Big minion resurrection

Seeing as there is not an equal amount of removal for big minions that get cast and and then resurrected at full stats, this is problematic. Also with colossal minions now in play, this has expedited the BIG boards minions back. Having 3 hands of neptulon ress’d then bring neptulon back with his own two hands, that is not fair.

I see two possible ways to fix and balance the issue of ress big decks:

1 - The resurrection pool now have a certain minion, when it dies, to only come back so many times before its permanent dead

2 - When the minion is resurrected, it is pulled with the same stats it died from and/or -1/-1 when ress’d (like rattlegore)

Also remove neptulons hands from the res pool, he gets like an instant 32 damage when ress’d, that is broken.

The deck doesn’t even really require piloting, it is just “Shadow Essence” then just resurrect and repeat that cycle, while doing something else on the side (like a quest). It really isn’t a deck that should be rewarded.

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They just nerfed it in Shaman with Lightning bloom.

Priest just figured out they can get into the Neptulon res action after the Shaman nerf. It’s extremely difficult to deal with a turn 2 Neptulon in Priest that they can subsequently revive the next few turns; and it’s impossible to ignore.

The key question is consistency. I have no idea how consistent it is.

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Those two solutions are way too complicated.

Perhaps just remove the hands from the ress pool is the solution.

You are not talking about balance.

You are talking redesign of the underlying system . It’s not likely going to happen. People love playing with that deck, and those are Blizzard costumers too.

And Blizzard has never resorted to such an extreme solution in 8 years. The closest thing was the nerf to Echo for the Mech Warlock deck in 2019. And that’s not close to how complicated a res limit would be, and how many different cards from so many classes would be affected. Cards like Carnivorous Cube, Weasel, Bloodreaver Gul’dan, Play/Feign Dead, etc.

Res with current stats, is extremely dangerous in classes with lots of minion buffs like Priest, Paladin, and Hunter. You buff the current Standard Beast Hunter deck, if you buff a Rat King then every subsequent Rat king comes back bigger. Priest has Buffs like Bless, Inner Fire, Wig, etc, to allow you to buff charge minions and res them buffed up.

It’s far easier to just nerf Shadow Essence to 7, and Resurrect to 3. Assuming that it’s indeed getting that strong. Which I am not sure right now.

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Other more established CCGs get around these problems with specific riders on specific minions that create undesirable play patterns when resurrected (Emrakul etc) as a way to control exactly which big minions are appropriate for resurrection play patterns and which ones are not. I personally think Hearthstone could use a Wild-only keyword for this…

I also agree that resurrection spells should not primarily function as infinite copy effects because they enable incredibly redundant play patterns revolving around the same tiny subset of minions being tutored then resurrected over and over again. I’d like to see it changed so if one original minion has died then you can only resurrect one copy, then have to wait for that copy to die again in order to resurrect it.

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They recently said in an AMA that they have no intention to make a proper graveyard any time soon so don’t expect them to work on Res at all. All Res does right now is check “What minions on this side of the board have died this game?” and then rolls a dice to see what comes back.

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Having a set number of returns would be void if they gave the minion reborn so it would still be a hassel. Imo, if a card is resurrected it should always return as a 1/1 of the original because in most cases the card in question tends to be a deathrattle minion or one that has an end turn effect, thus its still highly viable.

Mind you this may hurt just as much with a selfish shellfish fatigue deck.

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And all of the rules changes and downsides didn’t stop Hogaak from taking over the meta.

They first tried to ban cards around Hogaak, and it didn’t work. It still reigned the meta. Until they finally banned Hogaak, but a whole bunch of collateral damage was made in the process with the previous bans, rule changes, etc.

Let’s not make the same mistake WOTC made. Just nerf the stupid cards.

Of course it would be a hassel, nothing ever gets fixed in this game unless it requires immediate work or the community flairs up about it.

I really provided a couple solutions, not the only options, but I do like your idea. This would essentially stop big minions from smacking face because of the lack in mass removal constantly.

Silences are always a great thing to include for that possibility as well, but yes shellfish’s stats aren’t the best when playing against.

That’s the problem, isn’t it.

