Many of the other digital card games use buffs quite regularly, and the results are usually positive. Hearthstone is the only game I play that pushes the nerf panic button waaay too much, and as OP said, it's a temp fix until the next most broken deck takes over. Hearthstone nerfs are like a broken record, it's always the same result afterwards, the game never gets healthier for the long term.
This is news to me. What card games have buffed their cards with positive results?
Many of the other digital card games use buffs quite regularly, and the results are usually positive. Hearthstone is the only game I play that pushes the nerf panic button waaay too much, and as OP said, it's a temp fix until the next most broken deck takes over. Hearthstone nerfs are like a broken record, it's always the same result afterwards, the game never gets healthier for the long term.
Absolutely false. The meta after Un'Goro was pretty unpleasant at first, due to the ridiculously polarizing Rogue quest.
After they nerfed that, the meta was one of the best hearthstone has ever seen ... for exactly one month. Then KFT happened and everything sucked again for the next year and a half.
Another example is the early rotation of Genn and Baku. Not technically a nerf, but it's the same idea. Two cards make the game boring? Make them unplayable; problem solved. Standard has been much better without them, even in the midst of this Rogue-and-Warrior fest.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Buffing and nerfing are two sides of the same coin. Nerfing a card has the effect of lowering the power of a card relative to the power of all other cards; buffing a card has the effect of raising the power of a card relative to the power of all other cards. Nerfing a given card in effect buffs all other cards and buffing a given card effectively nerfs all other cards. Psychologically, it is preferrable to nerf a single card (and effectively buff hundreds of cards) than it is to buff a single card (and effectively nerf hundreds of cards).
Is it really such a request to ask for these to be buffed? This expansion was especially fun during the first few weeks. All kinds of weird stuff were running around and even a lot of unplayable concepts from the lackluster last three sets saw light. Is it not fun to have a true diversity in the game? Playing and playing against the same 3-8 decks is so tedious that the game just becomes work. As far as I can tell, Blizzard is not capable of projecting the meta, to this I don't blame them. Where I can blame them is for not adjusting it accordingly short of the expected nerf hammer which reads, "this tier one deck drops in power/ the tier 2 deck it counters goes to tier one." a.k.a. nothing very new much emerges.
I agree it is fun to see a diverse set of decks do well on ladder, and its fun to see some decks rotate out of T1/T2 and other decks take their place. However, I'm not sure buffing cards is the best solution. I would rather see Blizzard release mini booster sets mid expansion. Something like an influx of 20 new cards every two months that would alter the meta.
Yes I think buffs are a very good way to bring some new light to the meta But I voted no. Not because I dislike buffs, but because I don't think replacing nerfs with buffs is smart. I think a healthy balance of the two is the way to go. Sadly that wasn't an option.
No matter how many votes this gets, it will never happen.
They've already said they'd never buff cards and they've stood by that policy for YEARS.
Murloc Warleader, Bane of Doom, Deathstalker Rexxar, Tess Greymane, and any and all of the minions gifted tribes well after release are all laughing at your lack of awareness.
No matter how many votes this gets, it will never happen.
They've already said they'd never buff cards and they've stood by that policy for YEARS.
Murloc Warleader, Bane of Doom, Deathstalker Rexxar, Tess Greymane, and any and all of the minions gifted tribes well after release are all laughing at your lack of awareness.
To be fair, they have said they're against buffs as a means of balance changing, because nerfs are just strictly better for that. The majority of the buffs they've made have been incidental, like the minion tribe additions, not strictly buffs, like Bane of Doom and Deathstalker Rexxar (which were also both only changed due to mass community outcry that they weren't working the way they should), or more about improving the overall gameplay experience, as with the mass Murloc update.
I think the first buff to Unleash the Hounds and the buff to Molten Giant as it was Hall of Famed (which was really just a nerf revert) are the only ones I can think of post Alpha that were done to improve a card and impacted the meta somewhat (since Hounds was changed again soon after). There might be more I'm forgetting though.
No matter how many votes this gets, it will never happen.
