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.
True, but many casual players would be just as happy to play pokemon go or clash of clans. If/When their friends start leaving the game, they will as well.
Plus at this point their playerbase is more or less flatlined. It's so hard to get into this game without shelling out at least $300 at this point, I doubt they'll grow much more and if you're not growing, you're shrinking.
Just anecdotally, everyone I knew who used to be into hearthstone now just checks in now and again, maybe buys a few new packs with their gold they've stockpiled or does an arena. It's not that they've stopped playing videogames, they've moved on to Gwent or ESL or Duelyst or whatever else.
I like how they listed other versions of nerfed cards its really nice to see how they think about changes.
Hi, time to create a giant brick of text
I would say that overall these changes are about half good, half bad. I'm going to go the non-Druid ones individually, and then do the two Druid ones together. I would fell bad not giving props to Team 5 before starting, as this is probably the quickest balance change ever, so good on them there. Now, time to tear the apart :)
Fiery War Axe: Truthfully, I don't like this nerf. IF the goal here is to nerf Pirate Warrior, then nerf a pirate or two for heavens sakes. While Fiery War Axe is pretty good in that deck, its power level has actually somewhat decreased after the nerf of Small-Time Buccaneer, seeing as Pirate Warrior's only one drops are now Southsea Deckhand and N'Zoth's First Mate, leading into a weaker turn two. on the flip side, Blizzard just destroyed 100% of any Control Warrior's defense before turn three, and their turn three is generally reliant on their Fiery War Axe to help trade favorably with help from something like Ravaging Ghoul. I give this nerf 3/10.
Murloc Warleader: Personally, I think this nerf should have come last expansion. Murloc Paladin dominated the late Un'Goro meta, and was arguably the best deck the set saw after the nerf of The Caverns Below. I do agree that this nerf should happen following the fall of Druid, but given the questionable Druid cards chosen to be nerfed, i'm not sure the fall of Druid is eminent. Nevertheless, this is still a reasonable nerf to an overall strong deck, seeing as it was quite annoying for Murloc Warleader to revive your opponents Finja, the Flying Star when Finja summoned him. I give this nerf 7/10, due to bad timing.
Hex: This one confuses me the most, and I won't spend much time on it. Hex isn't really used in this meta, except as maybe a one of in Evolve Shaman or in a rare Control Shaman. I'm assuming from Blizzard's nerf note that this is more to free up future design space, so I won't judge this nerf, seeing as it's now basically just a SLIGHTLY worse Polymorph. Not rating this one.
Innervate and Spreading Plague: These nerfs confuse me the most. Given the almost crippling nerfs to two of the most prominent aggro decks, I presumed that Jade Druid would also be nerfed the hell and that it would be a Machine Gun Priest meta (which would also be a problem.) I was wrong. To my knowledge, Druid's ramp has never required any kind of nerf in the past because it was perfectly balanced. sacrifice early game tempo to gain late game value. The ramp only needed nerf once it had a completely broken goal, namely the Ultimate Infestation Jade Idol combo that now plagues the latter. (plagues, get it?). I post a similarly long explanation on what I though Blizzard should nerf for Druid and why. My choices were Ultimate Infestation, Spreading Plague, and Jade Idol, due to their insane synergy. (I made a long post about this on the Announcement that Blizzard is nerfing Druid, go dig that up if you want). I am glad they nerfed Spreading Plague, (though I think a health reduction on the scarabs would have been better) and I can go along with nerfing Innervate, but the lack of nerf to either Jade Idol or Ultimate Infestation (preferably a nerf to Jade Idol) Is folly. Jade Druid is hit, yes, but you've hit its aggressive opponents worse. I think Druid's only real competition now is Machine Gun Priest, which is in my opinion equally not fun to play or play against. I give these nerfs a 6/10 since they do lower the power level of Jade Druid and Aggro Druid, but not the way they really should have.
If you made it to the end of this, cudos to you, and thanks for listening :)
EDIT: Fixed spelling errors and some card highlighters :)
Wow. