Hello and welcome back to Part Seven of Hearthstone Classes Revisited. Today we are revamping the Paladin Class to add some new mechanics and revive some of its oldest archetypes!
Hey everyone! Sorry for such the long wait for the next class revisit! Hope you all enjoy the video! Wanted to clarify how Bless works cause I made a bit of a mistake in the video, it only triggers after you target the minion with the Bless keyword with a spell! Not when you target any minion.
1st of all the bless mechanic seems fair enough and i think it should have spells of such card where it triggers it into any friendly minion But the hero power (1st version) makes the upgraded hero power worse and by my opinion playing form hand makes it a target for secrets and minion effects also i see room for misplays here The second one is busted as you are actually getting the even hero power and even if are playing the regular paladin build with silver hands you are killing ur opp. By turn 7 and making it one will make by turn 4/5 Plz don't bring back librams .they were balanced but were in the stronger side and if they were in other sets they would surely get nerf. they saw play the full time they were in standard.The and overall a not a good fit for a class mechanic.Secrets are good in my opinion. All of these are all my opinion nothing more.
Spending 1 mana to summon a recruit seems busted for sure, but the other option is great IMO. Getting dudes into your hand instead of straight up summoning them adds quite a bit of nuance to the gameplay. A quick little suggestion: maybe it's worth expanding the mechanic of Bless to any effects instead of just spells? That would make it way more versatile as well as provide additional design space. Neat ideas overall, simple but effective.
Bless is also a Keyword that shouldn't be limited to Paladin either. Priest buffs their minions with spells nearly as often as Paladin does, and Druid and Shaman do it a fair amount too.
another good idea would be to expand on the aura's paladin has by giving them some new auras aswell as minions which interact with auras like if you have an aura active then a card has an aditional battlecry, or minions that interact with SPECIFIC auras, like a minion with charge that spawns 2 silverhand recruits everytime it attacks, but if you have crusader aura active (the order doesnt matter in that case, you can play the minion and then the aura or have the aura active and then play the minion) it gives the silverhand recruits charge or rush and divine shield so that they can immediatly attack either face or enemy minions to take advantage of the crusader aura, or minions that extend your auras like "battle cry, your active auras last for an additional turn" or even "your auras dont decrease while this is on the board" which would obviously be rather strong but can be balanced with stats and cost and would obviously be an immediate target, for inventors aura you could have a mech that gives you a sparkbot everytime you play a mech while inventors aura is up (which then ofc costs 0 because of the aura), the new aura package can either slot into existing archetypes like with inventors aura and mech paladin or it could create a new archetype of paladins that would run almost every aura and the minions to take advantage of the aura
I really love the 1 mana and add a recruit to your hand. Not only is it clever it also adds to the class fantasy in more ways than one. Because it isn't just recruiting knights you can buff before sending out into battle but also how it compares to the warlock. To me warlock from the days of warcraft was meant to be a rival to the priest and paladins which is why the horde side had them in those games and then later on they became more a evil mage once they settled on them being more fel than shadow. But I really love how this compliments the warlock class power by accident. Because like the warlock you are adding cards to your hand but you know exactly what it is, while the warlock is able to reuse a spell mages love but it cost them life. It just gives the fantasy of the warlocks willing to give up for more power while paladins screaming at them "there is a better way" and the warlock saying their way isn't enough.
I think having your recruits go to your hand is such a flavorful change for the class, considering the amount of hand buff Paladin cards printed. And bless just makes sense to the point it’s weird it doesn’t exist yet, although if it was up to me I’d make certain Paladin spells have a “blessing” keyword required to trigger it, so that you can’t cast damaging spells at your minions to trigger it. Generally good ideas, but they are considerably more tame when compared to your previous class reworks. I’ve seen videos criticizing your ideas you replied to and I assume that made you take a safer approach, but as I see it that’s a bit of a shame. Realistically it’s unlikely for these to actually end up in the game, it’s more like a thought experiment, and I feel like “how far can we push this” makes for much more interesting design. If you were actually designing a game, through intense play testing you’d be able to find out what works. But you find yourself in a unique circumstance where that’s impossible so, expecting every idea to be a success is dumb. None of the criticism you got, at least I feel like, was about you “turning down the dial”, but about thinking with intent. Cool is not always fun and a lot of official hearthstone cards kind of prove that point. It’s not that your ideas were too wild, but misguided imo. Comparatively while this is actually good design, it just doesn’t feel interesting. It’s like the small rework Priest got rather than the Demon Hunter or Death Knight launch
Totally fair, and you’re completely right about me taking a tamer approach here. Decided it would be best to try and keep it safe to see how people react, but I agree that the more complex designs are what I prefer to do as well. It’s hard to find the balance of what I want to do and what is somewhat realistic. On top of all that, Paladin isn’t a class I play a lot, so coming up with ideas was a little tougher. I think what I’d want to do is try harder to find that balance of realistic and complex and make a video that is more apparent with that approach
I think we can revisit demon hunter last, as it has only been out for about 3 years. Next you should revisit priest and make it less annoying. As for this one, no deckbuilding nuances this time, but not every class needs that. The hero power that adds the dude to your hand is fine, and is a very interesting way to handle it. The one that just summons the dude may be too strong, people would run genn just to use that. Also the dudes can trigger effects like lightray and elitist snob, making pure enough paladin a pretty good archetype.
