Personally i do not see the problem with Purify. Throw out an early Eerie Statue or Ancient Watcher and silence it. Or if you dont have silence, taunt it up until you do. Its a deck type that has not been fully explored thus far. The "Wall Priest" as i see it has potentiale to become great.
I have "explored" this deck. It is fucking awful and wouldn't be better with two extra silences. Priests don't need a two-card, 4 mana 4/5 or a two-card, 6-mana 7/7. They need something to let them actually contest the board, particularly in a token-heavy meta, before turn 4 or 5.
It's actually not a two-Card Combo since Purify is a cantrip. But I agree that purify will most likely not make a silence priest viable.
The fact that is a cantrip does not mean the play is not a two-card combo. You are using two cards from your deck for the play. Agreed that it obviously does not cause in-hand card disadvantge; but it does strictly cause you to be down a card in your deck. Whether this matters practically is a different question (doubt it frequently would go to fatigue), but there is also the issue with conditional combos like this that one (or in this case both) combo pieces are dead or largely dead absent their other card.
It would have been very good at 1 mana. The "1 mana cycle" he is so afraid of, is simply NOT THERE, since it REQUIRES A TARGET.
Well, I do think that we'd see a few people running the card in OHKO-style Embrace the Velen decks if it only cost 1 mana. Perhaps competitively, more likely not.
So it is there; I disagree with you.
The thing is, Brode looked at this and said "you're using the card all wrong! It's supposed to be for silencing your stuff, NOT cycling through your deck! We're going to have to change this card to stop you from doing this!"
Which is crazy. It's not like anything overpowered was going on.
So it is there, it's just not bad, so the justification for bumping to (2) was a bad decision. Basically, Brode didn't want you playing this card without Eerie Statue in your deck, and would rather it see play in no decks whatsoever than find any use outside of his darling Silence Priest archetype.
Edit: imagine if it costed (1) and you hybridized those two ideas. Run some Purifies and Sunfury Protectors, run some Ancient Watchers and Eerie Statues, make the rest card draw, heals and Embrace the Shadow, top it off with Emporer and Prophet. Maybe not competitive, but sounds fun doesn't it? Well forget fun.
Kudos to Brode for at least addressing this and doing something about it for arena players. Aside from the tone deafness issue, the other problem I see is that there is so much more they could have easily done. As others have said, it's not like there are 2 million physical copies of this card in packages ready to go out on Thursday. Here are a bunch of easy fixes to this card that they could quite literally waive the wand and implement:
Same cost, but enemy minions can be targeted - You mean priest might have a chance at slowing a Councilman, Berzerker, or Trogg?
1 mana cost, same effect - Probably still would not see play, but at least it's not egregious.
3 mana cost, draw 2 cards - Conditional arcane intellect is kind of interesting and would actually make a curve of T2 Watcher, T3 be able to use watcher + card draw kind of interesting
Just make the card epic so that priest players can dust it and craft another classes' usable cards until the next expansion, or the one after that, or the one after that and we never have to worry about it in arena again
I'm sure there is precedent value to worry about, but if ever there was a time to break glass due to emergency, it's now.
The same video addresses this. They tried any minion but realized it's reintroducing silence just when they worked hard to remove it. They tried 1 mana and it turned into a card cycle for combo decks and that's dangerous to give to anyone (and priest has a combo deck that's looking for a reason to be viable).
3 mana 2 cards would actually make the card nearly as useless though less anger inducing. It would SEEM ok until you realize priest's problem is the early game, not so much card draw, and this card would do nothing to help with that.
They couldn't make the card epic because Kara gave everyone 2 commons and an epic. You could argue "well then put it in another expansion and make it epic." To that I would say "That's what Brode is basically saying: it shouldn't have been in Kara."
And as I said earlier, you do not EVER want to kneejerk a solution even though it's a digital format. Untested Kneejerk solutions result in a card going from worthless and ignorable to broken and meta defining, and a bad card that never gets seen is MUCH better than a broken card that is played everywhere (Always remember 2 mana Unleashed). Even if it doesn't happen to Purify this time, broken glass turns into new precedents, and I don't want every expansion to result in a mass rush to demand a buff followed by a kneejerk buff.
