We won't even have the proper time to discuss the possibilities of sending cards to the Hall of Fame. Because Blizzard as it has already announced the cards that will leave the Standard format. As a reminder, Hall of Fame is a Wild format card set. This means that Hall of Fame cards are only playable in Wild format matches.
Surprise! Surprise! No Malygos, Alexstrasza or Auctioneer as one might have thought, but cards that are nevertheless emblematic of certain classes, as well as two others that greatly block space design.
As you will have understood, Baku the Mooneater and Genn Greymane will bid farewell to the Standard mode, after only one year of "good and loyal" services, they will have caused more problems in the end. Many criticisms have been made against them in recent months, and the design team prefers to put them away, as well as four other cards that were linked to the Even/Odd synergies.
Back to the classic set, the Doomguard, Naturalize and Divine Favor are the lucky nominees for this year's end.
Please note that, as usual, players will be able to keep their Hall of Fame cards and will receive their full arcane dust value (up to the maximum that can be integrated into a deck) as if they had been disenchanted.
The cards of the classic set
Find the developers' justifications:
- Naturalize: "The Druid has always been very good at picking, generating mana or large servants, but has always had difficulty managing large adverse threats. Acclimatization has eliminated this weakness, giving the Druid too good a way to manage the opponent's board in matchups where the card advantage is not decisive. Sending this card to the Pantheon will again make it difficult for the Druid to care for these servants, giving him back some of his original identity."
- Doomguard: "As masters of Demons, Demonists have always been a very good management class on the board. Even if we appreciate the fact that this servant is clearly part of the (destructive) identity of the class, we want the class to be in a potentially weak position when the board is lost. To do this, we must limit the amount of damage a Demonist player can take out of his hand. As a very powerful servant with a Charge, the Dark Guard goes against the identity of the class, which is why he is heading for the Pantheon."
- Divine Favor: "In recent years, we have seen a large number of aggressive Paladin decks come and go. Even if we appreciate the fact that the Paladin is based on board generation and buffer for a low mana cost, we think that the pickaxe should not be one of its strengths either. Divine Favor is one of the most profitable pickaxe cards in the game, and in order to control in advance the power level of the upcoming aggressive Paladin decks, we decided to put it in the Hall."
Baku & Genn, the buzz killers
Find the developers' justifications:
- Baku and Genn: "Baku and Genn are powerful cards that have put forward a lot of new strategies on the game since their arrival in the meta. These were much more predominant than we had anticipated at the outset, and we believe they could provide some shade at the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. To maintain a healthy meta in the game, we made the decision to send Baku and Genn to the Hall one year ahead of the original date."
- "As a complement to the Even/Odd mechanics inspired by Baku and Genn, we also send Black Cat, Glitter Moth, Gloom Stag and Murkspark Eel to the Hall of Game."
The Arena saw considerable changes over the last months, since the start of the Year of the Dragon. Rogue was already too overpowered with some essential cards. Therefore, Blizzard acted upon this and nerfed him.
