Honestly who are you to tell me what makes the game "fun" for me? Fine you don't like it, but that doesn't mean other people feels the same.
I for one don't care for "making my own deck". I don't find it any "fun" to spend hours upon hours to make and refine a deck from scratch. I honestly could not think of anything more boring than that.
What I do like is refining my skills. Putting them to the test with multiple choices and getting the edge with better plays than my opponent. Taking an interesting concepts and trying to get as close to optimal with the deck as possible.
But keep sitting on your high horse thinking you are better than anyone else because "you like to play your own deck". Or just stop playing if you don't find the game fun. But don't tell anyone else what they find fun
7
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.
3
Ah Alleria. Back when I started playing and first realized Hunter was the coolest class, I bought this. Must have been like 2017. Back when she, Medivh, and Magni were staples of the shop.
Now I'm waiting for both of the Starseeker siblings to be available. I probably won't start playing Demon Hunter until I have access to somebody who isn't *constantly angry*.
1
Monster Hunter World is manly as hell since you just kill giant monsters and use their body parts to kill yet more giant monsters.
Hollow Knight is a cool and manly game where your character silently (because speaking how you feel is un-manly) comes to terms with the fact that they're a walking corpse (that's pretty metal and metal = manly) filled with a sentient nothingness (not having feelings is also manly).
Fallout New Vegas is an RPG (hold on give it a chance) where your character survives being shot in the head (hey now that's manly) and goes on a revenge quest + does whatever you wanna do (decision making is a characteristic of manly men).
Cooking Mama teaches you practical skills (practicality is manly).
It took a long time for me to think of this list. I need to play more games.
1
I think that there should be more taxation effects in Hearthstone. Not like, loads more - but a few more neutral cards to let tax decks develop in classes that can use them. Watch Posts are a really cool addition to the game, and I hope they inspire more similar things from the devs. If we get more taxation cards, in theory that might balance out the insane tempo and freebie stuff that so many decks are capable of. Ultimately it would depend on what new cards are made, and for whom they are made.
Mage is an issue - it's so easy to break it in half with new cards each expansion. It's been a long standing problem, and the devs refusal to do balance changes for Wild exacerbates the issue. It's not like it's impossible to climb or play with other decks in Wild, of course. But if most of the ladder is dominated by Mages, it just isn't fun. And games are supposed to be fun.
2
I don't understand your point here. Also, what's up with this automatic assumption that the average player is sinking money into Hearthstone to buy packs?
Also, aggro decks update every expansion. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. They buy packs to get cards and dust to upgrade their decks.
Sometimes they want to open packs because opening packs is fun.
Not everybody buys packs. Not everybody who does buy packs buys preorders and other huge amounts at once. Not everybody who buys packs and does buy a lot at once enjoys or has the time to play control/combo.
3
This is why I refer to aggro, and more specifically Face Hunter, as "the People's Deck". It's accessible, it's easy, and it does well.
All things that infuriate a very vocal minority, apparently.
1
What's with all this "think before you speak" that's going around today? If I had a nickel for every time I'd read that today alone, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
But yeah I'm with Mouche on this one. the card never explicitly says "enemy", and we don't have enough context for what's happening in the artwork to really say if they're shooting an enemy. if anything: it IS the Hunter Mercenary getting shot through in the artwork, so I'd actually say that popping your own 1 Health minions and sending the rest face does seem in flavor with what's happening in the art.
1
That doesn't really have anything to do with Balance per se, that's just a function of aggressive decks. Hunter is fair *because* it plays on curve. It doesn't cheat mana. It doesn't draw 4/5 cards a turn for no mana. It plays minions on board and occasionally points spells face, all of which are efficient from a damage/stats standpoint, but don't cycle or generate advantage the way other aggro decks do.
Just because you think a deck doesn't require much thought to play, whether or not that's true, doesn't really have anything to do with balance.
1
I had an all-Golden Hunter at some point that wasn't remotely competitive, it was all just vaguely synergistic beasts and stuff.
I usually craft golds of cards I really like, or good cards in decks/classes that I really like. Hunter being my favorite class has the most Golds at the moment, tied with maybe Druid or Shaman. I have poor impulse control, and my primitive lizard brain sees shiny things and generates the faintest hints of dopamine.
5
While I agree that it's a very Warlock thing to do, I think the card is fine and that sacrificing your own minion for face damage is acceptable and a cool play to make. If anything, Piercing Shot should only target enemy minions so that you can play against it by not developing/playing weenies at all - that'd be nice. Counterplay for cards is important, and with Piercing Shot being able to just ignore the opponents board and hit their own 1/1's - while very cool in my opinion - maybe isn't a good thing.
Though it's still a 4 mana play that loses them a minion. That seems pretty fair to me.