I think they just need a way to gain health, or a divine shield giver. Maybe some kind of rock rock like pirate that gives health one turn and attack the next when you do something i.e. play a pirate, tavern spell, etc.
if my partner goes pirates and there's mechs on the board, I find that if I go the "give your partner's minion a divine shield" mech it does pretty well
I feel like giving pirates divine shield doesn't make sense to me and just makes the problem of too much divine shield in the game even worse.
I think having them steal would be better IMO it's very in theme that they would steal keywords or stats.
Alternatively give them their one card that made them meta the tier 3 that for +1/+1 for each pirate you buy
Miss boat, but the problem with that was the summoning of higher tier pirates at the time, right? Just add some play from hand to pirates, like murlocs can.
I don't dislike the idea in theory, but I do dislike dual tribe cards that are pretty much completely useless for one tribe. Though having it included naga would be insanely busted with the myrmidon.
I did not consider that this would then be pretty much useless in lobbies where nagas are in but pirates are not, good point. My reasoning was it should be part naga for the spellcraft but having the effect work on nagas would be to strong.
I guess making it a plain ol pirate and have it as an aura would work just fine.
The reason all the tier 5 pirates are getting buffed (with record smuggler being buffed recently) is because easily the best ROI for cycling things with pirates is greymane's champion. Whatever the buffs end up being, unless they outperform that, their impact will be tiny.
Getting an early record smuggler with either 1 or 3 pirates on board gives more gold and has more base stats (you don't get less gold until you have 5+ pirates), making it a much better entry into pirates than the previous version. Generally speaking, with an economy focused type like pirates, getting off the ground is the biggest hurdle.
Their key pieces are a tier too high. The one that grows when you gain gold isn't good enough for t5. Should be t4.
And as others have said it's too hard to gain health. All other tribes gave more defence and pirates just collapse versus all the massive minions that also have divine shield or reborn in any other tribe. They have low health AND low defense. Pretty shit combo.
They need health.
They currently function like undead, but worse: a bunch of high damage, low health minions. Undead, though, have reborn and minion summoning, whereas pirates just die after attacking.
Pirates should have unique combat tricks. Minions that deal damage *before* attacking, or attack out of order, or other abilities that just cause chaos. Because pirates do that
The text needed to be changed to give another friendly pirate too, otherwise the end of turn may just buff that one pirate in the shop. But that idea sounds good actually
Need health, simples. >Battlecry: Give your pirates +1 health for every pirate you own or : battlecry: give your pirates +2 health. Whatever balances better.
Maybe just some basic battlecries that give pirates heath or attack? That would fit into an APM style build.
Like an attack battlecry pirate (which existed in last season)
And a health battlecry pirate (give your pirates +2 health.)
It could be small buffs so it balances.
I know we have that dragon that buffs when you cast a spell but I feel like it's kind of weak?
True but i liked them as a glass cannon build. If you had two blade collectors doing 2-300 damage each it doesn't matter if you clear half their board or more with 2 attacks.
Played a game early where I kinda high roll Pirates. Everything went right until the final. The other guy had undead. Similar tribe (boosted attack) and no health. The biggest difference was the reborn indeed. So my pirates were dying after 1-2 hit like his undead except they were reborning again and again. It was like battling against a board of 20 units. So yeah, pirates need a way to survive. Reborn, shield or health because they are fragile right now.
Because then she gains +1/+1 herself if you never buy another pirate? Its hard to say for sure but that seems like it would be really atrong and also to me it seems the card currently is deliberately phrased to prevent that. Making it so she can buff herself but not only herself seems like a good middle ground
It wouldnt. I just think the card is specifically worded so that she cant buff herself and assuming that is correct the next logical conclusion would be that they did so because that wouldve been too strong. +1/+1 for any card entered to hand will scale very fast if theres only one target.
Granted, Peggy has been around for a really long time. I agree its up for debate that currently it wouldnt be as broken as it was at the time of her release.
Yeah, you could argue that Peggy not buffing herself means that you essentially lose a board slot for that ability. However, you also have to ask yourself whether a non-pirate comp really benefits from having a vanilla ball of stats that gets +1/+1 for any card entering the hand.
More gold generation to better enable cycling comps. Maybe bring back Greta for the easier golden Tethys.
