One card I'm surprised missed the original list is Shadow Assassin. It's a 3-of auto include in every Ionia deck regardless of the strategy they're trying to implement. It just does a little too much for its cost. I'd nerf it down to a 2/1.
I have one. Make it so Avalanche also gives everyone frostbite, your guys too, so you can combine it with Winters Breath for 11 mana and get a full board clear but not be able to fully capitalize on it till the next turn. So it will be a situational combo.
I don't think this is a change that would improve the play rate of the card. It needs to be playable as a standalone card, and not just a Round 8+ AOE combo piece. At the point that you're running a two-card board clear, you may as well run SI and The Ruination. Then you could play your AOE as early as Round 6, and it only costs you one card slot.
Yeah, for what it's worth, I probably shouldn't have said "shitposting" - it undercuts the reality that yes, people can and do feel differently about Hearthstone and its level of balance.
But I think the idea of "the hearthstone route...[of always needing] to push certain OP things" implies a real intentional effort from Blizzard to push OP content rather than try to build a balanced game. I think the recent rebuild of the Priest core set (which was famously underpowered) shows a meaningful desire on Blizzard's part to develop a fun, balanced game. (You could argue that Demon Hunter proves the opposite is true, but I think the Demon Hunter class was colored by a need to get people excited about and engaging with the new content, and proving there's a way to build a new class that doesn't just chew into the existing design spaces for other classes.)
Balance is always a moving target, and say what you will about Hearthstone, I think it's good that they aren't constantly putting their thumb on the scale the way Riot is, because I think it makes it really hard to know how close to real balance they ever are.
I feel like most of this BS could be solved if there was no limit to how many factions you could use. That way you could always slot in a card for almost any situation you may come across. But I get it. Since there are no mana colors like in MTG it would be hard to balance that too. But if that's the case they need to provide every faction with at least one answer to every possible card to balance it out. Like for example every faction should have at least one Obliterate, Deny, or Silence type card.
Just from a design standpoint, I think it would be very bad if each region was obligated to have least one Obliterate, Deny, Silence, etc. It's certainly true that every region should have a good set of answers to lots of different challenges, but those answers shouldn't be the same or the regions distinction will be pointless. Moreover, since you can run two regions, it's okay to allow for different regions to have different answers, but it becomes a problem when one region just has way more answers than the other regions. This is why there's such an imbalance between Ionia, SI, and P&Z vs the other regions.
It seems to me that runeterra is going the hearthstone route, bit by bit. It's like they can't come up with something balanced and always need to push certain OP things.
I'm glad i didn't play much because i'd probably get mad for the wasted time. I'm also sad that no one is able to come up with some truly balanced game and realize that you can't ever please everyone.
I disagree, I think they (Riot) are just not afraid to try different things, whether they're going to be op or not. Because they're willing to make balance changes every month this is also relatively safe for them to do. When releasing new cards you can't always play it safe because then there's the chance that very little of the new cards will be played, like what happened when TGT was released for Hearthstone.
While I certainly don't agree with the Hearthstone shitposting from Crusader2010, I take issue with the idea that "[Riot's] willing to make balance changes every month." They haven't said they'll consider making a balance patch every month, they've said that they will make a balance patch every month. I think you can very easily argue that Riot's insistence on constantly rebalancing the game is a crutch. They know they can get away with worse balance up front because players can always say "well, just a wait a couple of weeks and they'll fix that OP thing."
The result of that kind of constant buff/nerf cycle is a meta game that basically looks balanced. Every few weeks players will be developing new decks, new cards/regions will rise and fall in popularity, etc., but it will be artificial, and every cycle there will be a risk of some significantly OP deck dominating the meta game without any answer until it gets nerfed out of relevance. Maybe that's fine, but I think really it just means the long term play experience of the game is frustrating/unrewarding.
I am not a League of Legends player, and prior to playing LoR I had assumed that the major complaints about balance in LoL were not entirely fair/amplified by generic internet outrage. But after playing a fair amount of LoR from the preview patches through open beta and up to today, I find myself really unimpressed with their balance team, and I think a lot of the things about LoR that make it novel in the CCG space (an ever-expanding set of regions, spell mana, etc.) will only make it harder to design/balance as the game grows.
