Hello! As a passion project for the past couple months I’ve been conceptually reworking each class, imagining new Keywords and class mechanics to make each class feel more distinct, flavorful, and engaging to play. I usually return to working on this when inspiration hits me, since I’ve learned that creative work doesn’t flow when you force it.
I started this project with Hunter, developing an embarrassingly long, diary-like Google Doc detailing my grievances with the direction of its card design in the Year of the Dragon and Year of the Phoenix, and creating my own custom Keywords and class mechanics to no particular end - I just enjoyed doing it.
Shaman was the second Doc I made, because it’s my second favorite class. It has so much potential for awesome flavor and thematics, while being extremely engaging to play. Unfortunately, nothing about Shaman in its current state implements that at all. Whatever the current Blizzard design ethos for Shaman is, it’s done very little for the class’s benefit in my opinion. Shaman tends to be a competitively binary figure, it either does extremely well, infuriating the community with a powerful aggressive/midrange deck; or it doesn’t see the light of day, lingering at or below tier 3 with burn lists that are begging for an ounce of card draw or consistency.
I had experimented with some ideas for Shaman before. A card that opens up an alternative Hero Power (naturally inconsistent since you’d need to draw it); two different Keywords that would be new to Shaman, et cetera. Eventually I settled on an initial ethos for how I wanted to approach the class:
Shamans are spiritualists chosen by the Elements, the quasi-sentient building blocks of the world. They’re sagacious, using their wisdom to guide their decision-making. They wield the Elements in battle, casting devastating spells and summoning powerful elementals to wipe out their foes. The Elements are naturally versatile, and so they’re able to answer whatever problems the Shaman who controls them comes across. Able to Overload their Mana with surges of Elemental might, summon hordes of Elementals, and Ascend their spells to recast them when needed, Shamans are versatile enough to tackle aggressive decks, midrange decks, and control decks each with some level of competence.
I stuck to this concept rather faithfully for most of my work on the class, and some products of this line of thinking I’ll share. Ascend was an old - now abandoned - Keyword concept that was essentially Buyback from MTG (for an investment of 2 mana when you cast a spell with Ascend, you’d add it back to your hand). I remain firm in believing that Shaman should be versatile, able to build into aggro, midrange, or control.
Later on, a few days ago, I was struck with an incredible amount of inspiration after seeing the custom card “Harness The Storm” by FriendlyShadow on Hearthcards. It gave me the idea that Shaman should be able to play around with Overload more. Make it more than just a downside that tends to make the spell you cast less worth it. I wanted Shaman to play with its mana way, way more. And that was the impetus for a great deal of designs you’ll see here, as I’ll explain in a moment.
So in order to justify an addition to Shaman, I decided to double down on Overload as a mechanic. I thought to myself, what if Overload could be more punishing, but the class provided more ways to work with and around Overload, rather than just cope with it.
Double-Overload is an adjustment to the Overload Keyword; if a Mana Crystal is Overloaded, and you play a card with Overload, that Overloaded Mana Crystal is destroyed. For instance, if you Lightning Bolt turn 1, then Lightning Bolt turn 2, the Crystal that was Overloaded from last turn pops. It’s gone for good.
Don’t worry though, since there’s two additions to Shaman that’ll help work around this issue. First is a new Keyword that synergizes with Overload, and was directly inspired by “Harness The Storm”:
Cleanse - A card with Cleanse can only be paid for with Overloaded Mana Crystals. Doing so restores the Crystals to an un-Overloaded state.
Functionally, Cleanse serves two purposes. Firstly, it allows Shaman gameplay to be a little smoother, Cleanse wouldn’t be an insanely common Keyword (it’d be about 1/3rd as common as Overload is) and its effects would be helpful and strong because you need to be disadvantaged in the first place to play them. Card draw and high tempo minions could have Cleanse, for instance, both reined in by the Keyword itself.
The other purpose of Cleanse is to deliberately step around Overload. If you Cleanse before you cast another Overload card, you won’t Double-Overload and destroy your own Mana.
The second new feature I’d bring into Shaman might ruffle some feathers, but once I explain a little more (and show some cards to demonstrate how it would work) you might see where I’m coming from.
I’d want to put Mana Ramp in Shaman. See, since Shaman is playing around with its mana with Overload, I asked myself why not go all in? And what would Ramp in Shaman look like? Of course, it would need to be and feel distinct from Druid. This of course would come out in the Ramp spells themselves. I didn’t want Shaman to have Druids routine mana curve, and Shaman already has a curve that’s different from other classes because of Overload. So instead of steadily increasing over time like normal, or accelerating to 8 mana by turn 4, Shaman would be all over the fuckin place.
Shaman might pop its own Mana Crystals on turn 4 and wind up with 3 mana or so on turn 5, but could quickly accelerate past their opponent on the curve and follow up with another play, eventually losing more Crystals and dropping behind again only to Ramp back the next turn, and so on and so forth. Shaman’s curve on a graph would look like the Stock Market in my ideal world. Shaman uses its mana in weird ways, Crystals themselves have become a resource, so let them eat cake, I say.
One major part of my pet project has been designing Keywords. When all is said and done, each class will have gained 3 Keywords, though only 1 of them will be class-specific. I’m working with the same class-alignment/sibling class concept that was established in Scholomance with Dual Class cards. A class will gain its own unique Keyword, as well as 2 Keywords that it shares with its sibling class. Shaman, naturally, has these.
Mage/Shaman Keyword - Reverberate
I was trying to come up with how “Spell Tribal” would work now that Spell Schools exist, and I came up with this Keyword. I gave it to Mage and Shaman as they have diverse Spell Schools; Mage using Arcane, Fire, and Frost - while Shaman had Fire, Frost, and Nature. And it felt thematic for them both. Reverberate is a spell-exclusive Keyword, which triggers when you cast a spell AFTER casting a spell of the same school. So if you play a Fire Spell, then another Fire Spell with a Reverberate trigger on it, Reverberate resolves.
I had to come up with a clear idea of what each school was meant to do with Reverberate as an effect.
Fire Reverberations are focused on doing damage, having random targets or aoe, or maybe even temporary draw (in Soularium fashion).
Frost Reverberations are focused on defense, disruption, and freezing stuff.
Nature Reverberations are most likely focused on buffs, mana, healing, or summoning.
And finally with one new, and major, thing in common, the Keyword that Shaman and Druid share.
Druid/Shaman Keyword - Enriched
Enriched is simple enough. A minion with Enriched is carrying a single-use Mana Crystal for you to use. It would appear on the bottom of their portrait, and go away when you use it. Like a Mana Dork in MTG, but one use. When you would spend mana while an Enriched minion is on your field, its mana would be spent before the mana in your Mana Bar.
Of course this means that all Enriched minions need to be statted inefficiently, since they effectively cost (1) less than their mana cost says they do. Regardless, it does function as mana you can access if the minion survives until your next turn, letting you skip ahead in mana as if you’d cast The Coin or Innervate, but it’s on a minion your opponent can destroy.
