Dean Ayala was on Twitter this evening answering community questions. One prompt, on Priests, asked about the design of the class to which we received a fun response on Shadow Priests.
Shadow Priest is a subset of the Priest class that revolves around the use of Shadow magic. Much like how Mages have different flavors of magic - Frost, Fire, and Arcane - Priests dabble in both Holy and Shadow. We see Shadow flavor in cards like Shadow Word: Death and Shadow Word: Pain which both offer great removal, and some thiefery through Shadow Madness and Cabal Shadow Priest. These aren't the only themes present in Shadow Priest though because the big one, a World of Warcraft classic, Shadowform, completely changes how the hero portion of Priest plays in Hearthstone.
Unfortunately, Shadowform was Hall of Famed at the start of the Year of the Phoenix, removing some of those Shadow Priest dreams in Standard.
Although no specifics have been given, we're thinking it wouldn't be too crazy to see something that will interact with the Priest default hero power again. What would you like to see in the Shadow Priest package?
Quote From Dean Ayala Is there any chance priest's card design return to some nice mechanics with healing (like we had with clerig and alchenai), or the direction you want for the class is exclusively random value generation?
Priest toolkit is pretty wide from a design view
Random generation
Healing
Tempo-Curve gameplay (Dragons)
Traditional Control (removal into big minions or MC) (Source)We're also going to re-explore what shadowpriest means, which is sort of a different direction I think a lot of players will like. (Source)
Comments
Maybe the next enhanced power will heal an allied minion for 2 OR deal 2 damages to an enemy minion to reflect that control tendency
Blizzard stated before that they don't want priest to have face burst damage, so it's probably centered about board control.
True, but now that Velen was HoF'd and smite was changed to minion only, a "hero power deals 2 damage" isn't that big a deal. Hunter has it as a baseline after all...as long as they don't print other cards that somehow alter the hero power to do more damage (for priests) then it's not going to break anything down the road. I really do miss shadowform though. such a fun card
They're also changing HOF, tho. So who knows what'll happen with Velen and Auchenai Soulpriest
I was so upset they moved Shadowform to the Hall of Fame since it would forever have to compete with Shadowreaper Anduin in wild (and always loose).
They shouldve made shadowform 2mana and Hof midngames insetad f hofing shadowform..
They wanted to remove face damage from priest, so Shadowform was always going to be HoF'd last year. Certainly it wouldn't have been buffed and left in Standard, even if that would have been fine for game balance.
I'm no less disappointed than anyone else (it was the shadow priest cards that made it my second favourite class in Classic), but I see why they did it.
It seems to be an inconsistant application of their rules. I get that direct damage is something priest is supposed to be bad at but to not have them have a single card that can do it feels stupid if shaman can keep [Hearthstone Card (Farsight) Not Found] despite their weakness being carddraw.
There's an argument that card draw is more 'essential' than direct face damage, and that they can therefore be treated differently. There's also the fact that priest kept Mass Dispel despite their card draw being cut back substantially.
But the easier answer is simply that shaman didn't have a complete rework of Basic and Classic like priest did. If Far Sight is still around in Standard in April, then come back and say "I told you so" :)
It's their limitation not weakness, besides that it's the only card draw that's currently run in shaman.
In blizzard's own post under shaman Card draw is listed as the class' weakness actually.
I'm not asking to remove all weaknesses from a class but I don't see the harm in keeping some tiny elements of it around. Shadowform isn't efficient enough to promote face damage strategies on its own so I don't see its harm. The same way that mage's Mirror Image is not an issue despite taunt being a mage weakness.
I agree under those circumstances. Shadowform was a problem due to velen and smite. Without velen and smite being able to go face, shadowform is much more tame and honestly should never have been HoF'd.
I get why they did it (re-vamping the class identity allowed them the chance to hall of fame cards that didn't align with their vision), and will allow them to print a shadowform-esque card in a future expansion.
As they stated, the idea behind expansions is sometimes to explore the strengths of a class, or shore up their weakness. But only for a time. By keeping specific strategies in an expansion, they define a limited length of time that the class can utilize that archtype. Shadowform being part of classic did create a design space problem of always having an alternate hero power. Also, I imagine that with shadowform in the current darkmoon faire set, being able to discount shadowform through multiple means would allow priests to tempo themselves well. One of the shortcomings of shadowform was that it was a "3 mana: do nothing".
I'll be excited to see what the mini-set brings, as well as what the "big changes" the new standard year brings as well.
One day perhaps they will have a card that reads "all healing now damages instead" and then shadow priest will be born.