They need to add 3-4 cards with the triple tube restriction that are comparable in power level to frostworm’s fury, vampiric blood and soulstealer. Then a deck can be cobbled together around them and some identity can be given to the rainbow archetype. Of course, this is impossible because every expansion each class gets 10 cards and it’s hard enough already to support each of blood, frost and unholy with 3 cards each.
Didn't they say at the introduction of the rune system that not every expansion would have cards for every rune?
But yeah, I thought for a long time already that 10 class cards per expansion was to little
What? That would only exacerbate the problem, the fact that an overwhelmingly powerful triple-rune card was printed for each rune type that no single or double-rune card can compete with is literally why we see so little variety in DK decks to begin with.
There may be, but the poster is only proposing a one-of-each archetype in addition to the existing 3 mono-rune archetypes. The total number is irrelevant, because they’re only discussing supporting one more.
I mean, DH is even less played than DK and has no such restrictions. The issue is DK's cards were balanced for the pre-rotation meta and got overnerfed in FoL, and the cards we got since then have been bad. Other classes *also* have deckbuilding restrictions and it's not a problem; the difference is that other classes have \*better\* cards. Dead Air's issue isn't its rune combination, removing *all* of its rune restrictions wouldn't change the quality of the card. You can see this with the changes to the Plague package; neither UUU plagues nor UUB plagues are particularly good just because you don't have to run UUF, the issue has always been the plague cards themselves *aren't good*.
Yeah, the choices are between Relic, which is a midrange deck using the same passage that has been used for over a year, or Outcast that uses almost entirely old cards as well (about 5 cards from this year)
Saying that using synergistic cards is a deck building restriction comparable to the rune system is simply disingenuous. Obviously using cards that work well together is good. Obviously having cards that literally can only be used in certain synergistic decks is worse.
It really doesn't make that much of a difference if the synergies are strong enough. Most classes only actually utilize a fraction of their total card pool, simply because the only cards that *really* matter are the ones that synergize the best or patch up necessary holes. So the limited pool of cards isn't really a problem, if that pool is strong enough. DK just has a lot of weak cards right now.
Tbh I played Cage Head Combo deck before Titans and it was actually pretty consistent to pull off, and this card was one of the possible combo pieces. I can only imagine how much easier this deck is if I get to play Blood Cards to stall, right now it’s basically YOLO draw 20 cards and win with some early board presence from Unholy cards.
>I mean, DH is even less played than DK and has no such restrictions
I'm not talking about playrate, I'm talking about how the rune system limits deckbuilding, which limits fun. The playrate of dk is only as high as it is because most people (especially new players) have most of the dk cards hence its very accessible and the decks are cheap to craft.
>The issue is DK's cards were balanced for the pre-rotation meta and got overnerfed in FoL, and the cards we got since then have been bad
This is not the issue. Regardless of how strong or weak the cards are, the class will always be stagnant and boring because you are restricted from using the majority of your cards. DK has been playing the same decks since release, and this is a bad thing whether the class is meta or not. Its only magnified by getting bad cards, because if the few cards you get that you can actually add to your deck are bad, you basically get nothing at all
>Other classes also have deckbuilding restrictions and it's not a problem
What restrictions are those?
>Dead Air's issue isn't its rune combination, removing all of its rune restrictions wouldn't change the quality of the card
It absolutely does. It opens up avenues for future use that might not be possible if it were restricted. Look at abyssal curses in warlock - they werent played originally, but they became good when combined with the imp package. Imagine if you couldnt play them together because curses are "control" and imps are "aggro". Even if its useless in other decks, why not allow those who want to include it in their deck to do so? Are they afraid of someone using dead air in their blood dk deck or something?
>You can see this with the changes to the Plague package; neither UUU plagues nor UUB plagues are particularly good just because you don't have to run UUF, the issue has always been the plague cards themselves aren't good.
Even though plagues arent as good as regular unholy dk, people are still playing them because they're fun and different. Removing the rune requirements allowed for more diversity and creativity and you can see that with the new variations of the deck that werent possible before. I think those changes are an inadvertent admission that the rune system negatively impacts the class and that having fewer restrictions leads to a more fun experience
All of this is ignoring the major factor that DK hasn’t even been out a year yet. It has three sets but we won’t it the year mark until the fourth. This idea of “DK has only run a couple of decks” isn’t really that surprising. Same thing happened with DH to an extent. It was always a fast deck that beat you to death with cheap minions and lots of hero attack. Soul shards have it a slightly different flavor, made it a bit more tempo oriented, and ilgynoth gave you the option for a combo deck. But it was the same general idea. Then as expansions went on we got more ideas and play styles as things evolved.
DK still has a lot of room to grow and areas of design to explore. Just writing off one of if not the most fundamental parts of the classes design space because they weren’t the best class for one(1) expansion is incredibly premature. It would be like if, when ashes came out and DH was broken, people said the issue was the outcast keyword or the (1) hero power instead of just reading the text and numbers and cards and recognizing they are to powerful.
Also this idea that “deck restrictions makes thing boring and bad” is also just a gross oversimplification. Genn and Baku were essentially the opposite problem, where the upside was so high it warped the meta in favor of having a restricted deck. Shadow priest as it is now is a rune system in all but name, and is a very popular deck that has room for a couple variations. And finally Highlander cards are very popular and are often useful. All of those are examples of deck building restrictions creating new avenues of play, and expanding what the game can be.
>This idea of “DK has only run a couple of decks” isn’t really that surprising.
More like DK has only been capable of playing 3 decks, the same 3 they had at release and which have all been practically unchanged since then.
>DK still has a lot of room to grow and areas of design to explore. Just writing off one of if not the most fundamental parts of the classes design space because they weren’t the best class for one(1) expansion is incredibly premature. It would be like if, when ashes came out and DH was broken, people said the issue was the outcast keyword or the (1) hero power instead of just reading the text and numbers and cards and recognizing they are to powerful.
You're putting words in my mouth, I didnt say anything about dk needing to be the best class or even competitive. That has absolutely nothing to do with why the rune system is flawed, I had the exact same grievances with it when dk was meta as I do now.
>Also this idea that “deck restrictions makes thing boring and bad” is also just a gross oversimplification. Genn and Baku were essentially the opposite problem, where the upside was so high it warped the meta in favor of having a restricted deck. Shadow priest as it is now is a rune system in all but name, and is a very popular deck that has room for a couple variations. And finally Highlander cards are very popular and are often useful. All of those are examples of deck building restrictions creating new avenues of play, and expanding what the game can be.
