Oh yeah, I didnt mean to respond to you there
Ogre Priest is undefeated for me today in Legend so far (8-0). Best is vs Pallys, they have nfi whatās going on.
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If Iām the designer and I have to choose between ramp going or big powerful neutral minions. The ramp is going every time because itās a broken mechanic. If every class had the ability to ramp, that would be a different story. Thatās not how this game is.
Doomkin is fine and we can have a conversation about matron after we see what happens without the whelp.
Iām pretty sure we would all like to see restrictions put on Marin. Itās a new set card, so you arenāt gonna see any changes to that card till the end of the cycle.
Hearthstone devs at the start of 2023 year: āRamp is really restrictive for card design, so weāre gonna keep ramping very light this yearā
also them, splish splash whelp, malfurionsā gift, and doomkin
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Honestly I thought moving ramp out of Malfurionās Gift would of been the path chosen but here we are
See, I come to the opposite conclusion. I ditch the powerful neutrals. Those have the side effects of making the rest of the game too samey when everyone is playing say, Unkilliax, or astalor, or Denathrius.
Without ramp, druid basically loses its class identity. Itās possible to do ramp in a balanced way, but itās very tough to when they can avoid the inherent card inefficiencies of ramping with overly efficient followups, and itās way easier to nerf druid class cards that are too efficient post ramp than it is neutrals without collateral damage.
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Druid class identity to me is them being based off Druids in Warcraft. This class identity nonsense doesnāt have to be so restrictive. Druids can heal, gain armor, and attack themselves. They have Nature and Arcane Magic. Can change forms. They donāt need ramp, just like Rogue doesnāt need Shadowstep. Those were some cards at a time. Be more creative, Team 5.
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I think the biggest problem is that theyāve never done ramp correctly. They should have just stuck some overload onto the ramp cards. That way you accelerate to the end game faster than your opponent, but you canāt utilize it along the way.
They also need to rope in these big neutral minions they keep creating. A card like Marin, with no restrictions to play it is a really bad idea.
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itsā either
1 class thatsā broken becomes less broken (this is when you remove ramp)
or
every class suffers since theresā no longer a consistent power level of any kind.
First, letās bear in mind: weāre talking about a game where the rules constantly shift. Where cards are randomly discovered or added or removed or drawn or exploded or āACTION. PACKED. PERFECTION.ā
That being said, I really do have to echo that ramp is the problem. As painful as it is for me to say it. I love druid, theyāre the closest thing HS has to MTGās mono-green identity. But MTG has mana randomness. Your lands are (in most cases) part of your card draws. Mana screw vs flooding vs āI need THIS color instead of THAT oneā are par for the course. Itās part of the skill in deckbuilding - figuring out your mana curve and ratio.
Hearthstone is much more casual in that aspect. It has a fixed mana curve by default. Starting manaās always 1 (under ānormal rulesā) and always caps at 10 (again, unless something random happens) and you always gain 1 per turn (again, barring RNG). Ramp and/or mana steal, in this context, is LITERALLY cheating. Itās actually cheating. Itās breaking the one thing that gives the game any sort of stability.
If I know by turn 10 Iām very likely to hear āCareful, itās against ME!ā then I can plan around that to some extent. Maybe not over-extend my board. Maybe win BEFORE turn 10. Highlander Dragon Druid though? That deck can reliably pump that guy out on turn 6. Itās way more consistent than it should be, given Highlander restrictions and the inherent randomness in Hearthstone. And itās because of the mana ramp.
The idea is that you turn the fewest cogs necessary with the lowest scope required when making balance changes. If they remove powerful card X thatās warping the meta AND said X is a neutral card? Druid just ramps to the NEXT most busted thing to slap down several turns āearly.ā Thereās a reason Piloted Shredder was ridiculous back in the day, and itās because you were seeing it turn TWO (Innvervate used to give 2 temp mana instead of 1).
They gotta nix the ramp. Maybe they give Druid something else instead to compensate? Or maybe not. I donāt claim to have the best ideas. I just know the ramp is the problem.
Nobody ālikesā it when they face a Warriorās turn 9 and suddenly āSAFETY IS MY NUMBER THREE CONCERNā straight to the face 50 times in a row. (well, maybe the warrior in question likes it) but we tolerate it, because Warrior has no ramp. Nobody āfeels goodā when that Warlock made their entire deck explode and half the cards were sludge bombs but we tolerate it, because the Warlock has no ramp. Nobody likes it when the Mage goes Exodia, but we tolerate it, because you see the theme Iām going for by now.
