Care enough to explain this statement? Pirates often have weapon related synergies and Warrior does(or at least, used to) have access to some of the best weapons in the game as well as some of the decent weapon synergy cards. Warrior and Rogue being pirate classes makes sense game mechanics wise and flavor/lore/history wise. Just because pre-pirates Warrior had traditionally been regarded as defensive/control oriented class, doesn't mean it shouldn't have access to strong aggro decks at some point.
Care enough to explain this statement? Pirates often have weapon related synergies and Warrior does(or at least, used to) have access to some of the best weapons in the game as well as some of the decent weapon synergy cards. Warrior and Rogue being pirate classes makes sense game mechanics wise and flavor/lore/history wise. Just because pre-pirates Warrior had traditionally been regarded as defensive/control oriented class, doesn't mean it shouldn't have access to strong aggro decks at some point.
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but not every archetype should be available to all classes.
I don't know WOW lore, nor do I really care if Hearthstone follows it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
Class identity is for a class to have a well-defined list of mechanics for which :
They excel and have a quasi-monopoly on (e.g. Armor for Warrior, Transform effects for Shaman);
They're good at but share this talent with other classes (e.g. Secrets, Healing, Tribe synergies);
They tend to be average on or even slightly worse than other classes (e.g. Card generation, Raw damage)
They suck at and/or won't even touch (e.g. minion buffs for Mage; Taunt for Rogue, etc...)
Class identity takes into account playstyles (aggro, control, ...), general abstract mechanics (card draw, survivability, buffs, etc...) and specific mechanics that can have several purposes (armor, evolve effects, specific tribal synergies...)
Blizzard did a good job at refining the identity of each class from WOTOG and onwards but this year they seemed to have thrown this concern out of the window to instead focus on class identity within each set (think loa teams), which imo is a mistake because it dilutes general class identity over the long term).
I'm glad druids developed further into their class identity of "punishing people who play minions" this expansion. In the past, people often complained about Spreading Plague, and how it wasn't in line with the druid class identity. Now with the release of Gonk, the Raptor, Blizzard has made clear to us that this is just the new identity they have chosen to represent the class. However, while spreading plague punishes by spamming the board with up to 35HP of taunts, Gonk punishes by simply hitting the opponent in the face a lot until they die
I feel that this new theme is an excellent addition for druid as it's also quite fitting from a flavor standpoint. Vulgar minions disturb the peace and disturb nature. As we learned from Floop's section of the Boomlab puzzles, trees only grow when the board is empty. What better way to empty the board than to disincentivise opponents from playing any minions at all?
This may be somewhat controversial considering druid already has many aspects to their class identity. As we all know, druid is the best class at armoring, single target removal, ramping, drawing and winning. It sounds broken when I put it like this and that's why personally I like to think of druid class identity in terms of what they can't do. For example, Shaman has a monopoly on the "freeze" archtype and keywords such as "overload" (aka reverse ramping). In addition, druid lacks the ability to play minions with OpieOP keywords like "enrage" or "windfury" as well as the ability to lose games. QED: Druid is balanced
I'm glad druids developed further into their class identity of "punishing people who play minions" this expansion. In the past, people often complained about Spreading Plague, and how it wasn't in line with the druid class identity. Now with the release of Gonk, the Raptor, Blizzard has made clear to us that this is just the new identity they have chosen to represent the class. However, while spreading plague punishes by spamming the board with up to 35HP of taunts, Gonk punishes by simply hitting the opponent in the face a lot until they die
I feel that this new theme is an excellent addition for druid as it's also quite fitting from a flavor standpoint. Vulgar minions disturb the peace and disturb nature. As we learned from Floop's section of the Boomlab puzzles, trees only grow when the board is empty. What better way to empty the board than to disincentivise opponents from playing any minions at all?
