I wanted to write a full “state of vanar” review the way i see it but it will be too long however i do want to discuss Ilena as my favorite vanar general and a unique one.
Ilena is the control general of vanar (for those of you who don’t know every faction got a general for aggro, control, midrange) and is lacking hard part of it os becuase of the nerfs.
Ilena runs these two arcitype well - sotw and trail.
Any other arcytype just doesn’t feel right (even very fun ones like vespyr stun or full aggro).
The reason sotw was well recieved is due to corona.
Corona gave you the option to throw diciple on mana tile at 3 mana, stun the general or minion and start tanking dmg with varocity while developing for sotw (which is hard by itself).
1 mana corona was far from crucial, what was even more crucial is the option to stun generals, it gave you the stall you needed against solo decks that counter sotw hard (mantra, sajj, reva).
Imagine everything went well - you are on 8 mana, got your wounded deciple, and a few other injured minions , sotw at hand and corona.
In the old days you’ll stun the general and go twice with the diciple for 10 face.
I mean you already won! By not finishing it you are risking an out of hand dmg at 9 mana.
These days not only that you need to make sure your board is outlast the enemy’s you also need to leave an enemy minion alive for it sometimes.
Most of the time when the enemy knows how to position this is a problem and usually will block lethal.
Next - mdg —> i was really looking for a ma. Wisp nerf, i hate this card and doesn’t play it myself maily becuase i believe that it is not that good to begin with.
Ilena got better moves on 4 mana than babysitting a wisp.
Nerfing mdg was a mistake, the reason being - mdg is the alternative for decks who don’t run wisp ( like vespyr, infiltrate, sotw, trail) mainly for the fact that snow chaser synergies better or that mdg is a control tool that covers ground in the early game better then wisp.
I get that if wisp is 2 mana and mdg has the better effect it should be the same, but - you can’t buff mdg, you can’t aspect it, and in the mid to late game is useless that’s why 2 mana it wayyy too much for it.
It killed the card.
Now on turn 2 if everything goes well you need to play 2 mana minion instead of 3 mana and ramp for one in the next turn when you need to handle 4-5 mana minion usually + bbs.
This is a bad place to be.
The way i see it most of the generals got their own win con in a way.
Ilena didn’t got her yet (vanar’s trail should have seen a buff at least if not a complete rework - it is unplayable without running a super heavy control deck and hope that yoy opponent draws bad).
Ilena’s wincon for me was sotw which tuned her control a bit down and made her a little more deck space (super important in her situation given that her deck is loaded with single role control tools) and now it is got from hard to master to basically impossible.
I don’t enjoy running vanar neutral decks, i feel like those decks are lacking the faction identity and synergies and overall not that fun.
We all know that cpg got the expansion to fix problems.
But - expansion can’t fix everything and given how cpg nerfed vanar to the ground it will be difficult to fix eveything and give new archtypes support.
So i’m not counting on it.
I don’t know if we got a member of the design team in the forums but i would like it if someone will explain why the had to basically render a whole faction useless if not for neutrals.
As for today i sank in ladder back to rank 10 trying to make sotw work well again, but with all the stupid (and i mean it) decks, the no actual nerfs to the cards who needed nerfs, and the lack of unranked to actually try and build the deck i have to face braindead decks like trail brome and eggmar all around.