Mike Donais Part 2: More Reno Cards Unlikely in Near Future, Gadgetzan Themes, In-Dev Legendaries
IGN's interview with Mike Donais continues! Our recap can be found below.
Quote from Mike DonaisReno / Highlander
- No plans right now to make more cards.
- When more time has passed, it's an open ended question.
- They'd like decks to leave Standard and to maybe reappear later on.
Jade Lotus
- The Jade Lotus' mechanic, Jade Golem, was set in stone early on. Dev time was spent on how it would appear to players.
- Jade Idol has so far played out exactly as they expected and Mike expects it will change Control for the next couple of years.
- We shouldn't expect more Jade Golem cards in future sets, though cards could be created in the future that improve them (like Brann Bronzebeard & Jade Claws).
Grimy Goons
- The mechanic came about from the design of The Mistcaller and wanting to play into a Weapon Smuggling theme.
- Each class needed to be different even though they use a similar mechanic. Paladins their hand, Warriors taunt minions, Hunters beasts.
- They wanted to make sure there was an obvious combo with hand-buffing, to illustrate the mechanic, so each class got one of those as well.
- Grimy Goons Paladin and Hunter aren't very popular now, but it's possible future sets could make the mechanic better.
- By the end of testing, they felt Paladin was the most interesting to play with since it had reliability and potential.
Kabal
"They've got a big bathtub full of liquids. They're drinking from it. They're doing weird stuff with it. They're selling it." - Mike Donais, 2017
- Originally, the Kabal was all about spending all your mana in a turn and gaining a bonus for doing so.
- It didn't work out because you should already be spending all your mana - you're doing well.
- Later the mechanic was changed to the opposite, you get bonuses for not spending mana. It wasn't intuitive and didn't feel good.
- They tried to do something which changed your mana crystals into red mana crystals, but they didn't like it.
- Some cards in the set would change your blue mana into red mana.
- Cards could interact by gaining power based on the number of red mana crystals available, or straight up spending a static amount of red mana.
- One issue of red mana was that it didn't work well on mobile.
- They didn't feel like minions which transformed your mana crystals were cool enough.
- There may be space for a mechanic like this in the future. They'll experiment with it.
- Since Reno Jackson was a fan favourite, and it wasn't tier one, they decided to boost Reno up for the four Kabal legendaries.
- Originally Potions weren't a thing in the Kabal. They grew from the team wanting to do more than just Reno-effect Legendaries for Kabal classes.
- There was already some potion flavour in the set, so they renamed the spells, except one, to Potions and made it a thing.
- Inkmaster Solia originally had the Kazakus effect. It moved over to the leader of the theme since they loved it so much.
Kazakus
- His potions didn't change much from early on. Only two effects that were play-tested didn't make it in.
- There was a Thoughtsteal type effect.
- Mike couldn't recall what the other effect that didn't make it in was.
- They wanted to capture different themes from each of the Kabal classes in the potion creation. The exception is the Armor potion, but it was good for those playing Kazakus out of desperation.
- The Sheep effect was originally 1-mana: sheep a minion, 5-mana: sheep 2 minions, 10-mana: sheep all minions.
- It then evolved into what it is today, but there was a 1-mana sheep effect: Randomly sheep a minion on the battlefield. It didn't feel good when it backfired.
Raza the Chained
- The card is a good example of how a new card can improve old ones such as some of the Inspire minions and Shadowform.
- Raza was a freshly designed card and not an idea they were sitting on. It became a thing when they realized the card would have the Reno-restriction on it so it could be very powerful.
- Priest needed help, so they made Raza the strongest of the Reno cards.
Inkmaster Solia
- The design came out of Mages having large spells, Kazakus potentially giving you a large spell, and needing a card design.
- She was a 5-mana 5/5 early on, but it was too good.
Krul the Unshackled
- They didn't want to simply make Renolock better, they wanted it to go in a different direction if you wanted to play Krul.
Hunter
- Mike thinks the class just needs more cool themes in order to succeed. They are normally good in aggro meta, but they're slower than Pirates [which hurts].
Priest
- Dragon Priest was made strong so that they could deliver on the fantasy before half the cards rotated out of Standard.
- More "tricky" cards will be seen going forward. Consider cards like Pint-Size Potion and Potion of Madness.
- Mike thinks Priest may have the best shot at Reno decks in Standard once Reno himself rotates out thanks to Kazakus and Raza. Those two are very strong, Priests already have a lot of healing ability, and Priest has good single-include cards.
Misc
- Cards which make the game swing back and forth, such as board clears, large taunts, and large heals, can be really fun. There may be room for more of it but they don't want to overdo it.
- Drakonid Operative was originally known as Investigator. There was not Dragon requirement on the Battlecry.
- Cabal Leader was a 6-mana 4/8 Legendary.
- At the end of your turn, if you have unspent mana fire an arcane missile for each unspent mana.
- Dios was a 9-mana 12/12 Legendary Warlock minion
- Battlecry: If you have no remaining mana, shuffle two copies of this card into your deck.
