Setesh, the Destructor - Custom Hearthstone Card

Setesh, the Destructor

11th June, 2019 (RR)

Made by DestroyerR

DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Kovachut thanks! As I mentioned, the easy way out of this problem is the Health spell/Immune fix, which I think makes sense. Also, the Glinda combo does kill your opponent on the spot, if you have played a Coppertail Imposter beforehand. Not a major point, but still
Kovachut 4 years ago
After having read your posts, here is what I am about to say:

Regarding your first paragraph (talking about consistency and all) - yeah, I was aware that those combos might sound way too complex for somebody, but thing is, unlike the current warlock ones you wouldn't need any set-up to pull those off. Right now if you play the Patron-Howlfiend/Knife Juggler combo, you need a bunch of ticks from the Emperor, i.e. you need to find a way to survive until then. With Setesh you only need to find VI and draw the rest of your deck.

Btw the Glinda Mechwarper combo is a meme, because a) it doesn't kill the opponent on the spot, b) most control decks can kill your board (Brawl, Twisting Nether, DK Anduin...), c) against aggro, if you manage to gather those 3 components by turn 9, you have already won.

Regarding the healing options - I wasn't clear about that, sorry. I meant, that warlocks have good healing options for them to survive, before they play Setesh and the aforementioned immunity granting minions.

Regarding the third paragraph - my answer lies partly in the response above. I didn't say anything about having 30 Health. You just need to play Setesh, VI and then you can draw all you want. Unlike the tavern brawl, you have better chances at finding cycle and getting to your combo pieces at that time. Because by turn 8 you would draw a heavy amount of cards with your HP. You just have to make sure you survive until then, but this is possible, because we have a lot of cheap removals - defile, hellfire, spellstones, mortal coil.

4th paragraph - I mentioned Temporus only to show you how uninteractive this legendary would be, if priests had paladin's Time Out!. Tbh I also thought about Mecha'thun, but I couldn't picture how Setesh would make it more problematic. Warlocks can remove Bloodbloom, but they still need to destroy their deck, which can take a lot of time.

As for the last two paragraphs of your first post. I understand you well, but tell me what you prefer. I am grateful to you for aprpeciating my constructive criticism, but if you feel like I am just hindering you from exploring new areas and bothering you with my arguments around the wild format (many users despise it), I could stop. Or at least with the things happening in wild. I have enjoyed many of your previously designed cards - my most favourite one is George, Forever Lost - so I like your style.
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Kosmyc that’s a good idea. Another cleaner fix (not necessarily contradictory to your suggestion; both can be implemented), is to change the game mechanics so that you can’t cast Health spells while Immune. It would make sense as well: it’s comparable to trying to play a 5 Mana spell when you have 5 overloaded Mana Crystals. They exist, but they’re not spendable right now.
Kosmyc (3.5)4 years ago
Maybe if it immediately ended your turn? Currently, you are the first to benefit from it, and if you have a deck designed around it, it'd be game winning. But if it ended your turn (and maybe had better stats/taunt to compensate), maybe then it'd work better? idk throwing ideas out cause i like the card, but as Kovachut said, it's uninteractive in it's current iteration.
Kovachut 4 years ago
I'm still reading your post, but I just want to say, that I've imagined playing one of those immunity granting cards BEFORE going for the win-condition. So there is no reason to talk about health loss. This is why you can try out combos, which were unthinkable before (example with Leeroy and Glinda).
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
Wow, someone got too excited lol ^^

Also, @Kovachut:

“I'm sorry to say, but I agree with the users down below, that Setesh is problematic for the game.”

Don’t be! Constructive criticism like yours is like, THE best thing a custom card creator can get. You’re helping me and others get better at card creation with your detailed feedback, and are therefore helping the HearthCards gallery grow in quality (unlike the toxic users this community inevitably has). So... thanks!
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Kovachut when I made this card, I decided to not put a condition on it because EVERYTHING costing Health would not be able to enable hyper-combos simply because you’d run out of Health and lose. The Rin+Sac Pact combo, for instance, is more than 40 Health together. As for the rest, they either require probably too much Health at that point of the game (remember, we’re at least on turn 8) or have the weakness every many-card combo has - consistency. Remember the Glinda+Mechwarper+Magnetic combo? Sounds broken, right? And you don’t even need to pay everything with Health! Well, turns out it’s just a meme, because no amount of board control or healing will save you from the awful consistency of that combo. Speaking of healing...

The survival options are worse then one would think. For example: After playing Setesh, Healbot (which you classified under “a lot of healing”) would heal you for a grand total of... 3 Mana. Reno would admittedly help, but that’s a Legendary which has a no-duplicates condition, so how many crazy combos are you going to be able to do?

Same with cycling: ok, you’re finding your combo cards by playing a lot of cycling, but when you get to them, who’s to say you’ll be able to play them? Remember, if you’re at turn 8 (in the best case scenario) and still at 30 Health, you’re probably winning.

Yes, I agree this card narrows design space, but is that so uncommon in Hearthstone? You mentioned Temporus yourself; I’m thinking Mecha’thun, which is a NEUTRAL. And as I explained, this would enable much less than it would seem to enable at first glance.

About that last point, I must say I’ve been guilty of making many cards that would narrow future designs if printed, maybe because in a custom card site that will probably never go into the game, I feel more compelled to satisfy the creative and aesthetic demands of cardmaking. Don’t get me wrong, I do try to be balanced, but accounting for future designs as well is too restrictive to me, as I’m first and foremost an idea creator.

