Hi all,
New Titan minions were revealed last week when we announced TITANS, our next expansion! Soon, the rest of the Titans will be revealed and we thought it would be a great time to answer some questions and really get into the nitty-gritty about how Titans work in Hearthstone. So we brought an expert along to give us the scoop—check it out if you want to know all the details of the new Titan keyword, and don’t forget to follow along with our Titan card reveals from July 3 to July 7!
The following is being posted on behalf of Clay Howell, a Senior Software Engineer on the Hearthstone team.
New Keyword: Titan!
Hello! The next expansion, TITANS, has been announced and along with it comes the brand-new Keyword: Titan! I’m here to break down exactly how this new keyword works, so let’s dive deep into the rules and edge cases.
We’ll start with the basics, and then get more nuanced. Titan is a new keyword found only on minions. This main difference between a regular minion and Titan minion is the following:
- Each Titan minion has 3 activated abilities.
- Each turn, Titan minions can use 1 of their 3 abilities instead of attacking.
- Titan minions can only use each ability once.
- After a Titan minion has used all 3 abilities, it will be able to attack like a regular minion.
For templating reasons, Titan minions do not show what their abilities are in their card textbox. In game, you can hover over a Titan minion in order to see the Titan’s abilities in the form of tooltips. These tooltips will show a lock icon in the top right corner after an ability is used. You can also inspect a Titan minion in the Collection Manager to see all of the Titan’s abilities. From now on, I will refer to Titan minions simply as “Titans”.
On the first turn a Titan is in play you can immediately use one of their abilities. This is true if the Titan is played, randomly summoned, recruited from your deck, sent to the future, or awakened from being dormant. An easy way to think about this is: If a normal minion with Charge can attack, a Titan in the same scenario can use one of their abilities.
If a Titan has Windfury, then that Titan can use two abilities in a single turn. Using the same logic, if a Titan is Frozen, then that Titan skips their next action. Assuming a Titan has used their last ability and has no more actions available on a turn, a Titan will be able to start attacking as if they were a regular minion on the following turn. With all of this in mind, if you can somehow give a Titan Mega-Windfury on the first turn it is in play, you could theoretically use all three abilities on the same turn, and then use the fourth and final action to attack an enemy minion or hero.
A Titan that is forced to attack will perform minion combat. A forced attack will not execute one of the Titan’s abilities, and it does not consume that Titan’s action for the turn. For example, let’s say your hero has a Trueaim Crescent equipped, and you have a Titan in play. If you use your hero to attack a minion with the Trueaim Crescent, your Titan would be forced to attack the target minion. Afterwards, the Titan would still be able to use an ability.
If a Titan is Silenced, they can’t use their abilities and instead can perform attacks as if they were a regular minion. Typically, silencing your own Titan wouldn’t be a good idea, but you can if you want to give your Titan the option to attack a specific target instead of using one of its abilities. If a Titan previously used an ability on your turn, and then is silenced afterwards, it will not be able to attack since it already took an action that turn. But if a Titan is silenced the turn it is played, before you use any of the Titan’s abilities, the silenced Titan would be asleep and would not be able to attack that turn.
When you copy a Titan, the state of its abilities is preserved. For example, if you play Eonar, use Eonar’s ability Flourish to refresh your mana crystals, and then Faceless Manipulator your Eonar, the copy will also have the same ability, Flourish, exhausted. The new copy of Eonar will still be able to act on that turn, it would just have one less ability available to choose from. The same rules apply when copying an enemy Titan. Your copy of that Titan will have the same abilities exhausted as the original Titan. Since exhausted abilities persist on new copies, it is usually best to copy a Titan before it has used an ability on your turn, so that your new Titan copy has as many Titan abilities available as possible.
If your Titan is returned to your hand with Shadow Step, Freezing Trap, or any other similar effect, the Titan would be reverted to its base definition, allowing you to use all of the Titan’s abilities once it comes into play again.
Titan abilities that deal damage are not increased by Spell Damage because Titan abilities are not spells.
If a Titan’s ability requires a target but there are no valid targets, it can’t be used. If a Titan still has abilities left to use, and all the abilities left for that Titan have no valid targets, then the Titan will be unable to take any action that turn (including not being able to attack).
