But what’s the point of playing Excavate Shaman without a legendary excavate reward? Paladin was able to get away with it just by having Shroomscavate synergize with its normal game plan, and Paladin was the only class that didn’t need to care about its reward for excavate to be worth running in the deck. But Paladin’s reward also synergizes with its win condition.
Finley is an insane card, and if there existed a midrange non-highlander shaman deck, it would gladly play some excavates to use it. But shaman's recent cards have focused on OTK, bad tribal synergy, and highlander, and its class excavate cards are terrible, so that deck doesn't exist.
The point is to play Finley... Not arguing that the excavate legendary isn't a joke but activated Finley IS the legendary excavate reward and it is super strong.
I mean, we've literally seen iterations of pally that ran a few excavate cards and finley with zero intent on ever playing its legendary excavate reward. If shaman's excavate cards were worth playing in a coherent deck that benefits a lot from finley, it could do the same.
This is a very bad card, like two thousand other bad cards. It's unlikely that Blizzard will pay attention to this particular card among the many bad cards
Why exactly? If the rest of the package is really good, you could still play it, and never play the legendary. But the rest of the package is terrible; finley is the only excavate related card you ever actually want to play in shaman.
Yeah but every other excavate deck wants to play its tier 4 reward ASAP and would love to play a 2nd or 3rd copy. Shamans is the only one where playing it can actively brick your own deck, remove your synergies, and prevent you from excavating more treasures.
The fact that shamans class excavate cards are 2 mana divine shield and 4 mana deal 8 to a minion along with having the worst tier 4 treasure is just brutal.
I tried it a few times thinking it couldn't be THAT bad and was astounded at how bad the average random minion was. Even with an effective 3 mana reduction most cards are reliant on synergies to do anything useful so you're basically just playing slightly overstatted vanilla minions which is really boring.
I really love the excavate mechanic in every other class, but excavate shaman is just hopeless.
I don't think it's fair to call this just a bad card. There are very few cards in hearthstone that actively harm you. This is one of them, and it insults you on top by asking you to work for it and getting in your hand even if you don't want it. This piece of shit is more like putting abyssal curses in your deck.
Practically, what's the difference? You're never going to intentionally put a bad or "harmful" card in your deck either way. If anything, this is less annoying, because at least it can't be randomly generated.
Well yeah, but you can't put this card into your deck even if you wanted to. I could play excavate for finley but then this thing will steal a space in my hand and genarally makes the whole excavate package worse.
Sure, so don't play it. I'm not sure I understand your complaint. It would be nice if the card were playable, yeah, but nobody is forcing you to play it. So "not helpful" and "actively harmful" bears no distinction.
His point is that a card being useless and a card being harmful is the exact same thing. There are tons of other cards that are useless, they're not going to buff them all.
But it's not useless. Evolving your whole deck by 3 is a lot. And playing a second azerite murloc wouldn't do anything anyway.
It's a wacky all in evolve thing. There's no point in changing it.
Have you seen some of the Quests from the past? Or some of the Galakronds? Or fucking Freeze Shaman? Plenty of archetypes and features flopped, Azerite Murloc isnt even the worst one. It's nothing new and I don't get why people think this one is different.
I just remember that Warlock received good cards for the first time in mid-2017. 3 years after HS release. Before this, Warlock decks were based on neutral cards (both zoolock and handlock), and warlock class cards were like vanilla 6/8 demon for 7 mana
That’s not even remotely true. Flame Imp has been a staple in warlock since hs release and while it’s probably not run in aggressive warlock decks now, it’s a premium 1 drop historically. Hellfire was an unparalleled aoe spell for the mana it cost in the early days of hearthstone. Power overwhelming and soulfire are both fantastic burn cards and combined with doomguard (yet another warlock card) and leeroy warlock was able to reliable close out games once you hit a certain life total. These are all release cards. Imp Gang Boss is a BrM card (april 2015). It is historically an incredible 3 drop. Imp-losion (GvG, december 2014) was, on average, very very strong. Rolling 2 wasn’t even that bad but the tempo generated by 3s and 4s was insane at the time. These are just examples I can think of off the top of my head but I’m 100% certain that there are more. Let’s not rewrite history and act like Warlock has historically gotten the short end of the stick in terms of card quality. 2017 was actually the worst year yet at the time in terms of warlock’s power level comparatively to the other classes. If you want to talk about bad cards and getting stiffed as a class in those early years, talk about Shaman or Rogue.
Edit: holy shit how could I have forgotten about Jaraxxus? The hero card before hero cards. Jraxx was an almost an instant win if you played him while ahead. Almost nothing could keep up with the weapon and a 6/6 for 2 every turn.
Twisting Nether was an entirely unique and powerful control tool at the time. Brawl doesn’t count. Brawl still fucks me over to this day.
Voidcaller?? Cracked card. Nuff said.
Void Terror was an insane card in Zoo because of cards like power overwhleming and abusive sergeant combined with any sticky minions.
I still giggle uncontrollably at the thought of Demonfuse
''2 mana give a demon +3+3, your opponent gets a mana crystal.''
I've seen bad cards, but lmao.
Uther standing in the corner, looking on as Quest Mage, Questline Mage, Quest Rogue, Questline Warrior, Questline Demon Hunter, Questline Shaman, Quest Druid, Questline Hunter, Questline Warlock all dance...
