How are we all enjoying the latest balance changes? I'm personally really enjoying the new achievement system now that jankier decks are less likely to just immediately lose - coming up with silly decks to try and complete some of the weirder achievements is very fun, especially when you have to try and work around the card you'd think you need for it.

Conversation this week is a bit of a mystery. Let's investigate!

Perfectly Balanced

Congratulations are in order for ChickyChick and their Balance Keeper, the winner of the latest WCDC!

We look forward to their ideas for the next competition!

Investigation Station

It's been quite a while since we've seen one, so it's only fitting that the class we uncover in the most recent Fan Community Spotlight is shattterstar1998's Detective Class!

 

Coming up with a brand new class for Hearthstone is no easy task. The game designers themselves definitely had quite a few initial fumbles when introducing the Demon Hunter class, and that still went far smoother than I ever would have expected it to. I love seeing how different people take on the challenge of creating a mechanically and flavourfully unique class, while doing their best to take into consideration how balanced it would be. It's almost guaranteed that they wouldn't get it bang on without releasing it into the wild for playtesting, but even something that looks fun and not immediately broken or useless is a very impressive feat.

This Detective Class really hits big on the flavour, with one of the main mechanics being based around revealing cards, gaining or giving up information in order to receive benefits. I love this idea, because it's something that could easily fit into Hearthstone but hasn't really got much of a precedent; it feels organic and yet unique at the same time.

 

Check the full interview for more information on Cases!

This is something I think I'd impress upon someone trying to design a new Hearthstone Class as one of the most fundamental things they need to figure out. You can start from almost any source material and come up with something impressive, but you need to be able to differentiate your class from the existing ones in more than just flavour.

A Gladiator Class, for example, sounds quite impressive and immediately gives me ideas for potentially including a combat-focused Class Keyword - and of course, weapons. Care needs to be taken to recognise where your most obvious pitfalls are, however; Warrior and Paladin both spring to mind as classes to focus on when I'm fleshing out what the Gladiator's strengths and weaknesses are, as these two classes are most likely to have mechanical and flavour overlap with it depending on the setting.

How do you make sure your Necromancer isn't filching space from Priest or Warlock? Is your Trickster really just an amalgamation of Rogue and Mage? How does your Herbalist set themself apart from a Druid? There's always going to be some mixing of identities - I'm sure we could pin down exactly where Demon Hunter took each of its archetypes from if we wanted to - but balancing them to make your class stand out as unique but still a part of Hearthstone is a difficult but worthwhile endeavour.

Make sure you check out the interview at the link above where shatterstar1998 goes into more detail on how they decided to build their class, including the deliberate strengths and weaknesses they wanted to focus on, as well as a link to the full list of cards.

Crossed Over

We end with the WCDC, as always. We're helping some Champions make a trip over to Hearthstone this week - click the banner to welcome them!