Hearthpwn

"Forgetting the whole strategy/combo shenaningans" is like saying, "ignoring the 6-ton elephant sitting on my chest."

Cards like this suffocate the game.

With Guff rotating out soon, this makes me wonder what kind of extra-mana foolishness they have in store for Druid in the coming HS year. Surely they don't expect this card to see play if Innervate is the only way to use it.

Letting Druid reliably go above 10 mana was one of the more unpleasant features of the past 14 months, and it looks like that's going to continue to some degree.

It may not have been to your taste, but there's no need to insult the people who enjoyed it. It didn't fail because no one played it. (Mercenaries content always received a reasonable number of views.) It failed because the monetization was stupid.

Quote from M1ch43l >>

And that shows how incapable the team is. If a random player finds a combo like this so fast and the team didn't after "many" playtests.

 I doubt they put much effort (if any) into testing for Wild combos, and I don't blame them. There are too many variables, and too few players affected, so it's really not worth their time.

If you are surprised when things get broken in Wild, that's on you, not them. You've been warned many times that Wild is wild.

It will also be the last major update to the Mercenaries mode as we align our goals and focus on continuing to make Hearthstone the best digital card game in the world.

TRANSLATION: "We never figured out how to monetize this thing in a way that made any sense whatsoever."

I'm not offended, but you're extremely wrong. There are several archetype matchups where it's perfectly normal for the board to be empty on both sides in the late game. Control vs. control is a prime example.

Furthermore, you don't need to end your turn with an empty board for Astalor to send all damage to face. Your opponent can clear your board first, either by trading or with spells and weapons.

Their reason for nerfing Astalor is because it's in too many decks. It's in too many decks because it's an easy Neutral one-card win condition. That remains true after the nerf, and no deck that used it before is going to drop it because it now deals 2 less damage.

Agreed. The card is useless now, even though the only reason you would have crafted it was specifically for this interaction.

These changes are designed to bring Astalor’s power more in line with what we want from a Neutral, general-purpose utility card like this.

A card that can deal 16 (or 14) damage to face is NOT a "general-purpose utility card." It is an all-purpose win condition, and that is exactly why people are (over-)using it. When you print a relatively cheap, powerful Neutral win condition, it's going to appear in way too many decks. Hell, it doesn't even have to be cheap -- see the original Sire Denathrius.

I can't even give Team 5 the benefit of the doubt on this one, because there IS no doubt. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

That's basically two full months of the Astalor shit-show, and they are still acting like Shadowstep is a perfectly balanced card.

In a slightly less horrible world, they would have addressed the glaring balance issues and given the meta time to settle a bit before bringing on the mini-set, but guess what -- the mini-set is due in early February, and the balance issues aren't even remotely fixed.

Ramp Druid's win rate is below 50%. The problem isn't Guff. The problem is Astalor.

They seriously thought "Undead Aggro" decks in Warlock, Priest, and Druid would be competitive?  With what cards!?  Did they actually playtest these decks????

I mean I'm happy that Gnoll has finally been changed to what it should have always been, but I'm embarrassed to play a game whose developers changed the card four fucking times to get to this point, despite the whole community asking for this very change.

Astalor is still autoinclude in every single deck, it's barely changed. He does 2 less damage, very wow, such balance.

Yep, just played an hour of ladder and it's exactly what I expected. Same broken bs. Relic dh, frost dk, imp warlock(theyre playing the new legendary now since jts basically leeroy who does a 12 hp shift), ramp druid.

Everyone's still playing astalor cause it was barely nerfed and does half your opponents health if they can't keep a board up.

I think Maestra of the Masquerade should be eligible for full dust refund as well. Without the interaction it's just pointless to bring it in Tess rogue. You even have to take off the disguise first to avoid generating rogue cards from Jackpot! 

I'll just say this. I suffered in Hearthstone from BETA until finally Ben Brode left the game. From that point that game has been improved in many ways and the design philosophy has changed.

But the real enjoyment of Hearthstone is not playing competitively. If you play competitively (as in any game I guess) prepare for a lot of frustration. 

Are you 0-85 now?

Credit where credit is due, this was a fast and appropriate response to community feedback.

Though I will still question why a useless card like Shatterskin Gargoyle was given signature art.

Druid is not even close to that trash rogue deathrattle deck

Really surprised we had a balance patch released on a Friday though…. Good job on their team for doing such quick fix!