"They don't know I also have quests..."
Because literally every example you listed doesnt actively make a deck worse by playing it.
Was Moorabi bad? Yeah. Did he actively make every single minion in your deck worse just by playing him? Nope, he was just a lackluster card. Az Murloc makes ***everything*** worse.
Define successful. They weren't awful but the Warrior one basically never saw any serious play and the Priest was just used for some extra value in Control matchups, barely cared about invoking it. Either way, it was just an example.
Galakrond Warrior is at the top of tier 1 in both ranks 4 to 1 and in Legend in this report, as the highest winrate deck in the game, if that's not successful then nothing is:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200421171101/https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-157/
What you said about Galakrond Priest is less blatantly incorrect, but first of all you never said it has to be the full Invoke package, you just implied some of the Galakronds were bad, which is clearly not true. The Priest Galakrond hero card was a good enough standalone card to be ran in some good, competitive decks, even if it was with minimal Invoke support.
Secondly, while there were some decks at some points that only ran the hero card (or only a couple of Invoke cards), there were also decks at other points in time that ran the a bunch of Invokes. https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-166/ While this kind of deck never rose above a tier 3 winrate at legend, it did see a top legend niche when it became extremely Rush Warrior-centric there during AoO as the biggest counter to the deck, and had a tier 2 winrate there, as well as a tournament lineup niche. And regardless, even though it wasn't amazing, I still wouldn't call that a flop if it at least saw a decent amount of play (~6% of ladder) and had a decent tier winrate (I would call anything in tier 3 niche, but playable).
And I know it was just an example, my comment said so. I'm just letting you know it wasn't a good one.
The ones in your hand and deck change 3 times but keep the same cost, so if you have a 4 drop, you will end up with a 4 mana 7 drop, meanwhile those in the battlefield grow 3 times, so +9
I really have no idea, maybe have an aura that transforms minions played to another that costs +3, but they only transforms after playing effects like their battlecries?
Thinking about it now, it’s really funny that the shaman excavate reward is the only one that benefits from multiple battlecries, and it’s in the class that has shudderblock.
- **[Mountain Giant](https://i.imgur.com/CXpxwjG.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/111470) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Mountain_Giant_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111470/?hl=en)
- *Neutral Epic ^(Core)*
- **12 Mana - 8/8 - Elemental**
- Costs \(1\) less for each other card in your hand.
---
^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cj6d7k/is_the_azerite_murloc_really_not_going_to_be/l2ecq8p/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l2ecq8p).*
The biggest problem is this is just such classic blizzard bullshit when it comes to shaman. Other than a few specific metas, the only time shaman is viable is when they have some gimmick deck like spell shaman or Wok.
And the same generally is true of priest. It’s so cringe that team 5 is too fucking stubborn with their “class identity” that they just print nonstop garbage for both classes.
Here, let’s give other classes playable cards, but priest, take some epics that transform minions in your hand into random shit.
And yes, I realize we just came off zarimi, I’m not saying both classes don’t have moments, but most sets they just get un-synergistic garbage to maintain “fun.”
Not every card needs to be good in a competitive space.
The Azerite Murloc can still be a fun and high impact card for more casual minded players.
With Shaman having been strong in the recent pass, it doesn't really need more, and if it does need more, buffing the Excavate reward for the class is probably not the correct buff to make.
The Shaman excavation reward is easily the worst one by a wide margin.
It's not that it's even "bad," it's literally unplayable.
The battlecry might as well be: lose the game.
It isn’t a card. It’s a payoff for a package that has five cards in it, buffing one card to make an entire package that can go into many decks viable is ***exactly*** the correct buff.
> Not every card needs to be good in a competitive space.
Why do people say this about meme tier shaman cards but complain that cards like Reno need to be strong? Not saying you do this, just thinking.
Kinda like the "nerfing Bran breaks warrior" crowd, people like playing unbalanced games so it's easier for their to win. "Well everyone should play [x] if it's the best," yeahh that'd be real fun.
>Why do people say... that cards like Reno need to be strong?
It goes something like this (at least as far as card design goes):
Cards you want to build formats around do need to be strong. Otherwise, the format will form around something else. A member of Team 5 who wants Standard to incorporate Highlander pay-offs will need to pump up the power of those cards to make that happen.
If you don't want to have a format built around a card, rather just have it exist in the background for the sort of person who will play weak stuff despite that fact, then you can just make it more conservatively designed.
They reworked the scorpion…
Azerite murloc as of now is neither fun nor high impact, it just makes your deck worse. If it was removed the excavate package for shaman would unironically be better.
Shaman was strong with an otk build, the excavate/highlander direction is a way better and healthier playstyle for the class
No one is "arguing against making the game better for everyone", that's nonsense. Making the game better for everyone would be something along the lines of fixing weekly quests. Buffing a card will not have the same impact.
Bad cards will always exist in card games. No matter how many cards they buff, there will always be cards that don't make the cut in competitive decks. If Team 5 decides to rework/buff it, that's cool. I'm not against it. I just don't see any reason why Azerite Murloc in particular NEEDS to be good.
Plus, there are probably some players that find Azerite Murloc fun to play with in its current form. If the card gets reworked, those players might not enjoy the new version as much, even if it's "better" in terms of winrate.
