The Death Knight, a Custom Hearthstone Class.

Hello everyone, some of you may be familiar with me and what I do but I wanted to do something a little different than making a concept that would change the entire landscape of Hearthstone.

I wanted to make a Death Knight concept. This one is based off my previous iteration that was featured in Hearthstone, The Tavern has been renovated. 

Without further ado, let's jump in.

Kaln Vilehoof is not a very notable (well not really notable at all) Death Knight in World of Warcraft lore, but Hearthstone is severely lacking in badass, Tauren hero portraits. This is why Kaln takes center stage. I could have made an iteration using Arthas or Ner'zhul, but no. Look at the eyes on this beast, he's here to kick ass, raise the dead and slay Demon Hunters while jamming out to Khemmis. (Seriously check them out if you're into doom metal)

Speaking of raising the dead, let's talk about his hero power. The Death Knight's hero power is based off the Unholy Specialization Tree in World of Warcraft. The Hero Power by itself allows the Death Knight to have one Companion Ghoul. You may have noted that the Death Knight's Hero Power costs 3 mana instead of 2, I'll get into why down below and showcase some cards on why it costs 3. Cards that work like Youthful Brewmaster could be teched in to get more than one but I doubt there would be enough advantageous opportunities to even try the combo. I wanted something to be a persistent threat but not entirely too oppressive, as you can see the Companion Ghoul cannot attack Heroes. It can if it's silenced, but it will lose whatever buffs that were stacked onto it so it becomes just two damage. If it's taunted with Defender of Argus, then dies, it loses the Taunt. Simple to understand. Support cards for the Ghoul are not in the Death Knight's core set since it could easily spiral out of control with enough support, so whatever support the Ghoul gets needs to rotate out of Standard at some point.

The Death Knight also gets a new mechanic exclusive to its class, unless it gets burgled of course.

I cry every time that damn slash gets inserted into my text.

A rune charge amplifies your equipped weapon's abilities depending on what it does, mainly if it has a number. If you apply a Rune Charge to say your Sphere of Sapience, that would allow you to cycle through an additional card for each charge (up to three) applied to the weapon. These charges only disappear once the weapon is destroyed. If you think this is broken or unbalanced, it probably is because this is more of a proof of concept. I did not spend days upon days going through everything in this post with a fine-toothed comb to fix all the nitty-gritty shenanigans that can be had.

Now let's get to the Core set, I'll talk more once you've had a look at them.

So going back to Rune Charges with Howling Hatchet, its Deathrattle would do 1 + Rune Charge(s) damage to all enemies. With weapons such as Leeching Dagger, you would heal however much damage the weapon caused + Rune Charge(s). On the other hand weapons like Frostmourne and Atiesh would remain unaffected.

The cards of the DK's Core set are self explanatory. I wanted them to be sort of strong but not auto includes. Most of them are there just to get the player used to Rune Charges.

Along with the Core set, the Death Knight get's an additional set, the Undeath set, to help boost it's collection of cards to help it keep up with the other classes. These will rotate after one year in Standard.

We'll stop here and talk about these legendary cards. Frostbeard is a board clear, plain and simple, he can be a control tool as well but I'm not trying to figure out where he realistically fits since this is just a fan concept.

Earlier I said that I'd explain why the Hero Power costs 3, Gravewalker Gie is one of the reasons why. Herself, and other supporting cards below, change the Ghoul for the rest of the game. The Companion Ghoul goes from a little 2/2 minion that can't attack heroes to a POWERHOUSE OF DESTUCTION AND CHAOS THAT CAN BEND THE FABRIC OF TIME, DRINK GOD's TEARS, AND still can't attack heroes. That part should never change since it'd likely break wild.

The Frozen Heart is pretty much what it reads...... except when you apply Rune Charges to it. I'm still iffy on whether or not it was good choice but none of my ideas will never make it into the game so might as well explore ideas.

Frozen Giant will become self explanatory with the Rare and Common Cards.

