Ozzie Mejia of Shacknews had a chance to sit down with Mike Donais to discuss the Hall of Fame and why certain cards weren't included.
- The two primary factors for cards being sent to the Hall of Fame are card power level and class identity.
- Really powerful cards that consistently show up and have a large impact on the meta are good candidates.
- Doomguard was replaced because of its powerful impact and they can re place with with another card in the future.
- Druids are more about mana creation, not removal. That's why Naturalize was sent to pasture.
- They talk about Malygos moving every year but decided against it again because of the decks he creates.
- Mind Blast's One Turn Kill (OTK) potentially is reduced thanks to the rotation of Shadow Visions. The card remains on the short list.
Want to learn more about the Year of the Dragon and the cards that are rotating to the Hall of Fame? Check out the Year of the Dragon announcement.
Mike Donais on Malygos and Mind Blast
Quote from Mike DonaisDonais: There's lots of other candidates. We talked about cards like Malygos, which we talk about every year. We decided not to go with Malygos again, because of all the new decks that he creates. An important thing in card games is to have different types of decks. Not every type of deck should be medium-sized minions fighting. There needs to be small minions, big minions, and there needs to be some Malygos decks and other tricky decks that have different game plans. That's what makes card games interesting.
Donais: I think the Mind Blast problem will be temporarily improved because of Shadow Visions leaving, but I don't think that's a hard solve. Mind Blast is also on our list, both because it doesn't match Priest class identity. They're not supposed to be the face damage class. And it's also pretty powerful in the right decks. It has had a big design impact on us with the resurrection decks especially. You're seeing people resurrect and do Mind Blast.
You would get 3200 dust for free and you could still play him in wild.
wild? no thanks
Priests class identity is not face damage according to Donais, ok. But what is priests identity?
Is it healing, theft, class copying, buffs, minion cheating/copying?
Every aspect that a priest brings to the game is sub-par compared to other class identities. There are cards that really shine and make priest a power house with gimmick decks that the community hates - Kazakus priest, big priest, wall priest, spell priest, silence priest, OTK priest.
The reason the community hates these decks is because we take what little identity priest has and we meme the hell out of it to a point where there is little to no interaction, and rely on big swing RNG.
Before the core identity of priest is called into question for what cards need to be HoF'd perhaps we need to call attention to what the actual identiy of priest is first.
I agree, same thing more or less with Rogue
After replying to a comment below I thought I'd go through each of the classes and try to identify exactly what their identities are, have been, and definitely are not. Perhaps later I'll post my thoughts on this. For now though keep in mind Mind Blast is not being HoF'd (this time).
Unless they print another card similar to Shadowreaper Anduin, Mind Blast will fall our of favour in priest decks because a priest simply has no need to hit the opponent's face for 5. Without the 16-22 burst damage that Shadowreaper provides, that card is just pack filler. And without Shadow Visions, its just occupying 2 slots when more impactful cards can be used.
I think I have Priest's "identity" in a Nutshell:
"Healing and Wololoooo".
It really should not be doing much more.
My question at this point tho is:
What is Shaman's "identity"?
Better to have a wide array of cards to use in wild than to rely on the same half a dozen or so old strats in standard constantly.
Btw, I'll gladly accept all of the idiot Even Shamans in wild so I can farm them over & over again with Duskbreaker, Mass Hysteria, Pshyic Scream, etc and then just burn them down in the late game.
Not every deck is Jade Druid. Some are laughable Christmas Tree Pallies.
i never really wanted Malygos HOF'ed.
I would be surprised if Mind Blast gets even fringe play after Shadow Visions and Shadowreaper rotates out.
Nerf Barnes!
Oh it's gonna be the Year of the Dragon alright. Note: he's mentioning how many new decks Malygos can make. I have a feeling we're gonna get one last year of Maly before he rotates. This is gonna be the big year for dragons for sure, and for his victory lap before retiring to the HoF, Malygos is about to take a years worth of laxatives and straight up shit on the meta.
yeah special snowflake because you are the only player playing this game and th rest of opponents are bots....