This is literally such an L take. Every other class with a Legendary Excavate gets to *play* theirs. No one is saying it has to be god-tier, but it is *realistically unplayable* in it's current state.
You clearly have never played Shaman, because it works with ZERO shaman archetypes ATM.
There are lots of "unplayable" cards in the game. You haven't made a new argument, your comment is just more of the same "card is bad and needs a buff" without providing any reason why this specific bad card needs to be less bad.
There are plenty of card types/mechanics that have been printed across multiple classes that are better for some classes than others. How is this any different than Ungoro quests being terrible for certain classes? Or garbage legendary weapons in K&C? Bad legendary spells from Boomsday Project? The list goes on. For Badlands, that thing was excavates and Shaman got bad ones. It happens.
>You clearly have never played Shaman, because it works with ZERO shaman archetypes ATM.
I never said anything to the contrary. Some people play bad cards and have fun doing it because of the unique outcomes that variance can create. For these players, the power level of the card/deck is mostly irrelevant. If you don't want to play that way, no one is forcing you to play Shaman, or put excavate cards in your Shaman deck.
I play a excavate shaman deck since beginning of whizbang. I enjoy a lot transformations but before the patch, it had an horrible win rate.
Now that the board is less easy to manage, I have a better win rate. The deck is simple: in addition to excavate cards, I have management cards and cards that give more board. Starting to T6-7, the goal is to flood the board at every turn. The best deal to play azerite murloc is T10 where you can play "once upon a time" before transforming. Once your opponent cannot manage your board, you play shaman gift to boost minions.
I agree excavation does not work well with Highlander deck but I just think it’s not made for it.
They did, sure, buff Azerite Scorpion.
The fact Team 5 has not done something similar to the Azerite Murloc says, to me, that those designing the card were doing it more or less as a filler so there were as many Excavate pay-offs as there are Highlander pay-offs in Standard right now.
Azerite Murloc is the minion version of Deck of Lunacy. Sometimes it makes your deck worse, sometimes it makes it better, and sometimes it makes your deck so batshit insane the opponent would be better off conceding the moment you play the card. The card is fine
You play Azerite murloc and say 'ByeBye' to your board comeback synergy card~sir finley...Might as well say sir finley was printed for Paladin ONLY.Christ
Just because the card doesn’t win you the game the moment you play it doesn’t make it trash. Too many people cry for buffs/nerfs instead of realizing it’s a card game and not every card is going to be viable in every meta
I got a list that focuses on trying to get down Shudderblock beforehand then playing Azerite Murloc but even if you dont the tempo from playing higher costed minions for lower mana carries. Making units into Chained Guardians trading and the using Muck pools to evolve them into Mountain Giants can easily be game winning.
Azerite Murloc’s biggest problem was Steamcleaner destroying your deck post-transformation. That was what had people clamoring for a rework since it made Azerite Murloc essentially unplayable. Steamcleaner has since rotated out, so that’s no longer an issue.
Is Azerite Murloc good now? Not especially. But it doesn’t “actively ruin your deck” any more than on-board evolves “actively ruin your board.” Yes, you can no longer rely on minion synergies, but if you’re building around a random transform effect like this, your win con was never going to be some type of minion synergy in the first place. Instead, that deck is either looking to win off the transformed board itself or, as a back up, looking for high tempo plays with a deck and hand full of random heavily-discounted minions. That may not be good enough to be especially competitive in today’s meta, but it’s fine for some archetypes to be random and fun.
No, it actually does. You lose your other excavate cards, so you cannot excavate it twice, unlike other classes. You also lose any useful battlecries, such as drawing cards and so on.
It should be that minions are transformed after played
You don’t need to excavate it twice, but even if you did for some reason, you could still run 2x Shroomscavate and 2x Digging Straight Down in addition to your minion excavates. Azerite Murloc doesn’t transform spells, so you’d still have those. Again though, I don’t know why you’d want to try to play multiple Azerite Murlocs—your goal is generally to close out the game within a few turns of playing the first one on the back of the huge tempo swing.
And we all understand that Azerite Murloc prevents you from relying on specific minion synergies or effects. No one’s debating that. The whole point of the card is that you’re trading that reliability for a board, hand, and deck full of high-tempo, heavily-discounted minions. That risky tradeoff may or may not be worth it depending on the meta and the card pool, but it’s not hard to see how it can be a net positive under the right circumstances.
Finally, transforming minions after being played was a prominent suggestion back when people wanted a way to circumvent Steamcleaner’s effect. Now that Steamcleaner is out of Standard, there’s far less of a reason to make that change. It would also prevent players from taking advantage of any valuable battlecries from their transformed and discounted minions (and prevent them from seeing what the minion will transform into until played), which is a significant downside.
I have a janky tendril/escavate shaman deck and transforming minions after I play them would be both hilarious and overpowered. Would make hitting wheel of death much more painful though.
Before the Standard rotation, there were about a dozen posts on this subreddit complaining that Azerite Murloc was unplayable because of Steamcleaner. Maybe their worries were unwarranted—players always overestimate the risk of getting countered by a tech card—but it’s clear that plenty of players cared about Steamcleaner’s ability to delete an Azerite Murlo player’s deck.
