The Core Set is a brand new thing and Iksar is 99% sure it won’t escape with no changes.
They don’t want cards that appear in “literally every deck” for a class inside of the core set.
Paladins were in a good spot - thematic but none of the cards overpowered.
Forged in the Barrens
We may receive nerf reverts a week or so before the Year of the Dragon’s sets’ rotation.
They didn’t forget the new expansion is coming. We’ll receive all the information needed in due time. Have some faith!
Social Features
Social, alongside 2v2, constantly have pitches within the team.
A big question is whether you go for more ways to play together as social or ways to communicate.
Iksar would love to work on a Guild feature to connect players.
Following up guilds with social game modes would be the next iteration.
Iksar thinks they will spend a lot of time on social features next because they’ve spent a lot of time away from that.
Shaman
Spell schools are going to be fun with Shaman. Fire, Frost, and Nature build around are all open.
Card draw is coming back to Shamans.
We can expect to see more “go wide” cards like Bloodlust
Murlocs, Battlecry, Overload and Elementals are all confirmed to be places that will be explored again.
Wrath of Air Totem was the best Totem by far in some decks and totally useless in others.
Team 5 would like to build Spell Damage support for Shaman and not make it feel like a high roll moment whenever it happens.
Top Legend Rewards
They’ve been discussing special rewards for getting to X Top Legend and what cutoffs could exist.
It could be a cool goal to give players another reason to go for higher ranks.
Any reward like this should be something you can really show off.
No details to share on what the reward could be.
Pre-Release Events
Iksar doesn’t buy that people are solving the meta during the events.
He believes that players are out there just looking for deck ideas for Day 1.
Streamers aren’t necessarily trying to build the best decks anyway, just fun stuff to watch.
If the events accelerated figuring out the meta as much as some people say it does, he doesn’t think they’d do them anymore.
Game Balance
Some cards are meant to have a low play rate and either catch on later with support or stay there because they may become frustrating.
Team 5 doesn’t have infinite time, so there are always designs they end up shipping that they wish they had more time to work on.
Any class that was draw restricted will see more card draw.
Only some cards are supposed to be good at card draw though, so don’t expect hard cycle for everyone.
A big part of Team 5’s design philosophy is to make cards and strategies that feel really powerful when they work, even if their win rate isn’t that high.
It would be easy for them to tweak decks and cards power levels every day until all classes were at a 50% win rate, but that just isn’t the goal.
When you face something frustrating, they hope that experience is leveled out by a future game where you get to feel like you are doing the overpowered thing.
If everyone is talking about one deck being overpowered, chances are that it is. If everyone is talking about their deck being overpowered, we are probably doing something right.
Bluegill Warrior and Stonetusk Boar were abused in combos.
Mana cost matters. Design space became limited.
They are listening to feedback, it’s possible they might come to a different solution.
Iksar’s list of tough to balance classes:
Hunter can’t heal or clear the board so you can’t make use of it.
Druid ramp is a core mechanic but it can feel helpless to play against.
Warlock’s sheer power of Life Tap can make them 1 medium-power Neutral drop away from domination.
Iksar thinks Warrior and Druid are the easiest to meme with classes in terms of card design.
They considered creating mechanics that allowed you to play more than 2 copies per card in the same deck or effects with the same goal.
Deck Tracker
Hearthstone is not very likely to get its own in-game deck tracker.
Book of Heroes
The idea of Book of Heroes will be expanded beyond the 10 core characters.
Miscellaneous
Someone on the team designed a VR Hearthstone in their free time, but there’s no plan to make an official statement out of it.
Iksar
He isn’t done yet with achievements, but he’ll get back to them in preparation for the Core Set and Forged in the Barrens.
His favourite “bad guy” is Itachi Uchiha from Naruto.
He was really excited to play N’Zoth, the Corruptor, while his favorite playtest deck was a N’Zoth C’Thun Rogue.
Oh Thrive in the Shadows, you will be missed. Or maybe we could have multiple versions, and scrap the whole draw weakness. Strange how getting and playing cards is a capital strength and crippling weakness in a card game.
When you look at class weakness and that Shaman and Priest are both slated to be weak to card draw, and then actually compare the card draw of the two…it’s laughable. The difference between Shaman and Priest card draw is greater than the difference between Priest and Rogue board clear.
It was a dumb design anyway and I’m glad they finally figured it out. Card draw is ESSENTIAL because card advantage is the simplest way to win the game. You can’t just design a class without draw. You’d force them to have overpowered cards just to keep up with card advantage because their 1 card would be worth more than the same card in another class
I mean really, just give each classes conditions they have to fill to get their card draw. Warlock does it by paying life, demon hunter has it by existing, rogue has to combo a lot of the times, just keep designing conditions and card draw will be fine.
Focusing on the social communication will pay dividends to HS and game play. The more they focus on building a community, the platform will be used more as relationships build.
I might come back after expansion release. I just can’t play the game with the current state of priest and their lack of acknowledgement on the issues. Priest is dead last in standard and all they talk about fixing is Shaman and other stuff.
Plus, a lot of new games have been really appealing to me. Hearthstone just feels so stale, but I’m hoping this expansion changes things up enough to feel like a lot has changed.
I mean, that’s part of the problem with Priest right now. Playing other classes feels so smooth and Priest feels so clunky. The lack of draw/targeted draw is what part of the problem is. Everyone else can dig and get to their win condition faster, while Priest is lacking a definitive win condition, lacks a way to get to its win conditions faster, and has an uphill battle just to keep up with the power that other classes have. Priest has a lot of lack of synergy right now.
It’s EXACTLY, what’s wrong with priest. It is also EXACTLY what was wrong with hunter when they were like “hurr durr we will design hunter without draw” and then it basically became lose if you didn’t have a good opener class.
What I don’t understand is how they redesigned hunter to have draw, saw how that gave the class more options and at least 3 -4 decks at any given time, then went and said
“we are redesigning class identiites, we are going to kill draw for priest and shaman, also priest will have narrow but powerful spells”
What is the purpose of powerful spells IF YOU CAN’T DRAW THEM??? It was like one step forward, 2 miles back and I already knew that it would get reverted again. Glad they found a clue in the barrens.
Rogue is easily #1 meme class imo. I understand Druid/Warrior though as well, I have tons of memes with them. It’s because they have weird cards that allow you to abuse stuff.
