To me, league of explorers is S tier. It introduced the discover mechanic and the highlander mechanic, the single player content included the Rafaam fight which was hilarious (I like your deck, i think i will TAKE IT!), Brann allowed for a bunch of shenanigans that just wasn't possible before... It was such a good expansion!
4 of the 5 Legendaries in LeO introduced a whole new type of a deck. That's fantastic card design. But let's be honest, the only reason why LeO was so great is because it was an adventure and it couldn't have been bloated with useless cards. Whispers, that came right after LeO, was similarly as impactful and fun as LeO, but since they had to come up with 135 cards, there was a lot of useless pack filler and dud cards.
Totally agree. The amount of reno and bronsebeard decks out there is still high. It was the start of an era of highlander decks and nice combos. Also, naxramas was pretty good especially loatheb.
The first week after Whispers of the Old Gods released was the most fun I’ve ever had in HS. The fact that some of the more fun Legendaries were neutral meant that it didn’t feel like that huge of a commitment to craft them.
Witchwood gave me my favorite card ever, which gave me my favorite deck ever, Tess Greymane Burgle Rogue. While I despised Genn and Baku, never have I had more fun playing HS than with that deck.
@@c4rlt0x But sadly without nearly enough support to make it viable, not yet at least. But that kinda seems to be Rogue's stick currently, 4 different archetypes (Pirates, Burgle, SI:7, Deathrattle) but not enough support for any of them to truly shine...except maybe Pirates, but most of the time it feels like Pirate Warrior Light.
Curse of Naxxramas was great, and something awesome to look back to, despite the "one oppressive deck" - at least for many people, myself included. You're forgetting the context of the game was played back then, and why people have fond memories of the time. Basically back in the day when you played normal games at low ranks you wouldn't really encounter netdecks - people would make cool decks with their collections, experiment, and just have fun. When Naxx came out it brought a ton of awesome single-player adventures (which were a blast to play) and new awesome cards and interactions to play with - which was amazing. Now, if you were the "Spike" type of a player, you'd netdeck and eventually hit a level high enough to meet those oppressive decks and have a terrible time playing. But most players never got there, we just had fun playing the game. That's why people have so many fond memories of the expansion, it added a lot without taking anything away. Over time even the lowest rankes became filled with netdecks so the Timmy/Johnny space disappeared and I think it's the case to this day (I no longer play the game). But that should explain why you often hear how good Naxx was.
@@i_am_ergo I played at the time and this is simply not true. Netdecks were rare until rank 15-17 where most people ran a version of a metadeck, but with their own personal touch. The only time you ran into the sweaty hunters were on rank reset. But even then it never bothered me because i played a midrange warrior with healing and control elements to counter the hefty zoo/hunter fiesta.
It’s funny because on my own personal list, Knights of the Frozen Throne ranks super high. Priest had been a not so great class for a long time but it’s been my favorite since beta, so getting to rule the meta game for a while and even through Mean Streets was a breath of fresh air for someone like me. I can understand that it wasn’t fun for a lot of other people, but I remember it fondly and I pushed for Legend the most during that time period to experiment and learn as much as I could.
It helps that un'goro was pretty good for priest too. Purify priest became an unironically good deck. Radiant elementals, lyra, potion of madness and that card which discovered a spell from your deck were all so good. Doing Lyra shenanigans with 2 radiant elementals was one the most fun I had in hearthstone
Same, the deathknights were amazing, and to me it wasn’t just priest and warlock, I remember having a great hunter deck, a mage one… If I remember correctly only the warrior one was really underwhelming.
Frozen throne and ungoro are the greatest set for casual to mid players who don’t necessarily care to hit legend because they significantly disrupted deckbuilding for every class and gave everyone something unique to play with other sets just felt like they were buffing previous archetypes by slowly powercreeping rather than reinventing the playstyle
I sunk so much time into dungeon runs once Kobolds & Catacombs came out, it probably made up most of my hours in the game when I was playing. Has to be S-Tier for me personally. As far as Rastakhan's Rumble goes the only reason I remember it is the hype ass music in the cinematic trailer. Still hype as hell years later
This is a really fun to this I'd love to hear a tier list specifically on the cinematic trailers made for each expansion. because just as much as the expansion cards were fun the anticipation and the hype for these were just as amazing.
ahh the days of no duplicate protection.. I remember opening up like 400 packs of Mean Streets and still missing commons and rares LOL now you can get he whole expansion in 200 packs
My tier list (from left to right being best to worst in each tier): S tier: Journey to Un’Goro, Whispers of the Old Gods, League of Explorers A tier: Kobolds & Catacombs, Knights of the Frozen Throne, Boomsday Project (I just love mechs sorry), Mean Streets of Gadetzan B: tier: Saviors of Uldum, Fractured in Alterac Valley, Goblins vs Gnomes, Classic Hearthstone, Descent of Dragons C tier: Forged in the Barrens, Rise of Shadows, Schoolmance Academy, Blackrock Mountain, Ashes of Outland, One Night in Karazhan, Naxxramas D tier (most of these didn’t feel like expansions, they didn’t really have their own identity in the meta): Rastakhan’s Rumble, The Witchwood (okay if you consider 2 cards an identity in the meta then it did lol), United in Stormwind (this one is just disgusting, the quests are terribly designed, take me back to Un’Goro quests 😭 although I like the traceable mechanic), Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, The Grand Tournament (cool concept too bad the cards were unplayable 🥲)
I liked dark moon faire. I agree it was a bit of a weak expansion but you can’t say it was bad in the art department. The cinematic was amazing, the card art, and the old gods. It was also the first expansion that came out while I was playing so it will always be in my top 3.
I also made my rl friend quit playing hs forever w mechathun. I remember they msgd me when I got to the bottom of the deck "you're letting me win" blew their mind and they haven't played since. Rip.
