eSports / theorycrafting

Since it seems that Blizzard is finally changing their policy of actually buffing unused cards, maybe it is time to buff some of Classic and Basic cards that won't see any play in their current form and it is saddening to see that because those sets are always in the Standard format but never used, not even in meme decks, the ones I'll be talking about are even that, bad... yeah. Source There are many other cards than those that I chose for this list but my reasoning was because they are currently total garbage, unplayable and bad even when generated for free by other cards that do so, on top of that they are part of Classic and Basic sets that will be in standard forever. So let's start with: #1 Totemic Might Since I started playing Hearthstone which was back in the beta I saw this card and was like maybe I can make some cool Totem Shaman deck. Scrolling through the collection page, first I found Flamethounge, said to myself "Okay, this will be a nice target for it, what else...", then I found Mana Tide Totem "Okay, okay, not bad", and after a bit of scrolling I couldn't find any more Totems. After that, I quickly realized that there won't be any Totem Shaman anytime soon and maybe there will be an expansion to complement this card a bit more to make it playable. Oh boy, how wrong I was wrong. Many players did try to make it work in the Midrange versions of Shaman to make it easier to finish off the opponent with Bloodlust, but actually playing sticky Deathrattle minions will always be a better alternative. So now, in 2019, we have this card, completely unchanged since the existence of Hearthstone collecting dust (not arcane one though) without any use case. I understand that Basic cards should be on a lower power level than other cards, but not so much that it is in this state where it's like it doesn't even exist. Also, Basic cards are portrayed as having a function to teach newer players simpler mechanics that they will be encountering during their gameplay experience, but what does it teach? That we lack good Totems in the game? This card is so bad that Blizzard decided to remove it from the Arena draft choices because it essentially made draft worse just by appearing as a choice in a player's draft, meaning that you had 2 "may be reasonable" choices to select from instead of 3. Solution? It is really hard to balance a 0 mana card, so my suggestion would be to delete this card and make a totally new one that will fit in some/any style of Shaman that seem reasonable to use and to teach a new player something about that style of Shaman. I also considered a 1 mana that reads "Summon a Totem of your choice next time you use your Hero Power and give it +2 Health", like a one time upgraded Hero Power. I don't know if this is simple enough for a Basic card but it feels like it has so much potential yet it doesn't look too powerful. #2 Starving Buzzard Unlike Totemic Might this card has a different story. At first, it was a 2 mana 2/2 and then a 2/1 with the same effect and no doubt it was broken in both of these versions. It basically provided Hunter (Face Hunter mostly) with too much card draw. Furthermore, the change to Unleash the Hounds which then became the same card we know today but for 2 mana made this card even more broken with the ability to replenish your whole hand for just 4 mana while also being able to make trades on the board, or do what Face Hunter does, go face for even more damage. Now at 5 mana this card is abysmal and totally out of the playable card pool for Hunter. This nerf was definitely too harsh and we can see that because this card was never touched again after the nerf. Probably Blizzard didn't know how to resolve this problem so they did it the easier way and just "removed" this card from play. Solution As I've been playing the game while this card was in the broken state, I got used to Starving Buzzard being some kind of a draw card. So why not make it a balanced draw card? I can easily see this being 2 mana 2/1 or 3 mana 3/2 with a Battlecry: "If you control a Beast draw a card". Something like that. I like 3 mana version better because it discourages its use for aggressive decks more than the 2 mana one. #3 Warsong Commander Ahh, for those that played in 2015. or before that definitely remember this card as being so damn oppressive. With the same mana cost and stats but the very different effect "Your minions with 3 or less attack gain Charge." this card was bonkers. Even before that the effect was giving Charge to any minion that you played from your hand. But the reason this card got nerfed was, constraining design space and a more specific one was Grim Patron, a 5 mana 3/3 that summoned another Grim Patron if it survived taking damage, adding Frothing Berserker and Death's Bite into the mix, plenty of times turn this into an OTK combo. As of that change in 2015. this card remained unplayed because the effect is soooo bad. To make it even worse, Blizzard decided to go away from the whole Charge keyword and started printing Rush cards that we see today, definitely more balanced than Charge. Solution Since Charge is a mechanic Blizzard is trying to get rid of, this card should go away from Charge as a whole and got nothing to do with it, so maybe some simple Rush example? This card was always a 3 mana minion so I wanted it to keep this mana cost and change her to something like 3 mana 2/3 with Battlecry: "Summon a 1/1 minion (Orc probably) with Rush. It is similar to Razorfen Hunter. This can teach players both the Rush mechanic that is really present in the game right now and also that Class cards can be similar to Neutral ones but a bit more powerful. #4 Savagery Another in the past broken card, that got changed or more precisely nerfed to oblivion. Savagery was OP before I played the game, back in Alpha phase of development so I don't have any experience with it but I found some patch notes about what it did before the change. It was a 2 mana "Deal damage equal to your hero's Attack to all enemy minions.", WHAAT!? Later it was adjusted to 3 mana before finally changed to what it is today. Okay, that Alpha version was somewhat broken but in todays Hearthstone standards it would just be like a more flexible but less efficient board clear. Let's say you play Bite for 4 mana and than Savagery for 3, it would be like a Flamestrike in a 2 piece combo and we know that Flamestrike isn't that great in constructed anymore. Another example would be with Claw for 1 mana into this, making a 4 mana Consecration effect in a 2 piece combo which is just slightly better but still bad. Even though we can see that the more powerful version of Savagery would be on the bad side, the current version makes it like this card doesn't even exist. We even got a new minion in the last expansion Savage Striker that is a 2 mana 2/3 with Savagery effect attached to it and it still sucks... That's how bad this card is. Solution I guess they could just revert it into the Alpha state with a 3 mana cost because it will make this card interesting to play with and make new deckbuilding challenges. It is a Classic set card that isn't even considered since I remember playing Hearthstone and that shouldn't be the case. Come on, it's a Rare Class card, damn it! #5 Illidan Stormrage This is one of the most iconic characters in the lore of Warcraft and yet it is one of the most iconic mockeries of a card in Hearthstone. He wasn't all that bad in the Alpha, as a matter of fact, it was an interesting card. A 7 mana 7/7 with a Battlecry: " Both players discard 3 cards and draw 3 cards". Too bad I wasn't there to try it out. I can see how this could have been problematic since it was a serious combo breaker and punishing players for holding onto some key cards but at least it was better than this uninteresting waste of a legendary in the Classic set. Now as it stands a 6 mana 7/5 that doesn't do anything at the moment it is played is just awful. 5 health is too low to stick so late into the game and gets removed easily. Solution I don't really know what to make this card into, I just want it to become playable. It is a shame we don't see Illidan being played in any tier of decks. Simply changing his stats to maybe make him playable but not broken would be alright, but the whole rework would be much appreciated. Hope to see this change happen or at least that we get some kind of a re-print of Illidan in the upcoming expansions or something. This is it for today. If you have some other suggestions to fix those cards please leave a comment. I hope that Blizzard will recognize that even with their policy that "Hearthstone needs bad cards", these cards are so bad that they are most often just forgotten that they even exist. Thank you for reading! , z3ll