I don't really see the point in buffing Akama Prime. If he was actually playable he would just be insanely frustrating to deal with and be yet another instance of "you queued up with the wrong class buckarooo".
I fully appreciate he would be frustrating if commonly played because some classes have no real options for dealing with him (although neutral options do exist). However, that's a bit of a non-issue because all the classes that struggle to remove him can easily win games before he is drawn, and even more easily win after their opponent spends 6 mana on a minion that does nothing immediately, and not very much the turn(s) afterwards. So he's balanced for those match-ups by how long it takes to get up and running.
A good comparison is Rattlegore. He's another card that many classes just cannot deal with without playing a weak neutral tech card. And he's much easier to play at a relevant time than Akama Prime, especially with Commencement around. But does anyone complain about Rattlegore? No. So I just don't buy that making AP a 6/7 would cause any problems.
Quote From Author
He's a balanced card as is purely because of the fact that he isn't good enough to just be run without justification.
Here's the problem: the best justification for it atm is that you want the normal 3 mana 3/4. You don't even want to draw the prime version a lot of the time because he's genuinely weaker than most other cards in the deck. Whether that's healthy or not, it flies in the face of what the prime cards were meant to be, and certainly leaves space for a health buff without him causing trouble.
Akama - and more to the point Akama Prime (AP) - is a card that I have wanted to find interesting for the last year, but it has always been underwhelming. I'm hoping that by writing all my thoughts down I can begin to understand why, and then better understand card design too.
As a 3 mana 3/4 stealth, the first body is a solid card by all accounts, and certainly in the same league as the first bodies of the other prime cards. If anything it is better than most of the primes' first bodies because stealth denies the opponent the ability to remove the minion before it accomplishes something, and isn't situational like rush or spell damage.
The problem arises with the prime version of Akama. All the prime cards were designed to be bonkers strong, and something you couldn't print as a normal minion. Where the other prime cards achieve this with a hefty block of text detailing a fancy effect, Akama takes a more succinct and elegant approach by simply switching out 'stealth' for 'permanently stealthed', which we know from adventures can be very powerful. I have no doubt that if AP was a collectible card, it would indeed be bonkers strong.
So where's the problem? I think it is that the odds of drawing Akama twice by turn 6 are tiny, even in rogue. Statistics tell us you need to be ~75% of the way through your deck on average to draw AP, by which point you're probably long past turn 6. If you're against aggro or playing aggro yourself, the game is probably over before you see AP, so it is only worth evaluating against slow decks, and therein lies the issue: most slow decks have a way to deal with a 5 health stealthed minion.
Even when they cannot remove it immediately, AP still takes a whole turn before it can attack and show off the permanence of its stealth, and it probably has to attack at least twice before people it becomes interesting, making AP really, really slow. Compare that to the other primes, all of whom have much faster effects except Reliquary Prime, but at least that has a set of stats and abilities that make it more likely to achieve something significant right away.
The end result is that AP is in practice only marginally better than a 6 mana 6/5 stealth, a stat-line that can conveniently be compared to two cards that have been around in the Classic set since 2014: Stranglethorn Tiger and Ravenholdt Assassin. I think the tiger did see a tiny bit of play in druid at one point, but that's about all these two ever did in constructed. So AP sitting between them makes it seem like AP is actually just a bad card on its own. I'd say he's weaker than MSoG's attempt at this sort of effect (Lotus Assassin), and you can run 2 of those without any worries about shuffling them first.
Am I contradicting myself? First I say I think AP is a bonkers card, then a bad one? Again, timing is everything. If you could play AP on turn 6 and have him be part of a wider plan to pressure the opponent, then he's great. But if you have him on turn 14, when your opponent has stabilised or you are playing a deck that doesn't put on much pressure, then he doesn't do very much.
The (flawed) logic behind the design
It's quite easy to see how AP was made the way he was. Not only does it look cool and powerful at first glance (the community rated Akama quite highly), but we've seen first hand how powerful permanent stealth can be in adventures.
It's also notable that the prime mechanics (deathrattle and shuffle) are both things rogue had synergies for, and it stands to reason that rogue would have an easier time abusing primes than other classes. Stowaway in particular seems to alleviate the slow draw of AP. The trouble with the Stowaway solution is that you still need to have drawn both Akama and a Stowaway, and you have to be playing a fairly slow deck to justify him when you don't see Akama.
The fix
Fixing AP is simple: give him more health. I'd lean towards 7 to put him just out of range of modern Flamestrike +1 spell damage (which is so common and cheap in mage today that it's pretty much always going to be there). That way it makes 1 more class have to work to remove him, but makes almost no difference to classes that couldn't kill him to begin with, or who have un-targeted hard removal. It also gives him the opportunity to trade into a taunt minion without being reduced to piddly health that can be removed by small AoE.