MSoG was so stupid back than. I remember going for a local tournament and everyone had the same 4 decks in top3 - aggro shaman, renolock, renomage and pirate warrior
This is one of the best of these lists like this I've seen. Witchwood's hard to rate. Baku and Genn caused a LOT of problems for the game, but the set's flavor was so super solid. I also think it's easy to overlook how significant rush was on how the game plays. Granted, there's some new problems caused by rush being a little too commonplace nowadays, but that's more because of later sets than it was witchwood itself. My own personal list would look a bit different, since I love lower-power formats and I value flavor super highly . Sets like KoFT, DoD, and K&C are easy f-tier for me, but things like Un'goro, Tgt, Rastakhan, and Witchwood I tend to rank really highly. A lot of the overarching storyline sets like Stormwind, RoS, Uldum, or Alterac I generally dislike as much for being boring theme-wise as I might anything actual mechanical. (Stormwind's an exception here, because that set just makes the game worse through-and-through)
I haven't played actively played Hearthstone after KotFT but I remember TGT as a very enjoyable and creative expansion. The meta decks were obnoxious, sure, but to me it felt like it was the first time they really changed up the game and the wacky legendary cards made for a very experimental experience, which I really liked. Also the thematic of the set is probably one of my favorites.
I loved Naxx / GvG / BRM because the power creep was slow enough back then that I could get away with playing dumb decks way easier. I spent Naxx playing a Kel'thuzad priest / ramp druid deck and continued to tech stupid shit in like the Recombobulator in GvG to turn ancients of lore into rando 7 drops and shoved even more jank into it come BRM alongside playing a dumb RNG dragon mage deck. They weren't good decks, but I enjoyed playing them and they had a good enough winrate despite how stupid they were. As time went on it's felt like trying to play too far "off meta" is just futile against the strength of good decks as power creep snowballed.
Strictly looking at the meta game this is a good list, disagree on some but that’s natural. I’d love to see a series or something where you select an expansion and elaborate on what it was like at the time, cause I’d love to learn what HS was like in the expacs I missed.
That scrolling through the card collection on the playhearthstone website was so painful to watch because how laggy it was. :D Otherwise another cool video. :)
I like the expentions when they put some secret combos in with epics. Like the draw a card it transforms to a legendary i had sooo much fun with those 0 mana legendary on turn 2 or 3 🙂
rastakan's rumble killed the game for me. I left and went and played Pokemon and Eternal and it looks like I didn't miss much. I would say my peak experience playing hearthstone was Gadgetzan. I loved Jade druid and made legend that cycle. it was the ultimate midrange deck and I had a great time.
It's always fun to see, how Priest Dominates the game or not exist entire Herthstone history. Rouge is somewhat similiar, but she is not exist or piss everyone.
Just wondering if anyone else quit/lost interest around boomsday? I never really considered why I stopped playing but looking back at Kobolds, Witchwood, Boomsday, Rastakhan, Rise of Shadows. It was definitely a low point in the games history. Been trying to get back into it f2p these days though!
I got a taste if the old god expansion for a few months but then the year of the raven came and I quit after Rastakhan’s rumble. The game went full pay to win mode and the meta was frustrating.
personal tier list S: Scholomance, Alterac Valley, Ungoro, WotOG A: League of Explorers, Barrens, Frozen Throne, Uldum B: Classic, Blackrock, Stormwind, Boomsday, Rise of Shadows, Descent of Dragons, GvG C: TGT, K&C, Ashes, Darkmoon D: Karazhan, Witchwood, Rastakhan's Rumble, Gadgetzan F- : Naxx I think if Naxx came out a year later and wasn't the first expansion it would've borderlined killed the game.
You completely ignored the fact that kobolds and catacombs added the best version of solo adventures to date. I would give it atleast a B tier for that alone.
Witchwood was a weird one. Cause it had alot of really good cards but at the same time alot of bad cards not worth trying to make work. Rogue got alot of really good cards and thats when I started really getting into theif rogue
Hearthstone Classic: S My Control Warlock deck had an 80% win ratio. Naxx: F Literally just aggro cancer. Zoolocks and old SMOrc Hunters with sticky minions that don't die from Hellfire. :c Other classes seemed to not exist during this expansion. The campaign was cool, though. GvG: D I don't like mechs. Blackrock: B Campaign was awesome, Control Warrior was awesome. Grand Tourny: C Refreshment Vender, Bolf, and Justicar are literally the only new cards I played that expansion. League: A I played about half the cards in this expansion, and all legendaries. Old God: SS A control meta. YES! This was the most fun expansion. Building your C'thun and watching it go brrrrr, or watching your opponent's Yogg' Pyroblast themselves in the face- It's the best. Also who doesn't love being a part of a cult? Karazhan: E I only played Barnes. Also the 700 gold cost for each wing is horrible. It's probably better to just spend that gold on packs to craft the one card you want. Mean Streets: F Patches The Pirate. Haven't played much after Patches.
Oof there's stuff I agree with and stuff a despise about this tier list, like I didn't like any of the horde vs alliance stuff but I also liked the slower big plays type stuff, I just really want to play a 10 mana spell again
Pretty reasonable ranking. I would've put Stormwind in F tier though for "Fuck this expansion". Also looking back at Rastakhan I actually find myself thinking how many fun legendaries it had (Gonk, Shirvallah, Hakkar, Oondasta, Jan'alai and so on). Yea, overall the whole expansion didn't affect meta much and was forgetable because of it for a lot of people, but still had some cool cards to mess around with.
Ehhh Hearthstone basically has turned into an empty fridge. You open up the fridge thinking maybe there might be something worth munching on but all there is a few slices of cheese and old milk.
Will never forgive blizzard for what they did with the 2018 expansions, pre-purchased WW and Boomsday, never felt so disrespected when they claimed it was to balance the meta and then went and broke the game with RoS, SoU, and DoD.
