I've been dabbling around with Shaman a bit lately, and one of the cards that peaked my interest was Runespear. It's an odd card really, because on face value *(when you examine the text), it sounds really powerful. However, there are caveats that temper the power of this card (IMHO) quite heavily, and these make it feel like the mana cost for it is a little high:
* The spells are obviously random (from the Discover mechanic) so you are hoping for a big high roll * The target/s of the spells are random, so if you choose something that deals direct damage, you could kill yourself, etc * You have to actually attack something to trigger it (problematic when a big taunt is in the way) * The pool of spells for Shaman is fairly lacking in good options / utility.
Let me just say that I am not making any demands here, and I don't expect anything to come from this thread - I'm just musing on what I think about the card. I would love for this card to be better than it is - or at least more useful in a deck (even if that deck is built around it). I assume that Blizzard were trying to think of something along similar lines to the Woecleaver and wanted a spell-based weapon. And I love that. But I think they also missed a trick:
What if the weapon acted in a similar way to Woecleaver - but instead of recruiting a minion, it cast a spell from your deck instead? So basically like the Grand Archivist. That way you could build a deck around this weapon in articular and you would be selective over which spells to add. i think that would make for a cool alternative to the current version personally. I don't know how OP that would get with spells like Bloodlust or Volcano etc, but it would be fun finding out. :-) And with an effect like that, you could even give it a higher cost (as that effect is very powerful indeed, and more worthy of a Legendary card status in my opinion).
The ability is honestly fine, most the time you are going to get a spell that would be very beneficial and at worse harmless. Making it a Woecleaver for spells could be interesting, but I just can't really think of a deck where you'd want that. In a control deck, you want to be able to actually cast your hex instead of having it randomly be cast on a minion or cast healing rain instead of a volcano on a full board. In a deck running bloodlusts, you want to cast those on turn 5 before you lose your board instead of turn 8, the turn after most board clears occur.
If the runespear was down to like 6 mana, I think it would be fine. A 3/3 weapon isn't amazing, (albeit pretty decent in the current meta) but I feel like the 3 random spells justify the extra 3 mana.
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I don't have something witty about this deck, I just like it because Malygos is fun.
Yeah, I think in it's current iteration, (if unchanged) then it would have been better at a lower mana cost. Regardless of the spells, I suppose it does still deal 9 damage as well.
With the Woecleaver idea - I think that the downside of not knowing what spell is to be cast forces you to plan your deck well - and could also encourage an elemental deck (like the Mage varient for example) to be created.
Of course, I haven't put a great deal of thought into actual full deck ideas for it - I think the bloodlust thing "could" work - but I am also aware that people raved about Electra Stormsurge with Bloodlust when she was announced, and that hasn't really shaped up to much :-) (Perhaps because of the turn 8 issue you mentioned)
I unpacked it so I play around with it occasionally. Tried it in shudderwock shaman and even shaman and some elemental shaman. Fun card but unless you get basically the exact kinds of spells you need it's not good. The problem is really just the cost. It isn't strong enough for the 8 mana cost, and it doesn't compete with what other decks are doing on those turns. I agree about it being 6 mana, that would make it a really nice card I think. There is a pretty big anti synergy between bloodlust and storm bringer too because one wants you to attack first and the other after.
Perhaps if it gave you a 0 mana version of the spell you choose instead of casting it on attack. Maybe it only lasts until the end of the turn like an echo card. That would make you able to do some really nice combos, make choosing single target spells viable, and allow you to order your moves properly.
I'm not sure this card should be competitively viable at all though. Yes, we CAN tweak the mana cost to make it good. However, doing so means we just gave shaman easy access to 3 spells at, probably, the cost of 1. Considering some of those spells are things like bloodlust or unstable evolution, that's potentially game winning. Or losing if it rolls poorly.
That it hits random targets makes the situation worse. It's basically a slightly more controlable Yog with a focus on a class with A LOT of burst/damage/IWin spells and a LOT of absolutely worthless spells.
I'm no pro but I feel safe in saying that they may not want a card like that in competitive play.
Not all cards are made to fit into tournaments. Some are made to create less powerful but very interesting decks. Some are made for silly fun decks. Some are made to be bad now but good later.
Runespear, I feel, needs to be Silly Fun and MAAYYYYBBBEEE Interesting, but NOT competitive. If we want to make it cheaper, it can't Discover and it probably would need a durability lobbed off.
Not all cards are made to fit into tournaments. Some are made to create less powerful but very interesting decks. Some are made for silly fun decks. Some are made to be bad now but good later.
Runespear, I feel, needs to be Silly Fun and MAAYYYYBBBEEE Interesting, but NOT competitive. If we want to make it cheaper, it can't Discover and it probably would need a durability lobbed off.
I think it is probably a stretch to claim that the suggestions we've made here are making it fit into tournaments. I wouldn't even say that they are making it "competitive" either. Viable? Yes, more likely. But viable and competitive are different terms and mean different things. I would love Runespear to be more usable as a card, allowing it to fit into a deck - people say legendaries can be "trash" which while ostensibly true, the precedent doesn't dictate the rule. Personally, I think legendary cards should only be legendary rarity if they fit the power level / utility that the rarity suggests. Cards such as Millhouse, etc, are something of an anathema and have been a long-running mistake of Blizzard's as they have set a very bad precedent to the game.
That said, that's sidetracking this thread slightly (Oops!), so getting back to Runespear, I don't think making the card more playable / usable in a deck necessarily means making it a "Tournament Ready" card by any means, nor does it make it competitive per se.
Not all cards are made to fit into tournaments. Some are made to create less powerful but very interesting decks. Some are made for silly fun decks. Some are made to be bad now but good later.
Runespear, I feel, needs to be Silly Fun and MAAYYYYBBBEEE Interesting, but NOT competitive. If we want to make it cheaper, it can't Discover and it probably would need a durability lobbed off.
I think it is probably a stretch to claim that the suggestions we've made here are making it fit into tournaments. I wouldn't even say that they are making it "competitive" either. Viable? Yes, more likely. But viable and competitive are different terms and mean different things. I would love Runespear to be more usable as a card, allowing it to fit into a deck - people say legendaries can be "trash" which while ostensibly true, the precedent doesn't dictate the rule. Personally, I think legendary cards should only be legendary rarity if they fit the power level / utility that the rarity suggests. Cards such as Millhouse, etc, are something of an anathema and have been a long-running mistake of Blizzard's as they have set a very bad precedent to the game.
That said, that's sidetracking this thread slightly (Oops!), so getting back to Runespear, I don't think making the card more playable / usable in a deck necessarily means making it a "Tournament Ready" card by any means, nor does it make it competitive per se.
Well yes, making a card playable doesn't mean it'll be competitive. Thus the "not competitively but interesting" element.
But I was speaking specifically about Runespear. I believe there IS a point where you can make the card competitive. Cards like Unstable Portal have regularly made their way into the tournament scene due to the possibility of them being game winning. They could also fail horribly, but the reward was worth the risk. The community HATED the card with a passion but they don't have a choice of what to play: you choose what works best even if it's a card you hate that is essentially a win/lose dice roll.
Runespear is 9 damage and 3 free shaman spells with the Discover effect. A 3/3 weapon is almost a pyro over 3 turns or can remove 3 minions on one card. Meanwhile, having the chance of a free Bloodlust or a Volcano is exactly why Shaman loves Hagetha even if she regularly throws crap cards at you as well. The Discover effect is absolutely massive compared to true randomness.
So that, as is, makes the card potentially extremely powerful. What's holding it back is the inability to choose your target and the mana cost. The first is slightly offset by Discover but still is an issue. But I'm pretty darn sure a 5 mana 3/3 Runespear would be in every competitive Shaman deck even with that risk.
So if 8 mana puts it at trash level, not even meme worthy, and 5 mana, I honestly believe, would make it tournament worthy, I believe it needs to be put somewhere in between to hit that sweet spot.
I would guess 7 might be it. And if I'm right, I bet Blizzard saw that as well and decided to go one higher since, to them, it's better to underpower something than to make a mistake and overpower it. Worst case of Underpowering is that a cool card gets unused. Worst case of Overpowering means the entire meta is screwed and everyone suffers.
I think we are in agreement over the mana cost needing to be a little lower - as that was the initial point in the OP (along with the separate idea of a change to the ability - not suggesting both at the same time).
The problem with the autocast part of the mechanic (regardless of the Discover mechanic) is the fact that it can really backfire heavily. It's like Yogg killing himself with his first spell, or worse, killing you with a Pyroblast to self-face! Heh! And that's what the suggested alternatives are trying to focus on.
One of Hearthstone's biggest problems (which Blizzard seems to love for some reason) is how much randomness there is within the game, which you often cannot strategise around - it's possibly what makes the game itself so infuriating to play at times, because nothing feels worse than being cheated out of victory due to something you couldnt control. (But that's another thread entirely) - but bringing back on point here, this problem applies to the Runespear I feel. The randomness of outcome that you have to deal with makes the risk of playing it far too great for the mana cost / reward.
I love runespear but i regualry falls out of my decks due to it´s eight mana. I think that it will also loose at seven mana but at least i would reconsidder it in my odd shaman deck.
At six mana it would be playable but still like seven mana. I guess it will then often land in even shaman decks.
five mana would be goregeous and definitely in a lot of my shaman decks. It would compete with doomhammer and on a comparable level.
BUT: It´s already late. the set will rotate in hald a year and i guess not many care about it.
