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.
Maybe, though I very much doubt the devs would want to require an epic rarity card to use a basic one. For now Mind Blast isn't going anywhere and with Shadow Visions rotating out we might not see it often in standard anyway.
I would also not want the devs to feel too constrained by WoW mechanics. They were useful to guide things early on but HS is its own game and its main interest should be to made HS as good as it can be, not to shoehorn in WoW mechanics. If it is in the game's interest to have the shadow priest theme surrounded by mechanics that don't mirror a DPS spec, then so be it.
The question regards direct (face) damage, not the theme of Shadow Priest. That much is true. And aside from thematic aspects, game balance and mechanics also matter.
I am not saying that we can't have a debate about how Shadow Priest should be represented in Hearthstone. And I can see people arguing that it should be more about destructive magic in general, not necessarily damage. I personally disagree though. I think that a DPS spec should also be represented with direct damage abilities. And by the way, I would say the latest addition to that theme was the hero power of Shadowreaper Anduin. Also over a year old, but still a part of Standard nonetheless. There are not very many cards going in that direction, but it would be wrong to say it was discontinued after TGT. That is, if we exclude healing-based damage. While there is a difference in mechanics and flavor, I think these combos are still intended to give you large amounts of burst damage that can also target the enemy hero. And this being part of Priest was highlighted as recently as with Auchenai Phantasm and Regenerate.
I would actually agree that Mind Blast is a bit odd, but more because most of Priest's damaging effects come with more severe downsides than just being limited to target the enemy hero, like taking damage yourself or losing the ability to heal. And having large amounts of cheap burst along with several spells to stall the game for a long time is not making for a fun game experience. But that's again another thing to say than just claiming it's not part of Priest's identity.
As for evolving identities: Sure enough, things can change over time. However, these changes have to be declared "changes". There is a difference between saying "it doesn't match Priest's identity" and saying "we want to remove that part of Priest's identity". The video for the Year of the Dragon says that they want to stick close to class identities when making changes. That sentence only makes sense, if all people are on the same page. Either we agree that the established cards make the class identity, or they come out and say what the classes should be about instead and why. But then again, I have suggested multiple times that the evergreen set should get an overhaul, both for balancing reasons and to avoid silly contradictions when someone comes out to talk about class identity.
But even if you want to change class identities, permanently even, I don't see why. While I think there is a point in narrowing class identites to avoid overlaps and create distinct playstyles, Hearthstone is more interesting when you have more choices. When classes become one-trick-ponies, things get boring. Considering how many decks, entire archetypes, disappeared enitrely with the last few "balance" patches, it certainly did not make the game more interesting, if even less frustrating. Also, it is fine to drop a given theme for a while. Each expansion can take a class in any new or old direction. What is more sensible? Dropping Shadow Priest as a damage dealer for a year or two and focusing on other branches, or abolishing it and saying that it shouldn't be a part of Priest ever again?!
Changing class identities is fine. They don't have to be set in stone. But I'd prefer these changes to be properly communicated and ideally explained with an overarching strategy where they want to take classes. Forgive me my cynicism, but reasoning the changes to Druid or to Paladin or the debated changes to Priest with "class identity" seems awfully contrived to me so far, when in effect we just see cards getting removed that some consider "problematic" for the sake of it. We don't see the classes having more distinct playstyles or better outlined identities, we just see them getting worse overall.
Agreed, changes have not been properly communicated, but I believe they have still happened. The reason they get called on a lot these days as reasons to nerf/HoF is after Shaman-stone (aka Year of the Kraken) and Druid-stone (aka Frozen Throne) where the dominant classes almost lost any class identity because they could do pretty much anything they liked. Since then the devs seem to have been more conscious of the need to narrow down on what classes should and should not be able to do.
In a couple of hours I will be writing a forum post designed to highlight what I think each class' identity is. As a spoiler, the list of mechanics for each class is actually very long and no class is in danger of being a 1-trick pony. I'll point you to it when it is written so we can continue discussing there.
The auto retiring of Shadow Visions will hopefully help the OTK Priest, but no - you can't retire a Dragon for Year of the Dragon, that is just bad
Genn's strength has become his greatest curse.
He's lying. The real reason they didn't hall of fame Malygos was because it's going to be The Year of the Dragon. Think about how bad that would look.
What is the problem to rename the year and remove Malygos?
no one likes to face only mid-size minion decks, quoting what he said "tricky decks with different game plans should exist" you remove malygos and the game is back to the aggrostone we had from 2014-2017, and you know what if we had 3 years of aggrostone, then combostone deserves at least a 2 years. turn.
Wild growth and nourish made it so that druid wasn't about mana creation, it was about wild growth and nourish. Looking at those two cards when they cost 2-5 mana, what was the point of making any new ramp cards? Whatever you made had to be incredibly strong to compete. With those two gone, blizzard has more room to explore different ways for druid to gain mana that could actually see play.
That great except they have ZERO ways to remove minions outside of proper trading. No other class has that restriction. Slowing down their acceleration means one turn of improper or unfavorable trading means they fall behind the entire match. So you think that's good for the game and the class??
Lets also bear in mind the class was perfectly fine before the 2017 disaster expansions destroyed the game of HS. Nerfing Innervate,Growth and Noursih targeted all the cards that gave them their class identity. Unless they are going to give druid high stat minions in class that cost 1-2 mana less than what a normal class pays,they will be an unplayable class.
So your answer is that they give them new cards that essentially do what the old cards did? that sounds more like a corporate scheme to just make money having players pay for more of the same cards they already have. Anything they give druid will be just as slow as the current ramp cards are. Otherwise there was no point in slowing down their ramp. HS is a game of tempo and if you have no way to mitigate the loss of tempo you are essentially an unplayable class.
so what? Rogue has no Aoe and warlock AoE is mirrored, meaning the former has absolutely n way of clearing vomit hand boards, and the later loses his board if he tries to clear, being weak to a deck that tries to kill you in turn 4 is far worse than being weak to tall minions, and that's class identity, plus both rogue and lock function just fine.
and i quote.."Druids are more about mana creation". then proceed to nerf the ever loving hell out of the entire class identity of Druid. I'm not sure they understand how their own game functions at this point.
Malygos is the original blue dragon so if he leves it going destroy the dragon aspects collation and mess up the Welcome bundle . tbh he is the most replaceable cause in the lore Kalecgos replace him after his dead , but Kalecgos is an important character the may use later expansions if the dont do that most hearthstone can do is change his text and refund all the dust
Truth.
They better give me a good replacement for my doom boi!
You know when they release new cards to replace the ones being hofed they will be really shitty cards.
they'll eventually release aminion with battlecry+5sp during that turn, s people will have to look at cost reduction cards.
I absolutely agree with you. It seems that they didn't even consider about a nerf of one of those two cards.
These are trickier nerfs right now, because Topsy Turvy is still in Standard for another year.
history lesson: that deck was literally considered a noobtrap deck until Shadow Visions got printed and without shadow visions those two go back to being noobtraps