Hearthpwn

 This is the Discussion Topic. The Submission Topic is here.
(Please Read the Submission Topic first.)

Hello everybody! This topic is for discussion of Phase III of the Class Design Competition. To make sure that everything runs smoothly, we need to reserve the Submission Topic for submissions only. Everything else goes here. What is everything else, you might ask?

 Rules or Process. Do you have a question about the competition's process? Do you need clarification about this week's entry format? Are you not sure whether your entry adhered to the rules? Ask here!

 Feedback or Ideas. Do you have some ideas you'd like to run by others before settling on one? Do you need help balancing or wording your example cards? Do you need help finding art? Or do you just want feedback from the community on your entry? You're in the right place! Remember, although you are allowed to make minor tweaks to your entry after you've submitted it, you are not allowed drastic changes, so make sure that you've settled on your cards for sure beforehand.

 Discussion! Do you have thoughts on other people's cards? Are there directions you don't like that you're seeing too many people take? Or directions you'd like to see more people take? Would you like to help others and contribute to a greater community understanding of Hearthstone card design and balance? This is where you want to be!

 WARNING:

Please refrain from the following...

 Advertising Your Entry. This is a new rule during Season 2. Please don't pop in here just to advertise your cards only to never be heard from again. This includes only asking short, generic, or insincere questions like "Thoughts?" or "Do you think this is balanced?". Yes, getting feedback on your cards is one of the purposes of this topic, but we're not just here for other people to help you. We're here for you all to help each other.
12 hours after this competition begins, there should be plenty of other posts here for you to give specific feedback or for you to comment on a trend. If you post your cards for feedback after this time and do not also offer some form of substantial commentary, critique, or praise of others' work, you may find your post deleted.

 Plagiarism. Many people post their ideas here before finalizing them in the submission topic. Directly plagiarizing those ideas to post in the submission topic yourself is absolutely not acceptable.

 So, without further ado, have fun and get creating!

When I get home tonight, there are a couple of statistics I'll be sharing here to help y'all out. For example, the proportion of spells to minions that should be normally expected from a class's classic set, the average number of damage spells a class have, the average number of AoEs and card draw options existing classes tend to have when you combine their Basic and Classic sets, and more. These will hopefully help you create more realistic classic sets. =)

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Hello guys, Merchant creator here.  =)

First of all, congrats to all other contestants who made it this far!

I was wondering if there is some kind of card, idea or mechanic you would like to see in my class? Or maybe you want to give me some hints on my previous creations? How much should we pay for the strongest Salary minion (I'm talking here exactly about Salary X, not the mana cost)? Anyone got some fav NPCs you would like me to include as my class minions? Any feedback will be appreciated. :)

So, here's a concern that I have about your keyword, and really any class with a unique keyword: I don't think that it should carry your class. Look at the Druid, Rogue, and Shaman, and look at what percentage of their Classic cards even have their exclusive Choose One, Combo, and Overload mechanics. It's probably less than you think. PLUS, those keywords are general enough to be applied to any sort of card while your Salary keyword doesn't really apply well to Spells. And Spells, for those that haven't noticed, comprise the majority of most Class cards in the Classic Set. This isn't a trend you're obligated to follow, and I'm also pretty sure that Warlock breaks the trend by having 8 minions and 7 spells in its Classic Set, but then again look at how minion-focused the Warlock's theme is compared to other classes. This being the case, I don't think you should include more than maybe 5 cards with Salary. But that's just my opinion. =)

Thanks for the Wild Card guys. Much appreciated. I must say, I really felt like I hit the right spot in Phase I with my class, shame it didn't work in Phase II for me through normal voting. Where did I go wrong in Phase II?

Also, will the next voting topic be the same as the last topic Asylum_Rhapsody?

Quote from Vonrith jump

Also, will the next voting topic be the same as the last topic Asylum_Rhapsody?

That is currently the plan, yes, though we've taken one contestant's suggestions to increase the number of example cards allowed this Phase to 5 rather than 3.

Despite some vocal protest, most contestants actually seemed perfectly content with the Phase II voting format. Additionally, many of the concerns that were brought up were ones that turns out not to be a problem (and indeed most of those those that raised them ended up moving forwards despite thinking they would be disadvantaged). For example, there were complaints about Hero Powers not being on display and suggestions that folks wouldn't follow links to the submission posts. The viewer counters on display on the main forum, though, consistently showed a good number of people viewing the submission topic even when it was near the bottom of the page. Additionally, there were three example cards that depended on voters checking out the relevant submission posts to understand them, and it turns out that those three submissions all did quite well, two of them making it here to the semi-finals and one (tragically) missing the semi-finals by only a single vote.