This may be somewhat controversial considering druid already has many aspects to their class identity. As we all know, druid is the best class at armoring, single target removal, ramping, drawing and winning. It sounds broken when I put it like this and that's why personally I like to think of druid class identity in terms of what they can't do. For example, Shaman has a monopoly on the "freeze" archtype and keywords such as "overload" (aka reverse ramping). In addition, druid lacks the ability to play minions with OpieOP keywords like "enrage" or "windfury" as well as the ability to lose games. QED: Druid is balanced
But Druid always liked to play with tokens when they weren't ramping in fact token druid was something you used back in classic and you used *gasp* Imp Master and Violet Teacher, you changed imp amster for Echoing Ooze when it came out but it kept being the same premise, and Spreading Plague puts tokens in the battlefield instead of fully killing all minions, plague is one of the cards most in line with one of the Druid's premises which was having access to Savage Roar and a lotof the buffs like the marks
This may be somewhat controversial considering druid already has many aspects to their class identity. As we all know, druid is the best class at armoring, single target removal, ramping, drawing and winning. It sounds broken when I put it like this and that's why personally I like to think of druid class identity in terms of what they can't do. For example, Shaman has a monopoly on the "freeze" archtype and keywords such as "overload" (aka reverse ramping). In addition, druid lacks the ability to play minions with OpieOPkeywords like "enrage" or "windfury" as well as the ability to lose games. QED: Druid is balanced
The problem with druid was never the fact that they have (in fact) not weakness as a class but the fact that Blizzard print cards that are good for any druid deck that are not removal. If you see Hunter for example have not access to that much evergreen cards except removal, same fro the majority of classes except druid. That is what creates the problem. If all the evergreen cards of a class are good enough to use it in 2 whole different decks with two totally different gameplans that means that the class identity has fail. Lets see the new ramp Druid for example.
Druid minions are big, like hell of a big. As you said they are not suppose to have OP keywords but now every big beast minion Druid put in their decks can gain access to rush. That is not okay because you are not just cheapting the cost of cards like Tarantus or The lord an destroyer of worlds "Haildranox" but you are also making the cards faster so they are supper hard to dealt with in a deck that can run as many evergreen cards of druid as UI and Naturalize. And you can run spreading plague in that same deck too (people run the DK in that which is the same) cause the fact that you almost never will summon a spider for the number of other beast that you are playing unless you have veeery bad luck.
This is the whole situation of the combo druid decks again but now is not a combo but a "fast" deck. Another deck that have a base full of naturally good cards for every situation + a little different win condition. So back in the point what is the weakness of Druid again? because the fact that the answer is "you teching against them" is pretty obvius, by far is the second class with not bad match ups following of Mage.
Why is everyone taking my post so seriously? Druid is broken AF and I know it. I thought my over-the-top tone would make it evident I was only memeing but apparently not
Blizzard basically killed class identity if you ask me. Take priest for example. It's a mix of everything but nothing in specific.
Just a simple example of the last expansion. We all know that priest has the most useless hero power of all classes. It doesn't provide anything early game except for healing your already full HP hero. Blizzard got the perfect chance to change that by giving High Priest Thekal to Priest.... And they gave it to Paladin. They are basically doing these things every expansion.
Cards based on healing or shadowform, that's what makes class identity for Priest. Not the sh!t that we got last 2 expansions.
Blizzard basically killed class identity if you ask me. Take priest for example. It's a mix of everything but nothing in specific.
Just a simple example of the last expansion. We all know that priest has the most useless hero power of all classes. It doesn't provide anything early game except for healing your already full HP hero. Blizzard got the perfect chance to change that by giving High Priest Thekal to Priest.... And they gave it to Paladin. They are basically doing these things every expansion.
Cards based on healing or shadowform, that's what makes class identity for Priest. Not the sh!t that we got last 2 expansions.
If you gave high priest thekal to priest it would be super broken. High priest thekal was given specifically to paladin because it's a class that has access to healing but not as reliably as priest. In general it's a lot harder for paladins to heal up than it is for priests
Blizzard basically killed class identity if you ask me. Take priest for example. It's a mix of everything but nothing in specific.
Just a simple example of the last expansion. We all know that priest has the most useless hero power of all classes. It doesn't provide anything early game except for healing your already full HP hero. Blizzard got the perfect chance to change that by giving High Priest Thekal to Priest.... And they gave it to Paladin. They are basically doing these things every expansion.
Cards based on healing or shadowform, that's what makes class identity for Priest. Not the sh!t that we got last 2 expansions.
