Upcoming Hearthstone Balance Changes
A set of balance tweaks is coming in a game update. This hits the most highly represented classes and a couple of neutral cards including Yogg. This patch will be going live before the Last Call event for the Hearthstone World Championships. Last Call Invitationals start October 8th.
- Rockbiter Weapon now costs 2 mana (Up from 1)
- Tuskarr Totemic can now only summon Basic totems (the same ones from your hero power)
- Call of the Wild now costs 9 mana (Up from 8)
- Execute now costs 2 mana (Up from 1)
- Charge's mana cost has been lowered to 1 (Down from 3), the minion it is applied to cannot attack a hero that turn, and the bonus attack that the minion would receive has been removed.
- Abusive Sergeant's now has 1 attack (Down from 2)
- Yogg-Saron, Hope's End will now stop casting spells if he is destroyed, silenced, transformed, or returned to the owner's hand.
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Discuss this Nerf
Quote from BlizzardOver the course of the Year of the Kraken, we’ve seen the Hearthstone meta game defined and refined by our players. As a result, we’ve seen a wider variety of deck archetypes being discovered than ever before. New strategies and playstyles have evolved over time entirely thanks to our creative and passionate community.
With the introduction of new cards to the Hearthstone card pool comes additional chances to innovate and discover new decks. Sometimes, the introduction of additional cards can also lead to older cards gaining an overall power level boost. In many cases, dusting off old cards can be good for the game, and allow our players to create and expand on new themes, even if they may not have a place in the current meta.
With Keeping Hearthstone Fresh in mind, we have to be acutely aware of the overall power levels of our cards contained within the evergreen Basic and Classic sets. Since these cards do not rotate along with certain expansion or adventure sets each year for our Standard mode players, managing and monitoring their strength is of great importance to the overall health of the game.
In an upcoming update, we will be making changes to a few Basic and Classic cards, along with certain cards that may have felt too oppressive to our players in the current state of the meta game.
Shaman
Shaman has been representing a large population of the total decks played in Hearthstone for the past few months. While we think it’s great for Classes to fluctuate in power level, it’s important that Hearthstone always feels like there are a wide variety of decks to play with and against. We’re happy that Shaman has many deckbuilding options to choose from, but we are taking this opportunity to adjust two of the most widely played and frustrating Shaman cards. In the short-term, we think these adjustments bring Shaman closer to the pack in terms of both population and power level. In the long-term, we think these changes will make playing against Shaman less frustrating and make the deckbuilding decisions for Shaman more interesting.
Rockbiter Weapon
Rockbiter is the culprit of a few mass burst-damage combos in addition to being a reliable early game removal tool. Due to its strength in a variety of circumstances, it’s been one of the most widely played Shaman cards in Hearthstone’s history. Making changes to Basic cards that show up in every deck will help instigate more variety and help the Standard format succeed in the future. We’re preserving some of the synergistic potential of Rockbiter Weapon but decreasing its value as a removal tool by changing the cost of the card from 1 to 2 Mana.
We considered other Shaman cards like Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem, but these are both leaving Standard relatively soon, so we thought it would be better to change Rockbiter and improve the Standard format in a more permanent way.
Tuskarr Totemic
We like that Tuskarr is contributing to totem focused decks, but currently the power level is centered around the possibility of summoning cards like Totem Golem or Mana Tide Totem. This isn’t the most fun type of randomness for a card that is low mana and sees this much play. We want this card to be an option for decks that take advantage of extra totems through cards like Thing From Below or Primal Fusion, but a weaker option for players looking for standalone high power level options on turn three. That said, we are adjusting the battlecry for Tuskarr Totemic to only summon basic totems.
Call of the Wild
Although Call of the Wild is intended to be a powerful late game option, it is over performing at 8 mana. By moving it to 9 mana we intend to tone down its power enough that it won’t be an automatic inclusion in every Hunter deck and overshadow other strategies.
Execute
The Warrior class has access to a large amount of removal spells, and while we want to continue providing Warrior players with powerful removal options, Execute stands out as one that has proven to be too efficient in too many situations. We’re increasing the cost of Execute from 1 to 2 Mana in order to keep the card as an option closer in power level to other existing and future removal tools.
