Hearthpwn

Next time y'all do this, can people just use one of the 9 already designed hero powers if they wish. There are so many classes that would be better off with an existing copy of one of the hero powers already on show. Without serious hoops to jump through, you can only do basic stat boosts or a simple weapon. Some examples do that, and some ignore that entirely. And some class designs don't fit either of those parameters, so people create more than 2 mana hero powers or they are weirdly designed.

The battle-mage(Demonx95), for example. Would be better off if the hero power didn't move minions and it just had Fireblast as the hero power.

Having a delayed card draw attached to a minion is a little bit convoluted Cogito_ergo_sum, and yours is just one. It's not even the worst offender from all the classes, and it's not even the only class with a delayed card draw. The Magician from cL4wzHS also does this, and has the same problem. You'd both be better off if you could just have warlocks hero power and designed basic/class card(s) to fit the niche your hero powers staggered draw backs provide.

Also, stuff like the Researcher from aaro54, The Chronicler from Hurien, The pint sized Witch from Ragnador, etc. basically gets around the 2 mana restriction of hero powers by designing a token or group of tokens that costs 1 mana to use.

I get this is for fun for the people who get involved and at the end of the day that's all it's about. But, I guess I just have a serious disconnect to  part of this community. Lots of things aren't super appealing to me this go around, aesthetically or basic design wise. Personally speaking I can only back a few. I guess maybe my standards are too high, or I dunno.

The Witch(Thezzy), The Archeologist(Pircival). The Lich(Linkblade 91). Lowering my 'WOW aesthetic compliant' standards I gave The Bug(SunnoxPL) a pass, too.

I couldn't come up with anything so clearly I also couldn't do better myself. I just think of the hundreds of people who have competed in the past. Not plagiarizing while trying to carve out your own thing is hard to do, it's a rough task and this time illness, coupled with my own lack of creativity led me to avoid this competition from a competitors process.

'We want to breed new creativity with this competition.'  Lich/Necromancer, Alchemist, Bard, Tinker/Engineer. (You can probably throw battle-mage and/or some witchdoctor variant in there too.) If you really wanted to 'breed creativity' you'd stop equally common ideas. Otherwise, remove the monk, demon hunter, death knight restriction. Seems rather arbitrary to me from my perspective. I see those other classes just as often, if not more so across the hearthstone community since everyone seems to want to restrict those 3 classes. I probably should've complained about this sooner, or before the competition even started in the feedback thread, but it just didn't occur to me until now that this is a problem. I don't see a problem with people coming up with new ideas for those classes, I don't think we need that restriction for future class competitions.

Biggerbossman who just posted his submission while I was writing this. Not only is your class poorly balanced, I think it's offensive to Japanese mythos and culture, while also demeaning suicide and the victims there-of. 'There's nothing a good old shot of Seppuku can't solve.' YIKES. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but that is not a good look there, bud.

I know it's a bit late but i really wanted to join the competition. 

Any advice is more than welcome, i will try to fix it if i got time or maybe in the next phase.

The Botanist

Tempest Keep was merely a set back.

Freywinn, the High Botanist

Tempest Keep was merely a setback. Freywinn was in charge of the experiments the blood elves were conducting on the plants in the Botanica.  After the destruction of Tempest Keep he managed to survive returning to the simple life of a scholar, growing his knowledge about the native plantlife of Draenor/Outland, discovering the secrets behind the Evergrowth and the power hidden among the plants. Someone supposed that he has been infested by a rare specimen. 

What's a Botanist?

A Botanist is not a Druid, Blood Elves will never be druids. A Botanist is a scholar fascinated by plant life: the resilience and adaptability of weeds, the ability of simple grass to harness the power of the sun, the way a tree may be divided into two, or two branches grafted into one.  While the Druids are a protectors of the wild, a Botanist is focused on the research of nature secrets. They study, catalogue, culture and experiment on different kind of plants, tapping into their life force  in order to unlock their hidden power:  the ancient and lost connections of the Evergrowth. Patient is their main assistance because it takes time for a seed to grow strong.

Cultivation and Evergrowth

The Hero Power of the Botanist is going to test your patient and luck, but if you can wait enough it can show you some pretty good miracles. Every time he Hero Power is played the Botanist shuffle a Seed card into the deck that is gonna be cast when drawn, summoning a Seedling on the board. For the first time it will be a 1 Attacck 1 Health minion but thanks to the Evergrowth it will get bigger and stronger (If you won't get killed before, but you know, it's not easy to take care of a plant).