If you gave high priest thekal to priest it would be super broken. High priest thekal was given specifically to paladin because it's a class that has access to healing but not as reliably as priest. In general it's a lot harder for paladins to heal up than it is for priests
how can it be more broken in priest that have 0 super healing spells but not broken in paladin that have a 0 mana 7/5 drain rush divine shield minion. 2 weapons that heal (DK pala and Plate) and 1 spell that makes them inmune? XD
Warrior: Core: Armor for massive health gains, weapons for early removal and powerful tools lategame. Rastakhan's identity: Dragons; big bodies attached to powerful effects.
Shaman: Core: Powerful, undercosted spells for future payment (overload). Synergy with wide boards, both enemy and allied ones. Rastakhan's identity: Draw and generate spells.
Rogue: Core: Single target removal. Lack of heals/clear, but powerful, tempo efficient hero power and spells with easy ways to cycle/draw. Rastakhan's identity: Tempo pirates with rush and synergy with one another.
Paladin: Core: Lack of removal. Board-centric using stat manipulation and other tools (divine shield, weapons) for advantageous trades. Offensive buffs. Rastakhan's identity: Heal and cycle and be rewarded by both with tempo.
Hunter: Core: Powerful beast synergy, cheap removal spells to protect beasts on board, finish fights quickly by being aggressive. Rastakhan's identity: Use cheap spells and minions ASAP, be rewarded by a hand-reload mechanic.
Druid: Core: Skip turns to earn mana, drop big minions with defensive impact to comeback. Countered by constant medium threats. Rastakhan's identity: Use cheap removal tools which cycle thanks to the synergy with hero power attack. Go wide and try to finish fast.
Warlock: Core: Powerful effects paid in unconventional ways (health, discard). Weaker spells overall but strongest hero power. Demon synergy. Rastakhan's identity: Discard early to gain an advantage on board, use discard-recovery cards later to recover from the loss.
Mage: Core: All sort of removal spells, both powerful and relatively cheap. Ability to deal with both tall and wide threats easily. Rastakhan's identity: Elemental synergy, use of hero power for removal as a free spell.
Priest: Core: Healing-centric, synergy with high-health minions. Powerful and cheap, if situational, answers. Centered around surviving to lategame. Rastakhan's identity: Buff minions beforehand in hand and deck and take board with their over-stats.
Good list. I would add to priest: Use opponents cards against them (card stealing and mind controlling).
Blizzard basically killed class identity if you ask me. Take priest for example. It's a mix of everything but nothing in specific.
Just a simple example of the last expansion. We all know that priest has the most useless hero power of all classes. It doesn't provide anything early game except for healing your already full HP hero. Blizzard got the perfect chance to change that by giving High Priest Thekal to Priest.... And they gave it to Paladin. They are basically doing these things every expansion.
Cards based on healing or shadowform, that's what makes class identity for Priest. Not the sh!t that we got last 2 expansions.
If you gave high priest thekal to priest it would be super broken. High priest thekal was given specifically to paladin because it's a class that has access to healing but not as reliably as priest. In general it's a lot harder for paladins to heal up than it is for priests
Harder for Paladin? I would definately take another look at the Paladin cards...
Warrior: Core: Armor for massive health gains, weapons for early removal and powerful tools lategame. Rastakhan's identity: Dragons; big bodies attached to powerful effects.
Shaman: Core: Powerful, undercosted spells for future payment (overload). Synergy with wide boards, both enemy and allied ones. Rastakhan's identity: Draw and generate spells.
Rogue: Core: Single target removal. Lack of heals/clear, but powerful, tempo efficient hero power and spells with easy ways to cycle/draw. Rastakhan's identity: Tempo pirates with rush and synergy with one another.
Paladin: Core: Lack of removal. Board-centric using stat manipulation and other tools (divine shield, weapons) for advantageous trades. Offensive buffs. Rastakhan's identity: Heal and cycle and be rewarded by both with tempo.
Hunter: Core: Powerful beast synergy, cheap removal spells to protect beasts on board, finish fights quickly by being aggressive. Rastakhan's identity: Use cheap spells and minions ASAP, be rewarded by a hand-reload mechanic.
Druid: Core: Skip turns to earn mana, drop big minions with defensive impact to comeback. Countered by constant medium threats. Rastakhan's identity: Use cheap removal tools which cycle thanks to the synergy with hero power attack. Go wide and try to finish fast.
