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Creature Valuation: How Blizzard Assigns Costs to Cards

By: curi 

For a game still in closed beta testing, Hearthstone is quite balanced. Of course, it's not perfect and Blizzard will no

doubt make some further adjustments based on game results, but it's off to a very good start. After the last big patch

with the huge rogue and druid nerfs, classes have mostly equaled out. So how exactly does Blizzard do it? That is, howdo they balance and assign mana costs to cards?

I believe Blizzard used a pretty simple point system to initially balance most creatures and we can reverse engineer how

it works. Once we know the point system, we can quickly judge which cards are overpowered and underpowered fortheir cost. And for cards with non-standard abilities, we can see how many points the ability is being priced at, compare

with other abilities with known prices, and see if it's a good deal.

After careful examination, I've come up with a simple formula for how cards should be valued. Each of a card's

characteristics and power contributions to its "point value". The number of points that a creature costing x mana has is

approximately:

Card Value = 1 + (x * 2)  

That is, an ideal 1 mana creature should have 3 points of value, an ideal 2 mana creature should have 5 points of value,

etc... Here are various stats and abilities that are evaluated and their estimated worth:

  1 Attack: 1 point

  1 Health: 1 point

  Taunt: 1 point

  Spell Damage +1: 1 point

  Charge: 3 points

  Divine Shield: 3 points

  Draw card (battlecry or deathrattle): 3 points

  Deal damage battlecry: 2.5 points per 1 damage

For example, Boulderfist Ogre is a 6 mana card, so that means it should get 1+ 6 * 2 = 13 points. Sure enough, it has 6

attack and 7 health, which adds up to 13 points. According to our formula, it's a standard, balanced card. Chillwind

Yeti costs 4 mana for a 4/5, which also fits the formula. Bloodfen Raptor is 2 mana for a 3/2, which also fits theformula. Sen'jin Shieldmasta is 3/5 with taunt for 4 mana. 4 mana makes a 9 point card. It has 8 points of attack and

health, plus 1 point for the taunt, so it 's balanced as well.

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Some cards are stronger than the formula suggests. One such example is Azure Drake. It is 4/4 with spell damage and

draw a card, all for 5 mana. 5 mana creatures should have 11 points(1+5*2) according to our forula. Azure Drake has 8

 points of attack and health, +1 for spell damage, and +3 for drawing a card, which makes 12 points total. Surely enough,Azure Drake, as most people who have the beta know, is a very good card.

Some cards are weaker than the formula suggests like Silverback Patriarch, which is 1/4 taunt for 3 mana. It should

have 7 points for the mana cost, but it only has 5 from attack and health, plus 1 more from taunt. Actually quite a few

taunt creatures are 1 point short, and are not great cards, but the "good" taunts like Sen'jin Shieldmasta and Sunwalker  

fit the formula.

The formula is not perfectly accurate. Cards that cost 2 mana or less usually get an extra point. Also, sometimes classspecific cards or legendaries get an extra point. Most cards either fit the formula within one point, but there areexceptions.

The reason that 1-2 mana creatures sometimes get extra points (and rightfully so) is that you're using up a card to play a

small creature, and cards are valuable. For the opposite reason, high mana cost neutral cards (like Core Hound and War

Golem) often get one point less than the formula will suggest. You're getting an especially big creature for only one

card used up, so it can be slightly less mana efficient and still provide value. However the high mana cost legendarycreatures usually are as good as the formula or even a little better (King Krush fits the formula, Malygos is better).

 Now that we have a general idea of how Hearthstone creatures work from this perspective, let's look over some

examples. Then when you play, you can use the same methods to analyze any other creatures you encounter.

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A good place to see how pricing works is with Druid of the Claw. This card lets you choose charge or 2 health and

taunt. That shows Blizzard treats those as equivalently good options. Overall the card offers 8 points for the 4/4, and 3

more from the choose one, for 11 points total. It's 5 mana, so it should have 11 points. It's right on the formula for eitherchoice. But you get the flexibility of two choices, which makes it better than the formula. Thus, it's a good card.

Ironbark  Protector costs 8 mana so it should get 17 points. It has 8+8 points from it's attack and health, and 1 more for

taunt makes 17, so it fits the formula again. Mogu'shan warden, the 1/7 taunt for 4 mana, also fits the formula.