Druid, does whatever crazy stuff it wants, same as everyone else. But it does it WAY earlier than expected WAY too consistently. Ramp needs to be removed.
In this case is just that hearthstone math isnāt flexible.
There are many cards that are just too powerful with their cost and too weak if you raise it by 1.
In the end it really is about that. We got what would be a 2,5 mana card in wild growth and then when devs tried to extrapolate on it a little the result was already too powerful to be a 2 mana card at all but not acceptable as a 3 mana card.
When in reality a slighty stronger tribal version in theory should not just utterly break the game.
Basically hearthstone has itās limitations.
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Druid is a jack of all trades class in real Warcraft. Itās what makes them so cool. They can heal, be spell casters, or shapeshift into animals to be rogues or tanks. Like, ramp has nothing to do with them. They donāt need it to be cool and unique.
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In terms of source material, Iāll defer to people more experienced than me. I played WoW Vanilla straight through to Cataclysm, decided Pandas werenāt for me (which was a mistake, that expac I was told had AWESOME lore and quests) and thatās about it. Never played any Warcraft RTS games.
Regarding āclass identity within CCGāsā Druids were very obviously intended to be āIāve got the beefcakes and hereās ways to cheat them out.ā I really donāt think this is a subjective debate. They had literal over-value minions (often via raw stats) and they had ramp. Day one. And they still have over-value minions and they STILL have ramp even after this ban - just not as effective ramp as they used to.
Now that said, I do agree with you. Druids donāt āhaveā to stick to that identity. They could shift into who knows what else. And they probably should, or else this is just going to happen again and again down the line. I started playing Hearthstone when it first came out, and Druids were problematic with ramp. I stopped for several years. I come back, and druids are problematic with ramp.
Thereās a common denominator there.
Splish-Splash is just as much of a problem if not moreso than Doomkin. Having a 2-mana dragon (which synergizes with dragon tribal) give an empty mana and be a 2/1 body is one of the best ways for Druid to consistently out-ramp the opponent while also making trades. It is because of Splish-Splash why aggro doesnāt stand a chance against Druid even though Druid should be weak against aggressive decks.
Games where Splish-Splash doesnāt get played on curve, but Doomkin is played on curve is far more competitive than the opposite.
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Yeah, it became their identity because they were given ramp, for some reason. Because they were the Nature class, like Green in MTG? No idea. It has nothing to do with their class identity in Warcraft lore. Point is, there is so much more to Druid identity that you could focus on. Choose One cards were a nice attempt, but then they tried to break them with allowing both. Likeā¦Kā¦ Way to not have a hindrance?
Try to actually balance the game instead of giving tools to cheat mechanics to make up for the lack of balance? You know? Instead of giving everything an inch, they break the game and give them a yard.
Now, if Druidās class identity really was ramp, they never would have nerfed ramp, hence their excuse for not nerfing Shadowstep.
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Thatās a fair point which I hadnāt considered. Like, instead of nerfing a Priestās healing, they allow it to āover heal.ā But druidās ramp just gets bandaid nerfed once enough stink is made about it.
EDIT: Not complaining about priests or their healing. Just saying your logic tracks. Core identity mechanics are rarely nerfed.
Unless it comes to Druid, huh? I guess you could say Druid is the outlier because ramp is way too broken in a game without interaction.
Oh it absolutely is too broken. Iām not happy about the nerf personally, because it affects the deck I was using to climb this season. But itās a needed step in the right direction.
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No, please no, not āDruids in WoW do THAT but donāt do THISā.
This is not WoW this is HS. The game is loosely based on Warcraft franchise and has as little or as much to do with it as designers deem necessary. Saying āthis works differently in WoWā is not a good argument /rant off
The argument about the identity nerf is silly too. Hunter identity is direct damage and aggressive playstyle yet dozens of such cards were nerfed for Hunter.
Ramp has been nerfed plenty a time for Druid: Guff empty crystals, Nourish cost increase, Innervate nerf. What your saying is clearly wrong
And Druid still has Doomking and Eonarās and Malfurionās gift so even if Splish-Splash was banned for good Druid would still have mana ramp.
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Hearthstone does have interaction; what are you talking about?
Making trades with minions and using spells to target minions is the epitome of interaction. Decks like the dragon ramp are an outlier, and even then thats because Doomkin represents a fundamental departure from the āspiritā of Hearthstone. Typically, even with other degenerate decks you STILL have to use resources strategically to deal with the opponentās specific board-state.
Compare this to games like YGO and MTG where you can literally ignore your opponentās entire gameplan/strategy and still win.