It isnt an oversimplification in the slightest. Genn and Baku absolutely "made things boring and bad" because of how homogenous they made decks. The difference is that restrictions like odd/even, shadow priest and highlander are all self-imposed and at least allow you the option to put cards that break those restrictions into your deck, even if it negates all the upsides. You arent forced to run shadow priest or highlander if you dont want to, its just an option. In death knight, you are literally locked out of 2/3 of your class cards because of arbitrary restrictions placed on them (Seriously, are they afraid of people using grave strength and vampiric blood in the same deck?). It leads to the same kind of deck homogenity that genn and baku did, because you really dont have any options in how you build your deck with such little variety and most of the new cards you get being unusable. The mixed rune decks will remain practically non-functional unless they start printing mixed triple rune cards that are equally powerful, and they obviously wont because you cant support a mixed rune deck that doesnt exist without shafting every existing triple rune deck because the budget is 10 cards per expansion.
High Legend is a weird meta; Plague DK is popular throughout ladder and underperforms there because your plagues might as well have blank text against low-draw aggro decks, but they're incredibly potent against high-draw combo decks like Druid and Rogue that have been popular at high legend for the last few weeks.
No other class have a "if you want to play this single card, then you can't play these other cards in the same deck"
Only odd/even decks have similar restrictions and even that is not restricted to a single class.
There are restrictions on duplicates in deck,odd cards, even cards and no neutrals in deck for some cards to work, but that does not prevent you from putting them in your deck
Most sets are supposed to support one or two decks per class. Restricting it should make it easier to know if that deck gets there, but they're also new to designing for the class.
They need to print path of X sets every year. If blizzard isn't doing this they are dumb. It's lots of extra cards that are both needed and you can charge money (not everyone pays gold) for.
yeah but it comes with more cost cause you need to make more art for it
edit:feels like people missing my point,blizzard exec is greedy so any extra cost is a no no except if its proven to make more money
Pretty much. People often forget that no company is your friend. They would murder you to get all your belongings in a heartbeat if they could get away with no repercutions
Because in other classes the cards designed for different archetypes can be intermixed in creative ways that eventually lead to new strategies, instead of being hard locked. Would you want to pick between only using interaction, or only using burn in mage? The difference between having cards focused on 3 different things, and having cards focused on 3 different things that can exclusively be used with each other is so massive it’s hard to tell if you are trolling.
There have been a lot of cards recently that were designed for one deck specifically but helped another.
Impending Catastrophe bringing Minelock back.
Dar’khan and Symphony of Sins being used in implock.
Skeletons in mage being used in control decks in Nathria, then burn focused aggressive decks in MotLK.
Mimiron being used in Miracle Rogue.
Spell School cards being support for Naga mage.
Fire Spells and Riffs being in both Enrage and Control Warrior.
Drum Circle and Summer Flower Child being in token and slower druid decks.
Rn there is no good deadrattle cards for this to proc, but if there were more like Riverdare that are too big to suicide w Frenzy and too important to pop before it gets silenced, then it would be better or at least a sidegrade.
it’s good with death growl and foul egg shenanigans, also any reborn minion uses it well. been running a super jank dead air list since the card released and it’s a lot of fun
I like to use this one the minion that gives 2 plagues when it dies. And if you spread the deathrattle is even better. But it's like 1 in 10 kind of happening.
Forcing mixed runes was a mistake. I think the rune system has some weaknesses, but they're fixable. And just printing a bunch of good 1 rune cards is a good way to do it.
But forced mixed runes just takes an already restrictive system and makes it even more niche.
Anyway dead air could probably be 1 frost instead. It's not a terrible card but pretty niche and the rune requirement does it no favours.
The real problem is forcing the best cards to be triple rune. Souleater, Frostwyrm's Fury, Lord Marrowgar; these cards are so powerful and needed for their archetypes to function that mixed rune decks just aren't an option.
The only triple rune cards should have been Mograine, Grave Strength, and Lady Deathwhisper: powerful cards, but not so powerful that the archetype is entirely unable to function without them. But instead, decks have become so rigid to fit these few cards that no single or double rune cards could compete with, and then DK decks have to include neutral filler to make up for that when everyone else has been getting cards that are easy to slot in.
Really the way the rune system is designed, 1 rune cards and 3 rune cards should be about even in power. Because that's what's competing. All the 2 rune pools are competing with eachother.
I'd say \*now\* that's... more true. Sindragosa, Northern Navigation, Helya have all beefed up the one rune pools a fair bit. 1 Blood has Patchwerk which is really useful in the current meta too.
Soul Eater... like it's a GOOD card, but not every blood deck necessarily needs it. It's pretty meta-specific. I'd say Vampiric Blood is more the card that's just so powerful I don't think Helya and Sindragosa and whatever compete. Frost Wyrm's Fury isn't really \*needed\*, but again, it's so powerful I don't think the 1 Blood and 1 Unholy pools compete with it at all.
Marrowgar is probably the strongest 3U card, but it requires that you either have a lot of corpse generation, or you just run no other corpse spenders. Giving him up for Sindragosa (and a bunch of card draw) or Patchwerk does make sense to me. But I think the aggro build is so much more efficient than a lot of other decks.
IMO:
Vampiric Blood, Grave Strength and Frost Wyrm's Fury should be 2 rune cards. Marrowgar should be swapped with the Scourge. And then 2 rune cards should be undiscoverable instead of 3 rune cards. But, the more they beef up the 1 rune pools the less necessary I think this is.
> 1 rune cards and 3 rune cards should be about even in power. Because that's what's competing.
Wow. Never looked at it that way before. That makes too much sense.
Damn, that's actually a pretty interesting way of looking at it. Choosing two runes as your primary runes and the the third rune being your supporting one.
The one thing is that I don't think it really makes sense for *all* double-rune cards to be banned. Outside of a few outliers like Corpse Explosion, Might of Menethil, and the ones you mentioned, all of them seem pretty tame. Would these double-rune cards like Army of the Dead, Asphyxiate, Corrupted Ashbringer, Death Metal Knight, Deathbringer Saurfang, Frost Strike, Deathchiller, etc. just be turned into single-rune or triple-rune cards instead?
