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Murloc Warleader used to buff enemy murlocs. Doesn't anymore.
Tess Greymane used to have the Yog Saron "ends casting spells if dies/polymorphs", doesn't anymore.
Bane of Doom used to summon a specific set of demons that explicitly did not include doomguard or voidcaller, and the list of what could be summoned frankly sucked. It doesn't have this restriction anymore.
Deathstalker Rexxar explicitly was designed with the zombeast pool not to increase with new sets and did not get the Kobolds and Catacombs beasts added during that standard rotation. This was reversed.
Some 30 individual cards used to not have beast and/or elemental tag and had them added after the second post release patch of Ungoro.
None of the changes I'm listing happened in the beta, these are all unambiguously buffs that happened since launch.
It's played quite frequently in arena... so you support buffing cards and making them broken in arena?
I 100% disagree, as do most card game developers. Nerfs give unused cards a chance to shine; buffs prevent other cards from shining. Nerfing opens up design space, buffing limits design space.
Let's look at the only existing example, since Hearthstone hasn't buffed cards since release. When the aura mechanics were adjusted last year, Naga Sea Witch got a "buff" as it allowed giants to be played en mass on turn 5. Anyone who was playing Wild at the time can tell you that this buff led to one of the worst metas of all time.
In short, you don't overthrow a dictator by creating a second dictator. You pull up the offender by the roots and let things settle from there.
Buffing a card is really dangerous. As a game developer point of view, you can't expect what will happen when you buff things up. Maybe you create more problems to the meta, then anything else.
And what is a buff to a minion? Upgrading its stats? Creating new stuff to what it does? This is exactly what the developers don't want, because the time to get fresh stuff is when they realease a new expansion.
This idea makes no sense.
Genuinely surprised by the amount of narrow-minded people in this thread.
Buffs would just lead to nerfs, I don't see how this is a good solution because of that simple reason.
Nerfs are buffs, effectively: they buff other cards’ power level relative to the nerfed card. And nerfing overused/OP cards is preferable to buffing underused cards, for a few reasons:
1) Overused/OP cards are actually haven’t a direct impact on the meta, since those cards are frequently played by lots of players.
2) on that same line, it’s easy to identify nerf targets, whereas theoretically any underused (and how do we define that?) card could be a buff target. And how do you determine/test what sort of buffs would actually impact the meta?
3) Buffing cards will almost invariably have unintended consequences, effectively nerfing cards that didn’t need a nerf. On the other hand, nerfing cards has the effect of buffing other cards on a relative basis, which is what you say you want.
If hearthstone used buffs to balance the meta, you would most likely argue that they should use nerfs instead. Your logic is baseless and you didn't offer any ideas for specific buffs.
Nerfs and Buffs need to co-exist to create a healthy game. Your not supposed to just buff everything to an insane powerlevel but at the same time some cards that see 0 play could certainly use a little buff. I'd like to see bimonthly nerfs/buffs and while people may not like this, it could be little things like buffing an under-used card to mix up the current meta and nerfing cards that are too dominant.
Buffs would be good to make synergies and expansion mechanics viable. Currently a lot of mechanics basically get thrown out in favor of decks that consist of almost all classic cards.
I answered no because it’d just create problems most likely. There are 3 things that could happen if they buff a card. It’ll either end up still not being strong enough to run, be way too strong, meaning it needs to be nerfed, or it ends up being at a good balance level, which is very unlikely. In the first two cases people will complain just like they do about the nerfs, and in the third case people will still complain because people will complain about anything.
In a card game balancing can be really difficult, as changing even the smallest thing could break a card. A good example of this was Call of the Wild. That alone brought up the power level of midrange hunter by a lot, but they increased the mana by 1 and it just stopped seeing play.
That wasn't a buff that was an un-nerf. It was originally 20
Blizzard have their hands full with nerfing a couple of cards already and you want them to buff every other card instead? Yeah, no. Not gonna happen, sorry.