They've already said they'd never buff cards and they've stood by that policy for YEARS.
Murloc Warleader, Bane of Doom, Deathstalker Rexxar, Tess Greymane, and any and all of the minions gifted tribes well after release are all laughing at your lack of awareness.
To be fair, they have said they're against buffs as a means of balance changing, because nerfs are just strictly better for that. The majority of the buffs they've made have been incidental, like the minion tribe additions, not strictly buffs, like Bane of Doom and Deathstalker Rexxar (which were also both only changed due to mass community outcry that they weren't working the way they should), or more about improving the overall gameplay experience, as with the mass Murloc update.
I think the first buff to Unleash the Hounds and the buff to Molten Giant as it was Hall of Famed (which was really just a nerf revert) are the only ones I can think of post Alpha that were done to improve a card and impacted the meta somewhat (since Hounds was changed again soon after). There might be more I'm forgetting though.
This *is* all true. The examples I listed are not active number moving buffs, and often can be attributed to fixing some aspect of the user experience rather than card balance.
But my point is more that the people crying that blizzard "never buffs cards" is provably false. They do buff cards, these people just don't pay attention because they aren't as flashy about the buffs as they are about the nerfs.
Here's the way I see it: Nerf: Attempts to fix an immediate problem. Very low chance of causing issues.
Buff: Attempts to fix a problem that is not immediate. Very high chance of causing issues.
If a company is very very very good at game balance then buffs may be fine, but Hearthstone has historically had issues with balance and with that in mind I will vote for nerfs over buffs in Hearthstone 100% of the time.
But my point is more that the people crying that blizzard "never buffs cards" is provably false. They do buff cards, these people just don't pay attention because they aren't as flashy about the buffs as they are about the nerfs.
More likely, when people say "buff," they mean "direct buff," not indirect.
When I say I'm going to cross the street, I don't usually mean I'm going to go inside and fall down the stairs so an ambulance will come and drive me to the hospital that just happens to be on the other side of the street.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
All of the "buffs" that have been listed here are not really buffs. They are more like improvements to the quality of experience. They are basically coding fixes, not stat or interaction enhancements.
The DK Rexxar "buff" was mostly neutral in the end because his pool of beasts getting bigger also dilutes the good results into a much larger group of options.
And with regard to other card games, apparently they must be grand masters of balance, because buffs are relatively common in other digital card games.
Every Nerf is an indirect buff. You cant have one without the other. Direct buffs are tricky in a game like this though. So many interactions that many time reducing problem cards is better than creating more problem cards.
Buffing is not better than nerfing for changing the meta.
Let's say we buff... Betrayal. Nobody plays Betrayal right now, right? So what happens? People test out Betrayal in their Rogue decks, and either it makes the cut, or it doesn't. That's pretty boring.
Let's buff a different card, one for a class not in the meta much right now. I haven't seen a lot of Priest, what happens if we give them a buff? Well, now people try out Priest for a bit, and either it changes the meta up, or it still isn't strong enough to be Tier 1-2. Not much change, and either way the average powerlevel of the game has increased, which isn't good.
Now what happens when we nerf a card? Let's say we nerf Waggle Pick, since that seems to be one of Rogue's strong cards right now. Now we have a lot more interesting developments. First, we need to see how much of a hit this is to Rogue. If Waggle Pick is hit hard enough, what card do you replace it with? Do you need to change up your strategy completely? Then we need to see what Tier 2-3 decks can take advantage of this new drop in Rogue's powerlevel - maybe Zoolock becomes much better now? Or Midrange Hunter? What about Warrior decks, how does this affect them?
In general, nerfing cards creates far more opportunities for change than buffing cards does. Buffing a card means you try out that card; nerfing a card means trying out a bunch of cards to see if they're better than it now.
If the buff wasn't for a removal spell and it were instead for a core component of an unused archetype then the card along with many others would begin to see play, and not just in the form of a little experimentation in an already-top deck. Right now the only reason nerfs are interesting is because some classes' new(er) cards are egregiously good. No one can say Raiding Party is balanced with a straight face; cards like it are holding the format hostage.
