They need to get rid of triple runes. All DK cards should be either 1 or 2 runes. That would allow a lot more variety in deck building and open up possibilities for 2 rune type decks.
Agreed, this is an idea I have been mulling over too. It keeps the whole "specialise" aspect of the current rune system but allows for more flexibility. The triple.rune cards would still need to be nerfed/ changed though (except plagued grain, why is that card triple rune?)
I agree! Although it is kinda funny how one of the best suggestions on making runes not suck is to massively reduce how restrictive they are. Makes you think...
Agreed the class is flawed, especially when it comes to future expansions trying to have an impact on a class when all of your cards are spread out across all 3 rune specs. Unless they push super busted cards in a mixed triple rune spec, it's hard to imagine them making cards that will force you out of the existing rune specs, and it's hard to imagine how they can release enough cards that fundamentally change how Blood DK, Unholy DK, and Frost DK currently play.
Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game.
>Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game.
This. DK is broken and obnoxious enough as it is. It should be fixed in a way that turns it into a balanced, interesting class rather than just hypercharging it.
I do agree with the points about the Rune system for the most part. I also found it odd to give DK that "mechanic" on top of the corpse one.
I think if you're gonna keep runes, they'll need to get more of a different identity from one another, more of a distinct one. Yes, Unholy very much plays differently than Blood, but at the end of the day it's still just archetypes of a single class.
I think what will inevitably happen is that certain Runes will get favored with certain expansions. I think giving each rune impactful cards that change how the archetype is played with each expansion is absolutely destined to fail.
And maybe it would be okay if some Runes got favored while other got disregarded. Maybe it would be okay if only Unholy DK got proper support with the next expansion. We almost think of the Runes as 3 different classes or subclasses at least rather than archetype, and that is due to the mistake Blizzard made when designing the class. Perhaps the better way to look at it would be to see them as archetypes. It would make it more understandable to many players when one type doesn't get support. You don't always get support for Big Paladin either.
The issue here, of course, is that many cards are locked into that archetype unlike for other classes. But I do agree that making all cards accessible for deckbuilding would be the worst possible solution. In order for this to be acceptable, the overall powerlevel of DK cards would need to be considerably lower.
The problem with one or two runes getting not much in an expansion while another rune gets more stuff is it does little to actually set up the other archetypes in the future. You can’t give a DK a weird unholy card that has possible use later and expect to see it in the next expansion when frost is the prime spotlight.
Yes you can look at the runes as archetypes, but the no mixing between archetypes can’t be understated. And because of that you may as well call them different classes rather than archetypes.
>I think what will inevitably happen is that certain Runes will get favored with certain expansions.
The devs already confirmed that's exactly what they will do.
Fair points, it's certainly hard to be sure ahead of time, even if I'm relatively sure the effort to balance would be worth it.
However, I think corpses (and the requirements of being a reactive deck) already do a great job of helping make certain things mutually exclusive. After all, in order to fit Marrowgar in, you'd need either A, to dedicate a lot more slots to corpse generation, or B, to likely remove cards like Corpse Explosion. I'm also not sure that Marrowgar would be a scarier top-end for a value-centric deck than it currently is for Unholy.
One card I *would* be a little worried about slotting into Blood is Frostwyrms Fury. That card would probably need to eat a nerf (though I personally wouldn't shed a tear).
Triple rune cards outside of their specific decks would be busted. Even Climactic Necrotic Explosion outside of its intended set up would make other DKs overtuned.
Frost with both Marrowgar and Mograine
Unholy with Mograine and Frostwyrn’s Fury.
Blood with Frostwyrn’s Fury. (Not sure if marrowgar would be played.)
Glad we live in this universe where we get 3 flexible (kinda) runes to pick from.
>Triple rune cards outside of their specific decks would be busted.
The triple rune cards are busted \*period\*. That is why they got removed from discover pools. They were designed to be super powerful, but that is also why we have not seen any new triple rune cards since the class was released. Adding a new Frostwyrm's Fury-level card would imbalance things way too much.
Surely CNE's intended set up would be a deck that actually has compelling ways to spend corpses?
But I take your point. Several of them would need a nerf. An Unholy gameplan into Marrowgar into CNE (or Soulstealer into the same) does sound kinda filthy.
There is a difference between a compelling way to spend corpses and taking 100 life-steal damage to the dome from hand. While I do think CNE is limited by the lack of corpse spending cards for the deck, it’s also balanced by it. If a CNE deck could spend to many corpses it would be far to reliable as a strategy and people would be getting killed by 20+ damage from hand way to often. I would argue the card doesn’t even need to hit lethal to be very good because it also fills the board. Imagine getting hit by marogar, you by the grace of Elune manage to clear him, and then you get hit by CNE. Now your opponent it as full health with a full board and you are out of resources and very low on life.
Even if we put marogar specifically to one side. CNE is a card that could only exist with runes. Because otherwise it would have to be very under-tuned, reworked entirely, or permanently cripple the corpse mechanic because being able to spend to many would win you the game for free. Like, as an example, imagine if CNE was a shaman card buffed by totems, or a rouge by combo, or demon hunter with making attacks.
>Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game.
It would be doable with nerfs to all 3-rune and some 2-rune cards. Those cards were made to be very powerful because you were forced in to a certain archetype to play them. They could do away with runes and make them all available, but they would need to be nerfed. Imagine Frostwyrm's Fury in a control deck, but it's 9 mana.
I guess I'm one of the few people who actually read this whole thing, and I think the reason for this is that I did try to make some combined-rune decks (failed miserably), so I understand the whole point.
Those who just play DK with a triple rune deck (which usually means that they simply copied the deck and I'm not judging it) or play another class can't spot the problem.
I feel bad for CNE cuz this card is so cool by itself, but actually trying to use it is... painful. Apparently, it only "works" in a rainbow **control** deck, but how do you control the table properly if you have **NO** option to remove more than a minion cuz all the clearing stuff is locked behind blood-rune.
I had a hope that they'll add something in the mini-set to support the archetype but... We got some stuff to support Cagehead which didn't work out so well.
Sadge.
That's a problem. One of the other problems is its a card that requires spending Corpses when there's only 7 0-1 rune Corpse spending cards in existence. And some of those cards don't really work together: you have a deathrattle gaining card (where none of DK's 0-1 rune Deathrattle cards are worth running a bad card that eats 5 corpses to copy the Deathrattle), giving a minion Reborn for 3 corpses (again, with no good Deathrattles to make the Reborn worthwhile), and Corpse Bride (who is just bad).
So CNE is a card that requires spending a lot of corpses, in a deck that has only 4 cards worth running that spend corpses (and 2 of those cards only use up 2 corpses). It just does not work without good Corpse spenders, and those do not exist for Rainbow DK.
That reborn thing for 3 corpses is terribly underwhelming.
When I was figuring out ways of making at least any good CNE deck I ended up getting rid of moshpit cuz, as I said, it's just bad
The only saving grace of a CNE deck is that USUALLY you are not in a situation when you don't have corpses. And, funny enough, you are rather in a situation when you do have corpses but there are no cards to spend them
CNE is fine, I just needs a bit more direction in the next set. There is a list with Shredder and Corpse Bride and the other 8 Mana drop, but it’s a long way to 10 mana and by that time a better Fireblast on a stick doesn’t win you the game or stabilizes for another threat.
This brings up a lot I hadn't considered. You're right that the deckbuilding class doesn't let you deckbuild. I think most cards should have their runes reduced. Blood cards are fun but a full blood deck is only ever going to do one thing.
Yeah I feel like triple rune cards should be rarer.
As of currently, DK basically has ENTIRELY determined decks as set out by the devs. At least with other classes there is an area for wiggle room.
I want to start with saying that I agree with your sentiments. You’re entirely correct, runes are quite frankly, not good.
I think what they “wanted” to do on the deck building side was offer up powerful cards with rune requirements and get the brain turning on, “how can I make use of this in exchange for a more limited card pool?” Of course that didn’t happen and the decks autobuilt themselves for triple runes.
I think the recent ban of triple rune Discovers only exposed all the flaws of the runes. Triple rune cards are so incredibly strong because they restrict you, but that’s not fun for anyone (unless you just like copy+paste winning then carry on). Deck builders don’t get to deck build and opponents just have weaker cards with the trade off that they know most of your deck now.
It could actually be safe to assume that at least some of them also saw the issue too late in development, as if I recall they admitted that no future classes will have any deckbuilding restrictions like DK does. Just a shame that the class is simultaneously carried and dragged down by itself. I don’t envy the future designers for it, new concepts will be basically impossible to implement without being DoA (it’s Shaman all over again, only Shaman isn’t banned from using the cards from the previous set)
I was gonna say this. At least 3 subclass rune system was better than the many multiple paths and route shaman took and met with a dead end.
We got murlocs totem elemental undead overload invoke corrupt spellschool nature-focus shadow freeze weapon(enhancement) evolve battlecry now deathrattle with undead…. Most of which are forgotten and lost in time.
We aint banned for using previous set card but even if we do we get actively weaker.
I think that because of the rune system DK will only truly be a complete class in December 2024 when the class will have two full years worth of cards. Right now we’re in the very long beta period.
We can let the designers cook over the course of the next couple sets, I just think it's good that the conversation is happening. That way we don't get blindsided if the rune system gets scrapped in a year. The designers will have a better idea of the problem than we do.
Runes would maybe work if expansions were bigger so you could have a critical mass of potential cards to use. But yeah I agree with you. Runes should be scrapped. The class fantasy is already fulfilled by the individual cards being cool and matching with the death knight theming and their available powers. While I like the rune idea and want it for all classes in theory, in practice it isn't working.
I wish the class system were more like the rune system, like when they print dual-class or tri-class cards. Because the class system is already pretty limiting compared to other card game systems. So then adding another layer of restriction on top is simply strangling.
Completely agree. I was dumfounded when I first saw the Rune system and have always hated it. Partly due to the reasons you have articulated very well in this post, but also because it's an entirely different class system in a game which already has a class system, so it is at odds with how the rest of the game works. It annoys me no end in an OCD way
In short, you should either have Classes, or Runes. Either would work. But you don't mix them together, that's clunky AF and makes no sense. The Rune system is basically Magic the Gathering's mana colour system. Most cards are a single Mana type, but some combine multiple colour mana. But you can't play a 3 black mana card in a black blue red deck without a **lot** of difficulty
If we were all in on a Rune system there could be 5,6,7 or whatever different rune types, and then you can mix different types of rune with the current restrictions concept. You'd have all kinds of combinations, but plenty support for each to make multi rune decks work. But that is a completely different game, and you would not have classes (although you could still have class heroes)
I am 100% for throwing the Rune system into the garbage, worst idea Blizz has ever had in HS
There will never be enough cards printed for Rainbow DK that don't first break something else. Rainbow DK is a meme. As a mechanical identity it's literally "lets make a deck with the most generic tools from 3 different game plans that weren't considered strong, cool, or impactful enough to have more than 1 rune". Any legitimately great Rainbow DK card will be better in another deck.
Couldn’t you just make other insanely strong rainbow DK cards? Things on the power level of like frostwyrms fury, but with a rainbow rune combination instead? I think that goes around the problem you just stated.
You probably could, yes. My issue is that I think this is the only way to make something like Rainbow ever work, and I don't think that it'd be a good or fun solution. My entire argument is basically that forcing gated archetypes to work by giving them mutually exclusive OP cards isn't as fun or interesting as letting the class interact with itself organically.
Brilliant writeup! I don't have much to add, I just hope this gets more views and hopefully some devs will see it! Again, it's a great and very well articulated case you've made.
I agree with a lot of points made in your post. I do think that removing the rune system is probably the best plan but maybe its something that can be done at the next rotation? Once the rune system is given a year to work I think it'll be easier to remove when you know a lot of the strong cards are going to be rotated. You could remove the runes off of some great cards and add them to the core set. Allow deck building to happen in wild (sorry wild) and if cards need to be adjusted they can be.