However, Fen Creeper , Bootybay Bodyguard, Silverback Patriarch and Lord of the Arena are all 1 point worse than the

formula. They are not very good cards.

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What about cards with non-standard abilities? Acidic Swamp Ooze has 5 points of attack and health for 2 mana. That's

on formula, but cards at 2 mana or less always need an extra bonus point to be very good. Ooze has the ability to

destroy a weapon. To be a fair card, it needed 1 point in addition to its attack and health. So we can see the weapon

destroying ability as priced at 1 point. However, it's a VERY good ability. In my opinion, it 's much better than a 1 pointability like taunt or spell damage, though situational. So ooze is an above average card.

Ironforge Rifleman is around half a point underpowered (2+2+2.5 makes 6.5, it should have 7 points). Stormpike

Commando is fair (4+2+2.5*2 = 11 points, the correct amount for 5 mana). Fire Elemental is very

"overpowered"(6+5+2.5*3 = 18.5, it should be 13 for 6 mana.)

But most of us who've played the game already knew Rifleman was average and Fire Elemental was overpowered. Sowhat is the value of our formula here? Well, it's an organized way to understand and quantify the cards, and it lets us

quickly analyze cards we aren't familiar with.

Consider  Al'Akir the Windlord. Is he strong or weak? How do you tell? He's harder to analyze. But let's try out the

formula. 8 mana gets you 17 points. He has 3/5 stats worth 8 points. Add 3 for charge, 3 for divine shield, and 1 for

taunt. Let's price the windfury at 3 since he has 3 attack, and it lets him attack for 3 a second time. That means he'sworth 18 points, he got 1 extra point. Considering he's a legendary and has powerful competitors for high mana cost

legendaries, he is an OK card, pretty well balanced.

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Windfury harpy, being a 4/5, has its windfury priced at 4 points. This fits the formula for a fair price if you're willing

to pay 4 for that windfury (which makes sense because it can deal 8 damage per turn to the opposing hero, so it's kind of

like an 8/5 creature for 6 mana, which is fair). Thrallmar farseer, being 2/3, has the windfury priced at 2 points, makingit 7 points for 3 mana which is balanced. If you want to take advantage of windfury by buffing your creature with

 blessing of kings, shattered sun cleric, dark iron dwarf, or something else, then it's more efficient to get windfury for the

cheaper price on the Thrallmar Farseer . 

Loot Hoarder, Novice Engineer and Bloodmage Thalnos are interesting cards. They are all 6 points for 2 mana,

which is balanced. (In my opinion thought, card drawing should probably be valued at 4 and not 3) Innervate, forexample, costs a card but gives 2 mana, which is worth 4 points, so that is a hint cards are worth close to 4 points),

making them pretty good. However, creatures with less than 2 attack are usually bad because they can be killed off by

an enemy creature without doing much in return. And creatures with less than 2 health are usually bad because they can

 be killed by the rogue, mage and druid hero powers, as well as shiv and mortal coil. The weaknesses of small creatures

help balance out these cards. (Azure Drake, on the other hand, is a solid creature with card drawing priced at only 2

 points, and it might be "overpowered".)

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require your opponent to use up more damage spells to kill it. In Hearthstone, creatures usually die from taking damage,

so having high health can mean your opponent has to damage your creature 2 or 3 times in order to kill it, rather than

 just once. (There are some cards like Assassinate and Polymorph that can kill creatures no matter what health they have.

These are good cards and popular, but most decks will only have 2 cards like this. Meanwhile they might have 6 spells

that deal damage, and 15 creatures that deal damage.)

Another relevant issue is that attack and health are more valuable when a creature has less of those stats. Consider a 1/2

creature worth 3 points. Supposed we were able to add 3 more points to a creature. What abilities and stats would we

add to make it have the best value? Well, making it 3/3 would be a good option. Meanwhile, adding divine shield or

charge would not be as good. With bigger creatures, charge works better. If you have a 15 point creature (7 mana), then

the 3 points for charge only uses up 20% of his points. With a 6 point creature, charge uses up 50% of his points.

In conclusion, I want to say that I do not think this formula is absolutely perfect. Perhaps I've inspired someone to

figure out a better one. But I think it's a good starting place to analyze creature cards, which provides reasonable

answers. It may be especially valuable to new players who don't yet have experience playing with every card.