The design lessons
We already know a card's power depends strongly on when it is drawn and played. This is doubly true for uncollectible cards that are shuffled into your deck. So the lesson is to ensure such a card is a good late game card at bare minimum. It doesn't matter how good it is as an early-to-mid game card if it's almost never going to be drawn then.
You seem like obsessed with "Need" term and you shouldn't in my opinion.
There are two distinct uses of the word 'need' here. The first is just a sloppy alternative to asking whether HS would benefit from another class, and you are completely right that I should switch out the word 'need' here.
The second use is more correct and more central to what this thread was intended to discuss. We could ask whether DH's decks/archetypes could exist to a very good approximation in another class based on the established class identity. If so, then it is just up to Blizz to print those cards in that other class, and all the faffing around with DH is unnecessary.
So to ask whether HS needs a class is really to ask whether the class is unique enough to offer something that couldn't be covered by an existing class, and not so much a comment on whether HS as a game actually needs to add certain types of content to be successful.
This all gets muddied by classes gaining new tricks as time goes on, and some of these becoming core to how the class functions. Rogue's ability to generate cards from other classes didn't exist during Classic, for example, but is certainly a permanent fixture now. Since that can happen, could we not bypass adding classes completely and just add tools to the existing classes? This is of course the pre-DH philosophy of HS.
Clearly the philosophy of the word 'need' is deeper than I expected when I started writing this...
The all-spell restriction is not nothing, but it isn't a massive challenge either when all-spell mage has been given plenty of support over the past year and was already a functioning deck.
More egregious however, is that you can run minions and the Spring Water will still be significantly better than Arcane Intellect. A deck with 50% minions still gets a 2 mana draw 2 on average, and that deck restriction genuinely is nothing for mage.
@IksarHS We've seen a lot of Big Demon Hunter cards, but a lot of them haven't see any play at all, do you think that you've failed to deliver the optimal powerlevel of these cards or It's just missing a key card to become viable?
@imik_plays Control decks are hard work. We wanted to make a DH control deck that doesn't have one big "I-win" piece and instead runs multiple big cards and wins through an onslaught of big threats. (Source)
@imik_plays It's just very difficult to do that when other classes only need to run their one win condition and have a huge variety of board removals and lifegain. (Source)
@imik_plays I still think it's worth chasing that goal rather than giving in and making single win-condition cards, we'll get there. (Source)
I'm convinced that the control and big demon sides of DH will never work until they do something to make expensive cards work well alongside the outcast keyword. Or they shift things so that outcast is only really used on cards intended for aggro, and slow decks don't need them.
You're mostly right what you said in OP but it seems like you also have no suggestions to it. I mean, I know you from this website and the old and now shitty one :D. You have great information about WoW and how the game mechanics is. If you have no solution how DH might be shaped around, I can't call anyone that can do it. So my first question is how it should have been implemented to the Hearthstone in your opinion ?
Tho If someone asks me that "How could demon hunter as a class be succesful in hearthstone mechanically?" I would say that "Metamorphosis" as a keyword for DH like how Choose one is a keyword for Druids only. Minions that can metamorphose when you do something like Druid of the Plains for example. Cards that have two states. Or even Outcast might be the metamorphosis effect. Like; card is 4 mana 3/4 normally, no tribes, just a night elf with horns, if you play it while it is right most or left most, it transforms into 5/4 with demon tag and some texts on it etc.
And another mechanic comes to my mind; Summons preys on your oppenents board. Think this as a whole class' mechanic. Benefits from that you hunt your prey which you summon for your opponent.
People might hate it but Mana Burn is one of the best cards for DH mechanically. 2nd is Magehunter, 3rd is Kayn Sunfury (Should have been without charge and more stats), 4th is Star Student Stelina, 5th is Metamorphosis, 6th is Consume Magic, 7th and 8th are Sigils, 9th is Glide, 10th is Felsteel Executioner, 11th and 12th maybe Blade Dance and Blur (but it feels like Blur should have been a dual class card with Rogue and Blade Dance should be tri-class card as Warrior/DH/Rogue) and the others are cards like Acrobatics, Stiltstepper etc. that has effects if you play the cards that you draw that turn because of surviving counterpart of the class. Any other cards in DH feels like they belong to other classes and I honestly think that DH would be shaped around disorienting and distratcting tools like Mana Burn. People hates mill etc., i know that but this distracting tools fit so well to DH in my mind. These all are my own opinions tho.
Distracting tools could work, as could the metamorphosis idea. I was initially hesitant about whether making the metamorphosis mechanic would encourage druids to work in the same way more often too, but I'm sure it will be fine. The distinction between burgle rogue and thief priest has always felt enough, so there's evidence the 'same' thing can be kept mechanically different over many years.
Having given it a bunch of extra thought, I think DH could be made a lot more unique with very minor changes that don't even need to introduce anything fundamentally new. The two options that seem most likely to me are:
1: Less outcast, more left/right stuff
Outcast is undoubtedly a mechanic that is unique to DH and interesting on paper. However it is not without its problems, and the way it encourages dumping your hand to get cards into the correct place is seriously stifling DH's ability to leverage its unique combination of strengths, which is a large part of why it doesn't feel very distinct in practice.
