Power is contextual. Power IS winrate. There is no such thing as a card that wins games, only decks that win games. As far as cards are concerned Hearthstone is a team sport and they have 29 teammates. Therefore Mind Blast has a drawback that it can’t be played in non-Priest decks and this drawback DIRECTLY effects it’s power level. A Priest spell that does 5 face damage for 2 and a Hunter spell that does 5 face damage for 2 are NOT of equal power. Power creep is about power.
No it’s not, because Molten Rune isn’t competing against Identity Theft or Frost Strike AT ALL. Molten Rune was competing against whatever Mage card Molten Rune replaced in decklists. It replaced it because Molten Rune is more powerful (or it didn’t replace it at all).
But power isn’t integer based like that. Cards don’t match up like… 2 is greater than 1, or even fire beats grass beats water beats fire.
Decks can, but they don’t print decks, they only print the ingrediants for decks.
And I mean, sure, you can’t directly compare cards from different classes, but as I said my observation was general. Molten Rune is a worse value generating card, but is better in other ways.
So they are actively reducing the power level of card generation. While maintaining the game’s sort of… pace. Which even then they aren’t doing, because the power level of board flood is also gonna go down after rotation. Aggro druid is losing almost all of it’s biggest tools, so is totem shaman, so is aggro Paladin (though we have yet to see Paladins Badlands set, and obviously things can change in core or next year’s first set).
I didn’t say anything about integers. High level deckbuilding is about performance stats, but those are usually percentages calculated to 4 significant digits.
Yes, except the “sort of pace” isn’t maintained, it’s increased. In other words, power creep continues like the inexorable force that it is, but less of that power is in card generation this time and more of the power is in something else.
Pardon me being the guy bringing it up, but cards do have win rates based on data. When cards have particularly high win rates (based on drawn/played) when compared to the deck’s win rate, such things are worth noting.
At least it’s better information than just labeling a card power crept. Decks are one thing, but as you’ve said, how a card functions in a given class means a lot.
Yes. Basketball players have stats as well. I stand by my point that card performance is a team sport, in the same way that I stand by my stance that basketball is a team sport despite the existence of legends like Jordan and James. You can’t properly evaluate the stats of such players outside of the context of the teams that they played with and against, which created the opportunities that created the stats.
Power is so contextual that there’s no such thing as a card that’s powerful in a vacuum.
But those are also based on card matchups and other factors too. They’re not just numbers that exist in a vaccuum. (Which I think is your point? I feel like we’re crossing in the night a bit here.)
And often times when they print new cards, they’re either trying to soft nerf existing over performing decks (Golakka Crawler eating Patches is an easy example, but even Sargeras silencing and destroying whole boards is meant largely as a way to put a crimp on Paladin/Death Knight/Priest aggro decks).
But that doesn’t mean Sargeras is just purely a more powerful card, it just serves a key purpose.
…that’s a bad example because Sargeras is probably the single most powerful late game card in current standard. But I think the theory is sound.
Sort of. What we used to also have was a lot of synergy power. Which they’ve also all but removed to a large degree.
Like Relics are an entirely linear card type that’s dependent on other relics. They’ve really stopped printing that sort of thing. And that started with FoL where they tried to beef up the class’s core components and key words, which are far more general. Rather than printing a bunch of new, cannibalistic packages that tell you how to build your deck.
Like Molten Rune is a stronger card, but it’s also much less reliable than say, Frozen Touch. And it’s overall more expensive. But it also doesn’t require you to run a board at all. It’s also an Ignis activator.
Those card winrates are also based on deck winrates, though.
There’s a connection, but not directly based on one another. Some cards in given decks can be low, and some cards in given decks can be high. But if you have a large sample size of decks and games and look at how a single card performs across each deck, you can gauge how powerful a card is despite the decks it is played in.
Perhaps so. As I said, power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I mean in another recent post I compared Vulpera Scoundrel to Snake Eyes in the classic “power creep meme” format. But as I said earlier, power creep isn’t a disease like the meme assumes; I was joking. Vulpera Scoundrel’s current power level is zero because it isn’t played by any deck that wins. Power creeping it is the correct move, not the wrong one.
Well, I mean Vulpera isn’t a legendary, isn’t a class card, and the cards Snake Eyes discovers aren’t always class cards (while Vulpera Scoundrel’s are).
But a 3 mana 2/3 that discovers 2 cards IS a lot stronger than a 3 mana 2/3 that discovers 1. It’s just way more hand value and tempo.
Snake Eyes is also super cool, and isn’t like… like I think a lot of power creep invalidates existing cards that are in rotation, or pushes some element of the game (card generation, face damage, board clears) and can make it less fun. And I think that’s different than…
Ogre-Gang Thug is strictly a better card than Ogre Brute.
Not different in the way that matters. Ogre Brute is a power level zero card. It should be power crept.
The core assumption underlying all of your thinking here is that the power level of old cards is appropriate and therefore making directly superior versions of them is wrong. That assumption is incorrect. We need strictly superior versions of old cards.
Printing a fire spell which is 4 mana deal 8, or buffing Fireball up to be a 4 mana deal 8 is kind of toxic power creep because there’s no real cause or reason to make a better card than Fireball even though it doesn’t see play in any specific deck right now.
Making a better card than Ogre Brute is just sensible, it’s a bad card, that’s not interesting, and doesn’t even serve it’s express purpose.
I thought the whole concept of the expansion was that Bloodrock mined too deep without regard and unleashed N’Zoth. I’d be surprised if they didn’t show his face until the mini set after giving him that lovely cowboy hat and boots as the very first piece of the expansion we got to see.
I don’t know guys… this excavate thing smells bad… Some classes will be able to build deck around it because they get a 4 mana cost OP Legendary… also get excavating class cards with mana cheat but the others won’t… Feels like an unfair decision again… But we will see…
i think the intent is for some classes to build excavate decks. the other classes are intended to use them as value cards in highlander styles. the problem is i haven’t seen enough payoff yet to justify running highlander archetype. it may even out after the miniset. lord knows there are enough powerful decks now, so highlander might not take off until after rotation. if excavate is good enough to keep up with current deck power levels it could be too powerful after rotation, and be a menace in that way too. we’ll see how it shakes out. i feel your worries might be justified.