Heartwarming doesn't sound all that great, but a 3 mana 2/3 or 2/4 aint a bad deal. You picking up what I'm throwing down?

Bloodied Blade is a healing tool. Couple that with Rune Charges you could go from healing yourself from 4 to 8 for one charge or 4 to 16 if you got three charges on it, that is of course if there are a sufficient amount of minions on the board.

Vampiric Blood is that "I just need one more turn" card for when you might survive an opponents lethal long enough for you to either heal up or deal lethal damage yourself.

I thought the Undeath set could have some frost synergy in it to start out then it went all over the place as time went on, but there are only so many Freeze mechanics you can create before you want to make something else like some of the Epic cards. Man, I wonder if we can reprint Moorabi as a Death Knight card.

For the Common cards Frost Warrior stands out the most with Freeze synergy and could probably be game winning of the you're lucky enough.

Sterner stuff is again a card to support Companion Ghoul. So combine this with the other Companion Ghoul cards in the post we have 5 mana Hero Power that Summons a 4/6 minion that can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers. I'm sure someone is going to tell me it's broken.

Everything else is your run of the mill common cards.

So yeah. I've been sitting on this one for a while and decided to take the idea further.

Thank you for reading,

-Grif

Okay. This is a rather interesting class. First of all, all of your art is on point! They all fit WoW / Hearthstone world (an upside of making a canonical class). 

Rune Charge seems to be a very interesting mechanic. All of the weapon centric class (Rogue / Warrior) are more focus on increasing the stat of the weapon, with only Shaman is the exception with their new card, so I think this an interesting mechanic worth exploring

Your Hero Power is way too weak. Having cap the amount of Ghoul at 1 and it can't attack heroes, I think that it is fine at 2 mana. 3 mana is just kind of too much since the control class can just ignore the Ghoul until they draw into their board clear. Aggro deck can just ignore it and hit face. The only thing that it can give trouble to is probably mid-range deck since they focus on board control, but the 3 mana kind of too much to keep them in check. It also need the Hero Power text at the start.

Your Core set has serious problem. Basic cards do not have rarity, they don't have a Legendary and especially don't have your class's keyword. That means Risen Footman, Moriccalas and Runic Scourge cannot be Basic cards. Also, they don't have tech card like Mind Freeze as well as they don't have Deathrattle like Howling Hatchet. It'd be fine if you plan this to be a Classic set in the model of the other 9 classes, but since you said you have the Demon Hunter model you have to move those cards to the "Expansion" set.

These are fundamental problems. I'd get into the specific cards balance when these problems are fixed.

I seriously recommend you reading this post to a guide for making custom Basic set: https://outof.cards/forums/fan-creations/custom-hearthstone/76-guide-to-making-a-basic-set-for-custom-classes

Interesting take on the deathknight class. Here's some of my observations;

- You can try expanding on the rune charges concept. Right now, from what I understand, its essentially just Upgrade! that incidentally also upgrades descriptions. But what if its a weapon that doesn't rely on its numbers for power, like say The Fist of Ra-den? Overall, I get what you're trying to do, but its just one of those interactions in hearthstone that's not intuitive at a glance, and that's usually not a good thing.

- Most of your cards are designed with a weaker side of balance in mind, like 5/5 taunts for 5, or freezing elemental, a 5 mana freeze target. Since blizz will be redesigning the core cards at some point, I'm sure you're better off making them slightly above the usual average for an evergreen card.

- A lot of cards require freezing to be good, and yet there's no card that freezes multiple targets. Kinda makes the whole thing too redundant. I think something like a 3 mana freeze 3 targets is optimal or even expanding deathloc to also freeze targets. Or otherwise, who'd play cards like frostwake, probably one of the weakest card Ive ever seen.

- Finally, let's have a look at your hero power. So its summon a 2/2 for 3 mana, which can be upgraded. Unfortunately, as we have seen with Hack the System, even a 4/3 for 2 that can be summoned multiple times isn't really up to snuff. Also the setup for this to be even mildly amazing is so difficult its likely never worth doing.