The solution is to lean into the whole left/right thing, but not have it attached to the outcast keyword so often. They are already starting to do this with Zai, the Incredible and Kurtrus Ashfallen (yes, Kurtrus has outcast, but he attacks the left- and right-most minions even without it). This way you can play DH with the unique aspect of being mindful of the positions of cards (both in hand and on board), without feeling like you have to ignore a huge part of the class to do it.
Alternatively, print tools that help decks with expensive cards actually use outcast cards. When DH was announced everyone expected something that reorders your hand. Maybe a Lorekeeper Polkelt-like card that orders your hand from lowest to highest cost, allowing you to get that 8-drop out of the way. But sadly no such card has been printed yet.
2: Proactive sigils
The sigils are also a great unique mechanic on paper. The ability to set things up over 2 turns would be a distinct approach DH can take to do whatever it is DH wants to do.
The sigils we currently have are both reactive, so they are quite limited in their ability to further your own plans. But if proactive sigils were printed, that were designed to enable your own next turn rather than counter your opponent's, then sigils become an integral part of the class experience, and not just some janky removal option.
Quote From Author
So I'm asking, for them to not screw again, How should they implement Monks in Hearthstone to make it feels unique ?
As for monks, I honestly think they're going to be too close to existing classes to be a good choice to add to the game. DH is already showing that HS doesn't need another melee class, and monk would just be adding another one to the pile, even if it does have a unique mechanic like chi layered on top of it.
So if HS needs any more classes (very much up for debate!), it will probably want a spellcaster class that doesn't use weapons, or only very sparingly if they do. That probably rules out Death Knight too. Despite the restrictions on players in WoW, there are way more classes that exist in the Warcraft universe than you can actually play as, so you could easily find something.
The tinkerer (artificer in D&D terminology) is one that has potential without needing to think too much about it. It could be like the class manifestation of the GvG set, with lots of mechs and a spare-part mechanic that distinguishes it from everyone else.
In my eyes, the Venn diagram of even the original 9 classes is this giant blob that says everyone is way more alike then they are distinct. So from there, it's no surprise at all that Demon Hunter would have trouble distinguishing itself. That's my $0.02.
The Venn diagram picture is a nice one, if a little difficult to draw for the 10 classes simultaneously, where you need to a ~10 dimensional hypersphere for each class to draw all the overlaps correctly. I think what is central to this thread is that every class should have a significant part of their Venn hypersphere with no (meaningful) overlaps at all, and that most classes do. Note that by 'significant' I could still mean a small fraction of the total hypersphere, but it is a part that routinely affects how the class plays.
In truth, DH only needs small tweaks to get there. At the moment outcast comes close, but the way in encourages aggro means it ends up making the class look even closer to hunter/rogue than it does without it. However, if they can harness the whole left-/right-most card thing in a way that didn't discourage using the expensive tools that hunter and rogue lack, then you'd be more or less set. Sigils are also extending DH's hypersphere into unexplored territory; they just need to become more than a gimmick for a single set.
You don't need to explain this situation with gameplay. It was a market move and they screwed it.
I was much less interested in why they added DH than in how much it ended up adding to the game. We don't actually need to know anything about LoR or the wider market to answer the latter question, because it is only relative to HS itself. So the for the main focus of this thread, we definitely do need to consider gameplay.
You could look at it this way: what if it ended up a successful move? That was quite possible going into this, but the difference would be entirely internal to HS since the surrounding market would have been the same. Furthermore, that difference would boil down to gameplay (and possibly flavour to a much lesser extent).
Flavor-wise, as mentioned above, half of DH cards are elves with glowing tattoos. It's not surprising. The thing is, all 9 base classes are general D&D/fantasy archetypes and therefore broad enough in their flavor to fit in plenty of themes (Dragonmaw Overseer being a priest card is BS though). DH on the other hand is specific to the warcraft universe, it has no other representation in pop culture, and is a class restricted to night/blood elves. Ofc DH is going to be full of elves with green tattoos...
Had I included the flavour aspect I would have said something very similar. There's no question that demon hunters are very cool, it's just that they are extremely specific. Even when you relax the WoW limitation that they're all elves (as HS has done in a few instances, most notably in Aranna's story), all DHs can be described as: A grumpy and overly serious character who's willing to sacrifice everything to avenge a perceived wrong, seeks out Illidan in Outland, learns how to dual-wield war-glaives, gets their eyes burned out for demon sight and plays host to a demon's soul. Tattoos, horns and wings all come along as part of the package.
I think what bothers me most about DHs is that they all have pretty much the same personality, because no one would undergo the process of becoming a DH if they viewed the world in any other way. Of the available heroes, Aranna is the 'friendly' one, but by the measure of all the other classes she's still very serious.