Nerfs open up design space and diversify the meta. Honestly, I am glad the HS community is starting to understand that they are a good thing and seeing them in a different light. A couple of years ago people went feral at the mention of nerfs because of how rarely they happened, which was obviously a terrible attitude.
Now buffs, on the other hand, they really are difficult to pull off. Let's do mock statistics:
50% of Hearthstone's cards are unplayable (fillers, stat-piles, arena behemoths, Basic set, Year of the Raven, etc...)
20% are bad (janky stuff, most epic cards, stuff that goes into homebrew decks)
20% are good (class cards, most Classic legendaries, much of the Classic set, etc...)
10% are OP (many auto-includes, Year of the Mammoth, etc...)
For a nerf, you just need to either hit or kill off something among the 10% (sometimes Blizzard misses for the sake of dust refunds, but that has been happening less these days) and you're golden. For a buff, you will need to go blindly into the bottom 70% and pick at random. Your chances of messing up are substantially larger.
Blizzard could, however, implement temporary buffs. Say, giving us a month during which Pint-Sized Summoner is a 2/3 instead of a 2/2 probably won't kill anyone. Giving Dust Devil an extra health point, though, might create problems. But in a month, those would be reverted anyway, which is a lot sooner than most balance problems are solved in HS. Of course, I should come clean and reveal that this is just another plot for getting an unnerfed Yogg-Saron, Hope's End back, even if just for a while. Forgive me.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
All of the "buffs" that have been listed here are not really buffs. They are more like improvements to the quality of experience. They are basically coding fixes, not stat or interaction enhancements.
The DK Rexxar "buff" was mostly neutral in the end because his pool of beasts getting bigger also dilutes the good results into a much larger group of options.
"Neutral"?
Stoneskin basalisk, plated beetle, cave hydra, dire mole, vilebrood skitterer, and viscious scalehide all got added in one lump with... 2 bad cards and 3 kind of okay cards in the mix? That doesn't dilute the pool, it just makes the pool have more options that are fantastic with no downside.
There's a video of Ben Brode saying that North Sea Kraken is not a beast back in TGT, and yet in The Witchwood it was given the beast tag. Or how in that same patch Mountain Giant and Molten Giant gained the Elemental tag, despite it being a full year since Ungoro. Those are not a "coding fix" types of change, those are straight up buffs.
A "coding fix" would be Shudderwok having its animations sped up and having the max number of battlecries mucked with. A "coding fix" was when they added "stops playing card when dies/silences/polymorphs" to Tess Greymane, since it was always intended to have the yog saron limitation and it continuing was a bug. When 5 days later, they reverted the bug intentionally and said that they preferred Tess playing all the cards even if she dies, that was not a "coding fix".
All of the "buffs" that have been listed here are not really buffs. They are more like improvements to the quality of experience. They are basically coding fixes, not stat or interaction enhancements.
The DK Rexxar "buff" was mostly neutral in the end because his pool of beasts getting bigger also dilutes the good results into a much larger group of options.
"Neutral"?
Stoneskin basalisk, plated beetle, cave hydra, dire mole, vilebrood skitterer, and viscious scalehide all got added in one lump with... 2 bad cards and 3 kind of okay cards in the mix? That doesn't dilute the pool, it just makes the pool have more options that are fantastic with no downside.
Did you seriously just claim that Dire Mole is a good hit for a zombeast? Ok, sure buddy. Live in your fantasy world.
Edit: The only objectively good hits in that list you just made are the Vicious Scalehide and Stoneskin Basilisk. The Vilebrood Skitterer is way too expensive for its effect and will almost never be picked unless you can stitch it together with a 1 or 0 cost beast. Plated Beetle doesn't do anything for tempo or board, and Cave Hydra is super situational and only any good if it pairs with a rush beast, because otherwise it just gets dealt with before it can hit anything. I severely doubt whether you've ever actually used DK Rexxar.
Seeing how horribly wrong the Unleash the Hounds buff turned out and even the accidential Naga Sea Witch one, I seriously doubt they will ever buff anything directly again. Also design space for future expansions, rather print new cards yadayada...
