Class Designer for
@Diablo
IV |
@fabtcg
US National Champion | Enhancement Shaman in
@Fun_Detected
| Biomedical Engineer | Steelers fan | Views are my own
Today was my last day on
@PlayHearthstone
. It's been an absolute pleasure working on Mercenaries over the past year.
Next week, I will be starting on the
@Diablo
4 team as a class designer! Really looking forward to this exciting new opportunity!
I won the
@fabtcg
Battle Hardened event this weekend at
@SCGCON
! Bravo was definitely the Star of the Show, he got me a Pro Tour invite, and this golden hat! Shoutout to
@PEshghy
who made most of the deck and also piloted it to top 4.
@themattlondon
I was in this exact situation and said Hades. So many great things to say about that game.
Great moment to moment combat, impactful choices during the run, and when you died it never felt that bad since you got interesting story progression. And so much more I canโt fit here
A good run this weekend, 2nd place with fatigue Oldhim, super happy with the deck!
@Hadesblade
is the best player in the world though, and my deck came up short in the finals.
Pretty excited for one of the changes coming to Mercenaries mode in the next patch.
Not to be too mysterious about it, but it is a change I think nearly 100% of players will love.
Today at work, I have 6 hours scheduled to playtest and give feedback on upcoming Hearthstone card sets, as well as Battlegrounds and Mercenaries content.
AND THEY ARE PAYING ME FOR IT!!!
I love my job ๐
Here is my winning list from the
@fabtcg
Battle Hardened event at
@SCGCON
. Once again, big props to Pat Eshghy who made the deck with me and got 3rd place with it!
if anyone at dreamhack wants a free pack of dtd or evo, come over to the tabletop area and learn how to play FaB (no verification that you don't already know how to play necessary)
We are back next week for another
#DiabloIV
stream! This one is a Campfire Chat with
@AZJackson85
,
@TinMan354
, (and a giant plush treasure goblin)!
We talk Classes, Resistances, Unique Item updates and more.
October 10th - 11am PDT
I have seen some confusion about exactly how the new damage buckets calculations for Critical Strike and Vulnerable work in Season of Blood, so letโs work through an example.
Today at work, I have 6 hours scheduled to playtest and give feedback on upcoming Hearthstone card sets, as well as Battlegrounds and Mercenaries content.
AND THEY ARE PAYING ME FOR IT!!!
I love my job ๐
Had an absolute blast at the
@ArcaneEvents_
Living Legend tournament today! The format is a ton of fun and the event was exceptionally well run. Looking forward to more AGE events in the future!
Got 2nd place at the first Living Legend Battle Hardened tournament, only losing to
@ACHILLES2032
(twice!). Now I am officially washed up, only the second best Starvo player in the world.
Blizzcon tomorrow!!!!
It's going to be my first time, not just as an employee, but ever. I can't wait to see everyone, and if you see me, please say hi!
Pretty excited for one of the changes coming to Mercenaries mode in the next patch.
Not to be too mysterious about it, but it is a change I think nearly 100% of players will love.
Here is my hot take for
#fabtcg
spoiler season:
Generic cards from early sets like Sink Below, Wounded Bull, even Tunic set the bar too high for the direction new sets are going. Most/all of these older cards should be banned or rotated to make room for new cards.
Let's talk Merc design! And who better to talk about than the newest member of the Merc's roster, Murky!
Murky was designed to fill specific gaps in the current Murloc team, and also stay true to his "frustrating to play against" nature from HotS. ๐งต1/14
I know I have said it before, but I will say it again, I absolutley LOVE my job! ๐ฅฐ
Every day, I wake up excited to go to work and make games. Prior to working in the games industry, I was never excited for work. Really glad I made a change.
"We strongly encourage players to focus on fundamentals of the draft format"
Call me old fashioned, but I think that knowing the structure of a pack is one of the most "fundamental" things for a draft format.
@fabtcg
Won the Battle Hardened in my hometown of Pittsburgh!!! Bravo Star of the Show and Awakening are really good, but looking forward to a meta shakeup for the
@fabtcg
Pro Tour in a few weeks.
I love talking about Merc design!
Lokholar is obviously a very Frost centric character in lore, but when he was being designed, we already had a strong Frost comp, between Jaina, Varden, Lich King, and Balinda.
๐งต1/7
@TinMan354
Hey Charles, was wondering if you could give us some insight into the decision making process for the mercenary below. Regarding his Abilities/equipment.