KEYWORD  EVERGROWTH  The EVERGROWTH works similar to the Jade Golem mechanic. Every time a minion with EVERGROWTH is played it get its stats buffed by +1+1 for for each other minions with EVERGROWTH already played in that game. Because it's a buff, it can be silenced.

 

As you can imagine, the more Seed the more Seedling, the more Seedling the bigger stats. At this stage the new keyword is also the major strength of the Botanist, as long as you can draw enough of them before your opponent will end your planting session. Because of that here are some hints of how a Botanist could help himself and his crop to bloom. 

 

 

Mutated Mageroyal: It's always good to have an extra Evergrowth on the board, you just need to wait to draw 2 Seeds. The value of the card is that it give you an extra +1+1 to the next Seedling you will play. The stats are not great but it's cheap and if you have many Evergrowth already played it can be a problem.

Seeding: You need time to build your plantation so it is better to remove any threat since the beginning. Oh and you will get an extra seed once it die (whatever wasn't even yours). This card it's a removal for some low cost card and also a way to build up more seeds into your deck.

Greenkeeper:  No luck finding your seeds little Botanist? Let me take advantage of this situation. It's a 6 mana 2/5 minion with a battlecry effect that deal 1 damage to all enemies, repeating it for every seed in your deck. Let's say you used your hero power in the passed 4 turn this little guy is a 4 damage AoE (Hero included)

Vengeful Vine: That's easy, best way to protect yourself? A Taunt minion. Actually a taunt minion that shuffle another seed inside your deck once it die.

Evergrowth's Call: You kill something and you draw 3 card. 3 possible Seed. I thought about this card because it will works very well killing minions with deathrattle that give you extra seed like the Seeding target or the Vengeful Vine, or just for trading something on the board to get 3 draws.

---

 

Quote from Wishmaster333 >>

Next time y'all do this, can people just use one of the 9 already designed hero powers if they wish. There are so many classes that would be better off with an existing copy of one of the hero powers already on show. Without serious hoops to jump through, you can only do basic stat boosts or a simple weapon. Some examples do that, and some ignore that entirely. And some class designs don't fit either of those parameters, so people create more than 2 mana hero powers or they are weirdly designed.

The battle-mage(Demonx95), for example. Would be better off if the hero power didn't move minions and it just had Fireblast as the hero power.

Having a delayed card draw attached to a minion is a little bit convoluted Cogito_ergo_sum, and yours is just one. It's not even the worst offender from all the classes, and it's not even the only class with a delayed card draw. The Magician from cL4wzHS also does this, and has the same problem. You'd both be better off if you could just have warlocks hero power and designed basic/class card(s) to fit the niche your hero powers staggered draw backs provide.

Also, stuff like the Researcher from aaro54, The Chronicler from Hurien, The pint sized Witch from Ragnador, etc. basically gets around the 2 mana restriction of hero powers by designing a token or group of tokens that costs 1 mana to use.

I get this is for fun for the people who get involved and at the end of the day that's all it's about. But, I guess I just have a serious disconnect to  part of this community. Lots of things aren't super appealing to me this go around, aesthetically or basic design wise. Personally speaking I can only back a few. I guess maybe my standards are too high, or I dunno.

The Witch(Thezzy), The Archeologist(Pircival). The Lich(Linkblade 91). Lowering my 'WOW aesthetic compliant' standards I gave The Bug(SunnoxPL) a pass, too.

I couldn't come up with anything so clearly I also couldn't do better myself. I just think of the hundreds of people who have competed in the past. Not plagiarizing while trying to carve out your own thing is hard to do, it's a rough task and this time illness, coupled with my own lack of creativity led me to avoid this competition from a competitors process.

'We want to breed new creativity with this competition.'  Lich/Necromancer, Alchemist, Bard, Tinker/Engineer. (You can probably throw battle-mage and/or some witchdoctor variant in there too.) If you really wanted to 'breed creativity' you'd stop equally common ideas. Otherwise, remove the monk, demon hunter, death knight restriction. Seems rather arbitrary to me from my perspective. I see those other classes just as often, if not more so across the hearthstone community since everyone seems to want to restrict those 3 classes. I probably should've complained about this sooner, or before the competition even started in the feedback thread, but it just didn't occur to me until now that this is a problem. I don't see a problem with people coming up with new ideas for those classes, I don't think we need that restriction for future class competitions.