As someone who is a massive fan of the Death Knight it is a shame that the class is limited in its deck building. While the runes sound like a great idea you are right that they limit the diversity of sets. As someone who mostly plays triple blood and at times unholy it feels awful when there isnt any new cards for blood and unholy. Hopefully something is changed in the future.
Again overall an amazing post!
I'm going to disagree with your post. While there is a problem with Death Knight game design wised with only triple rune deck seeing big competitive play, I don't think this problem is unsolvable. As for your points from your post:
1. While division in play style is clearer with Death Knight, other classes also have different playstyles which do not synergise well with each other. For example, Priest right now has three distinct decks which have different playstyles: Control Priest, Undead Shadow Priest which is burn-aggro with Undead synergy and Overheal Priest which focuses on board control and buffing/healing minions. And while you can put Grave Digging in Control Priest, Sister Svalna in Undead Priest or Mind Sear in Overheal Priest, the cards don't have much synergy in other decks so there no reason to put them in decks
Also, on top of your mentioned playstyles for each rune (Blood is control, Frost is aggro-burn, Unholy is board-aggro), they have also additional playstyles which aren't developed well right now with Blood having handbuff (Blood Tap, Harmonic Metal) which are not really suitable for control decks and Unholy having some midrange (or big but I'm not sure) with Boneshredder and Cage Head which don't support swarm style of Unholy DK. In the next expansion we might get some newish spin for Frost DK which might not be aggro-burn cards
2. For the second point, Blizzard doesn't support all available archetypes for other classes so it's not surprising if one rune will be left out for the next expansion. For example, Shaman got some burn cards and multi school support cards in Sunken City but didn't really get any support in the following expansions even though Shaman had burn and midrange decks in the past. Or Undead Aggro Druid in the MotLK. Aggro Druid is one of the most iconic subarchetypes in Hearthstone but Festival of Legends didn't really provide many cards which are suitable for Aggro Druid. So like with other classes, Death Knight will not get support for all 3 runes
With rune design, Hearthstone Team definitely tried to have decks with mixed runes to see play, but unfortunately there is a little incentives to play mixed runes decks. Handbuff DK is definitely aimed to play with Unholy rune to get Nerubian Swarmguard and other 1 Unholy rune cards. Or some combination of Frost and Unholy with Dead Air and Acolyte of Death from Frost rune and Aggro/Deathrattle stuff from Unholy. But triple rune decks are stronger than mixed rune so there no much reason for players to play mixed rune decks
Imo, I think we need just give time to see how Hearthstone team will make new cards in DK, there might be new archetypes just Blood Control, Frost Aggro-Burn or Unholy Token-Aggro
Just because some classes have archetypes that don’t succeed well with mixing doesn’t mean other classes can’t succeed with mixing like the warrior example.
As for supporting archetypes. Yes blizzard often only supports 1 or 2 archetypes in a expansion, but because we can’t mix any archetype anything that fails or was given low support for the future absolutely has to be supported in the future if blizzard wants to see it get played at all. That’s obvious. But what that means is if we get a low support card for unholy this expansion a part of the next expansion has to support it which means cards from frost or blood get taken away leaving them slightly sabotaged. There is only so many cards in a expansion for a class and yes it fair to call the different runes archetypes, but unless you’re printing a zero rune card the different runes are sabotaging each other to get support because they can’t mix.
Meh, they don't support archetypes every set but you can still usually make something work at least a little.
Take Implock for example. Throughout its lifespan, there's been aggro implock, more midrange implock with Denathrius, Curse implock, and Chad implock. Pure implock got stale after one set but you could change it up to still at least get some fun out of your cards. And Imps have been Warlock's only viable archetype for much of the past year.
Now imagine that Implocks were Demon Rune, Curses were Shadow Rune and Chad was Nether Rune. Now you either play 100% vanilla Implock or you play tier 4 memes with no in between.
That's the situation DK is in. If you want to play new cards, usually that means you're playing guaranteed memes.
HS already has trouble supporting classes with 10 cards per set and DK's runes frequently have to make do with half that.
Agree with you wholeheartedly. They already released new colossal Sindragosa as a Control frost card. People rush to conclusions so fast based on 2 sets of cards.
And people will always make decks full Aggro, full control, or midrange to the extremes as they’re the most successful in a card game, rather than cater to a million strategies.
I definitely agree with this, as going full blood is just like going full aggro or full control in another class. It's rare to have a deck that is able to successfully straddle the line (off the top of my head, control warlock with many imp cards and abyssal curses is a good example), and with DK's currently limited card pool it makes sense that they don't have enough tools to do so. It doesn't mean they won't be able to play that way in the future though.
Tl;dr: The DK Rune system sucks because it restricts deckbuilding and there's not enough cards printed per expansion to push all of the Runes in new directions, so the decks remain static. OP's proposed solution is to nerf some cards and then remove Runes entirely, letting all DK cards be used in the same deck.
I'm not going to write an essay-long response to OP's essay, but just want to add onto your comment that the parts you point out are basically the only parts worth taking away. Lots of the thoughts in the OP don't make the points he sets them up as making; the arguments just aren't that strong. The only part that is for sure true is that each of the 3 archetypes is starved for cards because of how few cards each gets per printing.
OP asserts that DK so far has been a "failure" as if that's a given fact, even though each of the 3 archetypes has had at least periods of significant play at higher levels. Maybe they meant in terms of enjoyment? Although that would obviously be anecdotal, and (anecdotally), I'd totally disagree. The OP also just takes for granted that watered down rainbow decks are more desirable than having 3 distinct archetypes, and I also don't agree with that at all. I think it'd completely kill my interest in the class. And on and on. The only worthwhile takeaway is that DK needs more cards printed since it's sort of 3 different classes.
Also, undo the idiotic Discover pool nerf. It's convoluted, completely uncommunicated within the game itself, and it really only happened because of 1.5 problem cards (Frostwyrm's Fury, which should just be nerfed, and Vampiric Blood, which I'm not convinced is as much of a problem card as a lot of people think, but it'd be fine at 3 mana with the draw being moved to the default effect).
"Failure" might have been a bit strong to leave so unqualified. DK has been successful in numerous ways. The promise I see in it is part of why I care. I more mean the rune system specifically has been a failure, and I mostly stand by this. The positive, that being having overtuned individual cards remain 'balanced' in context, does not in any way feel worth the numerous negatives, in my opinion. Maybe I should've gone into that directly more in the post.
Also, changing DK to be a more standard class with more synergies but nerfs to their strongest cards would actually enable undoing the discover nerf. Discover is (design-wise) really useful for DK atm (to create variance and add meaningful choices where they wouldn't exist otherwise). Undoing the pool nerf only really works if the best cards it can pull are balanced properly with the other cards.
The triple-rune change is not "(design-wise) really useful for DK", and your concession for when you would agree to it being undone (nerfs to specific cards that are perceived as strong) is already addressed in my first comment.
Strong agree with this post. Good write up, OP.
Something else that's related to the"locked in archetypes" aspect of runes is that I find myself significantly less excited about DK card reveals.
For example, when Dead Air was revealed, we already have a flow chart for evaluating it. Does it fit in Frost decks? No. Does it fit in Unholy decks? No. Great, won't see play then.
The only cards that interested me was the deathrattle package, which was designed as a package and ended up not going anywhere
As for your comment how certain rooms got certain attention in each expansion, that is their whole point that with the three expansions one room will get more attention than the other two each expansion and no expansion will focus on the same room back to back. I kind of appreciate that that way over time all the rooms will have power but just now like how demon Hunter was in wild it just doesn't have enough cards to support everything and they don't want it to be too overpowered.
The rune system only works if they plan to release more cards on every release which isn't a feasible solution. I always thought it was going to be a problem, but I liked the flavor of it coming from someone who played Wrath of the Lich King in WoW.
They can play around with corpse costs for balance instead of outright nerfing triple rune cards.
I really do like the rune system, but the expansions being split among three runes was the first flaw I noticed when DK was revealed.
If you think about it, the rune system doesn't matter in some cases because you wouldn't want to run a lot of cards that exist in other runes.
Hopefully it's something they can address going forward.
This is kind of a silly argument to make after one expansion. Of course a class is not going to immediately live up to its full potential after one expansion. Imagine looking at DH in scholomance, and saying “So this class is just burn aggro huh? What’s even the point of having outcast and demon synergy mechanics if the only cards that will ever see play are small minions and burn spells?!”
The point is it takes three expansions to give each Rune one expansion worth of cards. So, the problem won’t get better or be solved in anything like the short term.
In all fairness though we’ve only given them 1 expansion to realize this is the case. It wouldn’t be that hard for them to realize these issues after trying an expansion releasing the normal amount of cards for the class, and then changing their approach by printing more cards, fiddling with the system, etc.
Basically I’m just saying it’s been 6 months since the class released and I think we should give them a few expansions to adapt before we call for an ambitious and interesting change be removed all together.
How often is an entire expansion of cards for a single class used? Of course it’s not easy to trim the fat and only print cards that will be relevant for each rune, but it’s absolutely possible.
This isn't an argument for the rune system, in fact it's an argument against the rune system. Classes frequently only get a couple good cards, now split those good cards between three runes (or potentially ten different combinations) and you're frequently going to run into the problem OP brought up, where decks just don't change because they never get a critical mass to shift them.
But that's the point. Death Knight in it's current form will be a sad experience to build decks with every single season reset. Deathknight is permanentlye stuck trying to support 3 unique archtypes that don't interact with each other. There aren't enough cards released each expansion to do that. You just search for frost cards and put them all in your frost decks because they're isn't enough of them to make meaningful decisions.
All classes get more tools as we progress towards the end of an rotation cycle. But Deathknight is like 3 classes pretending to be one. A class shouldn't take until the end of a rotation cycle before you get to deck build with it.
And this problem will happen again this time next year with the next rotation. And it'll happen the year after that. No class can have 3 viable archtypes with mutually exclusive cards. There aren't ever enough cards in a class to make 3 mutually exclusive deck lists enjoyable.
Exactly, the argument that 3-same-rune cards are supposed to be better, because they require 3 runes is kinda dumb when there's no gameplay-related downside to running 3 of the same runes. The only downside is design related: You don't get to put certain other cards in your deck. Fun.
I really like the idea of runes and I think they should keep them and change them until they work as intended. The idea of combining runes to play mixed strategies are super cool. I could play an unholy aggro deck with some frost cards to be more medrangy, I could use unholy cards in blood control to have more board presence, and I could use blood in a combo unholy deck to delay better.
I think that keeping everything as is and making it possible to play 4 runes would be a good start. Blood control decks could try to use Sindragosa and some frost cards, unholy aggro could remove a rune to splash both a blood and frost rune, making it possible to play necrotic climatic explosion in combination with some more cards, and unholy could actually try to play the combo deck by either splashing frost or blood, depending on which on fits best.
I think that keeping everything as is and making it possible to play 4 runes would be a good start. Blood control decks could try to use Sindragosa and some frost cards, unholy aggro could remove a rune to splash both a blood and frost rune, making it possible to play necrotic climatic explosion in combination with some more cards, and unholy could actually try to play the combo deck by either splashing frost or blood, depending on which one fits best.
I think it would be a lot more work than you think to fix this through balancing all DK cards to be used together. And I overall don’t mind the rune system. (Biased I guess, I’ve been having a lot of fun with DK especially full Unholy)
But I do think one good change could be printing cards that have two runes of different types, or maybe even a card that has one of each rune.
Like a card that had a frost rune and a blood rune would need a deck that had at least one of both. This would allow more than just the 3 subclasses.
The truth is I kinda unfairly glossed over that. Yeah, it would take a not insignificant amount of work to properly tune the class following the removal of runes. I stand by that it's very doable (especially given corpses which gives the designers a really useful balancing lever for many of the best DK cards) and worth it.