Perhaps ironically, the best approach they could take to diversify DH personalities comes from Valeera. She was possessed by the demon Kathra'natir, complete with demonic runes on her skin. It would be easy to adapt the story so the character becomes a DH begrudgingly as they learn to control and harness the demon inside. That way they can be as friendly as you like, and only need to take their own condition seriously, not the whole universe.
Quote From Cheese
I'm not entirely pessimistic though. If you look at HS history, the 9 base classes also took time to be fully refined. Burgle Rogue and Evolve Shaman didn't exist before the namesake cards were released. Hunter was entirely one-dimensional ("SMorc and/or play big stuff on curve") before 2017 (unfortunately Barrens made it one-dimensional again). Maybe Team 5 is actively working on refining DH too? Sigils can be promising if they expand on them. Soul Fragments are nice too even if they're dual-class.
Yes, it does look like they are working on diversifying the class mechanically. Hopefully that means they find more original things like sigils, rather than adding in well-trodden mechanics like tempo deathrattles. Certainly if they're going to introduce more overlaps, they should stop taking mechanics from hunter, rogue and warlock!
I was admittedly lazy when (not) discussing soul fragments. I guess I couldn't be bothered when all the soul fragments amounted to in DH were exactly what warlock did (AoE), plus the same-old give your hero attack stuff. So while novel on the face of it, they still failed to actually add much in practice.
Personally, I like the Rogue hero portrait and by picking it up should incentivize me to play Rogue even more. Same goes for the Demon Hunter hero portrait (which I like less though).
On a somewhat lighter but related sidenote, do you think there might be a threshold of too much collectible stuff added to HS too quickly which could scare off some potential collectors?
What is your opinion on these matters?
For me, the recent flood of hero skins is what finally got me to stop trying to have all of them. Now I only get them if I actually expect to use them (or they're part of the big pre-order bundle which I get more for the packs than anything else), which is a healthier approach so I'm happy about it.
If the daunting task forces collectors into making more rational decisions, then that's definitely a good thing. Not so much if instead they throw more and more at the game to get everything.
As for the Tier 2* skins, I'm definitely going with Valeera first again. It'll be my 6th Valeera skin, but will still end up being used more than any of the others due to how much of a rogue main I am. Plus, unlike a lot of the other classes, rogue doesn't have a non-basic hero that I just like way more than I will ever like the basic character. (The odds I use Gul'dan, Garrosh or Illidan over their more friendly counterparts is minuscule.) Given how little I expect to use most of them, I have no incentive to grind the rewards track to get them faster.
* It looks like rogue got T2 with the Book of Heroes portrait, so Valeera got T5 instead. DH was of course way too late to the WoW party to have a T2 set.
They did say it was purely for consistency of cards across game modes.
Hopefully if they ever make a quillboar pirate they give it the pirate tribe so the tag actually does something more than being an extra summon for N'Zoth. I guess a dual-tribe would be better, but there are so few of them with the current tribes (since all tribes other than pirate are mutually incompatible outside of amalgamations) that I can see why the devs don't think it is worth the bother.
They have had cards that specifically generate golden versions in the past (Blingtron 3000 and Zola the Gorgon), both for flavour reasons, so I guess it's possible there's a buff spell coming that is intended to make golden versions.
That or they had to do something similar to sort out diamond card generation, and did this just to make things more consistent in the code.
It's not so bad if the opponent messes up your points by killing you with Annoy-o-tron, since you can quite easily round it up by playing the card yourself. So really you've been doing them a service.
I have a similarly annoying achievement total: 15999. If someone plays Annoy-o-Tron, they are more than welcome to get a free win with it. The trouble is, no one is playing annoy-o-tron, and even if they were the odds it gets the finishing blow are tiny :(
Fixed a bug where enchantments from Golden spells, such as Soul of the Murloc, would not create Golden tokens.
I'm pretty sure this has been a 'bug' since 2014. I thought it was just based on the card that actually ends up generating it, which in this case is the minion with its deathrattle. I guess they now bother to tag enchantments as 'golden'.
Below is the version I was playing with most recently. Note it is not the strongest version. I just enjoy having to find a win condition as I go along rather than ending up with Spectral Cutlass or Mirage Blade doing all the legwork.
I have messed around with loads of different burgle decks over the years though, so I'm sure I can find/build something using different core cards if you want. There's lots of distinct options that you can mix together, including
Pedantry aside, its always good to see a fellow burgle rogue player with a smile on their face.
Thankfully burgle rogue holds up OK in Wild because it has enough tempo to stand a chance against aggro and combo, while also having enough value to stand a chance against slower decks.
As for working together, I think DH has one of the most solid plans laid out. Pressure early, Inquisitor finish. Real simple. Sure the Deathrattle stuff isn't quite on the same path but just another strong card or two and I can see it holding it's own. It's real fun in wild.
I'm not sure I count the appearance of a single big demon (albeit 2 copies) as 'working together', at least not quite how I meant it, but whatever. That's nitpicking beyond what is useful, so let's just leave it there.