Biggerbossman who just posted his submission while I was writing this. Not only is your class poorly balanced, I think it's offensive to Japanese mythos and culture, while also demeaning suicide and the victims there-of. 'There's nothing a good old shot of Seppuku can't solve.' YIKES. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but that is not a good look there, bud.

 Hey Wishmaster333 I'm sorry you feel that way. In my opinion, there isn't that much you can do with Hero Powers, so you either go with the tried and true (Deal 2 random damage, buffs, simple weapon), you create a bunch of tokens (like I did) or you go really out there, which can be really hit or miss. However, I still prefer this approach rather than copying an existing HP, just because it just doesn't fit the game that two classes would share such a fundamental piece. That's my opinion at least.

Regarding the "more than 2 mana HP approach", I don't really understand what's the problem if it is handled correctly. Adding an extra card to your hand is basically the same as the Warlock Hero Power, and the balance here comes from the fact that the card added is not as good as a card from your deck. In fact, I'd say this kind of HPs are more fitting to Hearthstone as a whole than Warlock's HP, which is rendered useless either by your life total or your deck size at one point or another. No other Hero Power has that kind of implications. Card creating HPs (minion ones more so, because of spell shenanigans) don't break any rule and work in the same places and same ways as other existing HPs. There's a lot more to them than just a 3 mana HP. In my case, I mixed this concept with the Shaman HP, trying to add a limit and proper balancing to the spells created by it.

Now, I'm totally with you on the Demon Hunter, Monk and Death Knight. I think it's high time we allow them again, because at this point we have more iterations on the Tinker and the Alchemist than any of them.

@thepowrofcheese I understand that completely. I was one of them lol

Anyway i thought that this one was going to be a bit more balanced because u are not summoning straight away the token but you a shuffle it between 30 cards. It might takes 10 or more turn to draw more than 5 seed and the bonus won't be as insane as the jade golem's on turn 10. What i can say is that i will try to make it as harder as possible and i'm not planning to follow the jade golem mechanic summoning a jade golem with another card. The only way to get seedling in this deck is luck and time.

Quote from Laurendor >>

@thepowrofcheese I understand that completely. I was one of them lol

Anyway i thought that this one was going to be a bit more balanced because u are not summoning straight away the token but you a shuffle it between 30 cards. It might takes 10 or more turn to draw more than 5 seed and the bonus won't be as insane as the jade golem's on turn 10. What i can say is that i will try to make it as harder as possible and i'm not planning to follow the jade golem mechanic summoning a jade golem with another card. The only way to get seedling in this deck is luck and time.

 I just took a quick look at your entry. The way it's worded right now, Evergrowth won't count minions that were summoned without being played. Not sure that was intentional.

I’m sorry what do you mean by that?

i want Evergrowth to work only on the minion summoned by that token and played from the hand.

Also regarding the Seed token. Do you think it’s more fair if I remove the draw a card at the end? 

Also to make it less powerful do you think is better to make evergrowth “give  X randomly split between Health and Attack, where X is the number of minion with evergrowth you already played/summon”

Like if I played 4 minion I can get a buff of +3 +1 for example 

I just thought that if it works like that it’s a bit more random and not so powerful and I can push the Seed mechanic a bit further without been overpower. 

Quote from Laurendor >>

I’m sorry what do you mean by that?

i want Evergrowth to work only on the minion summoned by that token and played from the hand.

Also regarding the Seed token. Do you think it’s more fair if I remove the draw a card at the end? 

Also to make it less powerful do you think is better to make evergrowth “give  X randomly split between Health and Attack, where X is the number of minion with evergrowth you already played/summon”

Like if I played 4 minion I can get a buff of +3 +1 for example 

I just thought that if it works like that it’s a bit more random and not so powerful and I can push the Seed mechanic a bit further without been overpower. 

 

 I mean that evergrowth won't triggered if the minion is summoned by a random effect  like from piloted shredder or it's recruited. 

Don't make the keyword random, it's going to be too complicated and less fun to play.

The draw part seems fine, especially when your hero power has no immediate impact on the board. 