Besides, remember Purify is meant to be a Johnny card: a card that doesn't work competitively but is odd enough to possibly create a tricky more unique deck. It's not designed to help priest competitively. Which is why they said the solution would've been to put in a different card and have purify show up later. Which we can't do now since 'that card' doesn't exist and won't for a few months even if they started now.
Brode was good for telling us what they did. They are fine for making Purify. Changing it wouldn't work since most of those options were already tried and the last time they buffed a card after it ended up bad we broke the meta for half a year in a bad way.
As for how they completely missed the idea of Priest being in a bad place and, right up to the reveal, didn't realize that Purify was NOT the card priest needed...well, if you notice, I'm not good at ranting and bashing, so I'll leave it to you guys who do a MUCH better job of it, but please keep bashing Blizzard for it for a good, LONG time. I'm just poking at the misconceptions or adding in info to help drive the rants to a good place.
There's nothing they can make that will make priest better, but not another class worst. There's no possible way to make it so every class has 5 decks that are exactly as good in ranked. It will never happen, it can't happen and everyone constantly complaining about a class being good or bad seems to absolutely not understand this point and they want instant solutions that basically would cause the game to spiral out of control into a power creeped mess of garbage.
The one and only complain that makes sense for purify is really that it's pointless. It doesn't inspire any new kind of deck since every interaction cards could have with it is already possible with better cards. It really should have been "silence any minion", but they didn't want that because they want to see less silence in the meta for some reason. I don't think silence was ever a problem other than being abused by face decks. Face decks was the thing people didn't like, not the silence part of the face decks. Purify being basically a worst (old) owl and class-specific would not cause too much problem and you could still have it in arena at common since it would be quite a nice utility card that would fit in most decks.
Kudos to Brode for at least addressing this and doing something about it for arena players. Aside from the tone deafness issue, the other problem I see is that there is so much more they could have easily done. As others have said, it's not like there are 2 million physical copies of this card in packages ready to go out on Thursday. Here are a bunch of easy fixes to this card that they could quite literally waive the wand and implement:
Same cost, but enemy minions can be targeted - You mean priest might have a chance at slowing a Councilman, Berzerker, or Trogg?
1 mana cost, same effect - Probably still would not see play, but at least it's not egregious.
3 mana cost, draw 2 cards - Conditional arcane intellect is kind of interesting and would actually make a curve of T2 Watcher, T3 be able to use watcher + card draw kind of interesting
Just make the card epic so that priest players can dust it and craft another classes' usable cards until the next expansion, or the one after that, or the one after that and we never have to worry about it in arena again
I'm sure there is precedent value to worry about, but if ever there was a time to break glass due to emergency, it's now.
The same video addresses this. They tried any minion but realized it's reintroducing silence just when they worked hard to remove it. They tried 1 mana and it turned into a card cycle for combo decks and that's dangerous to give to anyone (and priest has a combo deck that's looking for a reason to be viable).
3 mana 2 cards would actually make the card nearly as useless though less anger inducing. It would SEEM ok until you realize priest's problem is the early game, not so much card draw, and this card would do nothing to help with that.
They couldn't make the card epic because Kara gave everyone 2 commons and an epic. You could argue "well then put it in another expansion and make it epic." To that I would say "That's what Brode is basically saying: it shouldn't have been in Kara."
And as I said earlier, you do not EVER want to kneejerk a solution even though it's a digital format. Untested Kneejerk solutions result in a card going from worthless and ignorable to broken and meta defining, and a bad card that never gets seen is MUCH better than a broken card that is played everywhere (Always remember 2 mana Unleashed). Even if it doesn't happen to Purify this time, broken glass turns into new precedents, and I don't want every expansion to result in a mass rush to demand a buff followed by a kneejerk buff.
Besides, remember Purify is meant to be a Johnny card: a card that doesn't work competitively but is odd enough to possibly create a tricky more unique deck. It's not designed to help priest competitively. Which is why they said the solution would've been to put in a different card and have purify show up later. Which we can't do now since 'that card' doesn't exist and won't for a few months even if they started now.
Brode was good for telling us what they did. They are fine for making Purify. Changing it wouldn't work since most of those options were already tried and the last time they buffed a card after it ended up bad we broke the meta for half a year in a bad way.
As for how they completely missed the idea of Priest being in a bad place and, right up to the reveal, didn't realize that Purify was NOT the card priest needed...well, if you notice, I'm not good at ranting and bashing, so I'll leave it to you guys who do a MUCH better job of it, but please keep bashing Blizzard for it for a good, LONG time. I'm just poking at the misconceptions or adding in info to help drive the rants to a good place.
I heard the bit on them working to remove silence from the game, but here's the thing, we're talking about a class card, and one specifically for the class that already has a 0-mana silence and a card that effectively "silences" deathrattles (Entomb) - it would be reasonable flavor for the class and would be miles from making silence prevalent in the meta again. So, I acknowledge that Brode made the argument, I just completely reject it.
As for the 1-mana "cycling" thing, I just call bullshit. The reason people were using it for cycle at 1 mana is because the mechanic it is supposed to support (silence priest) is so bad that the only viable way to use it was gimpy card draw in non-silence decks, not because a 1 mana cantrip with a downside is a good thing. There is no combo priest deck out there unless they are planning on introducing significant additional burst into the class (which would make no sense by the way) - I've tried a malypriest and a velen OTK deck; and the fact that you have to trigger the Auchenai effect to have any real chance at a burst finish, even with Maly or Velen, means it will never get off the ground. Admittedly, I'm not an expert deckbuilder; but the priest player community is active and I'm sure someone would've found the magic priest combo deck if it existed.
3 mana draw 2 would admittedly not be great absent other early game cards. My point, perhaps not well-explained, is that if they see this card primarily in a "fun" silence deck with minions like watcher, having it as a T3 play is actually kind of perfect; and a 4/5 should be able to trade 2 for 1 with 3-drops, so the tempo loss isn't deadly, particularly if you come into Auchenai+circle or a taunt-giver on the next turn. It's clunky; but it would definitely be better than where they ended-up.
As for the rarity, it looks like its 2 commons and 1 rare for each class, with only one epic (the new giant). First of all, I'm not sure that the rarity count really matters; but assuming it does, swap the rarity of it and Onyx Bishop and you make arena Priests likely to get a categorically great arena card and less likely to get arguably the worst arena card. It's a more elegant solution than just pulling it out of the algo all together.
Regarding any changes being "kneejerk," at a minimum, the rarity fix is not an issue and they DGAF about arena balance anyway, so that would've been a nice bone to throw. Everything else, meh, maybe there's some precedent risk; but we're not talking about turning a card from Savagery into Flamewreathed Faceless.
It's really fishy that they increased the cost of Purify because people weren't using as it was intended. If you make a borderline bad card, it's actually *good* that it's flexible so that it can see general play. It's almost like they think that Power Word: Shield is flagrantly OP. Do they not get that in most cases, silencing his own minion is a cost for a priest, not a benefit? Do they not realize that people play Power Word: Shield on their opponent's minions if they don't have any of their own, thus making Purify an inferior card draw alternative?
Blizzard: just buff the card before its release. Oh, and make it rare. I know it's painful, but it's the right thing to do.
Basically, he's saying that they did not know that Priest was that bad right now untill the community freaked out because of Purify. How can you developp such a popular game and not know about basic forces of the meta?
And yet you the 3 month player that loves aggro , uses shaman and hates control dares to make an opinion.
Learn to use decks that need thinking, not netdecking first 5 turns and conceding if outplayed. When you do it then you will be heard.
At the moment all your 34 posts are pure hate and aggro defend. I get you are a newbie and have 2 or max 3 aggro decks available only... But learn the game instead only to counter whine and accuse people of being stupid to use control.
I wish you queue only at LIFECOACH 24/7
Nope, been playing since beta. I play all decks but love aggro because, as you probably saw in my other posts, I like seeing the salt in your eyes. I'm for sure going to try out silence priest, and if I don't like it, guess what, I'll just GO PLAY ANOTHER CLASS instead of whine like little babies or get upset at a digital card
I think they knew exactly what state priest was in, considering they kept the Priest reveals for the last possible second, building up huge amounts of hype.
Creds to Brode for making this relatively swift video reponse to the community outcry.
What REALLY annoys me though, like, really, is that initially they thought that this card was balanced at 1 mana. They increased it to 2 mana because in balancing the card was sometimes used to only cycle the deck (as if that's so bad...). BUT admitting that the effect was balanced at 1 mana and then changing it to 2 mana without making adjustments to improve the effect is in my eyes completely insane. This means that they admit that the card is overcosted, and as we all know one point of mana is enough to make the difference between playable and non-playable.
All they needed to do was to improve the effect when they made the change to 2 mana. Perhaps also healing the minion to full? Or giving it a stat buff after the silence, or taunt? Maybe healing your hero, if only slightly?
There's so much they could do to really push this archetype if they made this a strong effect.
Creds to Brode for making this relatively swift video reponse to the community outcry.
What REALLY annoys me though, like, really, is that initially they thought that this card was balanced at 1 mana. They increased it to 2 mana because in balancing the card was sometimes used to only cycle the deck (as if that's so bad...). BUT admitting that the effect was balanced at 1 mana and then changing it to 2 mana without making adjustments to improve the effect is in my eyes completely insane. This means that they admit that the card is overcosted, and as we all know one point of mana is enough to make the difference between playable and non-playable.
All they needed to do was to improve the effect when they made the change to 2 mana. Perhaps also healing the minion to full? Or giving it a stat buff after the silence, or taunt? Maybe healing your hero, if only slightly?
There's so much they could do to really push this archetype if they made this a strong effect.
They didn't just admit the card is overcosted. They admit that the card is bad. THey don't make cards like Majordomo or boogymonster with the belief that it'll be effective and just messed up. They are Jhonny cards: cards that are bad but allow someone to abuse it in some way such as Majordomo into Alex for basically a Jaraxxus with an 8 damage hero power. Jhonnys love unconventional tricks like that.
Purify was intended to be one of those cards. That's WHY it's purposely made weak. Otherwise it would be a Spike card: a card with a clear strong purpose to create a strong deck. Some cards are made for competition. Some for the lulz. Some for the challenge.
THey also admitted that giving the worst class in the game a trolly challenge card when they desperately need Spikes was a very stupid idea.
Though I'll admit, it would've been nice to see the card go Silence, then Taunt. But that probably would've needed some major testing to avoid some nasty combo.
Okay, so I have watched this video about 4 times now, and while I can appreciate the rebuttal given by Ben Brode, one thing in the video really sticks out to me, which no one else seems to have pointed out yet, beside myself and a friend of mine. Doesn't anyone else realize the most odd, and important thing about the video, like the part where he mentions, that it's Blizzards dream to make every deck have a 50% win rate???
Really, is Blizzards goal to make all deck have a 50% win ratio? That's not my dream, and I certainly hope it's not any other "competitive" players dream. First off, if that truly is their dream, then how can Hearthstone even be taken seriously anymore, and why are they continuously pushing for Hearthstone to be a popular Esport? I can understand, and accept Bens opinion on a 50% win rate, if Hearthstone wasn't being pushed to be an Esport, however this is clearly not the case stated by lead developer Mr. Ben Brode himself.
Second, how can anyone of us even take the ladder serious anymore? To me, this response is potentially the biggest troll in video game history.
