My humble and probably full of holes (tell me about it to make me better).
DK came in initially weak, but is now very strong, and incredibly positioned for rotation.
Archetypes are reskinned old archetypes.
A. Unholy DK is Murloc Shaman with an even better Bloodlust
B. Frost DK is Aggro/Tempo Mage
C. Blood DK is Control Warrior with Lifesteal.
Rotation. Blizzard play tests, maybe not enough, but they do, and they would have tested it within the context of the next rotation. The buffs required to make it work before rotation are going to create balance problems during rotation, because that’s the power level they play tested before they released it.
Warrior and Shaman have been poorly designed and obviously not given proper attention to focus on DK. They just can’t balance this many classes.
One class taking up the design space of 3 is possibly not a great idea but I’m bias because I don’t enjoy the class and would much rather play warrior or shaman.
To be fair every class in the past had this Zoo strategy. Warlock or Druid with Savage Roar or current token druid with his buffer cards. Same applies to the other speccs of DK. If we take this as criteria for being bad, then even 9 classes might be too much already, because there are more classes with the same archetypes. That’s why I wouldn’t say DK is a mistake, because at least he takes another layer in deckbuilding with the rune system and corpse mechanic. The real difference between classes are some keywords like corpse mechanic, combo or outcast and of course their hero power. But I would say corpse mechanic is probably the worst class mechanic, because it doesn’t fit Hearthstone and let looked other classes outdated and that’s why it was changed a bit for good. DK probably need a better class mechanic like combo or overheal. Maybe Reborn stuff?
Their buffs for DK later on were a bit stupid, especially Obliberate. The old one was better.
The real deal is that they should not have pushed the triple runed archtypes so fast.
But made mixed decks more viable at start.
Rainbow DK
2 unholy ,1 frost.
You got it already.
The colors have very strong identities and steal design space counting on the fact that they’re very restrict on cards that can be used.
So you should not see those that often.
Since they didn’t release support for mixed decks on start we did end in this situation.
Both DK and DH were mistakes. Ben Brode spoke at length about the nine class format, and why adding additional classes would destroy the balance and symmetry.
But Acti-Blizz doesn’t give a crap about play experience, just filling their pockets.
You know, when I heard about DK, I thought “cool, can’t wait to see what new thing/things it’s gonna bring.” Not gonna lie, I think the whole rune system is doomed.
They’ll put effort into it now at the cost of other classes, stealing their archetypes while they “reinvent” said classes, only to abandon the whole thing once they milked DK enough.
The corpse mechanic is cool! Trying to make different archetypes interacting differently with it is cool! But I doubt they will keep up with it. At some point, they will only make a new archetype for only one rune per expansion, with occasional Rainbow for a false sense of variety.
The rune system at some point will be used to force people to completely buy a new expansion for DK, because “I have only Unholy cards from last expansion, now I need all Blood from this expansion and maybe an older one to make a viable DK deck.”
I disagree with Brode on this, because as I said if we follow the logic of Brode then 9 classes are also already too much, because there are more classes than archetypes.
Fundamentally there are four archetypes:
Aggro
Midrange
Combo
Control
Every class in the past were able to fulfill every archetype, except Priest until recent days with Shadowpriest. So based on Brode’s logic only 4 classes would be enough and symmetric and five would be already too much. DK and DH are fine.
There are only three. Combo can be an aggro, or a midrange, or a control strategy. Not an actual play style.
3x3x3 was the formula, and greed killed it.
That doesn’t make sense, because Midrange plays completely different than Combo. The first one plays more like an tempo deck with lategame potencial/finisher, the last one more like control to end the game when collected all needed pieces.
But if you’re right, then 3 classes are already enough, no need for 9 or 11. Because every class could be different being fixed to one archetype. Do you want that? I don’t.
Aggro combo has beeen a thing.
So has control combo.
So has midrange combo.
The game was designed from jump for nine classes and the morons at corporate insisted on more.
Insults don’t help your case, but disqualify your arguments. You have proven yourself that you have no idea what you’re talking about and just whining.
I was here when you weren’t, and my family worked on this game.
I wasn’t insulting you.
You took my remark out of context.
I called the corporation morons as quoted correctly here:
I didn’t took your statement personally and I know that your insult were going to Blizzard, but this don’t help your statement. You haven’t really brought an argument to the table to disprove me, at least I don’t see any, just whining why you are unsatisfied with Blizzard development.
Combo is absolutely a different archetype than control. The strategic goal of a combo deck is completely different than that of a true control deck
The goal of a combo deck is to survive long enough to play the combo. Typically the combo is some kind of OTK strategy. Occasionally a combo deck is will kill over multiple turns though, infinite shudderwock or linecracker druid being examples of the latter.
The goal for a true control deck, a pure control deck, is to grind the opponents resources down to nothing.
And aggro, of course, is about swarming the board and overwhelming the opponent with damage before they can get their own strategy on line. I guess a more direct damage spell heavy burn deck could be aggro too, but I’m not sure that kind of deck has ever really been a thing in HS.
Some people would argue that mill is also an archetype unto itself, but I would argue that mill decks can usually be described as either combo (like mill rogue) or control (like RinLock).
The traditional rock/paper/scissors of Hearthstone was that aggro strategies would overwhelm combo decks before they could get the combo on line, combo decks would would kill control decks with combo they can’t respond to; and control decks would grind aggro decks out of resources through the use of strong taunts. AoE removal, spot removal, etc.