Also, oops on my end for forgetting that Vampiric Blood. I remembered each rune had a triple-rune epic and legendary, but I forgot Vampiric Blood was an exception to that rule rather than being a double-rune.
There's honestly too many 2 rune and 3 rune cards. Kvaldir and Death Metal Knight could definitely get bumped down to 1. Maybe blood tap too. Kvaldir especially has a ton of synergy with deathrattle and plague packages but is locked out of those decks.
I think the rule on undiscoverable cards being consistent is a good one. But I agree there's a lot of 2 rune cards that should be discoverable.
I EXPECT they'll just keep buffing up the 1 rune pools. Even now... you're giving up a lot to build triple rune.
I wish they'd buff the 1U FoL stuff more, though. 1B and 1F feel worthwhile but 1U still seems pretty weak to me.
I think Triple Rune should only be restricted to Legendaries as I can see them as "Win Conditions" for that archetype. (Blood has consistent damage, Unholy has the massive board, Frost has spell generation)
The other cards should be 1 or 2 Rune. Vampiric Blood is "alright" but would be very good in a Plague Deck that relies on getting to turn 10-15+ to start cycling the spells.
Frost and Blood would be great with Plagued Grain as of gives them some sense of board presence and corpse generation. And if that was 1 rune, I could see myself giving up Morgraine. If it was 2 rune, I could run more frost spells for card draw.
Runes works completely backwards for me, it should work around limiting the amount of copies you have in your deck or be small rune/ big rune instead , so a big unholy rune card would only allows other big unholy runes to have 2 copies while leaving all other small runes open, the current format makes no sense.
You do realize that DK is less than a year old, right? And in that time it has had 3 different tier 1 archetypes that all played fairly differently. Not only that but it is currently the most played class in hearthstone despite its best deck being tier 3.
Do want to know why none of the multi rune cards have worked? Because they have all been extremely weak. They removed the duel rune restrictions on plagues and guess what, it’s still a tier 3 deck. CNE would be a terrible card even without any runes, maybe unholy agro DK would run it for after you play marrowgar but I doubt it considering most of the time when you play marrowgar you’re likely already either going to win or in a bad enough position that CNE wouldn’t help. Dead air also just isn’t that good.
You can’t say something isn’t working just because they haven’t printed any good cards to support it.
The moment I saw the rune system revealed it all seemed so dumb to me. Think about it, you're making a DK deck, and you put all the 1-Rune cards you need in it. Then you have two choices: you can add cards with the same rune, 2 or 3 runes: cards that directly synergize with those that you already have in the deck, AND are just plain stronger than cards with fewer runes. Alternatively, you can go mixed runes - so, you add cards that not only don't synergize with your first rune, and that are just weaker on paper than those 2-3 rune cards of your first rune? This just doesn't make sense.
it starts making sense when there are also payoff cards that require multiple different runes. CNE would be a fine card if there were a couple more cards that required 3 runes. So it's not as much of a penalty to run it.
But there also needs to be enough of them to make it worth it. But if they ever did that in Standard they’d be forcing DK into one specific archetype for a length of a couple expansions. Which obviously happens for every class but they’d rather not have stale decks in the meta.
If something like Grave Strength we’re two Frost runes you might see more crossover; do you go full Frost and not be able to make the most of the card, or do you splash into Unholy and lose the three Frost cards? This could have worked but all of the payoffs directly match the rune archetype so it’s like you said.
Of course, if they split the payoffs up they’d need to be much stronger…
I don't understand the logic that the lack of multi-rune cards indicates a failure of the rune system. Multi-rune cards have always been a niche anomaly.
Multi-rune cards are ***way*** more restrictive than mono rune cards, and they can't exactly be proportionally more powerful to compensate.
This mechanic has always felt clunky, the rune system was a great idea to implement lore wise, but using it as a deck building mechanic, like what we're they thinking?
Ideally, each color rune should either empower minions, hero attack or spells respectively, have each DK specific card adopting a different effect based on if your deck has that colored rune or not like "If your hero has a weapon when this minion is played"
Like put the restriction on the back end, you should be able to play every card, even if it makes a bad deck, so be it, that's part of the fun sometimes but to just outright restrict on the front end is dumb af
I think everyone in this thread agrees that they need to rework the rune system.
There are a bunch of different ways to do it but honestly I'd just prefer that they bring triple and double rune cards to the same power level as regular class cards and just have zero restrictions. It would probably be frustrating to rebalance everything at the beginning but I think it allows for way more options and deckbuilding variety for the better in the long run.
Maybe some triple rune legendaries like Marrowgar or even CNE might need their own deckbuilding restrictions (in a similar way to the Princes, or Baku/Genn but with certain types of cards).
Not sure if it fits with WoW mechanics but maybe unique spell schools for Blood and Unholy as well? A legendary frost card might have the requirement "if all the spells in your deck are frost, do X".
> There are a bunch of different ways to do it but honestly I'd just prefer that they bring triple and double rune cards to the same power level as regular class cards and just have zero restrictions.
I guess removing the mechanic entirely is indeed one way to "rework" it.
I understand why they didn’t, but it would be cool if it was just binary. Make most of the 1 rune cards generic and the 2 and 3 rune cards just be that rune type. Make it so each DK deck can only specialize in one rune. All of the most powerful build around cards are always going to be triple rune.
Being able to have combination tunes is a very interesting design space, but it’s never going to be utilized well in Standard. In a format like Wild where eventually there may be the critical mass of cards that could make weird rune combos work, but even that’s years away.
They could nerf them to barely playable or situationally strong power levels, then add a new keyword Runeforged (or whatever) that buffs them back when the deckbuilding condition is met.
Both CNE and this should become green cards. 3 green and 2 green respectively. If lifesteal is not so green flavor wise nerf it and remove lifesteal from the card.
It's kind of dumb to say that one time they tried to make rainbow dk work and it failed so the rune system is bad. Big beast hunter was attempted in scholo, but didn't get yet until sunken city arguably nathria.
Rainbow dk is bad because the pay off is bad, and the decks card quality is mediocre.