- End Bringer was an 8-mana 9/9 Legendary Warlock minion. It later morphed into what we now know as Krul.
- Battlecry: Discard your hand. Summon any demons you discarded.
- Khajakus the Banished was a 7-mana 7/7 Legendary Kabal minion.
- Battlecry: If you have cast 10 unique spells this game, become Khajakus, Dragon Form.
- Mike: "I don't remember his dragon form off the top of my head, probably something really cool, though, like Ragnaros or something."
- Sin-Sor was a 7-mana 4/4 Legendary Priest minion.
- Battlecry: Swap a random enemy minion with a friendly one.
- Pang, The Unthinkable was an 8-mana 4/8 Legendary Mage minion.
- When your spells deal damage to enemy minions, this minion deals that much to the enemy hero.
The design of Dios is amazing!
Am I only one to agree with you?! Dudes, play a real decks instead of hiding yourselves or are you too afraid to die? ;P
Dont mind me ;)
Hunters don't need ridiculous one mana power creepers, they need more low cost decent taunts or must kill minions to force unfavorable trades from aggro, to protect the heavy hitters and bait removal from other midrange and control, or low cost weapons/reliable aoe to help early game (explosive trap is shit). Highmane is completely irrelevant in current meta, and it is one of the best cards ever made for hunter. Aggro ignore it and midrange/control just hard remove your buffed highmane.
Is Wyrmrest Agent overpowered? No. But nowadays, dragon priest is more aggro than hunter, a big health taunt can just sit there while you opponent spend a ton of resources trading, you go face with some early drops.
Alley Cat is a very nice 1 drop, but hunter need something very good at 2 mana slot. The only early game taunt hunter has is a 33,3% misha at turn 3. If not, by turn 4, pirate warrior already got half of your life.
Priest: absolutely with Raza. It will be the best Kazakus deck because of the ability to sustain itself with hero power and good healing cards. The expansion needs to help give some proactive cards though so you don't have to rely on shadowform, either that or just more healing options.
Mage: possibly with Solia, but there needs to be enough defensive/healing cards avail in future sets to support it, especially with Funnel cakes rotating out. If there are not enough neutral healing effects I doubt it will be viable.
Warlock: Highly unlikely because the upside of Kazakus won't justify the inconsistency of draws in a control warlock deck. It needs Reno to be great.
Yea, bucause renopriest is sooooooooo powerfull rigth now (sarcasm)
The WRW rule...
Why Reno Why?
Cool, I was right about reno Jackson and the future of highlander decks and the jade golems theme. I thought it was obvious, but lots of people thought they'd push highlander further and nerf jade idol.
When you ask people what Kabal's theme was, most will answer highlander decks. I was going to post a comment stating how that proves potions were a failed idea, but thinking again I think it's perfect. Class's flavor of expansion shouldn't mean a mechanic you're supposed to build a deck around of.
Jade Idol: the most broken card ever
jade mechanic: needs lots of relevant cards so it can make sense, very expensive
aya blackpaw: it's below average if played alone; on the other hand, Kazakus and Grim are OP even played alone
rogue: currently weakest class; only get 4 jade class cards while its counterparts get 6 (shadowstep/unearthed raptor/gang up can't compensate cos swarmer and shuriken are nearly worthless except generating golems)
the most painful ones in this game right now: new players who play rogue (and don't have reno)
reno mechanic: a way to get player use more new cards so the dev can get a better result in performance appraisal
feeling of this game right now: 65/100
Why do people keep saying rogue is the weakest? Paladin and Hunter are far worse
Unless you mean jade rogue which is pretty weak, but miracle is really strong
Or because they couldn't make it work on mobile.
ARRGH.
"something really cool, though, like Ragnaros or something."
THANKS YOU INSECT
Although I am happy about Reno decks not receiving more support soon (especially for Wild, where Reno is gonna stay forever), I think it is bad design choice.
Highlander decks just needed to go in a slightly different direction. Great techs and versatily instead of insane comebacks that polarise games.
Kazakus is just perfect. Highlander decks could use a few more cards with similar design, and they could do well without Reno. And they wouldn't polarise matches and the whole meta into Pirates vs Reno.
Nerf Reno but give Highlander more support.
Why are some of the most fun and original cards never released :(
Reno rotation best day ever
Kazakus's dragon form and red mana were planned but dropped for reasons, how depressing.
So basically standard format for the next year is:
-aggro meta will prevail again,
-reno decks are dead,
-there will be no more control decks other than jade druid which rapes control warrior and any other kind of control decktype,
-all dust i've put into kazakus, krul, solia and raza is dust again
-with the moltens unchanged each game is going to be a rat race ending by turn 6-7
- "Mike thinks Priest may have the best shot at Reno decks in Standard once Reno himself rotates out thanks to Kazakus and Raza. Those two are very strong, Priests already have a lot of healing ability, and Priest has good single-include cards. " - sorry, but you are wrong, without justicar its not going to be enough
so that leaves me with 3 options:
1) play wild
2) play cancerous zerg turn 6 decks
3) play battlefield 1
who plays justicar in Priest anyway