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.
Quite happy with those changes... Miscreant fix is very minor, I think it hardly even matters - which is a good thing. Raiding Party and Prep on the other hand both deserved a nerf and they got it. And it's not even too hard nerf, so I think rogue will still be viable, mabye just more focused on lackeys now.
With Elysiana nerf - I'm seriously so happy, this card was ruining control decks for me since it came out, I hope this will be enough.
Many people here are complaining about warriors not getting nerfed - they do have some cards that feel OP, but ironically I think warrior will be worse than it was now. These changes will probably mean rise of mage and hunter decks, which will be quite bad for warrior
I don't like this nerf at all. I like it that rogue is getting nerfed but why not warrior too? I would like to see omega defender nerfed because it's too strong with the mech tag. Is it too much to ask to remove the mech tag of that card so its no longer an 8 mana remove my 28/28 board?
Wild is vastly superior if you like to play a lot of different decks and like to brew new decks. It's decks like Big Priest that are ruining the format. That and the fact that Blizzard don't give a shit.
Good nerfs, not too hard nor too soft.
Okay Archivist Elysiana whit a coin can be hard in som matches, but it is stile fair in most cases.
Wild is a clownfiesta anyways, why even bother?
I knew it, Archivist will get 9 mana cost. ^^
i still think shadowstep needs a nerf to cost 1 mana or make the reduction 1 instead of 2 and same with the weapon
In Wild, Big Priest is being called for a nerf for a long time for a reason: the only thing that keeps it in check is Kingsbane Pirate Rogue, which relies on Preparation and Raiding Party a lot.
Blizzard: let's nerf Preparation and Raiding Party!
Yeah it's a good change for standard but man wild players are gonna suffer...
Yep, Wild now is basically just figure out how to beat Big Priest.
I haven't lost many games vs. big priest playing quest mage climbing from rank ~15-5---the stats are somewhat unreliable since it's from playing vs. low rank priests late in the season, but it definitely seems like quest mage has the matchup advantage even vs. the "best" big priest players. Maybe give that deck a shot if you're looking for a counter.
I'm right there with you though, wild players tend to get tossed into the gutter. Even the game itself when you swap from standard to wild is basically like, "are you sure you want to make a wild deck?" It's actually kinda funny.
Ok, I'll craft Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. It turns more OP with this nerfs.
Warrior actually takes a hit because the main reason you play Warrior now (other than for fun, ofc) is to counter Rogue. It loses its best prey, and its worst matchups, mech and midrange hunter as well as conjurer mage are all celebrating for the Rogue nerf. Not sure it's the happiest moment for Boom fans.
Now you gotta pay 3 mana instead of 2 to draw your entire deck. From memes to dreams. #rogueisdead
On a more serious note, preparation is literally the only card in hearthstone being played in both standard AND wild with maximum copies in all decks-----(not counting budget decks or odd decks). I looked up Rogue decks on HSreplay and it's basically just 41 pages of x2 preparation.
I'm actually not even exaggerating by much at all, there were 2 decks that didn't run prep. One had no spells over 0 cost, the other was a pirate rogue that didn't run prep raiding party so I can only assume the users forgot those cards existed. 41 pages of decks. Only 2 decks were without x2 prep.
So... yeah, preparation nerf was pretty much justified I'd say.
too salty? :D
But that’s the point. The Basic and Classic cards should be staples in almost every deck of that class.
I agree, but if it's in every deck, the card at least deserves some attention from blizzard imo. Thing is, this happens in standard pretty much every time there's a new rotation, but rarely in both standard and wild.
It does seem like a decent chunk of the basic/classic cards are falling behind in terms of power level with the new expansion releases though, that's something I'd hope to avoid----the more they nerf classic/basic sets, the less played they become. Not a fan of that.
Preparation was played cause every rogue spell is designed around prep. By nerfing prep they pretty much nerfed entire rogue set.
i totally agree with these nerfs, my only problem is nerfing the classic cards, it generally hasn't been a problem in the past preperation, just change/nerf the expansion sets that get rotated out eventually not the classic cards.
Called the Prep nerf. It has been a long time coming.
I think he means you can basically play around with the card for free now if you have the dust, which is true if you disenchant it within two weeks after the nerfs.
why would they nerf rogue so hard when the most dominant deck is warrior and then shortly followed by hunter/murloc shaman/mage