Druid takes more advantage of this mechanic than Shaman does in its designs, though Enriched has an opportunity for a new trigger effect: “After this minion’s Mana’s been spent”. This opens up plenty of opportunities for card design with the Keyword between the two classes.
So that’s it, essentially. Keep in mind, all of these Keywords, mechanics, and cards are all purely conceptual. I’m not a balance wiz; when I design cards I prefer to balance around my designs, rather than design around balance. I want my cards to be splashy and powerful and fun, I think any card in a game should be at least 2 out of 3 of those things.
I’ve been doing work around every class, though the ones I’m most familiar with are the ones with the most work put into them. At this point all 10 classes have been worked on, and I’ve done a lot of Keyword development, though some classes need to be updated with Keywords they share with other classes.
I’m rambling. Let me know what you think! I'm absolutely baffled by how adding pictures to this post works - I don't know how everybody does it. I'll just do it in a few separate posts.
Just some final cards as an attempted proof of concept. Sorry that this is formatted so strangely, this is the first time I've done something like this on here. Would putting the cards in the actual post only work if I had them on an imgur album or something? Let me know please.
These all look very cool and I'd be down to play a class that is functionally more complicated than it is now, but with a good payoff if done correctly.
I'm not a balance master either, but just at a glance, these all seem fine, to me. I would be interested to see what other minions would be worked into these new keywords and concepts.
Some very cool ideas. I particularly like the concept of Cleanse - I remember having a discussion in the YouTube comments (where all the best discourse happens, obviously) during the Blackrock Mountain era about how Shaman was bad. My argument was that part of it was their signature mechanic, Overload, was pretty weak because it was too inherently balanced - it guarantees weak turns after strong ones, which doesn't let you snowball the advantage, and my proposal was that there should be ways to make Overload into a positive rather than just mitigating it like Lava Shock was trying to do. Cleanse is a very interesting keyword for that purpose, and I think the cards that you've designed with it are really great. It is a little bit terrifying though, because at some point you reach a critical mass of Cleanse cards and Shaman decks turn into piles of undercosted Overload cards that have the upside of enabling your undercosted Cleanse cards. It's something that requires really strong consideration during every expansion, and with how many massive blunders Team 5 has made in the past few years I don't really trust them with it. Doesn't make it any less of a great idea, though.
Shaman as a ramp class makes me very jumpy. Ramp is a mechanic I very much dislike - it's highrolly, and it feels absolutely awful for the player getting ramped on. I like the idea of making Shaman a class that's constantly swinging the amount of resources they have, surging in power one turn and then being weak the next, it can potentially make for very spikey games, and sort of get rid of one of Hearthstone's most resilient constants - the power of what you can do increases as the game goes on. My big issue is this: How do you get Shaman to destroy their mana? Warlocks have toyed with cards that destroy their own Mana for a long time, and it's never been something that's really seen play. Unless I'm misremembering Blastcrystal Potion was a card run only in Singleton decks as one of the bottom 5 cards, Revenant Rascal saw play for about a week in a gimmicky Zoo deck, and that's it. Mana is just way too valuable a resource. Ebon Quartermaster shows a direction you could go in of simply having insane rewards, but at that point you're still running into the traditional problem of Druid ramp: The opponent got lucky and drew into their ramp, so now they get to do all this insane stuff early. Meanwhile you're sitting there with three mana and wondering how you're ever meant to beat this board. Essentially, the reward for something as bad as breaking a mana crystal has to be backbreaking enough for the opponent that it's as though you haven't destroyed the crystal at all. Maybe there's a way to implement this where the payoff is a massive, all-in, tempo swing that has to win you the game on the spot or you lose because your mana is all gone, but I find it hard to imagine how that looks in practice, and I don't know that it's that fun of an experience for whichever player comes out the loser of that exchange.
Reverberate is a neat idea that I would like to see in the game, but it's a very "custom cards" concept as far as I see it. It's a little tough for new players to get their head around for the core set, and it's super-dependent on interlinked design. Sort of like Cleanse, it means that very close attention needs to be paid to exactly what and how many cards go in what spell school, which is tough upkeep for the dev team. I get the feeling people were a little disappointed with how little Spell Schools actually mattered in Forged in the Barrens (there's what, 5 cards that interact with them in total? Bru'kan, Tamsin, Cariel, Knight of Annointment, Guff, and I may be forgetting one or two more, but there's not a lot is the point), but I think it's the right move because every spell with a School has to be balanced with every card that interacts with the School in mind. At the very most I could see Reverberate as a keyword-of-the-expansion for the last expansion of a rotation, where it doesn't have to be balanced around for as long. These are all concerns I have with "realism", so to say, though - I love the concept and would personally like to see it in the game, but it's the type of thing I don't think would ever get put in.
I think Enriched is a really clever idea that makes ramp a bit more interactive, since your opponent can deny you those powerspike turns, but I'd tweak it so that the Enriched crystal gets spent last, not first. As is I think most Enriched minions would wind up weak, or at least would feel awkward. Excluding the case where you use the extra mana immediately and the Enriched minion is basically a vanilla minion, the play scenario is something like this: you play an Enriched minion, which is a low tempo play due to its low stats, and you pass the turn to your opponent. Often they kill your minion, which means you've just effectively played an overcosted minion. But, say it survives to your turn. Now you HAVE to spend the exact amount of mana you have available, or your Enriched minion is still just an overcosted minion, since floating any mana means floating the Enrich benefit too. I think this'd feel awful and clunky, and would be too difficult to consistently set up. Not only is making an overcosted minion survive tough, but if it has survived it's likely because your opponent's done something proactive that you likely want to react to rather than playing the big proactive play you were planning to do with your Enrich. Making the Crystal spend last means you're not just wasting the Enrich if you don't have the perfect play next turn, and it even allows for interesting gameplans where you're setting up for big power turns by playing several Enrich minions at once and protecting them while going out of your way to not use their mana.
I've criticized a fair bit, but this is mostly just because I find criticizing way easier than praising. I think this redesign idea is super cool and well thought out, and frankly I'd rather see these ideas in the game than most expansion ideas nowadays - and I'm someone who thinks Hearthstone is generally in a pretty OK place, so I'm not damning with faint praise. Really great stuff!
Thank you for your insight! I appreciate criticism, here is the only place I feel I can get input on my ideas - it's not good to just sit and stew on my concepts without any outside input.
I guess if Ramp as a concept is something you're opposed to, I could see why the mechanic moving into another class might make you a little bit jittery. I promise you that the design intent is to make Shaman more engaging, and play more with its mana - while giving the option for Control decks to Ramp regularly with the less efficient cards. With the generally compact size of Decks in Hearthstone compared to MTG or LoR, I feel that with the right ratio of cards designed for that purpose being ran, a Shaman would consistently get value from popping their Mana as often as they Ramp to replace what they've lost. The goal is to give Shaman powerful stuff to do that leads to more dynamic gameplay - though Ramp is a rickety rope bridge I'd need to be careful designing around in a class that's never had it before.
I think you've got a really good point about Enriched being the final piece of mana you spend rather than the first. It'll also allow for more powerful "After this minion's mana is spend" effects, justified by being the final piece of mana you spend instead of the first one. The pricing of Enriched minions is the trickiest aspect of their design, since they refund a Mana just by existing. Their stats would mainly be defensive to make them harder to remove, though still being punishing if they do get popped by the opponent.
And I'm glad you dig Cleanse! Thanks for taking the time to let me know what you think!
I've got some ideas brewing that I'm really into that further explore these mechanics.
Weirdly I've been struggling to make minions I'm excited about, all of the effects (if you couldn't already tell haha) seem to fit so easily onto spells in my mind. All the same I have tried to come up with some minion concepts, as well as a very strange means of playing with Ramp over time. Unfortunately I'm at work and can't really do the Hearthcards thing, so I'll try and do that tomorrow. I'll have very little free time though, so we'll see.
Nice ideas. Was really thinking about Shaman yesterday (toying with Elemental Shaman) and realized that Shaman just has too many mechanics going on at this point.
Overload
If you are Overloaded
Murlocs
Play a spell the turn prior
Play an elemental the turn prior
The last of the two is a let-down since it probably would've been better if Marshspawn and Shattered Rumbler could trigger even if you cast the spell the current turn. Same probably with those that requires having used an Elemental (e.g., Liliypad Lurker and Arid Stormer) the turn prior (would've been better if it also allowed the use of an Elemental on that same turn). Maybe this could actually be a keyword as well like:
Recycle: If you did it this turn or last turn.
Then maybe Landslide could read: "Deal 1 damage to all enemy minions. Recycle Overload, deal 1 damage again"
Or Marshspawn. "Battlecry: Recycle Spell, Discover a Spell"
Although there might be a better keyword for it. Haha. Might help you with more ideas.
Nice ideas. Was really thinking about Shaman yesterday (toying with Elemental Shaman) and realized that Shaman just has too many mechanics going on at this point.
Overload
If you are Overloaded
Murlocs
Play a spell the turn prior
Play an elemental the turn prior
The last of the two is a let-down since it probably would've been better if Marshspawn and Shattered Rumbler could trigger even if you cast the spell the current turn. Same probably with those that requires having used an Elemental (e.g., Liliypad Lurker and Arid Stormer) the turn prior (would've been better if it also allowed the use of an Elemental on that same turn). Maybe this could actually be a keyword as well like:
Recycle: If you did it this turn or last turn.
Then maybe Landslide could read: "Deal 1 damage to all enemy minions. Recycle Overload, deal 1 damage again"
Or Marshspawn. "Battlecry: Recycle Spell, Discover a Spell"
Although there might be a better keyword for it. Haha. Might help you with more ideas.
I can dig using Keywords to shorten card text. Frankly, I think Keywords are best used for simplifying card text for more complicated ideas like this. It's trickier with this concept, since it needs to be flexible - applicable to both casting spells AND Overloading. And more, frankly, since the game theoretically exists until the sun explodes haha.
If you Recall a Spell...
Maybe Recall? Recall - If you've played a card of a specific type last turn, trigger X. That way you can at least go between Spells, Minions, and Weapons. When it comes to the cards triggering if you'd cast a spell the same turn, I think the design intent was meant to encourage you to plan out your turns like Elementals like to do; though both cards are pretty weak in payoff and rarely are able to be played in the sequence they like for one reason or another. I think the "If you're Overloaded" text is fine, but limiting for whatever effects you want the card to do since it's so much text.
I dig the idea though - I'd probably have it as a Neutral ability so that the "plan your turns ahead" goodness can bounce between all the classes.
I sure hope this isn't thread necromancy, but I finally found time to put some stuff together from concepts I had. Revisiting the ways that Shaman would be allowed to Ramp, I had this idea of shuffling mana into your deck that Casts When Drawn and gives you a Mana Crystal. While becoming more fundamentally random - something I want to avoid - the idea of moving your mana forward in time, and setting up Ramp to recover after destroying your own mana is far too compelling to me not to at least look into.
Here's the first idea I came up with (and also I figured out how to put cards into posts the good way, yay for me!): Astral Recall puts Mana Crystals into your deck that "Cast When Drawn". Functionally, when you draw a Mana Crystal this way (I would have made a card for it but "mana crystal fan art" was impossible to find) you gain that Mana Crystal back permanently, then draw the next card (a function of Casts When Drawn). This is a neat setup tool, you can put yourself behind in Mana to trigger something like Elemental Surge for instance, or just keep playing as you are and when the Ramp finds you, you're pretty happy about it.
Next was an idea I had yesterday when considering Shaman's general lack of advantage. And while I know Legendaries are hardly a good fix - more of a band-aid solution than anything - I liked this idea too much not to share it.
Gurrath here generates advantage in an interesting way. Essentially he gives each spell in your hand Twinspell, though functionally it's not that simple. "Unique" is here to balance the card; meaning that the effect only triggers when you cast a spell with a different name than one you've cast this turn. That way, you couldn't Lightning Bolt and add infinite Lightning Bolts to your hand (which may be a completely unnecessary form of balance but, hey, I can't let everything be OP). Letting you milk 2 casts out of each spell in your hand is an interesting form of advantage I haven't seen explored yet - though the downside of not being able to keep the second copy around in hand makes the advantage Gurrath provides rather fleeting, which I think is fine from a class flavor standpoint.
Just two more for this post, I think. Next up is a cool idea for a finisher I had. For Shaman, burn is a reliable way to close out games, hampered by the fact that it has no draw and bad card generation. There's something Hearthstone did exactly one (1) time that I really like, that Legends of Runeterra does a lot, which is let cards generate non-random tokens, or generate other cards that already exists. Kiri, Chosen of Elune and Razorpetal Lasher are the only cards I can think of that do this. I think these cards are cool, and the thing they do is underutilized.
Crack the Skies is my interpretation of a rock-solid finisher in Shaman. You could play this in a classic aggro-burn list as a finisher, and I'd encourage that, but being able to rip 9 damage of burn for 5 mana (Plus 6 Overload) is awesome - though perhaps too good. I'd considered, and it might be better this way, that Crack the Skies gives you 2 Lightning Bolts instead, bringing it down to Fireball levels of burst. But as far as I'm concerned, if Mage can get away with the things that it does, then this should be allowed by Blizzard's standards.
Finally is another card pondering what advantage could look like in Shaman, but leaning towards Elementals. There's a lot of reasons Elementals are underpowered, the function of their synergy in particular being a huge detriment to the tribe. Being able to at least acquire multiple Elementals without having to proc any synergies is a start for the tribe in a better direction, in my opinion.
Wizened Weird does the ole "Battlecry and Deathrattle", something I like quite a lot. Tutoring Elementals is something really valuable, and the last card that did so wasn't even an elemental, thanks Sandbinder. Here we have a "slower" 2 mana draw 2. The balancing here was simple imo. Knight of Anointment is 1 mana and tutors something. Tutoring has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes its as good as drawing a card, but sometimes a tutor is unable to get what you actually need in the moment, and is far less flexible than card draw is.
Alright so that's today's lil update to the thread. Sorry it's been so long - and I know that only 1 of these cards is directly related to the mechanics I conceived specifically for Shaman - but hey not every Mage card says Freeze or Counter on it, ya know? I hope y'all liked these! Let me know what you think.
Nice concept there with Cleanse, I like it! But I don't think it's a good idea to also give ramp tools for Shaman. Shaman kinda "ramps" it's own way with overload, by casting powerful effects for less mana than they should. If you also give them the ability to ramp, you probably eliminate the problem with overload, since most of the time, overload cards aren't expensive. I think Cleanse alone would be just a wonderful mechanic alone by itself, with no need of adding ramp. Even without Cleanse, IMO ramp would be broken af in Shaman.
It's kinda why they removed druid most of it's face damage. Ramping + face damage isn't something fun to play against.
Nice concept there with Cleanse, I like it! But I don't think it's a good idea to also give ramp tools for Shaman. Shaman kinda "ramps" it's own way with overload, by casting powerful effects for less mana than they should. If you also give them the ability to ramp, you probably eliminate the problem with overload, since most of the time, overload cards aren't expensive. I think Cleanse alone would be just a wonderful mechanic alone by itself, with no need of adding ramp. Even without Cleanse, IMO ramp would be broken af in Shaman.
It's kinda why they removed druid most of it's face damage. Ramping + face damage isn't something fun to play against.
I think there's a great deal of valid criticisms to levy at giving any class Ramp outside of Druid. Shaman having a large amount of access to burn is certainly one of them. Ramp being added to Shaman to help balance out Overload being as bad as it is - is certainly a weird solution with a great deal of downsides. The way I saw it was
A: This lets me brainstorm how to bring a new - but existing - mechanic to a class. How does X mechanic look in X class is a fun exploratory thought. B: The same downsides of Ramp in Druid exist here as well, where it's inherently slow and would open the door for early aggression to take you out. Some cards, like the one that heals, contradict the nature of ramp being a downside since it patches up the intended downside. Others, like the one that ramps really slowly by giving you an empty crystal next turn, or the one that requires you to be behind on mana I think are more true to the concept. C: Let them eat cake! When I design cards/mechanics, I tend to design really high on the power spectrum on purpose. It's more exciting and fun to make powerful cards, and I've got the mentality - though it is probably flawed - that if everybody's cards/mechanics are overpowered, things are basically "fair".
I'm glad you like Cleanse! Out of all of the concepts here I'm sure it's most likely to "Ship" so to speak, it's fair and allows for interesting designs in minions and spells. Logic-wise, Overload is actually the reason I wanted Ramp. Overload is a really, really bad mechanic that's held the class back for so long, but it does effectively act like ramp in the way you described. I thought "well, if Shaman can play with Mana, why make their Mana-Playing awful?
I hope this helped you understand where I was coming from. I think you're right, Ramp isn't something that belongs in a burn class. Incanter's Flow has effectively proven how the community responds to that.
Alrighty it's my day off and I highlighted some cards to bring out of my Google Doc and share for public opinion.
Getting it started with my most controversial addition; here's todays example of "what Ramp could look like in Shaman":
Overclock was a top-down design. I liked the idea of a Fire Spell that dealt in Mana somehow, but wondered how it could possibly be flavored to work that way. Overclock is a result of that challenge. I think this is a really fair and engaging form of Ramp - it demands that you set up a play by Overloading first, then rewards you in 2 turns (so your Crystals can cool off) with what could be a pretty major burst of ramp. I'd like to reiterate the design intent here: Shaman's curve, with these hypothetical changes, would be way more erratic than Druid's, since the class would have cards that incentivize destroying your own Mana, and Overloading.
Here's an example of a minion that does just that, with a really solid payoff that's worth considering.
Lavalasher - to clear up any confusion - targets something as a part of the Battlecry, then pops your Mana and deals 2X Damage (X = Your Overloaded Mana Crystals when this is played). The Mana would be destroyed, then the card would Overload your mana on its own. With that out of the way (which could be incorrect btw, that may not be how Overload works on Battlecries), the design. I'm finding myself drawn to Fire spells being ones that destroy Mana Crystals for payoffs - and I'll settle for Fire Flavor on minions. This couldn't be played for its effect on curve, unless you managed to both ramp AND Overload enough to do so by turn 4.
Next up is what MTG Players would call "Keyword Soup". At some point I remembered Shaman does Frost things - sorry Moorabi - and postulated what THAT would look like.
Wow, 3 whole Keywords and a Spell School! I had to pull back on letting it do anymore lest it become "Not Ultimate But Pretty Good Infestation". This is a really nice utility spell with an upside, letting you play it defensively or offensively based on your needs (Freezing a well statted minion so it can't trade while I go face - Freezing a scary minion I can't deal with right now) while also ramping you if you've just played a Frost Spell. The biggest travesty is that I didn't have time to find a picture of an actual WoW Ice-Pop that isn't already in Hearthstone.
Next up is a fun detour to an old community favorite: giving Forbidden spells to classes that never got them. Shoutout to whatever year Whispers came out.
Temporary ramp is a tricky beast, and early game this card seems extremely frightening. Of course, first we'd want to look at the top-end, the biggest thing that the card is capable of doing. If you coined this out on turn 4, you'd gain 5 mana next turn and have 10 whole mana to spend. In this way, you could compare this to Eureka! - a spell that cheats out a huge minion on turn 6, but can be coined out on turn 5. The main difference being that you can select the card you pull, and Battlecry effects will work. Big Shaman is a historically fun archetype, and this could enable it. But of course we need to know what else its capable of. Turn 4 you could play this, then turn 5 you could follow up with Bru'kan and a decent amount of burn. We could say Serpentshrine Portal and Lightning Bolt, equaling what... 13 damage? That's quite a lot for turn 5, all at once. And of course Lightning Bloom makes this potential high-roll burn deck all the more insane. All in all, I think there's a lot of complexity to this one - way more than I feel comfortable saying this is "printable".
Of course, with Forbidden Channeling, the idea is the same as in all ramp, but more extreme. You're fully tapping out and doing nothing, as well as telegraphing to your opponent that your next turn is going to be big. Does spending 1 turn doing nothing and making it clear that you're about to pop off enough of a downside to make this fair? I genuinely don't know.
Finally, a cool value minion. It must be the time I spend playing Even Shaman giving me some bias, but all of these being Evenly costed was a coincidence. I think. Value/card draw is something Shaman really wants for, and I like exploring how to solve that issue.
Here we have some poor fella who crossed the wrong Shaman, and is now handing out deals. What I like about this is that there's a lot of potential synergies for this, making the ceiling for the card very high. If your turn ends and your Overloaded crystals unlock naturally? Gain some Health, draw a card. Did you cast Lava Shock after playing this and unlocked some Overloaded Crystals? Health + Card. Did you play a card with Cleanse? Healthcard. There's a lot you could put into this to guarantee/accelerate how much value you get out of it.
So that's all I've got for today. I hope you dig the ideas, let me know what you think! I really am grateful for the feedback I get, it keeps me from going fuckin' crazy with my ideas. Criticism keeps me grounded, I guess.
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Hello! As a passion project for the past couple months I’ve been conceptually reworking each class, imagining new Keywords and class mechanics to make each class feel more distinct, flavorful, and engaging to play. I usually return to working on this when inspiration hits me, since I’ve learned that creative work doesn’t flow when you force it.
I started this project with Hunter, developing an embarrassingly long, diary-like Google Doc detailing my grievances with the direction of its card design in the Year of the Dragon and Year of the Phoenix, and creating my own custom Keywords and class mechanics to no particular end - I just enjoyed doing it.
Shaman was the second Doc I made, because it’s my second favorite class. It has so much potential for awesome flavor and thematics, while being extremely engaging to play. Unfortunately, nothing about Shaman in its current state implements that at all. Whatever the current Blizzard design ethos for Shaman is, it’s done very little for the class’s benefit in my opinion. Shaman tends to be a competitively binary figure, it either does extremely well, infuriating the community with a powerful aggressive/midrange deck; or it doesn’t see the light of day, lingering at or below tier 3 with burn lists that are begging for an ounce of card draw or consistency.
I had experimented with some ideas for Shaman before. A card that opens up an alternative Hero Power (naturally inconsistent since you’d need to draw it); two different Keywords that would be new to Shaman, et cetera. Eventually I settled on an initial ethos for how I wanted to approach the class:
Shamans are spiritualists chosen by the Elements, the quasi-sentient building blocks of the world. They’re sagacious, using their wisdom to guide their decision-making. They wield the Elements in battle, casting devastating spells and summoning powerful elementals to wipe out their foes. The Elements are naturally versatile, and so they’re able to answer whatever problems the Shaman who controls them comes across. Able to Overload their Mana with surges of Elemental might, summon hordes of Elementals, and Ascend their spells to recast them when needed, Shamans are versatile enough to tackle aggressive decks, midrange decks, and control decks each with some level of competence.
I stuck to this concept rather faithfully for most of my work on the class, and some products of this line of thinking I’ll share. Ascend was an old - now abandoned - Keyword concept that was essentially Buyback from MTG (for an investment of 2 mana when you cast a spell with Ascend, you’d add it back to your hand). I remain firm in believing that Shaman should be versatile, able to build into aggro, midrange, or control.
Later on, a few days ago, I was struck with an incredible amount of inspiration after seeing the custom card “Harness The Storm” by FriendlyShadow on Hearthcards. It gave me the idea that Shaman should be able to play around with Overload more. Make it more than just a downside that tends to make the spell you cast less worth it. I wanted Shaman to play with its mana way, way more. And that was the impetus for a great deal of designs you’ll see here, as I’ll explain in a moment.
So in order to justify an addition to Shaman, I decided to double down on Overload as a mechanic. I thought to myself, what if Overload could be more punishing, but the class provided more ways to work with and around Overload, rather than just cope with it.
Double-Overload is an adjustment to the Overload Keyword; if a Mana Crystal is Overloaded, and you play a card with Overload, that Overloaded Mana Crystal is destroyed. For instance, if you Lightning Bolt turn 1, then Lightning Bolt turn 2, the Crystal that was Overloaded from last turn pops. It’s gone for good.
Don’t worry though, since there’s two additions to Shaman that’ll help work around this issue. First is a new Keyword that synergizes with Overload, and was directly inspired by “Harness The Storm”:
Cleanse - A card with Cleanse can only be paid for with Overloaded Mana Crystals. Doing so restores the Crystals to an un-Overloaded state.
Functionally, Cleanse serves two purposes. Firstly, it allows Shaman gameplay to be a little smoother, Cleanse wouldn’t be an insanely common Keyword (it’d be about 1/3rd as common as Overload is) and its effects would be helpful and strong because you need to be disadvantaged in the first place to play them. Card draw and high tempo minions could have Cleanse, for instance, both reined in by the Keyword itself.
The other purpose of Cleanse is to deliberately step around Overload. If you Cleanse before you cast another Overload card, you won’t Double-Overload and destroy your own Mana.
The second new feature I’d bring into Shaman might ruffle some feathers, but once I explain a little more (and show some cards to demonstrate how it would work) you might see where I’m coming from.
I’d want to put Mana Ramp in Shaman. See, since Shaman is playing around with its mana with Overload, I asked myself why not go all in? And what would Ramp in Shaman look like? Of course, it would need to be and feel distinct from Druid. This of course would come out in the Ramp spells themselves. I didn’t want Shaman to have Druids routine mana curve, and Shaman already has a curve that’s different from other classes because of Overload. So instead of steadily increasing over time like normal, or accelerating to 8 mana by turn 4, Shaman would be all over the fuckin place.
Shaman might pop its own Mana Crystals on turn 4 and wind up with 3 mana or so on turn 5, but could quickly accelerate past their opponent on the curve and follow up with another play, eventually losing more Crystals and dropping behind again only to Ramp back the next turn, and so on and so forth. Shaman’s curve on a graph would look like the Stock Market in my ideal world. Shaman uses its mana in weird ways, Crystals themselves have become a resource, so let them eat cake, I say.
One major part of my pet project has been designing Keywords. When all is said and done, each class will have gained 3 Keywords, though only 1 of them will be class-specific. I’m working with the same class-alignment/sibling class concept that was established in Scholomance with Dual Class cards. A class will gain its own unique Keyword, as well as 2 Keywords that it shares with its sibling class. Shaman, naturally, has these.
Mage/Shaman Keyword - Reverberate
I was trying to come up with how “Spell Tribal” would work now that Spell Schools exist, and I came up with this Keyword. I gave it to Mage and Shaman as they have diverse Spell Schools; Mage using Arcane, Fire, and Frost - while Shaman had Fire, Frost, and Nature. And it felt thematic for them both. Reverberate is a spell-exclusive Keyword, which triggers when you cast a spell AFTER casting a spell of the same school. So if you play a Fire Spell, then another Fire Spell with a Reverberate trigger on it, Reverberate resolves.
I had to come up with a clear idea of what each school was meant to do with Reverberate as an effect.
Fire Reverberations are focused on doing damage, having random targets or aoe, or maybe even temporary draw (in Soularium fashion).
Frost Reverberations are focused on defense, disruption, and freezing stuff.
Nature Reverberations are most likely focused on buffs, mana, healing, or summoning.
And finally with one new, and major, thing in common, the Keyword that Shaman and Druid share.
Druid/Shaman Keyword - Enriched
Enriched is simple enough. A minion with Enriched is carrying a single-use Mana Crystal for you to use. It would appear on the bottom of their portrait, and go away when you use it. Like a Mana Dork in MTG, but one use. When you would spend mana while an Enriched minion is on your field, its mana would be spent before the mana in your Mana Bar.
Of course this means that all Enriched minions need to be statted inefficiently, since they effectively cost (1) less than their mana cost says they do. Regardless, it does function as mana you can access if the minion survives until your next turn, letting you skip ahead in mana as if you’d cast The Coin or Innervate, but it’s on a minion your opponent can destroy.
Druid takes more advantage of this mechanic than Shaman does in its designs, though Enriched has an opportunity for a new trigger effect: “After this minion’s Mana’s been spent”. This opens up plenty of opportunities for card design with the Keyword between the two classes.
So that’s it, essentially. Keep in mind, all of these Keywords, mechanics, and cards are all purely conceptual. I’m not a balance wiz; when I design cards I prefer to balance around my designs, rather than design around balance. I want my cards to be splashy and powerful and fun, I think any card in a game should be at least 2 out of 3 of those things.
I’ve been doing work around every class, though the ones I’m most familiar with are the ones with the most work put into them. At this point all 10 classes have been worked on, and I’ve done a lot of Keyword development, though some classes need to be updated with Keywords they share with other classes.
I’m rambling. Let me know what you think!
I'm absolutely baffled by how adding pictures to this post works - I don't know how everybody does it. I'll just do it in a few separate posts.
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Here's some Cleanse cards, as well as concepts for how Ramp would work in Shaman.
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Just some final cards as an attempted proof of concept. Sorry that this is formatted so strangely, this is the first time I've done something like this on here. Would putting the cards in the actual post only work if I had them on an imgur album or something? Let me know please.
please don't bully my son
Love it
These all look very cool and I'd be down to play a class that is functionally more complicated than it is now, but with a good payoff if done correctly.
I'm not a balance master either, but just at a glance, these all seem fine, to me. I would be interested to see what other minions would be worked into these new keywords and concepts.
Still, very cool.
Some very cool ideas. I particularly like the concept of Cleanse - I remember having a discussion in the YouTube comments (where all the best discourse happens, obviously) during the Blackrock Mountain era about how Shaman was bad. My argument was that part of it was their signature mechanic, Overload, was pretty weak because it was too inherently balanced - it guarantees weak turns after strong ones, which doesn't let you snowball the advantage, and my proposal was that there should be ways to make Overload into a positive rather than just mitigating it like Lava Shock was trying to do. Cleanse is a very interesting keyword for that purpose, and I think the cards that you've designed with it are really great. It is a little bit terrifying though, because at some point you reach a critical mass of Cleanse cards and Shaman decks turn into piles of undercosted Overload cards that have the upside of enabling your undercosted Cleanse cards. It's something that requires really strong consideration during every expansion, and with how many massive blunders Team 5 has made in the past few years I don't really trust them with it. Doesn't make it any less of a great idea, though.
Shaman as a ramp class makes me very jumpy. Ramp is a mechanic I very much dislike - it's highrolly, and it feels absolutely awful for the player getting ramped on. I like the idea of making Shaman a class that's constantly swinging the amount of resources they have, surging in power one turn and then being weak the next, it can potentially make for very spikey games, and sort of get rid of one of Hearthstone's most resilient constants - the power of what you can do increases as the game goes on. My big issue is this: How do you get Shaman to destroy their mana? Warlocks have toyed with cards that destroy their own Mana for a long time, and it's never been something that's really seen play. Unless I'm misremembering Blastcrystal Potion was a card run only in Singleton decks as one of the bottom 5 cards, Revenant Rascal saw play for about a week in a gimmicky Zoo deck, and that's it. Mana is just way too valuable a resource. Ebon Quartermaster shows a direction you could go in of simply having insane rewards, but at that point you're still running into the traditional problem of Druid ramp: The opponent got lucky and drew into their ramp, so now they get to do all this insane stuff early. Meanwhile you're sitting there with three mana and wondering how you're ever meant to beat this board. Essentially, the reward for something as bad as breaking a mana crystal has to be backbreaking enough for the opponent that it's as though you haven't destroyed the crystal at all. Maybe there's a way to implement this where the payoff is a massive, all-in, tempo swing that has to win you the game on the spot or you lose because your mana is all gone, but I find it hard to imagine how that looks in practice, and I don't know that it's that fun of an experience for whichever player comes out the loser of that exchange.
Reverberate is a neat idea that I would like to see in the game, but it's a very "custom cards" concept as far as I see it. It's a little tough for new players to get their head around for the core set, and it's super-dependent on interlinked design. Sort of like Cleanse, it means that very close attention needs to be paid to exactly what and how many cards go in what spell school, which is tough upkeep for the dev team. I get the feeling people were a little disappointed with how little Spell Schools actually mattered in Forged in the Barrens (there's what, 5 cards that interact with them in total? Bru'kan, Tamsin, Cariel, Knight of Annointment, Guff, and I may be forgetting one or two more, but there's not a lot is the point), but I think it's the right move because every spell with a School has to be balanced with every card that interacts with the School in mind. At the very most I could see Reverberate as a keyword-of-the-expansion for the last expansion of a rotation, where it doesn't have to be balanced around for as long. These are all concerns I have with "realism", so to say, though - I love the concept and would personally like to see it in the game, but it's the type of thing I don't think would ever get put in.
I think Enriched is a really clever idea that makes ramp a bit more interactive, since your opponent can deny you those powerspike turns, but I'd tweak it so that the Enriched crystal gets spent last, not first. As is I think most Enriched minions would wind up weak, or at least would feel awkward. Excluding the case where you use the extra mana immediately and the Enriched minion is basically a vanilla minion, the play scenario is something like this: you play an Enriched minion, which is a low tempo play due to its low stats, and you pass the turn to your opponent. Often they kill your minion, which means you've just effectively played an overcosted minion. But, say it survives to your turn. Now you HAVE to spend the exact amount of mana you have available, or your Enriched minion is still just an overcosted minion, since floating any mana means floating the Enrich benefit too. I think this'd feel awful and clunky, and would be too difficult to consistently set up. Not only is making an overcosted minion survive tough, but if it has survived it's likely because your opponent's done something proactive that you likely want to react to rather than playing the big proactive play you were planning to do with your Enrich. Making the Crystal spend last means you're not just wasting the Enrich if you don't have the perfect play next turn, and it even allows for interesting gameplans where you're setting up for big power turns by playing several Enrich minions at once and protecting them while going out of your way to not use their mana.
