Hearthpwn

Master Oakheart

Card game players have got to be some of the most short sighted people I've ever seen, I would fucking HATE to be in Brode and Co.'s shoes.

"Guys, I can't believe they nerfed Patron Warrior, there was no deck like it and it was a really cool interaction..."

"NERF NAGA GIANTS NOW, IT'S USING A STUPID INTERACTION AND THERE'S NO OTHER DECK LIKE IT!"

If T5 created some cards that specifically took care of multiple giant creatures (Anduin's battlecry, for instance), then boom, Naga Giants is balanced. Anyone who vomits their hand and fills their board with 4-6 giants is doing something called Overextending, and deserves to get punished for being wrecked by a single AoE.

I don't want to be *that* guy, and this is the first I've come across this so you might have already answered, but wouldn't this class be more frustrating to play than anything else?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you shuffled 10 cards into your deck that all have "Heal 2, Draw a card, autocast this" on them, There are going to be a TON of times were your about to play a huge Reservoir card only to be blocked by your own deck suddenly drawing 8 or so of the Ocean's Depths in a row (We've all seen the Spider/Candle memes where it's just one after another), and that's not even getting into how frustrating it would be for the opponent to have you dead to rights and suddenly you heal for 12-20 health just because your deck was stacked funny.

Cards like Sirenic Banshee are awesome, but the Ocean's Depths just feels like it would be downright unfun.

Quote from Horkinger >>

 

Quote from Vernula >>

 

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Quote from Horkinger >>

This card is imho too powerful. 5 health is a lot on turn 3 and therefore, this will regularly draw you a card if played on curve. And it even trades okay with 2 attack. Black Cat could be considered a similar strong card, but comes with a huge limitation on deck building. The issue I see is that if you can protect it, it will snowball the game like vicious fledgeling.

On the other hand, in later turns it might not be impactful any more since then it is easier to kill. Nevertheless, shaman never had strong draw cards and I think there is a reason that Genzo is a 4 mana card but only has 4 health instead of being a 3/6 or 2/7. Maybe if the effect is not on attack, but with killing a minion? Otherwise it looks too snowbally to me.

 

 

 Drawing a card isn't too terrible, and 4 mana is the point where alot of the removal options for every class starts to come into play. I don't see how it would snowball the game like Vicious Fledgeling when it would be more akin to Mana Tide Totem; Flappy Bird just gets stronger and stronger by attacking face gaining Windfury, Stealth, extra stats, and "Can't be targetted", where as this you'd have to pump more and more mana into it in order to buff it.

Black Cat has Spellpower though, which while not entirely relevant all the time, we all know what disregarding Spellpower can lead to.

 

 It actually is not at all something like Mana tide totem. It is much stronger. The mana tide totem has 3 health and no attack. it is a cantrip that has no board impact most of the times. And unlike mana tide totem, it still damages minions that attack it.

This doesn't come into play at 4 mana and at 3 mana it is very difficult to kill with 5 health. If you attack face with it you get a card without damaging your minion. If you do that for the next few turns, it will snowball the game. Not in an aggressive way like damage every turn (I admit that fledgeling was an inappropriate example), but in the same infinite way like if you leave mana tide totem up. Try that against a shaman deck and you will run into problems, even with the present shamans which do not have highly viable builds. Every turn an extra card is usually a win. This turn 3 and saronite chain gang on 4 will snowball against minion based decks.

Having no efficient draw is a weakness of shaman. This card solves the weakness entirely and therefore I think it is too strong. This would be an autoinclude in any deck, aggro, midrange and control.

As to the cat, the spell damage is a nice bonus feature, but it is not the reason you play the cat. And the cat only draws 1 card while this can draw the whole game. If it can only draw if it attacks a minion, it at least will automatically die after drawing 3 cards (unless you manage to put resources in it).

 Edit: I see a problem with my proposal that the card would be still a good on curve play, but the effect would be useless against decks with no minions. Then again, that disadvantage might balance it out.