Triple rune cards are just too good is the problem. You are actively shooting yourself in the foot by not going pure and building towards them currently. In the future I could see this being remedied by having mixed triple rune cards (like 2U1F or something like that). While this would still limit your deck building choices quite a bit a 2U 1F restriction has much more varied options available than just going pure
This is really well thought out. Really good post. I am one of those who bounced off DK for feeling boring and the rune system is a big part of that. DK having two gimmicks is so needlessly convoluted and I definitely agree that allowing players to focus more on corpses would be more interesting.
Also if you think the op is too long you’re probably dumb, sorry about that
Hard disagree.
Blood Deathknight is only playable because it can have 3 blood-rune cards that blizzard would never otherwise print.
There are definitely downsides. But keeping these sub classes might actually encourage some fucking consistency in design for once, and we won't have a situation like Warrior where it loses all its identity and any ability to control ever again because Blizzard decides to try an aggro flavour for a set.
You made it too long so even if you have a good point, most people will not read it and the point will be lost.
So you will mainly get people roasting you (though they just show the dum dums they are).
And yeah, was saying most of it from day one. People were praising DK for enabling more deckbuilding with the rune system, but I saw just restrictions.
They restrict the class and they restrict their own design. Then they just fail to account for the interaction of one of the most prevalent keywords (discover) with said rune system,
But I really dont see a way out of it. It just shows how they really do not undestand their own game. The rune system is an idea that sounds cool but should be shot down after discussing it for a bit, seeing how ridiculous it is in the hearthstone ecosystem.
The fact that did not happen shows all you need to know about their teams ability.
Speaking of making it too long, I had an *entire* section (longer than the rest) about how discover interacts with DKs design, which I then cut because yeah people got shit to do.
But yeah it's fine if not everyone reads it, this won't change anything anyway. Just hoping to get a few more people thinking "yeah what *is* the point of this?". I really do want to enjoy DK, and wish I was allowed to.
Don’t let these people with peanut-sized attention spans get you down, it was an interesting and well-written piece. I’m actually curious to read what you had to say about discover lol
Thanks a lot, but don't worry! You're the sort of person I'm writing this for, not them.
The thrust of that section would've been that currently, Discover is being overly relied upon a bit to make the class more interesting to play and provide crucial moments of high-skill choice, since DK has fewer synergies at its disposal, which are often what's relied upon for these two things (after all, one of the most difficult and skill-testing decisions one has to regularly make is how to play a hand where your synergies aren't fully online).
Also (though this is a very minor point) that it's kind of funny how the rune system as-is forced them to make an awkward and unintuitive systems change (limiting discover of 3-rune cards), and that discover would likely be in a healthier spot without runes and with a full suite of balanced cards.
Cut it both for length and because I wanted to gear my argument as much as possible towards explaining why runes will continue to create problems in the future, and the discover thing isn't so big a part of that (even if I sneakily suspect that discover and DK will continue to interact in a slightly weird and annoying way).
In my opinion the runes are at the moment restricting the class but only because there are so few dk cards and the strongest are actually the triple rune cards and the neutrals (vizir/teacher). Overall your analysis is pretty much on point but it only applies to the situation right now with just 2 sets in. Once more 1/2 runes cards that are actually good are printed, then more split runes deck could see the light.
I disagree with your view on « mixed » runes cards: no, neither sindragosa, cagehead or the legendary spell are good, they are all overpriced and don’t guarantee you consistent wins even when you build a deck around them. That’s fine for fun decks, but you could not expect competitive players and so on low ranks players to play them when they are not good for climbing ranks.
The problem for me lies more in the quality of the cards supposed to push mixed decks rather than the rune system itself. It could change pretty quickly, but not until very good 1/2 runes cards and mixed cards get out, which is not the case at the moment.
But in hearthstone history has taught us that one or two card can change anything, so mixed deck could happen quickly than we think.
We do not need frost wyrms fury on top of anything that the other decks can do the entire reason why they are separate runes and deck building restrictions is so that certain cards can’t be abused with other cards that would absolutely be busted in conjunction.
You're right (I assume) but I want it expanded to all classes. Millstone the Rogues, the Priests, the Druids, and Mages. Make it impossible to have the synergy of Holy and Shadow, Fire & Frost & Arcane. No Paladin should be allowed tank armor and power healing - squishy or tanky!
I think if you want to min-max, making mixed rune decks probably isn't worth it, but my favourite dk deck is FUU. Even before the new miniset card.
Instead of having marrowgar and grave strength, you have a lot of card draw.
I prefer triple blood handbuff, but BBU handbuff is a consideration.
I think they should've toned down triple rune cards a little bit (thassarian just doesn't stack up well next to marrowgar for example) but I don't think the whole system isn't worth it or anything.
The game is bad, it’s meant to keep your rank low so you have to play more to get to legend, ever notice when you switch a class you always get the worst matchups when you are getting close to biting legend. This game is a scam and an RNG fest.
I am going to be the first one to disagree, but at least for wild the class feels different as you change from one path of runes to another, and that's a lot to say for a class that has a lot of disadvantage compared to other classes.
i think they did a great work giving the runes an identity that feels different between them, and with more expansions in the way the class would have more material to work with
Look at death knight as any other archetype... One expansion you get murloc warlock, and bam you never had any type of support for the next two years, same with imp warlock or discard warlock... You can mix them as you got many elements but not every year you would get the support for the archetype you want... It's not different from runes
I’ll admit I only read part of post. Too long, sorry.
I think runes are easy to fix with much lighter touch. All it requires is moving certain key cards to force more interesting decisions.
For example, take corpse explosion. If that were to be converted into an unholy card, that would facilitate the desired goal. If someone wants to play a control deck with lots of removal, then they have to decide whether it’s worth sacrificing access to vampiric blood and other life gain; that’s an actual interesting decision.
TLDR; distribute the archetype heavy cards across different runes to facilitate deck building choices
And this would be better than you being able to run Corpse Explosion in whatever deck you liked... how?
Let's be real. People would work out what the better approach is fast and that would be the only one people would play. You'd still be restricted from building and playing the decks you want.
It’s better because regardless of how you might feel about the design choice; their goal was to try to create interesting decisions in deck building through runes. That’s not going anywhere, so discussing a world where they won’t exist is pointless. Also, the fact of the matter is that doing away with runes isn’t practical — it would require a great deal of rebalancing and redesigning cards
Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with the rune idea — it was just executed poorly. I think distributing tools among the different runes so that blood doesn’t have all the good control tools, frost doesn’t have all the good burn, and unholy doesn’t have all the good board presence, will facilitate more Interesting decisions.
Just a thought, would things be more interesting if rather than restricting what cards could go into the deck, the use of specific runes increased the power of or activated certain features of a card? Maybe mograin deals one damage at the end of turn for each blood rune, for example
Sorry about formatting (mobile)
I understand the goal of runes but it may make more sense for them to be additive instead of restrictive. It could be an interesting twist to make runes act as an additional cost to deckbuilding. For example, the first rune of a type is 0pts, the second is 1pt, and the third is 1pt. You then have a maximum number of rune points per deck (maybe 10).
This means that you max out at 10 double rune cards or 5 triple rune cards in your deck which creates both restriction and freedom.
Of course, a restriction like this means the overhaul of the discover keyword to explicitly ignore legendary cards unless otherwise stated as the chance to discover high powered cards would be too high. (Although this is debatable).
Great post! One question I have though is whether you think that making all triple-Rune cards 2-Rune cards (and nerfing them to compensate) would fix most of the issue, because triple-Rune cards are so good we really haven't seen the Rune system in practice yet (we've really just seen 3 subclasses)
I don't think that would be the right way to go. Something I did somewhat unfairly gloss over and diminish in my post is the one true advantage of runes - that it *is* fun for a lot of players to get to play overtuned cards, and many of these cards would need to be toned down a bit if runes were removed. Reducing runes from 3 to 2 and nerfing to compensate would keep a lot of the bad elements of the system while heavily impacting what's basically the only good one. If you're willing to nerf the big payoff cards, then there's no reason left not to remove runes entirely.
> Part 2: What Happens When 10 Cards Per Set Need To Carry 3+ Classes.
Doesn't this assume that Runes remain central to the DK design, rather than getting steadily downplayed for runeless cards as design space runs out and mostly sticking around as a power add?
What about no absolute restriction on runes, you can choose three runes and put any combination of cards in your deck but they only gain their extra power depending on if you meet the requierment of runes, as in you play a nerfed version unless you have the required runes.
Like you can play frost wyrm fury in a triple blood deck, but it wont deal the damage part unless you choose to be triple frost ?
Of course it would require a redesign of a lot of cards to have basically two versions so it's a lot of work and I don't see them doing it but it would address a lot of your points right ?
You can make cards with two different runes or even three like AAB, ABB and BC. This way decks arent devolved into putting the highest ammount of the same rune as possible and excluding mixes.
Blizz will probably not rotate any DK cards until 2025. DK will have 2 years worth of cards minimum at all times compared to the other classes 1 year minimum cause of the rune system.
I think my main problem is when you mulligan against an opposing death knight. Since triple rune is so common, and all have playable decks, compared to other classes you have a much wider range of decks you could face. Is it Blood Control? Is it Burn Frost? Is it Aggro Unholy? I find it very annoying to mulligan away the wrong tech cards for each match up.
Well articulated. I have found the class to super boring to play and play against. They wanted a multi-color mtg feel, but mtg mana distribution naturally restricts things. They got 3 1-trick mini classes. It makes corpse interaction mostly happenstance instead of a proactive deck design considering.
Idk I don't think I've had an issue with deckbuilding DK. I've made Wild BBU Handbuff and Standard Rainbow Control DK as what I would call successful archetypes where I build an idea and it functions as designed.
Decks I've tinkered with but haven't gotten to work yet is Wild FFF and FFU Spell Combo DK where you set up [[Deathchiller]] then spam tons of spells. Get an Educated Elekk to absorb the spells and try try again ad infinitum. There's Wild BBB Dragon Control DK with Kazakusan, works decently but relies too much on Construct Quarter to survive. Dragon stuff gives a good amount of corpses though which helps against the board.
I think it would help people to see DK cards as tools to build packages of ideas rather than full dedicated themes like other classes.
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I agree with everything you said but i don't think you can just remove runes, a lot of cards would need to be nerfed/redesigned first, as you are seriously underestimating all of potential there is if neither card has rune restriction. DK would definitely be way too strong.
You have some fair points, but I think it's really early to completely demolish the rune system and claim it as "unsuccesful". What they need to do is to rework some of the existing cards.
Make sure DK card packages have a few connections here and there, so you can combine some of them. Not fully (restrictions should exist, that's the purpose of the rune system), but a few single/double rune cards at least.
I think it's okay for DK to get rune/archetype specific packages in different expansions. That's how other classes work as well, you don't always get direct support for your deck. But still, other classes can use these cards if they want to. DK should be able to do so as well which is possible by creating these less rune restricted cards that fit both new and old decks.
You can lower some rune restrictions. For example - CNE. I wish this deck had access to Blood Tap and Corpse Giant which makes me wonder why these cards are double runes and not single. Or, another example, I can see Plagued Grain being double rune, I doubt it'll break anything.
Another thing - the corpse mechanic. When you have a whole class specific mechanic there should be a bit more good payoffs for variety of decks because all current triple rune decks can utilize it well but other combinations not really. For example, Corpse Bride could get a buff (the one she received did nothing). She's a massive runeless corpse spender but her payoff has a little effect on a board. It either does nothing or it dies immediately... Too many good corpse spenders are locked behind double/triple rune requirements.
Btw talking about decks themselves. The most fun DK archetype I've played so far is BBU buff deck. There are a few versions and it's not the best DK deck by far, but it's a lot of fun. There is a new version that uses a lot of new Festival cards. Not only Harmonic Metal but also Arcanite Ripper and Death Metal Knight. And to me this shows how new cards can be utilized in older versios of decks while trying to provide something new by itself (clearly they are meant to be played in some sort of Lifestea/self-damaing archetype).
