Saviours of Uldum and class identity.

A bit before the release of SoU we got a very nice article discussing each classes strengths and weaknesses.

https://outof.cards/hearthstone/148-keeping-hearthstone-unique-class-identity-breakdown

I'd like your opinion on what was said and what we got.

I personally mostly play hunter and from what I saw most of the hunter cards supports what the article said

Hyena Alpha fits both beast and secret synergies,

Swarm of Locusts just as Unleash the Hounds fits the beast synergies

The odd ones are Wild Bloodstinger (which is still a beast) and  the quest ,Unseal the Vault which, unlike the previous one that went with hunter's affinity with one drops, doesn't seem to fit at all...

Hunters are not known to swarm, don't usually wait for 20 minions to be summoned before killing the opponent and rarely has a board of tokens that sticks (it's usually 1/1s)

Now if it looked like Dinomancy and said  "give your beasts +x/+x " (I leave the figures, costs and details to pros of balance)  I would love it

Right now it seems Mech hunter will still rule supreme even though the class has nothing to do with mechs.

I love the shaman quest.  Now you can generate two cards from each battlecry instead of one.  What great class design! /s

Well, they don't mention swarm or mechs in Hunter table, so one might think they are not out of place in Hunter.

Real issue is, that Class Identity table they posted is utter trash. Just keywords thrown at random. The only ones with real meaning are the weaknesses. The rest is bound to be blown up in one expansion or another...

PS: people might like Mechs, and i think Magnetic was great design, but they simply pushed the whole tribe beyond what was reasonable. It's currently all over and out of place flavor-wise. Few strategical Mechs would have been much better.

I think the class identity breakdown is a good starting point in making each class feel distinctive. However, some of the cards in SoU don't seem to fit at all like the Paladin Quest. The other quests definitely feel in line with their respective classes. Priest heals, Rogue steals, Warrior uses weapons, Mage casts spells, Hunter summons beasts/minions, and Shamans like Battlecrys(?).

The issue with the class identity breakdown is that now anytime they go outside of those guidelines, people complain. I think they should either stick to it like Magic: the Gathering does, or delete the post and just use the guideline internally.

IMO Uldum was just the first example of the class identity memo negatively impacting HS card design, with more to follow. I've heard that Plague of Madness was a last-minute change from an actual board clear because the devs belatedly realised that rogue's not allowed to have mass removal.

Publishing the class identity document was a totally unforced error on Blizzard's part: they could have just not posted the damn thing in a transparent attempt to rationalise their hall of fame decisions, but instead they gave everyone unlimited ammo to criticise any and all future choices by the developers, either for following the memo too strictly or for straying from it.

I think the Shaman Uldum identity, similarly to the Hunter identity seems to be in line with the article. 

P.S: Remember Freeze Shaman !!!

I still don't know why they even bothered with that terrible post which literally says nothing of value (Demons are a STRENGTH for Warlock? I guess so if you consider being the only class to have demons printed for them as a strength)

Obligatory Shaman card generation meme

Granted, it could be that that post was written after SoU was designed (pretty much confirmed actually by Plague of Madness, which was at some point an AoE spell) so they haven't committed to it yet....but if they really go down this path then that's how Hearthstone will eventually die because every class just gets to do the same thing over and over again with no innovation.

Remember that Hunter would still be stuck with the old "hope you curve until Highmane, otherwise you have no chance to beat anyone" Midrange horseshit if it wasn't for cards like Subject 9 and Master's Call which actually incentivized deck building by offering Hunter a chance at reliable card draw.

Also, HUnter and swarming are kind of a thing. Not as much as Paladin, Shaman or Druid, but we have stuff like Halazzi, Snake Trap, as well as a general tendency to go wide in the early game (at least a lot of past Hunter decks did), so it's not really ouf of left field. The problem with the quest is mostly that it doesn't really seem to have a point considering the damage you accumulate with your regular hero power of the game is probably just about as much as you would get from the Quest reward with your final push.

