Sigils are a new mechanic that is arriving in Forged in the Barrens for Demon Hunters! This new type of spell has a special icon that will appear inside of the secret area of the board to let you and your opponent know what is about to trigger.
- The Icon is similar to the trigger lighting bolt found on minions.
- You and your opponent can both mouseover the icon to see which card it is.
- The slot the sigil appears in will consume a slot that would normally be used for secrets.
- Celestalon thinks Demon Hunters have a few extra "secret" slots (more than 5) but was unable to confirm at this time.
The first sigil to be revealed so far is Sigil of Flame.
The Flavor - What Are Demon Hunter Sigils?
Sigils are a mechanic that Demon Hunters have in World of Warcraft; Specifically the tanking specialization, Vengeance.
These are instant cast abilities that target a location of your choosing and perform an effect after a short delay (2 seconds as of writing). There are three Sigils available to Demon Hunters in Shadowlands:
- Sigil of Flame - Deals (11.5% of Attack power) Fire damage
- Sigil of Silence - Silences all enemies affected by the sigil for 6 sec.
- Sigil of Misery - Causes all enemies affected by the sigil to cower in fear, disorienting them for 20 sec.
- Sigil of Chains (Talent) - All enemies affected by the sigil are pulled to its center and are snared, reducing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec.
Sigil spell icons in World of Warcraft
The delay aspect of sigils in World of Warcraft translates over to Hearthstone quite well by making them work kind of like Secrets - except that they aren't secret (you'd be able to see the Sigil on the ground in World of Warcraft too) and they, so far at least, always activate at the start of your next turn. Looking at how the first one revealed, Sigil of Flame, it too mimic its World of Warcraft brother.
What could the other Sigils do? Let's try and make the mechanics match up with Hearthstone!
Sigil of Silence has the mechanic right in the name. It is quite possible this could be an AoE silence that could hit the entire board. It would add a serious tool to Demon Hunter that could help them break through the annoyance of buffs and those pesky taunt minions that like to get in their way when they want to setup a face attack.
Sigil of Misery is a fear effect. In World of Warcraft, a fear will make an enemy run away, allowing you to place some distance between yourself and the target so you can run or try and turn the tides of battle. We haven't really seen the same effect in Hearthstone, not that cards can really run away, but we did see a card with the name it in a Tavern Brawl! The Headless Horseman Rides brawl that we saw in 2017 and 2018 had Fear which, for 7 mana, destroyed minions with 4 Attack or less. That's definitely one way to win a fight!
Sigil of Chains applies some crowd control and makes everyone slow things down. Demon Hunter has access to a chains-themed card already through Duels and its called Binding Chains! Forcing random minions to go Dormant definitely slows the game down in your favor and it makes for some great thematic. We've also got another existing chains thematic in Hearthstone from all the way back in the Curse of Naxxramas adventure; Kel'Thuzad and his Chains made for quite an annoying card. If the Kel'Thuzad Chains effect was the same one we see from the Sigil, it would be nice because the enemy player can still have a chance to reduce the pain on your turn by choosing to not play anything too extreme and possibly even just trading their minions to get them off the field.
Image from BlizzardWatch
All of this is just a fun exercise in trying to make the spells match up to World of Warcraft and shouldn't be taken as their real effects - we'll need to wait for the reveals to see that!
World of Warcraft also has some other synergy with Sigils. If this is going to be a larger mechanic for Demon Hunters, much like Librams in Paladin, it is possible we could see some helper cards that give us a hand with improving them. These are some talents a Demon Hunter can take in WoW to buff their Sigils.
- Sigil Mastery (PVP) - Reduces the cooldown of your Sigils by an additional 25%.
- Quickened Sigils - All Sigils activate 1 second faster, and their cooldowns are reduced by 20%.
- Concentrated Sigils - All Sigils are now targeted at your location, and the duration of their effects is increased by 2 sec.