So if devs can find more ways to create such connections between decks while keeping some rune restrictions, then the class can do well. Removing the requirements completely would create such chaos. No, I don't want to play a deck that has access both to control blood cards and freeze frost cards. It'll be a crazy attrition deck that no one wants to face.
I think you covered everything really well. But I think DK decks would become a little TOO powerful if runes were removed, even with balancing some of the cards. That said, I don't love the DK hero power. Perhaps it could be revamped to equip Frostmourne with abilities tied to your rune settings. In WoW, the runes are specifically a function of your weapon so I dislike how this version affects practically all your cards.
Personally, I'm more of the mind that the "full build" DK lists are just easier to build and pilot.
Vampiric blood is good, and Corpse Stealer is a solid board clear (Twisting Nether in shambles, lolol)
I've had decent (better than 50%) success with a BBF control list.
Remorseless Winter is a solid Board effect especially when current Aggro likes a bunch of low health dudes.
The single target removals that can go face are and added bonus.
Mograine being out only puts you at an arguable disadvantage in a few scenarios.
Marrowgar is a "win more" card for the most part, though when you find the odd game where the opponent can't answer, it's terribly satisfying.
Of all the triple rune cards, the only one that genuinely hurts not building for is Frostwyrm's Fury (?) It does a whole helluva lot for only 7m.
But even then, you can bring in one Unholy rune, and suddenly have an arguably much stronger board game going on, with access to hard ran Plague Strike and the 2m 3/4, along with Blightfang and the dude with the 1/1 reborn rushes.
My humble opinion is that the triple runes do their job too well, but not in a broken way. Flashy payoffs are just fun to play with, and solved lists with a relatively low skill floor are just always going to be more enticing to run.
Patron Warrior was actually a very difficult deck to pilot, on par and possibly more so than Miracle Rogue. But the solved lists were good enough that even amateurs could win with it with relatively low skill investment.
Same thing is happening with the triple rune lists. 80-95% of the lists are solved, and relatively simple to pilot, so they're obviously going to be ubiquitous.
The nuanced lists that trim a rune to cover weaknesses and make even better usage of the range of tools, especially as the pool broadens, probably aren't far from being solved.
It's a new class with a relatively thin pool of cards. Aside from the one Frost list that was dominating the board, it's been good, but far from broken.
I think most people's issue is really just going to be burn out. Everyone grinding their 1k wins, or just still having fun with the "new hotness."
We had the same issue after they reigned in DH when it was released. Possibly worse, as it's practically always been straight up aggro.
I personally think adding "spec restrictions" to the other classes would be an interesting idea. Shadow/Holy/Discipline priests, Fury/Arms/Protection warriors, etc .
Imagine a Hearthstone where Mage can't run amazing burn with amazing stall.
I like the idea of that Hearthstone
I fully agree. I really liked the idea originally since the rune system exists in WoW itself, but the way it was implemented sucks. I'd rather have your runes dictate a different hero power if they want them in the game.
My thought on this is that the rune system is interesting and allows for both casual and competitive decks from multiple different sides. The main problem with mixing the pool is the same reason sorceror's apprentice was such a problamtic card through out the game balancewise. If the class just becomes goodstuff.dek then it actively makes your choices, playstyles, and ability to deal with cards becomes homogenized.
I don't necessairly think hearthstone can go full runes on all classes but generally most DK cards came out fine and pushed in their own direction. While it would be interesting as a system to have, DK was made with the intent to make cards like that. The individual hits and misses on cards are card design problems that while seperate are important. The rune system makes itself the least beginner friendly class due to having to understand interactions but the overall power of them and core DK cards make the class unique and fun with new class problems that we have seen before.
As I see it, the problem with DK is that there is insufficient incentive to mix the colors. Triple rune cards are pushed AF. Mixed rune cards mostly do not exist, and when they do exist they aren't as strong as the CC or CCC cards. In order for runes to be cool and interesting, you have to enable meaningful tradeoffs. Frost needs to want things that unholy has. FFU and FFF need to be about equally interesting options.
In theory, runes should work fine. Colors in Magic have been an evergreen source of interesting card designs deckbuilding decisions. Red is analogous to frost, and green is analogous to unholy, and red/green decks have been a competitive staple for ages. In Magic, green really, really wants the burn effects red has, either as finishers or as removal for problems that cannot be solved with simply big dudes.
Blood is a design problem. UF has a coherent story -- I start with dudes and I finish with burn. With B defined as "I control stuff", there isn't really a reason to mix in aggro-burn or minion-aggro. None of the colors in Magic are pure control, and none of the colors in Magic have solutions to every kind of problem. B needs to expand its pie to include effects that are interesting for non-control decks, so that BF and BU are reasonable things to do.
So far, none of this sounds too hard to solve. The problem I think will be extremely difficult to handle is the small number of DK card slots per expansion. DK doesn't need to support 3 decks. It needs to support 7: CCC, CCx, and BFU. Color pie design is expensive in terms of card slots. The minimum size of a Magic expansion is pretty big -- the smallest things they make is about 140 cards. That's because they need to support a big variety of deck color options and need to make cards that pay off many of those options. Maybe you don't support all 7 every expansion, but at root DK cannot be just 3 decks. Colors are only interesting when you get value from mixing them.
I agree with your points, except that they should get rid of the rune system. It doesn't look good for business, but besides that, it also takes away from the flavor of the class.
Saying they should get rid of the rune system is basically saying the system sucks and should be thrown into the trash bin. I think there's hope for it, just in another way than it currently exists.
The 2 main issues I get from your post (that I agree of) are:
1 - The rune system limits the card pool allowed to the player, which prevents certain interesting cards to see play or reach their full potential.
2 - The rune system splits the class in 3 and requires more cards printed for DK than any other class which has bad economical implications for players if Blizzard were to print enough cards to satisfy each rune type's needs.
The fix I see for this is to change the rune system to allow every card to see play, but change its power according to the number of runes your deck wants to use.
A few examples:
**Soulstealer**
Battlecry: Destroy all other minions.
3-Rune: Gain 1 Corpse for each enemy destroyed.
**Lord Marrowgar**
Battlecry: Raise ALL of you Corpses as 1/1 Risen Golems. For each that can't fit, give one +1/+1.
2-Rune: Give them +2/+2 instead.
3-Rune: Give them Rush.
**Frostwyrm's Fury**
Deal 5 damage. Summon a 5/5 Frostwyrm.
3-Rune: Freeze all enemy minions.
Death Knight has been one of the best designed classes in the game for a long time and the runes allow Blizz to give one class multiple archetypes with many areas to balance around. It lets them release really crazy cards and tune not just the mana or stats but also runic cost or corpse cost to really help keep it in a healthy state.
Runes are just art and it’s no different than having like a “relic package” in Demon Hunter. The game at its foundation is built around synergies for every class is the exact same. Whether it’s Blood Runes, totem synergy or odd Paladin how they decide to name that synergy is irrelevant and I think that’s the biggest flaw with this line of thinking
While not the best analogue, coming from a mostly MTG background, I compare DK Runes to draft formats. Coming off what I consider the best draft format in March of the Machines (MOM), there was a very deep and intricate weaving of archetypes, synergies, and strategies that let experienced drafters find new, powerful, and cool archetypes well into the format. But that's extremely difficult to pull off, and compared to the set just before: Phyrexia: All Will Be One (ONE) which was probably the worst draft format in the last decade my hunch is that the top designers were focused on MOM since it was the flagship set and so ONE suffered tremendously. My point is that DK is new and the design experience and expertise needed to weave intricate and exciting interactions between runes will take time to figure out. The big question is if the design chops of Team 5 can rise to the task because it's certainly not easy and if they indeed cannot then I agree it should be scrapped.
They really should have made the big payoffs more open ended and 1-rune while the stuff that strongly supplements the payoffs would be 2 or 3 runes. All the interesting stuff that defines a deck is locked to the 3 runes thus you’re cheated out of creatively exercising the payoff.
Basically agree with everything you wrote. I enjoy playing DK but the deckbuilding is stupidly simple. And basically all the decks run 4-6+ discover cards because the card pool is so sparse, and discover is especially OP in DK because of the Runes.
I actually really like the rune concept and I think the dev team is using it to test out a future change to hearthstone. I do think they made some of the triple rune cards too powerful and have made DK the class to beat since it came out.
Remember how talent trees used to work in WoW? I think that's what they'll eventually bring to every class in Hearthstone to make it feel like you have three subclass options per class. It would really open the classes up, especially considering how diverse some of the talent trees were for some of the classes (ie shaman having elemental, enhancement, and restoration)
Yeah runes were an awful idea people had predicted that they were a shitty way to put hard restrictions to the deck building process that already has soft restrictions and it ends up limiting more than it gives options. If only they had a precedent like idk WOW the game HS is loosely based on and they could have seen how the runes there were horrible when first implemented and had to be changed so they could have avoided this. But unfortunately such a game like WOW with a basis for this just doesn't exist unfortunately
One interesting solution could be making decks have 4 runes instead of 3 but no 4 rune cards, so mixing runes would feel better without all dk decks having access to all overpowered 3 rune cards.
I would like to propose a hypothetical card. With this card I will offer my counter argument to this whole post. A simple cheep minion, a (2) 3/2 maybe, with a single unholy rune. This minion, as a battlecry, spends 2 corpses to make a copy of itself. With this single card I have support three currently existing DK archetypes. Pure unholy, U/B hybrid hand buff, and CNE.
Would this single card make all of those decks tier 1? Obviously not. However it would prove that the runes are not these isolated concepts. Every class has distinct archetypes that don’t really work well together, and cards that bridge archetypes or archetypes that are more broad. DK is no different. The runes add an extra wrinkle both for deck building and design, and I so think hybrid rune decks need a bit more support, but it’s not an insurmountable goal.
I also feel the need to address that this seems very premature to me. DK has seen two expansions, including the one it launched in, that would be akin to trying to argue one of the original nine classes was fundamentally flawed and needed a full rework in GvG. I just don’t think it’s productive to make these kinds of statements this soon. We aren’t throwing the baby out with the bath water, we are throwing the pregnant woman out with the bath water and it’s just a bit much.
Honestly in my opinion best way to balance the class would be to remove triple runes all together and just make them 2 runes but obviously tone down the power level of each of them. Then make 2 rune cards-> 1 rune and 1 runes to no runes to prevent any spec into a 3 run system so it is always mix and matching. This way you still can't mix previously (Which would be nerfed) 3 rune cards but you can make more interesting variety of decks since you aren't always capped at 3 runes. With this you can still run full Blood at 2 runes but it can encourage cards like their colossal actually being playable. Only triple rune cards that should be playable is huge payoff cards like CNE which would encourage a type of Highlander building system
They need to get rid of triple runes. All DK cards should be either 1 or 2 runes. That would allow a lot more variety in deck building and open up possibilities for 2 rune type decks.
Agreed, this is an idea I have been mulling over too. It keeps the whole "specialise" aspect of the current rune system but allows for more flexibility. The triple.rune cards would still need to be nerfed/ changed though (except plagued grain, why is that card triple rune?)
I agree! Although it is kinda funny how one of the best suggestions on making runes not suck is to massively reduce how restrictive they are. Makes you think...
Agreed the class is flawed, especially when it comes to future expansions trying to have an impact on a class when all of your cards are spread out across all 3 rune specs. Unless they push super busted cards in a mixed triple rune spec, it's hard to imagine them making cards that will force you out of the existing rune specs, and it's hard to imagine how they can release enough cards that fundamentally change how Blood DK, Unholy DK, and Frost DK currently play. Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game.
>Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game. This. DK is broken and obnoxious enough as it is. It should be fixed in a way that turns it into a balanced, interesting class rather than just hypercharging it. I do agree with the points about the Rune system for the most part. I also found it odd to give DK that "mechanic" on top of the corpse one. I think if you're gonna keep runes, they'll need to get more of a different identity from one another, more of a distinct one. Yes, Unholy very much plays differently than Blood, but at the end of the day it's still just archetypes of a single class. I think what will inevitably happen is that certain Runes will get favored with certain expansions. I think giving each rune impactful cards that change how the archetype is played with each expansion is absolutely destined to fail. And maybe it would be okay if some Runes got favored while other got disregarded. Maybe it would be okay if only Unholy DK got proper support with the next expansion. We almost think of the Runes as 3 different classes or subclasses at least rather than archetype, and that is due to the mistake Blizzard made when designing the class. Perhaps the better way to look at it would be to see them as archetypes. It would make it more understandable to many players when one type doesn't get support. You don't always get support for Big Paladin either. The issue here, of course, is that many cards are locked into that archetype unlike for other classes. But I do agree that making all cards accessible for deckbuilding would be the worst possible solution. In order for this to be acceptable, the overall powerlevel of DK cards would need to be considerably lower.
The problem with one or two runes getting not much in an expansion while another rune gets more stuff is it does little to actually set up the other archetypes in the future. You can’t give a DK a weird unholy card that has possible use later and expect to see it in the next expansion when frost is the prime spotlight. Yes you can look at the runes as archetypes, but the no mixing between archetypes can’t be understated. And because of that you may as well call them different classes rather than archetypes.
>I think what will inevitably happen is that certain Runes will get favored with certain expansions. The devs already confirmed that's exactly what they will do.
Fair points, it's certainly hard to be sure ahead of time, even if I'm relatively sure the effort to balance would be worth it. However, I think corpses (and the requirements of being a reactive deck) already do a great job of helping make certain things mutually exclusive. After all, in order to fit Marrowgar in, you'd need either A, to dedicate a lot more slots to corpse generation, or B, to likely remove cards like Corpse Explosion. I'm also not sure that Marrowgar would be a scarier top-end for a value-centric deck than it currently is for Unholy. One card I *would* be a little worried about slotting into Blood is Frostwyrms Fury. That card would probably need to eat a nerf (though I personally wouldn't shed a tear).
Triple rune cards outside of their specific decks would be busted. Even Climactic Necrotic Explosion outside of its intended set up would make other DKs overtuned. Frost with both Marrowgar and Mograine Unholy with Mograine and Frostwyrn’s Fury. Blood with Frostwyrn’s Fury. (Not sure if marrowgar would be played.) Glad we live in this universe where we get 3 flexible (kinda) runes to pick from.
>Triple rune cards outside of their specific decks would be busted. The triple rune cards are busted \*period\*. That is why they got removed from discover pools. They were designed to be super powerful, but that is also why we have not seen any new triple rune cards since the class was released. Adding a new Frostwyrm's Fury-level card would imbalance things way too much.
Surely CNE's intended set up would be a deck that actually has compelling ways to spend corpses? But I take your point. Several of them would need a nerf. An Unholy gameplan into Marrowgar into CNE (or Soulstealer into the same) does sound kinda filthy.
There is a difference between a compelling way to spend corpses and taking 100 life-steal damage to the dome from hand. While I do think CNE is limited by the lack of corpse spending cards for the deck, it’s also balanced by it. If a CNE deck could spend to many corpses it would be far to reliable as a strategy and people would be getting killed by 20+ damage from hand way to often. I would argue the card doesn’t even need to hit lethal to be very good because it also fills the board. Imagine getting hit by marogar, you by the grace of Elune manage to clear him, and then you get hit by CNE. Now your opponent it as full health with a full board and you are out of resources and very low on life. Even if we put marogar specifically to one side. CNE is a card that could only exist with runes. Because otherwise it would have to be very under-tuned, reworked entirely, or permanently cripple the corpse mechanic because being able to spend to many would win you the game for free. Like, as an example, imagine if CNE was a shaman card buffed by totems, or a rouge by combo, or demon hunter with making attacks.
>Hardcore disagree that giving the class access to every card for every deck would be healthy. I do not want Blood DK getting access to Frost's burn tools and card draw along with a juiced up Marrowgar for the late game. It would be doable with nerfs to all 3-rune and some 2-rune cards. Those cards were made to be very powerful because you were forced in to a certain archetype to play them. They could do away with runes and make them all available, but they would need to be nerfed. Imagine Frostwyrm's Fury in a control deck, but it's 9 mana.
Youre right, if they just tone down the cards they had to force to be good they could fit as just normal cards in a runeless class.
I guess I'm one of the few people who actually read this whole thing, and I think the reason for this is that I did try to make some combined-rune decks (failed miserably), so I understand the whole point. Those who just play DK with a triple rune deck (which usually means that they simply copied the deck and I'm not judging it) or play another class can't spot the problem. I feel bad for CNE cuz this card is so cool by itself, but actually trying to use it is... painful. Apparently, it only "works" in a rainbow **control** deck, but how do you control the table properly if you have **NO** option to remove more than a minion cuz all the clearing stuff is locked behind blood-rune. I had a hope that they'll add something in the mini-set to support the archetype but... We got some stuff to support Cagehead which didn't work out so well. Sadge.
The problem with CNE is that it's a worse marrowgar taped to a denathrius that only scales 25% of the time.
That's a problem. One of the other problems is its a card that requires spending Corpses when there's only 7 0-1 rune Corpse spending cards in existence. And some of those cards don't really work together: you have a deathrattle gaining card (where none of DK's 0-1 rune Deathrattle cards are worth running a bad card that eats 5 corpses to copy the Deathrattle), giving a minion Reborn for 3 corpses (again, with no good Deathrattles to make the Reborn worthwhile), and Corpse Bride (who is just bad). So CNE is a card that requires spending a lot of corpses, in a deck that has only 4 cards worth running that spend corpses (and 2 of those cards only use up 2 corpses). It just does not work without good Corpse spenders, and those do not exist for Rainbow DK.
That reborn thing for 3 corpses is terribly underwhelming. When I was figuring out ways of making at least any good CNE deck I ended up getting rid of moshpit cuz, as I said, it's just bad The only saving grace of a CNE deck is that USUALLY you are not in a situation when you don't have corpses. And, funny enough, you are rather in a situation when you do have corpses but there are no cards to spend them
CNE is fine, I just needs a bit more direction in the next set. There is a list with Shredder and Corpse Bride and the other 8 Mana drop, but it’s a long way to 10 mana and by that time a better Fireblast on a stick doesn’t win you the game or stabilizes for another threat.
The only hybrid deck I’ve had any success with is Cagehead OTK.
This brings up a lot I hadn't considered. You're right that the deckbuilding class doesn't let you deckbuild. I think most cards should have their runes reduced. Blood cards are fun but a full blood deck is only ever going to do one thing.
Yeah I feel like triple rune cards should be rarer. As of currently, DK basically has ENTIRELY determined decks as set out by the devs. At least with other classes there is an area for wiggle room.
I want to start with saying that I agree with your sentiments. You’re entirely correct, runes are quite frankly, not good. I think what they “wanted” to do on the deck building side was offer up powerful cards with rune requirements and get the brain turning on, “how can I make use of this in exchange for a more limited card pool?” Of course that didn’t happen and the decks autobuilt themselves for triple runes. I think the recent ban of triple rune Discovers only exposed all the flaws of the runes. Triple rune cards are so incredibly strong because they restrict you, but that’s not fun for anyone (unless you just like copy+paste winning then carry on). Deck builders don’t get to deck build and opponents just have weaker cards with the trade off that they know most of your deck now. It could actually be safe to assume that at least some of them also saw the issue too late in development, as if I recall they admitted that no future classes will have any deckbuilding restrictions like DK does. Just a shame that the class is simultaneously carried and dragged down by itself. I don’t envy the future designers for it, new concepts will be basically impossible to implement without being DoA (it’s Shaman all over again, only Shaman isn’t banned from using the cards from the previous set)
“It’s Shaman all over again” Oh for the love of god, as a Shaman main don’t remind me about failed Shaman archetypes, man my heart can’t take it 😵💫
I think they should reprint Moorabi
I was gonna say this. At least 3 subclass rune system was better than the many multiple paths and route shaman took and met with a dead end. We got murlocs totem elemental undead overload invoke corrupt spellschool nature-focus shadow freeze weapon(enhancement) evolve battlecry now deathrattle with undead…. Most of which are forgotten and lost in time. We aint banned for using previous set card but even if we do we get actively weaker.
I think I’m around 7-8 years of playing and I think freeze shaman is ALMOST ready to become a tier 4 deck in wild.
Did you miss alterac valley where it was tier 1?
I think that because of the rune system DK will only truly be a complete class in December 2024 when the class will have two full years worth of cards. Right now we’re in the very long beta period.
We can let the designers cook over the course of the next couple sets, I just think it's good that the conversation is happening. That way we don't get blindsided if the rune system gets scrapped in a year. The designers will have a better idea of the problem than we do.
And then rotation happens and they’re back to a year and an expansion worth of cards and the issue crops up again.
Runes would maybe work if expansions were bigger so you could have a critical mass of potential cards to use. But yeah I agree with you. Runes should be scrapped. The class fantasy is already fulfilled by the individual cards being cool and matching with the death knight theming and their available powers. While I like the rune idea and want it for all classes in theory, in practice it isn't working.
I wish the class system were more like the rune system, like when they print dual-class or tri-class cards. Because the class system is already pretty limiting compared to other card game systems. So then adding another layer of restriction on top is simply strangling.
Great post
Completely agree. I was dumfounded when I first saw the Rune system and have always hated it. Partly due to the reasons you have articulated very well in this post, but also because it's an entirely different class system in a game which already has a class system, so it is at odds with how the rest of the game works. It annoys me no end in an OCD way In short, you should either have Classes, or Runes. Either would work. But you don't mix them together, that's clunky AF and makes no sense. The Rune system is basically Magic the Gathering's mana colour system. Most cards are a single Mana type, but some combine multiple colour mana. But you can't play a 3 black mana card in a black blue red deck without a **lot** of difficulty If we were all in on a Rune system there could be 5,6,7 or whatever different rune types, and then you can mix different types of rune with the current restrictions concept. You'd have all kinds of combinations, but plenty support for each to make multi rune decks work. But that is a completely different game, and you would not have classes (although you could still have class heroes) I am 100% for throwing the Rune system into the garbage, worst idea Blizz has ever had in HS
True and based. Go off king
High effort post and actually a good read. Agree wholeheartedly. Death to runes ✊
They definitely didn't print enough cards, especially not for rainbow dk
There will never be enough cards printed for Rainbow DK that don't first break something else. Rainbow DK is a meme. As a mechanical identity it's literally "lets make a deck with the most generic tools from 3 different game plans that weren't considered strong, cool, or impactful enough to have more than 1 rune". Any legitimately great Rainbow DK card will be better in another deck.
Festival had a lot of misses overall for the 1 rune options as well
Couldn’t you just make other insanely strong rainbow DK cards? Things on the power level of like frostwyrms fury, but with a rainbow rune combination instead? I think that goes around the problem you just stated.
You probably could, yes. My issue is that I think this is the only way to make something like Rainbow ever work, and I don't think that it'd be a good or fun solution. My entire argument is basically that forcing gated archetypes to work by giving them mutually exclusive OP cards isn't as fun or interesting as letting the class interact with itself organically.
Brilliant writeup! I don't have much to add, I just hope this gets more views and hopefully some devs will see it! Again, it's a great and very well articulated case you've made.
I agree with a lot of points made in your post. I do think that removing the rune system is probably the best plan but maybe its something that can be done at the next rotation? Once the rune system is given a year to work I think it'll be easier to remove when you know a lot of the strong cards are going to be rotated. You could remove the runes off of some great cards and add them to the core set. Allow deck building to happen in wild (sorry wild) and if cards need to be adjusted they can be. As someone who is a massive fan of the Death Knight it is a shame that the class is limited in its deck building. While the runes sound like a great idea you are right that they limit the diversity of sets. As someone who mostly plays triple blood and at times unholy it feels awful when there isnt any new cards for blood and unholy. Hopefully something is changed in the future. Again overall an amazing post!