Personally, I would not mind some buffs, but only if a class falls way behind in winrate (Warrior in Wild, Priest in Standard) and for cards supporting archetypes which clearly failed due to overerestimating their power level (freeze shaman, beast druid, current standard tempo mage.) Some more tier 3-4 decks rather than non existing ones would not hurt at all, and I would like to see all the classes being viable.
This is news to me. What card games have buffed their cards with positive results?
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Absolutely false. The meta after Un'Goro was pretty unpleasant at first, due to the ridiculously polarizing Rogue quest.
After they nerfed that, the meta was one of the best hearthstone has ever seen ... for exactly one month. Then KFT happened and everything sucked again for the next year and a half.
Another example is the early rotation of Genn and Baku. Not technically a nerf, but it's the same idea. Two cards make the game boring? Make them unplayable; problem solved. Standard has been much better without them, even in the midst of this Rogue-and-Warrior fest.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Buffing and nerfing are two sides of the same coin. Nerfing a card has the effect of lowering the power of a card relative to the power of all other cards; buffing a card has the effect of raising the power of a card relative to the power of all other cards. Nerfing a given card in effect buffs all other cards and buffing a given card effectively nerfs all other cards. Psychologically, it is preferrable to nerf a single card (and effectively buff hundreds of cards) than it is to buff a single card (and effectively nerf hundreds of cards).
I agree it is fun to see a diverse set of decks do well on ladder, and its fun to see some decks rotate out of T1/T2 and other decks take their place. However, I'm not sure buffing cards is the best solution. I would rather see Blizzard release mini booster sets mid expansion. Something like an influx of 20 new cards every two months that would alter the meta.
No matter how many votes this gets, it will never happen.
They've already said they'd never buff cards and they've stood by that policy for YEARS.
Yes I think buffs are a very good way to bring some new light to the meta But I voted no. Not because I dislike buffs, but because I don't think replacing nerfs with buffs is smart. I think a healthy balance of the two is the way to go. Sadly that wasn't an option.
Murloc Warleader, Bane of Doom, Deathstalker Rexxar, Tess Greymane, and any and all of the minions gifted tribes well after release are all laughing at your lack of awareness.
To be fair, they have said they're against buffs as a means of balance changing, because nerfs are just strictly better for that. The majority of the buffs they've made have been incidental, like the minion tribe additions, not strictly buffs, like Bane of Doom and Deathstalker Rexxar (which were also both only changed due to mass community outcry that they weren't working the way they should), or more about improving the overall gameplay experience, as with the mass Murloc update.
I think the first buff to Unleash the Hounds and the buff to Molten Giant as it was Hall of Famed (which was really just a nerf revert) are the only ones I can think of post Alpha that were done to improve a card and impacted the meta somewhat (since Hounds was changed again soon after). There might be more I'm forgetting though.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
but what if you buff betrayal AND nerf waggle?, one buff per balance change would be pretty good, but nothing more really
There's only 1 card that needs a buff Silverback Patriarch
#nerfbarnes
This *is* all true. The examples I listed are not active number moving buffs, and often can be attributed to fixing some aspect of the user experience rather than card balance.
But my point is more that the people crying that blizzard "never buffs cards" is provably false. They do buff cards, these people just don't pay attention because they aren't as flashy about the buffs as they are about the nerfs.
Here's the way I see it:
Nerf: Attempts to fix an immediate problem. Very low chance of causing issues.
Buff: Attempts to fix a problem that is not immediate. Very high chance of causing issues.
If a company is very very very good at game balance then buffs may be fine, but Hearthstone has historically had issues with balance and with that in mind I will vote for nerfs over buffs in Hearthstone 100% of the time.
More likely, when people say "buff," they mean "direct buff," not indirect.
When I say I'm going to cross the street, I don't usually mean I'm going to go inside and fall down the stairs so an ambulance will come and drive me to the hospital that just happens to be on the other side of the street.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
All of the "buffs" that have been listed here are not really buffs. They are more like improvements to the quality of experience. They are basically coding fixes, not stat or interaction enhancements.