BUT, there’s one point where you have me. This card would be alright if it weren’t for Immunity. I’ll admit I completely forgot about Illusionist and Mal’ganis while making this, and for that reason alone, I should’ve put a condition on Setesh’s Battlecry. Although if I can just try to make it easier upon myself here, we’re talking about wild here. I know that’s no excuse for broken design, but on the mode that most people play and associate hearthstone with, this would be fair, if design-restrictive.
Kovachut 4 years ago
Sorry for the mistakes in my posts. Those were made due to inadvertence.
Kovachut 4 years ago
I admit, that right now in standard people can't abuse Setesh like they can in wild. There aren't any immunity granting cards, the healing options are few and very weak and there aren't any good finishers - I can only think of Malygos + Alex or Leeroy + Glinda, but you need a lot of health to pull off those combos, so those scenarios are very unlikely.

However this fact shouldn't calm you. The Control/Hand archtype takes a big part of warlock's identity and sooner or later it's bound to receive more support cards in form of healing. And as I mentioned in my previous post, Setesh limits design space. The devs have to be careful what kind of cards they give us, in order to prevent uninteractive turns. And since your legendary's design bares a lot of risks, I don't think the devs would ever create it - even if standard was the only existing format.

For me Setesh looks exactly like Temporus. People treated him as a meme, but I read an interesting article that talked about the dragon's ill design. The card feels either useless or devastating, if there is a lot of support to make it work. Priest will never get a cheap self-immunity spell, but if this ever happens, the class can literally enter Solitaire mode and completely ignore the opponent's plays:

/watch?v=bBmh_BvGUjI and go to 4:02
Kovachut 4 years ago
Hi, DestroyerR. Since warlock is my favourite class, I love to check fan-made cards for this class and express my opinion on them.

And I'm sorry to say, but I agree with the users down below, that Setesh is problematic for the game. Maybe not in Standard that much (I will talk about it later), but certainly in wild. And I understand I may have gotten annoying with my constant wild posts, but this format is still part of the game and it's equally important to me.

Let's start our discussion with the following: Do you remember the "Blood Mages" tavern brawl? and why people hated it? - this was because some classes could win on turn 1, if they mulligan-ed for right draws. Health as a resource and as a replacement for mana SHOULD be taken with cautious, because it can exceed the 10-mana barrier greatly, as long as you can afford it. Now, I'm aware that warlock doesn't start the game with Setesh's effect and we don't gain armour, when we draw cards like druids, but this doesn't hide the fact that health instead of mana offers a lot of cheating and limits design for future cards (mainly defensive oriented).

There a lot of ways warlocks would be able to abuse this battlecry. In wild they could:

- use cards, that grant them hero immunity (Violet Illusionist and Mal'ganis) and basically make the "Health" resource infinite!!!!

- use a lot of healing to survive (Reno, healbots);

- cycle a lot (Coldlight oracles, the soularium) once they play VI;

- use powerful finishers, that can end the game on the spot.

And this is what scares me - to see almost the same uninteractive turns, that we saw in that tavern brawl. Granted, the opponent can also be able to use this battlecry, but tell me, what can they do if the game ends after Setesh is being played? And if you need some examples for big finishing combos, I've made a small list featuring some of them:

- Rin, the first disciple + Dark Pact;

- Ragnaros/Leeroy Jenkins shenanigans with Cube or with Glinda Crowskin;

- Grim Patron + Howlfiend & Treachery/immuned knife jugglers + defile;

- Malygos, Faceless and some burn (Darkbomb, Soulfire);

- I could imagine even some weird C'Thun decks popping up, which might be considered as a meme, but would be possible to end the opponent with a blast (Brann + C'thun + bouncers).

And I'm sure I am probably missing other easy-to-pull-off combos, which would be enabled by having "infintie mana". As you can see, Setesh can enable a lot of scary things in wild, so that's a BIG no-no for me. Now, let's talk about standard (in a minute :P).
Kosmyc (3.5)4 years ago
Unless a combo card gets discarded, then it's concede lol @Shoeman
Shoemanband 4 years ago
I mean, Warlock is a disruption class, but when you play Void Contract or Demonic Project, they don't cause your opponent to instantly reconsider their entire strategy regardless of what deck they were playing.
Shoemanband 4 years ago
While this card is technically balanced, it's not fair for the opponent. There are very few cards in the game that can permanently change how the rest of the match plays out (Hakkar, some Hero cards), and those that do are usually slow effects that take a while to have a significant impact. None of them change the game to the same extent as this, and I think that such a disruptive, game-changing effect doesn't belong on an 8 Mana unconditional Battlecry minion.
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Kosmyc While you’ll certainly benefit from this effect more, since you built a deck that around it (as you should; else why would you run it?), but you can’t say this gives your opponent no chance to keep up, since the effect can be extremely beneficial to them as well. Your opponent can also use the fact you’re losing health way faster than normal as well to quickly kill you. There are many, many options for your opponent and many ways the game could go.

“uninteractive” is the last thing I’d call this.
Kosmyc (3.5)4 years ago
I kind of agree with Drewski on this one, mostly because Warlock already has much better self portection tools than other classes, (and sure) while other classes can gain a whole ton of tempo, it doesn't exactly, work as a thing. It's really uninteractive currently.
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Arschgesicht thanks!
Arschgesicht 4 years ago
I like the card. Cool effect.
DestroyerR (creator)4 years ago
@Drewski Pyroblast is dumb, what if your opponent has 10 Health or less and no heal? They auto-lose
Drewski 4 years ago
This is dumb, what if your opponent is semi low health? Then they can't play anything and auto-lose
Poondaedalin 4 years ago
This is either a great or a terrible idea. No idea which; it all depends on what healing/Immunity cards Warlock gets in the future. Cool idea though.