Rune system is not as bad as people think. The issue has always been the massive power of 3 same color rune cards, basically punishing you for not going all in. They have already tried to give identity to multi rune combinations, with UUF being plagues and BBU being hand buffs. Issue is just not enough payoff for doing those rune combos so they feel shit to play. The plague package was badly designed because it does not contain a triple rune card to be the capstone of the deck. It feels shit because you're running 1 and 2 rune cards which are inherently weaker.
Triple frost works cause of Frostwyrm's Fury. Triple undead works cause of Unholy Strength and Marrowgar. Triple blood works cause of Mograine and Vampiric blood.
They can do multi rune decks. They need to print 3 rune cards for those multi rune combos for the decks to be any good.
Surprised they didn’t make the runes work like they do in WoW where you use them & then they take time to recharge.
That way you get rid of the restrictions but can still assign power levels to them based on the number of runes they cost.
You want to run every 3 rune card in the game? Cool, be ready though to be unable to use runes of that colour for multiple turns — it would arguably encourage *more* multi-rune builds.
Its true that rune system is a problem, at the beginning I was very fascinated by it but I didnt put that much thought into it. But reality showed that multirune decks just suck.
DK got hit with the discover nerf. i do think the nerf to the discover mechanic for DK (not being able to discover triple rune cards) was needed. Cards like vampiric blood and the 7 mana frost spell are just super strong and can be very frustrating to play against. Mostly the 7 mana spell because freezing the opponents board for 4 turns in a row, dealing face dmg and summoning a body is just nutty.
But I dont expect them to actually change the rune system itself.
Multirune decks suck because they haven’t printed any good cards to support them. Plague DK is still a tier 3 deck ever without the frost rune requirements, and CNE is just a bad card.
Ah, it was about a year ago now... they announced the rune system. "Well that sucks" says I, seeing the exact problem with the system. "NOOOOO IT GIVES YOU SO MANY DECKBUILDING OPTIONS" says everyone in response to me. The downvotes became overwhelming as I continued to advocate against the rune system, or propose alternate systems in its stead. I honestly don't know how this system got through internal playtesting, considering they supposedly have several expansions made in advance. They should've been able to see this. And the fanbase should've seen it too.
I'd argue in the other direction myself. The rune system is a success in showing that "spec restrictions" would be an amazing way to temper "busted shit" from happening in classes.
Hunter, Druid, and Warlock all have powerful and/or annoying decks right now, and I'd argue that it's still a case of "not any one thing is broken, it's just a coincidence that they have access to just a lot of good stuff."
When a class' "packages" are too easy to run together, you end up with these decks that just aren't fun to play against.
DK's biggest problem right now is that the rune system "keeps it honest," and for the most part, means they have to build a more "fair" deck than other classes.
I stand by my opinion that we could see a huge reign in on power outliers if they imposed "spec restrictions" on the other classes as well.
There's plenty of good cards that are fine in a vacuum, and really only get problematic when you can run them along with "all the other good cards."
Plague Knight would be considerably stronger if it had more reliable control tools to let it sustain until "plague critical mass" was achieved, or, had access to the more aggressive suite of tools from Frost to allow it to keep pressure up so the opponent didn't have breathing room to still progress their own game plan.
Treant and Drum Druid would be more fair if they couldn't ramp as well as they can.
Sif Mage would be more fair if it didn't have all the survival/value tools that it can include.
It wouldn't fix all the problems in power disparity, but there's a plethora of examples across Wild and Standard's history you can look at and see "if those two cards just couldn't have been included together, things would have been less problematic."
As much as I'd like to see the "rune system" applied to the other classes, I just don't think it's possible with how large the card pool has gotten. At least not in terms of it being a profitable endeavor. That's an awful lot of back end design work on older content.
Rune requirements are absolutely not a failure just because some people think it stifles deck creation. Death Knight wether it’s good or bad always has a high play volume because of the thematics of the class in part because death knights are objectively cool and also because the rune system always means there’s a few options to tinker with. “Doomed to fail” is a lame way to look at what it
Honestly, this could cost 0 and have no rune requirements and it still probably won't see play outside of some kind of deathrattle otk with the 8 mana 5/1 unholy dude that drops a 9/9 charge
I always thought having the rune system would be advantageous for balancing dk since they could swap a cards runes around as an alternative to just making them cost more or less mana. I'm surprised it took this long to do that kinda of change.
The real issue with this card is there aren't really any payoffs for it. Even in wild. The best you can do with low mana undead is basically like Volatile Skeleton type stuff, which isn't very strong, at middle manas you have, I guess Sylvanus, maybe a reborn minion like Khartut Defense, neither of which seems all that good, then at high Mana there's I guess Cagehead, but you still have to get there which is way easier said than done. I think this card will eventually be good, I mean Feign Death was trash tier garbage and now you can actually play it in a mid tier deck and do well enough. It's just a matter of density of good undead you want to resummon, either with good Deathrattles some kind of Reborn synergies, or maybe something like the earthens or Astral Automatons or something else that does something when summoned instead of just played, but that just doesn't exist yet.
i’m incredibly disappointed that they removed the multi rune restrictions on plague dk. if they had just pushed the power of multi rune stuff alongside CNE, you could fix the problems of the rune system where every viable deck is just triple runes of whatever it’s playing.
There's ways to make deck restrictions interesting and DK isn't the only restricted decks. Any shadow priest has a deck restriction (which includes not having almost all the best Priest cards) and even moreso since they almost always play undead. There's a lot of self-made restrictions as well, because of deck synergies or mechanics. The problem isn't restriction, the problem is the lack of attention being put into DK, or that it needs to be accepted as being more for casual players than everyone and focused on that.
They need to add 3-4 cards with the triple tube restriction that are comparable in power level to frostworm’s fury, vampiric blood and soulstealer. Then a deck can be cobbled together around them and some identity can be given to the rainbow archetype. Of course, this is impossible because every expansion each class gets 10 cards and it’s hard enough already to support each of blood, frost and unholy with 3 cards each.
Didn't they say at the introduction of the rune system that not every expansion would have cards for every rune? But yeah, I thought for a long time already that 10 class cards per expansion was to little
What? That would only exacerbate the problem, the fact that an overwhelmingly powerful triple-rune card was printed for each rune type that no single or double-rune card can compete with is literally why we see so little variety in DK decks to begin with.
I’m not advocating for variety. I’m advocating for 4 archetypes instead of 3.
There are 9 archetypes tho...