In recent times, the RNG element has really taken the lead as the class identity but not in a good way. High roll evolves, devolves and no real way to influence the outcomes...led us to the RuneSpear. How do I know that the bloodlust or healing rain I pick will be applied to my side of the field? I don't. Thus, it should be costed a point or two lower I think.
Cairne would be very disappointed with Ben Brode if he saw what Team 5 had done with his favourite weapon.
I've been dabbling around with Shaman a bit lately, and one of the cards that peaked my interest was Runespear.
It's an odd card really, because on face value *(when you examine the text), it sounds really powerful. However, there are caveats that temper the power of this card (IMHO) quite heavily, and these make it feel like the mana cost for it is a little high:
* The spells are obviously random (from the Discover mechanic) so you are hoping for a big high roll
* The target/s of the spells are random, so if you choose something that deals direct damage, you could kill yourself, etc
* You have to actually attack something to trigger it (problematic when a big taunt is in the way)
* The pool of spells for Shaman is fairly lacking in good options / utility.
Let me just say that I am not making any demands here, and I don't expect anything to come from this thread - I'm just musing on what I think about the card. I would love for this card to be better than it is - or at least more useful in a deck (even if that deck is built around it).
I assume that Blizzard were trying to think of something along similar lines to the Woecleaver and wanted a spell-based weapon.
And I love that. But I think they also missed a trick:
What if the weapon acted in a similar way to Woecleaver - but instead of recruiting a minion, it cast a spell from your deck instead? So basically like the Grand Archivist.
That way you could build a deck around this weapon in articular and you would be selective over which spells to add. i think that would make for a cool alternative to the current version personally.
I don't know how OP that would get with spells like Bloodlust or Volcano etc, but it would be fun finding out. :-) And with an effect like that, you could even give it a higher cost (as that effect is very powerful indeed, and more worthy of a Legendary card status in my opinion).
The ability is honestly fine, most the time you are going to get a spell that would be very beneficial and at worse harmless. Making it a Woecleaver for spells could be interesting, but I just can't really think of a deck where you'd want that. In a control deck, you want to be able to actually cast your hex instead of having it randomly be cast on a minion or cast healing rain instead of a volcano on a full board. In a deck running bloodlusts, you want to cast those on turn 5 before you lose your board instead of turn 8, the turn after most board clears occur.
If the runespear was down to like 6 mana, I think it would be fine. A 3/3 weapon isn't amazing, (albeit pretty decent in the current meta) but I feel like the 3 random spells justify the extra 3 mana.
I don't have something witty about this deck, I just like it because Malygos is fun.
Yeah, I think in it's current iteration, (if unchanged) then it would have been better at a lower mana cost. Regardless of the spells, I suppose it does still deal 9 damage as well.
With the Woecleaver idea - I think that the downside of not knowing what spell is to be cast forces you to plan your deck well - and could also encourage an elemental deck (like the Mage varient for example) to be created.
Of course, I haven't put a great deal of thought into actual full deck ideas for it - I think the bloodlust thing "could" work - but I am also aware that people raved about Electra Stormsurge with Bloodlust when she was announced, and that hasn't really shaped up to much :-)
(Perhaps because of the turn 8 issue you mentioned)
I unpacked it so I play around with it occasionally. Tried it in shudderwock shaman and even shaman and some elemental shaman. Fun card but unless you get basically the exact kinds of spells you need it's not good. The problem is really just the cost. It isn't strong enough for the 8 mana cost, and it doesn't compete with what other decks are doing on those turns. I agree about it being 6 mana, that would make it a really nice card I think. There is a pretty big anti synergy between bloodlust and storm bringer too because one wants you to attack first and the other after.
Perhaps if it gave you a 0 mana version of the spell you choose instead of casting it on attack. Maybe it only lasts until the end of the turn like an echo card. That would make you able to do some really nice combos, make choosing single target spells viable, and allow you to order your moves properly.
I'm not sure this card should be competitively viable at all though. Yes, we CAN tweak the mana cost to make it good. However, doing so means we just gave shaman easy access to 3 spells at, probably, the cost of 1. Considering some of those spells are things like bloodlust or unstable evolution, that's potentially game winning. Or losing if it rolls poorly.
That it hits random targets makes the situation worse. It's basically a slightly more controlable Yog with a focus on a class with A LOT of burst/damage/IWin spells and a LOT of absolutely worthless spells.
I'm no pro but I feel safe in saying that they may not want a card like that in competitive play.
Not all cards are made to fit into tournaments. Some are made to create less powerful but very interesting decks. Some are made for silly fun decks. Some are made to be bad now but good later.
Runespear, I feel, needs to be Silly Fun and MAAYYYYBBBEEE Interesting, but NOT competitive. If we want to make it cheaper, it can't Discover and it probably would need a durability lobbed off.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
It's a bad card. I guess it's better than the priest weapon, but it's just way too expensive.
