Mike Donais and Dean Ayala on the Arena Changes, Priest, Yogg-Saron, Tournaments
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to chat with Hearthstone's Dean Ayala and Mike Donais. We've recapped the interview below!
Quote from Dean Ayala & Mike DonaisShaman
- Mike believes the meta is in a good spot but it's a little more Shaman heavy than he would like.
- Shamans are currently around 20% of the ladder.
Druid
- Dean was surprised to see Malygos Druid pop up again thanks to the consistency brought by Arcane Giant.
Priest
- They've both been playing different Resurrect Priest lists, with Mike having the better one. (Check bottom of post)
- Mike admits he was lucky winning with his Priest list.
- Reno Priest has been spotted at high MMR in a couple of the regions.
- They should make sure to get good Priest cards into the next set.
- It is understood that people love Priest trickiness. They hope to incorporate more tricky cards in the future.
Hunter / Call of the Wild
- Not certain if Call of the Wild needs to be changed. Community feedback is being read.
- In some cases, it is okay to have strong class cards.
- It's tough to agree that Call of the Wild is an issue when those decks are on par with the good decks of other classes.
Yogg-Saron
- Yogg is on the developer radar.
- They want to find a solution that makes everyone happy.
- It's too early to talk about when they'll have a solution to the problem.
Tournaments
- BatStone was great to see because it explored a new format in how you could play Hearthstone. More events like this can lead to the discovery of new long-term formats.
- They don't have any tournament client stuff in development right now, but they've been talking about it for years.
Arena Balance
- It's too early to tell what impact the arena balance changes have made.
- There's two things they want to measure:
- How the winrates have changed.
- How often each class is being picked.
- Short term goal is to get all the classes closer together in pick rate.
- Long term goal is to be able to have players pick the class they love the most because they're all so even.
- They wanted to target class specific cards in the arena changes because removing neutrals doesn't really change anything for specific classes.
- They didn't want to remove weaker cards that gave players awesome moments such as Eye for an Eye.
- Bouncing Blades was questioned and ultimately, they think it's more consistently awesome in constructed.
- They didn't want to remove cards which felt core to what each class was. Example cited being Fireball and Flamestrike on Mages.
- Windspeaker was removed over Windfury because there are less spells in Arena as time goes by. The two cards were statistically very close.
- Succubus was statistically a very, very poor card.
- It is believed that the best method of long term arena balance is through changing the drop percentage of cards. They'll talk more about it when they figure it out.
Mike Donais' Resurrect Priest
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So there's one guy at high legend doing well with reno priest.. good to know..
BTW look at static UT hunter 25% play rate, every shaman 20% play rate does it seem similar? no need to nerf a specific RNG card that's too broken? or a specific 0 mana 5/5 taunt minion.. or a recent weapon that's so broken it replaced doomhammer in aggro shaman..
For those who want to play Priest, have no fear! They've confirmed the next class to get the Paladin treatment after the rotation!
You can add Shielded Minibot to your list.
Fixed.
"They want to find a solution that makes everyone happy."
it's confirmed boys, Anti-yogg DLC. Pay 4,99 a month and you won't queue into Yogg on ladder. We don't ahve to deal with yogg and Blizzard makes more money
Team 5 are the people you go out to lunch with who spend 30 minutes reading the menu and the waitress comes by three times asking if you are ready and they are like "oh sorry haven't decided yet" and all you can think is I am freaking hungry hurry the fuck up!!!
Seriously this is a TCG & lives do not depend on it! How long do you have to collect data and agonize over decisions before making them......
Mike ''Is too early to figure out'' Donais
"Is too early to figure out" means "just before Blizzcon". The same as before every other Blizzcon. Team Five saves all their major nerfs for the weeks before their major event. They don't want these problem cards dominating the discussion at their convention.
I'm finally able to sleep well at night in 1 year when the balance changes happen :D not sure if blizz is trolling us or serious tough. They are talking about priest like they are high legend players but in fact I am sure that blizz developers are actually rank 20 players (and do not forget they are playing on NA and not EU LUL)
Dear Blizzard staff, you are welcome to join the battle in EU where everything is way harder xD
priest has good cards... they are just to situational and/like they dont want to fix the 4 attack weak spot. cant see a reason why they print cards like shrinkmeister again
Oh yeah, so many awesome moments with this card [/irony]
i'm guessing you havent won a game only because your opponent attacked in the wrong order because of a secret. That my friend, is the best feeling you can get. Removing Eye for an eye would not only make you unable to win with it, but also make it alot less interresting to play against paladin secrets, since you can exclude it in your decision.
I agree!
I won a very close game with it as a rogue. Undercity Huckster value :)
Unbelievable feeling!
The odds of that happening are so low that I need to be a full-time streamer to make that happen. I've got more than 40000 ranked and arena games under my belt, so I can legitimately say that is not an awesome moment in hearthstone i play this game for. And to answer your question, I've played many games I won due to an opponent making the wrong decisions, including order and checking for secrets. So you're guessing wrong.
So, where is priest?
If you can make a post, you can re-read an article.
I'm assuming you mean, where is the Priest deck?
It's in the post now. Didn't mean to publish the article without it. Sorry about that!