Regarding memes, I could start a whole thread over DH's relationship (or lack thereof) with memes. Poor Zai, the Incredible is a card with so much meme potential but stranded in a class with no memes to offer. Were she not in DH, she would open up a whole world of silly decks. There have been plenty of cards that have had their wings clipped by the class they are put in, and I think Zai might be one of the most upsetting. Who knows though, maybe one day Illidan will stop being so serious and give her something incredible to do?
To me, less neutrals is actually better. Dying to Leeroy Jenkins no matter the class isn't healthy. We also have to remember to add in the Core set to the calculation of available cards. Getting that bunch of cards, free, is amazing for the game. I've honestly been having a lot of fun exploring those legendaries along side Barrens stuff. So while we loose some neutrals per set, we gain a more focused core.
And yes you could write a SIMILAR description for Rogue. They lack the healing and taunt for long games. As well as currently don't have OTK tools and do more of a death of a thousand cuts over continuous turns of damage. Also a strong battle cry and bounce core as you mentioned before. Overall I think it's similar yet different enough to have positives and negatives for using either class.
I was referring more to archetype-producing neutrals like Desert Obelisk (obviously a meme example, but no doubt produced something unique), rather than generally good neutrals like Leeroy, Pen Flinger and the new Alex that we learn to hate sooner or later.
Core set is a big plus, although it didn't do very much to help diversify DH. I guess Illidari Inquisitor finally got the class to use a big demon, though it had to brute force it by being ridiculously OP to compensate for the problems with the outcast mechanic. (I'm not hating on outcast itself, just how it was made too central to the class.)
And yes, DH has plenty of strengths that rogue doesn't have. As I said to @Dapperdog though, I don't personally think it is enough unless they actually combine the more disparate aspects of the class into the same decks. At present the sides of DH don't mix well enough for individual decks to really showcase how DH has a unique set of strengths, and it is not helped that we have seen lifesteal on rogue weapons twice before, making it iffy to say rogue couldn't have healing.
I fully appreciate he would be frustrating if commonly played because some classes have no real options for dealing with him (although neutral options do exist). However, that's a bit of a non-issue because all the classes that struggle to remove him can easily win games before he is drawn, and even more easily win after their opponent spends 6 mana on a minion that does nothing immediately, and not very much the turn(s) afterwards. So he's balanced for those match-ups by how long it takes to get up and running.
A good comparison is Rattlegore. He's another card that many classes just cannot deal with without playing a weak neutral tech card. And he's much easier to play at a relevant time than Akama Prime, especially with Commencement around. But does anyone complain about Rattlegore? No. So I just don't buy that making AP a 6/7 would cause any problems.
Here's the problem: the best justification for it atm is that you want the normal 3 mana 3/4. You don't even want to draw the prime version a lot of the time because he's genuinely weaker than most other cards in the deck. Whether that's healthy or not, it flies in the face of what the prime cards were meant to be, and certainly leaves space for a health buff without him causing trouble.
Akama - and more to the point Akama Prime (AP) - is a card that I have wanted to find interesting for the last year, but it has always been underwhelming. I'm hoping that by writing all my thoughts down I can begin to understand why, and then better understand card design too.
As a 3 mana 3/4 stealth, the first body is a solid card by all accounts, and certainly in the same league as the first bodies of the other prime cards. If anything it is better than most of the primes' first bodies because stealth denies the opponent the ability to remove the minion before it accomplishes something, and isn't situational like rush or spell damage.
The problem arises with the prime version of Akama. All the prime cards were designed to be bonkers strong, and something you couldn't print as a normal minion. Where the other prime cards achieve this with a hefty block of text detailing a fancy effect, Akama takes a more succinct and elegant approach by simply switching out 'stealth' for 'permanently stealthed', which we know from adventures can be very powerful. I have no doubt that if AP was a collectible card, it would indeed be bonkers strong.
So where's the problem? I think it is that the odds of drawing Akama twice by turn 6 are tiny, even in rogue. Statistics tell us you need to be ~75% of the way through your deck on average to draw AP, by which point you're probably long past turn 6. If you're against aggro or playing aggro yourself, the game is probably over before you see AP, so it is only worth evaluating against slow decks, and therein lies the issue: most slow decks have a way to deal with a 5 health stealthed minion.
Even when they cannot remove it immediately, AP still takes a whole turn before it can attack and show off the permanence of its stealth, and it probably has to attack at least twice before people it becomes interesting, making AP really, really slow. Compare that to the other primes, all of whom have much faster effects except Reliquary Prime, but at least that has a set of stats and abilities that make it more likely to achieve something significant right away.