We will continue assessing the outcome of the Poll Topic for Phase II, though, and we're plenty open to discussion about it.

Does it make sense thematically for that Hero Power to have a salary, though?

Wow, I can't believe how much the votes turned to my favor towards the end. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, you guys gave me a massive confidence boost!

Anyway, just wanted to throw out some early concepts for cards. Nowhere near balanced, just looking for some really cool effects. 

EDIT: I realized that there are so few shadow and Ice cards. On second thought, I might actually just remove secrets from this class. Do you guys think that's appropriate?

Some comments about each one individually:

Damned Cultist: Love this card. No changes likely.

Crazed Seer: Love the concept, a tiny minion with a massive scheme as it's deathrattle. Synergizes with some later Secrets. Not sure if it's balanced, as the reward is huge but it's such terrible tempo.

Wicked Deathspeaker: An interesting effect for a shadow or ice/shadow deck I think, but might be a bit strong. Another possible card would be "Battlecry: Gain Spell Damage +1 for each Frozen minion."

Permafrost: Like this card.

Glacial Bastion: Like this card.

Dominate Mind: I'm okay with this card, I'm not sure if it intrudes too heavily on Ice's identity as AoE and shadow's as single-target.

Wall of Ice: No strong opinions either way.

Countermeasures: I really like this concept of using Scheme on the enemy deck, but I'm not sure if that's too "gamebreaking" as it goes against design philosophy. At least it doesn't discard or modify the enemy hand...

Demise: I think it's interesting, but not sure again if it infringes on Ice being the AoE and shadow being single-target.

Mind Flay: Intentionally strong, a Scheme option that any Lich deck can take advantage of.

Shadow Fissure: Pyroblast was OP at 8 mana because "It was low-interaction and had no counterplay." Well, this card is aimed at combating exactly that.

Occult Keeper: This class has such expensive secrets, I felt it needed some sort of tempo-y thing for them other than Mad Scientist crazy value.

Soulbound Amulet: This secret has changed a lot. At it's core, it should summon a phylactery that makes your hero immune. Not sure how well it was accomplished. Note that it will trigger if you take damage while you are already at less than 10 health, although it will not trigger if that damage causes you to lose the game then and there.

Quote from Squiddylicious jump

Just a heads up, Blizz has so far stayed away from requiring you to interact with the game in any way during your opponent's turn.

Combining Scheme with Deathrattle would kinda go against that design principle.

I realized this earlier but I forgot it would happen. I'll change it to "at the end of the current turn" maybe.

Quote from DonnieMcKarlo jump

Quote from DKPaladinMDL jump

 

Lengthy post, so I'll use murlocs favored procedure.

Erm, asylum already hinted that the use of the class keyword should be applied sparingly. As such, I think you are overdoing it on that front for now. Cards I can definitely see being very good for you class are damned cultist, glacial bastion, dominate mind and ice wall(although this just strikes me as a tad overpowered). From the currently displayed scheme options I don't really like any single one, and the closest I feel ok with would probably be mindflay. On the others the scheme tag kind of interferes too heavily with the card balance and, honestly, packing 2 effects into one card seems to be somewhat overdoing it. 

Actually, according to rogue/shaman/druid, I'm not using scheme enough, as 8-9/15 of their expert set has their unique mechanic.

 All right, so as promised, I have some statistics to share to help you all figure out what it is that you need from your Classic Set to, combined with your Basic Set, end up with a completely functional class.

Costs:
You may or may not be surprised to know that cost curves vary wildly by class. Some classes can even have upwards of seven class cards all at the same cost! Though, to be fair, these are classes with Secrets, a class of spell that by necessity must cost the same. Anyway, don't worry TOO much about cost curve, but do still keep in mind that the game in general is curved towards the lower end. So, where classes might realistically have five or even seven 1-4-cost, having more than one or two 7-9-cost cards is likely not realistic.
Also of note, the only class cards that cost 10 are those that were nerfed to that cost later. It is absolutely intentional that not many cards cost 10 because then if those cards are too powerful the dev-favorite neft method of cost increase isn't an option. So, if you want to serve realism, don't give us any 10-cost anything.

Variety:
Remember that you're designing an entire class, not just one deck archetype. You can steer the class towards some deck archetypes by making some of them have more attractive options, but you should have some options if somebody wants to build an aggro deck or a control deck or a combo deck with your class even if that's not what you intend to be primary. Every class has some sort of option for all of these, even if they don't see a lot of use in this meta-game.