The rating is about the overall game experience. While I agree that both Stormwind and Scholomance had very OP power-crept cards, while I really hate the environment Stormwind provided, I fairly enjoyed Scholomance in general, eventhough I was aware how OP and power-crept cards were released. And that's the point. I'd definitely put Stormwind to the bottom, but Scholomance deserves a little bit more love, even if not on the top.
i also didnt like united in stormwind cus im more a midgame / control / value "slow" kinda casual player if i get half way thru gold im proud of myself cus thats probably the highest ill go cus ranked really doesnt interest me enough to grind to legend
Good list. I agree with most of it. Seeing this list showed me how forgettable some of the expansions were (e.g. Descent of Dragons, Forged in the Barrens), which makes a full tier list difficult to form. Top 3: 1. Ungoro (Best all around: Awesome Flavour paired with good Balance and Powerlever) 2. League of Explorers (Big impact for an adventure, Discover has shaped the game) 3. Whispers (Cool flavour and maybe the best meta) Honorable Mentions: Scholomance and Uldum Flop 3: 1. Rastakhan (Worst Expansion by far, boring and bland cards) 2. Witchwood (Disappointment in comparison to the flavour potential, also Genn and Baku were huge downers) 3. Grand Tournament (Keywords failed hard, overshadowed by prior GvG) Honorable Mentions: One Night in Karazhan and Ashes of Outland
Some weird placements there. Witchwood D-tier just because of Genn/Baku? Rise of Shadows D-tier just because of Lackeys? But then BRM deserves an A-tier because ”blackrock mountain is cool”? I really love the lore and flavor of Witchwood so seeing it in D-tier hurts especially when something like BRM is in A-tier even though the set doesn’t even have that many strong or memorable cards.
Witchwood was an A for me. I couldn't play many meta decks but I enjoyed the deck building challenges Baku and Genna creates and made a few flavoursome decks in both standard and wild.
League of Explorers is absolutely an S tier. Nothing less. That set was so good and introduced so much to the game that helped shaped its identity moving forward.
LoE - WotOG was my favourite time period in the whole history of Hearthstone. Before WotOG was released, I feared that C'thun decks would completely overwhelm the META and the game becomes one-sided and boring, but it turned out that the C'thun-system was so adequately designed, that while C'thun decks were significant, they didn't radically determine the META. Also I'm on a high degree of agreement with your opinion, such as how Baku and Genn impacted the gameplay and how bad influence on the META United in Stormwind had in general (but the questlines first of all). I also agree that Rise of Shadows (how generic title is this?) and Rastakhan's Rumble were the most forgetable expansions, but I'd include the Boomsday Project here because that felt rather dull to me as well. Other than that, like others said, LoE is definitely S tier for me, and though Witchwood had Baku and Genn and Shudderwock, I liked everything else in that expansion, espeicially the PvE content, so I would rank it as D at least, and Cobolds and Catacombs had the best PvE content ever (difficult but very entertaining, and thus rewarding), so that definitely deserves a B instead of C for me. With the rest, as I said, I mostly agree with you.
My favorites: -Ungoro: the quests aside from rogue were awesome and it was really fun to play against most decks -kobolds: the cards had synergy and it made the meta more interesting and most importantly it introduced my favorite arcetype of all time spell hunter -rise of shadows: As a attrition control player I enjoyed the heck out of the odd warrior control meta. I legit played hours upon hours while it lasted and it's probably my favorite meta of all time -rastakhan: the flavor was just awesome and play off meta stuff with friends was some of the best times I can remember, all in all a fun experience My least favorites: -stormwind: the rise of questline warlock in wild has killed the fun I had in the game, it was the first time I felt left out and I stopped playing for 3 months just after the first week, it was just horrible -outlands: demon hunter was busted af and many decks didn't feel great to play against
For me personally BEST: Old Gods, Explorers, Ungoro, FrozenThrone, Naxx VERY GOOD: Uldum, Dragons, Darkmoon, Catacombs WORST: Rastakhan, Stormwind, Grand Tournament I was actually not a fan of scholomance... that was the start of the spell-centric decks and i really did not like that at all. and you're spot on about Rise of Shadows... that expansion would have been so much better without those fucking lackies
I might be wrong, but didn't Shadowreaper Anduin priest die down pretty quickly after Raza rotated shortly after Knights of the Frozen Throne? I remember Druid being a lot more dominant then priest, and other death knights being a lot more impactful then anduin in standard such as Guldan and as time went on Uther (with the otk) and Rexxar.
This whole video is just pinning down every expansion based on the worst of it, ashes of Outland did have insane demon hunter but it was nerfed really hard only days into the expansion
LOL that was awesome. that was already the most packs I ever opened with an expansion.... and then because of that bug I got 87 bonus packs. crazy thing is i opened close to 400 packs and I was STILL missing a few rares Rares God bless duplicate protection. i can get the whole set with 200 packs + dust now.
There are a few breaking points to how this game died 1- witchwood the beginning of the end: shudderwock and odd paladin decks were so outrageous that it put so many people off. 2- ashes of outland hearthstone loses its top spot in the genre: demon hunter did it for me personally, thats when i quit and never looked back. 3- darkmoon faire tavern pass hits the nail on the coffin: and this is the moment when the game officially died. It was already a ridiculously expensive game and adding more stuff to buy just to be able to keep up did it for the remaining casuals. People who invested resources into this game still plays it but it is just a steep decline from now on.
Hey Rarran. I really like your content and decided to start stream Hearthstone partly because of you. Tomorrow I'll stream for the first time ever and although I'm really nervous, I really wanna thank you again. Keep up your good work.
I havent touched hearthstone consistantly since Descent Of Dragons, but I will always be in love with Saviors Of Uldum, literally that whole little Heros VS Villians story was so fun n cute. Plus Reno best boy.
I actually think kobolds had some of the more fun decks to play/play against, defenitely A-tier for me. Also boomsday was sooooo much fun to me with topsy turvy priest and mech decks, i thought it was so good. S-tier for me
Fully agreed. I don't like the direction that these questlines could permanently determine the Wild environment. Questlines and radical combo-meta feels like the player doesn't really plays against another player. They are just racing to build up their own combos and have no regard what the opponent is doing. With this mindset we might as well play Solitaire. Disgusting. (Ye, I admit, I'm a radical control-meta fan. But control with limits. Not endless Jade Golem and endless Shudderwock and endless Ignite etc...)