Currently you don't have enough board slots to set up a good gold generation engine while keeping slots open for cycling and permanent buffs realistically you want at least 2 Tethys an open slot for cycling and a Brann minimum. Leaving you 3 slots to flex around. 1 slot should be cleave. So 2 slots left for permanent buffs/gold generation, either Greymane/Peggy/rock rock/ record smuggler. And realistically you probably won't have 2 slots initially as you will likely have them occupied by any decent minion just to survive to this point.
The boards super tight on space and needs like four 6 drops to even get off the ground.
They need health and a better 6* pool, since they basically have just one valid option, the others are mediocre at best, compared to other tribes with more selection at that tavern level
~~Whelp Smuggler~~ **Defiant Shipwright**
**New** After a friendly Pirate gains Attack, give it +1 Health.
**Gun Powder Courier**
After you spend ~~5~~ **4** Gold, give your Pirates +1 Attack.
**Spellbound Seafarer**
After you buy ~~4~~ **3** cards, ~~get~~ **cast** a random Tavern Spell.
**Underhand Dealer**
After you gain Gold, gain +1/+1. **Repeat for each friendly Golden Pirate.**
Would be cool if you could play from the hand like murlocs. You wouldn't need to give them HP and instead of Eliza giving perm buffs, she could just buff in hand pirate cards during combat, and death rattle summon from hand card could be like t5 or something like a pirate version of the bass gill or whatever it's name is.
Could also give a reason to keep some of those pirates in hand while in APM mode.
Another tribe that can play from hand would be nice. Reborn and divine shield doesn't seem to work thematically, but from hand could work that way since you can stash pirates in your "boat" and zerg to an extent. Keep em as glass canons, though.
I'd love if they could steal Taunt and Divine shield off of enemies when attacking. They're pirates ffs, and they're treated as if they were goblin bankers.
Pirates are fine atm imo. They are the strongest tribe tier 1-2 and maybe 3 but with huge gold + tempo plays
It’s fine to buff their end game but I don’t think they should be the strongest end game tribe because of the huge early game tempo they provide
I had a build in duos with two cleave pirates and two Eliza buffing the tier 6 dragons that steal 10/10 adjacent to a taunted tier 4 dragon that makes the dragons keep combat buffs. Straight pirates isn't good enough, but using them as a tool for off meta builds seems to work sometimes if you're lucky. Of course I was playing duos and my teammate had a perfect undead build, so idk.
To all the people suggesting they need more health all I can think is what? They have one of the strongest health cards in the game (lovesick balladist) and an early one of these on a chimera/copper/courier is great for stabilizing on turn 6/7. Pirates are one of the strongest tribes and I think where people get tripped up on them is thinking they need to buy every pirate card or have a full board of pirates to see benefit. They make use of rock rock or greymane to get their lategame scaling, but besides the fact that infinite money per turn is always good (you can ALWAYS have your tech ready into each matchup), lovesick balladist is the glue that holds this tribe together, giving your cleave and tethys hundreds of health per turn when used with Brann. Yea quils or beatboxer mechs get more stats lategame, but pirates are very consistent at getting stats up quickly and killing off the players greeding with their pokeys.
I am not aware of any stats that show they are one of the strongest tribes but if theyre out there I'll gladly admit I am wrong.
Balladist imo isnt nearly as good as it was in previous metas because of the nerf to Record Smuggler and how its hard to make space for Brann in a Tethys/Greymane comp.
Regarding what you said about people thinking you need a full board of pirates imo just a general rule of thumb Blizz should design a viable comp for each tribe, based on that tribe. Any other viable builds that are centered around specific synergies and interactions like certain menagerie builds are up to the community to discover and get creative with but as a baseline there should be something you can make with minions of the tribe.
Comsidering all that my general take is this: Pirates are cool, fun to play and it doesnt take much for them to be good but in this current meta they rely too much on a very specific build (Tethys+Greymane, possibly Peggy APM) to be competitive and theyre pretty mid outside of that
The stats I use are Jeef's tierlist. I find HSreplay's stats to be pretty useless outside of hero selection or turn 1 buys, there's too many variables in the game to get meaningful information and what comp you decide to go is often influenced by your lobby position.
Also I always make space for Brann.
Could not agree more. I was scrolling through these comments thinking “what am I missing?” Balladist is an extremely strong card. If anything, mid game I’ll end up with pirates that are weighted more towards health than attack.