Power:
Not every card needs to be good. Not every card should be good. Not even that super special capstone legendary of yours needs to be something people care to use (I'm looking at you, King Crush and Prophet Velen). Some cool or flavorful but largely ineffective options sprinkled in are realistic. Don't be afraid of having a few cards that are just silly, negligible filler.

Spells-Minion-Weapon Balance:
As previously mentioned, the bulk of your class cards should probably be spells. When it comes to the 10-card Basic Set, 6-10 of that comprises spells for existing classes. When it comes to the 15-card Classic Set, 7-10 of that comprises spells for existing classes. Even Hunter, the class with the most Basic minions, actually ends up having the most Classic Spells tied with Druid and Mage. However, realize that some of those Hunter Spells are Animal Companion, Unleash the Hounds, and Snake Trap. The point it, you can sort of weasel your way around this by having Spells that summon minions, but of course those should have a reason for being spells rather than just being minions. Similarly, how many Weapon cards a Warrior has depends on whether or not you count Arathi Weaponsmith.

Directed Damage:
Cards with wacky effects are going to make your class cool and unique, but don't forget about giving your class some basic ways to do directed damage, not just enough for one deck but enough that they have options at different mana costs and such for different sorts of decks. Between damage spells, weapons, and minion battlecries, current classes have 1-4 directed damage cards from their Basic Set and 2-5 directed damage cards from their Classic Set, resulting in 4-8 total directed damage cards.

AoE:
Also don't forget to equip your class with a couple of AoE effects so that they can handle swarms. Current classes have 0-3 AoE cards from their Basic Set and 0-3 AoE cards from their Classic Set, resulting in 1-5 AoE cards total. It's up to you to decide whether Something like Equality or Unleash the Hounds counts, but that just goes to show you can be creative about blurring the lines here.

Kill:
Every class (almost) has some way to outright destroy a minion, 0-3 from their Basic Set and 0-2 from their Classic Set, totaling 0-5. I personally also count stuff like Sap and transformation effects like Hex.

Buffs:
I know they're not popular, but almost every class has minion buffs, 0-7 (Hello Shaman!) from their Basic Set and 1-4 from their Classic Set, for a total of 0-8. Of note, though, when I initially made this list, I counted Sorcerer's Apprentice as a buff card because it buffs spells rather than minions, so that means you can change those 0's to 1's minimum. It's only fair since I included Summoning Portal as a buff card.

Heal:
Healing cards aren't essential, but they're an oft forgotten category that may be worth checking out if you feel like you're missing something. Existing classes have 0-3 healing cards from their Basic Set and 0-4 healing cards from their Classic Set. Of note, remember that minion-only healing is still healing, hero-only healing is also a thing, and I don't know about you but I count Armor gain to be in this category.

Draw:
This is essential. Your class needs unique draw capabilities at various mana costs. Existing classes have 0-3 draw options from their Basic Sets and 0-4 draw options from their Classic Set for a total of 0-6 draw options, and I know that 0 is wrong because WTF why do I have Rogues written down as having no draw options!? Anyway, what counts as card draw may be open for debate. Do you count Shadowstep or Thoughtsteal for example? Think about it...

Final Word:
This isn't to say you have no room to get creative with cards that are none of the above. The cards that are none of the above often are essential to defining a class, cards like Innervate. But just make sure you have your bases covered is all and that your class has the tools to function competently as a realistic class. I'm not putting limitations on you, just helping you fill your class out and giving you direction. Think about a creative awesome new way to to an AoE or a totally unique card draw mechanic. And don't be afraid to mix some of these up in new and unexpected ways either, even if just to save space for your more exciting ideas. After all, we have cards like Swipe that are a mix betwee directed damage and AoE, cards like Power Word: Shield that function both as a buff and as card draw, and cards like Siphon Soul with both destroy a minion and heal your character. Mix it up!

Looking forward to seeing how these sets shape up. =)

And I'll maybe be posting my Seer's Classic Set at some point too... I hope I'm not being annoying about that because I know I'm not allowed to compete, like I said I just like to get in on the fun. ;_;

I forgot to mention something: That one class that has only one AoE is Priest, with its Holy Nova. But, you know, they also have that awesome Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo. Don't be afraid for creating cards that are designed to be combo'd with other specific cards for the desired effect. And speaking of Circle of Healing, absolutely remember to think of how your class cards interact with or combo with Neutral cards. Injured Blademaster isn't good for many classes, but it definitely works just fine in Priest. Especially keep neutral card interactions in mind when you start thinking about what sorts of combos your class can pull off and whether or not Emperor Thaurissan makes them too easy or powerful.