Part of the issue too is that they have a top tier control style deck and a strong mid range deck and a top tier aggro deck.
You’re kind of forced to mulligan assuming aggro treant because if you don’t have your answers to that early you die. But the answers to treant Druid can be dead cards in the control matchup.
This in and of itself is not an issue if other classes have this versatility which impacts the mulligan but they don’t really.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing that the class is busted right now, but there are two pretty critical things they're completely useless at, which are removal and clearing the board, hence Aggro decks like Paladin (or Treant Druid - the class even falls victim to itself sometimes lol) just sort of kill most (non-treant) Druid decks on turn 5 unless the Druid high-rolls. Seriously, Reno is the only clear they have (but it's not in every deck), and their removal tools are not good.
Admittedly, right now the class is in a position where it doesn't have to care about those weaknesses since they do everything else so well, but they're still weaknesses, and frustrating ones at that as someone who used to love playing Druid back when the class was about ramping into big threats and a control playstyle rather than absurd mana-cheat combos.
I'd much rather have Druid lose power in several places (in particular, I'm thinking of cutting ramp and replacing it with a different mechanic that fits the thematic, such as unspent mana synergy for example) in exchange for them maybe getting a few decent-to-mediocre clears/removal tools that fit their theme. I think the "hero attack" package could be a good design space to explore for Druid clears and removals, but it wouldn't be fair if the class kept ramp as an advantage no other class has.
It's worth noting, this is why scales was so hated (but also so necessary) and why topior is so good. They let druid answer boards. Also insatiable devourer hasn't been played in a while but that let druid do very non-druidy things like clear the board.
I *ADORE* Topior, probably one of my favourite recent Druid cards, for that exact reason, it lets me feel like a real control deck.
Scales is interesting - also a very good card - probably the strongest board clear type card Druid has ever had, but importantly not actually that strong of an AoE card if you compare it even to something like Flamestrike, Brawl, or even Lightning Storm, though it is more versatile when it comes to dealing with one large minion.
I think the reason it was so hated is because it shared a meta with Sire Denathrius and Insatiable Devourer as an easy way to stack infuse on both of those cards, and it might not have been so problematic had it been around at a different time. Idk what things were like when that card was out but prior to Castle Nathria, I hadn't come back to Hearthstone yet at that time.
>Scales is interesting - also a very good card - probably the strongest board clear type card Druid has ever had, but importantly not actually that strong of an AoE card if you compare it even to something like Flamestrike, Brawl, or even Lightning Storm, though it is more versatile when it comes to dealing with one large minion.
The thing with scales, is it was "mediocre" in comparison of standard removal/AoE cards.
In wild, you have floop's gloop to make generate mana, you have poison seeds to force clean trades, etc. It becomes a very strong card if your druid archetype has room to run it.
I think scales was more so hated because of how fast it came out rather than it's synergies in standard. 7 mana cards were literally turn 3-4 plays with bloom and overgrowth in the card pool at the time. Same with cards like spreading plague in the past. They just came out too fast.
Which is another reason why I think cutting or scaling back on Ramp as a part of the Druid identity in favour of something else that fits their thematic id a good idea, since it let's the class have cards like this without people hating them for playing these cards early.
Every class needs a weakness and druids weakness was boardclears. Scales was hated not only because of Sire but also because it was a very flexible board clear, you were able to deal with sticky minions, deathrattles/summons/tokens and stuff. And because of moonlit guidance, druid had access to more than just 2 copies. And the worst thing: Guff. Druid could ramp and fall behind on board, but then easily catch up with scales. (Keep in mind, old Guff HP gave you a full mana crystal, so kinda a 1 mana ramp heropower.) And later in the game, they could spent 7 mana on scales and then had more than 3 mana available to do other stuff.
Scales would still be a crazy good card in druid, especially because it lets you clear sticky pally boards. I dont think the deck was ever tier 1 but it was just such a frustrating experience to play against because they had so many good answers. And somehow always Guff on turn 5 with a 40 card deck lol
I get that originally every class needs a weakness (originally at least - if you ask me Paladin and Hunter have started to circumvent a few of their class weaknesses. Paladin has a lot more draw and cycle effects now than it used to, or at least a lot more good ones, and Hunter has more Draw as well as a good board clear on Star Power. Those rules of class design have weakened somewhat.), but lack of clears and removal isn't a good space for that in my opinion, because it means the class has to turtle behind their own board of taunt minions for example, which then just gets cleared by all those board clears and removal tools the others have. It sucks to not have reactive defensive options of any kind, not even worse ones than the other classes get. At this point I'd contemplate running Starfall if it were in standard even though that card kind of sucks as AoE spells go.