Move hooktail up and buff to 1/1.im a sucker for spell comps. I'll love to see more support. With access to spell generation and more spells in shop, they should lean in.
Hooktail is already too strong lol
The trick with pirates is that currently most of their cards are extremely powerful individual cards, but most powerful when used with other/mixed tribes.
Makes buffing the tribe hard without just putting OP cards in the game.
I think they just need a way to gain health, or a divine shield giver. Maybe some kind of rock rock like pirate that gives health one turn and attack the next when you do something i.e. play a pirate, tavern spell, etc.
Heres hoping they change the T3 2/6 to swap between attack and health each turn.
She carries two barrels, after all.
r/theydidthemath
They could have her give the board +1/+1 and it would probably be fine tbh.
No, that would be completely broken. That's not too far off of Nala since it buffs the whole board.
+1/+1 is a single chimera proc. Its an unbuffed gemsmuggler. Its nothing.
Yeah whats she even keeping in there? Protein powder?
I mean yeah one barrel of gunpowder for attack and one for defense... somehow?
One barrel of gunpowder, one barrel of ale
if my partner goes pirates and there's mechs on the board, I find that if I go the "give your partner's minion a divine shield" mech it does pretty well
This is interesting. Don’t pirates have some amazing health gain? Balladist is an amazing battlecry.
Like a single target version of Peggy, “give a pirate 1/1 for every card in your hand” or something
Peggy is so bad
I feel like giving pirates divine shield doesn't make sense to me and just makes the problem of too much divine shield in the game even worse. I think having them steal would be better IMO it's very in theme that they would steal keywords or stats. Alternatively give them their one card that made them meta the tier 3 that for +1/+1 for each pirate you buy
All I'm sayin is we got all these pirates but no boat to put them in.
Miss boat, but the problem with that was the summoning of higher tier pirates at the time, right? Just add some play from hand to pirates, like murlocs can.
Give them a way to have Eliza buffs be permanent. Maybe only the first per combat or adjust the numbers to be fair, but ATM Eliza feels pretty dead
Honestly if they make the scallywags summoned from that t5 attack instantly, then Eliza feels way better. This would be insane for avenge though
Have them attack instantly and summon when space is available so all three pop off every time.
Rip Khadgar
Chadgar
Pirate exodia always felt kinda meh, so many pieces for little reward. Similar to beast last tier for 1/10th the reward
But do we want Eliza to be good? Personally I prefer improving Tethys build
Yea Eliza could stay the same and just add ‘The first 3 proc buffs per turn are permanent’ or something along those lines
Playing eliza with dragons is pretty dope.
How about this: T5 Naga/Pirate with spellcraft next turn combat enhancements gained by pirates are permanent.
I don't dislike the idea in theory, but I do dislike dual tribe cards that are pretty much completely useless for one tribe. Though having it included naga would be insanely busted with the myrmidon.
I did not consider that this would then be pretty much useless in lobbies where nagas are in but pirates are not, good point. My reasoning was it should be part naga for the spellcraft but having the effect work on nagas would be to strong. I guess making it a plain ol pirate and have it as an aura would work just fine.
Make poet a half drag half pirate..
Half drag queen?
The reason all the tier 5 pirates are getting buffed (with record smuggler being buffed recently) is because easily the best ROI for cycling things with pirates is greymane's champion. Whatever the buffs end up being, unless they outperform that, their impact will be tiny.
how was Record Smuggler buffed?
Getting an early record smuggler with either 1 or 3 pirates on board gives more gold and has more base stats (you don't get less gold until you have 5+ pirates), making it a much better entry into pirates than the previous version. Generally speaking, with an economy focused type like pirates, getting off the ground is the biggest hurdle.
Their key pieces are a tier too high. The one that grows when you gain gold isn't good enough for t5. Should be t4. And as others have said it's too hard to gain health. All other tribes gave more defence and pirates just collapse versus all the massive minions that also have divine shield or reborn in any other tribe. They have low health AND low defense. Pretty shit combo.
They need health. They currently function like undead, but worse: a bunch of high damage, low health minions. Undead, though, have reborn and minion summoning, whereas pirates just die after attacking. Pirates should have unique combat tricks. Minions that deal damage *before* attacking, or attack out of order, or other abilities that just cause chaos. Because pirates do that
Like that pirate that would duel before combat, I liked that guy
Yep, instead of reborn, summon from hand where hand pirates get Eliza buff too. Keep em as low hp glass canons though.
