Hearthstone Quick Take: Rating Rastakhan, Where I Differ 

I think the first decks I'll experiment with is odd mage (with the hero damage stuff because RAGNAROS) and odd Gonk druid, mainly because "odd gonk" sounds hilarious

As someone who plays a lot of Elemental Mage, I think that Arcanosaur is actually pretty good, in the right meta. I often have two or three Flame Elementals in hand in the mid game, which would make this easy enough to activate. In the current meta, it's not that great since most decks are more controlling. However, against an Aggro or Midrange/Tempo deck, this becomes a great card. I think that this is a good tech option for Elemental Mage, something that is good at clearing small, wide boards. And if Frost Lich Jaina is active, then it's also a good heal.

One thing about the Overkill mechanic. I think this is a clever way of Blizzard trying to slow down the meta (Although I don't have faith in it working). The main thing about Overkill is that the effect benefits off of minion trading. And this means trading (or Trump trading), which means not going face and the game lasting longer. The Overkill effect is basically an incentive to not go face (which will result in longer games). This exception would be against taunt minions of course since the trades would of most likely happened anyways.

Stop rephrasing cards... because often you forget certain things in the rephrasing. Stampeding Roar in this case: You: This Turn, a random Beast in your hand costs (6) and has rush. If you had properly rephrased it: This turn, a random Beast in you hand costs (6) and has rush, it loses its battlecry and does not trigger "when a minion is played" effects. Conclusion: Just leave the card texts as they are...

As a druid player, I wanted druid to receive strong cards when it was weak and vice versa. But I didn't want the weak cards to be like deathaxe punisher (forgotten and unplayable unless a broken card gets printed, which it won't). I wanted it to receive cards like thief priest gets. Treant druid is a great example because the deck won't be good, but it exists, and you can slap it together and have a fairly fun time playing the deck.

If you play claw just for Gonk, you're already playing a bad card to prop up another bad card. The real problem there is that Gonk is seven mana and doesn't do anything on its own, and isn't part of a combo that just lets you win. It's slow and clunky.

I would argue that Arcanosaur is pretty good. I play only elemental mage, and there really isn't a board clear right now which is hard to come by with a spell-less deck. I run meteorologist at the moment to fill that gap, and I would switch it out for Arcanosaur for the same cost for a more consistent effect.

druid is obviously being sabotaged. which im ok with. like you've stated previously druid has been good and its decks have survived by doing the same stuff. which is why its big mion this expansion has 4 att. these druid cards wont be good now if ever and that was by choice.

Arcanosaur is not a strictly worse version of Duskbreaker since Arcanosaur is playable by mages, while Duskbreaker isn’t. It is a fallacy to look at cards from different classes and say that one is awful because you would rather have the other card that you can’t actually put in your deck.

Imagine if Druid's last epic card was a minion that said "every time an opponent's minion dies, your hero gains 1 attack this turn" and the common was a cheap 0 or 1 mana card that did something like gain armor and summon a 0/1 for your opponent. You could see this really interesting and unique druid deck emerge that "defiles" the opponent's board and then hits face for a shit ton while acting like a miracle deck looking for claws, bites, and other cheap druid spells. Raptor Loa could function like this cool auctioneer.

Druid in this expansion seems to be specifically targeting low health, low attack minions as its main lunch. That seems to be goal of EVERY card that has been released for druid in this expansion so far.

The new hero-power druid is like freeze shaman: dead at birth.

So inspirational!! I love it

I caught that re-record at 4:00, you ain’t slick ;)

"That's where my rating system kicks ass" I'd argue that's where it sucks. You're just saying "idk" instead of actually trying to figure out whether or not it's gonna work.

This is where my rating kicks ass, instead of actually rating the card I just tell what it's about and pretend I just rated it.

I couldn't agree with your assessment on Arcanosaur and Stampeding Roar more. Arcanosaur costs more, it's condition is harder to pull off, and it damages your own minions. The only case were I can see this being okay is with Frost Lich Jaina for the healing.

yeah this is a fair assessment of predictions in general.