If Mayor Noggenfogger is in play, and you control a Titan, you can still choose which ability your Titan will use, but the target of that ability, if a target is required, will be random. This is the same way Mayor Noggenfogger works with minions that have a Choose One ability.
Titans can’t be created as a result of a random evolution. Titans can’t be randomly discovered and won’t be randomly generated from cards with random generation effects.
If you have any more questions about Titans, feel free to ask! We’ll be checking in later today and adding answers to questions at a later date.
Edit: the following are questions and answers raised after the initial post (lightly edited for readability).
Q: When a Titan comes into play, do you get to decide when you use its ability during your turn? For example, is it like a battlecry and an ability must be used before any other action? Or is it like a standard minion attack and can be performed in any sequence?
A: After a Titan comes into play, and at any time during your turn, you can choose any ability to use, like you could with a regular minion’s attack action. The abilities are not used when coming into play like a Battlecry. As we’ve seen now that they’ve all been revealed, a minion could be both a Titan and have a Battlecry.
Q: Will a resurrected Titan have all of its abilities refreshed?
A: Yes.
Q: You mentioned being sent to the future by Anachronos. Does a Titan who comes back from Anachronos’s effect have all 3 abilities to choose from again? Or is it the same Titan that was sent and already used the first ability used?
A: A Titan with an ability exhausted, sent to the future by Anachronos, would still have that ability exhausted when it returns to play. However, it will be able to use a different ability on the same turn that it returns.
Q: If I were to play a Titan as a death knight, use the Titan’s ability, then use unholy frenzy to swing the Titan into a bigger minion, killing and resummoning it, would that titan have their 3 abilities reset? And would I be able to use another ability that turn?
A: Yes, it would be re-summoned with all abilities available, and yes you could use another ability immediately.
Q: Can I play Norgannon, use “play 1 secret” effect, copy Norgannon with Reverberations, and use the copy’s ability to get a “doubled” ability of one of the remaining?
A: Yes. Each copy keeps all “buffs” and will have the same abilities exhausted. The new copy will be able to use one of the remaining abilities right away.
Q: If I have a Titan with all three abilities used on board and I copy it in my hand, when I play it from hand will that Titan be able to attack right away?
A: No, the new copy in hand will have all the abilities refreshed with no abilities used.
When you make a copy of a Titan in play, the state of the abilities stays the same. But when you make a copy of a card and that copy is added to your hand, that card is reverted to its base definition, and none of the Titan’s abilities are exhausted.
Q: Will Norgannon’s secrets be countered by Counterspell?
A: No, Titan abilities are not spells and can’t be Counterspelled.
Q: Will Titans get +1/+1 after using one of their abilities if you have Rokara in play?
A: No, using abilities is not the same as an attack for effects like Rokara, Halveria Darkraven, or Annoying Fan.
Q: Does Stealth only break when a minion attacks, or does using its Titan ability also end the effect?
A: A Titan will only break stealth if the ability deals damage. If Norgannon has Stealth and uses Progenitor’s Power, it will lose stealth. If Norgannon has Stealth and uses Unlimited Potential, it will not lose stealth.
Q: V-07-TR-0N Prime has the ability Attach the Cannons. If I attach those cannons to a Poisonous or Lifesteal minion, does that work, or does the damage always originate from Voltron itself?
A: V-07-TR-0N will cause the attached minion to deal the damage. So if you attach those cannons to a Poisonous or Lifesteal minion, it would work!
Q: Will Zephyrs be able to understand Titans’ abilities?
A: No, Zephrys doesn’t know how to read card specific card text. Zephrys would see minions with stats. Zephrys would think that the Titans could attack, would not see the Titan abilities, or their exhausted state, and would offer options accordingly.
Q: With Titans, triple rune cards, and Bounce Around banned from random discover and generation pools, are you going to implement a UI icon on the cards in the collection to signify that the cards are limited in this way?
A: You make a good point. We are having discussions with UI if we should add a Collection Manager only tooltip that would denote if a card cannot be randomly generated. We don’t have anything to share on when (or if) that would happen, but it’s something we’re exploring.
Q: Does this mean that we’ll have support for more than one card being displayed when hovered over?
A: Yes. For example