Anyone else think the recent post about class pros/cons is incredibly lopsided?

I look at classes like rogue, which apparently supposed to have 4 major weaknesses and then see how other classes apparent intended fantasy is supposed to have maybe 2. Plus, I had to laugh at what T5 thought warlock was supposed to be 'weak' against. Warlocks are perhaps the most versatile class in the game when it comes to being able to make an effective deck from almost every single playstyle (aggro, midrange/tempo, combo, control, OTK) in both wild and standard to many degrees.

What are your impressions about the attempt to define HS class identity?

it's fine.  People are already big on thinking of themselves as a particular class player.  This just encourages it.  If you like going face you are a hunter player.  That sort of thing.  I would think that it would make it harder to make cards over time as the class ends up locked to an archetype that you cant' really experiment away from. But that's a matter of the design teams to worry about, not me.  

Not sure what you mean by laughing at warlock's 'weaknesses'.  They don't have good healing or great ways to burn an opponent from the hand anymore and the past has shown that they REALLY go off the rails whenever they have either.  That's the point of the 'weaknesses': it's a reminder for the team that a class should NOT have everything at once.  Don't let a warrior be able to zoo out or they go Pirate Warrior on you.  Jaina DK shows why mage shouldn't have reliable healing.  That sort of thing.  This is them deciding to remember that decks shouldn't be able to do everything well.

Apart from Druid not being able to remove big threats, I don't really agree with what they've put as class weaknesses/limitations. Fro example, Mage is often using Mountain Giants and duplicating them, to create an early 'swarm' of sorts (possibly 3 mountain giants on the board in quick succession!). This doesnt really seem to fit its identity as defined by Blizzard, not least because it relies on huge minions to bash the enemy to bits. Do Blizzard play their own game?

Quote From Dakarian

it's fine.  People are already big on thinking of themselves as a particular class player.  This just encourages it.  If you like going face you are a hunter player.  That sort of thing.  I would think that it would make it harder to make cards over time as the class ends up locked to an archetype that you cant' really experiment away from. But that's a matter of the design teams to worry about, not me.  

 

Not sure what you mean by laughing at warlock's 'weaknesses'.  They don't have good healing or great ways to burn an opponent from the hand anymore and the past has shown that they REALLY go off the rails whenever they have either.  That's the point of the 'weaknesses': it's a reminder for the team that a class should NOT have everything at once.  Don't let a warrior be able to zoo out or they go Pirate Warrior on you.  Jaina DK shows why mage shouldn't have reliable healing.  That sort of thing.  This is them deciding to remember that decks shouldn't be able to do everything well.

Lol yeah, like Jaina decks have ever gone past tier 2. 

What about mage difficulty to swarm boards and then conjurer's calling into 5 minions? 

Hunter card draw limitation? Just draw 3 beasts from your deck already! Master's Call

Shaman's card draw? Spirit of the Frog half your deck. Shaman's card generation? Are you kidding me? 2 Hagatha's, infinite murlocks, various battlecrys also repeated by shudderwock... 

Ansewring OP:

Yes. They wrote such a lengthy explanation (full of obvious well known facts and partial lies) just to justify them removing mind blast and vanish. Two wonderful, perfect fitting cards that they obviously can't balance.The hilarious thing is that the cards are going into wild (standard's dumpster) where apparently all this class identity importance does not apply :)

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

for example, people are laughing at shamans 'bad card generation'. but without hagatha the witch, kragwa, and underbelly angler, they really don't have very good card advantage, and kragwa and underbelly are only viable in one/two decks. and no, cards like shudderwock, and hagatha number 2 don't count because they generate value, they don't add cards to your hand. 

and all those cards are expansion cards, but in the core of shaman, there is not much card draw outside of manatide totem, which is kind of really bad.

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

for example, people are laughing at shamans 'bad card generation'. but without hagatha the witch, kragwa, and underbelly angler, they really don't have very good card advantage, and kragwa and underbelly are only viable in one/two decks. and no, cards like shudderwock, and hagatha number 2 don't count because they generate value, they don't add cards to your hand. 

and all those cards are adventure cards, but in the core of shaman, there is not much card draw outside of manatide totem, which is kind of really bad.