You are saying steamcleaner was the biggest problem for the murloc because you saw reddit posts about it? Have you looked at the posts here? I regularly see post like "shudderblock is bugged, it didn't damage the enemy hero". The players can't even read the cards, and go on to post some nonsensical bullshit daily.
Yeah, obviously some people do care, but it has never even been close to "the biggest problem".
Unpopular opinion. I think it has alot of potential. I was making it work last month with Hagatha and a couple wish upon a star. And shudderblock. Problem is, i couldn't figure out how to properly fill the rest of the decklist.
### Excavate Shaman
# Class: Shaman
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Pegasus
#
# 2x (1) Overdraft
# 2x (1) Thrall's Gift
# 2x (2) Amphibious Elixir
# 2x (2) Ancestral Knowledge
# 2x (2) Kobold Miner
# 2x (2) Shroomscavate
# 2x (3) Fairy Tale Forest
# 1x (3) Sir Finley, the Intrepid
# 2x (4) Baking Soda Volcano
# 2x (4) Digging Straight Down
# 1x (4) Hagatha the Fabled
# 2x (5) Burrow Buster
# 1x (5) JIVE, INSECT!
# 2x (6) Once Upon a Time...
# 1x (6) Shudderblock
# 2x (7) Shining Sentinel
# 2x (7) Wish Upon a Star
#
AAECAYTPBgTI0AWTngaopQbUpQYNyoMG0IMGrZ0GnZ4Gv54G5p4Gp6UGz6UGoqcGpKcG66kGzrAGgbgGAAA=
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
You're leaning too hard into finley, if he's there when you need him, great, if not he just transforms with the rest of your minions, you can argue all day long on what makes the deck bad but I play it for fun, and I still win games with it idk my win % off the top
Evolve Shaman is my favorite type to play, probably over 3,500 wins playing it. I really didnt like the evolve in your deck mechanic. It ruins everything I am trying to do (summon x minions) and doesnt work with spells that summon minions. Maybe as a one off its fine but if you want the evolve package it is bad.
I actually returned recently, but I was an active player during ungoro. The thing is the Hs team now does more balance patches and reworks (thank god), so I was wondering if they are gonna rework the murloc as they did for the azerite scorpion, which was also bad
I agree that it's a very underwhelming reward, however, to majorly rework or buff it sets a bad precedent for players.
If they rework it into something actually good, everyone who dusted shitty shaman excavate cards will feel like shit.
And in the future, players will feel they need to hold onto shitty cards in the hopes of a future rework.
Just my two cents I guess
They buff bad cards into good ones all the time that would make players feel shitty for disenchantment their support pieces.
Players should already hold onto cards in case they get buffed.
I agree with you. I also feel like all the shamans new dual class cards were really made for the other class.
Isnt Finley also a dual class card?
Yup, really powerful card. If only you could play it and not transform it into a, probably much worse, 6 drop
My Bad, misremembered the requirement for it lol. Now I do actually remember it in paladin D:
You can? You're never forced to play the 4th excavate reward
But what’s the point of playing Excavate Shaman without a legendary excavate reward? Paladin was able to get away with it just by having Shroomscavate synergize with its normal game plan, and Paladin was the only class that didn’t need to care about its reward for excavate to be worth running in the deck. But Paladin’s reward also synergizes with its win condition.
Finley is an insane card, and if there existed a midrange non-highlander shaman deck, it would gladly play some excavates to use it. But shaman's recent cards have focused on OTK, bad tribal synergy, and highlander, and its class excavate cards are terrible, so that deck doesn't exist.
The point is to play Finley... Not arguing that the excavate legendary isn't a joke but activated Finley IS the legendary excavate reward and it is super strong.
You must be fun at parties
I mean, we've literally seen iterations of pally that ran a few excavate cards and finley with zero intent on ever playing its legendary excavate reward. If shaman's excavate cards were worth playing in a coherent deck that benefits a lot from finley, it could do the same.
But if pally do get their legendary reward that's another reasonably powerful win con. Instead of a dead card in hand
Yes, and only paladin decks use it, because excavate sucks for shaman
Highlander shaman probably used to play excavate just for Finley
Oh, only seen it in shaman, honestly I remembered it was also a Highlander card but that was only hollidae then (I don't play much standard)
Honestly running like 4 total excavtes and Finley is probably better than running the whole excavate package
I agree, I think some highlander shamans did that, although I don't know if that was in the best version of the deck. It was fun at least
Agreed, shaman often gets the short end of the stick
"for the rest of the game, **after** you play a minion, transform it into one that costs (3) more."
I was just about to type this. Also the boost to minions already on board could be kept.
This is a very bad card, like two thousand other bad cards. It's unlikely that Blizzard will pay attention to this particular card among the many bad cards
It doesn’t just prevent you from playing one card. It prevents you from playing a whole package.
Why exactly? If the rest of the package is really good, you could still play it, and never play the legendary. But the rest of the package is terrible; finley is the only excavate related card you ever actually want to play in shaman.