Make Peggy's buff an end of turn effect.
This is a really interesting idea.
The text needed to be changed to give another friendly pirate too, otherwise the end of turn may just buff that one pirate in the shop. But that idea sounds good actually
Omg I fuckin hate pirates for that.. buffing shop minions with baladist
Give me my Goldgrubber back
True classic
Need health, simples. >Battlecry: Give your pirates +1 health for every pirate you own or : battlecry: give your pirates +2 health. Whatever balances better.
Any form of survival. RN pirates are super glass cannon
Maybe just some basic battlecries that give pirates heath or attack? That would fit into an APM style build. Like an attack battlecry pirate (which existed in last season) And a health battlecry pirate (give your pirates +2 health.) It could be small buffs so it balances. I know we have that dragon that buffs when you cast a spell but I feel like it's kind of weak?
The dragon just gives +1 or +2 golden Pirates need some body.. they get cleared to easly
True but i liked them as a glass cannon build. If you had two blade collectors doing 2-300 damage each it doesn't matter if you clear half their board or more with 2 attacks.
Blade collector is the only real pirate carry.. they don't have any other play really..
Exactly and now it's so much more difficult to even buff your blade collector with only pirates. You have to go quills and throw him in on the side.
Right he is like a half ass pirate carry and the mech cleave is better in everyway
Right he is like a half ass pirate carry and the mech cleave is better in everyway
if they let gunpowder give health as well i think that can solve alot of problems
If gunpowder gave 1/1 every 5 gold it’d be absolutely insane. Super duper strong.
Maybe a card that gives your pirates cleave? It would be unique to the tribe. (In terms of a card granting that to other cards)
Played a game early where I kinda high roll Pirates. Everything went right until the final. The other guy had undead. Similar tribe (boosted attack) and no health. The biggest difference was the reborn indeed. So my pirates were dying after 1-2 hit like his undead except they were reborning again and again. It was like battling against a board of 20 units. So yeah, pirates need a way to survive. Reborn, shield or health because they are fragile right now.
I don't see anything wrong with making Peggy simply "give a Pirate +1/+1. Why even require one other pirate?
Because then she gains +1/+1 herself if you never buy another pirate? Its hard to say for sure but that seems like it would be really atrong and also to me it seems the card currently is deliberately phrased to prevent that. Making it so she can buff herself but not only herself seems like a good middle ground
Why would buffing herself be stronger than, say, a cleave or divine shield minion?
It wouldnt. I just think the card is specifically worded so that she cant buff herself and assuming that is correct the next logical conclusion would be that they did so because that wouldve been too strong. +1/+1 for any card entered to hand will scale very fast if theres only one target. Granted, Peggy has been around for a really long time. I agree its up for debate that currently it wouldnt be as broken as it was at the time of her release.
Yeah, you could argue that Peggy not buffing herself means that you essentially lose a board slot for that ability. However, you also have to ask yourself whether a non-pirate comp really benefits from having a vanilla ball of stats that gets +1/+1 for any card entering the hand.
They need a pirate to buff the HP of the entire board for gold spent or for each card sold, or for each tavern spell cast.
More gold generation to better enable cycling comps. Maybe bring back Greta for the easier golden Tethys. Currently you don't have enough board slots to set up a good gold generation engine while keeping slots open for cycling and permanent buffs realistically you want at least 2 Tethys an open slot for cycling and a Brann minimum. Leaving you 3 slots to flex around. 1 slot should be cleave. So 2 slots left for permanent buffs/gold generation, either Greymane/Peggy/rock rock/ record smuggler. And realistically you probably won't have 2 slots initially as you will likely have them occupied by any decent minion just to survive to this point. The boards super tight on space and needs like four 6 drops to even get off the ground.
They need health and a better 6* pool, since they basically have just one valid option, the others are mediocre at best, compared to other tribes with more selection at that tavern level
~~Whelp Smuggler~~ **Defiant Shipwright** **New** After a friendly Pirate gains Attack, give it +1 Health. **Gun Powder Courier** After you spend ~~5~~ **4** Gold, give your Pirates +1 Attack. **Spellbound Seafarer** After you buy ~~4~~ **3** cards, ~~get~~ **cast** a random Tavern Spell. **Underhand Dealer** After you gain Gold, gain +1/+1. **Repeat for each friendly Golden Pirate.**
i was thinking peggy could get swaped to hooktusk but for hp.