Me: *laying in bed in pajamas because my classes were canceled today. Haven’t shaved today and with terrible bed head. Being a bum watching RUclips* Rarran “you look fantastic” Me: :)
I think i'm one of the few where kobolds and catacombs is my favorite expansion of all time. cubelock is my favorite deck and wished there was more support for it. i also liked RoS because thats when i started getting into rogue even though ive been playing since release. If I had to make my top decks of all time it would be K&C Cubelock Wild Ungoro Silver Hand Recruit Paladin RoS Tempo Rogue
Lackey's were actually pretty fun i think, in Rogue and Priest you had to value them out in the right ways which actually brought more strategy then most of the people taught. Naxx was awful until GvG came out. In design League of Explorers or Journey to Ungoro are tied the best for me. With Blackrock coming in right behind Them. The most fun i had was with Khadgar mage. The Giant and that 4 mana twinspell, time your freezes right. I stopped playing since United in Stormwind tho, that expension sadly ruined the game for me :(.
League of Explorers was peak Hearthstone for me. I don't say it was the best expansion, but loved the state of the game after it arrived. Frozen Throne strong contender.
Ungoro was the greatest expansion ever. I loved doing the quests, and it felt like the cards had a lot of love put into them, compared to other expansions that felt soulless like the barrens.
Yeah forged was fun at first but became really annoying.. spell mage and tickatus and priest i started playing wild there.. back to hearthstone now again few weeks ago..
It's extremely fun watching this video because my experience with the expansions are tied only to the murloc cards. Yes, i own every murloc card in the game and only the murloc cards. So my interactions with the expansions are tied to what they did for the murloc tribes. So hearing what a normal person has to say about the different expansions is very interesting since i only remember them for what they introduced to the murloc tribe. The best era for murlocs is hands down before they changed the wording on the core murlocs to only affect your cards, because the feeling of facing a rouge that stole a murloc from you and won the game with it because it gets all the buffs you give your own murlocs was a level of pain you never forget. But for example witchwood wasn't really that good of an expansion, but god damn if the Echo murloc wasn't a godsent. That card alone bumps the expansion up to a B tier because having a murloc that can repopulate the board after you get flamestriked to oblivion completely changed the face of murloc. And that's not to consider the fact that you can get more than 2 of them in your deck with discovers and inspire effects, i had some pretty crazy games even though only a single murloc was added that expansion. But by far my favorite expansion will always be ungoro because of the crazy options added to the murlocs. If you've read all this, here's a fun little thing about that expansion, Sated Threshadon is my favorite murloc card period, i even nicknamed it 'Nessie' because of how often that card ended up saving my games. To this day it's still an injoke with my friends who i regularly dueled with my murloc decks back then. I was probably the only person who actively played that card, if you're curious why i would play it, it's a super sticky and high value murloc card. It was easily the biggest card in the deck and capable of going toe to toe with all the other classes big cards, and removal didn't work well against it because three 1/1 murlocs are a lot more dangerous than you'd think in a murloc deck, a LOT more dangerous than you'd think, i have won more games with those 1/1 murlocs than i did with the murloc quest from ungoro. They were more dangerous than a 5/7 beast for sure, so using removal to get rid of that big dinosaur could actually be worse than just leaving it on the board for you, and if you left it, it's still a 5/7 card. Truly a legendary card for early murloc that was very weak to big removal, but then we got the echo murloc. EDIT: Costumed Entertainer is also a card that has given me way too many laughs. In a murloc drought, that card really reminded me how stupid murloc decks really are.
To me, league of explorers is S tier. It introduced the discover mechanic and the highlander mechanic, the single player content included the Rafaam fight which was hilarious (I like your deck, i think i will TAKE IT!), Brann allowed for a bunch of shenanigans that just wasn't possible before... It was such a good expansion!
Reno is my favorite card ever, agree with u, explorers 100% tier S
4 of the 5 Legendaries in LeO introduced a whole new type of a deck. That's fantastic card design.
But let's be honest, the only reason why LeO was so great is because it was an adventure and it couldn't have been bloated with useless cards. Whispers, that came right after LeO, was similarly as impactful and fun as LeO, but since they had to come up with 135 cards, there was a lot of useless pack filler and dud cards.
I honestly taught i was the only guy who played OSRS and HS...
@@marcd9696 I'm maxed in osrs and got all classic cards in hs!
Totally agree. The amount of reno and bronsebeard decks out there is still high. It was the start of an era of highlander decks and nice combos. Also, naxramas was pretty good especially loatheb.
The frozen throne expansion always will have special place in my heart
Agree, the adventure also felt like a real challenge at the time.
and they introduce death knight hero cards for the first time !
I bet you mained mage
Jade druid tho....
@@cazones3392 Yes.
The first week after Whispers of the Old Gods released was the most fun I’ve ever had in HS. The fact that some of the more fun Legendaries were neutral meant that it didn’t feel like that huge of a commitment to craft them.
Old gods and LOE Meta were my all time favorites aswell
Witchwood gave me my favorite card ever, which gave me my favorite deck ever, Tess Greymane Burgle Rogue. While I despised Genn and Baku, never have I had more fun playing HS than with that deck.
I crafted a golden version. Such a fun card when done the right way haha
Aaaaaaaand is back!
@@c4rlt0x But sadly without nearly enough support to make it viable, not yet at least. But that kinda seems to be Rogue's stick currently, 4 different archetypes (Pirates, Burgle, SI:7, Deathrattle) but not enough support for any of them to truly shine...except maybe Pirates, but most of the time it feels like Pirate Warrior Light.
Loved Genn and Baku and play Baku Pali in Wild up until this day. 1k games with it or smth.
Curse of Naxxramas was great, and something awesome to look back to, despite the "one oppressive deck" - at least for many people, myself included. You're forgetting the context of the game was played back then, and why people have fond memories of the time.
Basically back in the day when you played normal games at low ranks you wouldn't really encounter netdecks - people would make cool decks with their collections, experiment, and just have fun. When Naxx came out it brought a ton of awesome single-player adventures (which were a blast to play) and new awesome cards and interactions to play with - which was amazing.
Now, if you were the "Spike" type of a player, you'd netdeck and eventually hit a level high enough to meet those oppressive decks and have a terrible time playing. But most players never got there, we just had fun playing the game. That's why people have so many fond memories of the expansion, it added a lot without taking anything away.