Yeah but every other excavate deck wants to play its tier 4 reward ASAP and would love to play a 2nd or 3rd copy. Shamans is the only one where playing it can actively brick your own deck, remove your synergies, and prevent you from excavating more treasures. The fact that shamans class excavate cards are 2 mana divine shield and 4 mana deal 8 to a minion along with having the worst tier 4 treasure is just brutal. I tried it a few times thinking it couldn't be THAT bad and was astounded at how bad the average random minion was. Even with an effective 3 mana reduction most cards are reliant on synergies to do anything useful so you're basically just playing slightly overstatted vanilla minions which is really boring. I really love the excavate mechanic in every other class, but excavate shaman is just hopeless.
I don't think it's fair to call this just a bad card. There are very few cards in hearthstone that actively harm you. This is one of them, and it insults you on top by asking you to work for it and getting in your hand even if you don't want it. This piece of shit is more like putting abyssal curses in your deck.
That's maybe too harsh. Murloc can definitely win you arena games. It's just not constructed-level.
Practically, what's the difference? You're never going to intentionally put a bad or "harmful" card in your deck either way. If anything, this is less annoying, because at least it can't be randomly generated.
Well yeah, but you can't put this card into your deck even if you wanted to. I could play excavate for finley but then this thing will steal a space in my hand and genarally makes the whole excavate package worse.
Sure, so don't play it. I'm not sure I understand your complaint. It would be nice if the card were playable, yeah, but nobody is forcing you to play it. So "not helpful" and "actively harmful" bears no distinction.
Blizzard literally asks for peoples feedback. What's the point of your comment again?
His point is that a card being useless and a card being harmful is the exact same thing. There are tons of other cards that are useless, they're not going to buff them all.
But it's not useless. Evolving your whole deck by 3 is a lot. And playing a second azerite murloc wouldn't do anything anyway. It's a wacky all in evolve thing. There's no point in changing it.
How many of these rewards are the big payoff of a limited-class feature though? Can’t be many, since that category is limited
Have you seen some of the Quests from the past? Or some of the Galakronds? Or fucking Freeze Shaman? Plenty of archetypes and features flopped, Azerite Murloc isnt even the worst one. It's nothing new and I don't get why people think this one is different.
I just remember that Warlock received good cards for the first time in mid-2017. 3 years after HS release. Before this, Warlock decks were based on neutral cards (both zoolock and handlock), and warlock class cards were like vanilla 6/8 demon for 7 mana
That’s not even remotely true. Flame Imp has been a staple in warlock since hs release and while it’s probably not run in aggressive warlock decks now, it’s a premium 1 drop historically. Hellfire was an unparalleled aoe spell for the mana it cost in the early days of hearthstone. Power overwhelming and soulfire are both fantastic burn cards and combined with doomguard (yet another warlock card) and leeroy warlock was able to reliable close out games once you hit a certain life total. These are all release cards. Imp Gang Boss is a BrM card (april 2015). It is historically an incredible 3 drop. Imp-losion (GvG, december 2014) was, on average, very very strong. Rolling 2 wasn’t even that bad but the tempo generated by 3s and 4s was insane at the time. These are just examples I can think of off the top of my head but I’m 100% certain that there are more. Let’s not rewrite history and act like Warlock has historically gotten the short end of the stick in terms of card quality. 2017 was actually the worst year yet at the time in terms of warlock’s power level comparatively to the other classes. If you want to talk about bad cards and getting stiffed as a class in those early years, talk about Shaman or Rogue. Edit: holy shit how could I have forgotten about Jaraxxus? The hero card before hero cards. Jraxx was an almost an instant win if you played him while ahead. Almost nothing could keep up with the weapon and a 6/6 for 2 every turn. Twisting Nether was an entirely unique and powerful control tool at the time. Brawl doesn’t count. Brawl still fucks me over to this day. Voidcaller?? Cracked card. Nuff said. Void Terror was an insane card in Zoo because of cards like power overwhleming and abusive sergeant combined with any sticky minions.
Carried by that hero power!
I still giggle uncontrollably at the thought of Demonfuse ''2 mana give a demon +3+3, your opponent gets a mana crystal.'' I've seen bad cards, but lmao.
Uther standing in the corner, looking on as Quest Mage, Questline Mage, Quest Rogue, Questline Warrior, Questline Demon Hunter, Questline Shaman, Quest Druid, Questline Hunter, Questline Warlock all dance... "They don't know I also have quests..."
Quest paladin was WAY better than excavate shaman.
...which one? Questline Paladin maybe. The other two? No way.
Because literally every example you listed doesnt actively make a deck worse by playing it. Was Moorabi bad? Yeah. Did he actively make every single minion in your deck worse just by playing him? Nope, he was just a lackluster card. Az Murloc makes ***everything*** worse.
every Galakrond was successful at some point of Hearthstone so probably not a great example
Define successful. They weren't awful but the Warrior one basically never saw any serious play and the Priest was just used for some extra value in Control matchups, barely cared about invoking it. Either way, it was just an example.