I agree that 4 damage is a lot, but at the same time, I asked myself: besides making it fast speed, honestly how much damage would this card need to do to make me want to play it again? At the least, it would need to be able to clear vanilla Crimson Disciple, L1 Fiora, Elise, and War Chefs; however even up'ed to 3 damage I still don't think I'd actually play it because it still doesn't clear cards like Loyal Badgerbear, Boomcrew Rookie or the aforementioned post-bannerman and it's easily answered by cards like Transfusion, Ranger's Resolve, barrier, and Deny.
At slow speed AND hitting both sides of the board, it's play style is like a "lite" version of Ruination, so comparably it needs to have a significant impact on board. Maybe if it also cleansed everything, or obliterated instead of killing? Or keep at 2 damage but reduce cost to 3 mana so it could be played at the end of Round 2 or with pure spell mana? Frankly, I think this card wants to be anti-aggro so making it fast speed is a superior answer but I was brainstorm other changes that maintained the card's original attributes.
I think I'd make it a "Slow 4 mana deal 3." Because it's symmetric, I don't think you gain a ton by making it fast - it's not like you'll be using it often as a combat trick, as it will kill your units before they can attack or block. In fact, I think making it fast will produce a lot of scenarios where a player misplays and blames the card/game for it (because they didn't realize their units would die before damage, or failed to account for how the lower HP would impact an Overwhelming attacker, etc.). It's just a lot safer and more straightforward to keep it slow.
Making it deal 4 damage for the reasons you describe seems to over-index the problems of the existing meta game. Boomcrew Rookie. for instance, is an overtuned card that needs to be nerfed, so I wouldn't use its 4 Health as my yardstick for measuring good balance.
Warmother's Call is tricky to balance, because while Deny exists, if you aren't Ionia, you can pray your opponent doesn't have as many good stalling tools and as many finishing moves. Warmother Control with Shadow Isles may not be as popular, but it's still a decent deck that uses Warmother (so does mine with Freljord and Piltover xd). If too cheap, your opponent can easily overwhelm you. I ftoo expensive, it becomes a niche tool. I don't think this should ever be cheap enough, even if it didn't summon a minion at the time of cast, which is gating the power level of the card.
Probably reduce the cost of Aurora Porealis to 6. That card is hella expensive and laughable, but same could be said about Poros in general.
Yeah, Warmother's Call is definitely hard to balance. I think it needs to be cheaper to be worth playing, so perhaps it needs a more radical change. I haven't thought too critically about this, but what if the text were "Whenever you attack, summon the top ally from your deck." There are rally effects that could make this problematic, but if you aren't running Demacia you're probably only summoning one unit every other round.
Regarding Aurora Porealis, it's certainly good at 6, but I'm not actually convinced it needs to be cheaper. Compare it to Progress Day! - another expensive burst spell that generates card advantage. With the cost reduction, Progress Day! is kind of like "5 mana draw 3," and Aurora Porealis is kind of like "7 mana draw 4." In a lot of CCGs, that's a fair difference in terms of cost. Now, you could argue that the former draws cards from your deck, while the latter gives you random cards, so the difference isn't actually fair. But we know that a) you're playing Poros, so all of those random cards are relevant to your win condition, and b) you have very high odds of getting cheap units, so if you have any leftover mana you can often play a Poro immediately.
It's not a good card today, but I think that's more because of how weak Poros are, not because the card is the wrong cost.
I think the argument that OldManSanns (and implicitly GerritDeMan) are making about Shadow Isles not necessarily being overtuned is very tempting, but ultimately wrong. There's no doubt there are some very undertuned regions, which is why the argument looks good on paper. but I don't think Shadow Isles has enough meaningful weaknesses.