Over time even the lowest rankes became filled with netdecks so the Timmy/Johnny space disappeared and I think it's the case to this day (I no longer play the game). But that should explain why you often hear how good Naxx was.
So true. The Undertaker fiasco was quite demoralizing, but I will always love Nax for giving us a timeless classic in the form of Loatheb.
You remember it wrong. It was undertaker hunters as far as the eye can see from rank 25 onward.
@@i_am_ergo I played at the time and this is simply not true. Netdecks were rare until rank 15-17 where most people ran a version of a metadeck, but with their own personal touch. The only time you ran into the sweaty hunters were on rank reset. But even then it never bothered me because i played a midrange warrior with healing and control elements to counter the hefty zoo/hunter fiesta.
It’s funny because on my own personal list, Knights of the Frozen Throne ranks super high. Priest had been a not so great class for a long time but it’s been my favorite since beta, so getting to rule the meta game for a while and even through Mean Streets was a breath of fresh air for someone like me. I can understand that it wasn’t fun for a lot of other people, but I remember it fondly and I pushed for Legend the most during that time period to experiment and learn as much as I could.
It helps that un'goro was pretty good for priest too. Purify priest became an unironically good deck. Radiant elementals, lyra, potion of madness and that card which discovered a spell from your deck were all so good. Doing Lyra shenanigans with 2 radiant elementals was one the most fun I had in hearthstone
Whispers of old gods and Mean Streets of Gagdetzan was definitely S-tier for me in terms of flavor.
Blade of C´thun stil my fav card
Frozen throne is S tier. I will die on this hill
You wont die alone brother!
As a former player who mained Priest, I'm with you on this 😂
Same, the deathknights were amazing, and to me it wasn’t just priest and warlock, I remember having a great hunter deck, a mage one… If I remember correctly only the warrior one was really underwhelming.
Frozen throne and ungoro are the greatest set for casual to mid players who don’t necessarily care to hit legend because they significantly disrupted deckbuilding for every class and gave everyone something unique to play with other sets just felt like they were buffing previous archetypes by slowly powercreeping rather than reinventing the playstyle
League of Explorers and Journey to Un'Goro take my heart. Old Gods and BRM were fun too.
I sunk so much time into dungeon runs once Kobolds & Catacombs came out, it probably made up most of my hours in the game when I was playing. Has to be S-Tier for me personally. As far as Rastakhan's Rumble goes the only reason I remember it is the hype ass music in the cinematic trailer. Still hype as hell years later
This is a really fun to this I'd love to hear a tier list specifically on the cinematic trailers made for each expansion. because just as much as the expansion cards were fun the anticipation and the hype for these were just as amazing.
ahh the days of no duplicate protection..
I remember opening up like 400 packs of Mean Streets and still missing commons and rares LOL
now you can get he whole expansion in 200 packs
My tier list (from left to right being best to worst in each tier):
S tier: Journey to Un’Goro, Whispers of the Old Gods, League of Explorers
A tier: Kobolds & Catacombs, Knights of the Frozen Throne, Boomsday Project (I just love mechs sorry), Mean Streets of Gadetzan
B: tier: Saviors of Uldum, Fractured in Alterac Valley, Goblins vs Gnomes, Classic Hearthstone, Descent of Dragons
C tier: Forged in the Barrens, Rise of Shadows, Schoolmance Academy, Blackrock Mountain, Ashes of Outland, One Night in Karazhan, Naxxramas
D tier (most of these didn’t feel like expansions, they didn’t really have their own identity in the meta): Rastakhan’s Rumble, The Witchwood (okay if you consider 2 cards an identity in the meta then it did lol), United in Stormwind (this one is just disgusting, the quests are terribly designed, take me back to Un’Goro quests 😭 although I like the traceable mechanic), Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, The Grand Tournament (cool concept too bad the cards were unplayable 🥲)
I liked dark moon faire. I agree it was a bit of a weak expansion but you can’t say it was bad in the art department. The cinematic was amazing, the card art, and the old gods. It was also the first expansion that came out while I was playing so it will always be in my top 3.
Naxxramas and GVG were S tier, cause they made Arena 500% better when they came out. It was legit the best time of Arena and amazing as an experience.
I feel like after the old gods the game Because worse over the time
Damn it’s crazy to see how different hearthstone is today compared to back then when i played lol
At the time darkmoon faire came out there was a bit of quitting going on, you know with the rewards track......what a time
I personally liked darkmoon faire more than a c. Corrupt is my favourite keyword they've added for a while
I also made my rl friend quit playing hs forever w mechathun. I remember they msgd me when I got to the bottom of the deck "you're letting me win" blew their mind and they haven't played since. Rip.
Old gods was my fav, but anytime I can play a cheesy murloc shaman makes me happy.
MSoG was so stupid back than. I remember going for a local tournament and everyone had the same 4 decks in top3 - aggro shaman, renolock, renomage and pirate warrior
This is one of the best of these lists like this I've seen.
Witchwood's hard to rate. Baku and Genn caused a LOT of problems for the game, but the set's flavor was so super solid. I also think it's easy to overlook how significant rush was on how the game plays. Granted, there's some new problems caused by rush being a little too commonplace nowadays, but that's more because of later sets than it was witchwood itself.
My own personal list would look a bit different, since I love lower-power formats and I value flavor super highly . Sets like KoFT, DoD, and K&C are easy f-tier for me, but things like Un'goro, Tgt, Rastakhan, and Witchwood I tend to rank really highly. A lot of the overarching storyline sets like Stormwind, RoS, Uldum, or Alterac I generally dislike as much for being boring theme-wise as I might anything actual mechanical. (Stormwind's an exception here, because that set just makes the game worse through-and-through)
I haven't played actively played Hearthstone after KotFT but I remember TGT as a very enjoyable and creative expansion.
The meta decks were obnoxious, sure, but to me it felt like it was the first time they really changed up the game and the wacky legendary cards made for a very experimental experience, which I really liked.
Also the thematic of the set is probably one of my favorites.
I loved Naxx / GvG / BRM because the power creep was slow enough back then that I could get away with playing dumb decks way easier. I spent Naxx playing a Kel'thuzad priest / ramp druid deck and continued to tech stupid shit in like the Recombobulator in GvG to turn ancients of lore into rando 7 drops and shoved even more jank into it come BRM alongside playing a dumb RNG dragon mage deck.
They weren't good decks, but I enjoyed playing them and they had a good enough winrate despite how stupid they were. As time went on it's felt like trying to play too far "off meta" is just futile against the strength of good decks as power creep snowballed.
Strictly looking at the meta game this is a good list, disagree on some but that’s natural. I’d love to see a series or something where you select an expansion and elaborate on what it was like at the time, cause I’d love to learn what HS was like in the expacs I missed.
That scrolling through the card collection on the playhearthstone website was so painful to watch because how laggy it was. :D Otherwise another cool video. :)
I like the expentions when they put some secret combos in with epics. Like the draw a card it transforms to a legendary i had sooo much fun with those 0 mana legendary on turn 2 or 3 🙂
LoE - WotOG time period was the absolute peak of Hearthstone
Journey to Un'Goro at S - MY MAN
rastakan's rumble killed the game for me. I left and went and played Pokemon and Eternal and it looks like I didn't miss much. I would say my peak experience playing hearthstone was Gadgetzan. I loved Jade druid and made legend that cycle. it was the ultimate midrange deck and I had a great time.
You reminded me how much I loved scholomance!!!!!
My favorites:
-Moon faire
-Old Gods
-Forget in the Barrens
It's always fun to see, how Priest Dominates the game or not exist entire Herthstone history. Rouge is somewhat similiar, but she is not exist or piss everyone.
Just wondering if anyone else quit/lost interest around boomsday? I never really considered why I stopped playing but looking back at Kobolds, Witchwood, Boomsday, Rastakhan, Rise of Shadows. It was definitely a low point in the games history.
Been trying to get back into it f2p these days though!
tbh rastakhans rumble was pretty cool. it gets too much hate
I loved the lackeys but I couldn't wait for them to rotate
The peak of hearthstone was Knights of the Frozen Throne era, fight me
Kobolds and Catacombs... easy S for me. I had so much fun with dungeon runs.
I got a taste if the old god expansion for a few months but then the year of the raven came and I quit after Rastakhan’s rumble. The game went full pay to win mode and the meta was frustrating.
personal tier list
S: Scholomance, Alterac Valley, Ungoro, WotOG
A: League of Explorers, Barrens, Frozen Throne, Uldum
B: Classic, Blackrock, Stormwind, Boomsday, Rise of Shadows, Descent of Dragons, GvG
C: TGT, K&C, Ashes, Darkmoon
D: Karazhan, Witchwood, Rastakhan's Rumble, Gadgetzan
F- : Naxx
I think if Naxx came out a year later and wasn't the first expansion it would've borderlined killed the game.
Classic is clearly the best because it gave us the pogchamp that is Boulderfist Ogre.
What is the irrational hate for Jades and Lackeys?
LISTEN rarran, you don't have to resort to click bait. we all come here to tell you that you are handsome and move on with our day.
Kobolds and Catacombs should be S-Tier, was so much fun
You completely ignored the fact that kobolds and catacombs added the best version of solo adventures to date. I would give it atleast a B tier for that alone.
Witchwood was a weird one. Cause it had alot of really good cards but at the same time alot of bad cards not worth trying to make work. Rogue got alot of really good cards and thats when I started really getting into theif rogue
Hearthstone Classic: S
My Control Warlock deck had an 80% win ratio.
Naxx: F
Literally just aggro cancer.
Zoolocks and old SMOrc Hunters with sticky minions that don't die from Hellfire. :c
Other classes seemed to not exist during this expansion.
The campaign was cool, though.
GvG: D
I don't like mechs.
Blackrock: B
Campaign was awesome, Control Warrior was awesome.
Grand Tourny: C
Refreshment Vender, Bolf, and Justicar are literally the only new cards I played that expansion.
League: A
I played about half the cards in this expansion, and all legendaries.
Old God: SS
A control meta. YES!
This was the most fun expansion.
Building your C'thun and watching it go brrrrr, or watching your opponent's Yogg' Pyroblast themselves in the face-
It's the best. Also who doesn't love being a part of a cult?
Karazhan: E
I only played Barnes.
Also the 700 gold cost for each wing is horrible. It's probably better to just spend that gold on packs to craft the one card you want.
Mean Streets: F
Patches The Pirate.
Haven't played much after Patches.
Oof there's stuff I agree with and stuff a despise about this tier list, like I didn't like any of the horde vs alliance stuff but I also liked the slower big plays type stuff, I just really want to play a 10 mana spell again
as a free player MSoG was so miserable youd get out aggroed by warrior or impossible to outcontrol druids i stopped playing for like 3 expansions
Pretty reasonable ranking. I would've put Stormwind in F tier though for "Fuck this expansion".
Also looking back at Rastakhan I actually find myself thinking how many fun legendaries it had (Gonk, Shirvallah, Hakkar, Oondasta, Jan'alai and so on). Yea, overall the whole expansion didn't affect meta much and was forgetable because of it for a lot of people, but still had some cool cards to mess around with.
So ranking the META’s of the expansion; not expansions as a whole and their features ?
KaC was A tier for me. If corridor creeper didn't exist, easy S
Agree with the list but LoE also S tier for me. Dragon/Shadow priest were really fun. Now I dont even touch that class.
Now rate their cinematics
Witchwood was pretty bad early launch. After the nerfs and HoFs, it had one of the better metas.
Ehhh Hearthstone basically has turned into an empty fridge. You open up the fridge thinking maybe there might be something worth munching on but all there is a few slices of cheese and old milk.
Rastakhan have a best song compared with the other, and arguably blizzard last attempt to lower the amount of power creep. Should've at least b tier 😞
you said bad and showed witchwood,the expansion with the legendaries that are used and define decks even today,lmao ok dood
Will never forgive blizzard for what they did with the 2018 expansions, pre-purchased WW and Boomsday, never felt so disrespected when they claimed it was to balance the meta and then went and broke the game with RoS, SoU, and DoD.
