I recently caught up with Blizzard’s Team 5 to talk about Hearthstone’s

“ All nine classes are seeing play and everyone’s got something competitive out there.

What a card.

“ There were no decks that like, came out of the woodwork completely and just really, really surprised us.

From meme to dream.

“ So, there's been a lot of perception that Druid is very powerful. I think that it hasn't really aligned with what's actually happening.

“ I wish every class had as many archetypes as Druid has right now.

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Value for Warriors.

“ I think a lot of people actually like the fact that Giggling Inventor exists, even though it is very prevalent.

Here's what he had to say.I think it has been really positive. Decks like Odd Warrior have been showing up, and stuff like Deathrattle Hunter , and lots of different stuff. So I would say that everything has been really positive. The two classes that haven't been showing up quite as much in terms of popularity, have been Shaman and Priest. But even with those decks, I was actually looking at data the other day and every single class had some archetype that was above 50 percent, which is generally a good place to be. There are Control Priests that are just playing like basically just Priest cards, you know? Like Cabal Shadow Priest and some people are even running Mind Control. Even Shaman is still really good. There are still some people out there doing Shudderwock stuff but I'd say most of the more competitive decks are Even Shaman for Shaman specifically.But all nine classes are seeing play and everyone’s got something competitive out there. There's a lot of crazy one-off decks like the Mecha'thun stuff is really cool and there's still a lot of players that enjoy decks like Burgle Rogue, even if it's not super competitive right now… Pogo Rogue [also]. We're pretty happy. We're still monitoring data every single day and reading Reddit and official forums, and all kinds of stuff. But yeah, it's been really positive.I don't think so. I think that, just like any deck, it takes a while for everything to be super refined. I don't think a lot of people are playing just like a standard Control Priest, like in the last few expansions. But I think people are still sort of iterating on it and that's been the Priest deck that people have been playing. And also, something that brings down Priest numbers overall is the Stonetusk Boar Priest that people have been playing a ton of - APM Priest . It's been really fun for people to watch and a lot of fun for some people to play, but it's not the most successful deck. Intentionally, you know, I think that if everyone's dying to like, 48 attack Stonetusk Boars, maybe it's not the best meta.There's still a lot of people out there experimenting with the version where you have stuff like Malygos , and you’re resurrecting it, and Alexstrasza and Mind Blasts. So there's a lot of strategies people are trying, but I think that for the most part just the standard Control Priest is the one that's been the most successful right now. I think that it just has a lot to do with, I don't know, people just not really finding it or just wanting to experiment with some of the other classes first.That's not really how we balance each particular class... For example, Dragon Priests... That might be a very powerful deck at some point in the meta, so like, for the next expansion one of goals is maybe don't give Dragon Priest more cards in that scenario. But, it's not necessarily to make Priest weaker. We want to develop a bunch of new archetypes for Priest that maybe aren't Dragon Priest in that scenario, but it's never to say like, "Okay, Priest is very powerful right now. Now we want to make it not as powerful, the next expansion." Hitting the same archetype over and over again is generally something we try to avoid, but in terms of just class power levels we try to make them, you know, as equal as we can.It's a good question. I'd say pretty similar. There were no decks that like, came out of the woodwork completely and just really, really surprised us. I would say that Odd Warrior is a little bit more successful than I thought it was going to be. It's really cool seeing the old school “gaining a lot of armour” deck be pretty successful. I think a lot of people really enjoyed that fantasy of just being like the tank that is tanking up the entire game. So we knew that that was going to be a deck that was going to be moderately successful but I think recently we were checking that data and actually the most successful deck in the meta was Odd Warrior, at least for the day or two snapshot that we were looking at. So we weren't expecting that one to be quite as prevalent as it was.And then also Deathrattle Hunter is probably a little more popular than we thought it was going to be. There was a Deathrattle Rogue there for a while that we thought might catch on a little bit more than it did, but outside of that I would say that most of the decks are - we're in a pretty diverse spot right now. And that's the hope right? So you're doing final design on a set and you're trying to balance all the classes, and give everyone a bunch of archetypes, and I think that's kinda where we are right now. So, that was the hope and that was the expectation so it seems like things are going pretty well. At least early on.Yes and no. I think Togwaggle as a card - it's a neutral right, so it’s available to all the classes but I think it's really Druids that are sort of utilising it the best. So, I think that we knew that was going to be a thing