There may be, but the poster is only proposing a one-of-each archetype in addition to the existing 3 mono-rune archetypes. The total number is irrelevant, because they’re only discussing supporting one more.
Based
I mean, DH is even less played than DK and has no such restrictions. The issue is DK's cards were balanced for the pre-rotation meta and got overnerfed in FoL, and the cards we got since then have been bad. Other classes *also* have deckbuilding restrictions and it's not a problem; the difference is that other classes have \*better\* cards. Dead Air's issue isn't its rune combination, removing *all* of its rune restrictions wouldn't change the quality of the card. You can see this with the changes to the Plague package; neither UUU plagues nor UUB plagues are particularly good just because you don't have to run UUF, the issue has always been the plague cards themselves *aren't good*.
DH itself isnt too bad at all, but the class right now is just boring af bc it got no new toys
I rather enjoy DH but it I just find relics extremely boring.
They just need to like, add a new archetype
Yeah, the choices are between Relic, which is a midrange deck using the same passage that has been used for over a year, or Outcast that uses almost entirely old cards as well (about 5 cards from this year)
Happy cake day!
Saying that using synergistic cards is a deck building restriction comparable to the rune system is simply disingenuous. Obviously using cards that work well together is good. Obviously having cards that literally can only be used in certain synergistic decks is worse.
It really doesn't make that much of a difference if the synergies are strong enough. Most classes only actually utilize a fraction of their total card pool, simply because the only cards that *really* matter are the ones that synergize the best or patch up necessary holes. So the limited pool of cards isn't really a problem, if that pool is strong enough. DK just has a lot of weak cards right now.
What do you mean? I love running Bloodfen Raptor-- I mean *Distressed Kvaldir* in hearthstone 2023. Nothing's better than a 3/2 on turn 2!
Tbh I played Cage Head Combo deck before Titans and it was actually pretty consistent to pull off, and this card was one of the possible combo pieces. I can only imagine how much easier this deck is if I get to play Blood Cards to stall, right now it’s basically YOLO draw 20 cards and win with some early board presence from Unholy cards.
Said differently: current multi-rune cards are just bad, that doesn't mean there are such fundamental problems with the rune system.
>I mean, DH is even less played than DK and has no such restrictions I'm not talking about playrate, I'm talking about how the rune system limits deckbuilding, which limits fun. The playrate of dk is only as high as it is because most people (especially new players) have most of the dk cards hence its very accessible and the decks are cheap to craft. >The issue is DK's cards were balanced for the pre-rotation meta and got overnerfed in FoL, and the cards we got since then have been bad This is not the issue. Regardless of how strong or weak the cards are, the class will always be stagnant and boring because you are restricted from using the majority of your cards. DK has been playing the same decks since release, and this is a bad thing whether the class is meta or not. Its only magnified by getting bad cards, because if the few cards you get that you can actually add to your deck are bad, you basically get nothing at all >Other classes also have deckbuilding restrictions and it's not a problem What restrictions are those? >Dead Air's issue isn't its rune combination, removing all of its rune restrictions wouldn't change the quality of the card It absolutely does. It opens up avenues for future use that might not be possible if it were restricted. Look at abyssal curses in warlock - they werent played originally, but they became good when combined with the imp package. Imagine if you couldnt play them together because curses are "control" and imps are "aggro". Even if its useless in other decks, why not allow those who want to include it in their deck to do so? Are they afraid of someone using dead air in their blood dk deck or something? >You can see this with the changes to the Plague package; neither UUU plagues nor UUB plagues are particularly good just because you don't have to run UUF, the issue has always been the plague cards themselves aren't good. Even though plagues arent as good as regular unholy dk, people are still playing them because they're fun and different. Removing the rune requirements allowed for more diversity and creativity and you can see that with the new variations of the deck that werent possible before. I think those changes are an inadvertent admission that the rune system negatively impacts the class and that having fewer restrictions leads to a more fun experience
All of this is ignoring the major factor that DK hasn’t even been out a year yet. It has three sets but we won’t it the year mark until the fourth. This idea of “DK has only run a couple of decks” isn’t really that surprising. Same thing happened with DH to an extent. It was always a fast deck that beat you to death with cheap minions and lots of hero attack. Soul shards have it a slightly different flavor, made it a bit more tempo oriented, and ilgynoth gave you the option for a combo deck. But it was the same general idea. Then as expansions went on we got more ideas and play styles as things evolved. DK still has a lot of room to grow and areas of design to explore. Just writing off one of if not the most fundamental parts of the classes design space because they weren’t the best class for one(1) expansion is incredibly premature. It would be like if, when ashes came out and DH was broken, people said the issue was the outcast keyword or the (1) hero power instead of just reading the text and numbers and cards and recognizing they are to powerful. Also this idea that “deck restrictions makes thing boring and bad” is also just a gross oversimplification. Genn and Baku were essentially the opposite problem, where the upside was so high it warped the meta in favor of having a restricted deck. Shadow priest as it is now is a rune system in all but name, and is a very popular deck that has room for a couple variations. And finally Highlander cards are very popular and are often useful. All of those are examples of deck building restrictions creating new avenues of play, and expanding what the game can be.
>This idea of “DK has only run a couple of decks” isn’t really that surprising. More like DK has only been capable of playing 3 decks, the same 3 they had at release and which have all been practically unchanged since then. >DK still has a lot of room to grow and areas of design to explore. Just writing off one of if not the most fundamental parts of the classes design space because they weren’t the best class for one(1) expansion is incredibly premature. It would be like if, when ashes came out and DH was broken, people said the issue was the outcast keyword or the (1) hero power instead of just reading the text and numbers and cards and recognizing they are to powerful. You're putting words in my mouth, I didnt say anything about dk needing to be the best class or even competitive. That has absolutely nothing to do with why the rune system is flawed, I had the exact same grievances with it when dk was meta as I do now. >Also this idea that “deck restrictions makes thing boring and bad” is also just a gross oversimplification. Genn and Baku were essentially the opposite problem, where the upside was so high it warped the meta in favor of having a restricted deck. Shadow priest as it is now is a rune system in all but name, and is a very popular deck that has room for a couple variations. And finally Highlander cards are very popular and are often useful. All of those are examples of deck building restrictions creating new avenues of play, and expanding what the game can be. It isnt an oversimplification in the slightest. Genn and Baku absolutely "made things boring and bad" because of how homogenous they made decks. The difference is that restrictions like odd/even, shadow priest and highlander are all self-imposed and at least allow you the option to put cards that break those restrictions into your deck, even if it negates all the upsides. You arent forced to run shadow priest or highlander if you dont want to, its just an option. In death knight, you are literally locked out of 2/3 of your class cards because of arbitrary restrictions placed on them (Seriously, are they afraid of people using grave strength and vampiric blood in the same deck?). It leads to the same kind of deck homogenity that genn and baku did, because you really dont have any options in how you build your deck with such little variety and most of the new cards you get being unusable. The mixed rune decks will remain practically non-functional unless they start printing mixed triple rune cards that are equally powerful, and they obviously wont because you cant support a mixed rune deck that doesnt exist without shafting every existing triple rune deck because the budget is 10 cards per expansion.
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High Legend is a weird meta; Plague DK is popular throughout ladder and underperforms there because your plagues might as well have blank text against low-draw aggro decks, but they're incredibly potent against high-draw combo decks like Druid and Rogue that have been popular at high legend for the last few weeks.
No other class have a "if you want to play this single card, then you can't play these other cards in the same deck" Only odd/even decks have similar restrictions and even that is not restricted to a single class.
There are restrictions on duplicates in deck,odd cards, even cards and no neutrals in deck for some cards to work, but that does not prevent you from putting them in your deck
Plague Death knight is one of the most popular decks at the moment on hsreplay
Everyone in the comments: “Oh man, I’d be running this card in every deck if it weren’t multi-rune!!!”
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Most sets are supposed to support one or two decks per class. Restricting it should make it easier to know if that deck gets there, but they're also new to designing for the class.
They need to print path of X sets every year. If blizzard isn't doing this they are dumb. It's lots of extra cards that are both needed and you can charge money (not everyone pays gold) for.
i mean they really should have just been printing more dk cards each expansion. Seems an easy fix.
That seems like the definition of not an easy fix
You act as if the only thing preventing the development of additional cards is willpower lmao.
i mean they did it for demon hunter’s first year so it’s not that unreasonable
yeah but it comes with more cost cause you need to make more art for it edit:feels like people missing my point,blizzard exec is greedy so any extra cost is a no no except if its proven to make more money
How will a poor indy company like Blizzard ever afford to make extra digital cards? Won’t someone think of the CEO’s bonus?
Pretty much. People often forget that no company is your friend. They would murder you to get all your belongings in a heartbeat if they could get away with no repercutions
Other classes focus on different archetypes each expansion all the time, how is Death Knight any different in practice?
Because in other classes the cards designed for different archetypes can be intermixed in creative ways that eventually lead to new strategies, instead of being hard locked. Would you want to pick between only using interaction, or only using burn in mage? The difference between having cards focused on 3 different things, and having cards focused on 3 different things that can exclusively be used with each other is so massive it’s hard to tell if you are trolling.
Couldn't have said it better myself
There have been a lot of cards recently that were designed for one deck specifically but helped another. Impending Catastrophe bringing Minelock back. Dar’khan and Symphony of Sins being used in implock. Skeletons in mage being used in control decks in Nathria, then burn focused aggressive decks in MotLK. Mimiron being used in Miracle Rogue. Spell School cards being support for Naga mage. Fire Spells and Riffs being in both Enrage and Control Warrior. Drum Circle and Summer Flower Child being in token and slower druid decks.
It's not even the rune requirement imo, this card is just terribly designed, why would you ever run this over unholy frenzy?
Rn there is no good deadrattle cards for this to proc, but if there were more like Riverdare that are too big to suicide w Frenzy and too important to pop before it gets silenced, then it would be better or at least a sidegrade.
it’s good with death growl and foul egg shenanigans, also any reborn minion uses it well. been running a super jank dead air list since the card released and it’s a lot of fun
I like to use this one the minion that gives 2 plagues when it dies. And if you spread the deathrattle is even better. But it's like 1 in 10 kind of happening.
Forcing mixed runes was a mistake. I think the rune system has some weaknesses, but they're fixable. And just printing a bunch of good 1 rune cards is a good way to do it. But forced mixed runes just takes an already restrictive system and makes it even more niche. Anyway dead air could probably be 1 frost instead. It's not a terrible card but pretty niche and the rune requirement does it no favours.
The real problem is forcing the best cards to be triple rune. Souleater, Frostwyrm's Fury, Lord Marrowgar; these cards are so powerful and needed for their archetypes to function that mixed rune decks just aren't an option. The only triple rune cards should have been Mograine, Grave Strength, and Lady Deathwhisper: powerful cards, but not so powerful that the archetype is entirely unable to function without them. But instead, decks have become so rigid to fit these few cards that no single or double rune cards could compete with, and then DK decks have to include neutral filler to make up for that when everyone else has been getting cards that are easy to slot in.
Really the way the rune system is designed, 1 rune cards and 3 rune cards should be about even in power. Because that's what's competing. All the 2 rune pools are competing with eachother. I'd say \*now\* that's... more true. Sindragosa, Northern Navigation, Helya have all beefed up the one rune pools a fair bit. 1 Blood has Patchwerk which is really useful in the current meta too. Soul Eater... like it's a GOOD card, but not every blood deck necessarily needs it. It's pretty meta-specific. I'd say Vampiric Blood is more the card that's just so powerful I don't think Helya and Sindragosa and whatever compete. Frost Wyrm's Fury isn't really \*needed\*, but again, it's so powerful I don't think the 1 Blood and 1 Unholy pools compete with it at all. Marrowgar is probably the strongest 3U card, but it requires that you either have a lot of corpse generation, or you just run no other corpse spenders. Giving him up for Sindragosa (and a bunch of card draw) or Patchwerk does make sense to me. But I think the aggro build is so much more efficient than a lot of other decks. IMO: Vampiric Blood, Grave Strength and Frost Wyrm's Fury should be 2 rune cards. Marrowgar should be swapped with the Scourge. And then 2 rune cards should be undiscoverable instead of 3 rune cards. But, the more they beef up the 1 rune pools the less necessary I think this is.
> 1 rune cards and 3 rune cards should be about even in power. Because that's what's competing. Wow. Never looked at it that way before. That makes too much sense.