Thanks for the content penniless! Obligatory Request: do new warrior cards next plz 😉

theres too many wordsfor the ratings for me to keep up, but i love their style and theme :D

Arcanosaur is a card you prep when you expect a power turn from the opponent, not necessarily on curve. So if you are fighting an odd paladin, you can prep this with a defensive elemental on turn 5, then you can play this on curve to obliterate the board the next turn. Since we are looking at an elemental deck, you should be able to have the activeatable going almost by default - its much easier to play a Tar Creeper/Bonfire Elementa/whatever on curve ahead of an Arcanosaur than to have a dead card such as P. Drake/Legendary Dragons/Bone Drake in your hand. If you are looking at an Elemental/Big Spell mage specifically, you WANT the opponent aggro deck to slow down the pace and avoid making large boards. In the long run you out value them, especially once you survive to Jaina. Arcanosaur also helps make up for Jaina's weak board impact, simultaneously healing to compensate for damage you took earlier while also threatening clears.

I honestly want to mess around with these new neutral legendaries and the new Druid deck that seems like fun to me.

The 0 mana stampeding roar would be better. A: Playable without beast, not dead in your hand B: Battlecrys.

You miss one major problem with Gonk, if you attack multiple minions with your hero your hero will get a lot damage

What I don‘t like about traditional 5 star ratings is that often times people see a card as being good or medium but then they never appear in any deck because the meta isn‘t suited and suddenly a pre-release 3 Star card is a 1 Star card but only because nobody plays it. One expansion later: Oh no, Hadronox is not 1 Star but 5 Stars and Tar creeper isn‘t 4 Stars but 3 Stars now. Your rating system is way better as you give a rating, but also a condition, for example Lich King would be an undebated 5 Star card, but a card like Snowfury giant isn‘t a bad card but Overload Shaman is only decent at the moment, all could change with the new cards released though. A cards strenght isn‘t defined by its play frequency but more by it‘s strenght in a certain archetype, if the archetype doesn‘t work that well, the main card that makes the archetype tick isn‘t bad for that reason

5:34 Change it so it only grants attack on your turn.

People really need to start watching Kibler play his elemental deck, it’s really not bad at all, and has great tempo and keeps his hand size big, meaning he always has a lot of optionsZ

4:00 dat re-record...

The thing with Stampeding roar that you forget is two things. First, druid has mana gain. Second, witching hour exists, so if tyrantus dies after you play this, witching hour can bring it back earlier than intended.

I can imagine Gonk, the Raptor being abused next to the legendary weapon...

I don't even know what game this is I just like hearing oppinions

Spirit of the Raptor is a 1 mana pyromaniac

The comparison of Arcanosaur to Dusk breaker reminds me of the comparison of Servant of Kalimos to Drakenoid Operative. I'll never understand why Bliz wanted dragons to be objectively stronger- both in stats and for synergy's sake

IDK why Arcanosaur is compared to Duskbreaker when it should be compared to Abyssal Enforcer. Not to mention the Elemental tage can synergise well with Frost Lich Jaina.

6:25 am...I'm here .

Quite spesific.

I find it interesting that cards are only strong if they’re extremely powerful. Because no one wants a BALANCED CARD in their deck. It’s either super powerful, or I want it dusted, and it’s family dusted, and all traces of it erased.

I think saying Arcanosaur is bad because "well it's obvs when you set up, so it's bad" is a terrible argument. On turns where you play actual elementals like Bonfire or Blazecaller it can make the next turn very hard to guess what they're holding since they already have a board, and assuming it means they must have all of the above would lead to the opponent probably still end up playing into their enemies hand by not developing a board or properly answering the mage.

You literally have the best Hearthstone videos on youtube right now

First Everyone says Nerf Druid Nerf Druid its OP as F..K. Than new Expansion weak Druid Cards guys flame again pls better Druid Cards.

Penniless are you familiar with the Elemental Mage deck Kibler (and myself) is playing? You have basicly just minions - most of which elementals - and 2 Books of Specters. You play an elemental pretty much every turn so activating this is not challanging in the slightest. And the deck is pretty strong, but have one weakness - since you miss spells, you have no AoEs and once your opponent plays a wider board, you have a hard time coming back. At times Baron Geddon was played in the deck, but in current meta AoE for 2 is too little damage most of the times and legendary means you can have just 1 copy in deck. So this card perfectly fits the deck to cover it's weakness. Not sure if the deck will be any good in Rumble meta, but if it will, it will most likely play this card.

I think calling the + armor and + attack cards balanced is absolutely wrong. We've seen that 12 armor with two other flexible modes is about right for 4 mana. We've also seen Swipe as a popular card. With how much more valuable hitting other for 1 minions or having flexible alternatives, two of which is draw 2 or draw 1 and armor 6, be we can tell that Bite is super, super bad. The design even conflicts a bit because you gain armor, but also need to attack.... You're just not gaining enough armor to make up for the draw back and not enough attack for the key number of 5 with a lot of minions. A better example of a perfectly balanced card is Feral Rage. The armor is still there in Feral Rage if that is what is most important, but also if health doesn't matter as much taking 1 mana off Bite is strong. For bite to be a balanced card it would have to be something like 5/5 or 4/6. 4/6 is probably most balanced, but also lines up really badly against the game in general. Maybe 5/4 would be balanced.

Thr customers are always right except when they're not.

Druid is my fav. Class and I was actually looking forward to the new expansion since I was kinda bored with every deck being 90% the same cards. When the reveals kicked off and there was a prospect of Druid getting a midrange/tempo deck, I was excited!... Unfortunately, it just looks way too clunky. Play a bunch of bad cards for 'meh' value is just terrible. And all the people cheering for Druid getting bad cards, just means that they will continue to play the same old decks without much loss or care.

Gonk in thief rouge with spectral cutlass op op

The thing with druid is its a very good framework to add big neutral cards to so it might still find a competative deck that basically uses none of the new druid cards. The big problem I see with the druid cheating out beasts deck they are trying to push is they already did that with treant druid rush mulchers and they sucked. If anything druid probably is better just picking up the dragon synergy cards and just running the standard malygos, ysera etc

You brought up arconosaurwith the Kibler tweet but failed to even mention the use he brought up for it. He says (and I agree) that it fits very well into a big hand/elemental deck, or something similar depending on how the meta shapes up. A spell-less mage can be pretty much carried by book of specters, but its one area of weakness is falling behind on board (especially to aggro). Therefore Arcanosaur would fit amazingly into a non spell deck to give it the ability to comeback on board or even heal, but without having to include spells. Also, even though you mentioned it shouldn't be compared 1 to 1, I feel you compared it too much, and therefore too harshly with duskbreaker. First of all duskbreaker is a crazy overpowered card in most metas, often prompting priests to simply put dragons in their deck just for it. And also it's a priest card, therefore it's abit dismissive to say arcanosaur is "objectively worse", cause it's a mage card, so you CAN'T play duskbreaker in mage. To actually evaluate it's power level, comparing it to another class' card doesn't make too much sense.

Claw is balanced for its mana cost by bite really is under the mana curve. 4 mana equip a 4/1 weapon for this turn only and gain 4 armor? Would be balanced at 3 mana.

i don't see how stampeding roar is bad. druid has all the tools to draw out big beasts and ramp up really quickly. dropping a 7/7 at minimum with rush occasionally with a good overkill effect by turn 5 is a very strong in terms of game swinging potential. sure maybe 1 swing won't win the game but you've been both ramping up and drawing a hefty sum of cards (psych melon comes to mind). surely playing big beast after big beast with an occasional swipe, naturalize, or spellstone to keep taunts of varying sizes off the board would be at worst a reasonable gameplan for winning that such a deck could have. maybe not an absurdly strong deck. but the framework for making it work is definitely there. and you can't argue that it's inconsistent just due to the whole framework the druid class already has for setting up such plays.

Wait people actually think stampeding roar is good?

Full expansion ratings when?

so the thumbnail was clickbait and the title wasnt?

You have quite good analysis. I think you've mentioned before that you worry about looking objective when you rate analysis of people examining expansions. It would probably help if you looked at what people analyze correctly + why, not just everyone's mistakes (including your own). Partly because people tend to prefer more optimistic sounding explanations, partly because thats also an important part of the analysis - things done correctly, we should do more of.

I must say, your rating system isn't much of a rating system. It's more of just a standardised comment which allows you to claim you didn't rate it wrong. Most people use the star rating to predict play rate and then they just make these comments on the side.

Gonk or Spirit of the Raptor needed to provide a Cleave effect, In addition for Gonk, or just the effect for the Spirit, cause thanks to this, for it to go in on this style, you are gonna take so much face damage for so little in return

Gonk is at best a 4.9 windfury 7 mana doesn't look great

One-Hundred and Twenty Third

Your comment on princess is laughable. "My rating system is good because it lets me move on without having an actual opinion"

Blizz gave Druid weak cards. Thank Christ