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.
And to think that originally Dragon Operative didn't even have a Dragon requirement.
They seemed to have cooked up some interesting mechanic ideas but just didn't like any of them unfortunately. Getting bonuses for unspent mana "wasn't intuitive and didn't feel good"? Praise Curvestone!
The legendary minion ideas that never made it into the game sound a whole lot more interesting than what we actually got.
I think the "forbidden" cards worked out pretty well... If memory serves they have all seen at least some play.
I guess they have the interesting ideas but then can't figure out how to balance them.
Control decks, heck I am too busy trying to stay alive by turn 5. Ah ah ah ah staying alive, staying alive.
Are....are you joking? They Intentionally put this card in to kill off the possibility of creating ANY other control deck? What the fuck are they thinking? The mere existence of this card makes any control deck facing this an instant-lose, so this is really the only valid control deck. Admitting that this was the intention will cause a major shitstorm from control players. bad move Mike.
I find Jade Druid to be one of the easiest decks to beat in the meta, even when I am playing control like Reno Lock or Mage, or Dragon Priest. You just have to be aggressive and realize that they are the control deck in this matchup. By the time they can go crazy with an Auctioneer it should be too late.
That being said, Auctioneer needs a nerf. My choice would be to make it read "When you cast a spell that costs at least one mana, draw a card". That would cut down on some of the insane turns enabled by Coin, Prep, and Innervate.
If anything I see it as they plan to make control decks generally better and Jade Idol will be an obstacle. If a deck just simply is generally good against everything, then it will just become power full like mid-rage shaman did and people will start disliking that deck that is good against anything.
Overall Jade Idol is a very powerful card, but from the devs prospective they seem to trust and and it has been welly tested.
I mean, Jade Druid is just right now just not good enough anyway, I would wait until the future to see.
Yeah, that really annoyed the hell out of me.
For me the Idol is not the problem in itself and that's what he meant by saying that. Or at least I hope so.
I mean, the Jade Idol is working as expected, it's the Gadgetzan Auctioneer drawing your whole deck, and you having all the best removals and drawing and ramping tools to get there that really is broken and needs to be nerfed. Druid has some of the best removal at both single target and AoE removal in the game and they also get Raven Idol and Fandal so they get 3 copies of them in the deck, even allowing them to draw an answer on the spot.
It would be totally fine if Jade Druid wasn't able to cycle through his whole deck by turn 7, being at full mana and having the enemy board empty at the same time.
I don't mind Jade Druid being the best control deck or at least the deck you need to beat to be able to be a good control deck for a couple of years. I guess it sure beats facing turn 9 Bran into 20 armor C'thun warrior lol
I think that Druid losing raven idol might put the deck in check.