Anyway they made those cards so what's the point of bringing up class identity when they feel like it and turn a blind eye to other cards? 

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

Basically this, guys. These aren't hard and fast rules that they must always adhere to strictly. They're general guidelines that can be toyed with to fit whatever fantasy the current set of expacs are selling.

Quote From RandomGuy

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

Basically this, guys. These aren't hard and fast rules that they must always adhere to strictly. They're general guidelines that can be toyed with to fit whatever fantasy the current set of expacs are selling.

I get those are no hard rules but why bring them out at all, just be sincere and say "we can't balance vanish and mind blast so we're gonna dump em into wild, cya" 

I took it as a checkpoint to mark their design philosophy taking these rules more seriously from now on. The rotation of Mind Blast and Vanish seems to match the ideology they are trying to push forward. Blizzard has broken these rules in the past, obviously, but that might not have been ideal.

I think they are doing the opposite of what the Year of the Mammoth did; instead of merging most classes' strengths and weaknesses together and letting each deck be its own thing, they are pushing each class towards its own thing and making it more unique.

Of course, we'll have to wait until the next set to see if this is correct or not, but I am expecting none of the imposed weaknesses or limitations of each class to be 'fixed' by the upcoming cards.

Quote From Agon

Quote From RandomGuy

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

Basically this, guys. These aren't hard and fast rules that they must always adhere to strictly. They're general guidelines that can be toyed with to fit whatever fantasy the current set of expacs are selling.

I get those are no hard rules but why bring them out at all, just be sincere and say "we can't balance vanish and mind blast so we're gonna dump em into wild, cya" 

Because that isn't what happened. Vanish isn't even a particularly good card.

Yeah sure, let's all believe the class identity tale haha 

I also had the impression that each trait was clumsily defined, and... asymmetrical?

Like, words with different weight, somehow put together to fill the list for each class.

eg. Beast is a tag, a flavor if you like, but it has nothing to do on how a given class/archetype works. It's just a tribal synergy. Beasts in Druid work in the same way as Demons in Warlock. So why bothering to define it as a trait?

Same goes with Deathrattle (in Priest). What does that mean? It's just keyword, at best they could have written "sticky minions", that's more like a defining trait.

All that on top of the asymmetrical number of traits, as you mentioned.

Yet I'm happy they spent some effort trying to define class traits. I actually hope they are more restrictive than they've been so far, since their own weaknesses have been blown wide and large up to this point. Too much to even be called "weakness".

I hope it's coherently developed into something meaningful, not random stuff.

The reason they introduced Standard and Wild in the first place was, among other things, to allow classes to do something different for a certain amount of time. For example, Hunters had difficulty generating value, so lets give them DK Rexxar for a year and a half, let them wear that hat for a while (I know, Hunter have a LOT of value nowadays but that wasn't the case before).

The post they made to describe class identity was literally a way for them to spit on that idea. Quite frankly, if they go through with it, there is a chance that the rotation cycles will no longer feel special because the classes will be forced to play the same way, just with different cards.

In the meantime, a rotating classic set (for example) which would allow them much more freedom to tweak with classes for a period is something that eludes them. Not only that, the fact that the dust and gold systems continue being outdated and extremely detrimental to new players is also ignored.

MTGA is a more expensive game than Hearthstone and even they allow for a F2P guy like me to get pretty much every deck I want without the fear of crafting cards and getting them from packs later. HS only allows that for Legendary minions. Meanwhile, I crafted one Jumbo Imp so I could have two to try a Demonlock deck and I got two extras as my two following epic drops from RoS. By doing stuff like that, they maybe make a small percentage of whales spend an extra 100$/€ on packs for that extra golden legendary but, guess what, they were already going to do that.

What will also happen is people who decide to sometimes spend money on pack promotions feel like their money won't mean as much if half the epics you get are extras while you never get the two copies of the cool yet terrible card you just want to have fun with. 

PS: Yeah, the last two paragraphs were mostly unrelated rant filled with confirmation bias, but those greedy business practices of treating costumers like cash registers really annoy me. And this "class identity" speech really reeks of the greedy business practice.

Quote From Agon

Yeah sure, let's all believe the class identity tale haha 

Better than all putting on our tinfoil hats!

I honestly didn't think much of it.  After reading this post I looked at Rogue again and laughed a little when one of their weaknesses is "multi-minion buffs".  No wonder Team 5 has nerfed the Rogue quest over and over again to try and kill it!  They must not have known that was a desired weakness of the class when they printed that one!

One of the Shaman strengths listed was ‘totems’ which hasn’t been good since Totem Golem and Thing from Below. It’s still the only RNG Hero Power

Quote From ElSabidon

The reason they introduced Standard and Wild in the first place was, among other things, to allow classes to do something different for a certain amount of time. For example, Hunters had difficulty generating value, so lets give them DK Rexxar for a year and a half, let them wear that hat for a while (I know, Hunter have a LOT of value nowadays but that wasn't the case before).

The post they made to describe class identity was literally a way for them to spit on that idea. Quite frankly, if they go through with it, there is a chance that the rotation cycles will no longer feel special because the classes will be forced to play the same way, just with different cards.

In the meantime, a rotating classic set (for example) which would allow them much more freedom to tweak with classes for a period is something that eludes them. Not only that, the fact that the dust and gold systems continue being outdated and extremely detrimental to new players is also ignored.

MTGA is a more expensive game than Hearthstone and even they allow for a F2P guy like me to get pretty much every deck I want without the fear of crafting cards and getting them from packs later. HS only allows that for Legendary minions. Meanwhile, I crafted one Jumbo Imp so I could have two to try a Demonlock deck and I got two extras as my two following epic drops from RoS. By doing stuff like that, they maybe make a small percentage of whales spend an extra 100$/€ on packs for that extra golden legendary but, guess what, they were already going to do that.

What will also happen is people who decide to sometimes spend money on pack promotions feel like their money won't mean as much if half the epics you get are extras while you never get the two copies of the cool yet terrible card you just want to have fun with. 

PS: Yeah, the last two paragraphs were mostly unrelated rant filled with confirmation bias, but those greedy business practices of treating costumers like cash registers really annoy me. And this "class identity" speech really reeks of the greedy business practice.

In fact, you should never craft epics in hearthstone; and that means that you will not play some deck until you find the right epic in packs. That sometime won't happen. Then you find 2x druid odd epic in Witchwood and use Odd Druid to (un)climb just because.

However, I think almost the same you wrote: the system of classes and rotations means that every expansion is not based on class identity: it's based on breaking some point of class identity. For example: in a set X we give a good healing to warlock just to push controllock, then after rotation we print a lot of small minion for pushing zoolock; in the same set X, we print a lot of Rush/charge minion for warrior, while after the rotation we print a new way to gain the upgraded hero power.

This would mean that in standard you always play classes in the standard way (pun intended) and in a new way that change yearly, while in wild after some sets you will be able to play every archetype (aggro, midrange, control, combo) with every classes, but in 9 different ways.

Instead, if we focus too much on class identity, we'll have always the same standard archetype in standard, and the same standard archetype but overpowered in wild. Only that in standard you can forget to reprint some tools for some classes, so they'll disappear while others shine.

Being a rather beta person I lack some precision in the post. When defining strengths and weaknesses about classes, I want to see actual numbers which we can check and verify being true or false. For instance. Mage strength is bord clear. Paladin's weakness is direct damage spells and destroying big minions. Seems paladin has a hard time doing a bord clear while for mages it should be super easy. Paladin's OTK deck has 4 guaranteed board clears ready using Equality and Shrink Ray. Mages have blizzard, flamestrike, blast wave and some more aoe spells, but no guaranteed board clear at all. If a paladin needs to destroy a big minion he can choose from two class spells? How is this supposed to be a weakness then? Is it a weakness when a class has less than 4 cards in his deck dealing with it? Come on. Complete nonsense.

I find that post by Team 5 pretty delusional: they've stated things that they couldn't keep up with in the first place while also wondering on a "dangerous" argument. Why putting label on each class, when no one asked for them? Players have asked for ages to shake up those same identities in some way because in the long run that kind of mentality was locking each class into some predictable (and than boring) style.