Nothing came close to Ungoro meta
I rate Scholomance, Stormwind and Alterac tier S in power, but they kinda ruined the game, so i'm gonna say tier D
The rating is about the overall game experience. While I agree that both Stormwind and Scholomance had very OP power-crept cards, while I really hate the environment Stormwind provided, I fairly enjoyed Scholomance in general, eventhough I was aware how OP and power-crept cards were released. And that's the point. I'd definitely put Stormwind to the bottom, but Scholomance deserves a little bit more love, even if not on the top.
But you had Curse of Nax rated D on the thumbnail... BOO!
i also didnt like united in stormwind cus im more a midgame / control / value "slow" kinda casual player if i get half way thru gold im proud of myself cus thats probably the highest ill go cus ranked really doesnt interest me enough to grind to legend
Good list. I agree with most of it. Seeing this list showed me how forgettable some of the expansions were (e.g. Descent of Dragons, Forged in the Barrens), which makes a full tier list difficult to form.
Top 3:
1. Ungoro (Best all around: Awesome Flavour paired with good Balance and Powerlever)
2. League of Explorers (Big impact for an adventure, Discover has shaped the game)
3. Whispers (Cool flavour and maybe the best meta)
Honorable Mentions: Scholomance and Uldum
Flop 3:
1. Rastakhan (Worst Expansion by far, boring and bland cards)
2. Witchwood (Disappointment in comparison to the flavour potential, also Genn and Baku were huge downers)
3. Grand Tournament (Keywords failed hard, overshadowed by prior GvG)
Honorable Mentions: One Night in Karazhan and Ashes of Outland
Kobolds was the worst expansion for Cubelock existing
I loved witchwood :(
Mean streets is a Z tier for me. Ileft the game until just before boomsday came out because of it
Some weird placements there. Witchwood D-tier just because of Genn/Baku? Rise of Shadows D-tier just because of Lackeys? But then BRM deserves an A-tier because ”blackrock mountain is cool”? I really love the lore and flavor of Witchwood so seeing it in D-tier hurts especially when something like BRM is in A-tier even though the set doesn’t even have that many strong or memorable cards.
It's his personal tier, create your own!
@@RickyMuzakki I know, and I can give my opinion on it. That's how comments work.
Witchwood was an A for me. I couldn't play many meta decks but I enjoyed the deck building challenges Baku and Genna creates and made a few flavoursome decks in both standard and wild.
Bring back Baku and Genn!
This list stupid lol
League of Explorers is absolutely an S tier. Nothing less. That set was so good and introduced so much to the game that helped shaped its identity moving forward.
Kobolds was S tier for dungeon runs alone.
fr i still play dungeon runs
This expansion is the peak expansion fr the decks here were the most fun ever
@@elio4490 it really wasn't, a bunch of overpowered cards, remember warlock cube ?
Dalaran heist was also a really fun pve mode
@@Momo-xt2hu cubelock wasnt toxic it was just a good deck
Rastakhan's Rumble is tier S in the thumbnail, nice one!
LoE - WotOG was my favourite time period in the whole history of Hearthstone.
Before WotOG was released, I feared that C'thun decks would completely overwhelm the META and the game becomes one-sided and boring, but it turned out that the C'thun-system was so adequately designed, that while C'thun decks were significant, they didn't radically determine the META.
Also I'm on a high degree of agreement with your opinion, such as how Baku and Genn impacted the gameplay and how bad influence on the META United in Stormwind had in general (but the questlines first of all). I also agree that Rise of Shadows (how generic title is this?) and Rastakhan's Rumble were the most forgetable expansions, but I'd include the Boomsday Project here because that felt rather dull to me as well.
Other than that, like others said, LoE is definitely S tier for me, and though Witchwood had Baku and Genn and Shudderwock, I liked everything else in that expansion, espeicially the PvE content, so I would rank it as D at least, and Cobolds and Catacombs had the best PvE content ever (difficult but very entertaining, and thus rewarding), so that definitely deserves a B instead of C for me.
With the rest, as I said, I mostly agree with you.
Have to agree. it was also my alltime favorite period of hearthstone!!
My favorites:
-Ungoro: the quests aside from rogue were awesome and it was really fun to play against most decks
-kobolds: the cards had synergy and it made the meta more interesting and most importantly it introduced my favorite arcetype of all time spell hunter
-rise of shadows: As a attrition control player I enjoyed the heck out of the odd warrior control meta. I legit played hours upon hours while it lasted and it's probably my favorite meta of all time
-rastakhan: the flavor was just awesome and play off meta stuff with friends was some of the best times I can remember, all in all a fun experience
My least favorites:
-stormwind: the rise of questline warlock in wild has killed the fun I had in the game, it was the first time I felt left out and I stopped playing for 3 months just after the first week, it was just horrible
-outlands: demon hunter was busted af and many decks didn't feel great to play against
For me personally
BEST: Old Gods, Explorers, Ungoro, FrozenThrone, Naxx
VERY GOOD: Uldum, Dragons, Darkmoon, Catacombs
WORST: Rastakhan, Stormwind, Grand Tournament
I was actually not a fan of scholomance... that was the start of the spell-centric decks and i really did not like that at all.
and you're spot on about Rise of Shadows... that expansion would have been so much better without those fucking lackies
I might be wrong, but didn't Shadowreaper Anduin priest die down pretty quickly after Raza rotated shortly after Knights of the Frozen Throne?
I remember Druid being a lot more dominant then priest, and other death knights being a lot more impactful then anduin in standard such as Guldan and as time went on Uther (with the otk) and Rexxar.
This whole video is just pinning down every expansion based on the worst of it, ashes of Outland did have insane demon hunter but it was nerfed really hard only days into the expansion
Anyone remember mean streets packs not giving the correct cards? Haha you would get so many multiples of the same card they gave us extra packs.
LOL that was awesome. that was already the most packs I ever opened with an expansion.... and then because of that bug I got 87 bonus packs. crazy thing is i opened close to 400 packs and I was STILL missing a few rares Rares
God bless duplicate protection. i can get the whole set with 200 packs + dust now.
