Mike Donais and Peter Whalen Talk About Designing Un'Goro Legendaries
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to sit down with Mike Donais and Peter Whalen and they talked about how the designs came to be for some of Un'Goro's legendary cards.
Lyra the Sunshard
- Lyra the Sunshard came into being when they decided Priest needed to be "one of those trickier classes".
- Lyra was a 4 mana 3/5 initially, but proved to be too good in play-testing.
Sherazin, Corpse Flower
- Sherazin, Corpse Flower changed quite a bit during dev. Lower cost at one point, another time more stats, different numbers of cards required for the effect.
- At one point Sherazin required 3 cards and it was increased to 4 so you might have to build a deck around him.
- They're happy Sherazin ended up working out as playable and not just crazy.
- They didn't know how it would actually work from a UI perspective. One idea was to have the seed sit near your Hero Power.
Elise the Trailblazer
- Elise the Trailblazer had a lot of design iteration. One version of her saw "Discover a Quest".
- Once the Quest was discovered, you'd also get a package of helper cards in your deck to help complete it.
- The effect made Quests overall feel "less cool".
- Elise's Un'Goro Pack was originally destined for the Priest Quest Reward but it didn't feel good enough.
Hemet, Jungle Hunter
- Hemet, Jungle Hunter required a lot of play-testing in many different decks to see if he was reasonable.
- Hemet's effect surprisingly never changed, 3 was the perfect number.
Curious Glimmerroot
- Curious Glimmerroot was originally an idea for a Rogue legendary but ended up going to Priest as an epic. "It made more sense in Priest".
Shadow Visions
- Shadow Visions was originally 1 mana.
Priest Quests
- At one point, the Priest Quest was 'Start your turn with no cards in your hand. Reward: Un'Goro Pack'.
- Later on, they changed the reward to draw 5 cards instead, but that wasn't cool enough for quests.
Excited Lookout
- One of the removed cards from the expansion was Excited Lookout.
- It was a 2 mana card which shuffled the highest mana card in your hand back into your deck in order to draw a card.
- The card never made it to live because they were worried about the interaction between Hemet, Holy Wrath, and Molten Giant.
- It was removed around week 2 in the final design process.
Shadow Visions would be insane at just one mana.
Excited Lookout summary: we made a cool card that would have allowed for some cool combo deck, so we quicly removed it for good.
I wonder if you would say the same "cool card for cool combo deck", if it were made and it ended up making that Hemet, Molten Giant, Holy Wrath too consistent, or would you say "NERF THIS, ITS UNFUN TO PLAY AGAINST, STALL STALL STALL THEN 25 TO THE FACE BULLSHIT!".
wasn't actually a cool card really in the art he costed 1 mana why wouldn't you put it into every midrange deck? he smoothes your draw so much..
I never complained about any deck or card in the game. I learn and adapt as the game requires. And it all depends on 1 legendary card alone and drawing all the other at the right order at the right time and mana to execte it. dosen't seem like anything that would be different than any other allready exisitng combo deck. Of course if you plan on nerfing any problem card 6+ months after release, you might as well not print them at all i guess.
I agree with all legendaries except Hemet. He's like a card that is only viable in Holy Wrath Paladin and doesn't make any sense in any other deck. The care for the interaction doesn't make any sense
Do you want to draw your big minions and spells after turn 7 instead of a 1 drop, Innervate etc? Hemet is your guy, then. He may not be suitable to all of the decks, but works great in some of them.
He's also awesome in Astral Communion Ramp, as a finisher in Mage (as Kripp discovered), and likely in other situations too. There hasn't been enough experimentation to say for sure that we've discovered every use for him, and he'll only get more useful with time.
Warrior quest isn't really OP, it's mostly The Caverns Below people have trouble with. Sure it's annoying but it's for sure beatable and doesn't kill you by turn 5.
Excited lookout sounds great.
They really like avoiding the problem (Rogue Quest) don't they?
Quest rogue is overrated and easily beaten by other Tier 1/2 decks.
You are talking about tempo storm tier list right? the decks that are there are mostly there cause they can beat quest rogue.
Quest rogue has it's counters but it's a bad design, it's too good against control decks and it has something that was nerfed countless times by blizzard which are cheap chargers and OTK.
It will be nerfed it's only a matter of time, either the quest or shadowstep/vanish or maybe both who knows...
It won't be nerfed. Jade was in the exact same spot in msog and never got changed.
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