Take the "Glass Canon" idea. It definitely shows up thematically with the Fearsome, Can't Block, and Ephemeral units. But the region also has the most healing out of any region (something like 60% of all healing across Lifesteal, Drain, and Heal effects). The Elise/Spider package is good for aggro as a way to swarm the enemy, and it's good for control as a means of generating chump blockers, and for combo to build up to Atrocity. (We don't see Shadow Isles in aggro much today, but I think the inevitable nerf to Burn Aggro next week will open some doors for SI/Noxus aggro to come back.) Shadow Isles also has some of the most impactful AoE cards, and some of the only hard removal for units.
Taken all together, Shadow Isles is just too good at too many things. Even if the weaker regions weren't undertuned, I think you'd still be seeing a lot of Shadow Isles on the ladder because of how flexible so many of its cards are.
Still thinking about this balance problem. One of the things that Freljord is supposed to be good at is tribal synergies. From a fantasy standpoint, the Freljord is a region made up of several ruling tribes. The Winter's Claw and the Avarosan are represented in the game, and I'd expect eventually the Frostguard will show up too. (They also have Tarkaz the Tribeless, which strongly reinforces the idea that tribes matter to the Freljord.)
Mechanically in the game, Freljord has three of the six major tribal tags (Poros, Elnuks, and Yetis, but no Elites, Sea Monsters, and Spiders). (I guess technically "Tech" is also a tribe, though it's exclusive to Heimerdinger.) They even had actual tribal buffs in the form of Pack Mentality, though it ultimately lost the tribal flavor.
With all of this in mind, here are a couple of other changes I think would probably be a good idea
Iceborn Legacy: Change it to be a burst spell with text "Give an ally and other allies of its group everywhere +1|+1". This would effectively be a "tribe neutral" Poro Snax.
The original version of this card was "3 mana burst give an ally and all copies everywhere +1|+1" with the thinking that it would fit into a cloning deck, but all it did was buff the Spider/Atrocity decks. On its face, restoring it to burst speed and focusing on a tribe rather than a specific unit would just return it to that sort of "out of context usage."
However, I expect leaving the high cost would mean it's still unappealing for decks that just happen to include tribes (like Spider/Atrocity or Demacia Bannerman), where the opportunity cost of running this buff would be too high. What it would do, however, is make earnest tribal decks (like Yetis and Elnuks) much more appealing.
Pack Mentality: Change the text to "Give an ally and other allies of its group everywhere +1|+1 and 'Support: Give my supported ally Overwhelm this round if we share a group.'"
When Riot changed this card (it was originally "Give an ally and other allies of its group +3|+3 and Overwhelm this round"), they said they did it because the card was both ineffective and confusing. In my opinion, any confusing aspects of the card stemmed from the half-hearted support for tribal decks - it was the only card that referred to "groups," and they went the wrong way in an effort to clarify it.
My version offers a permanent buff and a permanent support ability. The buff is much smaller than any previous version of the card because my changes to Iceborn Legacy makes it easier to buff over time (and Freljord has deck buffs already) so you don't need the huge buff as a finisher.
The "Support" ability is intended to better reflect the fantasy of the card - when you attack as a pack, you overwhelm the enemy. While the support effect means its less impactful the turn you play it (because one unit won't get Overwhelm), it is available every attack moving forward. I can imagine a number of other ways to handle the Overwhelm aspect of the card, but I liked this because it leverages the Support mechanic - I find that mechanic to be novel to LoR, and think they should make more use of it
The second change there may be a little too wonky, but I do think it needs to change back to meaningfully supporting tribal synergies. The latest version not only throws out an important aspect of the Freljord, but also did nothing to improve its play rates.
EDIT: One last note - I could see a bigger change made to Ashe to further support tribal synergies. She's supposed to be a character whose mission is to unite the tribes of the Freljord, and having a champion that reinforces tribes could go a long way to making the synergies useful. That said, I don't have a clear idea as to what that revamp would be, and I don't think you'd want to change much about her - maybe just the Crystal Arrow spell since it's slow and a little unimpactful if you're not on offense the turn after she levels up.