in Druid, but I would say even then it's really not the most successful deck that Druids can be playing. It's one of the things that makes those Control Druid archetypes feel a little bit different but I wouldn't say it’s even in the top two or three really, of like, the most powerful things that class is doing. So it's really cool that it was able to have a different win condition there, but in terms of power level I wouldn't say it's surprising. It's actually not super powerful.Yeah I would say that there's been a lot of perception around Druid being super powerful and a lot of times like - I'm always wary of talking about data publicly because it can really come off the wrong way, because we really do balance around perception to some degree, right? We want people to have fun, we don't just look at numbers and say, "Everything is looking pretty good data-wise, therefore everyone must be having a good time." That's not how we look at things but I'm afraid that sometimes it comes off that way whenever we say that we're looking at data. So, there's been a lot of perception that Druid is very powerful. I think that it hasn't really aligned with what's actually happening.Yeah, I mean maybe that's true from a power level perspective but… I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, like the fact that... it's hard to understand exactly what archetype of deck that is. Some of it is the class uses a lot of the same cards, but the reason those things are bad normally is that they feel very similar to lose to or play against, and I think that a lot of the Druid decks actually have, you know, very different win conditions. And then even though the Token Druid deck a lot of times uses cards like Wild Growth - the same as a Control Druid deck - the win condition and those decks play very, very differently. So when a certain class has a bunch of different viable archetypes that you can play, that's something really positive for us, you know? I wish every class had as many archetypes as Druid has right now. It's hard to accomplish sometimes but that's kind of the dream for every class, is that they have seven or eight decks to play.I'm actually pretty happy with it. There’s been a Warrior mech deck that's been seeing some amount of play. I think that specifically for mechs, it's one of the things that gets better over time. Not necessarily because, you know, we're going to add Magnetic cards or whatever, but it's mostly just because the decks that seem to be really powerful early on in the meta games are the decks that don't really introduce that many cards.Decks that were pretty good in the past and then they add two or three cards - people have been refining those decks like Odd Rogue or whatever for four months and then a new set comes out and makes it a little bit better - but the really optimised version of that deck kind of already existed. Like, people have already been playing with it forever but when you talk about a deck like, Mech Warrior, it's kind of a deck with just twenty cards in it. So it's still [going to take] a really long time for that deck to get optimised by the public, and even though so many people are out there sharing decks on Reddit and places like HSReplay and stuff, it still takes a really long time to come up with the optimised version.I remember, even when we were talking about Odd Rogue, people were really figuring out what is the best version of that deck and messing around with cards like Bittertide Hydra. Void Ripper ended up being super strong in that deck but people weren't really putting it in until two/three months into the meta.When we’re talking about Mech Warrior , there's so many new cards there and there's so many different ways to build that deck, I think it's going to be one of those ones that's going to get a lot better towards the end of the meta game, when people are figuring out what's the exact right version to build.Our philosophy is still to make balance changes when we feel like balance changes are necessary, not necessarily to make balance changes just to shake things up. I think ideally the best way for a meta to evolve is, you know, on its own. The players making new decks that counter the decks that were popular before, and there being a cycle like that, rather than us coming in and making the meta shift for players. Giggling Inventor has been really, really popular. Part of that is by design, we think that having neutral, powerful taunt minions sort of makes the game interesting, it gives people options when there's a lot of aggro decks out there. We did that with Tar Creeper, we did that with Sludge Belcher, and those cards were on purpose, they were powerful on purpose. That said, there's still a line somewhere, so we have to determine whether or not, you know, it's really crossing the line of either popularity or power level…I think when I say things like this people will think that, "Oh yeah, okay, they're definitely changing it," but we’re undecided for sure - we're still waiting on more people to be talking about it and see what people feel like, because I think it's really split in the community. I think a lot of people actually like the fact that Giggling Inventor exists, even though it is very prevalent. You don't really feel like, you know, Giggling Inventor was the reason you lost a lot of times even though maybe it was. But I think that's the only card that really taking a close eye at right now. But that can always change.

Cam Shea is Editor in Chief of IGN's Australian content team and tries to spend as much time as possible in Japan. He's on Twitter