Warlock: Core: Powerful effects paid in unconventional ways (health, discard). Weaker spells overall but strongest hero power. Demon synergy. Rastakhan's identity: Discard early to gain an advantage on board, use discard-recovery cards later to recover from the loss.
Mage: Core: All sort of removal spells, both powerful and relatively cheap. Ability to deal with both tall and wide threats easily. Rastakhan's identity: Elemental synergy, use of hero power for removal as a free spell.
Priest: Core: Healing-centric, synergy with high-health minions. Powerful and cheap, if situational, answers. Centered around surviving to lategame. Rastakhan's identity: Buff minions beforehand in hand and deck and take board with their over-stats.
Good list. I would add to priest: Use opponents cards against them (card stealing and mind controlling).
I agree there.
Though I would add something to fix many people's ideas on Cleric vs Paladin:
Paladin is good at SELF heal. That is they can heal themselves VERY well but not good at healing others.
Clerics, meanwhile, are ok at healing themselves but are mostly good at healing minions.
Thus Paladin tends to focus on keeping themselves alive through board clears and healing/armoring themselves. Clerics, meanwhile, tend to focus on having high health minions which they can keep alive forever. This is why Dragons worked well with Clerics and not Paladins and why Paladin is the one to get the 'turn health into armor' effects.
Class Identity to me is when the game first came out with Classic and then Naxxramas later on. Where the devs were very careful with making sure there was very little overlap in the cards that the classes had access to. That the Class Identity was much more rigid and well-defined on traits that made the class stand out from the others. That when these traits of each class started to be less emphasized and even started to bleed into other classes is when Class Identity started getting murky.
Care enough to explain this statement?
Pirates often have weapon related synergies and Warrior does(or at least, used to) have access to some of the best weapons in the game as well as some of the decent weapon synergy cards.
Warrior and Rogue being pirate classes makes sense game mechanics wise and flavor/lore/history wise.
Just because pre-pirates Warrior had traditionally been regarded as defensive/control oriented class, doesn't mean it shouldn't have access to strong aggro decks at some point.
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but not every archetype should be available to all classes.
I don't know WOW lore, nor do I really care if Hearthstone follows it.
Kaladin's RoS Set Review
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Class identity is for a class to have a well-defined list of mechanics for which :
Class identity takes into account playstyles (aggro, control, ...), general abstract mechanics (card draw, survivability, buffs, etc...) and specific mechanics that can have several purposes (armor, evolve effects, specific tribal synergies...)
Blizzard did a good job at refining the identity of each class from WOTOG and onwards but this year they seemed to have thrown this concern out of the window to instead focus on class identity within each set (think loa teams), which imo is a mistake because it dilutes general class identity over the long term).
Custom cards :
CLASSES : Alchemist (CCC#5 | Phase V) | Chef (CCC#4)
EXPANSIONS : Year of the Scorpion (Year Comp)
I'm glad druids developed further into their class identity of "punishing people who play minions" this expansion. In the past, people often complained about Spreading Plague, and how it wasn't in line with the druid class identity. Now with the release of Gonk, the Raptor, Blizzard has made clear to us that this is just the new identity they have chosen to represent the class. However, while spreading plague punishes by spamming the board with up to 35HP of taunts, Gonk punishes by simply hitting the opponent in the face a lot until they die
I feel that this new theme is an excellent addition for druid as it's also quite fitting from a flavor standpoint. Vulgar minions disturb the peace and disturb nature. As we learned from Floop's section of the Boomlab puzzles, trees only grow when the board is empty. What better way to empty the board than to disincentivise opponents from playing any minions at all?
This may be somewhat controversial considering druid already has many aspects to their class identity. As we all know, druid is the best class at armoring, single target removal, ramping, drawing and winning. It sounds broken when I put it like this and that's why personally I like to think of druid class identity in terms of what they can't do. For example, Shaman has a monopoly on the "freeze" archtype and keywords such as "overload" (aka reverse ramping). In addition, druid lacks the ability to play minions with OpieOP keywords like "enrage" or "windfury" as well as the ability to lose games. QED: Druid is balanced
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
But Druid always liked to play with tokens when they weren't ramping in fact token druid was something you used back in classic and you used *gasp* Imp Master and Violet Teacher, you changed imp amster for Echoing Ooze when it came out but it kept being the same premise, and Spreading Plague puts tokens in the battlefield instead of fully killing all minions, plague is one of the cards most in line with one of the Druid's premises which was having access to Savage Roar and a lotof the buffs like the marks
The problem with druid was never the fact that they have (in fact) not weakness as a class but the fact that Blizzard print cards that are good for any druid deck that are not removal. If you see Hunter for example have not access to that much evergreen cards except removal, same fro the majority of classes except druid. That is what creates the problem. If all the evergreen cards of a class are good enough to use it in 2 whole different decks with two totally different gameplans that means that the class identity has fail. Lets see the new ramp Druid for example.