I like where both your heads are at on this. Specifically, I would recommend:
Changing Avalanche to either 4 damage or to fast speed. I spent a lot of time trying this month to make this card work, and even with a glut of P&Z / Noxus burn decks and Demacia bannerman decks it just stinks. The burn decks will always open attack, the bannerman decks will mostly survive it, and if there's a Crimson Disciple on-board you'll probably lose as much health as you prevent. It's just insane how much better Withering Wail is: for 1 more mana, the damage is fast-speed limited to your opponent's board and you heal.
Either buff Counterfeit Copies to shuffle more copies or make it guaranteed to put one on/near the top. I know what you're thinking--that's a P&Z card, not a Frejlord--but its intended to be part of the Elnuk package. Granted nobody wants a return to pre-nerf Elnuk madness, but it should be possible to build a Frejlord/P&Z deck that can contest a bannerman deck on turn 5 with some consistency.
Remove the "if" clause on Poro Herder--he just always tutors you 2 poros. Maybe also make Poro Snax add a random poro to hand? Basically: poros should be an easily slottable package comparable to spiders in SI, Eye of the Dragon + spells in Ionia, or aggro / Can't Block in Noxus.
Reduce the cost of She Who Wanders--maybe a 8 mana 8/8? She's suppose to be a stabilization tool circa The Ruination, but whereas SI can bank mana and heal/stall until Ruination on 6, its nearly impossible for Frejlord to survive until 10 without already winning board anyways.
I've seen Counterfeit Copies run in Ezreal/Karma decks just to have more cheap burst, but I doubt the extra shuffle would meaningfully impact that deck's success.
I really want Avalanche to be better, and I like your suggested changes to it in general. 4 damage might be a little high for a card that can come down on turn 3, but it definitely needs either a speed or damage buff. I also like the Poro Herder change (I've been trying to make a Poro deck work recently), but I don't know that it will make for a major improvement to a dedicated Poro deck - if you don't have one or more Poros in play most of the game, you're probably losing. It would make running a small "Poro Package" feasible in some other deck, but I'm not sure it has the flexibility of the spiders package to be worth it.
A great example of this comes from Hearthstone. The Caverns Below was not a massively OP card - the win rates for the archetype were only narrowly over 50% - but it created a meta game where match-ups were super polarized. Either you were playing a deck that was good against Quest Rogue, or you weren't, and that was the deciding factor in whether or not you won, not how you played the game. Blizzard tried and failed to balance it multiple times with nerfs.
I fully agree with you but wasn't Hearthstone always this way after Naxxaramas?
I mean, there was always this 1 way too powerfull deck warping the meta which was so much stronger then everything else that forced every other deck to either tech against it or to play counters.
Ex: Started with UTH Hunter otk, then Face Hunter, Mech Mage, Solitary Rogue, 7/7 Shaman, Demonlock, Dr. 6 Paladin, Pirate Warrior, Jade Druid, Patron Warrior, ...etc, just to name a few.
Hearthstone has certainly had it's share of balance issues and massively OP decks, but the distinction I'm drawing here is between a card like The Caverns Below and the pre-nerf Shaman Galakrond deck.
In the former example, the deck wasn't that powerful, but was situationally powerful in a way that warped the meta game disastrously but still left room for a couple of other successful meta decks. The latter was a deck that was itself incredibly powerful. It also warped the meta game, but in a pretty different way that suppressed everything else. Both were poorly designed, but they are qualitatively different and had different impacts, and the example of Unyielding Spirit maps closer to Quest Rogue.
Hi RoseMuffins, and welcome to the forum. I think there are lots of discussions here about game balance/region balance, and Shadow Isles does come up regularly (though perhaps these discussions are sprinkled throughout posts rather than in some dedicated balance thread).
FWIW, you'll get more responses to your posts if you actually share your point of view. Whether you meant for this or not, this kind of post ("I have thoughts, but I won't share them until you do") doesn't really invite conversation.
@grayghost39, I think you may need to adjust the costs a bit. "3 mana draw 2" is generally a fair price, and this is more like "5 mana draw 4." Yes, the "end your turn" clause is something of a counter balance, but it's not hard to just use the hero power as your last action on your turn anyway and mitigate that cost. I think I'd rather see the cost increased a bit (maybe to 3 for the base spell) and then drop the "end your turn" bit. In that way, it's balanced against Sprint from a cost perspective, but you get to trade certain efficiencies for "cards over time."
