Max McCall Talks About Charge and Taunt - Concerns, Experimentation, and Execution
Our friendly neighborhood Game Designer, Max McCall, was out on the forums this afternoon responding to concerns regarding Charge and Taunt. He had this to say:
- Taunt allows players to defend themselves and add minion to minion combat.
- Charge can be problematic due to one-turn-kill combos, usually through cheap Charge minions.
- We'll see more charge in the future when they find safe ways to use the mechanic.
- Currently, experimentation is underway with more expensive minions that are harder to use in combos.
- The Hogriders in Gadgetzan are the first example of different ways to use the mechanic in a non-degenerate way.
What would you like to see out of the Charge Mechanic? Can you think of any cool cards that could work like Leatherclad Hogleader, Spiked Hogrider, or Tanaris Hogchopper?
Quote from Max McCallNeither taunt nor charge are inherently bad for Hearthstone.
Taunt is great. Taunt minions let players defend themselves and their other minions and add a lot of depth to direct minion combat.
Charge can be problematic, though. Minions’ ability to directly attack other minions means that a player who achieves control of the board early will tend to snowball their lead. When you control the board, you can arrange for minion trades that further cement your board control. Minions with charge are a useful tool for allowing players who have fallen behind on the board to catch up. Spells are a good way to catch people up as well, but cards like Stormwind Knight can kill a 3/2 and establish a board at the same time. Different ways to catch up when you’re behind gives the game more texture, and offers more strategic choices.
Charge becomes a problem for Hearthstone when you use it to kill your opponent out of nowhere in one turn. Playing Druid of the Claw as a 4/4 charge for 5 is good gameplay. Playing Bluegill Warrior, casting Power Overwhelming on it twice, then copying it with Faceless Manipulator to attack your opponent for 20 isn’t. In that example, charge is only a problem because of how efficient it makes converting minion buffs into direct damage. We could make more charge minions if we made minion buffs worse, but minion buffs have more design space than charge minions. Minion buffs are also fun and also enable you to catch up with weaker minions your opponent hasn’t gotten around to trading off yet.
Note that it’s specifically cheap charge minions that tend to cause problems, because they’re easier to combine with buffs and Faceless Manipulator. No one uses Reckless Rocketeer or King Krush for evil. We’re cautiously experimenting with more expensive charge minions that are harder to use in degenerate combos. The Hogriders in Mean Streets were the first example of this, and it’s reassuring to see that no one is using them to one-shot their opponents. We’ll do more charge stuff in the future as we figure out what’s safe.
...When has charge been used specifically for board control ?
No, like, seriously, are we playing the same game ?
The only time charge is ever used for board control is when the card has charge for another reason but the occasion is too good to pass up. Examples include Bluegill Warrior in Murloc Paladin ( They want the charge for the huge combo with Anyfin Can Happen, but might as well use it for board control beforehand ) and Druid of the Claw that is 80% of the time used with the Taunt but, hey, sometimes it can be a good idea to go for Charge to make the trade up front and prevent removal or whatever ( And I would wager that a lot of the charge plays were actually gaining lethal with Savage Roar ; In fact since the combo nerf I don't think druids even play this card anymore ). And honestly, that's it ; Maybe the odd Leeroy + Shadowflame play, but it's honestly a pretty bad one that is only ever desperate.
This is another proof that the game's deisgners have no f*cking clue how their game is played.
Also I'm legitimately scared for this game's future that the latest way they made Charge "work" is by having it punish Taunt and large hand size. Talk about degeneration, this is one ; Team 5's enemy is control.
Well, I think this is a case when they are speaking as developers.
The idea was that charge minions could be used for a pro-active board control tool, and only occasionally would they just go face (the same idea behind weapons, really). That's how they were designed and why originally cards such as Argent Commander were played.
