New Details on The Witchwood's Monster Hunt - Cannoneer, Time-Tinker, Hagatha
Shacknews sat down with Ben Brode this weekend at PAX East to talk about Witchwood. Here's the new stuff we learned!
- Cannoneer starts with a Cannon on board which is fired via Hero Power. It blasts targets across from it - positioning yay!
- Time-Tinker's final boss fight is herself from the future.
- Clearing Monster Hunt with all four classes makes them all join forces against Hagatha, the ultimate boss.
Ben Brode also said he thinks Cubelock may continue to be strong and if it's too strong, it may need to be nerfed. Also, there's a Shaman card coming which players will "lose their minds about".
I'm just gonna put out here that I don't think Cubelock is even that strong....it's jsut annoying to play against.
Mana cheat is obviously obnoxious, but the real problem currently is that Warlock has so much access to cards through Hero Power and Librarian that they are significantly more likely to have the cards they need at the right time.
That being sad I've been doing reasonably well against Cubelock with my Barnes/Kathrena Hunter, a deck that doesn't run silence and isn't guaranteed to have a good opening. One of the few cards that really made me lose against that deck was, most interestingly, Mistress of Mixtures. If they had her in the opening hand they removed all pressure I could possibly put on them for at least 2 turns. Now Mistress is going away and I seriously feel like people vastly underestimate how valuable that card was in both Cube- and Controllock.
Added to that is the fact that Cubelock runs two different demons, only one of which will ever help them out against aggro decks. Pulling a Doomguard against aggro can be an instant lose, simply because your face is left open. Combine that with the fact that Baku Face Hunter might just be a thing and probably will not care much about taunts anyways, since they wll just spam Hero Power, I kinda feel like Cubelock will be put down appropriately
If the "real" problem is the hero power, it would be the baseline of the entire class. You might as well say that Warlock as a whole is too strong, and it really is not.
It is true that the deck is not impossible to beat, and it does lose a few cards. I hope that the deck will be less popular in the next expansion and a nerf won't be necessary. But if it should still be popular, it's just like with Quest Rogue. That deck was also far from unbeatable, but it severely limited what other decks you could play, and that is also true for Warlock.
Every meta deck is annoying to play against. Priests are annoying, secret mages are annoying. Barns on turn 4 is annoying. But everyone's blaming cubelocks only.
You clearly see why Ben Brode is a Hearthstone game director.
"Ben Brode also said he thinks Cubelock may continue to be strong and if it's too strong, it may need to be nerfed. Also, there's a Shaman card coming which players will "lose their minds about"."
Here is an idea: Stop making cards/decks that will be so problematic that you have to discuss nerfs one expansion later, or sometimes right after they came out. I don't know what bothers me more: That Ben thinks about nerfs already before the expansion launches, or that he hints at a card that we might as well see nerfed 6 months from now, if it's really that crazy.
Eric Dodds once said that he would only want to see cards changed when it's "absolutely necessary". He said: "We want players to find their own creative solutions to different decks, not to wait for us to nerf the flavor the month [sic]". Yes, this was during Beta, but you stuck with this guideline until you came up with Standard. By now, it has become a routine to nerf whatever is the strongest deck of the meta, and partially, it is a routine by design philosophy. You keep making decks stronger and introduce more insane cards until you get to a point where it has become "absolutely necessary" to nerf something, and then it begins all over again, usually with a different class. Internal testing is probably never entirely sufficient to prevent these cases from happening, and it can always happen that a card gets too strong by accident or was just underestimated, but they happened so frequently last year that you might want to be a bit more critical with yourself. Every single expansion since WOG made changes to one or more cards from the newest set, a previous one and/or the core set "absolutely necessary".
Be open and clear that it has become part of your strategy to let decks get out of hand or that you willingly make overpowered cards to see how far you can push the limit, if that is the case. If you fully anticipate that the community gets frustrated over certain cards and decks you make, fine, but then don't act so innocent and contemplative whenever you respond to critics. Just say "yup, we know it's broken. Don't worry, we'll nerf it eventually". OR, if this is NOT your intention, be more critical with your design and balance decisions. Especially when it comes to future expansions.
I think TEam5 just suffes from a lack of self-awareness. They still treat Hearthstone as this throw-away casual game where balance is just supposed to be an afterthought and everyone realizes this....but it's not. At this point Hearthstone is no longer just a casual spin-off game from Warcraft. It's a legitimate stand-alone game with a competitive scene and enough of a playerbase to form a serious metagame within a few weeks of an expansion's release.
I have no problem with "OP decks" existing for a limited amount of time, just to see what's the limit, but being forced to play against those decks (and as a resuult not being able to even experiment with less powerful decks), especially on ladder below legend is just not fun to do for months.
It'S really frustrating when you consider that in order to play casually these days you have to reach legend first, because it is only the top-percentage players who don't actually HAVE to care about winning games quickly.
Good read. I agree with you also I would like to add that if they want to make this game battle of the overpowered decks than give every class these superpower cards so whoever makes their op moves faster and efficient win.Also nerfing things is a custom in balancing for online games but the trend how its used in (other games included) turns into making the new flashy and strong things that people love it, others hate to play against it then nerf it after for the new op thing.
this small indie company dont need a marketing department. these guy enought for everything.
Yeah, fuck the press for covering a topic people want to hear about.
"Time-Tinker's final boss fight is herself from the future."
I realize that Solo Adventures aren't deep lore but that seems like a bit of a spolier for what could have been a cool moment the first time around.
Quick! Travel back in time and tell your past self not to read/watch this article!
I agree. It also would have been nice if they'd let the team-up be a surprise.
Yeah, I felt regret immediately after I read these spoilers.
If you don't discard 2 cards then Doomguard shouldn't have Charge, it's broken that it does if you ask me.
It shouldn't have Rush without discarding the 2 cards either, it should simply be a 5/7 minion.
Are you serious? :)