Five Card Nerfs Coming in the Next Hearthstone Update - Druids, Win Axe, Murlocs, Hex
Five card changes are coming to Hearthstone in an upcoming patch which brings nerfs to several fan favourites, three being basic cards.
- The reason for nerfs to basic cards is due to too many cards from this set being included in those classes' decks.
- They're trying to limit additions to the Hall of Fame, so they're instead nerfing Murloc Warleader.
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
Blog Post
In an upcoming update, we will be making balance changes to the following cards:
Innervate
Now reads: Gain 1 Mana Crystal this turn only. (Down from 2)
Fiery War Axe
Now costs 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Hex
Now costs 4 mana. (Up from 3)
Murloc Warleader
Now reads: Your other Murlocs have +2 Attack. (Down from +2 Attack, +1 Health)
Spreading Plague
Now costs 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Developer’s Note: Basic Cards and Our Stance on Hall of Fame
After careful consideration, we chose to make changes to three Basic class cards: Innervate, Fiery War Axe, and Hex. While they can be regarded as staples in those classes’ card repertoires, too many Basic and Classic cards played in individual decks means less fun when new expansions are released.
Cards in the Basic set serve several purposes in the game, so we would rather make balance adjustments to them instead of moving them to the Hall of Fame, like we have done for cards in the Classic set. We are also trying to limit Hall of Fame changes to the start of each Hearthstone Year, which is why Murloc Warleader—a Classic card—is receiving a balance change instead of moving to the Hall of Fame.
Innervate
Several powerful variations of Druid are currently seeing play, and all of them utilize Innervate. Innervate creates explosive starts to the game that can be difficult for the opposing player to recover from. This change leaves Innervate as a simple Basic card and slows down the explosive start potential, while ensuring that it will be utilized in decks that revolve around playing inexpensive spells.
What other changes did we consider?
We considered a few other options for Innervate:
- Refresh 2 Mana Crystals.
- Gain 2 Mana Crystals this turn only and increase the mana cost to 1.
- Gain 6 Mana Crystals this turn only and increase the mana cost to 4.
Since Innervate is a basic card, we need it to be clear and simple. Along with Wild Growth, these cards inform newer players that Druids create mana as a part of their class identity.
We kept in mind that cards like Counterfeit Coin were strong in combination with other support cards, such as Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Edwin VanCleef, and Combo cards. With the right support cards for Innervate, it may end up still seeing play, but won’t be in every deck—which is ultimately what we’re aiming for with this change.
Fiery War Axe
Fiery War Axe has been a powerful Warrior weapon since the launch of Hearthstone. Already great tempo for its cost, Fiery War Axe is well complimented by Pirates and cards that synergize with weapons. Raising its mana cost by 1 will slow down the Warrior’s tempo and lower the overall power level of the card.
What other changes did we consider?
The other option we considered for Fiery War Axe was to lower its attack to 2, but that change didn’t feel intuitive enough. Generally, changing the mana cost of a card is less disruptive, because you can always see the mana cost of cards in your hand. Despite the increased mana cost of Fiery War Axe, we expect that it will still see play—other 3 mana 3/2 weapons, like Eaglehorn Bow, can be found in decks that may not have synergy with the weapon’s card text.
Hex
We’re not making the change to Hex due to a current power-level problem. Shaman is a class that currently has a lot of flexibility, but is lacking in both class identity and identifiable weaknesses. Changing Hex makes Shaman a bit weaker against big minions and worse at silencing—having both strengths and weaknesses in a class is important.
We are very wary of cards that also incidentally work as a silence. If a player wants to utilize a card with a silence effect, they should be giving up something else. For example, if a player decides to include Spellbreaker in their deck, then they are playing a card that is weak in some situations. Priest is an exception to this rule—silence is a part of their class identity.
Even though Hex is not always played in the more aggressive Shaman decks, we will be making this forward-thinking change with the overall identity of the class in mind. This includes avoiding Shaman cards that function as direct and powerful removal. We will continue moving forward with this design philosophy to help reinforce that ideal.
Developer’s Note: Regarding Murloc Warleader and Spreading Plague
Murloc Warleader
Murlocs are good at taking an early lead, and if a player can’t clear the board in time, the game can ultimately snowball to victory using cards like Murloc Warleader. Removing the Health buff from Murloc Warleader will make it easier for players to clear the board of murlocs, and still have it remain a Classic build-around card. Simplifying health buff interactions is an additional benefit of this change. For example, in its current state, having a Murloc Warleader in play then using Wild Pyromancer and Equality would not destroy other murlocs on the board, leading to unclear interactions for some players.