The end result is that AP is in practice only marginally better than a 6 mana 6/5 stealth, a stat-line that can conveniently be compared to two cards that have been around in the Classic set since 2014: Stranglethorn Tiger and Ravenholdt Assassin. I think the tiger did see a tiny bit of play in druid at one point, but that's about all these two ever did in constructed. So AP sitting between them makes it seem like AP is actually just a bad card on its own. I'd say he's weaker than MSoG's attempt at this sort of effect (Lotus Assassin), and you can run 2 of those without any worries about shuffling them first.
Am I contradicting myself? First I say I think AP is a bonkers card, then a bad one? Again, timing is everything. If you could play AP on turn 6 and have him be part of a wider plan to pressure the opponent, then he's great. But if you have him on turn 14, when your opponent has stabilised or you are playing a deck that doesn't put on much pressure, then he doesn't do very much.
The (flawed) logic behind the design
It's quite easy to see how AP was made the way he was. Not only does it look cool and powerful at first glance (the community rated Akama quite highly), but we've seen first hand how powerful permanent stealth can be in adventures.
It's also notable that the prime mechanics (deathrattle and shuffle) are both things rogue had synergies for, and it stands to reason that rogue would have an easier time abusing primes than other classes. Stowaway in particular seems to alleviate the slow draw of AP. The trouble with the Stowaway solution is that you still need to have drawn both Akama and a Stowaway, and you have to be playing a fairly slow deck to justify him when you don't see Akama.
The fix
Fixing AP is simple: give him more health. I'd lean towards 7 to put him just out of range of modern Flamestrike +1 spell damage (which is so common and cheap in mage today that it's pretty much always going to be there). That way it makes 1 more class have to work to remove him, but makes almost no difference to classes that couldn't kill him to begin with, or who have un-targeted hard removal. It also gives him the opportunity to trade into a taunt minion without being reduced to piddly health that can be removed by small AoE.
The design lessons
We already know a card's power depends strongly on when it is drawn and played. This is doubly true for uncollectible cards that are shuffled into your deck. So the lesson is to ensure such a card is a good late game card at bare minimum. It doesn't matter how good it is as an early-to-mid game card if it's almost never going to be drawn then.
There are two distinct uses of the word 'need' here. The first is just a sloppy alternative to asking whether HS would benefit from another class, and you are completely right that I should switch out the word 'need' here.
The second use is more correct and more central to what this thread was intended to discuss. We could ask whether DH's decks/archetypes could exist to a very good approximation in another class based on the established class identity. If so, then it is just up to Blizz to print those cards in that other class, and all the faffing around with DH is unnecessary.
So to ask whether HS needs a class is really to ask whether the class is unique enough to offer something that couldn't be covered by an existing class, and not so much a comment on whether HS as a game actually needs to add certain types of content to be successful.
This all gets muddied by classes gaining new tricks as time goes on, and some of these becoming core to how the class functions. Rogue's ability to generate cards from other classes didn't exist during Classic, for example, but is certainly a permanent fixture now. Since that can happen, could we not bypass adding classes completely and just add tools to the existing classes? This is of course the pre-DH philosophy of HS.
Clearly the philosophy of the word 'need' is deeper than I expected when I started writing this...
The all-spell restriction is not nothing, but it isn't a massive challenge either when all-spell mage has been given plenty of support over the past year and was already a functioning deck.
More egregious however, is that you can run minions and the Spring Water will still be significantly better than Arcane Intellect. A deck with 50% minions still gets a 2 mana draw 2 on average, and that deck restriction genuinely is nothing for mage.
I'm convinced that the control and big demon sides of DH will never work until they do something to make expensive cards work well alongside the outcast keyword. Or they shift things so that outcast is only really used on cards intended for aggro, and slow decks don't need them.
Distracting tools could work, as could the metamorphosis idea. I was initially hesitant about whether making the metamorphosis mechanic would encourage druids to work in the same way more often too, but I'm sure it will be fine. The distinction between burgle rogue and thief priest has always felt enough, so there's evidence the 'same' thing can be kept mechanically different over many years.
Having given it a bunch of extra thought, I think DH could be made a lot more unique with very minor changes that don't even need to introduce anything fundamentally new. The two options that seem most likely to me are:
1: Less outcast, more left/right stuff
Outcast is undoubtedly a mechanic that is unique to DH and interesting on paper. However it is not without its problems, and the way it encourages dumping your hand to get cards into the correct place is seriously stifling DH's ability to leverage its unique combination of strengths, which is a large part of why it doesn't feel very distinct in practice.
The solution is to lean into the whole left/right thing, but not have it attached to the outcast keyword so often. They are already starting to do this with Zai, the Incredible and Kurtrus Ashfallen (yes, Kurtrus has outcast, but he attacks the left- and right-most minions even without it). This way you can play DH with the unique aspect of being mindful of the positions of cards (both in hand and on board), without feeling like you have to ignore a huge part of the class to do it.
Alternatively, print tools that help decks with expensive cards actually use outcast cards. When DH was announced everyone expected something that reorders your hand. Maybe a Lorekeeper Polkelt-like card that orders your hand from lowest to highest cost, allowing you to get that 8-drop out of the way. But sadly no such card has been printed yet.
