ROGUES ARE GETTING NERFED! 4 Card Changes Coming May 22
In a blog post from Blizzard this afternoon, they have announced changes to Rogue cards and Archivist Elysiana. The patch comes out May 22.
- EVIL Miscreant - Now has 4 Health (Down from 5)
- Raiding Party - Now costs 4 Mana (Up from 3)
- Preparation - Next spell cast cost is now reduced by 2 (Down from 3)
- Archivist Elysiana - Now costs 9 Mana (Up from 8)
Quote from BlizzardAfter evaluating game data and working through internal and external feedback on the most popular decks currently in the meta, we’re looking to address the power level and overall pervasiveness of Rogue decks, alongside a specific interaction with Archivist Elysiana. Look for these changes in an update slated for May 22.
We chose to focus primarily on Rogue in this update due to seeing the meta stabilize around the class’s most popular decks. Currently, if you want to build a deck that is strong against Rogue, you have just one reasonable option: Warrior. If you compare Rogue to Warrior, however, you’ll find that the latter class has a wide variety of good and bad matchups, which makes it unlikely that it’ll overtake Rogue in popularity in the current meta.
While we recognize that there are other powerful and popular decks (like Token Druid, Conjurer Mage, and Mech Hunter), we decided to not address them in this update because they all have varied matchups. If any of these decks were to emerge as the new prominent strategy, there are plenty of decks available to combat them, which would allow the meta to continue shifting.
As always, we’ll be evaluating the results of these changes over the coming weeks and look forward to your feedback. Read on for details on these changes, our thought process around them, and our goals for each of the cards we adjusted.
- EVIL Miscreant - Now has 4 Health. (Down from 5)
- EVIL Miscreant is meant to be a value-generating card that creates future swing turns, but having 5 Health on this minion means Rogue players sacrifice very little to set up those turns. We expect that EVIL Miscreant will continue to be a great option for Rogue decks, just at a power level that is more in line with other available cards.
- Raiding Party – Now costs 4 mana. (Up from 3)
- Rogue already excels at drawing cards, so having another powerful option that offers consistent results has resulted in Rogue games that play out a little too similarly than we think is fun. We’re making this change to better represent the power level of drawing from a very specific subset of cards.
- Preparation – Now reads: The next spell you cast this turn costs (2) less.
- All changes we make to the Basic and Classic sets are aimed at ensuring Hearthstone’s long-term health. Preparation is currently seen as such a powerful card that it appears in nearly all Rogue deck archetypes. That said, the change we’ve landed on is a small one. While we do want the card’s power to decrease, we also think it’s important for Preparation to remain a reasonable option, since it fits the Rogue class fantasy so well.
- Preparation is regularly used to reduce the cost of cards like Sap or Eviscerate, and those interactions will remain unchanged. Reducing the cost of your next spell by 2 as opposed to 3 opens our design options up a little more to create higher cost Rogue spells without having to balance so closely around the assumption that they’ll be cast alongside Preparation.
- Archivist Elysiana – Now costs 9 mana. (Up from 8)
- Our goal here was to preserve the feeling and power level of Archivist Elysiana when it comes to general use, while making much more difficult to play her multiple times in the same game. Shaman will still be able to replay Elysiana through Shudderwock, but this is not as common or problematic as what we’ve seen in control Warrior decks. Now, playing Elysiana alongside cards like Baleful Banker or Youthful Brewmaster should be a less consistent strategy.
Being alive at 4 mana in wild LUL
Meanwhile in wild, no developer or pro cares.
Everyone in wild will be playing only big priest because only counter in terms of kingsbane rogue has been eliminated. And barnes, blodbloom still untouched as we need more data... :)
https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/89827-dr-boom-mad-genius nerf pls!!!!!!!!!!!
People who want to nerf Prep right now
That video is A+
On the meta bus ...
Longtime priest players to rogue bitching about nerfs up front:
"HEY, here's someone we've never seen in the back of the bus ..."
/druid and warrior finally got some dry spells
Still no nerfs to BIG PRIEST. F*CK YOU BLIZZARD
Go play standard. Nobody plays wild.
what's this video doing here?
So, warrior is fine...
Warrior was never fine, it has an average to low winrate against everything except tempo rogue.
As a thief rogue main i'm a little bit disappointed. Our archetype has been doing better this expansion than it has before but its still got its issues and the prep + raiding party nerfs will affect us loads if not more than tempo rogues...
This is actually some good nerfs. I like all of them. Only a little worried about Hunterstone again.
will I get dust for these cards if I craft them now? especially the legendary?
Yea, I see why rogue has to be nerfed. Oh wait, I actually don't.
They've always focused nerfs at things they deem toxic and not necessarily the most powerful, see Quest Rogue, Yogg, and all of Jade Druid.
I don't clearly remember jade druid, but quest rogue was insane. How is current rogue toxic? I think my blood is boiling and body is melting when playing against war. It's soooooo boring, I swear I see like 4 times per game Omega Devastator in combination with Dr. Boom, Mad Genius.
Also the prep nerf. The entire rogue class is built around combos, about playing lots of cards in one turn. This is like removing the beast bonuses from hunter, or armor bonuses from war.
But hey, can't wait for my favorite game, Hunterstone. Again. And Again.
Nothing is more irrelevant and senseless than these HS replays stats. They mean nothing and do not reflect the meta in any way. They just brainlessly put in every games, regardless of the rank or the skill of the players and just give you an average win rate - which is totally dumb.
If you want more relevant data, you can go to vicisoussyndicate.com and see their meta report and analysis.