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.
shaman nerfs are very good. charge must be 0 mana.
Developer&Balancing Team of Hearthstone has no clue(!) about hearthstone (I don't blame balancers/testers if developers are ignoring them)
so why am I saying this?
1 - Because of Rockbiter nerf and how the route they have taken about shaman
Shaman was one of the weakest classes in this game for so long, then they added imbalanced cards to shaman class to raise shamans overall strenght but it is simply wrong approach of balancing, maybe adding too strong 1-2 cards wouldn't be a problem but since developers doesn't have a clue about game they started adding too strong cards one after another...
tunnel trogg - totem golem - tuskar totemic addition was actually too powerful, especially fucking tuskar totem RNG was way too imbalanced (and it keeps almost 2 years for them to understand that)
Anyways these additions from TGT should be enough for shamans, but no(!)
They should give shamans more, like 0 mana 5/5 taunts and 4 mana 7/7s...
Now they are nerfing rockbiter because: shamans have tunnel troggs for 1 mana and which can reach stats of 2 or 3 mana too soon and they have totem golem for 2 mana who has stats of 3 drop, and since shamans are starting with such huge tempo, the combination with rockbiter (1 mana 3 damage removal) became too much.
But let me ask you something;
Warriors have fiery waraxe, which works as 2x rockbiter weapon used in 2 turns, why are you not nerfing fiery war axe?
Because warriors can't place such huge monsters with such huge tempo in early turns and they can deal you maximum 2-3 damage with early minions, so the OPness of totem golem and tunnel trogg is nerfed by nerfing rockbiter weapon, very clever huh?
Another theory is Rockbiter + Doomhammer combination.
Is rockbiter itself seems imbalanced? again as I said, it is not imbalanced at all at 1 mana while you are using it on your hero or on a creature on board, but somehow(!) it is imbalanced with doomhammer(!) and ofcourse developers needs to nerf rockbiter insted of fucking doomhammer...
And let me tell you what will happen next
When year of kraken is out, and when tunnel trogg and totem golem and tuskar totemic is out of standart, shamans will be the same weak shamans at the old meta days, except they will have also a nerf to their one of best but not imbalanced card: rockbiter weapon. So shamans will be weaker.... and with the same logic those idiot developers will start to develop more imbalanced units for this more weaker shaman...
I know you think I am over exaggerating things, but remember old days of gvg, while people are thinking game couldnt be more RNG than this, and here we are today, playing with yogg-sarons babbling books cabalists tomes...
anyways I will cut my message here, but know this fucking hs developers, you are hopeless and you are failing in every steps of development, I wish blizzard would pay to people who deserves being a developer instead of a bunch of sharlatans...
Do you rent your crystal ball by any chance? I'd like to see the future too.
Less face damage. Just it. They still want that shamans have a strong early game, but with with that amount of face damage the point when shaman lost the board control are the point when he has letal.
you have no idea how testing and developing works
The reasoning behind rockbiter is not because of the combo with doomhammer, since u need 2 cards on your hand to play it, but instead the tempo swing aggro shamans get without any punishment when they drop a totem golem and rockbiter kill your 2 drop for 1 mana and still can get away with it, even tho the 1 mana spell do the same it does have overload, so i kind get why they did it, but when shamans cards get out of standard that gonna have huge effect and not good ones, so i believe the doomhammer nerf in some way would have been way better for the class overall, make the card cost 7 mana like gorehowl withtout the overload would be the best solution
Now I can play The Boogeymonster with Charge in my control warrior ! Yay!
Nice, it had to be done sooner or later.
I sincerely hope so. With a nerf this harsh I'll gain 5 deck slots and 1600 dust...
Yup.The official twitter confirmed you will be able to disenchant for full value.
I agree with pretty much everything on this list. Good balancing!
Finally no more 3rd and 4th Totem Golems.
Call of the Wild... Is this enough? All it does is delay "turn 7 coin Call of the Wild into turn 8 Call of the Wild" autowin condition by one turn. The card could very well be 10 mana and it will still be a must have 2-of in every single hunter deck.
i know how op CoW is, but if it was ten mana it would be a dead card, and i feel that since CoW is gonna be 9 mana, some decks will only run one now
It's not a bad thing to have 'must have' class cards as long as they're not too op. The only other real auto-include cards for Hunter are Savannah Highmane and Animal Companion. Well and maybe Eaglehorn Bow but that's only because weapons are just good in general, not because it's a particular good one.
There's a big difference. Often the first CotW will save a hunter from dying. Pushing this back by a turn will mean a definite decrease in winrate for the deck.
I think everyone can agree that this is great for the game.
I do have to say that I like charge as a control card tough. Turn 7 play sylvanas with charge is nice as a tempo swing or like turn 9 rag dealing with a minion and still dealing 8 damage. I see some new control warriors coming :O
Are you implying that if you cast Charge on Rag he will then be able to attack AND launch his fireball? That would be great