Not to mention that there aren't that many good token cards for Hunter, so really you're just wasting deckspace trying to complete a quest that essentially does what Hunter is already good at: killing your opponent

Quote From AliRadicali

IMO Uldum was just the first example of the class identity memo negatively impacting HS card design, with more to follow. I've heard that Plague of Madness was a last-minute change from an actual board clear because the devs belatedly realised that rogue's not allowed to have mass removal.

Publishing the class identity document was a totally unforced error on Blizzard's part: they could have just not posted the damn thing in a transparent attempt to rationalise their hall of fame decisions, but instead they gave everyone unlimited ammo to criticise any and all future choices by the developers, either for following the memo too strictly or for straying from it.

to be fair, if any of the other plagues are an indication, then Rogue having an AoE in any comparable form would be bad for the game in the long run...or it would just end up being useless because Rogue still doesn't get taunt or heals and needs to maintain board presence to beat aggression.

Also the dev team has been much more communicative lately so maybe they just wanted to get it out there to get some feedback...which should lead them to dropping this whole class identity BS and just design cards that give classes different option for building specific decks (like card draw in Hunter via Master'S Call and Subject 9 or card draw for Shaman via Spirit of the Frog)

Quote From YourPrivateNightmare

Quote From AliRadicali

IMO Uldum was just the first example of the class identity memo negatively impacting HS card design, with more to follow. I've heard that Plague of Madness was a last-minute change from an actual board clear because the devs belatedly realised that rogue's not allowed to have mass removal.

Publishing the class identity document was a totally unforced error on Blizzard's part: they could have just not posted the damn thing in a transparent attempt to rationalise their hall of fame decisions, but instead they gave everyone unlimited ammo to criticise any and all future choices by the developers, either for following the memo too strictly or for straying from it.

to be fair, if any of the other plagues are an indication, then Rogue having an AoE in any comparable form would be bad for the game in the long run...or it would just end up being useless because Rogue still doesn't get taunt or heals and needs to maintain board presence to beat aggression.

Also the dev team has been much more communicative lately so maybe they just wanted to get it out there to get some feedback...which should lead them to dropping this whole class identity BS and just design cards that give classes different option for building specific decks (like card draw in Hunter via Master'S Call and Subject 9 or card draw for Shaman via Spirit of the Frog)

 

I disagree. For one, it seems to me one of the main benefits of having evergreen and rotating sets is that you can have deviant cards in the latter because they rotate out anyway, EG Conjurer's Calling for mage or Hagatha the Witch for shaman. What's more, it's not as if all of the remaining plagues are equally powerful, for example the warlock plague is pretty weak and situational. They could have made a similar card for rogue that returns all friendly minions to hand and bounces a random enemy minion for each friendly returned in this way; I doubt that would have been much of a balance concern and it would have at least lived up to the idea of a board clear cycle for all of the villain classes.

I understand team 5 wanting to be more responsive and open, and I think that's a good idea in general, but to me the class identity document seemed more like an ass-pull to explain away the rather abrupt and arbitrary HoF-ing of Vanish and Mind Blast. If you just take it as a loose guideline then it doesn't explain the urgency in removing those cards, whereas if you take it as a hard set of rules then they've already broken their promise in the very next set they released after explaining their policy. I think they were open, but less than honest with the memo, and now they're stuck in their contradictions and frantically altering design decisions after-the-fact rather than just admitting that maybe the class identity thing was a poor choice, or at least poorly communicated.

An interesting outcome. I think a guideline for each class is good for the game. We're not talking about a bunch of set-in-stone rules but just a guideline that keeps the variety going.

What I like about the class identity thingy is that it provides the challenge I seek.. Think about a Mecha'thun hunter deck or a zoo priest/warrior. They provide a challenge because of the classes weakness.

Add in infinite card generation for hunter and everybody gets mad. Add in near infinite healing in mage and it singlehandedly wins games. 

I gotta agree though that making the guideline public gives trolls and salty players much ammo but hey does it really change much?