What other changes did you consider?
We considered changing both Rockpool Hunter and Murloc Warleader due to the current strength of Murloc Paladin in the early stages of the game. Changing either Rockpool Hunter or Murloc Warleader would accomplish this, but there are extra advantages to changing just Murloc Warleader: The simplification of health-giving buffs and additional room for future Murlocs since Warleader will be around longer than Rockpool Hunter.
Spreading Plague
Spreading Plague is a great defensive tool for Druid to protect themselves against aggressive decks, but it was too efficient at 5 mana. Raising the mana cost to 6 will slow the card down slightly, while still allowing for the defensive minions Spreading Plague creates to be utilized in the later stages of the game.
What other changes did you consider?
We considered changing Spreading Plague to 7 mana rather than 6, since it is currently the top performing card in Jade and Taunt Druid decks. However, since we are also changing Innervate, we decided to only add 1 mana to the cost of Spreading Plague.
Developer’s Note: Regarding Other Community Card Discussions
The community has mentioned other cards in balance-related discussions, such as Ice Block and Ultimate Infestation, and we wanted to talk about those cards as well even though we are not making any changes to them at this time.
Ultimate Infestation
Our team has discussed making a change to Ultimate Infestation since it feels bad to lose to. However, our data shows us how good each individual card performs in a deck relative to other cards in that deck. Spreading Plague ended up being the best performing card in Jade and Taunt Druid, Innervate was in the top three, and Ultimate Infestation was somewhere around the middle—but it felt much more powerful since it has a huge effect when played.
We considered changing all mentions of the number 5 in Ultimate Infestation to 4, or removing one of the effects entirely. With the other changes we are making to Druid, ramping out Ultimate Infestation before turn 10 should happen less often, so we decided to leave it as is.
Ice Block
We’ve seen discussions about moving Ice Block to the Hall of Fame. As previously mentioned, moving cards to the Hall of Fame occurs at the start of the Hearthstone Year, which will occur with the first expansion release in 2018. Our general stance regarding Hall of Fame is that we want to avoid moving cards mid-year.
We are excited for these changes, and we look forward to seeing how they will shake up the game.
Once these card changes are live, players will be able to disenchant the changed non-Basic cards (Murloc Warleader and Spreading Plague) for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks. Basic cards cannot be disenchanted and will not be available for an Arcane Dust refund.
Remember how all those 3/2 weapons were a worse version of war axe in other classes? Well what do you know... now it is other way around, because they have some useful text on them which might be relevant from time to time...
its sad, and its worst to control, who now will take free damage in firsts turns, more than ever
I totally get where you are coming from. I agree that the change to Innervate should hurt druid somewhat hard but really as a whole Jade Druid feels like it barely got touched by these nerfs. Its hard to say for sure what the meta will be as it stands but it feels like the hammer I was waiting for missed Druid and hit Warrior.
The Murloc Warleader nerf doesn't seem to do too much, classes with decent AOE didn't have trouble clearing murlocs if they drew their AOE, and still won't, the 1 health difference won't change much for a lot of classes, apart from our beloved druid overlords.
We're making Swipe better against midrange paladin and Spreading Plague as well, if you run your 3/2 murlocs into 1/5 taunts they don't die, so you don't get demolished by it, but if you run your 3/1 murlocs into it, the murloc dies, it's a huge different. Most likely we'll just see less murloc paladins or at least they'll include the murloc that buffs health, over all it just helpes Jade Druid and token druid that focuses on taunts.
Summery of my thoughts :
Glad they also looked in to some other class cards as well.
So almost no nerf to jade druid, strange that jade idol is untouchted. doubt that innervate will see any play at all after nerf.
Nerf to fiery war axe is a big hit for all warrior decks, a better fix would have been 2 mana 3/2 breaks when hitting face.
Strange that mage burst and combos stayed untouchted. (fireball, icblocks, glyph)
murlocs needed a tweak already but prob after seeing how easy it was to defeat the Lk with murlocs they decided to nerf it.
Hex in line with sheep seems fair but i didnt think the 1 differ in mana in poly was a problem in shaman.
overall some suprises but i doubt druid will be that much weaker after these changes
I just crafted murloc war leader... well at least I didn't waste dust...
I've heard a story that Druids are infesting meta so they should be nerfed. Can't see any "real" nerfs to Jade Druid. What do I miss?
Expected a bit more change concerning Druid, maybe make UI a choose one card in someway = choose one gain 5 armor draw 5 or do 5 damage summon 5/5. I get that they are trying to aim at cards that are auto-includes, so overall reasonable changes, now we wait and see how the meta adjusts and if it has a positive effect.
How nerfs should look like: VS How they really look:
vs
vs
Nice job Blizzard... Clap
but, those weapons actually do somthing more, now its a cheaper arcanite reaper
Thats why its named "Silenced"
Yeah I agree. Blizzard could be way more creative with their nerfs, but they often decide to just make it cost one more mana or do one less whatever. Sad because we know that they can be very creative, like they have shown us so many times in the past.
ok, i didnt see the name xd.
Innervate was the problem, turn 8 deal 5 damage draw 5 cards etc.
turn 1, innervate, play vicious fledging gg.
innervate is the reason people hate Druid, it's the ramp up to the good cards so quickly compared to your opponent.
jase idol isn't a problem, even before the expansion, jade druids we good but not as good as now, and then there wasn't Geist that could counter that card.
innervate is now basically counterfite/coin.
winaxe finally cost the same as rogue dagger up + poison same stats same weapon essentially, does some to slow down pirate warrior but feel like it just hurts other warriors more. but its nice to be finally able to play a 2 drop against warrior and not have it guarntied dead before next turn.
hex ... polymorph by any other name, Im not sure anyone was complaining about this one ?
warleader gurgle mugle finally does not make the board unmanagable even fixes the old equality bug that would make a murloc board unwipable.
Plague... I see how this stops the punish for playing minions? on wait it dosn't never mind ¬_¬
feels like a half measure nerf, change as little as possible so we get months more of the must fun expansion but worst meta ever
Having plague on turn 6 rather than on turn 5 is a big difference, i dont know whats your problem. Dont forget that innervate gives opnly 1 mana cyrstal one which is HUGE deal when it comes to plague + now youre more likely to build a board with minions of higher attach/health (youre given one more turn) making it easier to break through wall of taunts.
I have mixed impressions about this changes, nerfed innervate is definetely positive for the game as well as 6mana unleash the scarabs but infestation is still absurd 19mana spell for half cost, i guess jade druid can now become "just" tier 1 deck, we'll see. Instead of ramp-ramp-superramp-innervate-infestation-win you have to play normal cards for several turns now, poor guys.
I dont get why blizzard cant just kill druid class with nerfhammer and revive it step by step with each new expansion, they have no problem with hunter (me too lol) and warlock (until recently) being unplayable for year. Druid on the other side was strong since vanilla times and deserves some rest.
Also why would we nerf pirates and weapon buffs if we can just destroy control warriors best answer to aggro, right? Once again cw suffers because of Blizz decision to push aggro and tempo archetype within class which is 90% control oriented (first one was execute)
Hex and warleader nerfs are ok i guess.
Machine gun priest meta incoming, hello Zetalot :D
It's sad that hey didn't nerf other things that are very problematic, like:
Raza -> "make your HEAL hero power cost 0"
Ice Block -> hall of fame
Jade Idol -> only one option, summon a jade golem.
THIS needs to happen
What is the fucking problem with blizzard? Are they really stupid or are they just joking with us?
They nerfed cards that countered jade druid and dont touched the jade cancer.
Oh, "they nerfed spreading plague"... What? by costing only 1 more mana? Jade Druids can stil play spreading plague by turn 4, thanks to their ramp cards. Spreading plague should be 1/3 or 1/4. Spreading plague is a problem not only for aggro decks, but for control too. Priest and Mage will still suffer versus jade oprression. The same applies to miracle rogue.
The only deck that have good matchup versus jade druid is midrange paladin... and blizzard choose to nerf murloc warleader.
What are blizzard trying to do? To make jade druid our overlord, an unbeatable deck? Are they drunk? Looks like blizzard staff dont play their games, or worse, they are a bunch of retarded that play indeed Hearthstone, but they play only jade druid and they want this shit to opress us even more.
Well played blizzard, you destroyed Hearthstone, you must be proud.