Blizzard Addresses Problems - Tess Greymane, Shudderwock, Quest Druid at HCT Seoul
- An update on June 8th, PDT, will change some cards.
- Tess Greymane's Battlecry will once again continue even if she is destroyed, silenced, or removed.
- Shudderwock's Battlecry limit will be increased to 30, from 20.
- Players with Quest Druid decks at HCT Seoul are allowed to submit a new list if they wish due to changes.
- Ultimately, they only want to give out dust refunds if a card has a "decrease [in] their overall power level for balance purposes".
Quote from Jesse HillGreetings,
Thank you for your feedback regarding the recent Update 11.2. We apologize for not offering notice in advance of these changes before they went live. We understand that this wasn’t a good experience and that it also had an impact on some of our esports competitors as well. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, and we’ll do better in the future.
Update 11.2 brought with it some changes as part of our ongoing, overall goal to make card interactions more intuitive across the board. The intention of some of those changes was to align four similar cards (Tess Greymane, Lynessa, Shudderwock, and Yogg-Saron). If you’re familiar with the way that one of these minions works, you should be able to guess how the others work. We added a cap to the maximum number of effects that can be generated by these Battlecries, and made Tess’ Battlecry end if she was destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed, just like Yogg-Saron.
After hearing your feedback to that change, we initially considered offering a full Arcane Dust refund for Tess. We also read feedback from players who use Tess in their decks asking for her to be reverted to her old functionality. In this case, we agree that it’s worthwhile to sacrifice some consistency so Tess is more fun to play, especially since our priority wasn’t to decrease Tess’ power level. With that in mind, instead of offering an Arcane Dust refund and encouraging players to disenchant the card, we’re reverting one of the changes to Tess Greymane so that her Battlecry will continue even if she’s destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed from the board.
This situation has also raised discussions regarding the definition of a card fix versus a dust-refunding nerf, so we thought this would be a good time to talk about our stance on the subject.
We will continue to provide full Arcane Dust refunds for changes to cards that decrease their overall power level for balance purposes — in other words, card nerfs.
We’re working to improve Hearthstone and make the underlying mechanics more intuitive. Bug fixes or system-wide mechanics changes to improve the game will not be grounds for a full Arcane Dust refund on a card. System-wide mechanical updates affect many different cards in ways that could make some more or less powerful, such as the interaction between Jungle Giants and Faceless Manipulator.
Lynessa Sunsorrow was never intended to apply her buffs in the order they were cast, so the update to her functionality in 11.2 was a bug fix for that card. The cap of 30 effects is a system-wide change intended to protect the service and players from potentially bad play experiences that have minimal player value. We’re planning to raise the cap of Shudderwock’s Battlecry from 20 to 30 when we implement the fix that reverts Tess, as well.
We’re currently planning to revert the change that caused Tess Greymane to stop casting her Battlecry when destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed on June 8th PDT.
HCT Seoul and Quest Druid
We also would like to take this moment to apologize to our player community for this update’s impact on the HCT Tour Stop taking place in Seoul this weekend, specifically the 15 players who brought Quest Druid decks.
After considering recent feedback and significant discussion, we felt that Quest Druid decks were most directly affected in terms of viability as a result of the changes that were introduced with Update 11.2. As such, we allowed players that brought Quest Druid an opportunity to resubmit their deck.
Balancing the health of the game with the needs and calendar of a global esport like the Hearthstone Championship Tour is always challenging. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, for us, our players, and competitors, and we’ll do better in the future.
Thanks again for your feedback and your understanding, and we'll see you in the Tavern.
We won't see sth like this happening for a long time to come. Tournament mode is coming ?this year? But without ban feature, unfortunately. At least not in "beth" phase.
well, but there is where blizzard needs to start working. Some card bans should be a good idea looking for not repeat the yogg, jade and razakus disasters
Then, those cards should be forbidden to be played on ranked. What do you prefer? Because if someone plays ranked, he should do it to win. That's the point of that mode.
put a limit, who plays it cant compite, and if you only play the card to win on ladders its your problem, you actually are just playing the meta.
playing ranked =/ spike - lots of people try to have fun and be creative in a competitive environment. Those two can go hand in hand. Maybe not in the top 0.1% but there's this thing called recreational sports which is for everyone else. Saying those people don't compete (or even should be forbidden to compete) is ridiculous.
Nobody is stopping them from loving Yogg nor playing him. If it's a card created for strictly fun reasons then it shouldn't be competitively good. The problem is that people want old Yogg back because they like the card but also want to win a lot of games thanks to him which is just hilarious and hypocritical.
Use brain to win, not hardcore RNG cards. FUN > WINNING? - again, nobody is stopping you from playing this way but let other people who enjoy winning to do so, not having to care about retarded lose condition.
people sometimes prefer play a game to have FUN, instead of just WIN, and usually don't cry cause lose against fun cards, remember it, its a f***king game over all. the competitive part it's good, but not for all. and that is why people can love cards like yogg, cause its a fun card with all his crazy RNG, and come on, there are extremely crazy and powerfull decks on wild, a pre nerf yogg wouldn't be more than a angry chiken compared to all the other cards.
cause it doesn't matter, like every single person said about tess, do you really think you will play 30 battlecrys in a game?, usually its over way ago, cause you are dead, or you started the infinite combo.
hm, no, if you want to disencainht her, its your problem, why people that just play for fun have to lose a a great card in that propose (play for FUN), just because there are some others that just want arcane dust?, i prefer this, over a nerf that destroy more a card that already rarely see play.
Wait? How was quest Druid effected? I’m very lost monkaS
Some cards no longer count as minions being summoned, so the quest is harder to complete. For example, Faceless Manipulator now is considered a 3/3 played from hand that transform into a minion (and even if the minion being copied has 5 or more attack, it won't count to the quest total).
Was it a sarcasm? Literally at least 3 changes in patch notes mention Jungle Giants as an example which is the Druid quest. And at least 2 of them actually make the quest worse.
Faceless Manipulator doesn't help complete the Druid Quest anymore unless you copy Cursed Disciple and only after the deathrattle triggers.
Not sure about the Ixlid, Fungal Lord interactions though.
Now time to revert the Waraxe nerf
No thank you. Wild is a much better place now without pirate war
hahahaha it's too much for me, the comment and the profile image xD
Actually, if you look back at the history of hearthstone, blizzard had been more then generous with things like these. They know pissing the fanbase off is not worth it. That's why we get extra packs for service outages that lasted only a few hours, extra arena runs when they do a special arena, etc.
But unfortunately the "cool" thing around here is to say blizzard is always out to get every last dollar and to screw us over, and if you say otherwise you are a "fan boi".
In this way there is no refund. :).
I am with you.
I wanted disenchant the horrible Tess. Now I can’t. I will wait hoping in the disenchant for full value. I really hope to not see any other burgle shit for rogue in the next expansion.