Quote from tomiathon >>

interesting idea, but i agree that this card is probably a bit too strong. i think if it either lost 1 stat (attack or health either one) or cost 1 more (or perhaps simply have overload (1)) it might be just right

Quote from Castigation >>

If you can't see that this card is broken you really should stop wasting time thinking about balance and card design for HS.

Quote from Horkinger >>

This card is imho too powerful. 5 health is a lot on turn 3 and therefore, this will regularly draw you a card if played on curve. And it even trades okay with 2 attack. Black Cat could be considered a similar strong card, but comes with a huge limitation on deck building. The issue I see is that if you can protect it, it will snowball the game like vicious fledgeling.

On the other hand, in later turns it might not be impactful any more since then it is easier to kill. Nevertheless, shaman never had strong draw cards and I think there is a reason that Genzo is a 4 mana card but only has 4 health instead of being a 3/6 or 2/7. Maybe if the effect is not on attack, but with killing a minion? Otherwise it looks too snowbally to me.

 

Quote from Dalinos >>

Personally I think this is a bad idea. Allow me to elaborate.

Windfury is a very, very strong ability. In most games, an unanswered Windfury minion just outright wins the game on its own. There was a time Whirling Zapomatic was legal along with Powermace and Flametongue totem. I've won games on turn 4 with that deck, with near 100% consistency, IF (and this is a big if) a turn 1/turn 2 Zappomatic stays unanswered for 2 turns. They are very polarizing, and the swings they cause are very big and often devastating.

I am personally not a fan of games decided on turns 1-2-3 by IF my opponent has his OP windfury minion and IF I have my removal or not.

Lastly, the minion you created is ridiculously OP, it would have to be a legendary with overload 1, to balance out that PREMIUM statline (2+5=7, 7/3=2.333 so more than 2 stat points per mana cost) and that effect which costs 1 mana on its own (Blessing of Wisdom)

 

For some reason it's not letting me copy it to the clipboard, I'll have to post it tomorrow before I go to work :(

I've been testing a Tempo Shaman list lately, which plays big minions for their cost and then gives them Windfury. It's kinda bad, but with a perfect draw it works pretty well.

And then I added Genzo, the Shark to it.

To say he warped the deck is a bit of an understatement. I know he doesn't *look* impressive, but being able to attack, draw three, cast three burn spells, attack, and draw three is BEAUTIFUL. Due to Overload, it's not that hard to be able to cast all the spells you draw that turn decimating the opponent's board or just straight up burning them for 20 damage out of nowhere. Genzo is quickly becoming my favorite Shaman legendary, even if this deck is still too inconsistent to be playable in ladder.

But it got me thinking; why didn't they go this route with Shaman? More Windfury cards, "Whenever this attacks" cards, and similar. It's a unique ability that would strengthen the Windfury theme in the class, without having to worry about balacing every minion around Windfury being added on.

There's also the very slim possibility that paying 1 mana for a standard hero power can tide you over until you actually play your DK.

It's (very) small, but the chance is there.

Quote from Peteravens05 >>

 

Quote from CalibanHS >>

Balanced card, will see some play at least because Sleep with the Fishes is rotating. Warriors need a lot more than "balanced" cards though. Compare this to Defile and there's a clear winner. Hopefully, we'll see really good win conditions for warrior this expansion, seeing as Coldlight has rotated and fatigue is a much harder win con to pull off.

 

 even tho most players thought Defile was bad cause of poor judgement. 

Quote from Raskolnikow92 >>

I‘m curious if you could give a example, because it’s been a couple of years when I played magic but I can’t remember a set that wasn’t in the standard format. The only thing I remember is that some cards were instantly restricted. 

Quote from SlydE >>

First of all, I really hope they scrap "transform into +cost minion" as a core mechanic for shaman. I am sure some players like unpredictable randomness, but I am NOT one of them.

As for your suggestion, I think it could make in one soecific scenario only: A class is struggeling in Wild, but is very strong in standard, and they come up with a powerful card to fix the issue. Otherwise, they can just print cards with stronger synergies in Wild, like Lost in the Jungle and Call to Arms and leave it at that.

