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 think you solution is kind of lame. I dont want to play against Dr. Boom and Mysterious Challenger everygame.
"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." Because you made the entire Kabal class centered around no duplicates..... Its not a surprise that a lot of Kabal decks are going to include reno in their no dups decks. Pirates aren't a class archetype, they are just so strong that so many decks run them automatically... come on think a little smarter.
Well if they follow what magic already does, these buyable decks might just be the classic recipes of each class. Example for warrior you get this midrangish enrage filled deck and the finisher is grom.
Just as many people already predicted. They were oh-so-excited about their favorite creation Patches the Pirate that they just had to accompany him with a totally broken pirate in order for it to be playable and actually show up (because the mythical extremely hard to pilot Gang Up combo deck is...not working at all). See how it was supposed to be even more broken before? You may ask, why not make our friend Patches good on its own? Well, it's easier to refund dust for rares than for legends (and they already suffer from Yogg, who was supposed to be a "fun card only"). And I do not hate them, it's responsible developer behavior, I would do the same probably.
TL; DR: If you are a F2P player do not waste your dust crafting Patches! His small-time best friend would be an utter crap soon (around Undertaker level of crap) and thus the many-eyes dude will instantly become unplayable too.
The sad thing? They will not design a playable pirate card as long as Patches is in Standard...
Because Patches is free (both mana and cardwise) and he thins your deck he will still work with any other pirate than Small Time Buccaneer fine. Maybe Shamans would stop using pirates but for rogues it will be still great (they have two 1 mana class pirate cards) and probably for warriors too.
They should add it but if those decks are going to as good as the ones they suggest on deck building poor souls those who fall in the trap, since knowing blizzard they won't come cheap and probably not a good dust/$ ratio since there is no way in heaven nor hell that you will be able to buy them with gold
You can already buy a deck. You just buy packs until you have the cards and dust to build the deck you want.
Blizzard is just throwing money away if they let you pick and choose which cards you are purchasing.
Buying decks would be fine if you also had the option to buy it with gold
The reason why I'm clicking "yes" here is that letting a player buy the missing cards in a deck recipe (and ONLY a deck recipe) will allow newer players to rapidly build out their collection, and also allow players to start experimenting with control and combo decks because those generally have a higher card requirement than the aggro decks.
go one better and say every time you equip a weapon.
"It also baits warriors and shamans into wasting their weapon charges on face"
warrior needs no help with that one
"No, we don't want to nerf it into annihilation"
power creep is now soo high that giving it +1 each time you put on a weapon is bad, in vanilla that would probably be considered playable
I think the best thing about the premade decks it would remove the long grind new players have to go through the actually play a deck
Buying decks? Won't happen.
Lol??? Small time buccaneers versions before both were even more OP...this blizz team should just stop designing 1 drops they have 0 feeling for balancing those xD
Am I the only one that think Small-Time Buccaneer isn't OP? It's a good card but it's not pre-nerf Undertaker and the buff is conditional. Like you're not out of the game on turn 1...
1 drops are not fun and good ones mostly just fuel aggro they need a rule set for 1 drops no more than 2 attack regardless of any situation except via external cards casting buffs onto them.