Game Designer Max McCall Talks About Shamans
Max McCall, a Game Designer on the Hearthstone team had some things to say about the current state of Shamans in the game.
To summarize:
- There are three different types of Shaman decks currently popular, but they are not different enough to feel like that when playing against them.
- Dragon decks like Priest and Warrior as well as Reno decks are good against them. If you want to win versus a Shaman, play Reno Warlock.
- In general, about 1 in 4 of your opponents is a Shaman, which is kind of boring and they are not fine with it.
- The problem with Shaman is not that they are winning too often.
- Shamans are more popular than they like, and if it continues to be this way they might do something about it.
Read his full thoughts below:
Quote from Max McCallWe are keeping an eye on Shaman decks and we’ll see how they develop. We say that a lot. Here is what it means:Okay, so: there are a few different kinds of Shaman decks:
- There are aggressive Shaman decks that play a Pirate package and no Jade cards
- There are slightly slower Shaman decks that play Pirates and Jade cards
- And there are even slower Shaman decks that play the Jade cards but no Pirates
All of those decks are strong, but they are all weak against Dragon decks (like Priest and Warrior) and Reno decks. If you’re tired of losing to Shamans, play Reno Warlock. In some ways, that is fine: Shamans are popular, but there are strategies that are good against them.
In other ways, it is less fine. Collectively, Shamans are popular; you play against a Shaman about one game in four. Now, the reason that a ‘balanced’ metagame is desirable isn’t because ‘balanced’ metagames don’t have dominant strategies. They are desirable because you play against different classes more frequently, which means you have a wider variety in the types of Hearthstone games that you play. Playing Shaman isn’t a dominant strategy – again, they lose to plenty of decks – but it is still boring to play against the same class over and over again.
And even though the Shaman decks have distinct differences, those differences are small. If you played against Warlocks one game in four, but half of your Warlock opponents were playing slow Reno control decks and the other half were playing aggressive minion decks, those games would feel very different from one another. On the other hand, when you lose to Tunnel Trogg, Totem Golem, Feral Spirit three times in a row, it doesn’t matter if some of those Shamans had a Pirate package or if one of them had Jade cards. Your games still felt very homogenous and weren’t that fun especially the third time around.
The point I am trying to make is ‘classes can be problematic even though they do not win too often.’ Shamans don’t win too often. Right now, they are more popular than we’d like. If they are too popular for too long, we will do something about it, as we did when we nerfed them a couple of months ago. However, it takes time to assess whether or not a class will cause the game to feel too homogenous for too long. On release, Mech Mage and recently Pirate Warrior were more popular than Shamans have ever been – but only for a few weeks, then people discovered alternative strategies and the decks became less popular. Because we know that Shamans have weaknesses, we hope that those strategies will become more popular and drive down Shaman popularity a bit so that you play against more classes more often.
We are going to keep evaluating Shaman popularity in the near future, and if we don’t like what we see, we will change something about the metagame. Perhaps we will change a card. Perhaps we will see Shaman popularity fall and not have to step in at all. Perhaps we will wait to introduce a new set and see if that creates the metagame change we want. Either way, it is a thing we are actively concerned about and paying attention to.
It's sad but true, blizzard has always been bad at balancing and HS is no exception. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose for the community to create drama, but what they don't know is that people do get sick and tired playing against the same type of deck 7 out of 10 times at beginning of each month. They think that the meta settles down after 2 weeks of each month and that would make everyone happy, but I'm sorry by the end of the month you will see more people play aggro decks cause they want to climb fast to either rank 5 or legend.
The suggestion to go Reno lock to counter Aggro Shaman is probably because they have took in consideration of new players whois piloting the deck from rank 25-10. A good aggro shaman player rarely loses to reno lock unless they have really bad draws.
This shows how retarded are people who made this.
"half of your Warlock opponents were playing slow Reno control decks and the other half were playing aggressive minion decks"
Dude, every warlock nowadays is a slow Reno deck
Play Hearthstone some more and you'll see
Also, Renolock is NOT FAVORED AGAINST JADE/PIRATE SHAMAN BRO
"On the other hand, when you lose to Tunnel Trogg, Totem Golem, Feral Spirit three times in a row"
Woah woah woah, lets stop right there
OVERLOAD???
*clenches salt shaker too hard and it spills all over*
same ole tired crap from the same old tired wanks......thats why i play shadowverse.....rip hearthstone.... besides the 15 minutes a day for the free gold thats all you get from me.
Other classes have less options than Shaman
renolock is the only warlock deck on ladder (I think I played one discard lock since Xpac release)
same for Mage, the large majority is Reno. I rarely see tempo or what else ?