The reason I mentioned Paladins Librams was because of sigils in World of Warcraft's Demon Hunter having access to cooldown reduction. In Hearthstone, we'd see this as a reduction in card costs so it would make sense that there could be a minion or spell that assist you in getting out larger-cost Sigils on the cheap. Concentrated Sigils could translate into a spell that activates your next sigil instantly, though that might be a bit crazy so its cost would almost certainly be more towards the mid-range.
Stay tuned for the future reveals that will give us more Sigils!
Celestalon on Demon Hunter Sigils
Quote From Celestalon I'm super hyped for the Demon Hunter card that was just revealed, Sigil of Flame. It's the first in a series of Sigil spells that we're doing for them. I loved working on these, taking a mechanic from WoW and trying to imagine how it could work in Hearthstone.
For those curious how it looks in-game, there's a new icon (similar to the trigger lightning bolt on minions) that appears in your Secret zone. Mousing over it displays the card (to both players, it's not secret).
Does it take a secret slot?
Yes. (I think DHs probably have a few extra.) (Source)
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Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens to learn more about the new expansion and to see all the revealed cards!
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Comments
Sweet! What a creative idea. Looking forward to trying these out.
Are these Three Sigils you reference in the article something like Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide trilogy, in that there are 4? (Yes I know the Hitchhikers Guide trilogy of 4 had 5 books)
I like the idea, but the icon's a l'il off. It looks too polished next to Hearthstone's rustic game board, and perhaps too large.
These are all just Secrets with the trigger "At the end of your opponent's turn." Of course, they are easier to play around than Secrets because the information isn't hidden, so they are going to be slightly more powerful for the Cost. That doesn't really make them more interesting though. The most important difference from a design perspective is that they can have varying Costs, and I'm 100 percent certain that's how this whole idea came about.
I hope that this is the start of the Dev Team exploring "permanent enchantments" as well. It would be great to see the "secret tree" as a way to implement permanents similar to MtG, as it creates new layers of game play experience.
Kinda nice having more pro-active tools in the game.
Hoping some of the other classes can be more pro-active, too
SO COOL!!! They are doing a great job bringing WoW DH's mechanics to Hearthstone. Besides, Vengeance DH is one of my favorite specs in the game and at the moment they're dominating the tank meta!
Imagine what they can/will do with Monk/DK mechanics when they're implemented! We'll see!
Sigil of Blugil: Give a minion in your hand Charge, +2 Attack
pls no...
So Competitive Spirit has been Secretly a sigil this whole time?
Competitive spirit still requires you to have at least 1 minion to trigger, so I assume it is not quite equivalent. Perhaps if DH gets a minion-buff sigil we'll be able to test it, but DH doesn't really buff minions so that's probably not likely.
Thanks for the informative writeup!
Agreed! I haven't played WoW in 10 years, so it was nice to have a breakdown of what the Hearthstone designers could be using as inspiration.
My speculations:
- Sigil of Silence (2 mana): At the start of your next turn, Silence all minions.
- Sigil of Misery (4 mana): At the start of your next turn, return 2 random enemy minions to your opponent's hand.
- Sigil of Chains (4 mana): At the start of your next turn, take control of 2 random enemy minions until the end of your turn.
- Several sigils of the same type can be active at the same time
- All active sigils share the same slot: there is no limit of active sigils you can have (mouseover the lighting bolt icon to see all active sigils)
- There will be a card (spell or minion) to trigger immediately all currently active sigils
Hopefully there's a card that activates your sigils instantly. I love this concept though.
For Sigil of Misery could be fine if they make something like all the minions run out in fear and "At the start of your turn all minions attack another random minion", something similar as we seen in Mass Hysteria.
My guesses:
Sigil of Silence will silence all minions. (seems kind of obvious)
Sigil of Misery could do a Mass Histeria type of effect
Sigil of Chains gives -x attack to all minions
We wrote the same more or less at the same time about Sigil of Misery but I spent too much time looking for the name on wiki xD
But glad to see that somebody shares my thoughts :)
Knowing Blizzard, it will fail if your secret slots are full.
But does it considered as a secret? Does SI:7 Infiltrator works?