Blizzard has published a blog detailing class identity in Hearthstone with the Strengths, Weaknesses, and Limitations each class has to offer.
If you want to see all the new cards that are being added to the Basic & Classic sets, check out this post.
Quote From Blizzard As Hearthstone expands and more patrons make their way to the tavern, it becomes increasingly important for us to revisit past designs to make sure we are building on the right foundation. Over the past 5 years of evolution and growth, we’ve learned a lot about what makes each of the classes in Hearthstone different and what unique experiences players should have when playing each of these classes. Headed into our next update, we’d like to take this opportunity to outline our current class identity philosophy and to share our thoughts on where we see each class in the future.
Establishing Class Identity
When defining a class’s identity, we’re primarily concerned with staying true to the following three guidelines: adhere to a class’s “fantasy”, define the things the class should excel at, and establish where the class should struggle.
When looking at the fantasy of each class we want to capture the emotion of the class through gameplay. That could mean charging headfirst into battle as a Warrior, wielding devastating magical spells as a Mage, or plotting the perfect combination of moves as a Rogue. Once we know what makes a class tick, we can make better decisions about what cards fit and empower that fantasy.
Establishing stronger class identities serves several purposes. Giving classes better defined characteristics allows us to have more freedom when creating new mechanics. We can push further into the extremes knowing that each class has downsides to balance out new power. It also enables more counter-play when there is a clearer understanding of a class’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, the knowledge that a Druid is weak against big minions lets you start planning your strategy from the start of the match, with little to no knowledge of your opponent’s specific deck.
Class Breakdown
Here’s a brief look into how we currently picture each of the classes:
- Strengths: These are the things that a class focuses on and excels at.
- Limitations: These are aspects that might show up a few times in a class, but they are very limited in power level and the number of cards.
- Weaknesses: These are aspects that a class either doesn’t have or struggles to achieve effectively.
Druid: Attuned with nature, Druids rely on the magic of the wild, massive beasts, and swarms of woodland creatures. Their toolbox allows them the versatility to pivot from defense to aggression. However, they have limited ways to directly clear out enemy minions.
- Strengths: Mana generation, giant minions, minion swarms, card draw, Beasts
- Weaknesses: Destroying big minions, board clear
Hunter: Hunters use their wit, ferocity, and an army of beasts fighting alongside them to destroy their competition. Although they lack in defense, their aggression allows them to push through before they need it. A well-timed Secret or Deathrattle can help them gain clutch advantages against their opponent.
- Strengths: Beasts, face damage, Secrets, Deathrattle
- Limitations: Card draw and generation, board clear, Taunt
- Weaknesses: Healing
Mage: Mages have mastered the arcane arts and use their wide range of spells to take on even the most aggressive of opponents. Their defensive cadre is limited—while a good Mage usually has a useful tool to deal with any situation, a great Mage conjures the right tool when they need it.
- Strengths: Spells (big and small), damage spells, Secrets, board clear
- Limitations: Minion swarms
- Weaknesses: Healing, Taunt, minion buffs
Paladin: Paladins are great champions who support their minions with buffs, healing, and divine shields; however, they are not afraid to get their hands dirty when the time comes. They are methodical, controlling the battlefield through debuffs and focused attacks instead of destructive spells. Strength and persistence are the keys to a Paladin’s victory.
- Strengths: Minion swarms, minion buffs and debuffs, healing, Divine Shield, Secrets
- Limitations: Cost reduction
- Weaknesses: Direct damage spells, destroying big minions
Priest: Priests balance holy light and shadow magic to defeat their opponents. They control a battle’s outcome using powerful spells with situational applications. While not the most aggressive, they are able to generate, copy, and use combinations of cards to create a powerful army.
- Strengths: Healing, narrow but powerful spells, copying, single-minion buffs, Deathrattle
- Limitations: Card draw
- Weaknesses: Face damage spells, multi-minion buffs
Rogue: Rogues hide in the shadows, planning for the perfect time to strike. They may be sneaky and nimble, but they lack strong defenses and regeneration, forcing them to act quickly to incapacitate an opponent. Their innate ability to generate, draw, and burgle cards allows them to build up and execute on many synergies.
- Strengths: Combo cards, destroying individual minions, card draw, weapons, Deathrattle
- Weaknesses: Taunt, healing, board clear, multi-minion buffs
Shaman: Shamans wield the power of the elements along with their trusty totems. While they may not be able to generate resources as quickly as a Mage, they are able to overload their Mana Crystals with lightning, allowing them to ramp up for a burst of power faster than other classes. Shamans are thus rewarded for planning a few turns ahead by tuning their mana curve. Shamans also have strong tools to adapt to many situations. Although they are not as versatile as a Druid’s Choose One cards, they are able to extend their capabilities in ways other classes might not be able to.
- Strengths: Minion swarms, damage spells, Totems, Elementals, Murlocs
- Weaknesses: Card draw, card generation
Warlock: Sometimes sacrifices need to be made for power, and when you get demons involved this is often the case. The Warlock is comfortable with this bond and can manage all their resources (including their Health) in order to defeat their opponent. Their inherent ability to draw cards—with a sacrifice—allows them to keep the power flowing.
- Strengths: Powerful sacrifice effects, card draw, minion swarms, disruption, Demons
- Weaknesses: Face damage spells, big healing
Warrior: Warriors thirst for the battlefield. Primarily a martial class, they incorporate Armor, weapons, and minions to destroy their opponents. The minions who fight alongside each Warrior tend to be bigger and stronger, and they employ Rush and Taunt to control the flow of battle.
- Strengths: Armor, weapons, Taunt, destroying minions
- Limitations: Card draw and generation
- Weaknesses: Face damage spells, multi-minion buffs, minion swarms
Neutral: Neutral cards allow classes to extend their strengths to reach a specific goal with their deck or to make up for some of their weaknesses. For example, a Paladin can add Neutral Murlocs to help them round out their deck, or a Hunter may use a Neutral card that gives them a small amount of healing so they can stay in the fight longer. These cards are generally lower in power level so a class can never completely overcome their weaknesses.
Addressing Identity Issues
As we’ve worked to define what each class should bring to the table, we’ve found several cards that don’t match our established class identities. We’ll continue to adjust the Basic and Classic sets as needed, but for this update we’ve decided to address the following two cards: Mind Blast and Vanish.
While we like Rogues’ knack for getting out of sticky situations with targeted removal, Vanish allows them to effectively clear an entire board. This negates one of their intended weaknesses, reduces our ability to design towards their strengths, and makes it much harder for players to strategize against a Rogue.
Mind Blast gives Priests the ability to inflict a large amount of direct Face damage. We want to limit the amount of damage that Priests are able to deal from their hand, which will allow us to make cards that better emphasize their strengths in controlling the game.
We’ll be replacing these two cards with effects that better speak to their classes’ core fantasies:
For Priests, we’ve added Radiance since we wanted to have a low-cost spell that could be used for tricky spell synergies that also provided a powerful baseline heal for the class. Plaguebringer provides Rogues with another way to destroy minions and further establishes this class as the masters of Poison.
Since these are Basic and Classic cards (and so not subject to set rotation), we want to be careful with their power level so that Hearthstone can continue to feel fresh with each new year. At the same time, we’d like to provide effects that are natural for their class and can be useful in the right circumstances.
Comments
The backwards logic of some of these class descriptions is betrayed in part by the two changes to Rogue and Priest; the listed weaknesses are only weaknesses BECAUSE of the corresponding card changes, not due to some built-in class deficiency. A Rogue weaknesses is listed as “board clear.” But there aren’t that many class-specific board clears anywhere, period. Prior to, literally, today, with the removal of Vanish, no one would have interpreted board clear as a Rogue vulnerability; in fact, it would have been a part of their class identity, something echoed in other class cards like Daring Escape or Shadowstep. (Call it the “now you see me, now you don’t” mechanic.) Is board clear a part of Warrior class identity? Because Brawl does still exist. Hunter? Venomizer + Missile Launcher.