So what they are saying, is that all this time us players who work tirelessly at reaching rank 5 and beyond, that this whole time Blizzard is actually trying to do the opposite? To what extent? To appease the player base as a whole? You would think that they would at least, want most decks to have a 55 to 65% win rate, not a 50% win rate! I'm sorry, but I can no longer even take Hearthstone or pro or upcoming pro players seriously anymore. I feel like the jokes being played on us. I understand luck is a factor, and it should be, and most important it will be, because of the nature of card games. However 50% means, just that, which is 50%, which means Hearthstone is nothing but luck, and has no skill involved, or at least that's the dream for Blizzard, even if that's not currently true, because potentially it could become true.
This actually explains a lot to me, and after watching this video more than just a few times, I've come to my own conclusion, which is that I will no longer consider this a true competitive game or Esport, and I will no longer grind for hours upon ends, to reach the top "which I have done consistently since Hearthstones release". I will now only play for fun, and for a casual experience.
I have a strong feeling that, when Ben said the words, that he accidently spewed it from his mouth. In other words, that sentence was probably not ever meant for any of us to know, but because of the outcry over Purify, and all the confusion, it was blurted out on accident.
Creds to Brode for making this relatively swift video reponse to the community outcry.
What REALLY annoys me though, like, really, is that initially they thought that this card was balanced at 1 mana. They increased it to 2 mana because in balancing the card was sometimes used to only cycle the deck (as if that's so bad...). BUT admitting that the effect was balanced at 1 mana and then changing it to 2 mana without making adjustments to improve the effect is in my eyes completely insane. This means that they admit that the card is overcosted, and as we all know one point of mana is enough to make the difference between playable and non-playable.
All they needed to do was to improve the effect when they made the change to 2 mana. Perhaps also healing the minion to full? Or giving it a stat buff after the silence, or taunt? Maybe healing your hero, if only slightly?
There's so much they could do to really push this archetype if they made this a strong effect.
They didn't just admit the card is overcosted. They admit that the card is bad. THey don't make cards like Majordomo or boogymonster with the belief that it'll be effective and just messed up. They are Jhonny cards: cards that are bad but allow someone to abuse it in some way such as Majordomo into Alex for basically a Jaraxxus with an 8 damage hero power. Jhonnys love unconventional tricks like that.
Purify was intended to be one of those cards. That's WHY it's purposely made weak. Otherwise it would be a Spike card: a card with a clear strong purpose to create a strong deck. Some cards are made for competition. Some for the lulz. Some for the challenge.
THey also admitted that giving the worst class in the game a trolly challenge card when they desperately need Spikes was a very stupid idea.
Though I'll admit, it would've been nice to see the card go Silence, then Taunt. But that probably would've needed some major testing to avoid some nasty combo.
Johnny has his 0 mana silence, card draw does not worth 2.
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Fuck up, get insane publicity. This whole Purify drama made even people who left for better games to look back at shitstone.
Admit that you fucked up. Get insane publicity and congratulations that you had so much courage...to admit that you have fucked up.
This is too fucked up to be real
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Even better than a hot shower with vigorous scrubbing!
LOL
There's nothing they can make that will make priest better, but not another class worst. There's no possible way to make it so every class has 5 decks that are exactly as good in ranked. It will never happen, it can't happen and everyone constantly complaining about a class being good or bad seems to absolutely not understand this point and they want instant solutions that basically would cause the game to spiral out of control into a power creeped mess of garbage.
The one and only complain that makes sense for purify is really that it's pointless. It doesn't inspire any new kind of deck since every interaction cards could have with it is already possible with better cards. It really should have been "silence any minion", but they didn't want that because they want to see less silence in the meta for some reason. I don't think silence was ever a problem other than being abused by face decks. Face decks was the thing people didn't like, not the silence part of the face decks. Purify being basically a worst (old) owl and class-specific would not cause too much problem and you could still have it in arena at common since it would be quite a nice utility card that would fit in most decks.
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It's really fishy that they increased the cost of Purify because people weren't using as it was intended. If you make a borderline bad card, it's actually *good* that it's flexible so that it can see general play. It's almost like they think that Power Word: Shield is flagrantly OP. Do they not get that in most cases, silencing his own minion is a cost for a priest, not a benefit? Do they not realize that people play Power Word: Shield on their opponent's minions if they don't have any of their own, thus making Purify an inferior card draw alternative?
