Hearthstone Nerfs Coming February 5 - Equality, Cold Blood, Hunter's Mark & More
Five Hearthstone card changes are coming next week in an update scheduled for February 5. The following cards have mana cost increases.
- [Discuss] Cold Blood - Cost increased to 2 mana. (Up from 1)
- [Discuss] Flametongue Totem - Cost increased to 3 mana. (Up from 2)
- [Discuss] Equality - Cost increased to 4 mana. (Up from 2)
- [Discuss] Hunter's Mark - Cost increased to 2 mana. (Up from 1)
- [Discuss] Emerald Spellstone - Cost increased to 6 mana.(Up from 5)
Check out Blizzard's post below for further information.
Quote from BlizzardWhen we talk about changes that are in store for Hearthstone cards, we normally talk about each card individually to explain why we think that change is needed.
This time, we’re doing things a little differently because most of the upcoming changes are happening for the same reason. Here’s why we’re changing these cards and our general philosophy behind this update.
We think Hearthstone is most fun when strategies are consistently evolving. When new cards are released, we’d like for older expansion decks to get a few interesting new pieces while also allowing you to experiment with the totally new archetypes that emerge. When Basic and Classic cards become so broadly effective—no matter what you’re facing—that they drive what deck styles are considered viable every expansion, then it makes that goal difficult to achieve.
Basic and Classic are sets that, ideally, should embody the flavor and mechanics of each Class. As we’ve mentioned before, cards in these sets can become an issue when they make all other strategies look less interesting. This doesn't mean is that all Basic and Classic cards should be ineffective, however. It’s hugely important to us that these sets contain a good number of cards that are great tools for different situations and deck archetypes.
We’re changing these particular cards because each one has been highly prevalent, regardless of what strategies have been popular or what other cards have existed around them. When Basic and Classic cards become this ubiquitous, they take away some of the flexibility players have when building decks, ultimately stifling the diversity of decks we see when playing Hearthstone.
The following changes are intended to shift these cards from general-purpose “auto-includes” into options that are more likely to be chosen for decks that are focused on strategies that capitalize on what these cards have to offer.
- Cold Blood – Will cost 2 Mana. (Up from 1)
- Flametongue Totem – Will cost 3 mana. (Up from 2)
- Equality – Will cost 4 mana. (Up from 2)
- Hunter’s Mark – Will cost 2 mana. (Up from 1)
Emerald Spellstone – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
The only non-Basic or Classic card in this round of changes. We want to position Emerald Spellstone as an efficient mid- and late-game threat, so we’re moving its cost up by one to reduce its utility as an early-game, aggressive tempo option. This change—along with the Hunter’s Mark change—is aimed at addressing Hunter’s prevalence, while still leaving it as a viable option.
We look forward to seeing how the meta shakes out in the coming months. Thanks for reading, and good luck on the ladder.
Once these updates are live, players will be able to disenchant the changed non-Basic cards for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks.
Flametongue Totem and Hunter’s Mark are Basic cards, and cannot be disenchanted.
Iksar Talks About The Nerfs
Quote from IksarMidrange Hunter is still gonna be prevalent, that equality nerf though, ouch.
I hope so, the goal wasn't to completely invalidate Hunter archetypes, or really any of the cards we changed. When we make a balance change it's less about looking at the current environment and more about trying to understand what Hearthstone is like after we make changes. Statistically, Secret Hunter was the most powerful deck in the game and close to the most popular. We felt like there wasn't a huge long-term downside to changing the secret build-around card that is likely to get more powerful over time in Wild while we can protect against Secret Hunter separating itself from the pack even more than it already was. (Source)
Baku and Genn limit card design so much. Round up nerfing will always be a thing now that these two are a thing
I tried to touch on this a few places, but Odd Paladin and Equality not being three are unrelated. Classic and Basic cards that are so powerful they are in every archetype in every expansion is something that is very harmful to the goal of expansion metas feeling fresh and new. Equality at (3) mana in our playtesting didn't really solve this. The change to (4) was actually very jarring to us, but we wanted to try playtesting it in current and future environments anyway. After all those games, we felt like it was a reasonable option at (4) in control archetypes (now in in the future) but less reasonable in aggressive decks. That ideally where we'd like most cards to be, so (4) ended up being where we landed. If we thought (3) removed it from being in all paladin archetypes for the foreseeable future but Odd Paladin would get better in the short term, we would have just done that. (Source)
The funniest part is that even for 2 mana it is still looking vialable.