I can see you want to add some additional randomness to the meta. It can be challenging to calculate in PVP. ๐๐๏ธ
Lost in the top 4 of the
#fabtcg
Battle Hardened today, but had some amazing games against great players.
Also got a super awesome playmat with one of my favorite cards, Winterโs Wail!
Sure let's talk Deathwing!
(Sorry I missed this earlier, been pretty busy, but I aim to do a lot more of these covering specific Merc and boss designs going forward)
1/12 ๐งต
@TinMan354
Hey
@TinMan354
, Nice work everyone on the new Mercs/Release. I bet it was a busy/exhausting period leading up to this!
Was wondering which one was your favorite and if you could talk about the design? The last one - LOK - was really cool!
My favorite was Deathwing ๐
๐๐๏ธ
@SloopdoopFaB
Thatโs true, but Dynasty was released nearly 1 year ago. The best new hero (in CC) since then has been Uzuri, with 92 LL points, and the other 7 new heroes have 12 LL points between them. If a handful of them were bad, thatโs one thing, but all of themโฆ
All the people I follow talking about
#fabtcg
are saying how uncertain they are about their decks for the Pro Tour.
I'll break from this trend and say I am really confident in my list, I have like 75 of the 80 cards locked in and it feels great! ๐
Downright medium results from the
#fabtcg
Pro Tour this weekend, 4-4 in constructed, 3-3 in draft.
I was the most prepared I have ever been for a major event, and I also felt like I played pretty well, but sometimes things just donโt go your way in card games.
New episode of
@TheCombatChain
podcast is out, where we discuss the Fatigue Oldhim deck that I took to 2nd place at The Calling in Indianapolis last weekend!
We also talk about my history playing competitive card games and how to improve at
@fabtcg
My year in
#fabtcg
2nd Calling Indianapolis
120th Pro Tour Baltimore
1st US Nationals
12th BH Pittsburgh
88th Worlds
2nd BH Barcelona
Strong results at tier 3 and lower events, still struggling at the tier 4 events, just like last year. Looking to improve that going forward.
My year in
#fabtcg
Top 8 calling indianapolis
18th PT Baltimore
Top 8 Bh Atlanta
Top 4 US Nationals
T4 Team BH Portland
2nd place Pti Events Portland and Colombus
1st place BH STL
1st Place Pti event STL
1st place in the first ll event BH Barcelona
Won another Pro Quest with Oldhim! Luckily I played my buddy
@AzarithStryffe
in the finals, and since I already won last week, he got the invite passed down!
I am starting to think this Oldhim hero might be pretty good...
Day 6
#fabfitnesschallenge
I may not be posting daily updates but donโt worry, I am still picking things up and putting them down every day.
Also, I love this shirt
#HailLilith
Halfway through the
#fabfitnesschallenge
. I have been impressed with my own consistency, but living in a place with beautiful weather and a nice gym makes it pretty easy to stay active everyday!
@MagicEsports
@MTG_Arena
"And you can be one of them!" if you already did something (top 1000) before this article was published. If this is your first time hearing about this, you cannot qualify
2022 was a pretty amazing year for me, maybe my best yet.
- Got hired full-time at my dream job working on
@Diablo
- Had good success playing
@fabtcg
and traveled to many tournaments
- Maintained my good health
Looking forward to 2023... (1/2)
My first
#fabtcg
event was a Calling! Talk about being thrown right into the deep end, but I managed to go 4-4, and it instantly cemented my love for the game
My
@fabtcg
friends will appreciate this. Our LGS owner draws these cute pictures based on the event code. Here is the aquatic sheep from our Armory last night
The driving force behind the Varden rework was to make them less frustrating to play against. Simply put, Varden was too consistently disruptive with very few options to effectively counteract. ๐งต1/4
@TinMan354
I would love some insight on the recent Varden rework, I think those changes surprised most people but have been generally well received after playing with them. Have some theories myself on why those changes were made but curious to see the thought process behind it.
Day 3 of the
#fabfitnesschallenge
. Going to the gym everyday this month. I have always been fairly healthy but struggled to get a really consistent workout schedule, so a perfect time to buckle down.
July is the official start of the second
#fabfitnesschallenge
. I will personally be working with the
#fabtcg
legend
@brodiespurlock
every single day.