There are a few breaking points to how this game died
1- witchwood the beginning of the end: shudderwock and odd paladin decks were so outrageous that it put so many people off.
2- ashes of outland hearthstone loses its top spot in the genre: demon hunter did it for me personally, thats when i quit and never looked back.
3- darkmoon faire tavern pass hits the nail on the coffin: and this is the moment when the game officially died. It was already a ridiculously expensive game and adding more stuff to buy just to be able to keep up did it for the remaining casuals.
People who invested resources into this game still plays it but it is just a steep decline from now on.
Hey Rarran. I really like your content and decided to start stream Hearthstone partly because of you. Tomorrow I'll stream for the first time ever and although I'm really nervous, I really wanna thank you again. Keep up your good work.
I havent touched hearthstone consistantly since Descent Of Dragons, but I will always be in love with Saviors Of Uldum, literally that whole little Heros VS Villians story was so fun n cute. Plus Reno best boy.
I actually think kobolds had some of the more fun decks to play/play against, defenitely A-tier for me. Also boomsday was sooooo much fun to me with topsy turvy priest and mech decks, i thought it was so good. S-tier for me
United in Stormwind is probably the worst expansion of all time. Killed the game completely, especially in wild. Luckily, its changed now
Yeah man, i left the game because of Stormwind, Alterac is good tho
Fully agreed.
I don't like the direction that these questlines could permanently determine the Wild environment. Questlines and radical combo-meta feels like the player doesn't really plays against another player. They are just racing to build up their own combos and have no regard what the opponent is doing. With this mindset we might as well play Solitaire. Disgusting.
(Ye, I admit, I'm a radical control-meta fan. But control with limits. Not endless Jade Golem and endless Shudderwock and endless Ignite etc...)
Should create a G tier of "garbage" to united of stormwing
So true.
I think Koblods was actually my favorite meta. Although, I think that largely comes down to how much I loved Aluneth mage.
Me: *laying in bed in pajamas because my classes were canceled today. Haven’t shaved today and with terrible bed head. Being a bum watching RUclips*
Rarran “you look fantastic”
Me: :)
me being sad and watching everyone bash the witchwood even tho i found it very enyojable (i only player monster hunt tho)
I think i'm one of the few where kobolds and catacombs is my favorite expansion of all time. cubelock is my favorite deck and wished there was more support for it. i also liked RoS because thats when i started getting into rogue even though ive been playing since release.
If I had to make my top decks of all time it would be
K&C Cubelock
Wild Ungoro Silver Hand Recruit Paladin
RoS Tempo Rogue
Lackey's were actually pretty fun i think, in Rogue and Priest you had to value them out in the right ways which actually brought more strategy then most of the people taught.
Naxx was awful until GvG came out.
In design League of Explorers or Journey to Ungoro are tied the best for me. With Blackrock coming in right behind Them.
The most fun i had was with Khadgar mage. The Giant and that 4 mana twinspell, time your freezes right.
I stopped playing since United in Stormwind tho, that expension sadly ruined the game for me :(.
Stormwind was the worst by far
Witchwood was probably my favorite time to be playing, plus added my favorite card, Tess. But KFT is my favorite expansion.
League of Explorers was peak Hearthstone for me. I don't say it was the best expansion, but loved the state of the game after it arrived. Frozen Throne strong contender.
fully agreed
Yep Late 2015/2016 was the best time in HS to me Personally
Witchwood and Darkmoon are my two absolute favorite expasions ever, i understand Don't liking them Meta-wise, but Flavor-wise they are both Bangers
Pretty bad list tbh
Ungoro was the greatest expansion ever. I loved doing the quests, and it felt like the cards had a lot of love put into them, compared to other expansions that felt soulless like the barrens.
Yeah forged was fun at first but became really annoying.. spell mage and tickatus and priest i started playing wild there.. back to hearthstone now again few weeks ago..
It's extremely fun watching this video because my experience with the expansions are tied only to the murloc cards. Yes, i own every murloc card in the game and only the murloc cards. So my interactions with the expansions are tied to what they did for the murloc tribes. So hearing what a normal person has to say about the different expansions is very interesting since i only remember them for what they introduced to the murloc tribe. The best era for murlocs is hands down before they changed the wording on the core murlocs to only affect your cards, because the feeling of facing a rouge that stole a murloc from you and won the game with it because it gets all the buffs you give your own murlocs was a level of pain you never forget.
But for example witchwood wasn't really that good of an expansion, but god damn if the Echo murloc wasn't a godsent. That card alone bumps the expansion up to a B tier because having a murloc that can repopulate the board after you get flamestriked to oblivion completely changed the face of murloc. And that's not to consider the fact that you can get more than 2 of them in your deck with discovers and inspire effects, i had some pretty crazy games even though only a single murloc was added that expansion.
But by far my favorite expansion will always be ungoro because of the crazy options added to the murlocs. If you've read all this, here's a fun little thing about that expansion, Sated Threshadon is my favorite murloc card period, i even nicknamed it 'Nessie' because of how often that card ended up saving my games. To this day it's still an injoke with my friends who i regularly dueled with my murloc decks back then. I was probably the only person who actively played that card, if you're curious why i would play it, it's a super sticky and high value murloc card. It was easily the biggest card in the deck and capable of going toe to toe with all the other classes big cards, and removal didn't work well against it because three 1/1 murlocs are a lot more dangerous than you'd think in a murloc deck, a LOT more dangerous than you'd think, i have won more games with those 1/1 murlocs than i did with the murloc quest from ungoro. They were more dangerous than a 5/7 beast for sure, so using removal to get rid of that big dinosaur could actually be worse than just leaving it on the board for you, and if you left it, it's still a 5/7 card. Truly a legendary card for early murloc that was very weak to big removal, but then we got the echo murloc.
EDIT: Costumed Entertainer is also a card that has given me way too many laughs. In a murloc drought, that card really reminded me how stupid murloc decks really are.
My Favorite was Knights of the frozen throne because my main decks were Heal zoo lock & hadronax druid
Heal zoolock was only viable after kobolds and katacombs tho (with Kobold Librarian and Fungal Enchanter)