The DK Rexxar "buff" was mostly neutral in the end because his pool of beasts getting bigger also dilutes the good results into a much larger group of options.
And with regard to other card games, apparently they must be grand masters of balance, because buffs are relatively common in other digital card games.
Every Nerf is an indirect buff. You cant have one without the other. Direct buffs are tricky in a game like this though. So many interactions that many time reducing problem cards is better than creating more problem cards.
If the buff wasn't for a removal spell and it were instead for a core component of an unused archetype then the card along with many others would begin to see play, and not just in the form of a little experimentation in an already-top deck. Right now the only reason nerfs are interesting is because some classes' new(er) cards are egregiously good. No one can say Raiding Party is balanced with a straight face; cards like it are holding the format hostage.
Nerfs open up design space and diversify the meta. Honestly, I am glad the HS community is starting to understand that they are a good thing and seeing them in a different light. A couple of years ago people went feral at the mention of nerfs because of how rarely they happened, which was obviously a terrible attitude.
Now buffs, on the other hand, they really are difficult to pull off. Let's do mock statistics:
For a nerf, you just need to either hit or kill off something among the 10% (sometimes Blizzard misses for the sake of dust refunds, but that has been happening less these days) and you're golden. For a buff, you will need to go blindly into the bottom 70% and pick at random. Your chances of messing up are substantially larger.
Blizzard could, however, implement temporary buffs. Say, giving us a month during which Pint-Sized Summoner is a 2/3 instead of a 2/2 probably won't kill anyone. Giving Dust Devil an extra health point, though, might create problems. But in a month, those would be reverted anyway, which is a lot sooner than most balance problems are solved in HS. Of course, I should come clean and reveal that this is just another plot for getting an unnerfed Yogg-Saron, Hope's End back, even if just for a while. Forgive me.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
"Neutral"?
Stoneskin basalisk, plated beetle, cave hydra, dire mole, vilebrood skitterer, and viscious scalehide all got added in one lump with... 2 bad cards and 3 kind of okay cards in the mix? That doesn't dilute the pool, it just makes the pool have more options that are fantastic with no downside.
There's a video of Ben Brode saying that North Sea Kraken is not a beast back in TGT, and yet in The Witchwood it was given the beast tag. Or how in that same patch Mountain Giant and Molten Giant gained the Elemental tag, despite it being a full year since Ungoro. Those are not a "coding fix" types of change, those are straight up buffs.
A "coding fix" would be Shudderwok having its animations sped up and having the max number of battlecries mucked with. A "coding fix" was when they added "stops playing card when dies/silences/polymorphs" to Tess Greymane, since it was always intended to have the yog saron limitation and it continuing was a bug. When 5 days later, they reverted the bug intentionally and said that they preferred Tess playing all the cards even if she dies, that was not a "coding fix".
Did you seriously just claim that Dire Mole is a good hit for a zombeast? Ok, sure buddy. Live in your fantasy world.
Edit: The only objectively good hits in that list you just made are the Vicious Scalehide and Stoneskin Basilisk. The Vilebrood Skitterer is way too expensive for its effect and will almost never be picked unless you can stitch it together with a 1 or 0 cost beast. Plated Beetle doesn't do anything for tempo or board, and Cave Hydra is super situational and only any good if it pairs with a rush beast, because otherwise it just gets dealt with before it can hit anything. I severely doubt whether you've ever actually used DK Rexxar.
Seeing how horribly wrong the Unleash the Hounds buff turned out and even the accidential Naga Sea Witch one, I seriously doubt they will ever buff anything directly again. Also design space for future expansions, rather print new cards yadayada...
Personally, I would not mind some buffs, but only if a class falls way behind in winrate (Warrior in Wild, Priest in Standard) and for cards supporting archetypes which clearly failed due to overerestimating their power level (freeze shaman, beast druid, current standard tempo mage.) Some more tier 3-4 decks rather than non existing ones would not hurt at all, and I would like to see all the classes being viable.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide