Hearthpwn

Hey guys!

Two weeks ago I finished making my hearthstone monk class idea. Just recently, I finished some of the major reworking.

Note that everything here is a work in progress. Feedback is greatly appreciated and I will be frequently checking this thread to respond to compliments/input/criticism and make changes as quickly as possible.

On to the actual class.

Monk's class mechanic is Focus. It appears in the form of "Focus: Do something" and would be described in-game as "while this minion is at full health, it has a new power." It is the opposite of enrage, providing an aura effect that is active only while focused and deactivated on leaving focus.

Originally Monk had a second class mechanic, Initiative. Initiative was intended to be added as a new static neutral attribute that revolved around monk, kind of like how paladins have lots of divine shields (even though they are neutral). However, it received negative feedback for being too snowbally, and during reworking by pure chance there were only two cards with initiative left, so I seized the opportunity to remove it altogether.

Here are the cards :

v2.3 (Current) - http://imgur.com/a/duYqU#0

v2.0 (Old) - http://imgur.com/a/da3zG#22

Changelog

Likely future changes:

• Reworking tiger strikes, again
• Reworking the celestials, esp. Xuen and Yu'lon
• Reworking Enlightened Master, again

2/1/15 (Changes from 2.2 to 2.3):

• Release
• None yet

1/31/15 (2.1 to 2.2 cont.):

• INITIATIVE REMOVED!!!
• Legacy of the White tiger to +2/+1 for 1 mana (from +2/+2 for 2 mana)
• Tiger Lord's claws mana cost to 6 (from 4) attack to 3 (from 2)
• Taran Zhu fully reworked; 9 mana, 5/8: Focus: At the end of your turn, summon a Shado-Pan recruit. Shado-Pan recruit: 3 mana, 3/4: Taran Zhu has +2 attack.
• Spear Hand Strike no longer gives initiative and only is usable on your hero but now draws a card.
• Kun-Lai meditator removed; replaced with Shado-Pan Commander

1/30/15 (Changes from 2.1 to 2.2):

• Tiger Strikes renamed to Hurricane Strike
• Nimble Brew removed, replaced with new Tiger Stikes
• Tiger's Claws removed; replaced with Tiger Lord's Claws
• Pandaren Striker Removed; replaced with Apprentice Spellslinger
• Monastery teachings reworked; 5 mana: Give a friendly minion +2/+2 and summon two 2/2 acolytes.

1/Like2weeksago/15 (Changes from 2.0 to 2.1):

• Chi Wave to 2 mana (from 1)
• Shado-Pan Adept to Focus +2 attack (from +3)
• Nimble Brew to 3 mana (from 2)
• Spear Hand Strike to 4 mana (from 3)
• Legacy of the White Tiger to 2 mana (from 3)
• Fists of Fury to 2 mana (from 1)

Thanks for reading!

Quote from Nakazawa »

Looks nice but some cards doesn't really make much sense or a way over the top:

Touch of Death - If you have more minions, how should this work? Should be something like: Choose a friendly minion and destroy a (random) enemy minion that has less health than it.

To clarify this for you and the other person, you target one enemy minion. If it has less health than ANY of your minions, it can be targeted. As such, Touch of Death uses the highest health out of all of your minions.

Initiate's Stuff - Damage is dealt before a minion dies. Your hero would take damage first. I rather would change it to something like "If you killed the minion don't lose durability".

Just because something happens in game currently doesn't mean a specific card can't circumvent it. The "Initiative" mechanic I was talking about beforehand did exactly this, if your characters attacked and killed their target, they would take no damage in return. When initiative was removed, I simply hard-wrote it into the weapon. Perhaps it could have a different attacking animation to show a different kind of attacking.

Also I would redo Lorewalker. It could be that you have not played a spell for 10 turns and then you play this dude. Hard to really remember and track what this guy is actually doing. I would rather restrict it to a spell from the last turn only.

Making it a spell from last turn only would add some unnecessary restrictions to this card, since the real issue is clarity. Perhaps mousing over the card could display an image of the spell that it would give you, and the spell could be revealed to your opponent too so that even if you've forgotten you can still know?

Tiger Lord's Claws also is not very obvious. What if I attacked the hero in the first place? Double damage to him?

Yes, double damage to them. Many of the cards' not obvious situations are listed as the image descriptions on imgur.

Celestial Call: What does it call?

It calls the 4 celestials on the following pages.

Yu'lon is too strong. 3 health to all characters every turn is way too much value. Either make it trigger once or reduce it to 2 and make it minion only.

Yes, you are right. Yu'lon and the other celestials are in the "likely future changes" section. The most likely change is that it will no longer be a focus and instead just a battlecry.

Afterlife also is very strong. Play a 1 mana minion, destroy it and you can easily play strong cards early. And not only minions, also spells way too early - and that for 0 mana.

I definitely thought that afterlife was overpowered. Then I remembered that Innervate existed. One less mana gain without having to destroy a friendly minion, and there's also the fact that you can double innervate whereas Afterlife can only be used once in a row to put some sort of cap on the value you can get.

Fists of Fury has 0 drawback. It is similar to Shadowflame, costs 2 less and leaves your minion untouched. Way too good. Just use them on your Giants and they still are able to sit around. I would build in a drawback. Something like "Change its attack to 1 afterwards" (to show that this exhausted your own minion).

The reason that it has no drawback is because it doesn't have good value with weaker minions, and compared to shadowflame, it's a lot weaker. Sure, it costs 2 less mana, and it doesn't destroy your minion. But if your opponent has 5 minions, then shadowflame deals 5x as much damage as fists of fury. I think trying to compare fists of fury to shadowflame just because they both scale with minion's attack is a mistake for balance. Just think of shadowflame as a really strong spell, that destroys a friendly minion to balance it. Think of fists of fury as a weaker spell that requires a friendly minion with high attack to cast, as just one of the things that makes it balanced. Look at "Avenging Wrath" or basically any other spell in the game, they have no "drawbacks". 

The Focus mechanic could be really cool if you are trying to get your minions back to full life for their effects or when your opponent just pings a minion so it loses its effect.

Thanks, that was the intention. It has counterplay because enemies can stop it, but interesting interactions since you need to decide whether to bring it back or not.