Five Card Nerfs Coming in the Next Hearthstone Update - Druids, Win Axe, Murlocs, Hex
Five card changes are coming to Hearthstone in an upcoming patch which brings nerfs to several fan favourites, three being basic cards.
- The reason for nerfs to basic cards is due to too many cards from this set being included in those classes' decks.
- They're trying to limit additions to the Hall of Fame, so they're instead nerfing Murloc Warleader.
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
Blog Post
In an upcoming update, we will be making balance changes to the following cards:
Innervate
Now reads: Gain 1 Mana Crystal this turn only. (Down from 2)
Fiery War Axe
Now costs 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Hex
Now costs 4 mana. (Up from 3)
Murloc Warleader
Now reads: Your other Murlocs have +2 Attack. (Down from +2 Attack, +1 Health)
Spreading Plague
Now costs 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Developer’s Note: Basic Cards and Our Stance on Hall of Fame
After careful consideration, we chose to make changes to three Basic class cards: Innervate, Fiery War Axe, and Hex. While they can be regarded as staples in those classes’ card repertoires, too many Basic and Classic cards played in individual decks means less fun when new expansions are released.
Cards in the Basic set serve several purposes in the game, so we would rather make balance adjustments to them instead of moving them to the Hall of Fame, like we have done for cards in the Classic set. We are also trying to limit Hall of Fame changes to the start of each Hearthstone Year, which is why Murloc Warleader—a Classic card—is receiving a balance change instead of moving to the Hall of Fame.
Innervate
Several powerful variations of Druid are currently seeing play, and all of them utilize Innervate. Innervate creates explosive starts to the game that can be difficult for the opposing player to recover from. This change leaves Innervate as a simple Basic card and slows down the explosive start potential, while ensuring that it will be utilized in decks that revolve around playing inexpensive spells.
What other changes did we consider?
We considered a few other options for Innervate:
- Refresh 2 Mana Crystals.
- Gain 2 Mana Crystals this turn only and increase the mana cost to 1.
- Gain 6 Mana Crystals this turn only and increase the mana cost to 4.
Since Innervate is a basic card, we need it to be clear and simple. Along with Wild Growth, these cards inform newer players that Druids create mana as a part of their class identity.
We kept in mind that cards like Counterfeit Coin were strong in combination with other support cards, such as Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Edwin VanCleef, and Combo cards. With the right support cards for Innervate, it may end up still seeing play, but won’t be in every deck—which is ultimately what we’re aiming for with this change.
Fiery War Axe
Fiery War Axe has been a powerful Warrior weapon since the launch of Hearthstone. Already great tempo for its cost, Fiery War Axe is well complimented by Pirates and cards that synergize with weapons. Raising its mana cost by 1 will slow down the Warrior’s tempo and lower the overall power level of the card.
What other changes did we consider?
The other option we considered for Fiery War Axe was to lower its attack to 2, but that change didn’t feel intuitive enough. Generally, changing the mana cost of a card is less disruptive, because you can always see the mana cost of cards in your hand. Despite the increased mana cost of Fiery War Axe, we expect that it will still see play—other 3 mana 3/2 weapons, like Eaglehorn Bow, can be found in decks that may not have synergy with the weapon’s card text.
Hex
We’re not making the change to Hex due to a current power-level problem. Shaman is a class that currently has a lot of flexibility, but is lacking in both class identity and identifiable weaknesses. Changing Hex makes Shaman a bit weaker against big minions and worse at silencing—having both strengths and weaknesses in a class is important.
We are very wary of cards that also incidentally work as a silence. If a player wants to utilize a card with a silence effect, they should be giving up something else. For example, if a player decides to include Spellbreaker in their deck, then they are playing a card that is weak in some situations. Priest is an exception to this rule—silence is a part of their class identity.
Even though Hex is not always played in the more aggressive Shaman decks, we will be making this forward-thinking change with the overall identity of the class in mind. This includes avoiding Shaman cards that function as direct and powerful removal. We will continue moving forward with this design philosophy to help reinforce that ideal.