What appears to be the case is that they simply didn’t like Vanish’s interaction with the current meta. It potentially trivializes Token Druid, Murloc Shaman, Big Priest, Split Mage, or at least makes the board build up those decks are going for frustrating. Meanwhile, because they lowered the cost of [Hearthstone Card (Pogohopper) Not Found], it was suddenly possible to clear and play a number of Pogos onto an empty board.
Just give us some decent Shadow Priest stuff
Now i've noticed they didn't even mention the Combo, Overload or Choose One mechanics as class Strenghts, thats weird...
Blizz, are we even playing the same game?
This really maks me worried for the future.
Does this mean Control Shaman will just never be a real thing because they won't print any viable card draw?
Is the current Midrange Hunter just a mistake and they will never print conditional card draw for Hunter again?
Is Priest literally just a meme class with no actual winning strategy outside of Inner Fire?
Also their classification of "strengths" and "weaknesses" is utter BS at best
Demons are not a strength, they are a mechanic exclusive to Warlock. if they were a strength then they should be counted as a weakness for every other class
Also, Warrior basically has no weakness. Not having the ability to go wide is not a weakness it's merely not an archetype that's supported in the class (not to mention pirate warrior existed at some point). they basically mention a weakness that doesn't even feature into their gameplan. It's like saying armor generation is a weakness in Mage when it's just not even a relevant mechanic for the class
Basically Druid and Rogue autolose when an enemy gets a tall/wide board, meanwhile Warrior apparently has no actual weakness (which is wrong, since their weakness is being unable to really close out games outside of going for fatigue, which makes ressource generating strategies a natural counter)
All this tells me is that they want to really double down on rock-paper-sccissors instead of letting you build decks that try to adapt to situations. Have fun in a future where MAges win purely because they slammed down a Mountain Giant turn 4 and you just happened to play a class that's not allowed to beat that.
Not to say all your views are wrong (too much of this is subjective) but it is worth viewing everything from the other side, which is my intent as I pose counter arguments.
Draw in shaman: your sentence could exchange 'shaman' -> 'rogue' and 'card draw' -> (most of rogue's weaknesses) and make something people have asked for years. In short the answer is: probably yes. You are free to make traditional control decks for these classes, in the same sense as control warrior or priest, but of course they won't be as good. Instead you modify them to fit the tools available until you might not even call them control decks anymore.
Quite frankly: good. The whole point in having 9 classes is to limit tools available to any given deck. Every class should end up better than everyone else at something, to the point where other classes trying to mimic them are liable to be weaker and be considered 'not viable'. They might be OK in the grand scheme of things (e.g. control shaman > control rogue, hunter and druid), but being middle strength means nothing for the meta.
Anyhow, how does this respond to your question? It says if you want to make a control deck and card draw is important for you, you weigh up the options and discount shaman. Which I believe is much better than having the situation where you look at all 9 classes and all are equally good at everything.
Draw in hunter: firstly, draw came under 'limitations' (not a nicely defined thing in my book) rather than 'weakness', so by they made no suggestion of never printing conditional card draw again. Just that it will happen rarely. Even if they chose not to, I would be OK with it. As with shaman above, I think it is good to have the capacity to draw cards factor into decisions on which class to choose for a given archetype.
Priest only has Inner Fire: cf Nomi, Mecha'Thun, and others exist. A lot of decks do use Inner Fire because if the plan is for things to ever stick anyway, then it is an easy and cheesy win. E.g. silence priest doesn't have to run Divine Spirit + Inner Fire, but it lines up with the plan since it wins with minions punching the face anyway. In this case I would argue big, cheap, silenced minions are the primary win condition, with DS+IF as a powerful alternative in case the situation arises where it does the job.
Demons as a 'strength': if neutral demons didn't exist I would agree with you. However, they do and there is no denying warlock generally has a much greater capacity to exploit them than other classes do, just because they have the demon tribe.