I think it is probably a stretch to claim that the suggestions we've made here are making it fit into tournaments. I wouldn't even say that they are making it "competitive" either.
Viable? Yes, more likely. But viable and competitive are different terms and mean different things.
I would love Runespear to be more usable as a card, allowing it to fit into a deck - people say legendaries can be "trash" which while ostensibly true, the precedent doesn't dictate the rule. Personally, I think legendary cards should only be legendary rarity if they fit the power level / utility that the rarity suggests.
Cards such as Millhouse, etc, are something of an anathema and have been a long-running mistake of Blizzard's as they have set a very bad precedent to the game.
That said, that's sidetracking this thread slightly (Oops!), so getting back to Runespear, I don't think making the card more playable / usable in a deck necessarily means making it a "Tournament Ready" card by any means, nor does it make it competitive per se.
Well yes, making a card playable doesn't mean it'll be competitive. Thus the "not competitively but interesting" element.
But I was speaking specifically about Runespear. I believe there IS a point where you can make the card competitive. Cards like Unstable Portal have regularly made their way into the tournament scene due to the possibility of them being game winning. They could also fail horribly, but the reward was worth the risk. The community HATED the card with a passion but they don't have a choice of what to play: you choose what works best even if it's a card you hate that is essentially a win/lose dice roll.
Runespear is 9 damage and 3 free shaman spells with the Discover effect. A 3/3 weapon is almost a pyro over 3 turns or can remove 3 minions on one card. Meanwhile, having the chance of a free Bloodlust or a Volcano is exactly why Shaman loves Hagetha even if she regularly throws crap cards at you as well. The Discover effect is absolutely massive compared to true randomness.
So that, as is, makes the card potentially extremely powerful. What's holding it back is the inability to choose your target and the mana cost. The first is slightly offset by Discover but still is an issue. But I'm pretty darn sure a 5 mana 3/3 Runespear would be in every competitive Shaman deck even with that risk.
So if 8 mana puts it at trash level, not even meme worthy, and 5 mana, I honestly believe, would make it tournament worthy, I believe it needs to be put somewhere in between to hit that sweet spot.
I would guess 7 might be it. And if I'm right, I bet Blizzard saw that as well and decided to go one higher since, to them, it's better to underpower something than to make a mistake and overpower it. Worst case of Underpowering is that a cool card gets unused. Worst case of Overpowering means the entire meta is screwed and everyone suffers.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I think we are in agreement over the mana cost needing to be a little lower - as that was the initial point in the OP (along with the separate idea of a change to the ability - not suggesting both at the same time).
The problem with the autocast part of the mechanic (regardless of the Discover mechanic) is the fact that it can really backfire heavily. It's like Yogg killing himself with his first spell, or worse, killing you with a Pyroblast to self-face! Heh!
And that's what the suggested alternatives are trying to focus on.
One of Hearthstone's biggest problems (which Blizzard seems to love for some reason) is how much randomness there is within the game, which you often cannot strategise around - it's possibly what makes the game itself so infuriating to play at times, because nothing feels worse than being cheated out of victory due to something you couldnt control. (But that's another thread entirely) - but bringing back on point here, this problem applies to the Runespear I feel. The randomness of outcome that you have to deal with makes the risk of playing it far too great for the mana cost / reward.
Again though, just my opinion. :-)
Hi
I love runespear but i regualry falls out of my decks due to it´s eight mana. I think that it will also loose at seven mana but at least i would reconsidder it in my odd shaman deck.
At six mana it would be playable but still like seven mana. I guess it will then often land in even shaman decks.
five mana would be goregeous and definitely in a lot of my shaman decks. It would compete with doomhammer and on a comparable level.
BUT: It´s already late. the set will rotate in hald a year and i guess not many care about it.
I fail to see how it's an odd card, it clearly states 8 mana. Making it an even card.
Sorry couldn't resist.
Ba-doom-tish!! XD
Discover a spell. Add it to your hand. It costs (0).
Fixed and balanced.
Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake.
An interesting and well composed question, thanks for posting.
I'm not entirely sure that I know what the identity of Shaman (as far as HS goes) is really set anymore. I used to see the stable as:-
In recent times, the RNG element has really taken the lead as the class identity but not in a good way. High roll evolves, devolves and no real way to influence the outcomes...led us to the RuneSpear. How do I know that the bloodlust or healing rain I pick will be applied to my side of the field? I don't. Thus, it should be costed a point or two lower I think.
Cairne would be very disappointed with Ben Brode if he saw what Team 5 had done with his favourite weapon.
Golden Hero Collections thus far; -
Europe: Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior (9/9)
Americas: Druid, Mage, Paladin Shaman (4/9)
Everywhere else: Workin on it.. (0/9)