They've made such a long and pointless explanation to just end up saying that Vanish and Mind Blast don't fit what they think are Rogue's and Priest's themes, so they're moving them to the HoF. Why they cannot wrote down the gameplay reasons behind that choice, as they've always done before, while giving us real insights and datas on that?

On top of that they've tried to justify how terrible almost all of the new cards are by repeating the same old mantra about "controlling the powerlevel of Basic and Classic because they don't rotate", while deciding in the exact same moment to push into Basic and Classic new cards after having moved out so many of them. Instead of this in/out things at random moments, they should instead thinking of completly rework the idea of a fixed amount of cards for Standard.

It feels like a whole lot of rhetoric spun just to justify the removal of yet another two cards from the evergreen collection after-the-fact. I'm so tired of Blizzard twisting every which way to avoid doing the inevitable and rotating out classic. Even the new cards leave me with a bad taste in my mouth knowing why they're being introduced and what could have been instead. Not to mention them mostly being bland or unplayable.

I get the impression these are the directions they intend to go and would like to go, not the current State of the Game.  

With that said, I do feel like their actions are a bit lopsided/unbalanced.  While I agree that Vanish and Mind Blast don't fit their vision for class identity, Vanish almost never saw recent play and the 4-mana 3/3 that replaced it very well could, while Mind Blast was pretty central as a win condition in many Priest decks, and the new 1-mana spell most likely won't.  Looking at current class power levels, Rogue is very strong and loses a card it never plays, but gains a card it might.  And Priest is.....not good, and will lose a 'build around' card, and gain something that is pretty bad. 

With THAT said, I am not a game dev or tester, and I assume T5 has done quite a bit of internal testing....I'm very doubting but I will wait to make any real judgement until I've seen these changes go into effect. 

Them: Priest should not hit face with spells.

Reality: Priest has shadowform.

Not only is Priest at the crap end of the spectrum right now (Thief decks for Priest don't work when you have synergy-fueled trash aggro decks like demons, murlocs and treants), Mind Blast wasn't on the meta radar, even with the legendary copying a spell cast. If this was a year ago when you could fish out Velen and Malygos for a finish, yeah, it would be met with "the community has been requesting this."

Decks that rely on Inner Fire to win are lazy to me. It's even lazier when Team 5 doesn't give priest another win condition and removes a good one (when it is supported).

Even Vanish nerf puzzles me and I don't play Rogue. It's like someone at Team 5/Blizzard opened Hearthstone complaint mail from a year ago and applied it.

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

for example, people are laughing at shamans 'bad card generation'. but without hagatha the witch, kragwa, and underbelly angler, they really don't have very good card advantage, and kragwa and underbelly are only viable in one/two decks. and no, cards like shudderwock, and hagatha number 2 don't count because they generate value, they don't add cards to your hand. 

and all those cards are adventure cards, but in the core of shaman, there is not much card draw outside of manatide totem, which is kind of really bad.

I agree with your point - for example on Priest and Hunter's card draw - but Shaman really isn't struggling at all on card generation. They have Mana Tide Totem, Far Sight, Haunting Visions, Earthen Might and Elementary Reaction for elemental decks, Ice Fishing, Siltfin Spiritwalker and Neptulon for murloc decks, Storm Chaser, Bogshaper, and Blazing Invocation and Finders Keepers which turn up constantly from that one Lackey as well as Hagatha the Witch. Surely a lot of that list is trash, but even then that list is so lengthy that it's absurd to say Shamans are in the slightest limited in card draw and generation.

The whole post just seemingly has amazingly little thought put into it. Like what kind of weakness is lacking face damage spells? It's just an excuse for that some classes don't have real or enough weaknesses. And Warlock's "big healing"? *****, they knew five years ago that weakness was healing, and then they gave Warlock heals to fulfill that vampire flavour, leaving the class with no significant weaknesses - which made Cubelock a huge problem when suddenly Warlock, the class with no good heals, had the second strongest heal engine in the game - attached to a tempo efficient and under-costed board fill.

The biggest misconceptions, however, are Priest and Shaman imo.