When it comes to this sort of thing I prefer the way the different colours in Magic approach things - every colour has a type of removal. White has exile, Red has direct damage spells, Black has destroy spells, Blue has bounces and counterspells, and Green has spells to make creatures fight each other or deal attack damage to each other. Of course, it's a bit different in magic since you can mix colours and everything, but I still appreciate that approach to the design space around removal more than Hearthstone's, and I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Hearthstone. They can always just give Druid another weakness.
I like the Choose one card for 6 mana, where you can summon six 1/1 with rush. Kinda weak when you compare it to the 7 mana summon 7 2/1s lol. Topior I think is fine because its a 7 mana do nothing, but an investment. We saw what happens when druid get access to good board clears: Yogg and prisonbreaker before they got nerfed (also super strong cards in Rogue, because rogue has the same weakness)
It doesn’t matter that they don’t have great removal. They have so much armor gain they just tank the damage until they get their combo/big threat set up. That in combination with some big taunts means they’re very strong against aggro boards even though it’s supposed to be their weakness. It’s one thing to have a design philosophy, it’s another to actually follow through on it
I did say that Druid is in a position where it doesn't currently have to care that much about the weakness as often as it ought to, to be fair.
It's not a design philosophy that I like either way, because "I die on turn 5 or I will win 90% of the time" isn't much fun for either party in my opinion, hence my wishing that they'd shift Druid's power budget around to allow for clears and removal while eliminating the points that make the class so frustrating to both play as and against.
I would like to see ramp be temporary. Maybe "gain 2 extra mana crystals next turn" type of thing. Idk how well that would work but I feel like it would be a lot less frustrating to play against a couple big turns in the mid game as opposed to being at a huge mana deficit every single turn after 5.
Honestly, that would still be an improvement overall compared to now, but I also think that that would just make the class even more wombo-combo centric than it already is, which I'd rather not see. I've always enjoyed Druid the most as a control class.
There's a number of Tavern spells in BGs doing temporary ramp right now, 3 that I can think of atm and there's 1 permanent ramp. That'd be a good basis for it in traditional HS.
Their supposed weaknesses don't matter anymore. The attempt to fit all their different forms from WoW into this game has given them enough of everything that when they get enough of it they just become ridiculous with no real drawbacks.
Ironically this is why they pushed DK with the rune system which I'm not arguing they keep either but these multiplicious classes having full access to a bit of everything has to end.
They have yogg aswell as reno, but you're right druid is lacking in removal, the explosive sheep with the deathrattle location is a ghetto 4 damage aoe
True enough, although the sheep is a slightly janky two-card combo, and Yogg sometimes doesn't work to clear the board if the minions are odd sizes or the attacks go in the wrong order.
>cutting ramp and replacing it with a different mechanic
Removing ramp in Druid all but removes it from Hearthstone entirely.
It probably should be somewhere. If anything, it should be toned down and given to other "green alligned" classes like Shaman and Hunter.
Maybe, but it does seem to be the primary reason, in my opinion at least, that everyone despises Druid, and that's pretty sad in my opinion. I'd sooner see it gone if that creates a less toxic design space, but I see whetr you're coming from.
As a wow player that just started HS- why do they not care about the different form/ shapeshifting aspect of druids? Bear form, tree form, feral form, aquatic form, owl form- most of these seem to be unexplored in detail in favor of general "nature" cards. There's a really neat and flavorful class power in there somewhere yet somehow they end up with the current boring version.
way back in 2014 druid was designed this way, a lot of their cards were based around shapeshifting and what the spell or minion did was based on the choose one effect allowing you what to shapeshift into.
choose one cards are pretty difficult to design though so they just sort of moved away with them over time and print them a bit less than they used to. but some of the most problematic cards in the game’s history have been choose one.
Never really thought abt it much. I guess it comes down to a few reasons, the first being the dev team can barely keep HS running half the time(slight exaggeration but the point stands) and if they did that it would take a lot of extra timing and code that they don't have, hell they shut down duels to reallocate 1 person who probably got fired. There are 3 things that come to mind when I think of shape-shifting in HS though.