Priest has like 2, Dragon or Reno usually with dragons
hunter and pal have zero
and Rogue is miricle or jade
the other classes are just as "boring" to play against as shaman is
I died at " If you want to win versus a Shaman, play Reno Warlock."
'Usually we die at turn 5 before reno LUL'
It bothers me greatly that Max, Ben and the rest of the HS gang are clueless as to how broken their game is. They are OK with 25% of decks being played is Shaman with a 53% win rate? But they are going to continue to observe the data. In other words, they are not going to nerf any of Shaman's many OP cards. It just boggles the mind on how they can't get any kind of balance in this effing game.
So help me god, Blizzard, if you nerf Shaman before rotation and the whole class gets dumpstered when TGT and Explorers go away, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back.
Something needs to be done about the classic set. More random nerfs based around the current standard meta is NOT the answer.
The problem is just that shaman have almost always a curve and other classes like paladins dont even have a playable 2 drop or 1 drop or anything in the early game.
Its a symptom of flawed standard the basic set should at least give every class a playable curve. As it is now classes that dont get 1,2,3 drop in the current set are unplayable.
Speaking of unplayable...meet shaman after trog+golem will rotate out. Thats with next set released...so 3 month or something?! why change anything now? its way to late.
Do they forgot that for a long time Shaman was so weak is not played in ranked at all. Blizzard needs to do more testing before releasing an expansion. Just because one class is really popular isn't a reason to nerf it and make it not playable. If a card like patches is too powerful and released but now they are thinking about nerfing it tells us that not enough testing was done. They need to focus on giving Hunter and Paladin some love in the next adventure so those classes are playable again.
who cares this shitty hunter, and paladin is the most powerfull control class so there is no love to give them if the meta slow down they will be the new shaman thats all
The core cards are actually kinda bad... that's why shaman was in the dumpster for forever. Overload was a mechanic that was supposed to punish you for playing powerful/undercosted spells and minions. And for a while, that's exactly what it was, and it sucked.
TGT came along, and gave us Totem Golem, which is almost impossible to deal with on-curve for many classes. Also, we got pre-nerf Tuskarr Totemic, which had a relatively high chance of rolling a game-winning totem. But even THAT wasn't enough to make Shaman viable.
Then LoE came out, and Tunnel Trogg removed the punish of Overload. With 3 health, it usually sticks on turn 1, and can be buffed by Totem Golem on turn 2. But even Tunnel Trogg alone wasn't enough to make Shaman good.
Then WotOG came out, which gave us TFB and 4 mana 7/7. TFB was good because the Shaman hero power was generally considered to be weak. But now tapping the button meant a cheaper TFB later. Shaman was becoming more appealing, but still lacked something.
Karazhan was the tipping point. Maelstrom Portal and Spirit Claws gave Shaman the early game removal the it needed, while also not sacrificing tempo. It also meant that spell power was EXTREMELY valuable for Shamans (1 mana deal 9 damage... seems good), which meant that the totems became something that couldn't simply be ignored on board, for fear of increasing the odds of rolling spell power.
And that's all before the Jade/pirate stuff was introduced...
With the introduction of STB and Patches, as well as Jade Claws, Shamans always have a nearly un-beatable early game. Jade lightning is also a disgustingly good removal spell. To put it simply: Shamans have so many broken cards at their disposal that many don't even bother with the 4 mana 7/7 anymore.
Shamans can do a little bit of everything. They've got weapons, they've got busted AOE and single-target removal, and they can generate tokens. But most of those things that break shaman came from expansions (especially Kara and MSoG).
I'm gonna give you an upvote for the long post and the work you put into it, I did not read it though sorry
hahaha LOL LOL "4 mana 7/7 ...Shaman was becoming more appealing, but still lacked something."
yeah ofc it wasnt the best class by far for nearly one year, after karazan it was already less powerfull and now again less
Actually Tunnel Trogg was exactly the card that made shaman viable for the first time (not counting vanilla, when shaman was fine with just good class cards and good neutral cards, and not counting semi-viable mech shaman). Face shaman was tier 2 deck during LoA (somewhere below tier 1 secret pal and combo druid). Though it lost significant amount of burst with Crackle (and all face decks lost Leper Gnomes), so it wouldn't be viable without new strong cards.
4/7/7 -> 5/10/10 -> ?
Sooo they're not fine with 1/4 being shaman, bht they where fine with it for the largest part of 2016 when it was more like 1/2.
"If they are too popular for too long, we will do something about it..." How much time is it? LUL
Cool