Priest has a shadow side, that, if anything, hasn't been explored enough, and here Blizzard is taking a step away from it because they haven't figured out Priest's weaknesses - the most significant one being the lack of tempo oriented tools, something that has defined the class for the whole game's existence (except for BRM when fixing that weakness broke the class and created a deck that didn't fit the class at all). Arguably silence decks break this flavour as well, but imho they're a net positive for the flavour because self-silence is a lot stronger and clearer factor than the abstract concept of tempo.

And what Shaman is, is a jack-of-all-trades(-master-of-none), with three tribes getting consistent support and good tools to leave design space for aggro, midrange, control, combo and anything between. It's a class without clear weaknesses, and that's not a strictly negative thing.

Quote From ShotgunSoul

Them: Priest should not hit face with spells.

Reality: Priest has shadowform.

Not only is Priest at the crap end of the spectrum right now (Thief decks for Priest don't work when you have synergy-fueled trash aggro decks like demons, murlocs and treants), Mind Blast wasn't on the meta radar, even with the legendary copying a spell cast. If this was a year ago when you could fish out Velen and Malygos for a finish, yeah, it would be met with "the community has been requesting this."

Decks that rely on Inner Fire to win are lazy to me. It's even lazier when Team 5 doesn't give priest another win condition and removes a good one (when it is supported).

Even Vanish nerf puzzles me and I don't play Rogue. It's like someone at Team 5/Blizzard opened Hearthstone complaint mail from a year ago and applied it.

While I largely agree, what I think your post overlooks is how much of a potential constraint cards like Mind Blast can have on other cards. If Blizzard were to push the shadow priest archetype then MBs would certainly be in the deck and would require the rest of the burn package to be pre-emptively toned down. Of course that argument flies in the face of this new class identity nonsense, but I doubt they'll be consistent on it anyway.

With the removal of MB I wouldn't be surprised if they give priest more burn in upcoming sets and pretend that doesn't contradict their phoney narrative about class identity.

Regarding Vanish, it wasn't a maindeck card in anything but Pogorogue, but this change sort of falls in line with the general trend of nerfing the shit out of (pseudo)-silence effects in standard (Ironbeak Owl, Hex). Seems like a pre-emptive change more than a response to the card being a problem right now.

Guys, it's an element going forward.  As is, this is where they want the classes to be.  Not where they are now.

Yes, Mage can swarm like crazy. No they don't WANT them to swarm like crazy.  That means from here on they won't let mage swarm like crazy so easily and they will be more likely to go after cards that do. 

So the real question should be: Do you WANT the classes to act this way?

Myself I do have a few concerns:

Priest.  I'm not really sure I figure what their win condition actually is beyond Revive priest.  You can't heal your way into a win unless you go fatigue and I'm not sure we really want Fatigue Priest going around in tier 1.  "copying" sounds almost like THEY should be the ones Conjuring mountain giants.  If so then...alright I guess but I wnat to know that's what they aim for.  

Warrior: They destroy things and rush/taunt.   Ok Control mindset. But what's the win condition? Right now they have it in Dr. Boom and that's fine, but their story doesn't suggest that this will be a big priority. Which means they'll push more for "kill minions, Rush to kill more minions, Taunt to not die, ???, Win".  They need ot makre sure Warrior has a clear goal in mind when stalling the game.

Otherwise, it sounds like fine plans.  We'll need a few years to get the classes INTO that state, but.. sure.

Quote From Agon

 

Ansewring OP:

Yes. They wrote such a lengthy explanation (full of obvious well known facts and partial lies) just to justify them removing mind blast and vanish. Two wonderful, perfect fitting cards that they obviously can't balance.The hilarious thing is that the cards are going into wild (standard's dumpster) where apparently all this class identity importance does not apply :)

That's my take on it. They just wanted to justify the decision to smack those two cards. As Agon says, this description of the classes along with their strengths and weaknesses, if we truly are talking about "class identity," should apply to the entire game, not just in Standard. Also, they basically affirmed that they treat Wild like a dumpster where all the broken stuff goes. If they had been smarter about it, they would have just said, "We're removing these cards from Standard because we want to develop other cards for Priest and Rogue" and not bothered with the class description nonsense.