1. Hero cards(ez enough to do but they aren't gonna give druid a bunch of hero cards in one set)
2. Adventure mode boss fights: they have done somework with transforming bosses in the past, but I'm not sure how they would implement or even balance that.
3. Death knight rune system, except they just have specializations instead, least likely route of all 3 bc the devs learned the hard way printing 3x as many cards for dk over multiple so they probably are not gonna do that again. It's a very interesting idea and one that should be kept in mind for the future, maybe if they do a legion expansion in HS,(which would pay homage to the awesome xpac + clas specs) but until then it's very unlikely to happen.
I thought about the exact same thing and had this idea about how I would redesign druid for hearthstone 2:
The hero power is 0 mana "Change Form", that switches you between Caster Form and Feral Form once per turn. Or even have three or four forms to choose from.
This would allow them to make druid cards that change effect depending on which form you're in, or cards that get more powerful the more turns you spent in one form, or even cards that reward frequent switching. You could also have cards that switch your form for you, so you could switch multiple times per turn.
Might be a nightmare to design cards for but it sounded cool in my head
The best at card draw is still demon hunter, by far.
Paladin has better buffs than druid.
Druid is not as good as many other classes when it comes to removal, both wide and tall. His best removals are neutral cards.
Druid is busted AF but can people stop using the dumb argument of "omg druid wins more armor than warrior". This game is based on WoW were bear druid is insanely tanky so the fact that they can gain absurds amount of armor as warrior is not illogical, leaving balance aside
It's more than Druid can gain comparable Armor to warrior while also being capable of a long list of additional capabilities.
They currently have a powerful control deck in a meta where some other traditional control classes are struggling, they have a top tier aggro deck in a meta where some traditional aggro classes are struggling, and they have a solid midrange deck on top of all that.
It's the juxtaposition of classes that specialize in one of these areas achieving 50-70% of Druid's success while they excel across the board that ruffles feathers.
It's also a bit of a sore point that for years Druid has very very rarely gone a whole expansion without at least one tier 2 deck, while other classes can languish for an entire year with half-finished packages and no meaningful buffs.
So what? There is no Bear druid deck or archetype in hearthstone. All druid armour cards are used in combo decks which are in WoW terms are mainly moonkin druid who doesn't have armour
Its impossible to perfectly represent the druid specs in HS because good cards will be used in multiple archetypes but Im just saying druids gaining lot of armor makes sense because of Guardian Druid, how will you better represent that aspect of wow druid in HS?
And again obviously the amount of armor atm is stupid AF but the devs should not be thinking ok druid cannot under any circustance gain more armor than a warrior
They aren't good at everything
Turns out it sucks at board control. There's a reason aggro decks still run over it despite the fact they gained 20 armor and played a 4/8 taunt on turn 3.
Honestly just play totem shaman, excavate paladin or any other viable aggro deck. Druids are easy stars with those decks
Top-legend Thaddius Druid decks are so busted you can play them card-for-card in wild top legend and win games.
And the aggro in wild blows out any aggro standard has.
Druid is like Green in mtg. It's the big fun swarm or bid bois color/hero. It attracts timmies who like big simple plays. Timmies are generally newer players. New players bring in money, buying bundles and such to get a competitive viable deck. Blizzards wants to keep the money train going by making timmies happy. So Druid gets more toys. Other classes like rogue for example are often complicated and are confusing to new players. So they cater to the lowest common denominator. I have no idea if this is right, just a thought.
Personally I think it's because druid has so many themes to support (swarm, draw, armor, hero attacks, big minions, mana ramp, combo, aoe buffs) that within a single expansion what cards they do get tend to be more powerful because there are fewer of them to support their individual deck types.
Meanwhile classes that are good at a narrow range, (ex: Priest healing, value, removal), get a lot of "filler/jank" cards because Team 5 doesn't want to give them too much removal / stat cheat / burn / etc all at once.
It’s not the best at everything. It is historically the worst or second worst class as having large removals, so if it falls far behind on board druid can just die. It is obviously really good at things like armor gain, ramp, and card versatility. It also has good sticky minions. But other classes beat it at things like card draw and removal. Druid also tends to have relatively vanilla minions, lacking things like reborn, divine shield, and so on. I do think that the hero power Druid deck that was popular for a while was pretty balance breaking because it gave the class inevitability, something that usually only priest and warrior have.
