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.
Sure nerf all the stuff that's everyone's been okay with since forever.
Way to make a difference.
I don't know anyone who as ever been OK with turn 1 - coin > axe, turn 2 - 5/3 Bloodsail Raider.
People have been complaining about the power level of Innervate and Fiery "Win" Axe for as long as I can remember. Even Hex.
Whoops so many downvotes... Ok, so FWA is probably justified. And I'm glad about the change to Plague, too. The rest just seem somewhat random. There are plenty 'better' cards, they focused their nerf based on what 'everyone' uses to try to stimulate diversity.
For neutral cards this was a fair approach, I understand the cycling out of Rag, Sylvanas, Azure Drake... but some cards are class defining for a reason. Innervate is definitely fine as is an doesn't need a nerf. If it does, then so do Northshire Cleric, Frostbolt, Backstab, Eaglehorn Bow... to name a few. I think all these cards are fine as they are.
I would much rather have had them nerf Jade Idol, or do something about that Lich King that literally everyone is using right now.
"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."
What make all changes pointless.
Druid still much more powerful than anything else, all classes remain dead and the meta wil be endless mirrors of jade druid.
In comparison with UI the pre-nerf CotW and Ancient Of Lore are Magma Ragers.
Hello Hearthstone Community,
I understand many of you are disappointed and confused by our upcoming nerfs to the game. As an official employee of Blizzard, I feel compelled to tell you the true reasons behind our company's decisions.
First of all, Blizzard is a SMALL indie company and doesn't own any of the cards outside the base set. For us to get Triple AAA talent to even consider designing or drawing cards for the game we have to pay them royalties for every time a card they designed is crafted by a player.
Royalties cost are associated with card rarity as follows:
Legendary: $1,000
Epic: $500
Rare: $100
Common: $10
When we nerf a card one of the game artists creates, they lose the opportunity to make any income for their work since no one will ever craft that piece of garbage ever again. Because of this we have to PAY their royalty fee for every card disenchanted after a nerf which they designed. The nerf to The Caverns Below cost our company millions of dollars and all profits made form that and previous expansion went straight to the artist.
As much as Blizzard would like to Nerf the most problematic cards of this set. We simply can't afford to and we hope you understand. Please continue to support us by buying every $50 pre-order bundle for every expansion in the future.
We LOVE our hearthstone community.
Respectfully,
A Blizzard Employee
Jesus Christ. A quick look at your post history reveals you're not a blizzard employee, and besides it's not exactly believable in the first place. Not to mention your unprofessional attitude, you really expect people to believe that's how Blizzard pays artists? An actual blizzard employee said that most of the art is done freelance, with the concept art in house. This seems like bait, but seriously stop trying to trick people into believing this crap.
Respectfully,
An intelligent person
'An intelligent person' who couldn't sense the obvious sarcasm and cynicism of that post.
Or a tree ... Since when amoebas can type?
The dude is called GloryHoley.
I decided to try you jade Druid without innervate myself, lol 😂 once this nerf goes live, I can't wait to see the backlash, didn't actually make a difference to my win rate, which is scary because surely in the current meta blizzard would have tested (and I mean in ladder and not just amongst themselves and a few others) properly the change, innervate is more of a buff to aggro Druids, I stand corrected about my earlier statement, this won't make a diff to them, but the Mulock and warrior changes will, as they were classes that could make a dent in them, now that won't be as possible.
if u all want to prove blizzard wrong, make had Druid without innervate, play enough games then post your views.
They did test it, u guys got it wrong.
Nerfs are for Jade druid counters only.
Wow, 1k posts and almost all are critical. Might be a hint if they even look at this. Do the people running HearthPwn ever go to Blizz and say "WTF are you doing?" or "Look at these posts?"
I think there's some irony though in a game so deep in randomness that even the nerfs are random. Point out a major problem in the game and something that needs to be fixed and they just come out swinging the nerf bat randomly **cough**Hex**cough** without hitting the real problems.
Innervate might be a hit on the class, and Spreading Plague at 6 does hurt the class agaisnt aggro, but so far I'm very disappointed with Blizzard's nerfs. I might be mistaken, but the WHOLE POINT was to stop allowing Jade Druid to define the whole meta. This does not make Jade Druid not be the bane to every single control deck ever. If anything, it makes it worse since Paladin was one of the decks that could somehow compete with it.
You're so wrong about Jades being stronger because of the warleader nerf. Without being able to innervate into ramp combined with spreading plague at 6 mana, Jade druid is no longer a tier S deck. You're not seeing the forest for the trees. Innervate was the core card to catch up and stabilize and they now actually have a weakness.
No, u missing the point. Go create a jade deck without innervate and see for yourself.
i did after I thought it would make a diff, it doesn't.
Innervate was a really good card; but they rarely if ever rely on it to win in Control Matches, which again, was the whole point. If there's Jade Druid, Control can't compete. If Control can't compete, all the remains is aggro. Thus, it's an meta to either race Druid's face so they can't Jade, or anti-aggro control decks that auto-concede against Jade, because Jade is the defining factor.
This happened once before, and it was not a very good meta. It didn't happen Last Expansion because Druid didn't have the tools to stall that long, relied on gimmicky Auctioneer combos to get really going and if you dropped a few big guys they were done for; so all you needed as a control deck is to have enough early game to pressure Druid which also served as a deterrent for aggro. It was beautiful. Now, Druid has quite enough tools to fend off the aggression of even the fastest decks and thus any control deck is dead the second they're queued against Jade. The only thing that seems to do the trick is Aggro Druid, because Druid.
it might be too early to say; but it looks like they'll be the defining factor of the meta once more; and in my mind this nerf session was supposed to prevent that and thus it's a complete failure.
In control matches innervate was used to speed up ramp drop jades early and you could ui on turn 8. It also allowed you to ui at 5 cards in your hand and innervate to prevent overdraw. It had a ton of utility with the insane amount of draw ui provides.