Heartwarming cost 4, while sterner stuff cost 3. Its weird how anyone would contemplate playing the former over the latter when its obvious that sterner stuff is simply the better card, and easier to play. Both should cost ideally 3, and maybe even summon the ghoul out, because why not? If jade idol can go 1 mana 4/4 in most times, I dont see why 3 mana 4/4s that cant even damage heroes is in anyway broken.

Also, silencing effects that last throughout the game doesn't work. Comparable cards are frost lich jaina's lifesteal effect and crystal core. This wouldn't be broken anyway, because if you choose to ignore a minion on board, it should be fairly obvious what would happen. Plus, there's no silence in standard outside the much useless ironbeak owl so that's not really an issue.

The cost is a little iffy. 3 mana at the start? Why not just make it a 1/2 for 2? I think its still balanced even as a 2 mana 2/2. You can only do this once anyway, and it can't damage heroes.

Overall, nice job. Having a class that works like paladin, but centralized on the one particular minion generated by hp is smart. Maybe team5 should start taking notes.

Quote From shatterstar1998

Your Core set has serious problem. Basic cards do not have rarity, they don't have a Legendary and especially don't have your class's keyword. That means Risen Footman, Moriccalas and Runic Scourge cannot be Basic cards. Also, they don't have tech card like Mind Freeze as well as they don't have Deathrattle like Howling Hatchet. It'd be fine if you plan this to be a Classic set in the model of the other 9 classes, but since you said you have the Demon Hunter model you have to move those cards to the "Expansion" set.

These are fundamental problems. I'd get into the specific cards balance when these problems are fixed.

I seriously recommend you reading this post to a guide for making custom Basic set: https://outof.cards/forums/fan-creations/custom-hearthstone/76-guide-to-making-a-basic-set-for-custom-classes

Thank you for your input and I'll for sure give that a read!

Quote From sinti

Overall, an interesting class concept, having a unit that you can have only one off, but can be buffed throughout the game and can be summoned back with the obtained buffs is a cool mechanic, but i feel like at least from the buff cards you showed us, you are greatly overestimating the value of them, pretty much all of them could cost less, the 3 mana on the hero power alone makes this quite a drawback. I do like the mechanic tho.

Freeze being an integral part of DK is no surprise and you did design cards around it well enough overall.

Rune charge mechanic is quite confusing, i like a mechanic build around weapons, but i think yours need a bit more work.

Speaking of, while the class overall feels quite cool, the actual card making skills leave plenty of room for improvement, lots of "custom" wording when there are cards in the game that you can take the proper wording from and some cards that do basically the same as already existing cards (Freezing Elemental > Frost Elemental, Howling Hatchet > Death's Bite etc).

For the Hero Power costing 3 it could be too much and I may be giving it too much credit. I had it in my head of what it could possibly be at the end of it's second or third Standard year. Let's rewind time to say Year of the Raven and let's say Death Knight was released. The Ghoul would get support from the expansions of that year and Year of the Dragon next. So for Witchwood a card would permanently give it Rush, Boomsday could have made it part mech so it could be magnetized, in Rumble it could be given taunt or something else relevant to that expansion, in Rise of Shadows it could have something along the lines of of Twinspell or Lackey, in Saviors it could be given Reborn, then finally in Descent of Dragons it could be given something Dragon related. All that being said now we have an X/X minion that could be summoned each turn for X mana that; Can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers, has increased stats, has rush, has taunt, has reborn, is part mech, add a lackey to your hand, and actives dragon cards.

All of what I said could be made irrelevant but that's where my mind was in regards to the high cost Hero Power. It's weak at the beginning of it's launch, but as time goes on with each expansion it's capabilities grow. So the Death Knights meta itself changes. at the first or even second expansion of a year Frost DK may be the only viable variation/archetype but uses the Ghoul as a support, then by the end of an expansion cycle the Ghoul is a formidable foe. But it probably does need it's cost to be 2 instead of 3.