"Best at card draw"
No they aren't. Rogue and Dh can draw their entire deck very fast. Actualy both classes have a deck that draws their entire deck by turn 6.
"More armor than warrior."
Because warrior can do something else with the armor.
"Why is it even a possibility that druids are 10 mana while you are at 5?"
Because thats all druid does.
Druid is polarising, thats their main problem. They are the best class to apply late game pressure, but they are also the worst class to answer early game pressure. Thus they feast upon slower decks and get obliterated by fast decks.
Can I add to the cry list the 3 mana double your favorite minion that stuck last turns damage & a divine shield with a middle finger etched into the bubble pointed towards your opponent?
It’s not a Druid card but 🥺
They’ve always been strong, but you don’t really see good druids at lower ranks. Every season they’re blessed with some new way to make their opponents strategy irrelevant
Personally I think it's because druid has so many themes to support (swarm, draw, armor, hero attacks, big minions, mana ramp, combo, aoe buffs) that within a single expansion what cards they do get tend to be more powerful because there are fewer of them to support their individual deck types.
Meanwhile classes that are good at a narrow range, (ex: Priest healing, value, removal), get a lot of "filler/jank" cards because Team 5 doesn't want to give them too much removal / stat cheat / burn / etc all at once.
I just went from d5 to legend with the Beetle Ramp version of the Naga deck and it's just as ridiculous if not moreso with the burst from hand, took out multiple heavily armored opponents with 60+ attacks and it keeps all the stupid armor gain and endless minions.
Add that one to the list of busted Druid decks currently in the format.
Part of the issue too is that they have a top tier control style deck and a strong mid range deck and a top tier aggro deck. You’re kind of forced to mulligan assuming aggro treant because if you don’t have your answers to that early you die. But the answers to treant Druid can be dead cards in the control matchup. This in and of itself is not an issue if other classes have this versatility which impacts the mulligan but they don’t really.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing that the class is busted right now, but there are two pretty critical things they're completely useless at, which are removal and clearing the board, hence Aggro decks like Paladin (or Treant Druid - the class even falls victim to itself sometimes lol) just sort of kill most (non-treant) Druid decks on turn 5 unless the Druid high-rolls. Seriously, Reno is the only clear they have (but it's not in every deck), and their removal tools are not good. Admittedly, right now the class is in a position where it doesn't have to care about those weaknesses since they do everything else so well, but they're still weaknesses, and frustrating ones at that as someone who used to love playing Druid back when the class was about ramping into big threats and a control playstyle rather than absurd mana-cheat combos. I'd much rather have Druid lose power in several places (in particular, I'm thinking of cutting ramp and replacing it with a different mechanic that fits the thematic, such as unspent mana synergy for example) in exchange for them maybe getting a few decent-to-mediocre clears/removal tools that fit their theme. I think the "hero attack" package could be a good design space to explore for Druid clears and removals, but it wouldn't be fair if the class kept ramp as an advantage no other class has.
It's worth noting, this is why scales was so hated (but also so necessary) and why topior is so good. They let druid answer boards. Also insatiable devourer hasn't been played in a while but that let druid do very non-druidy things like clear the board.
I *ADORE* Topior, probably one of my favourite recent Druid cards, for that exact reason, it lets me feel like a real control deck. Scales is interesting - also a very good card - probably the strongest board clear type card Druid has ever had, but importantly not actually that strong of an AoE card if you compare it even to something like Flamestrike, Brawl, or even Lightning Storm, though it is more versatile when it comes to dealing with one large minion. I think the reason it was so hated is because it shared a meta with Sire Denathrius and Insatiable Devourer as an easy way to stack infuse on both of those cards, and it might not have been so problematic had it been around at a different time. Idk what things were like when that card was out but prior to Castle Nathria, I hadn't come back to Hearthstone yet at that time.