I've criticized a fair bit, but this is mostly just because I find criticizing way easier than praising. I think this redesign idea is super cool and well thought out, and frankly I'd rather see these ideas in the game than most expansion ideas nowadays - and I'm someone who thinks Hearthstone is generally in a pretty OK place, so I'm not damning with faint praise. Really great stuff!
Thank you for your insight! I appreciate criticism, here is the only place I feel I can get input on my ideas - it's not good to just sit and stew on my concepts without any outside input.
I guess if Ramp as a concept is something you're opposed to, I could see why the mechanic moving into another class might make you a little bit jittery. I promise you that the design intent is to make Shaman more engaging, and play more with its mana - while giving the option for Control decks to Ramp regularly with the less efficient cards. With the generally compact size of Decks in Hearthstone compared to MTG or LoR, I feel that with the right ratio of cards designed for that purpose being ran, a Shaman would consistently get value from popping their Mana as often as they Ramp to replace what they've lost. The goal is to give Shaman powerful stuff to do that leads to more dynamic gameplay - though Ramp is a rickety rope bridge I'd need to be careful designing around in a class that's never had it before.
I think you've got a really good point about Enriched being the final piece of mana you spend rather than the first. It'll also allow for more powerful "After this minion's mana is spend" effects, justified by being the final piece of mana you spend instead of the first one. The pricing of Enriched minions is the trickiest aspect of their design, since they refund a Mana just by existing. Their stats would mainly be defensive to make them harder to remove, though still being punishing if they do get popped by the opponent.
And I'm glad you dig Cleanse!
Thanks for taking the time to let me know what you think!
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I've got some ideas brewing that I'm really into that further explore these mechanics.
Weirdly I've been struggling to make minions I'm excited about, all of the effects (if you couldn't already tell haha) seem to fit so easily onto spells in my mind. All the same I have tried to come up with some minion concepts, as well as a very strange means of playing with Ramp over time. Unfortunately I'm at work and can't really do the Hearthcards thing, so I'll try and do that tomorrow. I'll have very little free time though, so we'll see.
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Nice ideas. Was really thinking about Shaman yesterday (toying with Elemental Shaman) and realized that Shaman just has too many mechanics going on at this point.
The last of the two is a let-down since it probably would've been better if Marshspawn and Shattered Rumbler could trigger even if you cast the spell the current turn. Same probably with those that requires having used an Elemental (e.g., Liliypad Lurker and Arid Stormer) the turn prior (would've been better if it also allowed the use of an Elemental on that same turn). Maybe this could actually be a keyword as well like:
Recycle: If you did it this turn or last turn.
Although there might be a better keyword for it. Haha. Might help you with more ideas.
I can dig using Keywords to shorten card text. Frankly, I think Keywords are best used for simplifying card text for more complicated ideas like this. It's trickier with this concept, since it needs to be flexible - applicable to both casting spells AND Overloading. And more, frankly, since the game theoretically exists until the sun explodes haha.
If you Recall a Spell...
Maybe Recall? Recall - If you've played a card of a specific type last turn, trigger X.
That way you can at least go between Spells, Minions, and Weapons. When it comes to the cards triggering if you'd cast a spell the same turn, I think the design intent was meant to encourage you to plan out your turns like Elementals like to do; though both cards are pretty weak in payoff and rarely are able to be played in the sequence they like for one reason or another. I think the "If you're Overloaded" text is fine, but limiting for whatever effects you want the card to do since it's so much text.
I dig the idea though - I'd probably have it as a Neutral ability so that the "plan your turns ahead" goodness can bounce between all the classes.
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I sure hope this isn't thread necromancy, but I finally found time to put some stuff together from concepts I had. Revisiting the ways that Shaman would be allowed to Ramp, I had this idea of shuffling mana into your deck that Casts When Drawn and gives you a Mana Crystal. While becoming more fundamentally random - something I want to avoid - the idea of moving your mana forward in time, and setting up Ramp to recover after destroying your own mana is far too compelling to me not to at least look into.
Here's the first idea I came up with (and also I figured out how to put cards into posts the good way, yay for me!): Astral Recall puts Mana Crystals into your deck that "Cast When Drawn". Functionally, when you draw a Mana Crystal this way (I would have made a card for it but "mana crystal fan art" was impossible to find) you gain that Mana Crystal back permanently, then draw the next card (a function of Casts When Drawn). This is a neat setup tool, you can put yourself behind in Mana to trigger something like Elemental Surge for instance, or just keep playing as you are and when the Ramp finds you, you're pretty happy about it.
Next was an idea I had yesterday when considering Shaman's general lack of advantage. And while I know Legendaries are hardly a good fix - more of a band-aid solution than anything - I liked this idea too much not to share it.
Gurrath here generates advantage in an interesting way. Essentially he gives each spell in your hand Twinspell, though functionally it's not that simple. "Unique" is here to balance the card; meaning that the effect only triggers when you cast a spell with a different name than one you've cast this turn. That way, you couldn't Lightning Bolt and add infinite Lightning Bolts to your hand (which may be a completely unnecessary form of balance but, hey, I can't let everything be OP). Letting you milk 2 casts out of each spell in your hand is an interesting form of advantage I haven't seen explored yet - though the downside of not being able to keep the second copy around in hand makes the advantage Gurrath provides rather fleeting, which I think is fine from a class flavor standpoint.
Just two more for this post, I think. Next up is a cool idea for a finisher I had. For Shaman, burn is a reliable way to close out games, hampered by the fact that it has no draw and bad card generation. There's something Hearthstone did exactly one (1) time that I really like, that Legends of Runeterra does a lot, which is let cards generate non-random tokens, or generate other cards that already exists. Kiri, Chosen of Elune and Razorpetal Lasher are the only cards I can think of that do this. I think these cards are cool, and the thing they do is underutilized.
Crack the Skies is my interpretation of a rock-solid finisher in Shaman. You could play this in a classic aggro-burn list as a finisher, and I'd encourage that, but being able to rip 9 damage of burn for 5 mana (Plus 6 Overload) is awesome - though perhaps too good. I'd considered, and it might be better this way, that Crack the Skies gives you 2 Lightning Bolts instead, bringing it down to Fireball levels of burst. But as far as I'm concerned, if Mage can get away with the things that it does, then this should be allowed by Blizzard's standards.
Finally is another card pondering what advantage could look like in Shaman, but leaning towards Elementals. There's a lot of reasons Elementals are underpowered, the function of their synergy in particular being a huge detriment to the tribe. Being able to at least acquire multiple Elementals without having to proc any synergies is a start for the tribe in a better direction, in my opinion.
Wizened Weird does the ole "Battlecry and Deathrattle", something I like quite a lot. Tutoring Elementals is something really valuable, and the last card that did so wasn't even an elemental, thanks Sandbinder. Here we have a "slower" 2 mana draw 2. The balancing here was simple imo. Knight of Anointment is 1 mana and tutors something. Tutoring has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes its as good as drawing a card, but sometimes a tutor is unable to get what you actually need in the moment, and is far less flexible than card draw is.
