Another Mage Diamond Card?! - Blizzard Explains March of the Lich King's Diamond Card Choices
Blizzard dev Celestalon tweeted out some explanations for a community concern about Diamond Cards earlier tonight. Read on below for the full story.
The Introduction
To introduce this story properly, we have to explain the root cause of the issue at hand first. Since Diamond cards were introduced there have been 15 cards created, or 16 if you want to count Ragnaros in both classic and Wild separately. Of these 15 there were 9 Neutral cards and only 6 class specific ones.
- Bru'kan for Shaman
- Decimator Olgra for Warrior
- Darkbishop Benedictus for Priest
- Jandice Barov Dual class for Rogue and Mage
- Balinda Stonehearth for Mage
- Commander Sivara for Mage
So out of the 9 classes before March of the Lich King, 4 have not had a Diamond card at all. Shaman, Warrior, Priest, and Rogue have 1. Mage has 3.
This imbalance already lead to some misgivings before, but with Castle Nathria giving a Diamond card to a new class (Warrior), things seemed to be on the path to more class balance.
That is, until tonight, when news came out that one of the Diamond cards for March of the Lich King is the recently revealed Mage class Legendary Grand Magister Rommath, which meant that there were still 4 classes without a Diamond card, while Mage was getting it's 4th card.
Explanation
From this point we'll dive into the tweet thread Team 5 Dev. Celestalon started, to explain some of the things going on.
Quote from BlizzardI saw a few comments about Grand Magister Rommath getting a Diamond card, "mage again", and wanted to add some context/clarification.
Most expansions have 2 or sometimes 3 Diamond cards. This time, there are 5.
Quote from BlizzardWhen picking cards to diamondize, class distribution is important, as well as the excitement for the character, how suitable the art is for it, and other factors.
Quote from BlizzardIn this case, we planned to diamondize the entire canon Blood Elf council: Halduron, Rommath, Lor'themar, Liadrin, plus one of the the Death Knight cards.
Quote from BlizzardHowever, things don't always go as planned; not every art piece is well-suited for being diamondized. That turned out to be the case with Halduron's art; a beautiful piece, but it posed problems for diamondizing.
Quote from BlizzardSo, we looked for suitable alternatives, and ended up swapping Haldruon for a second Death Knight card. It's the launch of DK, people are going to be excited about it, and another of theirs was a known character that was well-suited to it.
Quote from BlizzardSo yes, Rommath is "another Mage Diamond", but class distribution is still important to us, and there's also a Paladin, Neutral, and two Death Knight Diamonds.
Conclusion
First of all, whoa, Celestalon tipping off the fact that Halduron Brightwing is going to be in this expansion. He is the Ranger General for the Farstriders, which means he's a Hunter. And Hunter is still short a legendary from the reveals! Will be interesting to see this card!
After this we can also conclude that Blizzard made at least some inroads to class balance, by giving Paladin and the new Death Knight class their first Diamond cards, but this still leaves 3 classes without any Diamond representation at all and the Mage class on its own with 4 cards already.
This also means we know 4 of the 5 Diamond Cards coming with March of the Lich King:
Your Opinion
That is the story and the explanation from Blizzard. Let us know in the comments what your thoughts are on this subject, and perhaps what you think the 5th Diamond card, from one of the Legendaries in the Death Knight class, is going to be!
so we usually purchase one in the battlepass, one is awarded after buying 25 legendaries, deathwhisper is in golden miniset
what about the 2 others ? anyone know how to get?
Turns out I can still be surprised at the dumb stuff people will complain about.
I am surprised that nobody noticed that card during the stream.
hi
I hope the last would be Lord Marrowgar ...he is sick!
His artwork really is perfect for diamond with the weapon swing, bone "wings" and shattering bones.
But isn't he already a signature card? I think that will disqualify him sadly...
Didn't prevent Lor'themar Theron from having both. I don't see why not.
True! Maybe then :)
"So out of the 9 classes before March of the Lich King, 4 have not had a Diamond card at all. Shaman, Warrior, Priest, and Rogue have 1. Mage has 3."
I like counting (and progressing through) them as follows;
3 cloth classes - Mage, Priest, Warlock
3 leather classes - Demon Hunter, Druid, Rogue
2 mail classes - Hunter, Shaman
+2 plate classes - Paladin, Warrior
10 classes altogether. But f DH, am I right? Can't say I can blame the author, that class needs to pay for its past transgressions.
Why mages got another legendary in the new miniset??? ohh, I hurried
sorry for spoilers
So... Where is Halduron?
I don’t care at all about diamond cards. At all. They should focus on more important things.
It's funny to see that blizzard gives a rat's ass at balancing the cards in general and pushing that forward in the Diamond cards. How hard can it be to give each class the same amount of Diamond cards? You cannot convince me that some classes have 0 suitable cards for a diamond version. If so, the graphic's team does a crappy job.
Priest has a Diamond card (Darkbishop Benedictus) and there are only 9 neutrals ... if I'm not mistaken.
D'oh. I missed that. You are right. Priest colour to close to Neutral colour on those cards. I'll fix the article.
Literally who cares?
"Literally who cares?" -mage mains
They should also add some more mage portraits while they are at it. Shaman is only four behind and could steal the lead! Blizz pls!
Jump to 5 years later:
"Okay so far we've had 24 Mage diamond cards and only 2 Hunter diamond cards, and we're adding yet another Mage diamond card in this expansion, but rest assured we still care about class distribution."
Halduron was literally mentioned in the expansion announcement along with the Farstriders, so not much of a hat tipping there.