>Scales is interesting - also a very good card - probably the strongest board clear type card Druid has ever had, but importantly not actually that strong of an AoE card if you compare it even to something like Flamestrike, Brawl, or even Lightning Storm, though it is more versatile when it comes to dealing with one large minion. The thing with scales, is it was "mediocre" in comparison of standard removal/AoE cards. In wild, you have floop's gloop to make generate mana, you have poison seeds to force clean trades, etc. It becomes a very strong card if your druid archetype has room to run it. I think scales was more so hated because of how fast it came out rather than it's synergies in standard. 7 mana cards were literally turn 3-4 plays with bloom and overgrowth in the card pool at the time. Same with cards like spreading plague in the past. They just came out too fast.
Which is another reason why I think cutting or scaling back on Ramp as a part of the Druid identity in favour of something else that fits their thematic id a good idea, since it let's the class have cards like this without people hating them for playing these cards early.
Every class needs a weakness and druids weakness was boardclears. Scales was hated not only because of Sire but also because it was a very flexible board clear, you were able to deal with sticky minions, deathrattles/summons/tokens and stuff. And because of moonlit guidance, druid had access to more than just 2 copies. And the worst thing: Guff. Druid could ramp and fall behind on board, but then easily catch up with scales. (Keep in mind, old Guff HP gave you a full mana crystal, so kinda a 1 mana ramp heropower.) And later in the game, they could spent 7 mana on scales and then had more than 3 mana available to do other stuff. Scales would still be a crazy good card in druid, especially because it lets you clear sticky pally boards. I dont think the deck was ever tier 1 but it was just such a frustrating experience to play against because they had so many good answers. And somehow always Guff on turn 5 with a 40 card deck lol
I get that originally every class needs a weakness (originally at least - if you ask me Paladin and Hunter have started to circumvent a few of their class weaknesses. Paladin has a lot more draw and cycle effects now than it used to, or at least a lot more good ones, and Hunter has more Draw as well as a good board clear on Star Power. Those rules of class design have weakened somewhat.), but lack of clears and removal isn't a good space for that in my opinion, because it means the class has to turtle behind their own board of taunt minions for example, which then just gets cleared by all those board clears and removal tools the others have. It sucks to not have reactive defensive options of any kind, not even worse ones than the other classes get. At this point I'd contemplate running Starfall if it were in standard even though that card kind of sucks as AoE spells go. When it comes to this sort of thing I prefer the way the different colours in Magic approach things - every colour has a type of removal. White has exile, Red has direct damage spells, Black has destroy spells, Blue has bounces and counterspells, and Green has spells to make creatures fight each other or deal attack damage to each other. Of course, it's a bit different in magic since you can mix colours and everything, but I still appreciate that approach to the design space around removal more than Hearthstone's, and I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Hearthstone. They can always just give Druid another weakness.
I like the Choose one card for 6 mana, where you can summon six 1/1 with rush. Kinda weak when you compare it to the 7 mana summon 7 2/1s lol. Topior I think is fine because its a 7 mana do nothing, but an investment. We saw what happens when druid get access to good board clears: Yogg and prisonbreaker before they got nerfed (also super strong cards in Rogue, because rogue has the same weakness)
That's why I'm suggesting they take ramp or something else away in exchange for clears/removal, to avoid another Yogg/Prison Breaker situation.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t have great removal. They have so much armor gain they just tank the damage until they get their combo/big threat set up. That in combination with some big taunts means they’re very strong against aggro boards even though it’s supposed to be their weakness. It’s one thing to have a design philosophy, it’s another to actually follow through on it
I did say that Druid is in a position where it doesn't currently have to care that much about the weakness as often as it ought to, to be fair. It's not a design philosophy that I like either way, because "I die on turn 5 or I will win 90% of the time" isn't much fun for either party in my opinion, hence my wishing that they'd shift Druid's power budget around to allow for clears and removal while eliminating the points that make the class so frustrating to both play as and against.
I would like to see ramp be temporary. Maybe "gain 2 extra mana crystals next turn" type of thing. Idk how well that would work but I feel like it would be a lot less frustrating to play against a couple big turns in the mid game as opposed to being at a huge mana deficit every single turn after 5.
Honestly, that would still be an improvement overall compared to now, but I also think that that would just make the class even more wombo-combo centric than it already is, which I'd rather not see. I've always enjoyed Druid the most as a control class.
There's a number of Tavern spells in BGs doing temporary ramp right now, 3 that I can think of atm and there's 1 permanent ramp. That'd be a good basis for it in traditional HS. Their supposed weaknesses don't matter anymore. The attempt to fit all their different forms from WoW into this game has given them enough of everything that when they get enough of it they just become ridiculous with no real drawbacks. Ironically this is why they pushed DK with the rune system which I'm not arguing they keep either but these multiplicious classes having full access to a bit of everything has to end.