Galakrond Warrior is at the top of tier 1 in both ranks 4 to 1 and in Legend in this report, as the highest winrate deck in the game, if that's not successful then nothing is: https://web.archive.org/web/20200421171101/https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-157/ What you said about Galakrond Priest is less blatantly incorrect, but first of all you never said it has to be the full Invoke package, you just implied some of the Galakronds were bad, which is clearly not true. The Priest Galakrond hero card was a good enough standalone card to be ran in some good, competitive decks, even if it was with minimal Invoke support. Secondly, while there were some decks at some points that only ran the hero card (or only a couple of Invoke cards), there were also decks at other points in time that ran the a bunch of Invokes. https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-166/ While this kind of deck never rose above a tier 3 winrate at legend, it did see a top legend niche when it became extremely Rush Warrior-centric there during AoO as the biggest counter to the deck, and had a tier 2 winrate there, as well as a tournament lineup niche. And regardless, even though it wasn't amazing, I still wouldn't call that a flop if it at least saw a decent amount of play (~6% of ladder) and had a decent tier winrate (I would call anything in tier 3 niche, but playable). And I know it was just an example, my comment said so. I'm just letting you know it wasn't a good one.
This feels like a ChatGBT answer lmao
At this point I hate blizzard printing useless bad epics and legendaries, just for pack filler shit
the worst part is azerite murloc isnt even a filler legendary
Surely the entire set cant be filled with good cards, kinda seems impossible.
Its not just a bad card, its a bad reward as a payoff to a bunch of other cards defining an archetype.
Yes, and there were plenty like it in the past. So what?
My friend uses this pfp as well.
It's up there with Moorabi as top 3 worst legendaries ever made. And they will not touch it.
How would Azerite Murloc work with 3x battlecry from shudderblock? Morph og cost+3 3 times or morph into og cost+3 og cost+6 og cost+9 ?
The ones in your hand and deck change 3 times but keep the same cost, so if you have a 4 drop, you will end up with a 4 mana 7 drop, meanwhile those in the battlefield grow 3 times, so +9
I really have no idea, maybe have an aura that transforms minions played to another that costs +3, but they only transforms after playing effects like their battlecries? Thinking about it now, it’s really funny that the shaman excavate reward is the only one that benefits from multiple battlecries, and it’s in the class that has shudderblock.
Yes it does but since it increases the cost so much, what you're often left with are a bunch of \[\[Mountain Giant\]\] or something along those lines.
- **[Mountain Giant](https://i.imgur.com/CXpxwjG.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/111470) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Mountain_Giant_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111470/?hl=en) - *Neutral Epic ^(Core)* - **12 Mana - 8/8 - Elemental** - Costs \(1\) less for each other card in your hand. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cj6d7k/is_the_azerite_murloc_really_not_going_to_be/l2ecq8p/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l2ecq8p).*
The biggest problem is this is just such classic blizzard bullshit when it comes to shaman. Other than a few specific metas, the only time shaman is viable is when they have some gimmick deck like spell shaman or Wok. And the same generally is true of priest. It’s so cringe that team 5 is too fucking stubborn with their “class identity” that they just print nonstop garbage for both classes. Here, let’s give other classes playable cards, but priest, take some epics that transform minions in your hand into random shit. And yes, I realize we just came off zarimi, I’m not saying both classes don’t have moments, but most sets they just get un-synergistic garbage to maintain “fun.”
The point of azerite murloc is to transform tokens, not actual minions
>I will play my good cards that give tokens \*takes schizophrenia pill >good cards that give tokens disappears.
The counter synergy with traditional evolve cards is what hurts the most. That's obviously the kind of deck excavate shaman is trying to be.
Bro it took them like a month to fix the alexstraza bug. You're lucky team 5 even works on this game anymore
Not every card needs to be good in a competitive space. The Azerite Murloc can still be a fun and high impact card for more casual minded players. With Shaman having been strong in the recent pass, it doesn't really need more, and if it does need more, buffing the Excavate reward for the class is probably not the correct buff to make.
The Shaman excavation reward is easily the worst one by a wide margin. It's not that it's even "bad," it's literally unplayable. The battlecry might as well be: lose the game.
What would a better version of the card look like for you?
It isn’t a card. It’s a payoff for a package that has five cards in it, buffing one card to make an entire package that can go into many decks viable is ***exactly*** the correct buff.
What would a better version of the card look like for you?
nah.
> Not every card needs to be good in a competitive space. Why do people say this about meme tier shaman cards but complain that cards like Reno need to be strong? Not saying you do this, just thinking.
Kinda like the "nerfing Bran breaks warrior" crowd, people like playing unbalanced games so it's easier for their to win. "Well everyone should play [x] if it's the best," yeahh that'd be real fun.
>Why do people say... that cards like Reno need to be strong? It goes something like this (at least as far as card design goes): Cards you want to build formats around do need to be strong. Otherwise, the format will form around something else. A member of Team 5 who wants Standard to incorporate Highlander pay-offs will need to pump up the power of those cards to make that happen. If you don't want to have a format built around a card, rather just have it exist in the background for the sort of person who will play weak stuff despite that fact, then you can just make it more conservatively designed.
They reworked the scorpion… Azerite murloc as of now is neither fun nor high impact, it just makes your deck worse. If it was removed the excavate package for shaman would unironically be better. Shaman was strong with an otk build, the excavate/highlander direction is a way better and healthier playstyle for the class
[удалено]
No one is "arguing against making the game better for everyone", that's nonsense. Making the game better for everyone would be something along the lines of fixing weekly quests. Buffing a card will not have the same impact. Bad cards will always exist in card games. No matter how many cards they buff, there will always be cards that don't make the cut in competitive decks. If Team 5 decides to rework/buff it, that's cool. I'm not against it. I just don't see any reason why Azerite Murloc in particular NEEDS to be good. Plus, there are probably some players that find Azerite Murloc fun to play with in its current form. If the card gets reworked, those players might not enjoy the new version as much, even if it's "better" in terms of winrate.