Sorry but thats a total falacy. If you Buff lets say heal druid into a t1-2 deck Rogues are going to be less dominant, and the meta is going to be more diverse. There is no powercreep. There is not op cards, only more viable options.
I like the idea of giving minor buffs to some cards, but I don't think it's the right solution to bring down overpowered decks. ShadowsOfSense did a great job at explaining this, you can read his post below.
That said, I do think they could look at some underplayed cards that are very obviously below the powerlevel they intended them to be. Some examples could be:
Buff The Boogeymonster's stats, it's very hard to imagine the card becoming overpowered as an 8/8 in an environment as competitive as wild.
Buff Moorabi's stats or make his effect more impactful. Maybe instead of adding the minion to your hand he could summon a copy of it (which is still frozen, which allows the opponent more time to answer it). A buff like this might also require his cost to be increased.
Lower Harbinger Celestia's mana cost to 3. This is very unlikely to make her playable, but at least it will make her more playable.
These are just a few examples of bad cards that can safely be buffed. Besides these type of cards I don't think Blizzard should go crazy and buff all slightly underplayed cards. The main problem with this is that a lot of cards might not be a problem right now but can become problematic in the future as new cards are released. Everyone laughed at Hadronox when he was first released, but a few expansions later he became the centerpiece of taunt druid, which was a deck that could generate insane amounts of value. If Hadronox would have been buffed beforehand, the deck might have been unstoppable. Another good example is Bloodbloom. This card was pretty much useless during it's entire standard cycle but thanks to Darkest Hour it now allows an already pretty oppressive combo to be played as early as turn 4.
tl;dr: I think buffs could be nice but only for very underplayed cards that have very little to no chance of ever seeing play. If the aim is to balance the game, nerfs are the most effective solution.
Okay, which buffs would that require? And are you certain that won't change the meta for the worse either in this expansion or in the next couple of expansions?
My main concern with buffing over nerfing is the extra time it takes to get it "right", which would likely take time away from other areas, like creating new cards. So the only buffs I would really like to see is to utterly unplayable cards, but then again either the buffs would be so minor that the cards are still unplayable or you risk the cards becoming a problem.
I actually think this would make her strong enough to see play in several decks. The upside vs the downside would be much better. The only concern would really only be doomsayers. Other than that it would offer good AoE protection on certain turns or have the very likely chance of staying 3 mana 5/6 for one turn vs certain control decks.
While buffs pose a danger of powercreep, forcing players always to have large amounts of the newest cards/often craft new ones- it should be considered in a few exeptional cases. But I really think nerfs are the better tool to keep classes in check.
If a class has winrates well below 45% with all decks, some class cards -a somewhat random selection- could gain in strenght. Maybe just temporally, Blizzard publishes a few lines of story,like how Madam Lazul manages to buff this 4 cards with stolen manaelementals, and with the next rotation the buffs might vanish - again explained with some lines of story.
Another case where buffs should (carefully) be considered: class identity. Didn't Blizzard want to enforce this? If a certain aspect of class identity isn't shown in the meta at all, like ramp for druid, one card displaying this could be buffed. Not to make a new T1 deck possible, but just enough that some people will consider the card.
Third case: Lore. If a card displayes a character out of WoW, that many remember as strong, it should also be playable in Hearthstone. Especially if it comes from the classic set. Few classic legendarys see meta defining play,even though this set should be the backbone of the game.
Tldr; in some cases, to preserve class identity, help a class without any metadecks, or for iconic cards from the classic set,buffs should be considered.
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Card Design ChampionNerfs can target a single card more effectively. Buffs can have much larger cascading effects other than providing an alternative to that strong card you didn't want to nerf.
Certain weak/pack-filled cards could use a buff sure, but if a certain card is being problematic, buffing other cards is a much trickier way to try and fix it. It can be much harder to anticipate how the newly buffed card is going to impact the meta compared to nerfing the problematic card itself.
Worst idea ever.
No more words needed.