Mike Donais: Ladder Will Not Change With the Next Expansion
Mike Donais sat down with Cam Shea of IGN to discuss . We've recapped the interview below.
Quote from Mike Donais
- There's a huge variety of classes and decks as similar win-rates right now.
- ".. which is probably the flattest meta we've seen for Hearthstone since launch."
- Shamans are less of an issue now than pre-Gadgetzan.
- "Right now, it is definitely closer to even, closer to the 10% mark than it has been in the past. I think it's been improved."
- Pirate and Reno decks are among the more popular decks.
- "The different Pirate decks. If you add them all together and stack them on top of each other, it's still a very tall stack. The same thing is true of Reno decks."
- No Ladder Changes in the Next Set
- "There's lots of discussion going on , but I don't see us being that close. I think there's still not an obvious solution, but maybe some small steps in that direction going forward, and then as we discover more good ideas, more small steps in that direction?"
- "Not that I'm aware of, but it's not something that I work on. I work mostly on designing the cards."
- Pirates changing up how other decks are being played is okay, at least for a while.
- Charge minions are problematic due to buff combos, but they wanted to make the pirate fantasy succeed.
- Small-Time Buccaneer has gone through some changes over its development cycle.
- He changed five or six times throughout design process.
- 1 mana 1/2 - Whenever you equip a weapon, he gained +2 attack for the rest of the game.
- 1 mana 1/1 - Battlecry: Gain +1/+1 for each Attack of your weapon.
- His current iteration, or the final nerf, was made days before they had to lock the set in.
- Small-Time Buccaneer is on Mike's watch list as the decks it is used in won't change much with the upcoming Standard set rotation.
- Just because you make a card worse than the original design doesn't always mean it's still good to ship out.
Bonus: Mike Asks
In response to a question about a way to get specific cards / tier-one decks up and running faster for ladder play, Mike asked if a button that would let you buy a deck would be something that should be added to the game, so we ask the same question.
Should Blizzard add a way for players to buy a deck?
I really liked what Dills' idea from Angry Chicken suggested. Yes you should be able to buy decks, but it not come with any legendaries just be able to fill out rares and epics for newer players. That way they still have to grind for a legendary but still have an option to have at least an idea for what a deck should look like.
Next they are going to add the option to just buy packs then this game is going to be ruined as you can just buy cards dust them and get the ones you want.
Instead of "Buy a Deck", I would like to be able to keep the cards you draft in Arena. This would help out new players doing arena a lot.
Other digital card games do that, and even if they didn't.. why are you defending the arbitrary price set by blizzard for that specific arrangement of bytes? Why shouldn't cards be cheaper?
Cards prices are valued way to highly in this game then for new players. You could cap it at you get to keep the first 3 arena runs cards.
I've got a strong feeling that he told so much about smalltime buckaneer just to make us think ''well darn, they put a lot of time in developing this card, and the earlier versions were even stronger! I guess it's not that broken after all''.
No. It's a stupid card. Stop making broken 1-drops, they've been ruining the game since Naxxramas came out.
I like the card and don't run it. Challenge yourself to find a deck that can beat a 3/2 1 drop... it's not the hardest thing in the world. I rarely lose to Pirate-anything, but I rarely netdeck.
Buy a deck LMFAO
Who comes up with trash ideas like that
shadowverse :)
i guess those would be spoiled dumb kids of rich families :/
they'll want to buy the legend cardback next :)
what about "hunter class" that been totally killed in the game
its perfectrly fine, still too much of them since there is a few
the real question is why do the people that always complain about aggro never tech against it?? yea aggro is annoying but there are plenty of ways to shut them down...but sadly most low tier player think that any deck they play should be favored against everything