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- HyperOrange
- Card Design Champion
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Member for 8 years
Last active Thu, Apr, 16 2020 19:22:18 -
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8
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!
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1
I've climbed to rank 5 with this deck a few times.
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THE COMMANDER
The commander is a master of the art of war and by the use of clever strategy and tactics can lead their troops to victory in almost any situation. The default hero for the class is Sir Anduin Lothar, the Lion of Azeroth, a legendary hero that fought in the First War between orcs and humans and later commanded the armies of the Alliance of Lordaeron during the Second War, at whose end he perished at the base of Blackrock Mountain. And yes, the Anduin that we all know and love is named in his honor so you can bet this guy is quite popular to the people of Stormwind.
KEYWORD - TRAIN
Minions and weapons with Train can attack other friendly minions (dealing damage, of course) to give them a specified effect like +1/+1 or Rush. Train is thought to be an option the card has to make it more versatile and not something you want to be doing every turn. Identifying when you want to Train and when to attack your enemy is key to mastering this class.
EXAMPLE CARDS
REMAINING CARDS
PREVIOUS PHASE
You can find a link to my phase 1 post here.
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What I meant was that changing cards by changing their cost should only be done when a card by itself is too powerful. Examples of this are Emerald Spellstone and Call to Arms. If a card's cost is already what it should be given its stats and effect changing it will most likely kill the card, especially for the lower cost ones since going from 1 to 2 essentially means duplicating the cost. If you want to change the cost of the card because you think the effect is too good for the early game (see Mana Wyrm) you should also increase its stats. For example I think the new Mana Wyrm should have 4 health for it to be a balanced card (if you play 1 spell it would be better than a vanilla 2 drop and therefore worth it).
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So if Equality is fair at 4 mana, could you explain how Shrinking Ray is not broken at 5? It seems like a substantially better card for 1 more mana. I'm not saying that equality wasn't a good card, it certainly was. I don't know if it needed a nerf but as it stands, duplicating its mana cost is not the best way to reduce its power level.
Regarding Flametongue Totem it was only played by aggressive decks. Now at 3 mana unless you're playing an extremely heavy totem deck you're just better off running Dire Wolf Alpha instead. Minions with 0 attack need to have really good upsides and a 3 mana Flametongue simply isn't worth it.
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I love how most people look at the balance changes from the perspective of the most powerful decks that played them. Sure, the power of odd rogue has been reduced, but at what cost? Well, 1 more mana, to be precise. Cold Blood is now a joke of a card. Just compare it to Blessing of Might and tell me with a straight face that it's good game design. And I could say the same thing about Equality vs Shrinking Ray or Flametongue Totem vs Dire Wolf Alpha.
The truth is that cards in Hearthstone have an inherent balanced mana cost associated to them. A 2/3 minion should cost 2 mana, dealing 2 damage costs 1 mana and giving a minion +4/+4 costs 4 mana. When you combine all the effects of a card their inherent mana costs should add up to the total cost of the card. There are some slight exceptions to this when the effects of a single card are extremely synergistic, such as Vilebrood Skitterer's Poisonous + Rush. If two very synergistic effects exist on a 2 card combo there's a lot more leeway though, since the extra resources you spend come in the form of an extra card you have to draw and use.
To shake up the meta and to force people to use more expansion cards blizzard is tuning down the powerlevel of the Basic and Classic sets. Now this isn't bad on it's own. Personally I would much rather prefer to rotate all of Basic and Classic out of standard and add a clasic mode for new and old players alike. Still, if you're certain about keeping those cards away from rotation and reducing their power level so that people play with new cards the way blizzard has ignored the very basic rules of card design that i described earlier shows that they don't have a grand vision for what Basic and Classic should look like.
