by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone Classic Set and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

Oh boy….

Why is it so bad?

If you spend a card and mana to deal damage to the opponent’s hero, you are down a card and have no effect on the board. Unless you are planning to kill him soon, chances are the game will start slipping from you as your opponents board will continue to grow and overwhelm you. Cards that only deal damage to your opponents face don’t see much play, and if they do they are only used as finishers. Even the versatile cards that deal damage to any character are only aimed face when the victory is imminent, so it’s easy to see how Eye for an Eye isn’t worth a second thought. It is way too easy to proc it for 1 damage, and 1 damage is hardly a notorious finisher.

This card’s biggest strength is that it’s so bad, that you could catch someone off guard as they wouldn’t be expecting anyone sane to be using this on a constructed deck, and even on arena you can likely pick anything that is better than this.

To summarize:

• Way too easy to play around.
• Way too inconsistent.
• Often a wasted card with no effect on the board.

What’s the Design Intent?

Eye for an Eye screams flavor, It’s WoW Counterpart used to do something like this: “All magic attacks against you have a X% chance to cause 30% of the damage taken back to the attacker as well.” This secret’s intent seems to be a resurrection of this old Ret Pally Talent.

Possible Improvements

Eye for an Eye has been easily the hardest card I’ve set my sights on yet. We’ve talked about this extensively, but 1-drops are really hard to balance as you cannot give them too strong of an effect, yet if the effect is too weak then the card will have no value to a player. Sinister Strike is regarded as a pretty poor card, and that 3 instant damage to an opponent. Eye for an Eye needs you to be damaged first before it procs, meaning that your opponent can get the killing blow on you before this secret has a chance to activate, sure Eye for and Eye could get a revenge kill but we are not playing to draw games right? We need a card that wins. So for this card to even start getting consideration it needs to consistently do at least 3 damage, the potential to catch your opponent off guard and do extra damage should be able to offset how easy is to play around it. But what if we make it harder to play around? Dealing 1 damage is rather easy, trivial even for Mages, Rogues, Pallies, and Hunters. Maybe if this only activates if your recieve more than 1 damage, then it would be able to get value more consistently.

The Big Problem with this card is the wording, is a fun effect but it’s a bit long to explain, which makes it super hard to add to an already crowded textbox.

Additional Notes

Secret synergy is important to note, if Eye for Eye was actually a decent card. Then having both it and Noble Sacrifice as options on your opponent head would make them both better. If the enemy attacks with the heavy minion he receives a lot of damage, but if he attacks with the little one then the noble clears it. If the enemy suspects that you are running both then he might put himself on an unfavorable position, which is good; sadly, since Eye for an Eye is but an afterthough, all the rest of the secrets suffer as they become more predictable.

The Result

This is the meh version, this at least guarantees sinister strike value but that isn’t much to start with. The thing is, this small adjustment makes it a lot harder on your opponent to play around it, lets say only has Dr. Boom and 2 boombots, then he’s taking the full 7 damage unless he has something on his hand to deal with this. Situations like that would likely at least merit that this version of Eye for an Eye at least gets looked at twice.

This second version tries to adress the lack of board effect, it is much easier to play around but it could end up taking out a big enemy threat AND dealing some heavy damage at the same time. You immediately notice how the cardinal sin of 1-drops once again rears his ugly head, this effect might just be too strong for 1-mana, especially in a control deck where you can limit your opponents board and practically force a big target to run into this spell.

What do you think? Is version 1 interesting enough? Is version 2 way too good or could it be the best eye-patch available? Let me know using the comments below or in my personal twitter account @DannieRay23