Druid minions are big, like hell of a big. As you said they are not suppose to have OP keywords but now every big beast minion Druid put in their decks can gain access to rush. That is not okay because you are not just cheapting the cost of cards like Tarantus or The lord an destroyer of worlds "Haildranox" but you are also making the cards faster so they are supper hard to dealt with in a deck that can run as many evergreen cards of druid as UI and Naturalize. And you can run spreading plague in that same deck too (people run the DK in that which is the same) cause the fact that you almost never will summon a spider for the number of other beast that you are playing unless you have veeery bad luck.
This is the whole situation of the combo druid decks again but now is not a combo but a "fast" deck. Another deck that have a base full of naturally good cards for every situation + a little different win condition. So back in the point what is the weakness of Druid again? because the fact that the answer is "you teching against them" is pretty obvius, by far is the second class with not bad match ups following of Mage.
Why is everyone taking my post so seriously? Druid is broken AF and I know it. I thought my over-the-top tone would make it evident I was only memeing but apparently not
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
Blizzard basically killed class identity if you ask me.
Take priest for example. It's a mix of everything but nothing in specific.
Just a simple example of the last expansion.
We all know that priest has the most useless hero power of all classes. It doesn't provide anything early game except for healing your already full HP hero. Blizzard got the perfect chance to change that by giving High Priest Thekal to Priest.... And they gave it to Paladin. They are basically doing these things every expansion.
Cards based on healing or shadowform, that's what makes class identity for Priest. Not the sh!t that we got last 2 expansions.
Specifically for hearthstone, class identity seems to have a main theme and a few secondary themes.
Warrior: main theme armor
Secondary themes: cheap removal, damage your own minions, weapons
Druid: main theme mana acceleration
Secondary themes: armor, healing, transform
Warlock: main theme damage your own hero
Secondary theme discard, aoe removal
And so on. From these blizz expands on a theme or two and mixes things up a little every new set.
For instance if I told you there was a card dealt 5 damage to your hero and 2 to all minions, you could immediately imagine its a warlock card.
If you gave high priest thekal to priest it would be super broken. High priest thekal was given specifically to paladin because it's a class that has access to healing but not as reliably as priest. In general it's a lot harder for paladins to heal up than it is for priests
how can it be more broken in priest that have 0 super healing spells but not broken in paladin that have a 0 mana 7/5 drain rush divine shield minion. 2 weapons that heal (DK pala and Plate) and 1 spell that makes them inmune? XD
Good list. I would add to priest: Use opponents cards against them (card stealing and mind controlling).
Harder for Paladin? I would definately take another look at the Paladin cards...
Druid’s class identity is being the favorite class of the development team.
I agree there.
Though I would add something to fix many people's ideas on Cleric vs Paladin:
Paladin is good at SELF heal. That is they can heal themselves VERY well but not good at healing others.
Clerics, meanwhile, are ok at healing themselves but are mostly good at healing minions.
Thus Paladin tends to focus on keeping themselves alive through board clears and healing/armoring themselves. Clerics, meanwhile, tend to focus on having high health minions which they can keep alive forever. This is why Dragons worked well with Clerics and not Paladins and why Paladin is the one to get the 'turn health into armor' effects.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Hello Everyone, This is class identity for me...
Class Identity to me is when the game first came out with Classic and then Naxxramas later on. Where the devs were very careful with making sure there was very little overlap in the cards that the classes had access to. That the Class Identity was much more rigid and well-defined on traits that made the class stand out from the others. That when these traits of each class started to be less emphasized and even started to bleed into other classes is when Class Identity started getting murky.
Edit: Fixed some capitalization.