You view other people’s decks as problems which need to be fixed.

How about we nerf one of your favorite cards for each card affected?

Sure, that’s another way to kill the deck that would probably work lol. Not exactly the same goal as the changes I suggested, but that’s ok.

So, just to be clear, you think the rider text on Emrakul, Aeons Torn is a mistake? Care to elaborate on that?

I didn’t mention Emrakul. I mentioned Hogaak.

All that text and rule changes on previous cards did was create a situation where old graveyard effects became unplayable and new graveyard effects were simply created to work and be strong within the new guidelines.

Which is what global res changes would do if implemented in Hearthstone.

We would be killing dozens of cards that are not problematic and just see play in meme decks as collateral damage just to nerf Big Priest, when Big Priest can get nerfed independently. If needed, which I am not sure is the case right now.

Ah, I see - I misunderstood, I thought you were referring to my first paragraph describing the graveyard rider WOTC puts on large minions they specifically don’t want to be part of resurrection play patterns, and the example I gave was Emrakul.

Hogaak is literally the exact opposite of the example I gave from WOTC, can’t even be played from your hand and is made to be played from graveyard… I’m not aware of any minions in Hearthstone with a similar design, and obviously you can’t put an anti-resurrection rider on a card like Hogaak. The point I made was that anti-resurrection riders are the tool WOTC uses to put much-needed boundaries on resurrection mechanics in MTG because they have a history of being toxic, but can also be pretty fun when implemented with care. As a matter of fact, Hogaak is banned in modern while Emrakul remains legal to this day, largely as a product of that rider, and a lot of cards on the modern ban list are directly related to graveyard/resurrection mechanics because it is a very tricky design space existing outside the game’s usual power structures.

But we can agree to disagree on the systemic nature of the problem in Hearthstone, that’s basically what I meant when I said I would still be happy with the changes you suggested even though they seemed to be coming from a different place in terms of goals (killing the deck vs making its’ mechanics more fun - not like I’m playing resurrection priest so makes no difference to me lol).

My perspective, however, has always been that the resurrection mechanics in Hearthstone really don’t function as or feel like resurrection to me - they feel more like reproduction, and are much more boring as a result. All you need to do is get one minion out one time then you can make as many copies of it as you want, forever. The end result is a play pattern that maximizes redundancy/reliability by playing the smallest pool of minions possible then repeatedly tutoring/reproducing them (while actively punishing putting anything else onto the board). So I do think it is a systemic issue related to the quality of the play patterns in question, but again we can agree to disagree on that no problem.

RE: acute concerns with specific cards, in combination with there being no limits whatsoever on the minions that are viable in this strategy this particular function of res mechanics in Hearthstone (the reproduction aspect) really does constrain future development in addition to encouraging what I perceive to be some really boring play patterns. I brought up Emrakul because it is a damn cool card that is literally only able to exist because of that rider. And the fact that they put that rider on it meant they didn’t need to constantly look over their shoulder at legacy, vintage etc when designing it to be fun in standard. And it ended up defining an iconic deck in Modern that had to put a lot of work into hardcasting it at 15 mana, or cheating it onto the board (in a way very similar to shadow essence, actually) but for diminished value. The deck is certainly fun/powerful enough without having the ability to manufacture Emrakuls at will or cheat surprise extra turns onto the board, and if your opponent deals with the first one you need to do something difficult again to get a second - which is basically what people mean when they talk about dynamic gameplay in CCGs.

While the monsters people res in Hearthstone aren’t at that power level yet, resurrection in Hearthstone is random, MTG is a different/better game with sideboards etc, I do think it is worth considering the way they manage these exact issues in their game. It really doesn’t seem like that big deal to put a “can’t be resurrected or copied” keyword on cards like obsidian statue, scrapyard colossus etc as they rotate out of standard, and this could in fact be a reasonable compromise between the systemic and acute camps, hence it being my first suggestion… there are plenty of other minions to use out there that don’t just immediately grind the game to a halt once your opponent plays shadow essence on turn 6, and actually do interesting proactive stuff instead… I guess I would rather have the designers make the cards they want and slap a rider on the stuff that has a lot of potential or proves to be problematic in wild.