Charge
While we enjoy seeing players explore combo styles of play and will continue to support it in the future, we’ve seen in the past that the ability to give Charge to minions that don’t normally have it has been particularly problematic and also heavily restricts future cards. We’ve redesigned the card Charge in a way that provides opportunities for minion combat, but does not enable strategies that intend to win without allowing opponents to interact.
Abusive Sergeant
Aggressive decks are stronger than we would like right now, and Abusive Sergeant is in virtually all of them. We like that Abusive Sergeant is available to players using minion heavy strategies, but neutral cards in the base set should be narrow enough that they aren’t showing up in such a wide variety of circumstances. We’re changing Abusive Sergeant to be a 1/1 so the battlecry becomes the clear focus, rather than the card being a reasonable turn one option for all aggressive deck types.
Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End
This is the most controversial card we've ever made. Some people LOVE Yogg, and others hate it. We felt like seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up. Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments. Yogg is relatively weak in power level for nearly every class at every level, but is slightly above average in 2 decks – Tempo Mage and Token Druid. We didn't want to nerf it so much that it couldn't still be a fun card for players who currently love Yogg. Yogg-Saron will now stop casting spells if, during Yogg-Saron’s battlecry, it is destroyed, silenced, transformed, or returned to its owner’s hand. We tried a bunch of things and we think this is a significant enough nerf that it could reduce the amount it gets seen (especially in tournaments), while still maintaining the dream for people who love the card.
In addition to the above changes, we will be addressing the bug where cards with Overload cast by Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End will not cause Overload to the player in a future update.
Thanks for checking out our reasons behind the latest balance changes to Hearthstone. The updated cards will arrive as a part of our 6.1.3 update, which is currently planned to go live before the Last Call events for the Hearthstone Championship Tour.
Usually changed cards refund the full crafting cost for a certain period. So dust all nerfed cards, wait for the meta, then craft what is still used. You can only win.
Way better than the last nerf patch, just don't understand rockbiter. Their reasoning is that Tunnel Trogg and totem golem will be rotated out soon, but so will Tuskaar. People forget just how weak shaman was before Loe. Strongly disagree with removing a classic card for shaman(don't even get dust for it FeelsBadMan ) Really like the abusive one, I wish they removed a zoolock card too (outside of abusive that nerf lowers the power level of fucking every aggro deck). Yeah I feel like PO is the only one they're missing that's obviously problematic.
Now this is how you nerf cards! All of these cards aside from yogg and charge are still completely playable in at least some decks while now not as oppressive. I'm a little sad about the charge nerf as worgen combo was a very tame and fun strategy, but I really like all of the other changes.
*Sees new Tuskarr Totemic* WOOO NO MORE 3 mana 6/6
King Krush might be stronger than new Call of the Wild.
Execute, doesn't seem like a big deal.
Charge, I never use OTK decks, and this card looks like its buffed. Might have been better if it was 0 mana like the old version.
Yogg will probably won't last more than 5-7 spells.
Charge is not buffed as minion combat as they describe it, it pretty pointless. The main goal is removal and warrior got other, better ways to do that.
The only option I could imagine, is charging a deathrattle to force the immediate trigger. Like Sylvanas + Charge to prevent playing around the deathrattle.
Not sure about Krush being better than CotW. It is more burst if you have no board, but with a single minion of 2 attack you break even. Misha provides a taunt and Leokk buffs everything. Also having three minions requires different removal than a single big one.
Wait. Charge doesn't even give +attack now?? It used to be 0 mana no +attack back in the days... come on...
So, I am a F2P player, and around 2 weeks ago, I crafted Yogg. I have to think a lot before crafting a card, cause I can't really aford to have a (expensive) card stuck in my collection with no use. If the card is now unplayable, did I just lose 1200 dust?
Full Refund (1600 Dust)
Yogg is definitely not a first-pick legendary to be crafting before others.
Cards that are changed are temporarily disenchanted for the full crafting cost.
Usually when they change cards, you cand dust it for full value.
Chill, you will get your 1600 dust back when you disenchant yogg after the nerf is applied. youre welcome.
Should be able to dust it for the same amount when it is nerfed.
Farewell, Shaman. You've had your time in the sun. After the next expansion, you'll be cast back into the abyss of the bottom tier from whence you came.
Probably desenchanting Yogg, but thanks Mr. Brode for these wonderful changes
I though Yogg was never supposed to cause overload, since Yogg is the one casting the spells? Wasn't that the intention?
The combo deck hate continues...