Alright so that's today's lil update to the thread. Sorry it's been so long - and I know that only 1 of these cards is directly related to the mechanics I conceived specifically for Shaman - but hey not every Mage card says Freeze or Counter on it, ya know? I hope y'all liked these! Let me know what you think.
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Nice looking cards, dropping a comment for the updates!
Check out my fun and innovative decks here:
Beat your opponent to a pulp with Revenant Warrior or outlast them with Demon Reno Warlock.
I appreciate the dedication.
Nice concept there with Cleanse, I like it! But I don't think it's a good idea to also give ramp tools for Shaman. Shaman kinda "ramps" it's own way with overload, by casting powerful effects for less mana than they should. If you also give them the ability to ramp, you probably eliminate the problem with overload, since most of the time, overload cards aren't expensive. I think Cleanse alone would be just a wonderful mechanic alone by itself, with no need of adding ramp. Even without Cleanse, IMO ramp would be broken af in Shaman.
It's kinda why they removed druid most of it's face damage. Ramping + face damage isn't something fun to play against.
I think there's a great deal of valid criticisms to levy at giving any class Ramp outside of Druid. Shaman having a large amount of access to burn is certainly one of them. Ramp being added to Shaman to help balance out Overload being as bad as it is - is certainly a weird solution with a great deal of downsides. The way I saw it was
A: This lets me brainstorm how to bring a new - but existing - mechanic to a class. How does X mechanic look in X class is a fun exploratory thought.
B: The same downsides of Ramp in Druid exist here as well, where it's inherently slow and would open the door for early aggression to take you out. Some cards, like the one that heals, contradict the nature of ramp being a downside since it patches up the intended downside. Others, like the one that ramps really slowly by giving you an empty crystal next turn, or the one that requires you to be behind on mana I think are more true to the concept.
C: Let them eat cake! When I design cards/mechanics, I tend to design really high on the power spectrum on purpose. It's more exciting and fun to make powerful cards, and I've got the mentality - though it is probably flawed - that if everybody's cards/mechanics are overpowered, things are basically "fair".
I'm glad you like Cleanse! Out of all of the concepts here I'm sure it's most likely to "Ship" so to speak, it's fair and allows for interesting designs in minions and spells.
Logic-wise, Overload is actually the reason I wanted Ramp. Overload is a really, really bad mechanic that's held the class back for so long, but it does effectively act like ramp in the way you described. I thought "well, if Shaman can play with Mana, why make their Mana-Playing awful?
I hope this helped you understand where I was coming from. I think you're right, Ramp isn't something that belongs in a burn class. Incanter's Flow has effectively proven how the community responds to that.
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love is in the AIR! We ve got to make it live
Alrighty it's my day off and I highlighted some cards to bring out of my Google Doc and share for public opinion.
Getting it started with my most controversial addition; here's todays example of "what Ramp could look like in Shaman":
Overclock was a top-down design. I liked the idea of a Fire Spell that dealt in Mana somehow, but wondered how it could possibly be flavored to work that way. Overclock is a result of that challenge. I think this is a really fair and engaging form of Ramp - it demands that you set up a play by Overloading first, then rewards you in 2 turns (so your Crystals can cool off) with what could be a pretty major burst of ramp. I'd like to reiterate the design intent here: Shaman's curve, with these hypothetical changes, would be way more erratic than Druid's, since the class would have cards that incentivize destroying your own Mana, and Overloading.
Here's an example of a minion that does just that, with a really solid payoff that's worth considering.
Lavalasher - to clear up any confusion - targets something as a part of the Battlecry, then pops your Mana and deals 2X Damage (X = Your Overloaded Mana Crystals when this is played). The Mana would be destroyed, then the card would Overload your mana on its own. With that out of the way (which could be incorrect btw, that may not be how Overload works on Battlecries), the design. I'm finding myself drawn to Fire spells being ones that destroy Mana Crystals for payoffs - and I'll settle for Fire Flavor on minions. This couldn't be played for its effect on curve, unless you managed to both ramp AND Overload enough to do so by turn 4.
Next up is what MTG Players would call "Keyword Soup". At some point I remembered Shaman does Frost things - sorry Moorabi - and postulated what THAT would look like.
Wow, 3 whole Keywords and a Spell School! I had to pull back on letting it do anymore lest it become "Not Ultimate But Pretty Good Infestation". This is a really nice utility spell with an upside, letting you play it defensively or offensively based on your needs (Freezing a well statted minion so it can't trade while I go face - Freezing a scary minion I can't deal with right now) while also ramping you if you've just played a Frost Spell. The biggest travesty is that I didn't have time to find a picture of an actual WoW Ice-Pop that isn't already in Hearthstone.
Next up is a fun detour to an old community favorite: giving Forbidden spells to classes that never got them. Shoutout to whatever year Whispers came out.
Temporary ramp is a tricky beast, and early game this card seems extremely frightening. Of course, first we'd want to look at the top-end, the biggest thing that the card is capable of doing. If you coined this out on turn 4, you'd gain 5 mana next turn and have 10 whole mana to spend. In this way, you could compare this to Eureka! - a spell that cheats out a huge minion on turn 6, but can be coined out on turn 5. The main difference being that you can select the card you pull, and Battlecry effects will work. Big Shaman is a historically fun archetype, and this could enable it. But of course we need to know what else its capable of. Turn 4 you could play this, then turn 5 you could follow up with Bru'kan and a decent amount of burn. We could say Serpentshrine Portal and Lightning Bolt, equaling what... 13 damage? That's quite a lot for turn 5, all at once. And of course Lightning Bloom makes this potential high-roll burn deck all the more insane. All in all, I think there's a lot of complexity to this one - way more than I feel comfortable saying this is "printable".
Of course, with Forbidden Channeling, the idea is the same as in all ramp, but more extreme. You're fully tapping out and doing nothing, as well as telegraphing to your opponent that your next turn is going to be big. Does spending 1 turn doing nothing and making it clear that you're about to pop off enough of a downside to make this fair? I genuinely don't know.
Finally, a cool value minion. It must be the time I spend playing Even Shaman giving me some bias, but all of these being Evenly costed was a coincidence. I think. Value/card draw is something Shaman really wants for, and I like exploring how to solve that issue.
Here we have some poor fella who crossed the wrong Shaman, and is now handing out deals. What I like about this is that there's a lot of potential synergies for this, making the ceiling for the card very high. If your turn ends and your Overloaded crystals unlock naturally? Gain some Health, draw a card. Did you cast Lava Shock after playing this and unlocked some Overloaded Crystals? Health + Card. Did you play a card with Cleanse? Healthcard. There's a lot you could put into this to guarantee/accelerate how much value you get out of it.
So that's all I've got for today. I hope you dig the ideas, let me know what you think! I really am grateful for the feedback I get, it keeps me from going fuckin' crazy with my ideas. Criticism keeps me grounded, I guess.
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