Well they rotated a Raven for Year of the Raven :) By natural auto rotation.
So that's how they missed Mind Control Tech. They forgot about the ubiquitous, not-fun neutrals rule.
MCT isn't all that much ubiquitous... some decks run him sometimes...
i think malygos had enough time to shine already, i see him as another form of charge really which blizzard despises more and more
it would've only made sense to hof this card
also, preaching interactivity, yet keeping that guy in every year... sigh
So, dealing face damage does not match Priest's identity?
Huh, that's weird. I always thought this side of Warcraft, Shadow Priest, was always considered part of the class identity. Like, from the very beginning to this day.
On the one hand, you had cards like Auchenai Soulpriest, Embrace the Shadow and the recently added Auchenai Phantasm that would gain big burst potential with cheap and powerful healing spells like Flash Heal, Light of the Naaru and the just added Regenerate.
And on the other hand, you had the direct damage cards like Shadowform, Spawn of Shadows, Shadowreaper Anduin, Shadowbomber and of course Mind Blast. Not to mention other shadow-themed cards like Shadowfiend, Shadow Word: Death, Excavated Evil... I guess ALL these cards were just happy little accidents, that you actually did not want to make because that's all not part of Priest's class identity.
You know, if you really think that Shadow Priest, a DPS spec, kinda obviously about dealing face damage, should not exist in Hearthstone, fine. You can say that. You can say that you don't want that anymore. Go ahead and nerf more basic cards. But don't be like "it's not part of the class identity" after 5 years of continously printing cards that confirmed it IS a part of Priest's identity.
Argh... I'm getting mad again. I put more effort and thought into pointing out how this line makes no sense than Mike Donais in his statement.
Ok fine, it's not part of Priest's class identity. They were always just about healing and buffs and love and friendship. Go ahead, downvote me for criticising a developer who clearly knows what he's saying.
While I agree with you regarding past cards fitting the face damage identity, I would draw some distinctions. Shadow priest cards generally, e.g. SW:Death and Shadowform, are mechanically different to Mind Blast. They all represent shadow priests in a WoW sense, but their mechanics in HS are different. What Mike Donais specified is face damage, not the broader shadow priest identity.
Okay, so narrowing things down then, what about face damage by healing? That is again distinct. It can be part of a class' identity to swap healing for damage without including something that is face damage and nothing but face damage. The easiest way to reveal the subtlety here is to view it in reverse: If a hunter gets a direct damage card people will say "yeah, that makes sense for hunter". If instead hunter is given a 'healing does damage' card it would make no sense for the class' identity.
More relevant are Shadowbomber and Spawn of Shadows. These are undoubtedly in the same identity space as Mind Blast, so surely there is no identity problem? Well, yes and no. If this had been said way back in TGT I would agree it is part of what makes up priest, but absolutely nothing along these lines has been printed since. Somewhere along the way the devs clearly decided that actually direct face damage shouldn't be part of the priest identity, and that Mind Blast only exists because it was designed very early on when they were still testing what should and should not be part of each class.
Ultimately your assessment of the cards is, in a vacuum, completely correct. What you have not allowed for is for class identity to evolve. Maybe it should be static and never change, maybe not. But as the game has matured it is not surprising that it is the original cards, designed at a time when the class identities were not so well established, are often the ones that are mechanical misfits today. That includes Mind Blast, but also Cold Blood, Naturalize and Divine Favor, which just goes to show how the community's perception of class identity can be warped by single out of place cards just because they are very powerful and have been around since the start.
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Tl;dr: Donais knows what he's saying, but they have never done a very good job of explaining changes in class identity, especially when classes lose some of their original identity.
So then the easier fix to this to keep identity would be to reword mind blast to require being in shadow form only to use. I don’t think that it’s hard to keep WOW identities in the game. Shadow priest will be more face damage, so make the card require shadow form so the healing identity gets further away.