Now, the way Hearthstone has developed is that spells have taken the place of charge minions 99% of the time. Why use Stormwind Knight to deal 2 damage for 4 mana and *maybe* have a minion left over when you can...Holy Smite for 1 mana? The whole problem is that spells have to be cheaper to be worth it, since unlike minions they don't represent a persistent threat. But in a game of tempo that cheaper cost outweighs the value considerations enough that spells are universally used over minions for removal (except in niche cases, such as the Druid of the Claw example).
So no, I don't think that they are clueless. They are expressing their design goals as a team in which charge is a potentially interesting and dynamic mechanic...but has become degenerate and used almost exclusively for face damage and OTKs. The hogrider cards are clearly very conservative in design, but that was on purpose. As the interview just stated, they're trying out ideas and in a perverse sense they're happy that they didn't see too much play. If you look at all the other neutral charge cards they just get slotted into aggressive decks and go face.
Argent Commander was played mainly because it was a 4/3, essentially making it a 6 mana vanilla 4/3 + deal 4 damage somewhere, which is a bargain. It stopped being played as soon as the nerf came out, so it's definitely not a matter of meta but of actual raw power ; Even a card with weak concept will eventually be playable given enough stats. Also you're leaving the fact it has Divine Shield out of the equation ; As you said, Stormwing Knight needs to survive ( And if it has only 1-2 HP left, he can die to hero power or a 1-drop, which is still bad value ) to even not be a 4 mana Holy Smite. With Divine Shield, Argent Commander was essentially a 6 mana 4/3 with Battlecry : Deal 4 damage, which makes it all but minion trading but rather just a spell/minion hybrid ; A similar thing cannot be said of Stormwind Knight.
I did forget Doomguard though, that was always a good trader, though I would wager a lot of it had to do with the possibility of playing him mid- to late-game as a 5/7 charge for 5, which is pretty good. But it was also a very good finisher. Again, I think it's about power level rather than a proof of concept here.
As to the more general point, charge minions haven't been used that way for nearly 2 years now. Except Max is here talking present, as if this was an actual thing, right now. That's where I'm saying he's clueless. Even his example is agravating ; Who would pay 4 mana for 2 damage and a 2/2 ? When has this been good value ?
And as I said, the only reason people do that in the first place is because they put the Charge card in their deck to use it to go face. Nobody in this game has ever wanted a Charge card except to go face ( Or any other use except trading, like in Druid of the Claw's case where it's the Taunt form that is put in the deck - figuratively, before I get nitpicked on that ; Or because the card is grossly overpowered, of course ). This is their ONLY intended use, but, as I said, it doesn't exclude desperate situations from forcing you into using them another way, but that's a general thing about the game.
Freeze mages too have used Alexstrasza on themselves, yet that doesn't make it a healing card, precisely because no one puts it in their deck to use it that way. The best way to convince yourself of that is this : Would cards with Charge still be played if they couldn't attack minions at all ? The answer is yes, ten times yes, and it proves my point that "B-but, we intended them to be a comeback mechanic !" is a poor excuse for them.
I completely disagree. I put Doomguard in my deck to both trade and finish. If it were just for going face, what's the point of the 7 health? If you only intend to go face with charge minions, you're designing pretty boring decks.
That's ONE card ( That I did single out in a previous comment ), and I think it has to do with it being borderline broken. Most of the time, the discard part is ignored because your hand is empty, and that's always been a big complaint about that card ; As I said previously, this card doesn't really show charge is a valid minion trading concept to me, because it's just that f*cking strong. I say that in the sense that it's so all-around powerful that it's an auto-include, but since zoolock isn't known for holding cards for long, it'll end up being played in any case, whether it goes face or not. It's like the ogre effect ( 50% chance to "miss" ) ; it's a dumb effect, but keep making a card with it stronger and stronger and sooner or later it'll see play in all decks, to go face, to board control, to do whatever the deck aims to do ; it doesn't mean the mechanic actually furthers any of these aims, it just means a card withit is powerful enough that it sees play in a deck with said aim. In fact, if the card is such a good board control card, why is it only an "aggro" deck that uses it ? And you could say "But Handlock and Renolock can't afford to discard ( key ) cards" ; True, but there was a time when they could, and nobody in their right mind ever put Doomguard in those.
Also, you said you used it both to trade and finish, which doesn't mean you wouldn't use it if it could only go face ( And, considering Leeroy was a fairly popular choice amongst zoolocks despite the legendary tag, isn't that improbable ; In fact I would wager that if you didn't use it, it'd only be because you'd use Leeroy instead, and without the fried chicken man, you'd use Doomguard as a replacement ).
That leaves us with the other cards like Bluegill Warrior, Leeroy Jenkins, Patches, that 2/1 pirate, and so many others. In fact, Doomguard isn't used anymore anyway.
As to me not using charge for anything other than face, that's because I don't use charge, and if you think it's boring to design a deck without Patches, Bluegill or Leeroy ( Which probably 99% of decks with a charge minion contain )...Well, f*ck, guess I gotta play Renolock, Anyfin Paladin or the pirate package instead of Malygos Rogue or Reno Mage.
make Faceless Manipulator a 7 drop card - copy another card and give it +2/+2
7 drop not 6 drop so Emperor Taurisan doesn't enable it
Charge is more problematic than Faceless Manipulator, and if you nerf Faceless to 7 mana, it'll see almost no play - even with the +2/+2.
The Hogriders in Mean Streets were the first example of this, and it’s reassuring to see that no one is using them
to one-shot their opponents.FTFY
Letherclad Hogrider actually saw play in some RenoLock lists. :)
Sure.... Charge is a problem. But the bigger problem is Emperor and Faceless Manipulator.
Emperor is cycling out and the combo isn't even run in most RenoLocks...
The Windfury situation is even worse. They're so bad at balancing the best they could come up with is Grook Fu Master.
#WhatWentWrongBlizz?
The problem with Windfury is that, unless they have Charge, they have to survive on your opponent's next turn to be able to use the ability, and most cards that require them to be alive are not reliable, and therefore not viable. The only Windfury minions I can think of that saw play were Whirling Zap-o-matic, Al'Akir the Windlord, and Raging Worgen. Even then, they didn't see very much play either. Whirling Zap-o-matic sometimes saw play in Aggro Shaman, Al'Akir only occassionaly pops in every now and then and only really run because it has Charge, and Raging Worgen only saw play in Warrior in combination with a buff of buff cards (prior to the Charge card change which absolutely killed the deck).
Making a minion that has both Charge and Windfury would definitely be difficult and risky because they have so much burst potential. Currently the only minion in the game with both is Al'Akir, and ts statline really shows how much both keywords and worth together.
I noticed that the mechanic is weaker than it should be. Yes a 3/5 with the ability for 5 makes it vanilla, but it has to attack twice to get that (which makes it take more damage when needing to trade), so really it should probably be a 3/6, but then again like you said burst potential is there.
The best option Blizz has at the mechanic is restricting it to classes that cannot abuse it (i.e. practically all classes besides Priest, Pally, and Rogue), restricting its attack to minions only, or something along those lines.
Its frustrating because the minions they made besides Al'Akir and *maybe* Raging Worgen seem really about hitting your opponents face. If they made it focus more on getting around multiple targets with taunt or divine shield or something it can really go somewhere.
But no. Its either broken 3/2's for 2 or trashy 5/5's for 7, no in between. And I get that it can be hard but it really looks like they aren't even trying anymore with it. I wouldn't be surprised if it disappeared in Un'Goro altogether.
I don't think most Windfury minions are designed to go in competitive ladder decks. They're fun when they pop out of a random or discover effect, and they're occasionally fun in cheese decks. Sometimes, I think that's enough to justify a card's existence.
Grook Fu is pretty bad, though.
Charge wouldn't be a problem if Blizzard was better at balancing this game.
this is actually retarted