Ben Brode on Lack of Demons, Priests, PTR, and Aggro
What happens when the Overwatch developers give the OW community constant developer interaction? Ben Brode shows up to a complaint thread on reddit to talk! We've recapped his responses to the thread below.
While we're on the subject, do you think we need more developer interaction?
Quote from Ben Brode
- Ben tries to make himself available as much as possible, through Twitter, Twitch, and reddit.
- A Public Test Realm for future Hearthstone content would require revealing all the cards at least a month before release. (Source)
- This is cited as being a major downside.
- Ben doesn't believe that aggro decks are self-piloting. (Source)
Priests
- They're evaluating Priests but are not ready to reveal plans yet. (Source)
- Ben thinks it is possible there are quality Priest decks out there that haven't been discovered. (Source)
Warlocks / Demons
How can you make a good priest deck in a tempo meta if all your 2 and 3 drops are terrible?
They aren't even that great vs other control decks either sadly. Cthun warriors can essentially play around cthun ever being entombed by using emperor to discount cthun/ shield slam and doom caller / Brann, that way they can shield slam cthun after playing it and then bring it back times 2 later. You can honestly just win in fatigue as well by justicar armoring up and not playing cthun til it for sure kills the priest along with fatigue damage. There are hardly any nzoth paladins around but even they can choose to simply not play Tyrion, if they run justicar it's possible to wear the priest down simply with the recruits. Plus if the paladin drops a decent amount of death rattles that die instead of being entombed and plays nzoth later, the priest really doesn't have too many great ways of clearing it with the lack of light bomb.
Great, looking forward to more demons, and whatever they have in store for priest. Though I have to say, priest doesn't seem like it's as bad as everyone complains about. It deals with Warriors (except perhaps Pirate), zoo, and shaman (Shadow Word: Horror is underestimated by all). Maybe bad against Miracle (though you don't see it as often on ladder), but it's really not the worst class by as much as people say (if it even is the worst class). Honestly, I feel like paladin is in a worse spot.
Indeed priests needs more tempo. At the moment it's all about building up till you can get combos through.
And warlocks need more demons and discard synergy. 2/3 of a warlocks deck are shitty mortal beings :D
No, they don't need community and developer interaction as they would effect the game case in point WOW
I'm very curious about these undiscovered Priest decks. I wonder what blind spot the entire hearthstone community has on the subject. Should be AMAZING when it comes to light.
It's Aggro/Face Priest. But it takes skills, you know, it doesn't self pilot...
Wait, Brode is obviously hinting at pirate priest! Nobody ever tried that, how could we know if it's effective or not ? I mean, look at Silithid Swarmer, it was obviously designed for them! I am sure Brode intended it to be a priest card but changed it to a neutral at the very last moment.
I'd love a clue as to what these competitive priest decks look like.
"Ben Brode doesn't think"
that seems to be a reoccuring issue..
Wat hearthstone needs is taunt removed and creatures cant attack face if there is at least one enemy creature on the table. This is the only way i can justify the existence of deathtouch shitminions like pet snake.
Oh and priest is in the position it is now just because you cant build a decent facedeck with it. There are face hunters, face shamans, face paladins, face locks, face druids, face warriors and even face rogues, but no face priests* FeelsBadMan with a Flashheal :(
"Aggro decks aren't self-piloting!"
"There are quality Priest decks out there that haven't been discovered yet!"
Brode is wrong as always, what else is new? If this guy's the face of the dev team, I really have to wonder about the rest of the team.
If the Brode is face, then the rest is obviously taunt.
"Quality Priest decks that haven't been discovered yet."
Kappa Kappa Kappa
I guess if you replace Priest with Concede than he's definitely right. There are tons of quality Concede decks, I mean Priest decks.
I'd say that their biggest issue with a test server would be that they intentionally make some cards overpowered, but they obviously can't admit that. Just if this happened a few months ago:
1 - WoG goes live on the test server
2 - 10 000 people see that, for eaxmple, Flamewreathed Faceless is obviously overpowered and scream at Blizzard to nerf it before release.
3 - Blizzard intentionally made it OP to buff Shaman so they can't listen to the community, but they can't deny that it's op either.
4 - Blizzard gets a shitstorm from the community for ignoring the test guys.
I agree with not having open ptr, I love testing new decks on ladder. A ptr will determine prior to release what's good and what's bad, which card work and which suck.
It will take away the most fun part (for me) out of hearthstone, the testing of new cards/decks in a crazy ranked meta. I do however agree that they should have a better internal meta check.
About the priest deck comment, we haven't discovered it yet? Really?
There are 189 pages of priest decks on hearthpwn when u set the filter to standard mode old gods expansion. Thats 4,725 priest decks since wotog release.... so please don't tell me we didn't discover it yet
My main problem with priest is that they just have waaaay too many reactive cards. Like, Druid can just drop a random big minion each turn and say 'deal with that'. A Priest is always waiting for his opponent to play a minion, and then either steal or destroy it. Which is kinda not fun...
MtG has something they call the "Future Future League", and from what I understand their job is to playtest cards and decks and try to figure out Metas beforehand. I feel that Blizzard should work to improve their version of this.
Why is this viewed as a "major downside"? WOW does it. Overwatch does it (Competitive Play). Yes, it reveals content to customers but which is the lesser evil?
I think 1 is the lesser evil. I'm going to see the damn cards eventually anyway. I'd much rather have vetted content on release.