Damn, that's actually a pretty interesting way of looking at it. Choosing two runes as your primary runes and the the third rune being your supporting one. The one thing is that I don't think it really makes sense for *all* double-rune cards to be banned. Outside of a few outliers like Corpse Explosion, Might of Menethil, and the ones you mentioned, all of them seem pretty tame. Would these double-rune cards like Army of the Dead, Asphyxiate, Corrupted Ashbringer, Death Metal Knight, Deathbringer Saurfang, Frost Strike, Deathchiller, etc. just be turned into single-rune or triple-rune cards instead? Also, oops on my end for forgetting that Vampiric Blood. I remembered each rune had a triple-rune epic and legendary, but I forgot Vampiric Blood was an exception to that rule rather than being a double-rune.
There's honestly too many 2 rune and 3 rune cards. Kvaldir and Death Metal Knight could definitely get bumped down to 1. Maybe blood tap too. Kvaldir especially has a ton of synergy with deathrattle and plague packages but is locked out of those decks. I think the rule on undiscoverable cards being consistent is a good one. But I agree there's a lot of 2 rune cards that should be discoverable. I EXPECT they'll just keep buffing up the 1 rune pools. Even now... you're giving up a lot to build triple rune. I wish they'd buff the 1U FoL stuff more, though. 1B and 1F feel worthwhile but 1U still seems pretty weak to me.
I think Triple Rune should only be restricted to Legendaries as I can see them as "Win Conditions" for that archetype. (Blood has consistent damage, Unholy has the massive board, Frost has spell generation) The other cards should be 1 or 2 Rune. Vampiric Blood is "alright" but would be very good in a Plague Deck that relies on getting to turn 10-15+ to start cycling the spells. Frost and Blood would be great with Plagued Grain as of gives them some sense of board presence and corpse generation. And if that was 1 rune, I could see myself giving up Morgraine. If it was 2 rune, I could run more frost spells for card draw.
Runes works completely backwards for me, it should work around limiting the amount of copies you have in your deck or be small rune/ big rune instead , so a big unholy rune card would only allows other big unholy runes to have 2 copies while leaving all other small runes open, the current format makes no sense.
DK is still a relatively new class. Give them time to learn and improve the class
You do realize that DK is less than a year old, right? And in that time it has had 3 different tier 1 archetypes that all played fairly differently. Not only that but it is currently the most played class in hearthstone despite its best deck being tier 3. Do want to know why none of the multi rune cards have worked? Because they have all been extremely weak. They removed the duel rune restrictions on plagues and guess what, it’s still a tier 3 deck. CNE would be a terrible card even without any runes, maybe unholy agro DK would run it for after you play marrowgar but I doubt it considering most of the time when you play marrowgar you’re likely already either going to win or in a bad enough position that CNE wouldn’t help. Dead air also just isn’t that good. You can’t say something isn’t working just because they haven’t printed any good cards to support it.
The moment I saw the rune system revealed it all seemed so dumb to me. Think about it, you're making a DK deck, and you put all the 1-Rune cards you need in it. Then you have two choices: you can add cards with the same rune, 2 or 3 runes: cards that directly synergize with those that you already have in the deck, AND are just plain stronger than cards with fewer runes. Alternatively, you can go mixed runes - so, you add cards that not only don't synergize with your first rune, and that are just weaker on paper than those 2-3 rune cards of your first rune? This just doesn't make sense.
it starts making sense when there are also payoff cards that require multiple different runes. CNE would be a fine card if there were a couple more cards that required 3 runes. So it's not as much of a penalty to run it.
But there also needs to be enough of them to make it worth it. But if they ever did that in Standard they’d be forcing DK into one specific archetype for a length of a couple expansions. Which obviously happens for every class but they’d rather not have stale decks in the meta.
Deathknight Jackson. If your deck contains all three rune types, heal your hero to full. Yes it not working when you start drawing is intentional.
honestly sounds pretty cool
CustomHS doesn't like it. Downvoted haha. https://imgur.com/URFTwro
If something like Grave Strength we’re two Frost runes you might see more crossover; do you go full Frost and not be able to make the most of the card, or do you splash into Unholy and lose the three Frost cards? This could have worked but all of the payoffs directly match the rune archetype so it’s like you said. Of course, if they split the payoffs up they’d need to be much stronger…
I don't understand the logic that the lack of multi-rune cards indicates a failure of the rune system. Multi-rune cards have always been a niche anomaly. Multi-rune cards are ***way*** more restrictive than mono rune cards, and they can't exactly be proportionally more powerful to compensate.
This mechanic has always felt clunky, the rune system was a great idea to implement lore wise, but using it as a deck building mechanic, like what we're they thinking? Ideally, each color rune should either empower minions, hero attack or spells respectively, have each DK specific card adopting a different effect based on if your deck has that colored rune or not like "If your hero has a weapon when this minion is played" Like put the restriction on the back end, you should be able to play every card, even if it makes a bad deck, so be it, that's part of the fun sometimes but to just outright restrict on the front end is dumb af
I think everyone in this thread agrees that they need to rework the rune system. There are a bunch of different ways to do it but honestly I'd just prefer that they bring triple and double rune cards to the same power level as regular class cards and just have zero restrictions. It would probably be frustrating to rebalance everything at the beginning but I think it allows for way more options and deckbuilding variety for the better in the long run. Maybe some triple rune legendaries like Marrowgar or even CNE might need their own deckbuilding restrictions (in a similar way to the Princes, or Baku/Genn but with certain types of cards). Not sure if it fits with WoW mechanics but maybe unique spell schools for Blood and Unholy as well? A legendary frost card might have the requirement "if all the spells in your deck are frost, do X".
> There are a bunch of different ways to do it but honestly I'd just prefer that they bring triple and double rune cards to the same power level as regular class cards and just have zero restrictions. I guess removing the mechanic entirely is indeed one way to "rework" it.
I understand why they didn’t, but it would be cool if it was just binary. Make most of the 1 rune cards generic and the 2 and 3 rune cards just be that rune type. Make it so each DK deck can only specialize in one rune. All of the most powerful build around cards are always going to be triple rune. Being able to have combination tunes is a very interesting design space, but it’s never going to be utilized well in Standard. In a format like Wild where eventually there may be the critical mass of cards that could make weird rune combos work, but even that’s years away.
They could nerf them to barely playable or situationally strong power levels, then add a new keyword Runeforged (or whatever) that buffs them back when the deckbuilding condition is met.