There are three basic ways to nerf a card. Change the stats, change the mana cost and change the effect. Since changing the effect beyond just tweaking numbers (stats and mana) changes the card entirely I don't think it's a good practice unless the effect itself is bad for the game and needs to be replaced. Changing the mana cost is bad since as I said earlier cards already have an inherent mana cost associated to them. Lastly I think that changing stats is the best way to nerf cards because it lets you do micronerfs that reduce a card's powerlevel without making it entirely useless. For example, Flametongue Totem could have had its health reduced to 2 while keeping its original mana cost. The card is less powerful than before but it still feels like a 2 drop.
"But I hate this deck, or this other deck!" Some people will say. "I don't want them to be viable at all!" Well, it's true that some decks can be oppressive to the game but the only way for that to happen is for some cards in them to be OP. Emerald Spellstone is actually a good example of this. 6/6 worth of stats and beast synergy with no downside for 5 mana already sounds pretty good. Add the fact that you can go all the way to 12/12 by playing secrets that you want in your deck anyways and you have a broken card. At 6 the card is balanced because no one would put a 6/6 for 6 in a deck. Hunters would just run Savannah Highmane instead. But if you run a lot of secrets it's worth it. There you have it, balanced design. Still, I feel like the only reason blizzard nerfed this card is because everyone was complaining about it and they would not have been able to get away with this batch of nerfs to basic and classic cards if they hadn't included this one.
So to sum up, blizzard is nerfing decks, not cards and they're nerfing the cards that didn't deserve it because they want weak basic and classic sets so they can print better expansion cards that will rotate and you need to buy. Nice to see what they really care about after all.
There's one last thing I want to try out in this post. Below you can see some cards I made a while back for my custom expansion. Their mana costs have been removed and what I want you to do is reply below with what you think they should cost and why. I'm not expecting everyone to guess correctly but I'm interested to see if cards really do have this inherent mana cost I've talked about.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy and what blizzard is doing is good game design or do I offer some pretty solid points? Do cards have an inherent mana cost? Let's find out.
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The way I see it is the following. First the game checks what you can target when you attack. Then if any of those targets have Taunt they must be attacked instead of the ones that don't. Because of this ordering, Taunt can never make a minion unable to attack. Think about why they added those 'Taunt doesn't affect minions with Stealth or Immune' "rules" for a moment. They could have perfectly just said: 'No, if a Taunt minion can't be targeted your minions can't attack anything else.' But it makes more sense, both from a game design perspective and from a flavour one (you're supposed to attack it because it is taunting you) that Taunt only works on the things that you can attack in the first place.
Regarding the showcase cards I think those are the best ones to show. Thanks for that!
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Yeah I agree with you on Nightwatch and Inspiring Blade, I'll go fix them right now. Now about Charging Knight, are you sure that it wouldn't bypass Taunt? If a minion with Taunt can't be attacked (by being Immune or by having Stealth) the Taunt effect doesn't apply. Also Rush minions will bypass a hero with taunt (check The Curator fight in One Night in Karazan.
Regarding Surrender I guess I could find a better name for it. The idea is that after dealing so much damage to a minion, it chooses to surrender and fight at your side. I don't know if there's a better word for it but I'll consider your options.
Lastly I forgot to mention this in my original post but what are the 5 cards that you think I should showcase? I'm still trying to decide that. Anyways thanks for replying, I really appreciate the feedback.
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Alright, so I've just finished the basic set for my class and I thought I should get some feedback on it before posting it in the submissions thread.
THE COMMANDER
For the purposes of this post I want to focus on card balance less than lore/fantasy so I'll just go straight to it. The hero power is quite simple and can look kind of weak at first but this class is based on buffing and is very board centric so that's where it gets its strength. The unique keyword of the class also synergizes quite well with it.
Here are a couple examples so you can grasp how it works.
Train cards can give pretty significant buffs to your minions at the expense of not attacking the enemy. As you can see, this is something you don't want to do all the time, it's supposed to make them more versatile and interesting. Notice how 0 attack minions such as the hero power's token are very easily trained since they don't deal damage to the trainer.