2: Proactive sigils
The sigils are also a great unique mechanic on paper. The ability to set things up over 2 turns would be a distinct approach DH can take to do whatever it is DH wants to do.
The sigils we currently have are both reactive, so they are quite limited in their ability to further your own plans. But if proactive sigils were printed, that were designed to enable your own next turn rather than counter your opponent's, then sigils become an integral part of the class experience, and not just some janky removal option.
As for monks, I honestly think they're going to be too close to existing classes to be a good choice to add to the game. DH is already showing that HS doesn't need another melee class, and monk would just be adding another one to the pile, even if it does have a unique mechanic like chi layered on top of it.
So if HS needs any more classes (very much up for debate!), it will probably want a spellcaster class that doesn't use weapons, or only very sparingly if they do. That probably rules out Death Knight too. Despite the restrictions on players in WoW, there are way more classes that exist in the Warcraft universe than you can actually play as, so you could easily find something.
The tinkerer (artificer in D&D terminology) is one that has potential without needing to think too much about it. It could be like the class manifestation of the GvG set, with lots of mechs and a spare-part mechanic that distinguishes it from everyone else.
The Venn diagram picture is a nice one, if a little difficult to draw for the 10 classes simultaneously, where you need to a ~10 dimensional hypersphere for each class to draw all the overlaps correctly. I think what is central to this thread is that every class should have a significant part of their Venn hypersphere with no (meaningful) overlaps at all, and that most classes do. Note that by 'significant' I could still mean a small fraction of the total hypersphere, but it is a part that routinely affects how the class plays.
In truth, DH only needs small tweaks to get there. At the moment outcast comes close, but the way in encourages aggro means it ends up making the class look even closer to hunter/rogue than it does without it. However, if they can harness the whole left-/right-most card thing in a way that didn't discourage using the expensive tools that hunter and rogue lack, then you'd be more or less set. Sigils are also extending DH's hypersphere into unexplored territory; they just need to become more than a gimmick for a single set.
I was much less interested in why they added DH than in how much it ended up adding to the game. We don't actually need to know anything about LoR or the wider market to answer the latter question, because it is only relative to HS itself. So the for the main focus of this thread, we definitely do need to consider gameplay.
You could look at it this way: what if it ended up a successful move? That was quite possible going into this, but the difference would be entirely internal to HS since the surrounding market would have been the same. Furthermore, that difference would boil down to gameplay (and possibly flavour to a much lesser extent).
Had I included the flavour aspect I would have said something very similar. There's no question that demon hunters are very cool, it's just that they are extremely specific. Even when you relax the WoW limitation that they're all elves (as HS has done in a few instances, most notably in Aranna's story), all DHs can be described as: A grumpy and overly serious character who's willing to sacrifice everything to avenge a perceived wrong, seeks out Illidan in Outland, learns how to dual-wield war-glaives, gets their eyes burned out for demon sight and plays host to a demon's soul. Tattoos, horns and wings all come along as part of the package.
I think what bothers me most about DHs is that they all have pretty much the same personality, because no one would undergo the process of becoming a DH if they viewed the world in any other way. Of the available heroes, Aranna is the 'friendly' one, but by the measure of all the other classes she's still very serious.
Perhaps ironically, the best approach they could take to diversify DH personalities comes from Valeera. She was possessed by the demon Kathra'natir, complete with demonic runes on her skin. It would be easy to adapt the story so the character becomes a DH begrudgingly as they learn to control and harness the demon inside. That way they can be as friendly as you like, and only need to take their own condition seriously, not the whole universe.
Yes, it does look like they are working on diversifying the class mechanically. Hopefully that means they find more original things like sigils, rather than adding in well-trodden mechanics like tempo deathrattles. Certainly if they're going to introduce more overlaps, they should stop taking mechanics from hunter, rogue and warlock!
I was admittedly lazy when (not) discussing soul fragments. I guess I couldn't be bothered when all the soul fragments amounted to in DH were exactly what warlock did (AoE), plus the same-old give your hero attack stuff. So while novel on the face of it, they still failed to actually add much in practice.
For me, the recent flood of hero skins is what finally got me to stop trying to have all of them. Now I only get them if I actually expect to use them (or they're part of the big pre-order bundle which I get more for the packs than anything else), which is a healthier approach so I'm happy about it.
If the daunting task forces collectors into making more rational decisions, then that's definitely a good thing. Not so much if instead they throw more and more at the game to get everything.
As for the Tier 2* skins, I'm definitely going with Valeera first again. It'll be my 6th Valeera skin, but will still end up being used more than any of the others due to how much of a rogue main I am. Plus, unlike a lot of the other classes, rogue doesn't have a non-basic hero that I just like way more than I will ever like the basic character. (The odds I use Gul'dan, Garrosh or Illidan over their more friendly counterparts is minuscule.) Given how little I expect to use most of them, I have no incentive to grind the rewards track to get them faster.