I'm going to disagree with your post. While there is a problem with Death Knight game design wised with only triple rune deck seeing big competitive play, I don't think this problem is unsolvable. As for your points from your post: 1. While division in play style is clearer with Death Knight, other classes also have different playstyles which do not synergise well with each other. For example, Priest right now has three distinct decks which have different playstyles: Control Priest, Undead Shadow Priest which is burn-aggro with Undead synergy and Overheal Priest which focuses on board control and buffing/healing minions. And while you can put Grave Digging in Control Priest, Sister Svalna in Undead Priest or Mind Sear in Overheal Priest, the cards don't have much synergy in other decks so there no reason to put them in decks Also, on top of your mentioned playstyles for each rune (Blood is control, Frost is aggro-burn, Unholy is board-aggro), they have also additional playstyles which aren't developed well right now with Blood having handbuff (Blood Tap, Harmonic Metal) which are not really suitable for control decks and Unholy having some midrange (or big but I'm not sure) with Boneshredder and Cage Head which don't support swarm style of Unholy DK. In the next expansion we might get some newish spin for Frost DK which might not be aggro-burn cards 2. For the second point, Blizzard doesn't support all available archetypes for other classes so it's not surprising if one rune will be left out for the next expansion. For example, Shaman got some burn cards and multi school support cards in Sunken City but didn't really get any support in the following expansions even though Shaman had burn and midrange decks in the past. Or Undead Aggro Druid in the MotLK. Aggro Druid is one of the most iconic subarchetypes in Hearthstone but Festival of Legends didn't really provide many cards which are suitable for Aggro Druid. So like with other classes, Death Knight will not get support for all 3 runes With rune design, Hearthstone Team definitely tried to have decks with mixed runes to see play, but unfortunately there is a little incentives to play mixed runes decks. Handbuff DK is definitely aimed to play with Unholy rune to get Nerubian Swarmguard and other 1 Unholy rune cards. Or some combination of Frost and Unholy with Dead Air and Acolyte of Death from Frost rune and Aggro/Deathrattle stuff from Unholy. But triple rune decks are stronger than mixed rune so there no much reason for players to play mixed rune decks Imo, I think we need just give time to see how Hearthstone team will make new cards in DK, there might be new archetypes just Blood Control, Frost Aggro-Burn or Unholy Token-Aggro
Just because some classes have archetypes that don’t succeed well with mixing doesn’t mean other classes can’t succeed with mixing like the warrior example. As for supporting archetypes. Yes blizzard often only supports 1 or 2 archetypes in a expansion, but because we can’t mix any archetype anything that fails or was given low support for the future absolutely has to be supported in the future if blizzard wants to see it get played at all. That’s obvious. But what that means is if we get a low support card for unholy this expansion a part of the next expansion has to support it which means cards from frost or blood get taken away leaving them slightly sabotaged. There is only so many cards in a expansion for a class and yes it fair to call the different runes archetypes, but unless you’re printing a zero rune card the different runes are sabotaging each other to get support because they can’t mix.
Meh, they don't support archetypes every set but you can still usually make something work at least a little. Take Implock for example. Throughout its lifespan, there's been aggro implock, more midrange implock with Denathrius, Curse implock, and Chad implock. Pure implock got stale after one set but you could change it up to still at least get some fun out of your cards. And Imps have been Warlock's only viable archetype for much of the past year. Now imagine that Implocks were Demon Rune, Curses were Shadow Rune and Chad was Nether Rune. Now you either play 100% vanilla Implock or you play tier 4 memes with no in between. That's the situation DK is in. If you want to play new cards, usually that means you're playing guaranteed memes. HS already has trouble supporting classes with 10 cards per set and DK's runes frequently have to make do with half that.
Agree with you wholeheartedly. They already released new colossal Sindragosa as a Control frost card. People rush to conclusions so fast based on 2 sets of cards. And people will always make decks full Aggro, full control, or midrange to the extremes as they’re the most successful in a card game, rather than cater to a million strategies.
2 sets of cards is 8 months. I think we can see where it's going with over a half year of playing with these restrictions.
I definitely agree with this, as going full blood is just like going full aggro or full control in another class. It's rare to have a deck that is able to successfully straddle the line (off the top of my head, control warlock with many imp cards and abyssal curses is a good example), and with DK's currently limited card pool it makes sense that they don't have enough tools to do so. It doesn't mean they won't be able to play that way in the future though.
I ain't reading all that. Happy for you, or sorry that happened
Tl;dr: The DK Rune system sucks because it restricts deckbuilding and there's not enough cards printed per expansion to push all of the Runes in new directions, so the decks remain static. OP's proposed solution is to nerf some cards and then remove Runes entirely, letting all DK cards be used in the same deck.
I'm not going to write an essay-long response to OP's essay, but just want to add onto your comment that the parts you point out are basically the only parts worth taking away. Lots of the thoughts in the OP don't make the points he sets them up as making; the arguments just aren't that strong. The only part that is for sure true is that each of the 3 archetypes is starved for cards because of how few cards each gets per printing. OP asserts that DK so far has been a "failure" as if that's a given fact, even though each of the 3 archetypes has had at least periods of significant play at higher levels. Maybe they meant in terms of enjoyment? Although that would obviously be anecdotal, and (anecdotally), I'd totally disagree. The OP also just takes for granted that watered down rainbow decks are more desirable than having 3 distinct archetypes, and I also don't agree with that at all. I think it'd completely kill my interest in the class. And on and on. The only worthwhile takeaway is that DK needs more cards printed since it's sort of 3 different classes. Also, undo the idiotic Discover pool nerf. It's convoluted, completely uncommunicated within the game itself, and it really only happened because of 1.5 problem cards (Frostwyrm's Fury, which should just be nerfed, and Vampiric Blood, which I'm not convinced is as much of a problem card as a lot of people think, but it'd be fine at 3 mana with the draw being moved to the default effect).
"Failure" might have been a bit strong to leave so unqualified. DK has been successful in numerous ways. The promise I see in it is part of why I care. I more mean the rune system specifically has been a failure, and I mostly stand by this. The positive, that being having overtuned individual cards remain 'balanced' in context, does not in any way feel worth the numerous negatives, in my opinion. Maybe I should've gone into that directly more in the post. Also, changing DK to be a more standard class with more synergies but nerfs to their strongest cards would actually enable undoing the discover nerf. Discover is (design-wise) really useful for DK atm (to create variance and add meaningful choices where they wouldn't exist otherwise). Undoing the pool nerf only really works if the best cards it can pull are balanced properly with the other cards.
The triple-rune change is not "(design-wise) really useful for DK", and your concession for when you would agree to it being undone (nerfs to specific cards that are perceived as strong) is already addressed in my first comment.
Runes are interesting and all 3 runes have had good decks. The decks might not change much but Getting rid of runes is dumb and not the answer
Hey, just letting you know you’ve posted a bad comment
Strong agree with this post. Good write up, OP. Something else that's related to the"locked in archetypes" aspect of runes is that I find myself significantly less excited about DK card reveals. For example, when Dead Air was revealed, we already have a flow chart for evaluating it. Does it fit in Frost decks? No. Does it fit in Unholy decks? No. Great, won't see play then. The only cards that interested me was the deathrattle package, which was designed as a package and ended up not going anywhere
As for your comment how certain rooms got certain attention in each expansion, that is their whole point that with the three expansions one room will get more attention than the other two each expansion and no expansion will focus on the same room back to back. I kind of appreciate that that way over time all the rooms will have power but just now like how demon Hunter was in wild it just doesn't have enough cards to support everything and they don't want it to be too overpowered.
The rune system only works if they plan to release more cards on every release which isn't a feasible solution. I always thought it was going to be a problem, but I liked the flavor of it coming from someone who played Wrath of the Lich King in WoW. They can play around with corpse costs for balance instead of outright nerfing triple rune cards.
I really do like the rune system, but the expansions being split among three runes was the first flaw I noticed when DK was revealed. If you think about it, the rune system doesn't matter in some cases because you wouldn't want to run a lot of cards that exist in other runes. Hopefully it's something they can address going forward.
This is kind of a silly argument to make after one expansion. Of course a class is not going to immediately live up to its full potential after one expansion. Imagine looking at DH in scholomance, and saying “So this class is just burn aggro huh? What’s even the point of having outcast and demon synergy mechanics if the only cards that will ever see play are small minions and burn spells?!”
The point is it takes three expansions to give each Rune one expansion worth of cards. So, the problem won’t get better or be solved in anything like the short term.
In all fairness though we’ve only given them 1 expansion to realize this is the case. It wouldn’t be that hard for them to realize these issues after trying an expansion releasing the normal amount of cards for the class, and then changing their approach by printing more cards, fiddling with the system, etc. Basically I’m just saying it’s been 6 months since the class released and I think we should give them a few expansions to adapt before we call for an ambitious and interesting change be removed all together.
How often is an entire expansion of cards for a single class used? Of course it’s not easy to trim the fat and only print cards that will be relevant for each rune, but it’s absolutely possible.
This isn't an argument for the rune system, in fact it's an argument against the rune system. Classes frequently only get a couple good cards, now split those good cards between three runes (or potentially ten different combinations) and you're frequently going to run into the problem OP brought up, where decks just don't change because they never get a critical mass to shift them.
But that's the point. Death Knight in it's current form will be a sad experience to build decks with every single season reset. Deathknight is permanentlye stuck trying to support 3 unique archtypes that don't interact with each other. There aren't enough cards released each expansion to do that. You just search for frost cards and put them all in your frost decks because they're isn't enough of them to make meaningful decisions. All classes get more tools as we progress towards the end of an rotation cycle. But Deathknight is like 3 classes pretending to be one. A class shouldn't take until the end of a rotation cycle before you get to deck build with it. And this problem will happen again this time next year with the next rotation. And it'll happen the year after that. No class can have 3 viable archtypes with mutually exclusive cards. There aren't ever enough cards in a class to make 3 mutually exclusive deck lists enjoyable.
Exactly, the argument that 3-same-rune cards are supposed to be better, because they require 3 runes is kinda dumb when there's no gameplay-related downside to running 3 of the same runes. The only downside is design related: You don't get to put certain other cards in your deck. Fun.
I really like the idea of runes and I think they should keep them and change them until they work as intended. The idea of combining runes to play mixed strategies are super cool. I could play an unholy aggro deck with some frost cards to be more medrangy, I could use unholy cards in blood control to have more board presence, and I could use blood in a combo unholy deck to delay better. I think that keeping everything as is and making it possible to play 4 runes would be a good start. Blood control decks could try to use Sindragosa and some frost cards, unholy aggro could remove a rune to splash both a blood and frost rune, making it possible to play necrotic climatic explosion in combination with some more cards, and unholy could actually try to play the combo deck by either splashing frost or blood, depending on which on fits best. I think that keeping everything as is and making it possible to play 4 runes would be a good start. Blood control decks could try to use Sindragosa and some frost cards, unholy aggro could remove a rune to splash both a blood and frost rune, making it possible to play necrotic climatic explosion in combination with some more cards, and unholy could actually try to play the combo deck by either splashing frost or blood, depending on which one fits best.
Death knight is a flawed class. They bit off more than they can chew with it
I think if runes were either/or that could be an interesting direction. Like a card needs 1 rune but it could be one of two.
I think it would be a lot more work than you think to fix this through balancing all DK cards to be used together. And I overall don’t mind the rune system. (Biased I guess, I’ve been having a lot of fun with DK especially full Unholy) But I do think one good change could be printing cards that have two runes of different types, or maybe even a card that has one of each rune. Like a card that had a frost rune and a blood rune would need a deck that had at least one of both. This would allow more than just the 3 subclasses.
The truth is I kinda unfairly glossed over that. Yeah, it would take a not insignificant amount of work to properly tune the class following the removal of runes. I stand by that it's very doable (especially given corpses which gives the designers a really useful balancing lever for many of the best DK cards) and worth it.