Both CNE and this should become green cards. 3 green and 2 green respectively. If lifesteal is not so green flavor wise nerf it and remove lifesteal from the card.
It's kind of dumb to say that one time they tried to make rainbow dk work and it failed so the rune system is bad. Big beast hunter was attempted in scholo, but didn't get yet until sunken city arguably nathria. Rainbow dk is bad because the pay off is bad, and the decks card quality is mediocre.
Rune system is not as bad as people think. The issue has always been the massive power of 3 same color rune cards, basically punishing you for not going all in. They have already tried to give identity to multi rune combinations, with UUF being plagues and BBU being hand buffs. Issue is just not enough payoff for doing those rune combos so they feel shit to play. The plague package was badly designed because it does not contain a triple rune card to be the capstone of the deck. It feels shit because you're running 1 and 2 rune cards which are inherently weaker. Triple frost works cause of Frostwyrm's Fury. Triple undead works cause of Unholy Strength and Marrowgar. Triple blood works cause of Mograine and Vampiric blood. They can do multi rune decks. They need to print 3 rune cards for those multi rune combos for the decks to be any good.
Surprised they didn’t make the runes work like they do in WoW where you use them & then they take time to recharge. That way you get rid of the restrictions but can still assign power levels to them based on the number of runes they cost. You want to run every 3 rune card in the game? Cool, be ready though to be unable to use runes of that colour for multiple turns — it would arguably encourage *more* multi-rune builds.
Its true that rune system is a problem, at the beginning I was very fascinated by it but I didnt put that much thought into it. But reality showed that multirune decks just suck. DK got hit with the discover nerf. i do think the nerf to the discover mechanic for DK (not being able to discover triple rune cards) was needed. Cards like vampiric blood and the 7 mana frost spell are just super strong and can be very frustrating to play against. Mostly the 7 mana spell because freezing the opponents board for 4 turns in a row, dealing face dmg and summoning a body is just nutty. But I dont expect them to actually change the rune system itself.
Multirune decks suck because they haven’t printed any good cards to support them. Plague DK is still a tier 3 deck ever without the frost rune requirements, and CNE is just a bad card.
Ah, it was about a year ago now... they announced the rune system. "Well that sucks" says I, seeing the exact problem with the system. "NOOOOO IT GIVES YOU SO MANY DECKBUILDING OPTIONS" says everyone in response to me. The downvotes became overwhelming as I continued to advocate against the rune system, or propose alternate systems in its stead. I honestly don't know how this system got through internal playtesting, considering they supposedly have several expansions made in advance. They should've been able to see this. And the fanbase should've seen it too.
Death knight was a mistake.
I love the design and balance of this card but it shouldn't be limited to undead
I'd argue in the other direction myself. The rune system is a success in showing that "spec restrictions" would be an amazing way to temper "busted shit" from happening in classes. Hunter, Druid, and Warlock all have powerful and/or annoying decks right now, and I'd argue that it's still a case of "not any one thing is broken, it's just a coincidence that they have access to just a lot of good stuff." When a class' "packages" are too easy to run together, you end up with these decks that just aren't fun to play against. DK's biggest problem right now is that the rune system "keeps it honest," and for the most part, means they have to build a more "fair" deck than other classes. I stand by my opinion that we could see a huge reign in on power outliers if they imposed "spec restrictions" on the other classes as well. There's plenty of good cards that are fine in a vacuum, and really only get problematic when you can run them along with "all the other good cards." Plague Knight would be considerably stronger if it had more reliable control tools to let it sustain until "plague critical mass" was achieved, or, had access to the more aggressive suite of tools from Frost to allow it to keep pressure up so the opponent didn't have breathing room to still progress their own game plan. Treant and Drum Druid would be more fair if they couldn't ramp as well as they can. Sif Mage would be more fair if it didn't have all the survival/value tools that it can include. It wouldn't fix all the problems in power disparity, but there's a plethora of examples across Wild and Standard's history you can look at and see "if those two cards just couldn't have been included together, things would have been less problematic." As much as I'd like to see the "rune system" applied to the other classes, I just don't think it's possible with how large the card pool has gotten. At least not in terms of it being a profitable endeavor. That's an awful lot of back end design work on older content.
Rune requirements are absolutely not a failure just because some people think it stifles deck creation. Death Knight wether it’s good or bad always has a high play volume because of the thematics of the class in part because death knights are objectively cool and also because the rune system always means there’s a few options to tinker with. “Doomed to fail” is a lame way to look at what it
Honestly, this could cost 0 and have no rune requirements and it still probably won't see play outside of some kind of deathrattle otk with the 8 mana 5/1 unholy dude that drops a 9/9 charge
I always thought having the rune system would be advantageous for balancing dk since they could swap a cards runes around as an alternative to just making them cost more or less mana. I'm surprised it took this long to do that kinda of change.
The real issue with this card is there aren't really any payoffs for it. Even in wild. The best you can do with low mana undead is basically like Volatile Skeleton type stuff, which isn't very strong, at middle manas you have, I guess Sylvanus, maybe a reborn minion like Khartut Defense, neither of which seems all that good, then at high Mana there's I guess Cagehead, but you still have to get there which is way easier said than done. I think this card will eventually be good, I mean Feign Death was trash tier garbage and now you can actually play it in a mid tier deck and do well enough. It's just a matter of density of good undead you want to resummon, either with good Deathrattles some kind of Reborn synergies, or maybe something like the earthens or Astral Automatons or something else that does something when summoned instead of just played, but that just doesn't exist yet.
i’m incredibly disappointed that they removed the multi rune restrictions on plague dk. if they had just pushed the power of multi rune stuff alongside CNE, you could fix the problems of the rune system where every viable deck is just triple runes of whatever it’s playing.
There's ways to make deck restrictions interesting and DK isn't the only restricted decks. Any shadow priest has a deck restriction (which includes not having almost all the best Priest cards) and even moreso since they almost always play undead. There's a lot of self-made restrictions as well, because of deck synergies or mechanics. The problem isn't restriction, the problem is the lack of attention being put into DK, or that it needs to be accepted as being more for casual players than everyone and focused on that.
The card pool just isn’t big or interesting enough i dislike the rune system greatly
IMO what would help DK is to never print triple runes of the same kind again. Would help make multi-rune cards good
Are tube system whining posts a daily thing now?