What cards are good? - Spreadsheet updated!

Multiplayer Discussion
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  • Which cards are good?
  • What cards should I keep, even though they’re not “meta” right now?
  • What is safe to disenchant for more dust?

For a while, I have maintained a spreadsheet called “Cards for a Limited Collection”, and have just updated with new sheets for Common/Rare, and Epic/Legendary cards.

As with anything that rates cards, ratings are somewhat subjective and the context should be taken into account. In this case, I have rated them on general usefulness, long-term use in your collection, and dustable cards for right now.

Each card is rated as one of 5 categories:

  • Staples are practically cards you should always keep if you open them up in a pack. Cards to craft are also mostly in this category.
  • Good cards are not always crafting priorities but will find use in your collection at some point if you want to play a certain deck.
  • Ok cards help support the other cards in the top two categories.
  • Niche cards may be part of an off-meta deck. Casual cards are useful if you’re missing other cards to play, but they aren’t competitively efficient. Meme cards are niche cards more for fun.
  • Trash cards are cards that are pretty much always going to be bad or replaceable by a better card, or their use is so niche you’re better off getting the dust for them now.

The whole Niche/Casual column can be a grey area but I didn’t want to split that up into multiple columns for Common/Rare.

If you are caught up with Hearthstone as each expansion releases, that is you save 6000 gold or more every 4 months (or pre-order with $$$), then obtaining all the Commons/Rares is going to be a non-factor.

However, if you are missing cards here and there, then the question becomes: “which cards are the most bang for buck from the sets I’m missing?”

A good example is the neutral cards from Rise of Shadows. Only 1 or 2 Commons/Rares are in Staple. Mountseller before Ashes of Outland would have been only in Good/Ok tier. Cards will shift with the upcoming Scholomance Academy expansion but most cards will stay at a similar rating. A card may be in a “meta deck” right now but only be in the OK category.

The spreadsheet is called “Cards for a Limited Collection”, after all. You can add comments to the spreadsheet, expressing your opinion if you want.

There is also a tab, listing all the Hearthstone sets, and a tab for Galakrond’s Awakening, which you might find useful. 2019 sheets are hidden, in case you wanted to check stuff from Witchwood, Boomsday and Rastakhan.

If there is enough requests, I may do a Wild version.

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It’s very dangerous to rate Standard cards as trash.

For example, Flark didn’t find a home on release but was a staple in Mech Hunter and Quest Hunter the following year.

I even remember Regis saying Togwaggle was one of the worst Legendary cards in Kobolds, and it ended up becoming an archetype defining card for a great Druid deck.

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As I’m very much aware, Hadronox was an example of this until Witching Hour came along.

I’m not the type of player who says “50% of every set is trash”, either, so the trash list is fairly short. It’d be shorter if I didn’t put more in there that a player could disenchant and not lose out on much.

Windfury Harpy is in Trash right now because Gyrocopter exists. But in a different time, I ran Harpy in multiple decks with Corpsetaker. So it would have been Niche, or even Ok at that time under this rating system.

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I am usually against classifying cards in this manner. Reason is that it removes the learning process of each player, to know how to judge/assess each card by themself.

It forms a great part in deck building, and adapting to meta changes, instead of ‘blindly’ following “meta-decks”.

However, I still commend the effort and thus a like awarded. :smiley:

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Look, the bottom line is, if you’re a new player - you should not be crafting anything because you don’t know what the hell it is that you’re doing. You should not be dusting cards that are not extras. You will royally screw your collection.

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So, your advice to new players is “dont craft, don’t dust”?

Sounds quite fun!

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I tell the exact opposite to new players tbh. Getting a viable deck asap is important for hearthstone because of the rewards you get from higher ranks help you expand your collection a lot faster than if you don’t dust stuff.

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It is still up to the player to figure out why a card is staple, or not, and what decks a card is suited for.

If anything, I’d hope that listing every card would bring to light, cards that “I’d forgot they existed”, because they’re not meta. Because how often do we keep hearing that?

Hence the Staple and good cards are there, so you don’t screw your collection disenchanting them.

Niche and Trash category cards you can choose to disenchant which ones you want and won’t lose much. Casual is in there because there are cards like Explosive Shot which are ok if you don’t have much else to start off, but later on not use much.

When I was fairly new, I disenchanted Arcane Golem, Kidnapper, and golden Leatherclad Hogleader to craft some cards for a Midrange Hunter that got me to Rank 5. Would have been impractical otherwise.

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The you should always wait until you need the dust before you make a craft. But yeah honestly if you want to go f2p you either need a budget deck or you can take a wild secret burn mage and substitute the aluneth for a 100 dust jeeves if you want. Pretty solid 1700-3200 dust semi budget deck diamond worthy 5 deck. It climbs very fast in the low ranks. Alternatively you can go to hsreplay and sort with your collection for cheap decks to craft which is how i found I had a standard totem shaman alongside a legend worthy discolock in wild. But before that if you’re f2p on a budget you can try to make a decent budget deck and spend 200-1000 dust on crafts.

You can look at card potential as a ‘could this card ever be good’, not a is it homeless right now situation. Something like a golden epic 3 mana 1/1 blubber baron is likely to always be bad, 8 mana 6/8 boogie monster worse than grull even if it sticks yeah, but often cards can make a comeback or end up getting broken. Just look at quest mage and toggwaggle fatigue combo deckthief druid. The quest was basically a instant win, but getting and casting 6 random spells took time when the best was a 5 mana cabalists tome. Note evocation got printed and 4 0 mana Giants so they can otk without needing simicariums or just vargoth you Or alexstraza and you’re dead.

On the other hand the monthly packs are well worth pushing for but you should be limiting to piloting a budget 1500-6000 dust deck rather than cannibalizing if you need and just push to rank floors learning even if just the decks you face and getting experience.

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@Jonius.
A topic for your consideration.
Legitimate cards to hold copies of in case of nerfs

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A lot of cards in this expansion will be really, really good. The only real loser is control. I’m betting that other Warrior decks will see way more play than Big and that goes for other class’s control decks as well. The game will be way too swingy to the point where just trying to keep the board clean for 6+ turns won’t be enough.

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Shortlist
Lightning Bloom (Common, Druid/Shaman)
Glide (Rare, DH)
Secret Passage (Epic, Rogue)
Raise Dead (Common, Priest/Warlock)
Devout Pupil (Epic, Paladin/Priest)

There’s a couple of more, but I haven’t been quite keeping up with the community whispers…

UPDATE: Mindrender Illucia and Kael’thas (undisenchantable) are getting nerfed

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Epics and Legendaries for Scholomance have been mostly updated with a preliminary rating. Overall, at least half are in the “Good, but not necessary to craft if you want to save your dust”, the sweet spot. This is in contrast to DoD, where a good third of legendaries could be regarded as “almost staple” for their respective classes

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22 Nov: BUMP, since the forums isn’t allowing me to triple post:

I have added in the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire cards. Ratings may change, but generally a Staple card will stay good, and a niche card won’t suddenly become a staple.

Disclaimer: Rating is based on value having the card in your collection over multiple expansions.

New expansions have been pushing the previous expansions’ cards out of play quite a bit, so the older cards may need to be rerated. With MDF, the power level isn’t quite as high as some of the older expansions.

Also consider that Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, Descent of Dragons, Galakrond’s Awakening, and Demon Hunter Initiate sets, are expected to rotate out of Standard in around 4 months.