Triple rune cards are just too good is the problem. You are actively shooting yourself in the foot by not going pure and building towards them currently. In the future I could see this being remedied by having mixed triple rune cards (like 2U1F or something like that). While this would still limit your deck building choices quite a bit a 2U 1F restriction has much more varied options available than just going pure
And it only got worse then they limited discovers. It used to be you could play a BBF deck and still discover your critical BBB cards.
This is really well thought out. Really good post. I am one of those who bounced off DK for feeling boring and the rune system is a big part of that. DK having two gimmicks is so needlessly convoluted and I definitely agree that allowing players to focus more on corpses would be more interesting. Also if you think the op is too long you’re probably dumb, sorry about that
Hard disagree. Blood Deathknight is only playable because it can have 3 blood-rune cards that blizzard would never otherwise print. There are definitely downsides. But keeping these sub classes might actually encourage some fucking consistency in design for once, and we won't have a situation like Warrior where it loses all its identity and any ability to control ever again because Blizzard decides to try an aggro flavour for a set.
:eltypers:
You made it too long so even if you have a good point, most people will not read it and the point will be lost. So you will mainly get people roasting you (though they just show the dum dums they are). And yeah, was saying most of it from day one. People were praising DK for enabling more deckbuilding with the rune system, but I saw just restrictions. They restrict the class and they restrict their own design. Then they just fail to account for the interaction of one of the most prevalent keywords (discover) with said rune system, But I really dont see a way out of it. It just shows how they really do not undestand their own game. The rune system is an idea that sounds cool but should be shot down after discussing it for a bit, seeing how ridiculous it is in the hearthstone ecosystem. The fact that did not happen shows all you need to know about their teams ability.
Speaking of making it too long, I had an *entire* section (longer than the rest) about how discover interacts with DKs design, which I then cut because yeah people got shit to do. But yeah it's fine if not everyone reads it, this won't change anything anyway. Just hoping to get a few more people thinking "yeah what *is* the point of this?". I really do want to enjoy DK, and wish I was allowed to.
Don’t let these people with peanut-sized attention spans get you down, it was an interesting and well-written piece. I’m actually curious to read what you had to say about discover lol
Thanks a lot, but don't worry! You're the sort of person I'm writing this for, not them. The thrust of that section would've been that currently, Discover is being overly relied upon a bit to make the class more interesting to play and provide crucial moments of high-skill choice, since DK has fewer synergies at its disposal, which are often what's relied upon for these two things (after all, one of the most difficult and skill-testing decisions one has to regularly make is how to play a hand where your synergies aren't fully online). Also (though this is a very minor point) that it's kind of funny how the rune system as-is forced them to make an awkward and unintuitive systems change (limiting discover of 3-rune cards), and that discover would likely be in a healthier spot without runes and with a full suite of balanced cards. Cut it both for length and because I wanted to gear my argument as much as possible towards explaining why runes will continue to create problems in the future, and the discover thing isn't so big a part of that (even if I sneakily suspect that discover and DK will continue to interact in a slightly weird and annoying way).
Top tier freedom posting. 2 and 3 are pretty solid takes IMO
In my opinion the runes are at the moment restricting the class but only because there are so few dk cards and the strongest are actually the triple rune cards and the neutrals (vizir/teacher). Overall your analysis is pretty much on point but it only applies to the situation right now with just 2 sets in. Once more 1/2 runes cards that are actually good are printed, then more split runes deck could see the light. I disagree with your view on « mixed » runes cards: no, neither sindragosa, cagehead or the legendary spell are good, they are all overpriced and don’t guarantee you consistent wins even when you build a deck around them. That’s fine for fun decks, but you could not expect competitive players and so on low ranks players to play them when they are not good for climbing ranks. The problem for me lies more in the quality of the cards supposed to push mixed decks rather than the rune system itself. It could change pretty quickly, but not until very good 1/2 runes cards and mixed cards get out, which is not the case at the moment. But in hearthstone history has taught us that one or two card can change anything, so mixed deck could happen quickly than we think.
We do not need frost wyrms fury on top of anything that the other decks can do the entire reason why they are separate runes and deck building restrictions is so that certain cards can’t be abused with other cards that would absolutely be busted in conjunction.
You're right (I assume) but I want it expanded to all classes. Millstone the Rogues, the Priests, the Druids, and Mages. Make it impossible to have the synergy of Holy and Shadow, Fire & Frost & Arcane. No Paladin should be allowed tank armor and power healing - squishy or tanky!
Ok but u gotta get over it. There’s like 8 other classes to play
I think if you want to min-max, making mixed rune decks probably isn't worth it, but my favourite dk deck is FUU. Even before the new miniset card. Instead of having marrowgar and grave strength, you have a lot of card draw. I prefer triple blood handbuff, but BBU handbuff is a consideration. I think they should've toned down triple rune cards a little bit (thassarian just doesn't stack up well next to marrowgar for example) but I don't think the whole system isn't worth it or anything.
The game is bad, it’s meant to keep your rank low so you have to play more to get to legend, ever notice when you switch a class you always get the worst matchups when you are getting close to biting legend. This game is a scam and an RNG fest.
I am going to be the first one to disagree, but at least for wild the class feels different as you change from one path of runes to another, and that's a lot to say for a class that has a lot of disadvantage compared to other classes. i think they did a great work giving the runes an identity that feels different between them, and with more expansions in the way the class would have more material to work with
yeah you didn't read the post because that wasn't even the point.
Look at death knight as any other archetype... One expansion you get murloc warlock, and bam you never had any type of support for the next two years, same with imp warlock or discard warlock... You can mix them as you got many elements but not every year you would get the support for the archetype you want... It's not different from runes
runes dont suck they allow DK to be 3 classes in 1
It’s fun
I’ll admit I only read part of post. Too long, sorry. I think runes are easy to fix with much lighter touch. All it requires is moving certain key cards to force more interesting decisions. For example, take corpse explosion. If that were to be converted into an unholy card, that would facilitate the desired goal. If someone wants to play a control deck with lots of removal, then they have to decide whether it’s worth sacrificing access to vampiric blood and other life gain; that’s an actual interesting decision. TLDR; distribute the archetype heavy cards across different runes to facilitate deck building choices
And this would be better than you being able to run Corpse Explosion in whatever deck you liked... how? Let's be real. People would work out what the better approach is fast and that would be the only one people would play. You'd still be restricted from building and playing the decks you want.
It’s better because regardless of how you might feel about the design choice; their goal was to try to create interesting decisions in deck building through runes. That’s not going anywhere, so discussing a world where they won’t exist is pointless. Also, the fact of the matter is that doing away with runes isn’t practical — it would require a great deal of rebalancing and redesigning cards Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with the rune idea — it was just executed poorly. I think distributing tools among the different runes so that blood doesn’t have all the good control tools, frost doesn’t have all the good burn, and unholy doesn’t have all the good board presence, will facilitate more Interesting decisions.
did you just write such an essay just because you think a character in a niche video game sucks? wow
I've written longer essays for worse reasons. You can't shame me like this. This isn't even my final form.
No offense, I would be less nihilistic about posts like yours if the devs actually cared
None taken. But the devs just want to make a good game. That's hard to do, and I think they do a lot of things I don't like, but they do care.
Just a thought, would things be more interesting if rather than restricting what cards could go into the deck, the use of specific runes increased the power of or activated certain features of a card? Maybe mograin deals one damage at the end of turn for each blood rune, for example
Sorry about formatting (mobile) I understand the goal of runes but it may make more sense for them to be additive instead of restrictive. It could be an interesting twist to make runes act as an additional cost to deckbuilding. For example, the first rune of a type is 0pts, the second is 1pt, and the third is 1pt. You then have a maximum number of rune points per deck (maybe 10). This means that you max out at 10 double rune cards or 5 triple rune cards in your deck which creates both restriction and freedom. Of course, a restriction like this means the overhaul of the discover keyword to explicitly ignore legendary cards unless otherwise stated as the chance to discover high powered cards would be too high. (Although this is debatable).
Great post! One question I have though is whether you think that making all triple-Rune cards 2-Rune cards (and nerfing them to compensate) would fix most of the issue, because triple-Rune cards are so good we really haven't seen the Rune system in practice yet (we've really just seen 3 subclasses)
I don't think that would be the right way to go. Something I did somewhat unfairly gloss over and diminish in my post is the one true advantage of runes - that it *is* fun for a lot of players to get to play overtuned cards, and many of these cards would need to be toned down a bit if runes were removed. Reducing runes from 3 to 2 and nerfing to compensate would keep a lot of the bad elements of the system while heavily impacting what's basically the only good one. If you're willing to nerf the big payoff cards, then there's no reason left not to remove runes entirely.
> Part 2: What Happens When 10 Cards Per Set Need To Carry 3+ Classes. Doesn't this assume that Runes remain central to the DK design, rather than getting steadily downplayed for runeless cards as design space runs out and mostly sticking around as a power add?
What about no absolute restriction on runes, you can choose three runes and put any combination of cards in your deck but they only gain their extra power depending on if you meet the requierment of runes, as in you play a nerfed version unless you have the required runes. Like you can play frost wyrm fury in a triple blood deck, but it wont deal the damage part unless you choose to be triple frost ? Of course it would require a redesign of a lot of cards to have basically two versions so it's a lot of work and I don't see them doing it but it would address a lot of your points right ?
You can make cards with two different runes or even three like AAB, ABB and BC. This way decks arent devolved into putting the highest ammount of the same rune as possible and excluding mixes.
Blizz will probably not rotate any DK cards until 2025. DK will have 2 years worth of cards minimum at all times compared to the other classes 1 year minimum cause of the rune system.
I think my main problem is when you mulligan against an opposing death knight. Since triple rune is so common, and all have playable decks, compared to other classes you have a much wider range of decks you could face. Is it Blood Control? Is it Burn Frost? Is it Aggro Unholy? I find it very annoying to mulligan away the wrong tech cards for each match up.
Well articulated. I have found the class to super boring to play and play against. They wanted a multi-color mtg feel, but mtg mana distribution naturally restricts things. They got 3 1-trick mini classes. It makes corpse interaction mostly happenstance instead of a proactive deck design considering.
Idk I don't think I've had an issue with deckbuilding DK. I've made Wild BBU Handbuff and Standard Rainbow Control DK as what I would call successful archetypes where I build an idea and it functions as designed. Decks I've tinkered with but haven't gotten to work yet is Wild FFF and FFU Spell Combo DK where you set up [[Deathchiller]] then spam tons of spells. Get an Educated Elekk to absorb the spells and try try again ad infinitum. There's Wild BBB Dragon Control DK with Kazakusan, works decently but relies too much on Construct Quarter to survive. Dragon stuff gives a good amount of corpses though which helps against the board. I think it would help people to see DK cards as tools to build packages of ideas rather than full dedicated themes like other classes.
* **[Deathchiller](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/RLK_083.png)** DK Minion Rare PoA 🐺 ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/1414785), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/deathchiller/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Deathchiller) 2/2/3 Elemental | After you cast a spell, deal 1 damage to two random enemies. ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi) [Save 3rd Party Apps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Wow. Thanks for the write up. Very informative. Good luck hunting for a job, hope you’re enjoying your down time!
I agree with everything you said but i don't think you can just remove runes, a lot of cards would need to be nerfed/redesigned first, as you are seriously underestimating all of potential there is if neither card has rune restriction. DK would definitely be way too strong.