Regarding the art, I think it works but it would be better as something more tavern-centric to fit the broader Hearthstone "meta" nature (e.g. a human and an orc having a beer together). (And I'm not sure an elf bathing would get past Blizzard censors.)
@Thez, I could make it say "Swap your Hero Power to Shadow Drain" in the interest of shrinking the text box a bit, but I used Metamorphosis' text as my baseline for how to template it. The card text says "Deal 5 damage" despite the hero power being called "Demonic Blast," so I opted to print its effect as closely as I could (while keeping text at 4 lines or fewer).
Thanks to folks for the feedback on Thunderfury. It was kind of a mixed bag, so I'm going to play with some other ideas (might revisit it later). Here's a new idea I worked on this morning:
I had to play around a little with standard templating to make the text fit within four lines. Typically you'd expect the card to include "At the start of your turn" in the hero power description, and you'd expect the damage to be described as "deal 2 damage to your hero," but all of that was impossible to reasonably fit.
One card I'm surprised missed the original list is Shadow Assassin. It's a 3-of auto include in every Ionia deck regardless of the strategy they're trying to implement. It just does a little too much for its cost. I'd nerf it down to a 2/1.
So what do you recommend instead? Or is the snarky response all you've got?
I get a lot of these changes, but why the update to Jinx? Just because they added Noxian Fervor and Gotcha! to the game?
Also, while Loyal Badgerbear is very powerful, the nerf you're suggesting makes him a worse Iron Ballista. The real problem in my mind is the Grizzled Ranger.
And I agree with CursedParrot that Unyielding Spirit needs a speed change.
I don't think this is a change that would improve the play rate of the card. It needs to be playable as a standalone card, and not just a Round 8+ AOE combo piece. At the point that you're running a two-card board clear, you may as well run SI and The Ruination. Then you could play your AOE as early as Round 6, and it only costs you one card slot.
Yeah, for what it's worth, I probably shouldn't have said "shitposting" - it undercuts the reality that yes, people can and do feel differently about Hearthstone and its level of balance.
But I think the idea of "the hearthstone route...[of always needing] to push certain OP things" implies a real intentional effort from Blizzard to push OP content rather than try to build a balanced game. I think the recent rebuild of the Priest core set (which was famously underpowered) shows a meaningful desire on Blizzard's part to develop a fun, balanced game. (You could argue that Demon Hunter proves the opposite is true, but I think the Demon Hunter class was colored by a need to get people excited about and engaging with the new content, and proving there's a way to build a new class that doesn't just chew into the existing design spaces for other classes.)
Balance is always a moving target, and say what you will about Hearthstone, I think it's good that they aren't constantly putting their thumb on the scale the way Riot is, because I think it makes it really hard to know how close to real balance they ever are.
Just from a design standpoint, I think it would be very bad if each region was obligated to have least one Obliterate, Deny, Silence, etc. It's certainly true that every region should have a good set of answers to lots of different challenges, but those answers shouldn't be the same or the regions distinction will be pointless. Moreover, since you can run two regions, it's okay to allow for different regions to have different answers, but it becomes a problem when one region just has way more answers than the other regions. This is why there's such an imbalance between Ionia, SI, and P&Z vs the other regions.
While I certainly don't agree with the Hearthstone shitposting from Crusader2010, I take issue with the idea that "[Riot's] willing to make balance changes every month." They haven't said they'll consider making a balance patch every month, they've said that they will make a balance patch every month. I think you can very easily argue that Riot's insistence on constantly rebalancing the game is a crutch. They know they can get away with worse balance up front because players can always say "well, just a wait a couple of weeks and they'll fix that OP thing."
The result of that kind of constant buff/nerf cycle is a meta game that basically looks balanced. Every few weeks players will be developing new decks, new cards/regions will rise and fall in popularity, etc., but it will be artificial, and every cycle there will be a risk of some significantly OP deck dominating the meta game without any answer until it gets nerfed out of relevance. Maybe that's fine, but I think really it just means the long term play experience of the game is frustrating/unrewarding.