I dislike the Librams, because, as seen with Druid and Rogue, designing a class around mana cheating has historically created quite an imbalance. Auras fulfill the new void that secrets created quite a bit better. As for the other effects, they're pretty well designed. The main issue with Silver Hand Recruits is that the design philosophy around one drops has drastically changed throughout the years. Now, only the absolute most powerful of them (with immediate effects) have 1 health, as to not be pinged down by enemy hero powers. This hasn't translated well to the Silver Hand Recruit, which could previously stick around and wait for something to smack into, evenly trade with an enemy one drop, or wait around to be buffed - that was its draw. Now, it just gets deleted by most one drops in the game and invalidated by most hero powers in the game. I doubt blizzard would go as far as to change it now, but I think either of the proposed changes would be healthy for the class.
You know, i'm over here working on my own project of a cardgame following hearthstone's ruleset and your Bless mechanic is funnily enough similar to the Spotlight mechanic for my bard class which is just Bless but counts minion's targeted battlecries as well
I for one am always willing to wait for quality content such as yours, BD. I enjoy your takes on these classes. Adding the recruits to your hand seems like the better option since it opens more opportunities, while ultimately still costing 2 mana per minion. Personally I'd like to see your take on druid next, but i hope you at least get to them all eventually.
I believe that paladin's main problem is that he doesn't have very reactiv tools such as rogues one's. So dev give massiv stats to compensate this weakness. So typical paladin games look like : make board if it gets cleared you lose else you instantly win. I wish we could see some new stuff to lower this weakness so that there are less win or lose games wich are frustrating
I really like the video, but instead of making Librams the secret replacement, I think auras should be there instead. They take up the same “board area” as secrets and feel closer to what most paladins do with an aoe effect to help their own guys out
They got Auras to replace secrets, and I prefer it much more over adding more Librams to the game. Imagine if DH got more Relics or Warrior got more Riffs. I'm tired of these cards that only get played because they have overtuned synergy and not because they have good effects.
I liked the ideias, but It wasnt really a "rework". Nothing major changed, Just some new mechanics that could be part of any New set without changing the older stuff. At most you can consider the change to the hero power. But that would be more balancing then really changing How the class plays or the deck building.
Yah deciding to take a bit of a tamer approach to these revisit videos, as I feel I almost went a little too overboard with some of the other ones. More of a revisit than a complete rework
@@bionicdoor Yeah, you went overboard with classes like the Hunter. But now you over corrected and make It just slight balancing and new cards, without achieving what I consider was the main goal from the start: providing each class with concrete sub-classes and diferent rules regarding deck building.
@@OrdemDoGraveto My main goal from the start was to just add something new to each class, not necessarily split it into the three subclasses like DK. I did it for mage at the start just because I liked the idea a lot and then I also did it for warlock but actually didn’t like how I did it for that class. So I opted to not do it for Warrior but noticed that people seemed to like the subclass approach more. That led to me to do it for Hunter, Shaman and Rogue. But all of those revisits I wasn’t entirely proud of because the subclass approach felt forced and frankly it was. So this time I decided to not force myself to do the specialization thing and keep it simple. That’s just my reasoning for why this revisit is a lot more tame. I’m very new to all this and trying to make the best that I can. Right now my goal is to learn as much as I can from this series, and make each video better than the last
@@bionicdoor I am a game designer, and I actually implemented some of your ideas into the card game I am developing. I like the different rules to deck building that make each class feel unique in more then Just keywords themes. I just think they shouldt be over complicated. Hunter was too complex in my opinion, and paladin was too simple. But hey, thats just my opinion. You do each class however you feel is better hehe