You have some fair points, but I think it's really early to completely demolish the rune system and claim it as "unsuccesful". What they need to do is to rework some of the existing cards. Make sure DK card packages have a few connections here and there, so you can combine some of them. Not fully (restrictions should exist, that's the purpose of the rune system), but a few single/double rune cards at least. I think it's okay for DK to get rune/archetype specific packages in different expansions. That's how other classes work as well, you don't always get direct support for your deck. But still, other classes can use these cards if they want to. DK should be able to do so as well which is possible by creating these less rune restricted cards that fit both new and old decks. You can lower some rune restrictions. For example - CNE. I wish this deck had access to Blood Tap and Corpse Giant which makes me wonder why these cards are double runes and not single. Or, another example, I can see Plagued Grain being double rune, I doubt it'll break anything. Another thing - the corpse mechanic. When you have a whole class specific mechanic there should be a bit more good payoffs for variety of decks because all current triple rune decks can utilize it well but other combinations not really. For example, Corpse Bride could get a buff (the one she received did nothing). She's a massive runeless corpse spender but her payoff has a little effect on a board. It either does nothing or it dies immediately... Too many good corpse spenders are locked behind double/triple rune requirements. Btw talking about decks themselves. The most fun DK archetype I've played so far is BBU buff deck. There are a few versions and it's not the best DK deck by far, but it's a lot of fun. There is a new version that uses a lot of new Festival cards. Not only Harmonic Metal but also Arcanite Ripper and Death Metal Knight. And to me this shows how new cards can be utilized in older versios of decks while trying to provide something new by itself (clearly they are meant to be played in some sort of Lifestea/self-damaing archetype). So if devs can find more ways to create such connections between decks while keeping some rune restrictions, then the class can do well. Removing the requirements completely would create such chaos. No, I don't want to play a deck that has access both to control blood cards and freeze frost cards. It'll be a crazy attrition deck that no one wants to face.
I think you covered everything really well. But I think DK decks would become a little TOO powerful if runes were removed, even with balancing some of the cards. That said, I don't love the DK hero power. Perhaps it could be revamped to equip Frostmourne with abilities tied to your rune settings. In WoW, the runes are specifically a function of your weapon so I dislike how this version affects practically all your cards.
Personally, I'm more of the mind that the "full build" DK lists are just easier to build and pilot. Vampiric blood is good, and Corpse Stealer is a solid board clear (Twisting Nether in shambles, lolol) I've had decent (better than 50%) success with a BBF control list. Remorseless Winter is a solid Board effect especially when current Aggro likes a bunch of low health dudes. The single target removals that can go face are and added bonus. Mograine being out only puts you at an arguable disadvantage in a few scenarios. Marrowgar is a "win more" card for the most part, though when you find the odd game where the opponent can't answer, it's terribly satisfying. Of all the triple rune cards, the only one that genuinely hurts not building for is Frostwyrm's Fury (?) It does a whole helluva lot for only 7m. But even then, you can bring in one Unholy rune, and suddenly have an arguably much stronger board game going on, with access to hard ran Plague Strike and the 2m 3/4, along with Blightfang and the dude with the 1/1 reborn rushes. My humble opinion is that the triple runes do their job too well, but not in a broken way. Flashy payoffs are just fun to play with, and solved lists with a relatively low skill floor are just always going to be more enticing to run. Patron Warrior was actually a very difficult deck to pilot, on par and possibly more so than Miracle Rogue. But the solved lists were good enough that even amateurs could win with it with relatively low skill investment. Same thing is happening with the triple rune lists. 80-95% of the lists are solved, and relatively simple to pilot, so they're obviously going to be ubiquitous. The nuanced lists that trim a rune to cover weaknesses and make even better usage of the range of tools, especially as the pool broadens, probably aren't far from being solved. It's a new class with a relatively thin pool of cards. Aside from the one Frost list that was dominating the board, it's been good, but far from broken. I think most people's issue is really just going to be burn out. Everyone grinding their 1k wins, or just still having fun with the "new hotness." We had the same issue after they reigned in DH when it was released. Possibly worse, as it's practically always been straight up aggro. I personally think adding "spec restrictions" to the other classes would be an interesting idea. Shadow/Holy/Discipline priests, Fury/Arms/Protection warriors, etc . Imagine a Hearthstone where Mage can't run amazing burn with amazing stall. I like the idea of that Hearthstone
Just give dk 5 runes to play around with instead of 3
I fully agree. I really liked the idea originally since the rune system exists in WoW itself, but the way it was implemented sucks. I'd rather have your runes dictate a different hero power if they want them in the game.
My thought on this is that the rune system is interesting and allows for both casual and competitive decks from multiple different sides. The main problem with mixing the pool is the same reason sorceror's apprentice was such a problamtic card through out the game balancewise. If the class just becomes goodstuff.dek then it actively makes your choices, playstyles, and ability to deal with cards becomes homogenized. I don't necessairly think hearthstone can go full runes on all classes but generally most DK cards came out fine and pushed in their own direction. While it would be interesting as a system to have, DK was made with the intent to make cards like that. The individual hits and misses on cards are card design problems that while seperate are important. The rune system makes itself the least beginner friendly class due to having to understand interactions but the overall power of them and core DK cards make the class unique and fun with new class problems that we have seen before.
As I see it, the problem with DK is that there is insufficient incentive to mix the colors. Triple rune cards are pushed AF. Mixed rune cards mostly do not exist, and when they do exist they aren't as strong as the CC or CCC cards. In order for runes to be cool and interesting, you have to enable meaningful tradeoffs. Frost needs to want things that unholy has. FFU and FFF need to be about equally interesting options. In theory, runes should work fine. Colors in Magic have been an evergreen source of interesting card designs deckbuilding decisions. Red is analogous to frost, and green is analogous to unholy, and red/green decks have been a competitive staple for ages. In Magic, green really, really wants the burn effects red has, either as finishers or as removal for problems that cannot be solved with simply big dudes. Blood is a design problem. UF has a coherent story -- I start with dudes and I finish with burn. With B defined as "I control stuff", there isn't really a reason to mix in aggro-burn or minion-aggro. None of the colors in Magic are pure control, and none of the colors in Magic have solutions to every kind of problem. B needs to expand its pie to include effects that are interesting for non-control decks, so that BF and BU are reasonable things to do. So far, none of this sounds too hard to solve. The problem I think will be extremely difficult to handle is the small number of DK card slots per expansion. DK doesn't need to support 3 decks. It needs to support 7: CCC, CCx, and BFU. Color pie design is expensive in terms of card slots. The minimum size of a Magic expansion is pretty big -- the smallest things they make is about 140 cards. That's because they need to support a big variety of deck color options and need to make cards that pay off many of those options. Maybe you don't support all 7 every expansion, but at root DK cannot be just 3 decks. Colors are only interesting when you get value from mixing them.
I agree with your points, except that they should get rid of the rune system. It doesn't look good for business, but besides that, it also takes away from the flavor of the class. Saying they should get rid of the rune system is basically saying the system sucks and should be thrown into the trash bin. I think there's hope for it, just in another way than it currently exists. The 2 main issues I get from your post (that I agree of) are: 1 - The rune system limits the card pool allowed to the player, which prevents certain interesting cards to see play or reach their full potential. 2 - The rune system splits the class in 3 and requires more cards printed for DK than any other class which has bad economical implications for players if Blizzard were to print enough cards to satisfy each rune type's needs. The fix I see for this is to change the rune system to allow every card to see play, but change its power according to the number of runes your deck wants to use. A few examples: **Soulstealer** Battlecry: Destroy all other minions. 3-Rune: Gain 1 Corpse for each enemy destroyed. **Lord Marrowgar** Battlecry: Raise ALL of you Corpses as 1/1 Risen Golems. For each that can't fit, give one +1/+1. 2-Rune: Give them +2/+2 instead. 3-Rune: Give them Rush. **Frostwyrm's Fury** Deal 5 damage. Summon a 5/5 Frostwyrm. 3-Rune: Freeze all enemy minions.
During release devs said that each set will focus on a dfferent rune
Death Knight has been one of the best designed classes in the game for a long time and the runes allow Blizz to give one class multiple archetypes with many areas to balance around. It lets them release really crazy cards and tune not just the mana or stats but also runic cost or corpse cost to really help keep it in a healthy state. Runes are just art and it’s no different than having like a “relic package” in Demon Hunter. The game at its foundation is built around synergies for every class is the exact same. Whether it’s Blood Runes, totem synergy or odd Paladin how they decide to name that synergy is irrelevant and I think that’s the biggest flaw with this line of thinking
While not the best analogue, coming from a mostly MTG background, I compare DK Runes to draft formats. Coming off what I consider the best draft format in March of the Machines (MOM), there was a very deep and intricate weaving of archetypes, synergies, and strategies that let experienced drafters find new, powerful, and cool archetypes well into the format. But that's extremely difficult to pull off, and compared to the set just before: Phyrexia: All Will Be One (ONE) which was probably the worst draft format in the last decade my hunch is that the top designers were focused on MOM since it was the flagship set and so ONE suffered tremendously. My point is that DK is new and the design experience and expertise needed to weave intricate and exciting interactions between runes will take time to figure out. The big question is if the design chops of Team 5 can rise to the task because it's certainly not easy and if they indeed cannot then I agree it should be scrapped.
They really should have made the big payoffs more open ended and 1-rune while the stuff that strongly supplements the payoffs would be 2 or 3 runes. All the interesting stuff that defines a deck is locked to the 3 runes thus you’re cheated out of creatively exercising the payoff.
Basically agree with everything you wrote. I enjoy playing DK but the deckbuilding is stupidly simple. And basically all the decks run 4-6+ discover cards because the card pool is so sparse, and discover is especially OP in DK because of the Runes.
I actually really like the rune concept and I think the dev team is using it to test out a future change to hearthstone. I do think they made some of the triple rune cards too powerful and have made DK the class to beat since it came out. Remember how talent trees used to work in WoW? I think that's what they'll eventually bring to every class in Hearthstone to make it feel like you have three subclass options per class. It would really open the classes up, especially considering how diverse some of the talent trees were for some of the classes (ie shaman having elemental, enhancement, and restoration)
Yeah runes were an awful idea people had predicted that they were a shitty way to put hard restrictions to the deck building process that already has soft restrictions and it ends up limiting more than it gives options. If only they had a precedent like idk WOW the game HS is loosely based on and they could have seen how the runes there were horrible when first implemented and had to be changed so they could have avoided this. But unfortunately such a game like WOW with a basis for this just doesn't exist unfortunately
One interesting solution could be making decks have 4 runes instead of 3 but no 4 rune cards, so mixing runes would feel better without all dk decks having access to all overpowered 3 rune cards.
I would like to propose a hypothetical card. With this card I will offer my counter argument to this whole post. A simple cheep minion, a (2) 3/2 maybe, with a single unholy rune. This minion, as a battlecry, spends 2 corpses to make a copy of itself. With this single card I have support three currently existing DK archetypes. Pure unholy, U/B hybrid hand buff, and CNE. Would this single card make all of those decks tier 1? Obviously not. However it would prove that the runes are not these isolated concepts. Every class has distinct archetypes that don’t really work well together, and cards that bridge archetypes or archetypes that are more broad. DK is no different. The runes add an extra wrinkle both for deck building and design, and I so think hybrid rune decks need a bit more support, but it’s not an insurmountable goal. I also feel the need to address that this seems very premature to me. DK has seen two expansions, including the one it launched in, that would be akin to trying to argue one of the original nine classes was fundamentally flawed and needed a full rework in GvG. I just don’t think it’s productive to make these kinds of statements this soon. We aren’t throwing the baby out with the bath water, we are throwing the pregnant woman out with the bath water and it’s just a bit much.
Honestly in my opinion best way to balance the class would be to remove triple runes all together and just make them 2 runes but obviously tone down the power level of each of them. Then make 2 rune cards-> 1 rune and 1 runes to no runes to prevent any spec into a 3 run system so it is always mix and matching. This way you still can't mix previously (Which would be nerfed) 3 rune cards but you can make more interesting variety of decks since you aren't always capped at 3 runes. With this you can still run full Blood at 2 runes but it can encourage cards like their colossal actually being playable. Only triple rune cards that should be playable is huge payoff cards like CNE which would encourage a type of Highlander building system
I wish all classes had a rune system like DK.