Blizzard: just buff the card before its release. Oh, and make it rare. I know it's painful, but it's the right thing to do.
It's like Silence with less flexibility in exchange for drawing a card. Mana cost too high though.
Say "Wow" for RNG!
Basically, he's saying that they did not know that Priest was that bad right now untill the community freaked out because of Purify. How can you developp such a popular game and not know about basic forces of the meta?
Priests in arena got such a bad card that it was a buff to give them 2 new cards instead of 3 new cards... Yay?
Move lightbomb to the core set. Then you won't upset priest balance in wield and make it fine in standard.
I think in next set they relase lots of priest cards what try to make purify lots better but im scared priest will be then even worst than it is now.
It is officially confirmed that Priest will get crazy broken cards from next expansion like Entomb and Lightbomb
Dead but dreaming
I think they knew exactly what state priest was in, considering they kept the Priest reveals for the last possible second, building up huge amounts of hype.
TEMPO MAGE
Creds to Brode for making this relatively swift video reponse to the community outcry.
What REALLY annoys me though, like, really, is that initially they thought that this card was balanced at 1 mana. They increased it to 2 mana because in balancing the card was sometimes used to only cycle the deck (as if that's so bad...).
BUT admitting that the effect was balanced at 1 mana and then changing it to 2 mana without making adjustments to improve the effect is in my eyes completely insane. This means that they admit that the card is overcosted, and as we all know one point of mana is enough to make the difference between playable and non-playable.
All they needed to do was to improve the effect when they made the change to 2 mana. Perhaps also healing the minion to full? Or giving it a stat buff after the silence, or taunt? Maybe healing your hero, if only slightly?
There's so much they could do to really push this archetype if they made this a strong effect.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Okay, so I have watched this video about 4 times now, and while I can appreciate the rebuttal given by Ben Brode, one thing in the video really sticks out to me, which no one else seems to have pointed out yet, beside myself and a friend of mine. Doesn't anyone else realize the most odd, and important thing about the video, like the part where he mentions, that it's Blizzards dream to make every deck have a 50% win rate???
Really, is Blizzards goal to make all deck have a 50% win ratio? That's not my dream, and I certainly hope it's not any other "competitive" players dream. First off, if that truly is their dream, then how can Hearthstone even be taken seriously anymore, and why are they continuously pushing for Hearthstone to be a popular Esport? I can understand, and accept Bens opinion on a 50% win rate, if Hearthstone wasn't being pushed to be an Esport, however this is clearly not the case stated by lead developer Mr. Ben Brode himself.
Second, how can anyone of us even take the ladder serious anymore? To me, this response is potentially the biggest troll in video game history.
So what they are saying, is that all this time us players who work tirelessly at reaching rank 5 and beyond, that this whole time Blizzard is actually trying to do the opposite? To what extent? To appease the player base as a whole? You would think that they would at least, want most decks to have a 55 to 65% win rate, not a 50% win rate! I'm sorry, but I can no longer even take Hearthstone or pro or upcoming pro players seriously anymore. I feel like the jokes being played on us. I understand luck is a factor, and it should be, and most important it will be, because of the nature of card games. However 50% means, just that, which is 50%, which means Hearthstone is nothing but luck, and has no skill involved, or at least that's the dream for Blizzard, even if that's not currently true, because potentially it could become true.
This actually explains a lot to me, and after watching this video more than just a few times, I've come to my own conclusion, which is that I will no longer consider this a true competitive game or Esport, and I will no longer grind for hours upon ends, to reach the top "which I have done consistently since Hearthstones release". I will now only play for fun, and for a casual experience.
I have a strong feeling that, when Ben said the words, that he accidently spewed it from his mouth. In other words, that sentence was probably not ever meant for any of us to know, but because of the outcry over Purify, and all the confusion, it was blurted out on accident.
How do you feel about this?