I am not a League of Legends player, and prior to playing LoR I had assumed that the major complaints about balance in LoL were not entirely fair/amplified by generic internet outrage. But after playing a fair amount of LoR from the preview patches through open beta and up to today, I find myself really unimpressed with their balance team, and I think a lot of the things about LoR that make it novel in the CCG space (an ever-expanding set of regions, spell mana, etc.) will only make it harder to design/balance as the game grows.
"Burn Aggro" is the name given to the current Noxus/P&Z aggro deck that uses a lot of direct Nexus damage to burn the enemy down quickly.
I think I'd make it a "Slow 4 mana deal 3." Because it's symmetric, I don't think you gain a ton by making it fast - it's not like you'll be using it often as a combat trick, as it will kill your units before they can attack or block. In fact, I think making it fast will produce a lot of scenarios where a player misplays and blames the card/game for it (because they didn't realize their units would die before damage, or failed to account for how the lower HP would impact an Overwhelming attacker, etc.). It's just a lot safer and more straightforward to keep it slow.
Making it deal 4 damage for the reasons you describe seems to over-index the problems of the existing meta game. Boomcrew Rookie. for instance, is an overtuned card that needs to be nerfed, so I wouldn't use its 4 Health as my yardstick for measuring good balance.
Yeah, Warmother's Call is definitely hard to balance. I think it needs to be cheaper to be worth playing, so perhaps it needs a more radical change. I haven't thought too critically about this, but what if the text were "Whenever you attack, summon the top ally from your deck." There are rally effects that could make this problematic, but if you aren't running Demacia you're probably only summoning one unit every other round.
Regarding Aurora Porealis, it's certainly good at 6, but I'm not actually convinced it needs to be cheaper. Compare it to Progress Day! - another expensive burst spell that generates card advantage. With the cost reduction, Progress Day! is kind of like "5 mana draw 3," and Aurora Porealis is kind of like "7 mana draw 4." In a lot of CCGs, that's a fair difference in terms of cost. Now, you could argue that the former draws cards from your deck, while the latter gives you random cards, so the difference isn't actually fair. But we know that a) you're playing Poros, so all of those random cards are relevant to your win condition, and b) you have very high odds of getting cheap units, so if you have any leftover mana you can often play a Poro immediately.
It's not a good card today, but I think that's more because of how weak Poros are, not because the card is the wrong cost.
I think the argument that OldManSanns (and implicitly GerritDeMan) are making about Shadow Isles not necessarily being overtuned is very tempting, but ultimately wrong. There's no doubt there are some very undertuned regions, which is why the argument looks good on paper. but I don't think Shadow Isles has enough meaningful weaknesses.
Take the "Glass Canon" idea. It definitely shows up thematically with the Fearsome, Can't Block, and Ephemeral units. But the region also has the most healing out of any region (something like 60% of all healing across Lifesteal, Drain, and Heal effects). The Elise/Spider package is good for aggro as a way to swarm the enemy, and it's good for control as a means of generating chump blockers, and for combo to build up to Atrocity. (We don't see Shadow Isles in aggro much today, but I think the inevitable nerf to Burn Aggro next week will open some doors for SI/Noxus aggro to come back.) Shadow Isles also has some of the most impactful AoE cards, and some of the only hard removal for units.
Taken all together, Shadow Isles is just too good at too many things. Even if the weaker regions weren't undertuned, I think you'd still be seeing a lot of Shadow Isles on the ladder because of how flexible so many of its cards are.
Still thinking about this balance problem. One of the things that Freljord is supposed to be good at is tribal synergies. From a fantasy standpoint, the Freljord is a region made up of several ruling tribes. The Winter's Claw and the Avarosan are represented in the game, and I'd expect eventually the Frostguard will show up too. (They also have Tarkaz the Tribeless, which strongly reinforces the idea that tribes matter to the Freljord.)
Mechanically in the game, Freljord has three of the six major tribal tags (Poros, Elnuks, and Yetis, but no Elites, Sea Monsters, and Spiders). (I guess technically "Tech" is also a tribe, though it's exclusive to Heimerdinger.) They even had actual tribal buffs in the form of Pack Mentality, though it ultimately lost the tribal flavor.