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Quote From Agon

 

 

Ansewring OP:

Yes. They wrote such a lengthy explanation (full of obvious well known facts and partial lies) just to justify them removing mind blast and vanish. Two wonderful, perfect fitting cards that they obviously can't balance.The hilarious thing is that the cards are going into wild (standard's dumpster) where apparently all this class identity importance does not apply :)

That's my take on it. They just wanted to justify the decision to smack those two cards. As Agon says, this description of the classes along with their strengths and weaknesses, if we truly are talking about "class identity," should apply to the entire game, not just in Standard. Also, they basically affirmed that they treat Wild like a dumpster where all the broken stuff goes. If they had been smarter about it, they would have just said, "We're removing these cards from Standard because we want to develop other cards for Priest and Rogue" and not bothered with the class description nonsense.

I don't think this is just for those two cards. I think this is to start a trend.  They already broke with many of their old ways by buffing cards and HoFing outside of rotation.  I'm thinking they will be doing A LOT more of this stuff as we go on, and some of those changes will not be explainable by It's OP/not fun/messes with design.  

Mind Blast was aimed at for a HoF already.  They flat out said last time they were going to hit it and just barely decided to just not do it this year.  Vanish was the surprise though.  If it was a design decision, they would've said so as you suggest as they've done it before.  If it was due to future cards, they've just done that earlier with Hex.  The literally have no reason to make some fakey excuse when they've already used many of the other reasons for doing this without audience madness.

There IS a chance that this is Activision Corporate Speak sneaking in, which loves to oversugarcoat things.  But I don't see a reason to assume that's the case. If it is, we'll find out sure enough anyway in the next sets of cards and nerfs.  

But assuming they are correct, I'm betting that the next set of mage cards will not work with the conjure mindset, and they just gave themselves an opening to nerf Conjure or Mountain Giant without the deck being OP or unfun.  

We'll know sure enough

After reading the blue post, I must say that I don't agree with the design pattern the devs will be following in the future. I think, that while having a general concept of how a class should look like would be a great idea and people would get burried in its fantasy, some restrictions would make the classes feel two-dimensional and not that interesting. This wouldn't apply to all classes in the game (like my beloved warlock), which would cause a lot of lopsidedness and I understand people's frustration (Lyra) with this.

I am not going to lie, one of the reasons why I adore playing warlock is the huge variety of different play-styles it offers in the game. I don't think this is a bad thing, as long as those archtypes don't cause any damage to the state of the game. It's the opposite - I warmly welcome them, because they make the class feel more complex and it can appeal to different tastes, which would attract more people. Imho we should be able to see this happening with other classes as well. And weaknesses imho shouldn't restrict a certain class to explore different play-fields, but rather the cons should just keep the strengths in check. And this is why I don't agree with the devs' decision for HoF-ing Vanish and Mind Blast. If rogue's weakness is not being able to play a defensive game, then how would new mechanics like Theft or Shuffle work for them? They won't, unless they follow a specific tempo-oriented path. And this is what I despise, this future design philosophy would make not only rogue but other classes as well too linear. Rogues won't be able to play combo in standard anymore; their miracle, burgle, deathrattle and shuffle packages have to be strictly tempo-oriented. This means, that all cards, which feel remotely situational and not that rewarding enough for an aggro or a mid-range deck, would be cut in favour for the more reliable ones. And I am aware, that rogue is a squishy class and it wouldn't make sense to pull some sticky taunts from its ass - in WoW it can take only one role and that's the one of a DPS - but there could be an alternative and more creative solution for this. 

If the devs implemented some equivalents to other class specific cards but just weaker, that would be a good way to show players how a class should look like, while not hurting it too much. In the past I've created a specific legendary for rogues, that allowed them to achieve different things based on the number of cards in hand:

Please, distant yourselves from the balance of this card; just look at the concept. I think, that if tricksters were implemented for rogues, those could enhance their defensive tactics by using cunning tools like smoke bombs or noise makers and cause distractions (i.e. summon taunts). And if some of you played WoW, those used to exist in the game. So it's not unthinkable or strange to implement something similar, you just have put it in the context of the specific class and acknowledge their character traits and their pros/cons. Another example - hunters don't have healing, but they could develop a profession called "Leatherworking" in hs and use the corpses of their beasts as armour.

