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?
when 1800+ people dont want to buy decks but you're blizzard so you'll do it anyway
https://gyazo.com/ecb81a0ef17ef1963355bc299c1bb9ed
Don't Look at the number of people, look at the %,
41.63% vote yes, that's almost 1 of 2, it's huge in my opinion,I thought the number would be only 5% or less, but 41%????
This say much.
And before you ask, i voted NO
How many people didn't want to do the Heroic Tavern Brawl? I don't think that option was even close to the 40/60% split this is getting. Also, how often do products attract 100% of the customers? Almost never. 40% is a pretty good pull if that is a legitimate number (if everyone that says yes would actually buy a deck if it fit their style- a BIG if).
Note that 40% of players didn't say they'd use the feature, just that theythink it would be good to have it.
What do they mean by no "ladder changes"?
They will sell some midrange decks, like taunt warrior. Not a control one.
If they didn't see them as being broken they would have left it like it was instead of changing it.
Balance? Really? And this is just today.... Doesnt seem too flat
I suppose the numbers mean thousands? 17000 games looks pretty reliable amount of data. I mean, it's not like you'd use a sample of 17 games to make conclusions about the state of the game, right?
Hey man, its possible, but I'm just calling it as I see it.
I'd love to see how many games you've played today and what the ratio of classes was since you seem to have so much confidence in Blizzard's honesty. Lol but for real, I actually would be curious to hear what those numbers are for you to see if Shaman is actually around 50% or if its just my case.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just showing that your arguments supporting the opinion are weak. What I'd use as a source would be something like vS data report, I believe it claimed it to be a little bit below 40% at some point.
He plays rank 18 to 15 in Standard. He knows. We need to trust him.
With him, are you referring to me or AtrixHD?
Right, no I agree, but I'm just speaking for me. I said "it doesnt seem too flat", and that is the case. I continued on yesterday to play 68 matches, and 38% of that was shaman (which supports what you said about vS data) another 21% was pirate warrior which contributes to 59% of the games played being against some kind of aggro oriented pirate deck (whether its shaman or pirate warrior the actual matches are all the same). The shaman numbers of 38% is lower than my original 59% (of course since its a larger sample size), but I disagree with Mike Donais that this is balance. Having 16% more meta share than the next lowest class and 26% more than the next lowest class that isn't pirates is not balance nor flat, and most certainly is not an improvement from pre-gadgetzan. If anything, Shaman is even better now.
I can send over a screen shot of my numbers just to show I'm not spewing them out randomly, but I was hoping that you would just trust a random guy on the internet to be truthful (and I'm lazy) haha
Yeah as Blue Banana said, you might want to clarify who you are referring to with something other than "he" and "him". Also, I dont know, but I'm fairly confident that anyone who is commenting on forums like this about the state of the meta is not settling for rank 18-15 every season. I know you were attempting a joke, but next time maybe pick something a little more original and a little less nonsensical?
I dont want to always tech against aggro. It would be nice to have slower meta where you can play great cards that dont always have immediate impact such as Rafaam. They should just have an aggro ladder if you want quick games, I personally like long games.
+ 1000 , there are so many cards that have never seen play because they are just too slow!