I'll see if I can improve how it conveys how it works on a weapon.

I was aiming for samey but slightly different for Death's Bite. Not gonna lie, completely oblivious to the fact that Frost Elemental existed.

Thank you for your input.

Quote From dapperdog

Interesting take on the deathknight class. Here's some of my observations;

- You can try expanding on the rune charges concept. Right now, from what I understand, its essentially just Upgrade! that incidentally also upgrades descriptions. But what if its a weapon that doesn't rely on its numbers for power, like say The Fist of Ra-den? Overall, I get what you're trying to do, but its just one of those interactions in hearthstone that's not intuitive at a glance, and that's usually not a good thing.

- Most of your cards are designed with a weaker side of balance in mind, like 5/5 taunts for 5, or freezing elemental, a 5 mana freeze target. Since blizz will be redesigning the core cards at some point, I'm sure you're better off making them slightly above the usual average for an evergreen card.

- A lot of cards require freezing to be good, and yet there's no card that freezes multiple targets. Kinda makes the whole thing too redundant. I think something like a 3 mana freeze 3 targets is optimal or even expanding deathloc to also freeze targets. Or otherwise, who'd play cards like frostwake, probably one of the weakest card Ive ever seen.

- Finally, let's have a look at your hero power. So its summon a 2/2 for 3 mana, which can be upgraded. Unfortunately, as we have seen with Hack the System, even a 4/3 for 2 that can be summoned multiple times isn't really up to snuff. Also the setup for this to be even mildly amazing is so difficult its likely never worth doing.

Heartwarming cost 4, while sterner stuff cost 3. Its weird how anyone would contemplate playing the former over the latter when its obvious that sterner stuff is simply the better card, and easier to play. Both should cost ideally 3, and maybe even summon the ghoul out, because why not? If jade idol can go 1 mana 4/4 in most times, I dont see why 3 mana 4/4s that cant even damage heroes is in anyway broken.

Also, silencing effects that last throughout the game doesn't work. Comparable cards are frost lich jaina's lifesteal effect and crystal core. This wouldn't be broken anyway, because if you choose to ignore a minion on board, it should be fairly obvious what would happen. Plus, there's no silence in standard outside the much useless ironbeak owl so that's not really an issue.

The cost is a little iffy. 3 mana at the start? Why not just make it a 1/2 for 2? I think its still balanced even as a 2 mana 2/2. You can only do this once anyway, and it can't damage heroes.

 

Overall, nice job. Having a class that works like paladin, but centralized on the one particular minion generated by hp is smart. Maybe team5 should start taking notes.

- I would put The Fist of Ra-den in the same category as Frostmourne and Atiesh since those effects aren't really number based. If they said something along the lines of "Summon X amount of minions" it would be an entirely different story, but as it stands those are the few examples of outliers.

- Yeah I just kind of went for a baseline, I'd rather them be criticized for being underpowered than overpowered.

- You're right, I should've added an AoE freeze so Frostwake will be more beneficial. And should've added more freeze overall as well, but it's nothing an expansion or two can't fix.

- So I pointed out in an earlier comment above my reasoning for the Hero Power costing 3, I may be wrong in that reasoning as well. Heartwarming costing 4 comes from the fact that it doesn't increase the cost of the hero power. So if Sterner Stuff is played twice you have a 5 mana Hero Power that summons a 4/4. On the flip side just playing Heartwarming gives you a 3 cost Hero Power that makes a 2/4 without digging into your available mana even more. Now if we've played all four of those we get a 5 mana 4/6 to use as a board control tool. Additionally buff the power even further with cards like Gravewalker Gie.

- Hack the System is just bad. The setup was the polar opposite of what a Warrior needed. Swinging and losing Health to be rewarded with a Hero Power that doesn't restore that Health is a lost cause. I think Master of Ghouls has the advantage since it's available from the get-go.

I think you, and other people are right, it should cost 2 mana instead since it's capped out at one minion (unless an expansion changes that).

Thank you for reading and thank you for the input.