Developer’s Note: Regarding Murloc Warleader and Spreading Plague
Murloc Warleader
Murlocs are good at taking an early lead, and if a player can’t clear the board in time, the game can ultimately snowball to victory using cards like Murloc Warleader. Removing the Health buff from Murloc Warleader will make it easier for players to clear the board of murlocs, and still have it remain a Classic build-around card. Simplifying health buff interactions is an additional benefit of this change. For example, in its current state, having a Murloc Warleader in play then using Wild Pyromancer and Equality would not destroy other murlocs on the board, leading to unclear interactions for some players.
What other changes did you consider?
We considered changing both Rockpool Hunter and Murloc Warleader due to the current strength of Murloc Paladin in the early stages of the game. Changing either Rockpool Hunter or Murloc Warleader would accomplish this, but there are extra advantages to changing just Murloc Warleader: The simplification of health-giving buffs and additional room for future Murlocs since Warleader will be around longer than Rockpool Hunter.
Spreading Plague
Spreading Plague is a great defensive tool for Druid to protect themselves against aggressive decks, but it was too efficient at 5 mana. Raising the mana cost to 6 will slow the card down slightly, while still allowing for the defensive minions Spreading Plague creates to be utilized in the later stages of the game.
What other changes did you consider?
We considered changing Spreading Plague to 7 mana rather than 6, since it is currently the top performing card in Jade and Taunt Druid decks. However, since we are also changing Innervate, we decided to only add 1 mana to the cost of Spreading Plague.
Developer’s Note: Regarding Other Community Card Discussions
The community has mentioned other cards in balance-related discussions, such as Ice Block and Ultimate Infestation, and we wanted to talk about those cards as well even though we are not making any changes to them at this time.
Ultimate Infestation
Our team has discussed making a change to Ultimate Infestation since it feels bad to lose to. However, our data shows us how good each individual card performs in a deck relative to other cards in that deck. Spreading Plague ended up being the best performing card in Jade and Taunt Druid, Innervate was in the top three, and Ultimate Infestation was somewhere around the middle—but it felt much more powerful since it has a huge effect when played.
We considered changing all mentions of the number 5 in Ultimate Infestation to 4, or removing one of the effects entirely. With the other changes we are making to Druid, ramping out Ultimate Infestation before turn 10 should happen less often, so we decided to leave it as is.
Ice Block
We’ve seen discussions about moving Ice Block to the Hall of Fame. As previously mentioned, moving cards to the Hall of Fame occurs at the start of the Hearthstone Year, which will occur with the first expansion release in 2018. Our general stance regarding Hall of Fame is that we want to avoid moving cards mid-year.
We are excited for these changes, and we look forward to seeing how they will shake up the game.
Once these card changes are live, players will be able to disenchant the changed non-Basic cards (Murloc Warleader and Spreading Plague) for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks. Basic cards cannot be disenchanted and will not be available for an Arcane Dust refund.
murlocs, the war leader its a good support to beat the lich king with paladin
I have to say I'm overall incredibly disappointed with these nerfs. While I understand the problem presented by cards like Fire War Axe and Innervate, the nerfs done to them just took away all of their flavor, making Innervate essentially a coin and War Axe literally a worse Eaglehorn Bow.
The changes made to Hex and Warleader I understand, and I'm not gonna argue in favor or against those, and I did like the nerf to Spreading Plague, but I can't help but feel that moving Innervate and War Axe to the Hall Of Fame, or perhaps making the Axe a 2/2, would have been a much more elegant solution, and would have kept the flavor and not ruined outright such core identity-defining class cards.
The arguments you presented against doing exactly that are also incredibly weak, or just not justified all together: "The other option we considered for Fiery War Axe was to lower its attack to 2, but that change didn’t feel intuitive enough." and "We are also trying to limit Hall of Fame changes to the start of each Hearthstone Year" Why?, why are you trying to limit Hall Of Fame changes to the start of the year? What reason is so important, you would rather completely destroy some of the most flavorful and class defining cards in the game, instead of simply sending them to wild, where they could still be played?
And last but not least, where is the nerf to Ultimate Infestation? Why are you so keen on avoiding nerfing a card, that in my humble opnion, should never have been even considered being made in the first place? The value of that card is so incredibly insane that it single-handedly changed the whole druid playstyle, to one where they absolutely abuse all of their ramp, as soon as possible, so as to cast that card, and then win from there. The single card that allows them to, in most games, not have a single care about running out of cards, where before there was a delicate balance to be held, between ramping, and running out of cards, seen for example by the tendency to hold wild growths for draw, instead of ramping after the mid game.