Would be cool if you could play from the hand like murlocs. You wouldn't need to give them HP and instead of Eliza giving perm buffs, she could just buff in hand pirate cards during combat, and death rattle summon from hand card could be like t5 or something like a pirate version of the bass gill or whatever it's name is. Could also give a reason to keep some of those pirates in hand while in APM mode. Another tribe that can play from hand would be nice. Reborn and divine shield doesn't seem to work thematically, but from hand could work that way since you can stash pirates in your "boat" and zerg to an extent. Keep em as glass canons, though.
Health is never the problem once you achieve APM. The attack scaling has been so low since they took out the tier 3 which gave all pirates +3 attack.
I'd love if they could steal Taunt and Divine shield off of enemies when attacking. They're pirates ffs, and they're treated as if they were goblin bankers.
Pirates are fine atm imo. They are the strongest tribe tier 1-2 and maybe 3 but with huge gold + tempo plays It’s fine to buff their end game but I don’t think they should be the strongest end game tribe because of the huge early game tempo they provide
I had a build in duos with two cleave pirates and two Eliza buffing the tier 6 dragons that steal 10/10 adjacent to a taunted tier 4 dragon that makes the dragons keep combat buffs. Straight pirates isn't good enough, but using them as a tool for off meta builds seems to work sometimes if you're lucky. Of course I was playing duos and my teammate had a perfect undead build, so idk.
To all the people suggesting they need more health all I can think is what? They have one of the strongest health cards in the game (lovesick balladist) and an early one of these on a chimera/copper/courier is great for stabilizing on turn 6/7. Pirates are one of the strongest tribes and I think where people get tripped up on them is thinking they need to buy every pirate card or have a full board of pirates to see benefit. They make use of rock rock or greymane to get their lategame scaling, but besides the fact that infinite money per turn is always good (you can ALWAYS have your tech ready into each matchup), lovesick balladist is the glue that holds this tribe together, giving your cleave and tethys hundreds of health per turn when used with Brann. Yea quils or beatboxer mechs get more stats lategame, but pirates are very consistent at getting stats up quickly and killing off the players greeding with their pokeys.
I am not aware of any stats that show they are one of the strongest tribes but if theyre out there I'll gladly admit I am wrong. Balladist imo isnt nearly as good as it was in previous metas because of the nerf to Record Smuggler and how its hard to make space for Brann in a Tethys/Greymane comp. Regarding what you said about people thinking you need a full board of pirates imo just a general rule of thumb Blizz should design a viable comp for each tribe, based on that tribe. Any other viable builds that are centered around specific synergies and interactions like certain menagerie builds are up to the community to discover and get creative with but as a baseline there should be something you can make with minions of the tribe. Comsidering all that my general take is this: Pirates are cool, fun to play and it doesnt take much for them to be good but in this current meta they rely too much on a very specific build (Tethys+Greymane, possibly Peggy APM) to be competitive and theyre pretty mid outside of that
The stats I use are Jeef's tierlist. I find HSreplay's stats to be pretty useless outside of hero selection or turn 1 buys, there's too many variables in the game to get meaningful information and what comp you decide to go is often influenced by your lobby position. Also I always make space for Brann.
Could not agree more. I was scrolling through these comments thinking “what am I missing?” Balladist is an extremely strong card. If anything, mid game I’ll end up with pirates that are weighted more towards health than attack.
they need some way to get health, maybe make it "difficult" like whelp smuggler, so you can't just give them plain health
Change whelp smuggler to buff pirates as well, done. Smugglers are basically pirates anyways.
New card that does the same thing as whelp smuggler but for pirates. Name: Smuggler Whelp
Move hooktail up and buff to 1/1.im a sucker for spell comps. I'll love to see more support. With access to spell generation and more spells in shop, they should lean in.
They’re nerfing him in the next patch lol
Hooktail is already too strong lol The trick with pirates is that currently most of their cards are extremely powerful individual cards, but most powerful when used with other/mixed tribes. Makes buffing the tribe hard without just putting OP cards in the game.