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gamescom Livestream with Kripp, Donais & Hamilton Chu

by - 9 years ago

Soe and Frodan sat down with pro player Kripparian as well as Mike Donais and Hamilton Chu from Team 5 at the gamescom press desk and talked up the Grand Tournament.

Joust

  • Joust came from the flavor of the set.
  • Capture the idea of knights fighting against each other.
  • If you’re getting overrun, Joust provides an option to counter an deck heavy with small minions.

Inspire

  • Inspire focuses on emphasizing the hero and the hero powers.
  • It incentivizes using your hero power more and you’re consequently using it more.
  • It shifts the calculation on using hero powers vs. not using them.
  • “Was Floating Watcher an inspiration?” Sounds like it was seeded with Inspire in mind.

Q: How do you choose the characters?

A: It’s fun to approach the question: it’s easy and natural to draw stuff out of the games. The Argent Tournament inspired that, but it was a dark narrative, so how could they brighten that up and make it fun and ridiculous?

Q: Any favorite cards?

A: Donias loves Lock and Load. It sounded really broken on paper, and it’s risky, but giving that choice to players is better than playing it safe. The game needs to be fun.

A: Chu loves the Tuskarr Jouster. IT’S A WALRUS ON A TURTLE. IT’S THE BEST CARD IN THE WHOLE SET FOR THAT REASON. What the card does is irrelevant.

A: Kripp doesn’t have a favorite, but really likes cards that do something explosive. Lock and Load enables that.

New Cards Revealed

Warhorse Trainer

If Warhorse Trainer dies, the bonus dries up. It’s not an Inspire card, but it works indirectly with the hero power. Kripp calls it powerful because bringing out the Trainer early makes using Recruits on turn 2 less punishing.

Flash Heal

Priests didn’t have a simple heal card, and they should have one. It’s a clean design to have a common heal card in play. Kripp sees combos with Auchenai Soulpriest, but it’s hard to be excited about heals. Donais brings up combo potential with Lightbane and Darkbane legendaries since they get buffed when targeted with spells. Lots of healing synergy for Priest cards as well.

Living Roots

Living Roots: Kripp says it makes Token Druid much cooler. Soul of the Forest might be a strong option. It’s not OP, it’s a better Claw, but it feeds into combos and flexibility. Overall, benefits Druid in the early game.

Fist of Jaraxxus

Kripp likes how it’s against the grain of how discard mechanics have played out previously. Having it as a bonus when you randomly discard it is much cooler, though.

Charged Hammer

It’s a shaman weapon if that’s not clear. Instead of dropping totems, you gain Jolt and can shoot 2 damage at anything. Justicar Trueheart does NOT interact with it.

Kripp likes how the Deathrattle weapon, just as a general type creates a very high-level play circumstance. “TGT positions Shaman to become a high-skill cap class.”

Q&A

Q: Will you release a new class?

A: Donais: Existing classes have an individual identity, and adding more classes might water that down. So now classes while that’s a risk.

Q: Could you explain what has changed in Ranked play?

A: Donais: Big QoL improvement called Highest Rank Bonus. Whatever your highest rank hit during the month is, it’s recorded in the quest log, even if you play more and end up going down in rank. At the end of the month, you get a chest to celebrate the highest rank you hit. Mainly meant to address players hitting a high rank and then stopping because they don’t want to lose the rank.

Q: Will you keep up the same pace of new content in the future?

A: Chu: Hearthstone needs to be a game for everyone. We need to make sure that the game is a great experience for everyone, and we need to add new content to keep things exciting, but not too much that might overwhelm players. It’s a big audience to please and it’s a plan they’re constantly thinking about.

 


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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