But enough of that. The basic set can't actually make use of this mechanic so let's just dive right into it.
And that's it. I'd really like to get some feedback before I get this posted since my first phase post didn't get many upvotes. Thanks for reading.
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Dude I don't know what you're talking about. I've climbed to rank 5 with this deck and I've also played it in high wild legend, it works.
It's a tempo/midrange deck based on overwhelming your opponent with stats and value so 3 boardclears (Duskbreakers + Potion) are more than enough. Even then, against aggro you can discover more Duskbreakers through Netherspite Historian.
Next time, how about you tell me Even Shaman is bad because its only boardclear is Maelstrom Portal.
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This is the deck in case anyone is wondering.
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If you ignore the 5/4, the fact that you can target minions below 5 attack and minions that can't be targeted by spells and Hero Powers, the dragon synergy and you being able to also use both cards separately...
Then yeah, it's a two card power word death.
Glad to be on the same page.
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My version of Dragon Priest doesn't run shadow visions so I'd say craft the other epics.
Also prepare to have your mind blown:
Marsh Drake + Potion of Madness
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THE COMMANDER
The commander is a master of the art of war and by the use of clever strategy and tactics can lead their troops to victory in almost any situation. The default hero for the class is Sir Anduin Lothar, the Lion of Azeroth, a legendary hero that fought in the First War between orcs and humans and later commanded the armies of the Alliance of Lordaeron during the Second War, at whose end he perished at the base of Blackrock Mountain. And yes, the Anduin that we all know and love is named in his honor so you can bet this guy is quite popular to the people of Stormwind.
Now, that's a nice backstory and all but what you're thinking right now is that his Hero Power seems a bit weak. I mean, a 0/3 can't be good for much, right? Well, if you want to obtain victory you'll need to have an army and an army isn't going to train itself. And with that we arrive at the Commander's own keyword, Train.
A good warrior doesn't come from nowhere. Tons of dedication and perseverance is needed to be able to properly fight, as well as a master that is willing to teach you. Minions and weapons with Train can attack other friendly minions (dealing its damage of course, how else are they going to learn how to fight?) to give them a specified effect. Let's see some example cards:
As you can see most Train cards don't suffer much stat-wise for having their train effect. This is because training a minion means that you're not attacking an enemy and you're dealing damage to your own stuff. They're not meant to be used to train every single turn and should be seen more as an option that makes them more versatile. Training Stick can be used on turn one to clear an enemy 1-drop and then on turn 2 it can buff your New Recruit if you use your Hero Power. Worgen striker can be used in the early game to remove a threat or in the late game to give rush to a minion that isn't meant to have it, enabling powerful interactions. Degree provider is not a Train card per se but it shows how you can be rewarded by using other cards with Train.
Before we continue let me explain the precise details about how this mechanic works. The bonus is applied even if the attacker or the recipient die during training. Worgen Striker for example could give Rush to an 8/8 minion just fine but it wouldn't live to tell the tale. In the same vein, Fighting Stick could be used with a 1 Health minion and the +1/+1 would make it survive even though its Health dropped to 0 momentarily.
Before I finish I'd like to show two more general cards that don't involve this new keyword.
Make Camp allows you to make efficient trades and then let your minions recover from combat immediately. It needs to be the last thing that you do in your turn though so if your minions were already low on Health it's not going to be as effective since you can't use it right before trading.
Battle Orders: Ambush is one of the many Battle Order cards that the Commander will have. They'll all be 4 mana secrets so you can bet they'll be quite powerful. This one particulary makes you think about how you position your minions to increase its effectiveness, which will be a recurring theme for the class.
And that's it for now. I hope you're as excited as I am to see where this class goes. There are still some things I haven't shown you yet but most of the cards still need to be designed of course. I'll certainly be looking forward to further developing this class and seeing how it turns out. See you next phase!