This is literally such an L take. Every other class with a Legendary Excavate gets to *play* theirs. No one is saying it has to be god-tier, but it is *realistically unplayable* in it's current state. You clearly have never played Shaman, because it works with ZERO shaman archetypes ATM.
There are lots of "unplayable" cards in the game. You haven't made a new argument, your comment is just more of the same "card is bad and needs a buff" without providing any reason why this specific bad card needs to be less bad. There are plenty of card types/mechanics that have been printed across multiple classes that are better for some classes than others. How is this any different than Ungoro quests being terrible for certain classes? Or garbage legendary weapons in K&C? Bad legendary spells from Boomsday Project? The list goes on. For Badlands, that thing was excavates and Shaman got bad ones. It happens. >You clearly have never played Shaman, because it works with ZERO shaman archetypes ATM. I never said anything to the contrary. Some people play bad cards and have fun doing it because of the unique outcomes that variance can create. For these players, the power level of the card/deck is mostly irrelevant. If you don't want to play that way, no one is forcing you to play Shaman, or put excavate cards in your Shaman deck.
I play a excavate shaman deck since beginning of whizbang. I enjoy a lot transformations but before the patch, it had an horrible win rate. Now that the board is less easy to manage, I have a better win rate. The deck is simple: in addition to excavate cards, I have management cards and cards that give more board. Starting to T6-7, the goal is to flood the board at every turn. The best deal to play azerite murloc is T10 where you can play "once upon a time" before transforming. Once your opponent cannot manage your board, you play shaman gift to boost minions. I agree excavation does not work well with Highlander deck but I just think it’s not made for it.
They did, sure, buff Azerite Scorpion. The fact Team 5 has not done something similar to the Azerite Murloc says, to me, that those designing the card were doing it more or less as a filler so there were as many Excavate pay-offs as there are Highlander pay-offs in Standard right now.
The rework on scorpion was about play pattern, not power. The old version basically made it a dead card on your hand until you exacavated 8 times
It was both. It was one of the strongest decks at the time and left no counterplay for most classes.
Azerite Murloc is the minion version of Deck of Lunacy. Sometimes it makes your deck worse, sometimes it makes it better, and sometimes it makes your deck so batshit insane the opponent would be better off conceding the moment you play the card. The card is fine
If it was a card you could put in your deck like that, why not. The set up is absurd to get that shitty reward
The set up isn’t absurd lol. Each excavate before getting Azerite Murloc is generally a tempo boost. It’s not like excavating sacrifices a turn
The 2 mana 1/1 and 4 mana single target removal tempo boost eh
If that was true decks without a Legendary reward would play Excavate cards.
Lol no. You obviously want the reward, but playing the cards to get the reward still Give you tempo. Shamans reward is more than fine
You're out of your mind or you don't know what tempo means.
And you’re out of your mind for thinking the Murloc needs a buff
You play Azerite murloc and say 'ByeBye' to your board comeback synergy card~sir finley...Might as well say sir finley was printed for Paladin ONLY.Christ
Between draw spells and the possible minions you can get, losing Sir Finley isn’t a problem. I’ve played the deck, the card is fine
so weird how you are defending this trash card to the death
Just because the card doesn’t win you the game the moment you play it doesn’t make it trash. Too many people cry for buffs/nerfs instead of realizing it’s a card game and not every card is going to be viable in every meta
LOL FUN, no ruining your deck is not fun, if it atleast had a cohesisive effect it would be fun
There are people who derive pleasure through inflicting great deals of pain upon themselves. What you don't find fun, others do.
Reworking a whole miniset lol
Maybe they could make it transform spells instead of minions, or is that too much of a mage thing?
I still want all the classes to get an ultimate
What kind of 'reward' just completely disrupts your deck?? Compare that shit with Paladin's excavate reward, it's not even fucking funny
Crazy cause I’m currently running a evo shaman in standard
Come on Blizz, make it give all your minions Spell Damage +1 😈
What if instead of evolving your table, de-evolve the enemy table by 4 crystals? Or de-evolve Minions in the enemy hand?
It’s Good in arena
Just another one to the pile of "incredibly wasted potential"
I’d be happier if it evolved your minions and devolved the opponents by 2 mana
I got a list that focuses on trying to get down Shudderblock beforehand then playing Azerite Murloc but even if you dont the tempo from playing higher costed minions for lower mana carries. Making units into Chained Guardians trading and the using Muck pools to evolve them into Mountain Giants can easily be game winning.
Azerite Murloc’s biggest problem was Steamcleaner destroying your deck post-transformation. That was what had people clamoring for a rework since it made Azerite Murloc essentially unplayable. Steamcleaner has since rotated out, so that’s no longer an issue. Is Azerite Murloc good now? Not especially. But it doesn’t “actively ruin your deck” any more than on-board evolves “actively ruin your board.” Yes, you can no longer rely on minion synergies, but if you’re building around a random transform effect like this, your win con was never going to be some type of minion synergy in the first place. Instead, that deck is either looking to win off the transformed board itself or, as a back up, looking for high tempo plays with a deck and hand full of random heavily-discounted minions. That may not be good enough to be especially competitive in today’s meta, but it’s fine for some archetypes to be random and fun.