That's the goal. We knew going in that the Equality nerf was going to be really jarring to look at, it was to us, too. We played so many games in current and future environments and it led us to believe that (4) was the right call even if it reads poorly. (Source)
Nerfing Equality that hard though is gonna kill any possibility of a competitive Control Paladin deck in the future if it doesn't get any great control cards in the next expansions. I hope you have something planned for that, so that we don't go back to having only Aggro pally's be competitive in both Standard and Wild.
We like Control Paladin, I expect it to do just fine in the future. We've been playtesting a lot of the first set of this year with Equality at (4) and there are still powerful Control Paladin archetypes. (Source)
Kibler & Iksar Talk
Quote from IksarKibler: “Should we listen to Kibler and make a rotating core set like he suggested when we first introduced Standard?”
Kibler: “No let’s just slowly nerf every Classic card into the ground!”
Kibler: These changes also don’t address what are IMO the biggest problems with Heartstone right now, which are OTK and Genn/Baku decks making games play out super similarly every time. If anything stuff like Mechathun gets better with the aggro nerfs, even if OTK Paladin is hit.
Kibler: Also worth noting that the Equality nerf to 4 is likely also Baku’s fault, since giving that deck such and easy answer to big minions would be a disaster
We don't make short-term quick fixes that are damaging to the long-term. At least we try not to. If one of the issues with Equality was that it goes in most every Paladin deck forever, I don't think (3) mana solves that.
Kibler: Cards going in every deck forever has a variety of ways you can solve it
Totally true. One of the most painful moments both anecdotally and statistically for players is when they have a deck they are playing that breaks. Literally breaks by the game saying the cards they have it in are no longer valid.
We try to come up with solutions that don't violate that when they can, but it's not always possible. Set rotation hits a large number of players but also misses a huge pool of players that are using 'forever' sets and don't have rotated cards.
I'm not saying having a rotating core set is absolutely right or wrong, but one of the reasons not to do it is that theoretically we would invalidate nearly all players decks, very casual, very competitive and all in between.
Scott Lynch: Apologies for butting in, but that literally happens every time expansions rotate out. If your core set rotated at the same time the expansions rotate out, I don't see the difference.
Kibler: Yeah I don’t really see how this is different from any set rotation unless someone literally has a deck with all classic cards.
rayC: The reason @bbrode gave in one of his interviews was that they want the game to feel familiar to casual players who come and go
Kibler: Does making all of their best cards bad do that?
Our goal isn't to make all good cards bad, it's to make cards that go in nearly 100% of archetypes and make them go in archetypes that make sense for them. There are plenty of powerful cards in basic and classic set we'd rather not change. These weren't on that list.
Kibler: I didn't say all good cards - I said best cards. Also, I don't feel like Equality or Flametongue fall into the 100% of all decks category. I also feel like hitting them so hard has a hugely detrimental effect on Wild's ability to be a place where you can play all your old decks.
100% is a big number, I should probably just be using 'almost all'. There will always be a deck someone will copy paste me that doesn't include those cards. The point is they have been and will be in almost all Paladin/Shaman decks forever given no other changes.
For what it's worth, we've been playing Equality at (4) in both the current environment and in future set playtesting and it feels like a pretty reasonable option for Control archetypes and less so for aggressive ones. Generally a healthier place for cards to exist.
Much of the playerbase is clueless. I think they can be safely ignored.
