Drakonid Operative: Pushing Priests to Dragons One Last Time
Hearthstone Game Designer, Max McCall, shed some light on Drakonid Operative's inclusion in the Gadgetzan set as being a last hurrah for Dragon Priest as many cards will be rotating out soon when Blackrock Mountain leaves Standard. They hoped the archetype had of been more powerful and wanted to provide a final solid midgame card for it.
No mention was given regarding what the future holds for this archetype, but we're hoping this won't be the last we see of Dragon Priest in Standard.
Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and The League of Explorers are set to rotate out of Standard early this year.
Quote from /u/mbmccallIs [Drakonid Operative] Blizzard's way of saying 'we have no idea how to balance a class so the weak classes get op cards in rotation'?No. The idea is that Dragons in Priests were never quite as powerful as we had hoped for, and the Blackrock dragons will rotate soon, so Mean Streets was our last opportunity to push the deck for a long time. We didn't want to improve the deck's early game, and the Jade decks are supposed to have the strongest late game, so we made Operative a strong midgame option.
Operative is a class card that you have to build a deck around, so it has quite generous stats. It could perhaps have done the job of 'push Dragon decks before they rotate' at 6/5 or 6/4, but we were more confident in our estimation of the Dragon deck's power level than we usually are, and we knew that if we were wrong, the problem would fix itself after rotation.
If you think 'well Azure Drake is neutral and almost as strong as Operative and goes in more decks so what are you thinking' the answer is that I think Azure Drake is extremely generous, which isn't to say that it should or should not be changed.
Sooo some guy essentially asked if they gave Priest this card because it was a bad class.
The developer answers 'no', Then continues to explain how (dragon) Priest is not very good, so they gave Priest a very strong card to fix this. Which is pretty much what that guy said, but worded in a different way.
No, he admitted that Dragon Priest was bad and fixed that.
Drakonid operative should be neutral card.
well i understand why they gave dragon priests a powerful card since priests was in a really bad spot and its not game-breaking strong so thats ok but if blizzards going by this logic
"but we were more confident in our estimation of the Dragon deck's power level than we usually are, and we knew that if we were wrong, the problem would fix itself after rotation."
That's not how you balance cards blizzard, not saying Drakoniod Oprative is OP, but if your going to balance cards based on this then we have a problem. It's like if you gave C'thun decks "Give your C'thun +5/+5 (wherever it is)" to C'thun decks on the last expac before the rotation and saying "its ok C'thun decks are rotating soon so it won't be a problem in a few months" When in wild it will be a problem since that is game breaking OP. Now Drakonoid isn't OP, but this worries me if your going to balance under performing decks like this on the last xpac before the rotation since i remember 2 official HS forum moderators saying they would balance wild for any broken combos or decks.
Dragon Priest was never as powerful as they hoped because Priest's base set is awful. Priest decks will never be as powerful as they want until that problem is resolved. It's the only class that has to rely on getting OP cards every set in order to make up for the deficiencies of its base. Adjust/rework a few things and that problem goes away. Unless Priest was intended to be the only class that doesn't have good early cards in a game based entirely on tempo...
I don't think that's true at all. Paladin has some of the best midrange/control cards in the game in Aldor Peacekeeper and Truesilver Champion, plus Equality, Consecration, and one of the best legendaries in the game in Tirion. Shaman, similarly, has Flametongue Totem, the best single-target removal in the game in Hex, Mana Tide Totem, Doomhammer, and Fire Elemental, one of the best minions in the game by any estimation. Priest has nothing to compare to any of that. Shaman's problem has never been its base set. It's the mechanics of the class (RNG hero power and Overload) that held it back until they piled so many cards into improving those mechanics (Thing from Below, Tunnel Trogg, etc.) that the class became dominant.
Priest has never been dominant except for one brief phase during beta when Mind Control was still 8 mana. It has 1 1-cost base set minion with an ability that only benefits from other minions. It has 1 2-cost base set minion with no attack value. It has no base set 3-cost minions. Basically all of Priest's base cards below 4 mana are situational or subpar compared to other classes and the only 4-cost card that isn't is Auchenai Soulpriest. The lone exception below that is PWS. Priest's hero power is also neutered by the limits of the health pool (you can never heal more than 30; Warrior's armor can theoretically be infinite and also benefits other key cards like Shield Slam) and the requirement of actually maintaining a board to be of any use, unlike most of the other hero powers in the game.
But improving the base set is paramount if we don't want to be seeing card like Drakonid in every release to make the class barely playable.
"If we are wrong, the problem will fix itself after rotation"
Much appreciated, Blizzard! With love from wild
Don't expect them to care about balance in wild, I think that was made clear. Honestly, I like it that way :) wild IS wild.
To compensate the loss of Black Rock?
"...we knew that if we were wrong, the problem would fix itself after rotation."
THAT'S NOT HOW YOU RUN A COMPETENT DESIGN TEAM
Do you mean they should always know whether a card is going to be problematic, or that taking risks shouldn't be affected by how big the risk is, or that how easy a problem is to fix doesn't affect how big the risk is?
I'm not saying I'm disagreeing, I'm just saying your comment isn't fully unambiguous.
I love the wild format and it's getting wilder and wilder :DDDD
I have 2 questions after reading this though:
1. How in teh world did u guys manage to make Priest (of all things) run on a complete curve autipilot
2. Why would u make such a dull and boring mechanic as Jade the ''strongest lategame'' ... what about actual control decks which thrive on options instead of a 1 mana card that beats Jaraxxus in a control comparison?
The Jade mechanic isn't broken but it's the stupidest design decision they ever made, no mechanic should counter an entire deck typelike this
@fluxflashor: "They hoped the archetype had of been more powerful and wanted to provide a final solid midgame card for it." should be "had've", not "had of".
"Had've" isn't correct either, either only "had" or "would have".