"Ben Brode on how long until Pirates walk the plank"
Tim Clark from PC Gamer had a chance to sit down with Ben Brode to talk about the recent Q&A, his philosophy about nerfing/buffing cards, the next Standard rotation, what they were thinking when Spirit Claws was printed and more!
Quote from Tim Clark and Ben Brode
- They don't want to announce a nerf too far out from it actually happening. If they would, people would feel bad losing against a card they know is going to get nerfed.
- Ben Brode agrees that Small-Time Buccaneer is the problematic card in the Pirate package, not Patches the Pirate. If they decide to change something, it would be Small-Time Buccaneer.
- They intentionally nerfed Molten Giant really hard because they didn't want people to play that card anymore as it was hurting the ability for Standard to change.
- Hypothetically, if they would ever decide to move Classic cards to Wild it would probably be cards like Ragnaros the Firelord because they limit the design space for their mana cost a lot and limit the ability for Standard feel more fresh.
- Ben is not sure if he agrees with Brian Kibler that cheap weapons are a problem in general or if it's only a problem with a few specific weapons.
- The team was a bit disappointed that Shaman got even more popular after Karazhan, as that was not their intention.
- For example, Spirit Claws was intended for a new type of Shaman deck, and not for the current Shaman decks at the time.
- Ben worries about a big expansion concept / theme failing to land.
- C'Thun was one of the most risky things they have ever done and it turned out perfect from a balance perspective.
- Ben thinks the Grimy Goons mechanic will be used more in the future, once the meta slows down a bit.
- They try to have a good balance in 'obvious' mechanics like Jade where you just put as much of them in your deck as you can, and cards that require a bit more deck building skill to utilize.
Go for those synergies. It wont be for ladder climbing, but you can make it to 50% win rate with almost any reasoable deck after some tweeking. It just takes some time, patience and deck-building skill. Have fun.
That's what casual and wild are for.
I don't face the same decks on ladder. I get a good variety of decks.
Also courage. And the understanding, that you will lose some time, till you find your balance...
People Just go "I lost 2 times with this shit - fuck it - I'm going back to Aggro Shaman"
Yeap. Well said. I told it several times already here. Aggro is just one side of the game. Needed side. Because eliminating one side, will just crush the others out of existence.
Purify is crap, but Deadly Fork is atleast solid 3 drop, just little bit too slow + i suspect some potential synergy with Luckydo Buccaneer
That's pretty much the biggest fuck you they've ever given to the dedicated players.
Molten giant was one of the best cards in the game and gave skilled players a way of showing their skill. The only reason it could be considered 'overpowered' in the first place was because of all the players who were stupid enough to give their opponents free giants over and over again.
Well, I guess, it was kinda limiting the design space. Imagine now, If you could play old Molten Giant: on 10hp you could've went Giant - Shadowflame - Reno Jackson. With no Emperor Thaurissan involvement. Since they wanted to push Reno-theme, it's kinda reasonable.
They said 1 year ago they nerfed molten giant to a playable stage "cause decks will have less burst"
first of all it's a lie, decks barely lose any burst just face decks with arcane golem, juggler and leper gnome, but the rest of spell burst is intact(except blade flurry, which is also a lie about rogue weaponary)
master of diguises nerf is also a lie, I didn't see a single card broken by master of disguises...
I really don't know why they nerfed molten giant so badly just 22 mana was totally fine.. and would keep the card playable..
or they could banish the card to wild..
I hope nothing gets nerfed. I hate nerfs.
Pirate Warrior player detected.
If you look at my card collection, I'm currently lacking cards for pirate warrior.
I'd happily play it if I can though.
Instead of nerfing cards, they just need to come out with new counter measures such as minions that negate Battlecry effects from working or reducing spell damage available to players from buffed minions (not by silencing, but kind of an AOE effect, like the ones that increase cost to minions like Nerub'ar Weblord) etc. We already have ones that silence, reduce/remove weapons, kill minions of specific condition; just gotta add to it and then people can design decks to counter the common ones people are all using so that everyone is having to think of their plays and keep it some what interesting.
the problem is that techcards are most of the time too weak, too slow, too expensive or they they prevent many cards from being played. bgh was the best example: he prevented most of the higher cost cards from being played.
we dont want cards like hungry crab and hemet nesingwary. we want cards like ooze and mct. a 3 mana weblord(3/4 just 1 more mana) on the other hand would be cool.
What basically means they lied about Molten Giant back in the days. In the nerf announcement they said, that Molten Giant should still be used because with Druid Combo gone it would be less risky to go lower on health. Well, that was a lie, they just wanted to destroy the card. Molten Giant was never meta defining. It was only run in some Mage and Warlock decks and these decks were rather hard to pilot.
Sometimes when I read things like that I ask myself if Ben Brode is game director or the janitor. Who would have thought that a 1 mana 3/3 weapon and a 2 mana AoE would destroy the only hard counter that existed at this point (Zoolock).
Yeah, the meta slows down every time in Ben Brode's head … maybe someone should tell that the 2/3 pirate decks on ladder. Grimy Goons will never work. It is too draw dependend and too slow. Even if you draw perfect, you cannot afford to skip the first 3 turns. Control Decks will just AoE you every turn until your bonus is used up and Aggro decks will just kill you.
LoL, what? Handlock was played on every Championship. Like base line-up.
I'm kind of getting a little bit tired of Ben Brode talking about how we all "feel". Every time there's a big uproar in the community, Blizzard comes back with the excuse that they can't do anything right now because someone somewhere will be upset.
I'm upset. Right here, right now. Losing to dumb pirate decks is upsetting every single time whether or not I know that a nerf is coming. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's more upsetting that we still have no more information about what they plan on nerfing, or even that there are concrete plans to nerf anything at all.
I think Blizzard needs to just stop assuming that they know what's best for us and instead listen to what people have been yelling at them for years instead.
Are we really gonna lose rag to wild?