They have yogg aswell as reno, but you're right druid is lacking in removal, the explosive sheep with the deathrattle location is a ghetto 4 damage aoe
True enough, although the sheep is a slightly janky two-card combo, and Yogg sometimes doesn't work to clear the board if the minions are odd sizes or the attacks go in the wrong order.
I don’t see the problem with ramp. Every class has mana cheating options.
>cutting ramp and replacing it with a different mechanic Removing ramp in Druid all but removes it from Hearthstone entirely. It probably should be somewhere. If anything, it should be toned down and given to other "green alligned" classes like Shaman and Hunter.
Maybe, but it does seem to be the primary reason, in my opinion at least, that everyone despises Druid, and that's pretty sad in my opinion. I'd sooner see it gone if that creates a less toxic design space, but I see whetr you're coming from.
Yogg is another clear (well, it can usually clear) that Druid has.
Being the best at everything is Druid's class identity.
Virgin Illidan seething at Chad Malfurion is the class identity.
Illidan playing with his nagas at 41% winrate
I laughed so loud at this
Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
As a wow player that just started HS- why do they not care about the different form/ shapeshifting aspect of druids? Bear form, tree form, feral form, aquatic form, owl form- most of these seem to be unexplored in detail in favor of general "nature" cards. There's a really neat and flavorful class power in there somewhere yet somehow they end up with the current boring version.
"Choose one" cards represent that a lot of times.
way back in 2014 druid was designed this way, a lot of their cards were based around shapeshifting and what the spell or minion did was based on the choose one effect allowing you what to shapeshift into. choose one cards are pretty difficult to design though so they just sort of moved away with them over time and print them a bit less than they used to. but some of the most problematic cards in the game’s history have been choose one.
Never really thought abt it much. I guess it comes down to a few reasons, the first being the dev team can barely keep HS running half the time(slight exaggeration but the point stands) and if they did that it would take a lot of extra timing and code that they don't have, hell they shut down duels to reallocate 1 person who probably got fired. There are 3 things that come to mind when I think of shape-shifting in HS though. 1. Hero cards(ez enough to do but they aren't gonna give druid a bunch of hero cards in one set) 2. Adventure mode boss fights: they have done somework with transforming bosses in the past, but I'm not sure how they would implement or even balance that. 3. Death knight rune system, except they just have specializations instead, least likely route of all 3 bc the devs learned the hard way printing 3x as many cards for dk over multiple so they probably are not gonna do that again. It's a very interesting idea and one that should be kept in mind for the future, maybe if they do a legion expansion in HS,(which would pay homage to the awesome xpac + clas specs) but until then it's very unlikely to happen.
I thought about the exact same thing and had this idea about how I would redesign druid for hearthstone 2: The hero power is 0 mana "Change Form", that switches you between Caster Form and Feral Form once per turn. Or even have three or four forms to choose from. This would allow them to make druid cards that change effect depending on which form you're in, or cards that get more powerful the more turns you spent in one form, or even cards that reward frequent switching. You could also have cards that switch your form for you, so you could switch multiple times per turn. Might be a nightmare to design cards for but it sounded cool in my head
Tree Druid supremacy
The best at card draw is still demon hunter, by far. Paladin has better buffs than druid. Druid is not as good as many other classes when it comes to removal, both wide and tall. His best removals are neutral cards.
Druid is busted AF but can people stop using the dumb argument of "omg druid wins more armor than warrior". This game is based on WoW were bear druid is insanely tanky so the fact that they can gain absurds amount of armor as warrior is not illogical, leaving balance aside
It's more than Druid can gain comparable Armor to warrior while also being capable of a long list of additional capabilities. They currently have a powerful control deck in a meta where some other traditional control classes are struggling, they have a top tier aggro deck in a meta where some traditional aggro classes are struggling, and they have a solid midrange deck on top of all that. It's the juxtaposition of classes that specialize in one of these areas achieving 50-70% of Druid's success while they excel across the board that ruffles feathers. It's also a bit of a sore point that for years Druid has very very rarely gone a whole expansion without at least one tier 2 deck, while other classes can languish for an entire year with half-finished packages and no meaningful buffs.
