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.
Well, The reason it was played (rarely played that is) was that Priest has plenty of synergistic healing effects. and its really hard to compare it to Ancient of lore just because it costs two mana less, which really is a big deal., largely due to just how early you can play the card. playing an alchemist on turn five is way better than a Lore-Heal on turn seven, since it's really hard in standard at the moment to start winning once you're already losing early on. Comeback mechanics are far and few and healing your face or minion for 5 just isn't sufficient, especially by turn seven. if you're able to heal up earlier, it wards your opponent off from continuing with a super aggressive playstyle slightly and you're more likely to be able to bring the game back in your favor.
WoW. Really good and resonable nerfs :)
Dammit. I just dusted 3x Yogg that I had like forever. Did keep the golden one so still 3200 dust for me.
how the fuck does one accquire 3 yoggs?
Considering I'm $100 deep and still 0 Yoggs ..... I'm going to say RNGesus is on his side
what about 4 mana 7/7?
4 mana 7/7, is being cut from a lot of shaman decks so he is no longer a target for the nerf bat.
The didn't really nerf Aggro Shaman when you think about it.
Aggro Shamans didn't even run Tuskarr Totemic before they started running Thing From Below.
Rock biter is only abusive when they top deck it for 10 dmg lethal, that late in the game 2 mana or 1 mana what is the difference?
By question is: Doomhammer, where is it? Why don't I see see Doomhammer on this list? Am I overlooking it? I must be? I'm sure it must be on this list somewhere, it would be nuts if it wasn't.
Guys most of you don't see it, but Charge change is not a nerf, it's a rework. Cause now it can be efficiently used for trading.
Imagine it been used with cards like The Boogeymonster to make it viable. It can be used with Arcane Golem for efficient ~1 mana trade swing(leaving you a golem as a threat), or used on Justicar Trueheart to use her 6 damage as a powerfull removal.
Most epic begins when you use it with cards like Sylvanas Windrunner to steal enemy rag/tirion/c'thun.
Don't forget about Emperor Cobra which may find some neat play.
In total this card will be MUST HAVE in any warrior deck, where you have minions to trade. Just having a Ravaged ghoul can justify putting it in your deck cause it may lead to ton of valuable tempo.
If you use it with:
- Emperor cobra it's: 4 mana and 2 cards for an assassinate = worse than new execute
- Sylvanas: 7 mana and 2 cards for a very bad version of mind control (you damage the minion you take control of)
- The Boogeymonster: 9 mana and 2 cards to kill a small thing and leave an 8 attack body on the board that will probably die the next turn because of health lost . So 2 cards for a single North Sea Kraken like effect .
- Arcane golem: Ramping your opponent is never a good idea so you want to use this at 10 mana but it's 4 mana and 2 cards to deal 4 damage to a minion .
None of these options are even close to cards we are used to put in our decks so I'm sorry but the potential just is't there .
MAYBE if it was 0 mana it would have a chance of ever being used but in this form it's just a dead card like Warsong commander .
Your theoretical situations conveniently assumes there is a 5 attack minion is play besides the one you want to seal and that these are the only 2 minions in play .
Quite a lot of assumptions meaning this situation will very rarely come into reality .
Sylvanas Shadowflame = board clear .
Sylvanas charge is more like a very expensive MC TECH .
Just not worth it .
You're doing it wrong when you just choose one option and say that it is bad. The good thing in new charge is that is a VERSATILE card, you can use it early for a tempo swing OR later to devastate your opponent's 8-turn Rag with Sylvanas combo. You are NOT forced to place one special combo in your deck. After all some druid choose one cards are bad on their own, but the fact you can use them differently gives you lot of OPTIONS, making you deck "bigger" in it's own effective way.
As for cobra - Execute is the same two card assasinate, which still very viable, but you are right it isn't that powerful, but i think i was right when i said it MAY see a play or two.After all main problem Assasinate has, is the fact it is a dead card draw against most aggro decks, while Charge os NOT.
About arcane golem i'm sorry, i mean't Arcane Giant for Control warriors(ye i've seen such variations).
Boogey....that was a rofl nevermind.
And yeah it's NOT EVEN CLOSE to warsong commander.
he probably meant Arcane Giant and not Arcane Golem
i disagree with what you said about sylvanas. you wont always damage the minion you're taking. and i doubt that will be the majority of cases either. The card has so much more potential now than it did before. before all it had was OTK.
Also Its nowhere near Warsong commander level of shit, because lets be honest, There's a pretty good argument that warsong commander is worse than something like purify. *gasps* I know i know, but seriously warsong commander is literally a class card that's worse than a neutral BASIC card (looking at you raid leader). purify has been run in somewhat successful silence decks. warsong commander has never been run post nerf. ever. and it never will in its current state. Charge has potential to simply because The power of having initiative while you're even or behind is game winning. ie, being able to make the efficient trades instead of your opponent abusive-ing some shitty 3-2 into your 5 health minion.
Is Charge Amazing in its current state? No, i doubt it. Is it playable? Very well might be. it has a lot of synergistic potential and i think with a creative mind it would work in some deck. We'll really just have to wait and see though. Its probably too early to judge its full potential.
Hahahah the games are too long at the moment? So playing until round 6 is to long for you . Lmao
Maybe you just need de-nerf your Ritalin dosage.