I have to say the Powercreep has been massive the last 2 years, to the point where splitting into 2 formats was almost unnecessary. Maybe the next rotation will shake up things, and the next few expansion will not completely outclass the previous ones (once again.)

 

TL;DR: Many card games (Most notably M;tG) have sets or cards that release directly into the older formats without disrupting the current standard, allowing them to print cards that don't make sense in current sets or even print cards that are above an acceptable power level for Standard. Should Hearthstone do the same?

First, we must accept some truths:

1) As time marches on, Wild will grow in power level. It's just the nature of the beast, as only the best of the best cards out of the 50 or so sets get played, and there will be strange interactions between cards that were never meant to be played together (Mal'Ganis and Gluttonous Cube, Naga Siren and giants). This will lead to....

2) Eventually, there's only going to be a handful of cards (likely 5, at most 10) from any set that make a dent in the Wild metagame. This will lead to the format being "solved" and it will become relatively unchanging, and rather stale. Rather than a shake up in the meta every time a set releases, you'll see top tier decks adding one or two cards, maybe a new deck emerge, but that's it. For 3-5 months.

3)  Printing cards specifically meant to be played in Wild in any Standard format runs the risk of either being worthless to standard players opening the packs, being so broken that they define the meta they weren't even designed for, or not making sense for the set they are included in.

If we can accept those as true, then how do we inject new cards into Wild? Blizzard should take a leaf out of WotC's book and create a 50 card "set" at the end of the year using previous mechanics in the game taken up to eleven to be able to compete in Wild. This would allow old decks to still flourish, still shake things up with an influx of cards, and not disrupt Standard at all while being a massive push to give Wild a try.

This would allow Blizzard to continue exploring design space as it comes up (Ben on a recent Hearthstone Tech Support video said that while they could still explore things like Inspire, they'd rather not retread ground and move on to new and exciting things), but they don't have to waste an entire set around bringing the new mechanic back or figuring out how to word the keyword so it makes sense and fits the cards. If they wanted to see how well an old and new keyword would work together, they could using this sort of system.

Say, something like this:

This is really powerful. Convert a 5 drop into Sabretooth Stalker with Windfury, Get a 1/1? Poisonous. Any taunt with +3 health or +3 Attack... This really makes the bad rolls that much better. It's too powerful to really print into Standard, but in a Giant filled meta? Could be a nice spell.

The second thing this gives Blizzard is a chance try to fix keywords. Discard, Handbuff, Inspire..... These are all keywords (or mechanics) that could really use a push to help them be even remotely playable. Say, a Warlock card that discards a random card, but can summon a 1/1 copy of it on Inspire. I know that sounds crazy, but it'd be going up against dumping 40/40 worth of stats on the board for free in one turn. WAY too powerful to be in Standard, but it could work in Wild. (I'm not making a mock up on this card because this isn't the card creation forum and I already have one up above, but if the mods allow it I'll do it for readability).

Keep in mind that this would be 1 mini-set of 40-60 cards at the end of the year, not anything too major. It'd certainly help the end of year content draught we find ourselves in, and would help direct players to Wild if only for a little bit. I'm curious as to what kind of discussion this idea will bring about.

She's no where near comparable to Divine Favor......

Quote from Leramar89 >>

 

Quote from Vernula >>

 

Quote from FRAAANKYSUUUPER >>

People forget wild exists still somehow?

 

 You're forgetting that the only reason cards are given horrible statlines (like how every single mana cost had a 1/1 do something since Evolve got popular) is because Evolve was in the standard.

I highly doubt they will continue to make cards with Evolve in mind when it's no longer right in front of them.

 

 Are people forgetting Unstable Evolution is still going to be in standard for another year?

Quote from wonderboyjon >>

 

Quote from FortyDust >>

Why should they change something that is already clear? I think it's an interesting artifact indicating that this is the prototype that was released before the keyword existed.

By that logic, why did they update existing cards to use the key word 'Poisonous' when their effect was already clear? Blizzard are just inconsistent with their choices.