With all of this in mind, here are a couple of other changes I think would probably be a good idea
The second change there may be a little too wonky, but I do think it needs to change back to meaningfully supporting tribal synergies. The latest version not only throws out an important aspect of the Freljord, but also did nothing to improve its play rates.
EDIT: One last note - I could see a bigger change made to Ashe to further support tribal synergies. She's supposed to be a character whose mission is to unite the tribes of the Freljord, and having a champion that reinforces tribes could go a long way to making the synergies useful. That said, I don't have a clear idea as to what that revamp would be, and I don't think you'd want to change much about her - maybe just the Crystal Arrow spell since it's slow and a little unimpactful if you're not on offense the turn after she levels up.
I've seen Counterfeit Copies run in Ezreal/Karma decks just to have more cheap burst, but I doubt the extra shuffle would meaningfully impact that deck's success.
I really want Avalanche to be better, and I like your suggested changes to it in general. 4 damage might be a little high for a card that can come down on turn 3, but it definitely needs either a speed or damage buff. I also like the Poro Herder change (I've been trying to make a Poro deck work recently), but I don't know that it will make for a major improvement to a dedicated Poro deck - if you don't have one or more Poros in play most of the game, you're probably losing. It would make running a small "Poro Package" feasible in some other deck, but I'm not sure it has the flexibility of the spiders package to be worth it.
Haha, good to know, thanks! I had noticed some problems with it, but didn't know how to resolve them.
Hearthstone has certainly had it's share of balance issues and massively OP decks, but the distinction I'm drawing here is between a card like The Caverns Below and the pre-nerf Shaman Galakrond deck.
In the former example, the deck wasn't that powerful, but was situationally powerful in a way that warped the meta game disastrously but still left room for a couple of other successful meta decks. The latter was a deck that was itself incredibly powerful. It also warped the meta game, but in a pretty different way that suppressed everything else. Both were poorly designed, but they are qualitatively different and had different impacts, and the example of Unyielding Spirit maps closer to Quest Rogue.
Hi RoseMuffins, and welcome to the forum. I think there are lots of discussions here about game balance/region balance, and Shadow Isles does come up regularly (though perhaps these discussions are sprinkled throughout posts rather than in some dedicated balance thread).
FWIW, you'll get more responses to your posts if you actually share your point of view. Whether you meant for this or not, this kind of post ("I have thoughts, but I won't share them until you do") doesn't really invite conversation.
@grayghost39, I think you may need to adjust the costs a bit. "3 mana draw 2" is generally a fair price, and this is more like "5 mana draw 4." Yes, the "end your turn" clause is something of a counter balance, but it's not hard to just use the hero power as your last action on your turn anyway and mitigate that cost. I think I'd rather see the cost increased a bit (maybe to 3 for the base spell) and then drop the "end your turn" bit. In that way, it's balanced against Sprint from a cost perspective, but you get to trade certain efficiencies for "cards over time."
Regarding the art, I think it works but it would be better as something more tavern-centric to fit the broader Hearthstone "meta" nature (e.g. a human and an orc having a beer together). (And I'm not sure an elf bathing would get past Blizzard censors.)
@Thez, I could make it say "Swap your Hero Power to Shadow Drain" in the interest of shrinking the text box a bit, but I used Metamorphosis' text as my baseline for how to template it. The card text says "Deal 5 damage" despite the hero power being called "Demonic Blast," so I opted to print its effect as closely as I could (while keeping text at 4 lines or fewer).
@shaveyou - your passive hero power shouldn't have a cost associated with it
Thanks to folks for the feedback on Thunderfury. It was kind of a mixed bag, so I'm going to play with some other ideas (might revisit it later). Here's a new idea I worked on this morning:
I had to play around a little with standard templating to make the text fit within four lines. Typically you'd expect the card to include "At the start of your turn" in the hero power description, and you'd expect the damage to be described as "deal 2 damage to your hero," but all of that was impossible to reasonably fit.