* It looks like rogue got T2 with the Book of Heroes portrait, so Valeera got T5 instead. DH was of course way too late to the WoW party to have a T2 set.
They did say it was purely for consistency of cards across game modes.
Hopefully if they ever make a quillboar pirate they give it the pirate tribe so the tag actually does something more than being an extra summon for N'Zoth. I guess a dual-tribe would be better, but there are so few of them with the current tribes (since all tribes other than pirate are mutually incompatible outside of amalgamations) that I can see why the devs don't think it is worth the bother.
They have had cards that specifically generate golden versions in the past (Blingtron 3000 and Zola the Gorgon), both for flavour reasons, so I guess it's possible there's a buff spell coming that is intended to make golden versions.
That or they had to do something similar to sort out diamond card generation, and did this just to make things more consistent in the code.
It's not so bad if the opponent messes up your points by killing you with Annoy-o-tron, since you can quite easily round it up by playing the card yourself. So really you've been doing them a service.
I have a similarly annoying achievement total: 15999. If someone plays Annoy-o-Tron, they are more than welcome to get a free win with it. The trouble is, no one is playing annoy-o-tron, and even if they were the odds it gets the finishing blow are tiny :(
I'm pretty sure this has been a 'bug' since 2014. I thought it was just based on the card that actually ends up generating it, which in this case is the minion with its deathrattle. I guess they now bother to tag enchantments as 'golden'.
Below is the version I was playing with most recently. Note it is not the strongest version. I just enjoy having to find a win condition as I go along rather than ending up with Spectral Cutlass or Mirage Blade doing all the legwork.
I have messed around with loads of different burgle decks over the years though, so I'm sure I can find/build something using different core cards if you want. There's lots of distinct options that you can mix together, including
All can be very fun, though I usually stay away from the Cutlass because it feels unfair when it get's to 6 attack. (I'm that sort of player...)
Anyway, the deck:
### Old school burgle
# Class: Rogue
# Format: Wild
#
# 2x (1) Dragon's Hoard
# 1x (1) Patches the Pirate
# 2x (1) Swashburglar
# 1x (1) Togwaggle's Scheme
# 2x (1) Wand Thief
# 2x (2) Underbelly Fence
# 2x (2) Undercity Huckster
# 1x (2) Vanessa VanCleef
# 2x (3) Blink Fox
# 1x (3) Shaku, the Collector
# 2x (4) Hench-Clan Burglar
# 1x (4) Lilian Voss
# 1x (4) Scabbs Cutterbutter
# 2x (4) Vendetta
# 2x (5) Bazaar Mugger
# 2x (5) Ethereal Peddler
# 1x (5) Keywarden Ivory
# 1x (6) Flik Skyshiv
# 1x (6) Grand Empress Shek'zara
# 1x (8) Tess Greymane
#
AAEBAcKPBAqRvALJvwKX0ALr8AKvkQPBrgPq3QOE5AOX5wOd8AMK8rACkrYClLYCx/gCkJcD+5oD/poDqqgDt64DpNEDAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Actually, she's a princess...
Pedantry aside, its always good to see a fellow burgle rogue player with a smile on their face.
Thankfully burgle rogue holds up OK in Wild because it has enough tempo to stand a chance against aggro and combo, while also having enough value to stand a chance against slower decks.
Cards lose enchantments when they transform, so that's not surprising. I think the only exception is corrupt cards.
I'm not sure I count the appearance of a single big demon (albeit 2 copies) as 'working together', at least not quite how I meant it, but whatever. That's nitpicking beyond what is useful, so let's just leave it there.
Regarding memes, I could start a whole thread over DH's relationship (or lack thereof) with memes. Poor Zai, the Incredible is a card with so much meme potential but stranded in a class with no memes to offer. Were she not in DH, she would open up a whole world of silly decks. There have been plenty of cards that have had their wings clipped by the class they are put in, and I think Zai might be one of the most upsetting. Who knows though, maybe one day Illidan will stop being so serious and give her something incredible to do?
I was referring more to archetype-producing neutrals like Desert Obelisk (obviously a meme example, but no doubt produced something unique), rather than generally good neutrals like Leeroy, Pen Flinger and the new Alex that we learn to hate sooner or later.
Core set is a big plus, although it didn't do very much to help diversify DH. I guess Illidari Inquisitor finally got the class to use a big demon, though it had to brute force it by being ridiculously OP to compensate for the problems with the outcast mechanic. (I'm not hating on outcast itself, just how it was made too central to the class.)
And yes, DH has plenty of strengths that rogue doesn't have. As I said to @Dapperdog though, I don't personally think it is enough unless they actually combine the more disparate aspects of the class into the same decks. At present the sides of DH don't mix well enough for individual decks to really showcase how DH has a unique set of strengths, and it is not helped that we have seen lifesteal on rogue weapons twice before, making it iffy to say rogue couldn't have healing.