomkin via Puppet Theatre for example, you are now at 5 mana and they are at …7 at the start of their turn…and you just lost your entire turn. It’s THAT specific swing that causes issues for any mid game or late game deck. You can’t play around it. Doomkin is played, you’re immediately affected and behind.
It’s just a combo of everything. Free dragons causing free minion boards and then doomkins not allowing you to answer the boards they played for free really hurt.
Yes, but they currently aren’t dropping dragons. They might be able to in the expansion, who knows? With the 2 new mana ramping spells, they might be able to.
And yet losing their 2 drop mana ramp dragon only placed them back to Tier 2. If they unban it and don’t nerf it, it’s going to be an issue.
Yes, Warrior is going to be a problem as well. Warrior might even be worse, who knows.
We should all expect a Reno Warrior surge combined with an Odyn Warrior surge as soon as expansion releases. Mark my words.
In my opinion, removing Doomkin or banning it would fix a lot. And I think Gem tosser is dang near close to being the other issue. When I lose a game to Combo Druid, it is almost exclusively because they got a Doomkin off or ramped to 10 when I’m at 4 and they unload a Gem Tosser and it’s hitting face for 10 on turn 4 and 5. It’s brutal.
But everyone is going to focus on the ramp because, yes, ramp IS the enabler. But Doomkin played win rate is entirely too high for a 6 mana (read: 4 mana) drop.
Expansion release, Druid will just be playing 2 mana ramp for 2 crystals next turn and dropping early Doomkins and that’s going to create non-games.
I agree. It’s one thing to ramp, it’s another to steal crystals from the opponent AND ramp.
I think they should also have Nestmatron return less than four mana. It’s a free taunt with good stats and gives them stall.
You do make compelling points. I still think you understate how much power has scaled back in general since the start of the expansion. The only new addition in the deck really is Marin and druid was actually trash at the start. I doubt it just boils down to late refinement. Anyhow, I can see how the deck has legs in the current format. Not so sure about how it’ll fare in the next expansion. I still think it’s going to boil down to what they need to drop from the deck (probably not dragons, I agree, but looking at the list in hsreplay it does seem like a tight list), and how nutty everything else in comparison.
I didn’t think about Gem tosser actually, jesus that’s a 3-mana payoff card on its own lol.
Anyways, I think you tend to look at druid issues from the pov of a non-aggro player and in the end ramping is all about out-greeding non-aggro decks. You put too much blame on the ramping itself imo and overlook how vulnerable this makes them earlier on. Or at least that’s what should happen. Sometimes the devs themselves don’t understand this and decide to give druid insane tempo/ defensive stuff, like the dragons package lol.
On that note, there is one bad boy that I would most definitely slot into ramp druid. And I could see being stupid in the deck:
Absolutely. It shouldn’t be free at all. It creates earlier minion boards that are hard to deal with. When they do this, you usually have to play catch up. Doomkin then doesn’t allow the catch up.
Marin and Dorian.
And also, the nerfs to Unkilliax are important here. If Unkilliax was 8 and now 9, it’s essentially now at 10 for everyone else and still at 8 for Druid because of the ramp.
Yeah, this card does so much damage. And Marin allowing it to be 0 mana with a draw or Dorian getting copies is an issue. The Marin 3 cost draw 3 for 0 mana is brutal. Especially when they do it with Dorian.
Another thing to note here is that because of ramp, Druid can drop Dorian early and hide it behind a taunt. Then they player Flowerchild. Now you have 2 minions discounted by 1 and 2 1-cost minions that should be 6+ mana higher. It’s absolutely brutal.
The entire deck synergizes off the fact that they ramp early and get to a mana position that they can cheat mana and minions like crazy.
Yeah, this might make the cut. I’m not sure what they do, but I’m going to guess they will be fitting Gorgonzormu in there as well.
A funny thing about Doomkin. Before the nerf to whelp i modified my old egg hunter deck and converted it from Reno. It’s amazing what you can do with that deck with just 4-5 mana. Druids had no real answer to those big minions and/or dropping multiple King Plush so early in the game.
If druid continues to be a problem i am going to modify it some more and get Sasquawk into the deck for more damage.
Ngl the prospect of ramping to 16+ mana and hitting control decks with Gem tossers while they stay at 7 does tickle the sadist within me. But then I know I will eventually come across a DK playing plagues and it will make me uninstall again 
Why stop at 16 mana when 99 is the cap? 
And I don’t know why the heck everyone and their mother is playing Plague DK and Rainbow Reno Plague DK but they are EVERYWHERE in D5-D1. It’s disgusting how many there are. It’s like 50% of my matches.