I thought about it and yeah I wanted to don’t work with this kind of combo. I guess it’s easier. 

Quote from Wishmaster333 >>

'We want to breed new creativity with this competition.'  Lich/Necromancer, Alchemist, Bard, Tinker/Engineer. (You can probably throw battle-mage and/or some witchdoctor variant in there too.) If you really wanted to 'breed creativity' you'd stop equally common ideas. Otherwise, remove the monk, demon hunter, death knight restriction. Seems rather arbitrary to me from my perspective. I see those other classes just as often, if not more so across the hearthstone community since everyone seems to want to restrict those 3 classes. I probably should've complained about this sooner, or before the competition even started in the feedback thread, but it just didn't occur to me until now that this is a problem. I don't see a problem with people coming up with new ideas for those classes, I don't think we need that restriction for future class competitions.

 The Big Three are banned for more reasons beyond just because we're concerned such entries would be commonplace. They're banned because they're existing WoW classes, and are subject to underlying biases about them. "I love the DK in WoW; you get my vote!" Such an assertion might not have anything to do with the quality of the entry, and would exist mostly on the basis of nostalgia and/or playing to Warcraft's base. Ability names, notable NPCs (for Legendaries), and artwork would be more readily accessible, as well: together they provide an unfair advantage in regards to the burden of entry for these classes (finding appropriate artwork for one's cards, making up names, etc.). An obvious counter-jab would be "that easy for you to say, using Kel'Thuzad as your hero and relying on existing characters", but they're not on the same level. There's still a required amount of effort for me to research these characters and connect them to the right art and effects. If I were to look up information regarding the Demon Hunter, all of the necessary materials could be found on a single Wiki page: ability names, important Demon Hunters, Warcraft artwork for these characters, etc.

All-in-all, the reasoning behind our restriction on these classes goes deeper than just in the interest of "creativity". It's mainly about fairness, keeping everyone on a relatively-even playing field regarding the effort required to make a class that appeals to people.

Quote from Wishmaster333 >>

Next time y'all do this, can people just use one of the 9 already designed hero powers if they wish. There are so many classes that would be better off with an existing copy of one of the hero powers already on show. Without serious hoops to jump through, you can only do basic stat boosts or a simple weapon. Some examples do that, and some ignore that entirely. And some class designs don't fit either of those parameters, so people create more than 2 mana hero powers or they are weirdly designed.

 

...

'We want to breed new creativity with this competition.'  Lich/Necromancer, Alchemist, Bard, Tinker/Engineer. (You can probably throw battle-mage and/or some witchdoctor variant in there too.) If you really wanted to 'breed creativity' you'd stop equally common ideas. Otherwise, remove the monk, demon hunter, death knight restriction. Seems rather arbitrary to me from my perspective. I see those other classes just as often, if not more so across the hearthstone community since everyone seems to want to restrict those 3 classes. I probably should've complained about this sooner, or before the competition even started in the feedback thread, but it just didn't occur to me until now that this is a problem. I don't see a problem with people coming up with new ideas for those classes, I don't think we need that restriction for future class competitions.

 Not gonna comment on everything, just the competition-running related stuff.

You talk quite a lot about looking for creativity, so I don't really understand why you want people to be allowed to use existing Hero Powers for their classes. That's the most derivative thing you could do. A lot of people have come up with fantastic Hero Powers that are better than existing ones - certainly many people manage to beat the worst ones, Lesser Heal and Totemic Call.

The Hero Power is part of the intrinsic design of the class - you can theme cards all you want, but if your Hero Power is just 'Deal 1 damage' all I'm going to be thinking is, "Why aren't you just designing Mage cards for an expansion?".

In regards to the banning of Death Knight, Monk and Demon Hunter, we haven't just banned these because they were designed time and time again when Hearthstone first came out. They're also banned because they are the three playable WoW classes which are not Hearthstone classes - people have fond memories of these classes, and that bias gives anyone who designs one of these classes an unfair advantage over other competitors. If you want a tangible example of this bias, all you have to do is look at the hype around the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion and the Death Knight Hero cards when they were first announced.

They also come with far more available resources than non-WoW classes, like spell names and lore characters, which offer unfair advantages to people entering with them. Basic and Classic sets practically write themselves, which would not only lead to repetitive designs from people, but also a disparity in how much work each competitor faces.