What if Demon Hunter Was a Temporary Class?

A recent Iksar Q&A revealed that Demon Hunter was meant to potentially be a temporary addition to Standard at some stage in development. With almost two years since the class’ original release, how is it shaping up as a permanent part of the Hearthstone roster then? With hindsight, would it have been better to follow that principle, and would it make sense to do so when the oft-rumored Monk class rolls around?

Something Something Vengeance: The State of Demon Hunters

It was a pretty damn big deal when the Demon Hunter class was announced – or, well, it would have been, had it not leaked a day before its original announcement. Still, the gameplay implications of a tenth playable class were massive: another set of keywords and balance issues to juggle, potential new design space to explore, and a rearrangement of the distribution of cards available in each set.

“The Year of the Phoenix introduces Hearthstone’s first new class since launch: the Demon Hunter! Embracing chaotic soul magic and fel energy, the fearsome Demon Hunter features an in-your-face playstyle, cutting down foes with weapons and claws, or crushing them with enormous Demon minions.”

Team 5 certainly didn’t stick the landing with Demon Hunter, and it still remains the prime example of their new policy: release broken content first and balance it after release. DH was hit by the fastest set of nerfs in the history of the game, with the first patch of adjustments rolled out less than 24 hours after the launch of the Ashes of Outland expansion. Many more followed, with a third of the class’ original cards nerfed before the following set was even released.

“Mix and match Hero Attack buffs with weapons to trigger mighty attacking-related effects. Slice into enemy minions, using your own health as a resource. You’ll find the class lacks in direct sources of healing, but instead relies on smaller chip heals via Lifesteal.”

The problem with this many adjustments is that whatever plans the devs may have had for the class at the time of its original release must have been chucked out the window. With further sets already far into development by the time of any given release, we most likely never got to see the Demon Hunter class originally envisioned by Team 5.

The many weapon nerfs have significantly neutered the part of Demon Hunter’s class fantasy revolving around direct attack and healing the damage taken from there after the fact. Warglaives of Azzinoth and Aldrachi Warblades have both been mangled in the name of overall meta health, which has led to a game state where the heal tools are more likely to lean into an OTK strategy than anything related to using hero attacks to maintain an even board state.

“While other Heroes may buff and heal their minions, Illidan instead fuels himself with their souls when they fall in combat, taking vengeance upon his enemies.”

After the early days of relentless aggression (and the combo madness that followed), Demon Hunters currently ply their trade in sticky Deathrattle decks and off-the-board removal-based packages leaning into late-game finishers. The token synergy cards haven’t really had a chance to shine to date. It remains to be seen where the class will be taken in the new Standard year.

Demon Hunter can be a lot of fun to play – I should know. Still, I can’t help but feel that something feels off with the game ever since its addition. Regardless of where you may stand on the class, there are other design principles and considerations, plus a couple of side effects, that emerge when you introduce something beyond the game’s original nine.

Monks and Other Mooks: What’s the Correct Approach?

Hearthstone was originally designed around nine classes and no more, and the introduction of a tenth one has clearly strained some of the systems put in place at the time of the game’s release. While this is a natural part of development, especially with a game with a fairly long lifespan such as Hearthstone, it’s interesting to see just what kind of adjustments had to be accommodated, if only to figure out the answer to the question in the title of this article and whether any further classes could also be shoehorned in at a later point in time.

Over time, the devs consciously reduced the presence and impact of neutral cards in Hearthstone, and the addition of a tenth class was a natural evolution of this trend, further limiting the number of such cards in any given release. Keeping in mind that the nine unique classes with no ability to mix and match was a big part of what separated HS from MTG initially, today’s setup with very little relevant neutrals and a smattering of dual-class cards makes the game closer to its counterpart in this regard than it ever has been before.

This isn’t necessarily a problem by itself, but Team 5’s continued insistence on pre-assembled archetypes becomes even more difficult to circumvent when there are no surprise neutrals to fill a specific niche, or, indeed, when there are even more preordained archetypes present across ten classes instead of nine. This, coupled with the power level imbalances, is a big part of why metagames get solved so quickly nowadays. It is very difficult to innovate on an archetypal level from a deckbuilding perspective, and you’d hardly have any Neutrals left if you were going to introduce yet another class to the game.

Furthermore, any classes introduced so many years after launch will inevitably have a more tightly designed package of class cards and synergies compared to the originals. Though this issue has mostly been rectified by the addition of the Core set, the difference between Demon Hunter’s original offerings compared to, say, the Paladin Classic set was night and day. This is an additional design challenge to consider.

Though it’s no doubt irrelevant to the devs, it’s worth highlighting how the presence of a brand new class wreaks havoc on the Arena offerings in the current format as well due to the same issue: a class with no cards from the older sets with lower power level will inevitably get better offerings unless significant manual adjustments are made. A quick look at the HSReplay charts tells us that Demon Hunter is currently at 54.9% in a metagame with no micro-adjustments made, which is not the first time the class has pulverized the rest of the field in Hearthstone’s limited mode.

So what if Monks are indeed coming to the game? This is where the vibes-based analysis comes into play. There’s a simple interface-related challenge to consider at a certain point. Just look at the top of the collection screen:

How much more can you fit there, realistically?

Having a tenth class in the game on a rotating basis would have allowed Team 5 another way to shake up the gameplay experience, though with the downside that any balance changes and adjustments made would have had an even lower impact (and the power levels on release would have likely been even more out of whack without the added design lessons learned in the live environment).

As it is, juggling ten on a permanent basis in terms of gameplay variety and power levels already seems like a near-impossible job to the team. Eleven seems like a bridge too far based on their track record. Without significant systemic changes made, it’s tough to envision how all those classes could have roles to play in a healthy metagame, or, indeed, how they’d all be reliably differentiated from each other, especially after the levels of reconstructive surgeries Demon Hunter took to get it into a balanced shape. Introducing an eleventh class seems like something none of us are… wait for it… prepared for, including the Hearthstone developers.