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.
The fact that you think Blizzard cares how much free-to-play gold you get shows you really have zero insight into game design. The best way to maintain a game's profitability is to make as many players as happy as possible. Short-term manipulation of the meta to reduce gold production doesn't produce NEARLY as much profit as making the playerbase happy enough to continue playing the game for years.
The mind-set you're describing is the one employed by flash-in-the-pan mobile games that fizzle out after a couple of months. AAA developers with decades of experience in customer retention know better than that, and frankly know a hell of a lot more about it than you or I do. Pretending that you know better than them is arrogant, childish nonsense.
This does nothing to reduce the Druid problem, you can easily play all of the Druid decks without Innervate and Spreading Plague especially now that Pirate Warrior is no longer playable and you can clear the board of Murlocs with Starfire instead of leaving them on the board with Spreading Plague :/
Sad to see Innervate nerf. I am going to wait until the changes take affect before I comment more.
Is it possible, these changes may have strengthened Druid?
I'm surprised they actually adjusted a Frozen Throne card. It was a small change but at least they admitted they got something wrong with the Frozen Throne expansion. But they still didn't do something with Ultimate Infestation which is complete bullshit. That card is incredible because it allows Druids to be extremely aggressive in playing cards because they know they will never run out. Keeping that 5 card draw mechanic is obscene. And still doing nothing to Jade mechanics is laughable. Blizzard cannot seem to ever admit the direct screw ups they commit but most often make these indirect tweaks.
Then again - this is the same crew that told us they replaced the "Sorry" emote because it was the least used emote. You can't really believe those guys after they try to pass that bullshit off on us.
5 damage for 10 mana doesn't clear a board or save you face from the other minions that UI leaves behind.
Yes it's insane value when you include all aspects of the card, but it's one of the worse tempo cards in the game, which is also it's heel.
I had more problem with aggro druid tbh. Turn 1 fledgling was a lot of trouble and a perfect innervate deckhand firefly mark of lotus turn really gave them an explosive start.
I play a lot of aggro murloc decks and tbh warleader nerf is fair. Paladin gets back on board super easy and can utilize handbuff mechanics and quest shaman (wild) has other tools to raise hp. Also there's coldlights and gentle megasaurs and primalfins so i wouldn't say this type of decks are dead yet, just not completely bonkers.
Will be interesting to see what the axe of the axe does to pw, one less viable turn 2 play so they'd have to rely on mulligan bloodsail which will just be a 3/3 generally making the entire mulligan harder, perhaps even inconsistent.
All in all it looks like a full on nerf for aggro decks. We mights see some heavy control meta developing (Jade vs priest?). Not sure if this is the best path but hey i'm no developer.
"oi lads nobody gives a shite about pirates anymore and kazakus priest is op af but suppressed by jades, let's nerf druid and randomly nerf fiery war axe and hex just for the heck of it lololol" *ben brode laughs*
Well, kind of upset that we will forever have to see Jade Idol in Wild while not playing Druid, but not too upset with all the nerfs as a Druid player.
Innervate is (was) probably my all time favorite card, so I'm bummed that it's a coin now, but still playable at least.
Spreading Plague is still excellent at 6 mana, glad they didn't change the ability. Can still combo with the taunt buffer on turn 10.
So glad to see FWA nerfed, long time coming.
Hex seems out of the blue, but I like their explanation for not giving them direct removal. Makes sense, and that card historically has been a bit oppressive paired with their other removal (maybe not this current meta, but it was in the past, so it could be again in the future).
Warleader is a much needed nerf, especially since the weird reviving interactions mentioned. Very glad they didn't take away any attack buff as well so murlocs as a whole don't get nerfed to the dirt.
KILL IT WITH FIRE
"Random guy chimes in with excessively long quote shtick to try and make a joke or something I'm not really sure because it was totally irrelevant to my post." Typical.
I do see and understand how the Jade Mechanic driven by Jade Idol has toxified the game in so many ways. However, I'm a Druid player, so I play with the cards I've been dealt, just like every other class. You also forgot to mention that I was glad that they didn't remove any attack buff from Warleader, thus making it still possible to beat Jade Druid. So yeah. What was your point again? Reading over your post, I'm failing to find one.
Ramp has always been the issue. Innervate was the right call. This impacts any future ramp druid decks, of which have been the strongest in the past or maly druid as another example...
This also slows druid alot for all those complaining jade druid is a race, the race just got 2mana tighter, giving us 2-4 more turns of play before jade's get retarded. As a predominantly priest player i love this nerf, any agro decks should as well.
Thinking that the nerfs target in the right directions but lack real subtlety.
Targeting Pirate Warriors - hitting Control Warriors the most. Targeting Druids - hitting mostly Token Druid. The hex nerf counts for little.
Jade Druids remain largely unaffected I fear. There'll be no shakeup, leaving Blizz with a headache nevertheless.
I hope to be proven wrong, but for the moment i shake my head in disbelief. Only nerf I wholly second is the one to Warleader.
Jade Druids were hard-targeted with the introduction of Skulking Geist; why would they need further specific nerfs?
Because Skulking Geist was already a rather sloppy and careless solution. I don't like the approach of Blizzard leading to solutions like Hungry Crab or Golakka Crawler.
Uh no... 1). If you use Skulking Geist it will decrease your Winrate vs Aggro other Control Decks 2). You most likely only run 1 Geist so you have to draw it = sometimes it is deep inside your deck 3). Thx to mana ramp and tons of card draw Druide is like 3 rounds ahead = plenty of time to spawn idols. So Geist will only stop Druide of going infinite but it will not stop him from spawning 8/8 9/9.. people think this card is a free win card but even without spawning a single idol they can create 8/8