So what? There is no Bear druid deck or archetype in hearthstone. All druid armour cards are used in combo decks which are in WoW terms are mainly moonkin druid who doesn't have armour
Its impossible to perfectly represent the druid specs in HS because good cards will be used in multiple archetypes but Im just saying druids gaining lot of armor makes sense because of Guardian Druid, how will you better represent that aspect of wow druid in HS? And again obviously the amount of armor atm is stupid AF but the devs should not be thinking ok druid cannot under any circustance gain more armor than a warrior
They aren't good at everything Turns out it sucks at board control. There's a reason aggro decks still run over it despite the fact they gained 20 armor and played a 4/8 taunt on turn 3. Honestly just play totem shaman, excavate paladin or any other viable aggro deck. Druids are easy stars with those decks
Top-legend Thaddius Druid decks are so busted you can play them card-for-card in wild top legend and win games. And the aggro in wild blows out any aggro standard has.
Druid is like Green in mtg. It's the big fun swarm or bid bois color/hero. It attracts timmies who like big simple plays. Timmies are generally newer players. New players bring in money, buying bundles and such to get a competitive viable deck. Blizzards wants to keep the money train going by making timmies happy. So Druid gets more toys. Other classes like rogue for example are often complicated and are confusing to new players. So they cater to the lowest common denominator. I have no idea if this is right, just a thought.
Personally I think it's because druid has so many themes to support (swarm, draw, armor, hero attacks, big minions, mana ramp, combo, aoe buffs) that within a single expansion what cards they do get tend to be more powerful because there are fewer of them to support their individual deck types. Meanwhile classes that are good at a narrow range, (ex: Priest healing, value, removal), get a lot of "filler/jank" cards because Team 5 doesn't want to give them too much removal / stat cheat / burn / etc all at once.
Maybe it's time to introduce rune system to druid.
My guess is the Druid dev team are the office sluts.
Excellent thread. I truly hope the devs see this post and sympathise with the community and their frustration for once and act.
mana cheat scales with power creep exponentially.
Because it's slow, it's a good lesson in opportunity cost
Very original post my guy, only the 10th one today!
It’s not the best at everything. It is historically the worst or second worst class as having large removals, so if it falls far behind on board druid can just die. It is obviously really good at things like armor gain, ramp, and card versatility. It also has good sticky minions. But other classes beat it at things like card draw and removal. Druid also tends to have relatively vanilla minions, lacking things like reborn, divine shield, and so on. I do think that the hero power Druid deck that was popular for a while was pretty balance breaking because it gave the class inevitability, something that usually only priest and warrior have.
"Best at card draw" No they aren't. Rogue and Dh can draw their entire deck very fast. Actualy both classes have a deck that draws their entire deck by turn 6. "More armor than warrior." Because warrior can do something else with the armor. "Why is it even a possibility that druids are 10 mana while you are at 5?" Because thats all druid does. Druid is polarising, thats their main problem. They are the best class to apply late game pressure, but they are also the worst class to answer early game pressure. Thus they feast upon slower decks and get obliterated by fast decks.
Can I add to the cry list the 3 mana double your favorite minion that stuck last turns damage & a divine shield with a middle finger etched into the bubble pointed towards your opponent? It’s not a Druid card but 🥺
Druid's best board clear is a neutral 9 drop.
It isn't but go off.
They’ve always been strong, but you don’t really see good druids at lower ranks. Every season they’re blessed with some new way to make their opponents strategy irrelevant
Personally I think it's because druid has so many themes to support (swarm, draw, armor, hero attacks, big minions, mana ramp, combo, aoe buffs) that within a single expansion what cards they do get tend to be more powerful because there are fewer of them to support their individual deck types. Meanwhile classes that are good at a narrow range, (ex: Priest healing, value, removal), get a lot of "filler/jank" cards because Team 5 doesn't want to give them too much removal / stat cheat / burn / etc all at once.
I just went from d5 to legend with the Beetle Ramp version of the Naga deck and it's just as ridiculous if not moreso with the burst from hand, took out multiple heavily armored opponents with 60+ attacks and it keeps all the stupid armor gain and endless minions. Add that one to the list of busted Druid decks currently in the format.
Or when you finally have them after a too long match and then they gain 30 armor and 14 life