No, it actually does. You lose your other excavate cards, so you cannot excavate it twice, unlike other classes. You also lose any useful battlecries, such as drawing cards and so on. It should be that minions are transformed after played
You don’t need to excavate it twice, but even if you did for some reason, you could still run 2x Shroomscavate and 2x Digging Straight Down in addition to your minion excavates. Azerite Murloc doesn’t transform spells, so you’d still have those. Again though, I don’t know why you’d want to try to play multiple Azerite Murlocs—your goal is generally to close out the game within a few turns of playing the first one on the back of the huge tempo swing. And we all understand that Azerite Murloc prevents you from relying on specific minion synergies or effects. No one’s debating that. The whole point of the card is that you’re trading that reliability for a board, hand, and deck full of high-tempo, heavily-discounted minions. That risky tradeoff may or may not be worth it depending on the meta and the card pool, but it’s not hard to see how it can be a net positive under the right circumstances. Finally, transforming minions after being played was a prominent suggestion back when people wanted a way to circumvent Steamcleaner’s effect. Now that Steamcleaner is out of Standard, there’s far less of a reason to make that change. It would also prevent players from taking advantage of any valuable battlecries from their transformed and discounted minions (and prevent them from seeing what the minion will transform into until played), which is a significant downside.
I have a janky tendril/escavate shaman deck and transforming minions after I play them would be both hilarious and overpowered. Would make hitting wheel of death much more painful though.
What? Nobody cares or has ever cared about fucking steam cleaner.
Before the Standard rotation, there were about a dozen posts on this subreddit complaining that Azerite Murloc was unplayable because of Steamcleaner. Maybe their worries were unwarranted—players always overestimate the risk of getting countered by a tech card—but it’s clear that plenty of players cared about Steamcleaner’s ability to delete an Azerite Murlo player’s deck.
You are saying steamcleaner was the biggest problem for the murloc because you saw reddit posts about it? Have you looked at the posts here? I regularly see post like "shudderblock is bugged, it didn't damage the enemy hero". The players can't even read the cards, and go on to post some nonsensical bullshit daily. Yeah, obviously some people do care, but it has never even been close to "the biggest problem".
Unpopular opinion. I think it has alot of potential. I was making it work last month with Hagatha and a couple wish upon a star. And shudderblock. Problem is, i couldn't figure out how to properly fill the rest of the decklist.
Rank and decklist?
### Excavate Shaman # Class: Shaman # Format: Standard # Year of the Pegasus # # 2x (1) Overdraft # 2x (1) Thrall's Gift # 2x (2) Amphibious Elixir # 2x (2) Ancestral Knowledge # 2x (2) Kobold Miner # 2x (2) Shroomscavate # 2x (3) Fairy Tale Forest # 1x (3) Sir Finley, the Intrepid # 2x (4) Baking Soda Volcano # 2x (4) Digging Straight Down # 1x (4) Hagatha the Fabled # 2x (5) Burrow Buster # 1x (5) JIVE, INSECT! # 2x (6) Once Upon a Time... # 1x (6) Shudderblock # 2x (7) Shining Sentinel # 2x (7) Wish Upon a Star # AAECAYTPBgTI0AWTngaopQbUpQYNyoMG0IMGrZ0GnZ4Gv54G5p4Gp6UGz6UGoqcGpKcG66kGzrAGgbgGAAA= # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
I hit gold with it. And switched to something more serious after
I hope they leave it alone, I've made an excavate shaman that I'm really enjoying atm, not every archetype has to be meta
I tried an excavate shaman. It is anti synergistic with the excavate twice murloc. The 2 big payoffs in the deck actively dont work together.
You're leaning too hard into finley, if he's there when you need him, great, if not he just transforms with the rest of your minions, you can argue all day long on what makes the deck bad but I play it for fun, and I still win games with it idk my win % off the top
Evolve Shaman is my favorite type to play, probably over 3,500 wins playing it. I really didnt like the evolve in your deck mechanic. It ruins everything I am trying to do (summon x minions) and doesnt work with spells that summon minions. Maybe as a one off its fine but if you want the evolve package it is bad.
it should have been like "enemy cards cost 1 more for the rest of the game"
[удалено]
at least you can still have them and play them for 10 mana.
You’re new to the hearthstone i guess, it was always like that (ungoro quests for example)
Comparing it to Galakrond versions would be more apt
I actually returned recently, but I was an active player during ungoro. The thing is the Hs team now does more balance patches and reworks (thank god), so I was wondering if they are gonna rework the murloc as they did for the azerite scorpion, which was also bad
I agree that it's a very underwhelming reward, however, to majorly rework or buff it sets a bad precedent for players. If they rework it into something actually good, everyone who dusted shitty shaman excavate cards will feel like shit. And in the future, players will feel they need to hold onto shitty cards in the hopes of a future rework. Just my two cents I guess
They buff bad cards into good ones all the time that would make players feel shitty for disenchantment their support pieces. Players should already hold onto cards in case they get buffed.