Mike Donais and Dean Ayala on the Arena Changes, Priest, Yogg-Saron, Tournaments
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to chat with Hearthstone's Dean Ayala and Mike Donais. We've recapped the interview below!
Quote from Dean Ayala & Mike DonaisShaman
- Mike believes the meta is in a good spot but it's a little more Shaman heavy than he would like.
- Shamans are currently around 20% of the ladder.
Druid
- Dean was surprised to see Malygos Druid pop up again thanks to the consistency brought by Arcane Giant.
Priest
- They've both been playing different Resurrect Priest lists, with Mike having the better one. (Check bottom of post)
- Mike admits he was lucky winning with his Priest list.
- Reno Priest has been spotted at high MMR in a couple of the regions.
- They should make sure to get good Priest cards into the next set.
- It is understood that people love Priest trickiness. They hope to incorporate more tricky cards in the future.
Hunter / Call of the Wild
- Not certain if Call of the Wild needs to be changed. Community feedback is being read.
- In some cases, it is okay to have strong class cards.
- It's tough to agree that Call of the Wild is an issue when those decks are on par with the good decks of other classes.
Yogg-Saron
- Yogg is on the developer radar.
- They want to find a solution that makes everyone happy.
- It's too early to talk about when they'll have a solution to the problem.
Tournaments
- BatStone was great to see because it explored a new format in how you could play Hearthstone. More events like this can lead to the discovery of new long-term formats.
- They don't have any tournament client stuff in development right now, but they've been talking about it for years.
Arena Balance
- It's too early to tell what impact the arena balance changes have made.
- There's two things they want to measure:
- How the winrates have changed.
- How often each class is being picked.
- Short term goal is to get all the classes closer together in pick rate.
- Long term goal is to be able to have players pick the class they love the most because they're all so even.
- They wanted to target class specific cards in the arena changes because removing neutrals doesn't really change anything for specific classes.
- They didn't want to remove weaker cards that gave players awesome moments such as Eye for an Eye.
- Bouncing Blades was questioned and ultimately, they think it's more consistently awesome in constructed.
- They didn't want to remove cards which felt core to what each class was. Example cited being Fireball and Flamestrike on Mages.
- Windspeaker was removed over Windfury because there are less spells in Arena as time goes by. The two cards were statistically very close.
- Succubus was statistically a very, very poor card.
- It is believed that the best method of long term arena balance is through changing the drop percentage of cards. They'll talk more about it when they figure it out.
Mike Donais' Resurrect Priest
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I don't know if I speak for all priest players, but the trickiness is not at all what I want. We don't need more unreliable combos that have shown to not work or be consistent in the past. A solid, consistent, reactionary class is all I want.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20303031/upcoming-balance-changes-update-613-9-28-2016
They Nerfed my boy Yogg, he was the card that brought the fun factor back into this game for me... I wish they'd just ban him from tournaments or something instead of this... He usually dies within the first 3 spells, not worth the 10 mana anymore imo.
If they dont get more developers and engineers on this game to build tournament formats and work fast through balance, they are going to lose the wave of popularity this game has. In fact, they are already slipping behind on it, this last adventure showed weak card design.
Leave Hopes End alone.
Are these developers are given specific instructions on what to say during these interviews? Because the stuff these people say are just as pointless and evasive as yet another Ben Brode excuse. It feels like all the words are coming out of the same person's mouth.
"They didn't want to remove cards which felt core to what each class was. Example cited being Fireball and Flamestrike on Mages."
"which felt core to what each class was."
Downright disgustingly overpowered? Cause that's what mages are. From my experience, playing and watching others play Arena, if a Mage plays Flamestrike, unless they are really far behind in general card advantage, or they are gonna die the very next turns, then they almost always win the game on the spot.
Flamestrike needs to go. Either removed completely or....no, screw that. Remove it from the Arena draft completely. Other classes might finally have some breathing room.
"Reno Priest has been spotted at high MMR in a couple of the regions" -> UNICORN PRIEST SPOTTED, BLIZZ NERF PLZ!!111!1!
Don't you touch Yogg-Saron!
I think that is a problem because if a games comes down to … draw card X => win, don't draw it lose it makes the whole game too much of a coin flip. It would be much better if hunter were a class that does not rely on a single card.
Even Mike doesn't use Purify.
But Dean does, which is why Mike's deck was better.
They just sneak in a random deck list in the updates' list? :\
How is Shaman 20% of ladder. I mean that class is so under-powered the average expected skill of a player who wants to get near Legend needs to be extremely high. Jokes aside, thank god Blizzard made it officially clear they noticed and let's hope they do something about it with the next expansion. Not that I am holding my breath over it. The quickest solution will prob come next March with the new Standard. Also praise Yogg.
Why even bother asking the developers anything? They give the same generic non answers every time.
We believe the meta is in a good place. The meta is constantly changing. We're keeping a eye on said card. Blah blah blah.
Call of the Wild is a win more card. I'm fine with it.
Don't get my comment wrong I don't think Call of the Wild needs to be nerfed, but I think you are misusing the win more term. A win more card is a card that is good when you are already ahead in the game (thus the term win more). Call of the Wild is always good, period.
How the hell did you arrive at the conclusion that [card]Call of the Wild[/card] is a win more card ?
It is pretty good when you are behind. 5 damage, maybe even some awkward trades from your opponent is a decent result for a mana slot that has Tirion Fordring in it. However, if you have at least a couple of creatures on board when you Call of the Wild, it is devastating. So, it is a card which is subpar when behind, OK when the board state is equal and broken when you are ahead. In my head it classifies it as a win more card more than anything else.
It's a win-more card, it's a comeback card, it's a maintain board card, it's everything a card shouldn't be when played by itself. Not to mention the fact that it's worth 13.5 mana yet only costs 8.
What is the "problem" with Yogg-Saron, Hope's End that it's too early to talk about when they'll have a solution that makes everyone happy?
who is mike and why he play priest?