'cept Mountain Giant is not balanced and not because of Conjurer’s Call but because of what the game has become:
originally no class had the ability of generating so much hand presence or resources, making Mountain Giant essentially viable to cheat out early on in builds like Handlock which had almost no early game and no early game plays but solely relied on increasing their hand size. Not only that, Lifesteal was not a thing; so taking damage while avoiding the early game tempo would essentially put you in a bad spot, unless you also played it with the pre-nerf Molten Giant in Handlock builds.
Now, alot of classes can be given an insane amount of resources without losing too much tempo, thus being able to play an 8/8 for as low as 3-4 Mana with relative ease. I dare it not compare it to Azure Drake but Hearthstone has just turned into an environment way too abusable for Mountain Giant and devs should have caught on this by now.
Azure drake is an understated card for the cost. The reason azure drake fit into so many decks is because it was like Zilliax. Not Overpowered, but just very efficient. Cycle and spell power with a 4/4 body for 5 is just good value. It is incorrect of you to compare Azure Drake to giants.
I still stand firm in the opinion that Azure Drake didn’t deserve to get HoFed. It was a good card, but problematic? Please. I am firmly against HoFing anymore cards. Period.
God forbid more than one class be able to properly leverage a neutral card, right?
If all classes have access to Mountain Giant or equally powerful plays, I’d say balance is stoll maintained, just at a higher threshold than before. It’s okay for curving out vanilla minions to not always be the top strategy.
Azura Drake was HoF’d because it was becoming an auto-unclude due to having premium stats and draw attached to it.
Sylvanas was not an auto include; it was “supposedly premptively” HoF’ed because of the DR support in upcoming releases.
It was outclassed by Aya throughout that time.
Again, ignore HoF; it serves no purpose since all classes can enjoy a strong neutral.
I’m done here. We can argue this whole day; keep your 4 Manas 8/8 and let’s wait on more Conjurer’s Calling-like stuff/scenarios or means to abuse an average of “4 Mana cheat play”.
First, you fill your hand to maximum with a Mana Cyclone turn (and/or Book of Specters/Banana Buffoon/Arcane Intellect). Then, on turn 4, you play Elemental Evocation into Mountain Giant (which means the Giant only costs 1 mana when played). Then, you play Conjurer’s calling on it. And now you have two Mountain Giants on turn 4.
Look Luke. Heres the deal. I doubt Blizzard will ever un retire HoFed cards back into standard (even though I would like to see a rotating basic set with a partially rotating expert set). The way things currently are, Hofing cards from the basic and expert sets is incredibly damaging to the game.
Suppose you are a new player. How are you supposed to get started if all of the good class cards are gone? How are people supposed to heaven forbid, take a break from the game, come back and play if they have no good class or expert cards to fall back on (because all their other cards rotated). These are serious issues.
