Hearthstone News: Hall of Fame, New Classic Cards and Class Identity!

So we got a LONG Developer's Insights post from Hearthstone talking about class identity and how moving forward, we're going to try not to go too far off from the strengths and weaknesses of each class's identity. It's... it's genuinely interesting to take a look at the sheer amount of cards we've had in Hearthstone over the past couple of years and see just how much we've strayed from how the class fantasies were originally envisioned to be. We've, of course, deviated here and there over the years, but I do like this long, long post about how they know where they've fucked up (Frozen Throne and Un'Goro, as much as I love them, did introduce a lot of things that sort of really caused things to spiral out of control), they're trimming down the Classic and Basic set to fit with this more, and among the ones that get sent off to have fun only in Wild are Vanish and Mind Blast. I am so glad these aren't nerfed, and I see that they will continue to prosper a lot in Wild.

I'm not going to go through every single class identity analysis or whatever, but man, Druid's Strength/Weakness has really gone super haywire until the newest rotation, huh?

Anyway, in order to replace these cards that are moving into Wild, we're getting new Basic and Classic cards, as well as a bunch of others to replace previous Hall of Fame rotations. Pretty sweet! And... and, of course, being some of the more basic cards out there, none of these are especially powerful. But it's neat that they're actually paying attention to older cards instead of "new cards buy new packs give us money please". I'm going to do a quick, quick review of all of the cards we got:


Rogues get Plaguebringer, a 4-mana 3/3 that gives a friendly minion Poisonous. This is essentially a shittier version of Plague Scientist from Knights of the Frozen Throne. Vanish was taken out because they didn't want Rogue to have an evergreen board clear, but we're getting one that's a lot more limited, and asks a lot more compared to Vilespine Slayer or Walk the Plank, while still being relatively reasonably statted. Mostly going to be an arena card; Rogues have never really been a token deck.

Radiance is a cheap Priest spell costing one that restores 5 health... but only to your hero. Most comparable to Flash Heal (and other equivalent cheap healing spells like Regenerate, or Divine Hymn) but a lot shittier. Only restoring 5 health to your hero for 1 mana? That's really expensive and restrictive. Hell, I'd probably call this unplayable even if it's at 0-mana. Kind of a bummer that we're losing out Mind Blast for this -- only thing I can think that this could be combo'd with would be like, Lyra the Sunshard or something.

Siegebreaker for Warlock replaces... uh... Doomguard? We're moving a bit more into demon synergy, and Siegebreaker is a big fat Pit Lord demon. And it's way too expensive. A 5/8 with taunt that buffs your other demons is a great minion. For 7 mana? That's way too expensive and impractical. It'd be nice to get out of random effects, but mostly he's definitely too weak to be played. Not the worst demon out there, though, and flavour-wise I do think that the current demon pool centers a bit too much on low-cost ones. Definitely a worse card that Doomguard, but a less problematic one.


Gift of the Wild, replacing Naturalize, is an 8-mana card that gives all minions +2/+2 and Taunt. Which is... pretty fucking bad, especially when you consider that Cenarius does the same thing, sans Taunt, for 1 mana more and comes with both a 5/8 body and the flexibility to build your own board if you had just been board-cleared. It's got none of the versatility and comeback mechanic that Forest's Aid gives, and it's way too expensive compared to literally any of the other board-buff cards. I get that the idea is to give Druid a Spreading Plague like effect while playing around the 'buff a pre-existing token board' flavour, but man is this card bad.

Righteousness, replacing Paladin's Divine Favor... is also bad. Giving all your minions Divine Shield is great. That one option from the Unidentified Maul is one of the best to come out of it. But for five mana? Holy hell that's overpriced. Really could've went with an additional effect, or a cheaper cost, or maybe bundled into a minion.


Replacing Sylvanas Windrunner and Ragnaros are Brightwing and High Inquisitor Whitemane, which are definitely very, very solid characters from the Warcraft lore that I approve to be inducted into the Classic set as opposed to, say, some of the far more exotic and expansion-specific ones. Brightwing, hailing from Heroes of the Storm, isn't the best card. She's 3-mana 3/2 and could've afforded to be more well-statted, but she's a neat jack-of-all-trades that generates a random Legendary... and is also a dragon. She's just such a safe 3-mana card for dragon decks. And admittedly there's a dearth of that in Standard right now, and Wild's power level is way too high, but Brightwing as a legendary that exists is something I'm a huge fan of. An evergreen tribal legendary is neat, and I really wished they'd insert a replcement for Old Murk-Eye for this reason.

Whitemane, meanwhile, is a 7-mana 6/8 with a battlecry that revives all friendly minions that died this turn. Which, of course, everyone will recognize as being basically Kel'Thuzad-Lite. One mana less, but the effects only happen once as a battlecry. I wouldn't discount Whitemane out just yet, though, because as N'Zoth, Bloodreaver Gul'dan and resurrection mechanics have shown, instant board generation is nothing to scoff at. Sure, she's only going to bring back things that died this turn and thus the power level is waaaay weaker than Kel'Thuzad or N'Zoth, and she's never going to see the light of day in Wild, but in some Standard metas, she could be a very acceptable end-game card.


A trio of neutrals to replace... uh... Azure Drake, Mountain Giant, and one more? Whatever the case, these three are definitely not as interesting as any of the others, although in my opinion not as bad as Righteousness. Barrens Stablehand, a 7-mana 4/4 that summons a random beast, has such a huge, huge pool to pick from that he's way too unstable to consider, so it at least fits into the theme of Classic-set Epic cards being either horrendously powerful or just simply horrendous. Arcane Devourer is an 8-mana 5/5 that gains +2/+2 after every spell, so a more expensive, more impractical and more cumbersome Questing Adventurer. The elemental tag really doesn't matter here.

SI:7 Infiltrator is a 4-mana 5/4 that destroys a random single enemy Secret, though, and she's definitely a lot more stable and playable than Kezan Mystic or Eater of Secrets, something I found surprising. But people have been clamouring for Blizzard to put in cards like Dirty Rat, Eater of Secrets, Skulking Geist and other counter cards into the Classic set, and instead we get SI:7 Infiltrator, something to fight off the large amount of Secrets in the game. Right now they're not as powerful as they were a couple of expansions back (Emerald Spellstone, anyone?) but having the option, and one without a negative-to-cost statline, is amazing and I definitely approve of this.

So yeah, a bunch of fun, fun little additional cards! Looking forward to the next expansion, even if I've been spending all of my Hearthstone playing time just exclusively playing the Dalaran Heist and completely neglecting my ladder rank for the first time in multiple expansions. Hell, I didn't even play that much Rise of the Mech mini-event or whatever, because Dalaran Heist is pretty dang fun!