Speaking of strenghts, I would like to express my opinion really quick on them. I don't understand something - why is it a good idea to design obviously overpowered cards just because they fit the concept of a class's stronger sides? I could name a lot of examples - Spreading Plague (back when it was in standard, it used to punish swarm decks in a very unhealthy way), Drakonid Operative aka Dr. OP (who combined everything you want), Conjurer's Calling (that can cheat out mana). And there are other examples like Deathstalker Rexxar or Underbelly Angler, which aren't good only because they answer a certain class's weakness, but could easily be used in many other classes just because their power-level is that high. [btw I like playing with the hunter hero card and I'm not demaning for a change, I'm just using it as an example].

All in all, I can see a lot of flaws with this design philosophy and I fear the linear design path some classes would be forced to follow in the future.

Quote From Dakarian

 

I don't think this is just for those two cards. I think this is to start a trend.  They already broke with many of their old ways by buffing cards and HoFing outside of rotation.  I'm thinking they will be doing A LOT more of this stuff as we go on, and some of those changes will not be explainable by It's OP/not fun/messes with design.  

Mind Blast was aimed at for a HoF already.  They flat out said last time they were going to hit it and just barely decided to just not do it this year.  Vanish was the surprise though.  If it was a design decision, they would've said so as you suggest as they've done it before.  If it was due to future cards, they've just done that earlier with Hex.  The literally have no reason to make some fakey excuse when they've already used many of the other reasons for doing this without audience madness.

 

 

I do not mean that I believe the description of classes is ONLY to justify removing the two cards. What I mean is that I think it's one reason, kind of a "just in case people like Vanish and Mind Blast" type of write-up. I don't disagree with you, it definitely is a way to plan for the future. My main idea is in agreement with the other poster: they have unintentionally admitted (once again) that Wild is not really part of planning for the game. Class identity is for Standard only. Wild is being treated like a dumpster and the company is admitting to this by removing the cards from Standard, defining the classes, and "dumping them" in Wild, where the classes will not have the same identity since they have access to all the cards ever made.

Everything a company does is "corporate" and everything writtten and posted to the internet in one way or another is a type of marketing. Just about everything is done in exchange for some kind of money. Video game companies do not produce things out of the goodness of their hearts. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying that it's that way.

The descriptions of the classes, as the OP might suggest, are lop-sided. Or, as I'd prefer to call it, "poorly thought out." Whenever I judge something that is written by a video game company, I always remember that the people or person writing the thing posted to the Internet has some kind of college education. I would judge this writing as poorly produced and the content is kind of silly. They could have done a better job with their descriptions or they could have not bothered to do it until they thought a little more about what they were going to publish (this last option is the better one, really.)

Quote From BlueBanana

Quote From MalcolmReynolds

for those of you who are saying "LOL this class does not have this weakness because one card, DuH". a class weakness does not mean that in all of hearthstone ever they cannot have one/two cards that can give them that.

for example, people are laughing at shamans 'bad card generation'. but without hagatha the witch, kragwa, and underbelly angler, they really don't have very good card advantage, and kragwa and underbelly are only viable in one/two decks. and no, cards like shudderwock, and hagatha number 2 don't count because they generate value, they don't add cards to your hand. 

and all those cards are adventure cards, but in the core of shaman, there is not much card draw outside of manatide totem, which is kind of really bad.

I agree with your point - for example on Priest and Hunter's card draw - but Shaman really isn't struggling at all on card generation. They have Mana Tide Totem, Far Sight, Haunting Visions, Earthen Might and Elementary Reaction for elemental decks, Ice Fishing, Siltfin Spiritwalker and Neptulon for murloc decks, Storm Chaser, Bogshaper, and Blazing Invocation and Finders Keepers which turn up constantly from that one Lackey as well as Hagatha the Witch. Surely a lot of that list is trash, but even then that list is so lengthy that it's absurd to say Shamans are in the slightest limited in card draw and generation.

maybe shaman has more card draw than I gave it credit for. but on that list, only far sight, haunting visions, and storm chaser really saw play (I am not 100% sure on some of the wild card as they were already in wild when I started playing) and all the cads on that list only get you one card in hand. now compare that to druid, rogue, mage, or warlock. 

I admit that they should have labeled that under 'limitations' not 'weakness', but you have to admit that it is definitely not a strength.