I wouldn't bring GGG into this, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
Yeah they listen and interact with...some...of their players, while disregarding long-standing technical issues (connectivity being the biggest one), being fully content with keeping half the skills essentially dead in the water for years while constantly introducing new ones, just in case the old ones didn't look bad enough, and they'll never miss a chance to inform you about a new cosmetics bundle they're selling at the login screen while you're recovering from your 6th attempt trying to load into your fucking hideout. Go have a look at the forums and count the number of 50+ page threads on disconnection issues. GGG hasn't responded to any of them.
That, their enthusiastic wiping of hard-earned Atlas completion or Master progression, constant risk of your character's tree getting wiped by Passive Tree adjustments (better use an external programme to save your build, or you're building it from the top of your head next time) are doing an excellent job at pushing some players away from the game and are all excellent examples of a company catering almost solely to its hardcore audience while disregarding the needs and preferences of people even slightly less invested than that audience. I got friends I've spent a long time playing PoE with that just refuse to start the game again because essentially everything they've worked for has been taken away or reset and they'd need like two hours before they can even start playing their character again (respeccing, rearranging hideout, checking changes in skill tree, waiting an hour for the shitty PoE client to check resources...etc.). Their technical issues have gone so far I consider it the second best ARPG ever made, yet I'm glad I've finished all the builds I was interested in and don't have an incentive to play anymore, cause fuck me if I have the patience to patch for 30 minutes, try to log in for 20 more, only to find something about my character has been wiped, again.
And hey, don't get me wrong, Genn and Baku are in my top 3 most hated cards (no. 1 being Barnes). Like you, I have no clue how to fix that major fuckup. If they said that with Witchwood rotating out they'll remove them from the game, I'd be overjoyed. That doesn't mean some (if not all) of the cards getting hit by the nerf bat this time around shouldn't be touched. A team can make both good and bad decisions. I consider these nerfs to be a good one. People always feel like the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but Wizards of the Coast have been designing card games for two decades and they fuck up horrendously every other expansion or so. I'm willing to forgive Team 5 some mistakes. Tri-class cards were a bad idea and now we know. Genn and Baku were a bad idea, and now we know. A neutral focused expansion is a mistake and now Shadowverse knows what Hearthstone already figured out in MSoG. You can only learn from mistakes if you make them.
Blizzard killing hearthstone its time to quit. 4 Mana equality for a class that has no hard removal is the biggest joke they ever done
Dame it. I had golden Equality and i dust it 1 week ago.UNLUCKY
And here I thought my end-of-month Equality reward was a bad thing...
Just because atual bad card designs. Damn, rotate everything to hall of fame
yes! please do that, so that way I can get dust for everything and DOUBLE the value of my collection!
glad i switched to mtg arena...
Blizzard does not communicate with the community well so we can be happy they do it with Kibler at least, although they are still so resistant to any tips from him / us.
Why not start buffing the endless amounts of crappy cards to offset this?
The technology isn't there yet...
Except for the Spellstone the changes seem completely arbitrary and I fail to see how any of these changes improves the game. I've never perceived any of these cards as oppressive or frustrating, not even the Spellstone as such (Zul'jin filling the board with 7 wolves is a different story). It's obvious that Blizzard keeps looking at statistics and drawing conclusions from them. I'm sure if the win-rate for player 2 wasn't statistically lower, they'd nerf The Coin to 1 mana, because it's contained in a whopping 50% of all decks played on ladder!
If you think they don't test these nerfs to beejesus and back, you're out of your damn mind.
Looking forward to seeing if it makes a difference in the Meta, or if the top tier stays the same.
Top tier will now be Mecha'thun.
Until they have to nerf those decks as well, in a month or two.
Cold blood nerf why... 2 cost with combo to give +4 attack isn't worth the mana lol. But I'm a bit excited with the new changes in the meta this will bring, especially the hunter nerf.
every time nerfs come around I wonder if at one point, blizzard might un-nerf all the nerfed cards, ever.
I know they will never do this, but it would be kinda fun, maybe as a brawl or fourth game mode.
They did un-nerf molten giant when it went to wild. I know it's not standard, but it shows they don't completely rule it out.
Remember that one brawl where they gave us top-tier decks from the past with unnerfed cards? That was pretty cool.