As for whether demons (and totems, and every other tribe since none are made use of equally well by all classes) should be listed as weaknesses of other classes: sure, if you want the full list they'd be there. But does this really need writing down?
Warriors not caring about going wide: well, it's never part of their game plan because warriors suck at it. If they were good at going wide you can be sure they would do it sometimes. View it this way: you want to make a deck that goes wide, but are yet to even pick a class. Among others you discount warrior because it has nothing to make the deck work, and instead land on druid, shaman, warlock or pally (possibly hunter if you are a fan of the class). Why? Because the chosen archetype plays to their strengths, while the other classes are weak at it.
Same goes for armour in mage. Its not part of the game plan precisely because they are weak at it. If you try to instead argue mage just happens to not include it in their game plan through choice, then be my guest and make an effective armour-focused mage....
The rule of thumb is: if a mechanic is never part of a class' game plan, its probably because they are weak at it.
Druid/rogue auto-lose to a tall and wide board: well yes, they can struggle to deal with it effectively. But that doesn't mean they cannot beat decks that build such boards; they just have to prevent the board being built in the first place. E.g. rogue can single target kill minions as they come down before they build up. Yet again this is good as it means each class plays differently.
Re turn 4 Mountain Giant in mage: turn 4 Mountain Giants are nothing new (see Handlock), and that is something I don't mind. How they multiply if you cannot deal with them is however a problem and I agree it is much too punishing just for a choice of class. Mana cheating and giants have caused so much grief over HS's history that I have to wonder whether they should change a minion's mana cost to its played cost rather than base one...
I'll miss my Archmage Vargoth + Mind Blast finisher 😭
Seems like these class identities is more of a goal than a reality. I wonder how much impact they can make on wild class identities? Ultimately, I am not that excited but I am glad they have a vision. Let's see where it goes.
I think they see card draw as a limitation in Priest as in: you need a Combo of cards or situation to draw. That's indeed what Northshire Cleric already is. The card does not actively draw on its own.
Anyway, i like design restrictions. They make me feel safer from BS.
its one of the best atm in card generation only hagatha itselfs and card draw was never so easy with the totem far sight
This new priest card is so uninteresting and pathetically week... Rogue card can give interesting options and looks good for the arena.... but wasting a card to heal face for 5? I hardly imagine anything to motivate players to play it. Tricky spell synergies? If your deck is built around that then why not play some spells that do something useful?
cause basic cards that do useful things are scary, could easily heal 10 and still be MEH..
i think rogue need more lifesteal or another heal,rogues become too slow(exept goldfish with pogos),thats why rogue need to upgrade lifesaving ability.
Mage limitation is minion swarm? Shaman limitation is card generation? Are they even playing the game right now? In the current meta, it’s completely opposite of that.
These thing are for moving forward, a lot of people seem to miss that
Also limitation is not the same as weakness. It´s more like a: sometimes they will be good at that, and sometimes not.
Well... don't know what to say. I won't touch topics of Priest in Standard and class balance, since both have been thoroughly discussed before.
Thematically, I'm really sad they're consistently axing more agressive and precise shadow parts of Priest. Exploring possibilities for Shadowform or cost reduction for Velen-Mindblast while having tools for control - that what was fun in those ancient metas.
To reiterate - Priest deckbuilding fun was in having potentially powerful shadow spells that could do face damage, but those spells were hard to fit in a deck. When it clicked - it felt awesome. Shadow felt awesome. And now, what they're saying spells "No more Shadow awesomeness", telling us to never expect that kind of Priest fun again in Standard.
That how it feels.
Wait, is Card draw and generation really a weakness of shaman?Are they really sure about that?
It‘s the direction they want to go from now on.
Same for warlock.. no big healing? Amethyst spellstone is laughing in his wild grave.
It‘s a little sad because warlock was the strongest when he got access to healing. E
yeah, except for [Hearthstone Card (swamp queen hagatha) Not Found], shamans don't have very good draw.