Everyone's goals are different and it's up to you to set your own targets. Anything from weightlifting, cardio, eating healthier,
My path, a hard pivot after realizing I liked games more than my degree
โก๏ธUndergrad in Bioengineering
โก๏ธManufacturing Engineer
โก๏ธFreelance Content Creator
โก๏ธContract Game Designer, Dota Underlords
โก๏ธContract Game Designer, Hearthstone
โก๏ธAssociate Game Designer, Diablo
Share your career path into the games industry:
โก๏ธ SCAD BFA
โก๏ธ Concept Artist & Texture Painter
โก๏ธ 2D Art Lead
โก๏ธ Gnomon School of VFX
โก๏ธ Associate Games Producer
iโm the elusive person who went to school for games and then actually worked in games.
Landed in Vegas for
#fabtcg
Nationals! Feeling great about my deck for the tournament, but regardless of what happens, excited for a weekend of fun with friends.
Lots of great changes in the latest
@DotaUnderlords
Patch, reworked Underlords, balance and Jail changes. If you are feeling lost, I break it all down for you here!
Finished the day 6-1 at
#fabtcg
Nationals, feeling pretty good going into day 2! Lots of my teammates are also 6-1 so hopefully I donโt play any of them tomorrow.
Neputulon and Ozumat are coming for the throne in Patch 23.4!
๐Throne of the Tides Mini Set!
๐Battlegrounds Updates
๐Diablo Returns
๐And more!
@fabtcg
Could you expand on this point?
โGEM system prefers to pair players with the same records and similar Eloโ
So in a tournament, high ELO players are more likely to be paired vs other high ELO players? So itโs better to drop your ELO before a big tournament for easier matches?
@Fra3nky
@mwadsit
You have discovered the secret tech!
Both equipment will trigger, and you will be able to get 4 Mercs in play this way. But, when one of them dies, you will not be able to replace them if you still have 3 Mercs left alive.
Iโm really excited for my first BlizzCon!
I canโt wait to meet so many of the people I have only known virtually for years, and also all the fans who loves these games as much as I do. Hope to see you there!
A legendary adventure awaits you at
#BlizzCon
โ๏ธ 2 Full Days of BlizzCon
๐น๏ธ Opening Ceremony
๐ค Panel Discussions
๐ Community Night
๐ Overwatch World Cup
And more!
Details here:
We are aware of a bug where Murky's tasks don't automatically grant the next one in the chain when completed. A fix for that should be in a hotfix later this week.
Now we do 100 base * 3.5 (50% close + 50% burning + 150% crit + 1) * 1.5 (50% crit baseline + 1) = 525 damage.
Same with Vulnerable, we would add your Vulnerable damage in along with your other affixes then multiply by 1.2 at the end.
For Snowball, the design chat went something like this:
"Hey we have this cool snowball art"
"Huh, what would a snowball ability do in Mercs?"
"Umm, a Frost ability that grows over time, like, you know, a snowball rolling down the hill"
"Cool, ship it!"
7/7
@Ironforce92
@hsdecktech
There is work being done on that front, but I am not directly working on it, so I don't feel comfortable saying any more than that.
@RhysTheRedeemed
Magicโs version of tempo has no relevance in FaB, and their classification of aggro/midrange/control does not map to FaB decks at all. I think the idea of matchup %s carry over pretty directly though.
Not the best results at the Pro Tour, finished 7-7. I felt like my deck was great and I would register the same list again.
I had some bad luck at key times and I probably didnโt play as well as I could have. Looking forward to the new set and Worlds later this year.
#fabtcg
Finished 9-5 in the
#fabtcg
Pro Tour! Probably good enough for top 64 and a big step up over my 7-7 in the last PT.
Went 5-3 in CC with Fai, and 4-2 in draft both times on Isylander. Wouldnโt change my CC deck much if I had to do it again, just hope to see less Guardians.
๐
#3yearsofFAB
, 3 days of FAB Giveaways๐
DAY 2!
Late to the Party but want to join the fun? We have a Flesh and Blood Ultimate Starter Pack to giveaway to one lucky winner!
To enter:
๐Retweet with the hashtag
#3yearsofFAB
๐Follow
@fabtcg
@ZombiesGoNomNom
@IksarHS
For some Mercs, we look at whether or not they are fulfilling a niche. Yu'lon like you mentioned, same with Alexstrazsa and Athissa in the last patch. Those Mercs were not being played much, even though the things they should have been countering were fairly popular.