Not to mention the lack of nerfs for the jade druid cards, which have proven, time and time again, to be very problematic, so I'm assuming we'll be getting more and better tech cards against jades in the future, since geist, while useful, proved to not be quite good enough to stop them.
Overall, I feel you guys really missed the mark on this one, I thought your nerfing policy had improved a lot, but you clearly proved me wrong.
It's really sad. I don't even understand why they nerfed hex when it doesn't even get used. Why didn't they nerf devolve? Why didn't they nerf Jade Idol? Why didn't they nerf ultimate? Ridulcilous. By the way, putting a basic card to wild is just very strange. I don't agree with how some basic cards are in wild and some are in standard.
I agree, ideally they would send the most problematic cards to wild, and then put some low power level class cards, that are meaningful in terms of class identity, from the older expansions, into the evergreen set to replace them. That way we don't lose those cards forever, and in case anyone feels like playing with their old decks and strategies again, they simply go to wild, but instead we get... well this.
Fiery War Axe
" Generally, changing the mana cost of a card is less disruptive, because you can always see the mana cost of cards in your hand"
So now we are officially balancing the game for people who don't bother reading card text. I have no words.
Who ever was responsible for even bringing up this "issue" should be immediately fired from Blizzard before his idiotic views spread to other members of the team.
This ^
I'm baffled by some of the justifications they come up with for decisions they make. And this understanding of the player base having the intellectual capacity of a newborn baby, like when they were saying more deckslots would be too confusing... I get it, there are stupid people, but maybe don't balance your strategy game around that particular demographic.
This ^
That ^
Blizzard nerfed Spreading Plague so that Druid regains bit of his past weakness vs aggressive decks and early pressure midrange decks (murlocs basically) -----> ok nerf
Then they nerf those same decks harder than Druid....LOL
Oh, and they destroyed any kind of non-Pirate Warrior....because reasons. GG
You're joking, right? Fiery War Axe is the bread and butter of every Warrior, most importantly Pirate Warrior, which is usually buffed by Bloodsail Cultist and Upgrade! to have it's stats become a cheaper, stronger Arcanite Reaper. Fiery War Axe is a huge damage dealer for Pirate Warrior, and the nerf to it is going to be HUGE. That one nerf is enough to severely skew the winrate of Pirate Warrior, perhaps turning it into midrange or simply killing it.
Great changes, and surprisingly fast all things considered.
I'm happy to see basic/classic cards touched instead of expansion ones, we have to remember that rotation is a thing and nerfing cards from a set that will eventually go away isn't as impactful as nerfing the ones that'll stay forever in standard.
Still, no Jade Idol change, i don't know about that. Ultimate Infestation + Nourish makes getting to the bottom of your deck and starting pumping out Jade after Jade with the idol really easy, i don't know if the changes will have an impact on that.
MAYBE the nerf to Innervate and Spreading Plague will make slower druid decks like jade have a tougher time against aggro, and MAYBE that'll be enough to push Jade a little bit out of the meta to make space for other classes to shine.
I guess we'll have to wait and see, but i wouldn't put my money on that.
"Great changes"
Huh, innervate is now a Counterfeit Coin .
Probably a good call. Still feels weird AF.
Btw all the good basic cards being nerfed will ultimately make it a lot harder for newer players to compete with someone who already owns set cards.
YES YES YES
SIT DOWN DRUIDS
Ouch
Jade Druid players are scanning these comments and down-voting anything negative against them LOL. What's the matter? Is lil' timmy proud of his first ever rank 5 with that stupid ass deck, auto-pilot, broken and boring deck? You guys are worse than Pirate Warrrior, Secret Paladins, Mech mages, Face Hunters, Undertaker Hunters...accept your place at the very bottom of the 'scum-ladder to hell'. It's good job blizzard (apparently) loves you, cause I assure you, no one else does.
Don't feel bad friend,i assure you jade druid will not be in 90% of the games anymore
Jaina and Anduin will be very very happy about this changes!
They wont let you down!
Ty Blizzard, now I know, what to do -> uninstal...