New Card-Witch's Brew

Multiplayer Discussion
1

New Card-Witch’s Brew
2 Mana
Shaman
Epic
Spell
Restore 4 Health
[Echo]

2

Control shaman intensifies.

2 Likes
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nice to see they are back to printing echo cards, i thought it was just an one time thing as they didn’t print any echo cards last expantion.

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A little reminiscient of Forbidden Healing.

Expensive for the amount healed, and I’d honestly just prefer a healing rain most of the time. But in a pinch, it might serve if acquired randomly, and Shaman lacked an echo spell outside Unstable.

1 Like
5

Basically Forbidden Healing, but better (you can heal a minion and aim rest at your face, for example). Sounds decent, also it’s up to 20 HP in a single card. Maybe not as efficient as some other lifegain options, but it’s a lot in a single draw.

And Hagatha can generate these randomly too. IMO will see play.

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Blizzard and consistency go together like mayonnaise and peanut butter.

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Why they don’t reuse Echo is beyond me.

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8

There’s shamans much needed heal spell. Its pretty dang good actually potential 20 healing spread that’s very good. O god priest is going to thought steal this and kill us all.

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This will be the only one, and quite possibly the last. Each class got one “throwback” card to the set the villain comes from, and this one is Hagatha’s.

Kind of a lot of healing if you Krag’wa it the next turn though…

1 Like
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We like to keep keywords to one set. All other Echo cards rotate out before this one, so it doesn’t make sense to have a keyword on a single card in a set. For a new player to jump in to Hearthstone, it can be difficult to learn a bunch of new keywords. By limiting the number of keywords that people have to learn, the easier it is to play Hearthstone. Witch’s Brew doesn’t suffer from being unreadable if we take the keyword off. :slight_smile:

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Just like the number of deck slots are too confusing?

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…Discover??? Rush? Lifesteal? Clearly I’m confused.

This is HORRIBLY inconsistent.

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I really do not understand the thinking behind this. It’s also not consistent. Discover, Lifesteal, Rush. The value of keywords is being able to reuse an idea without having to spell it out, you can just mouse over the text of the keyword to see what they do. This argument would make a lot more sense in a physical card game, but in a digital game with mouseover text, this just seems like a really weak argument.

This just seems to me like you’re limiting your own design space for the sake of a small part of the playerbase.

In a set with Twinspell, it’s a bit confusing as to whether you can play Witch’s Brew more than twice.

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Why not make it evergreen like rush?

It seems like a prefect keyword for evergreen as it is easy to understand. Especially for spells. There is only one evergreen keyword for spells and the limitations because of this is starting to show.

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Every time I read a dev comment like this, I can’t help but be insulted that the developers think that it’s playerbase (which includes me and everyone I try to invite to hearthstone) are clueless. When I first started the game, the first thing I did was test out cards with keywords in AI mode just to see I was getting it right, and everything else I had this magical tool of near omniscient knowledge called a search engine.

We. Can. Handle. Intricacy.

Mike donais asked what they can do to get people to play hearthstone again. You can stop treating them like children.

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Thanks for kinda spelling the logic out.

I do have to agree with some of the sentiment here, though. Limiting keywords to one set has a purpose, sure. But some were never really explored super well and we would love to see many return.

Echo is definitely one. But inspire was also kinda…flat in it’s set. And magnetize should definitely see return from time to time.

I’m not going to mirror the level of negative feedback others have, but definitely take away from this that we actually love the flavor of keywords created and like to see them explored again and in new ways.

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I really want to bang home this point: keyword overload (pun, lol) can definitely be intimidating in a physical card game since you’d have to look up what the keyword does and you’re on your own to follow the rules of how they should work and interact.

In Hearthstone, we should not have those problems. We can hover over the text of a keyword to get the exact description of what it does. And even if we didn’t fully or correctly understand the keyword after reading it, the game will make us follow the rules and we can then learn how it actually works. And if you were still concerned about the new player experience with it, you can adjust the intro tutorial to cover things that might be confusing. You could also make a ‘training mode’ in the versus AI section.

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The distinction between physical to digital is so important because it’s embracing those strengths that has made hearthstone the best digital card game. I agree with others that keeping the keywords is better I think, especially since you can get the description of it from tool tips.

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You can’t expect the designers of this game to be consistent, or even logical at times. Been like that since day one.

Wild Growth does not say anything about Excess Mana, yet somehow, it does something that is not mentioned in the card text at all.

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20

The excellent Shmorrior has relayed the point perfectly. :smiley:

I do understand the predisposition you, Team 5, hold to keep the game simple, such that it is accessible and can be picked up by new players or back up by returning players. However, we would like to humbly request that you treat the players as normal human beings. Even if we err once or a few times, which is already unlikely provided the card is worded correctly and the keyword defined properly in the tooltip, we will quickly learn precisely how a given mechanic works and interacts in almost every situation.

This is certainly not intended as a disparagement of your philosophy; I do not intend to censure the developers. Having said that, I daresay that I am speaking for almost every player I know, offline and online, new and veteran alike, when I posit that certain aspects of the game are overly simple and that this fact holds it back.

Additionally, I respectfully wish to add that deciding against reusing keywords – which, mind you, literally exist to be reused, to enhance consistency and clarity – is almost certainly counterproductive.

  • Poor or unclear wording on cards can easily puzzle players at all levels of experience, and will do so more than the systematized use of keywords.
  • Cards that work exactly the same way (or were meant to) should follow an established format, and this includes keywords. Some cards possessing a keyword for a mechanic while others lack it will inevitably confuse players, and almost certainly much more so than having to learn keywords, something easily done with practice and readily prepared for by reading tooltips and looking it up if necessary.
  • On an aesthetic level, new players might perceive the game design to be all over the place and consequently resolve that the game is not for them. I know this seems to be a trivial point, but accessibility is vital to Hearthstone, so indubitably this does matter a lot.

I am sure you had lengthy discussions before coming to this decision: I would simply like to ask that you reconsider, especially since it is possible this philosophy made sense in the past but no longer does. It shouldn’t make a difference, but I should append that I have been contracted to aid in game design as one of the multiple odd jobs I used to take in the past, so I do have some experience in this respect; although, naturally, I would never presume to be as knowledgeable as you nor be informed regarding how the game is run.

Thank you for your time! :smiley:

6 Likes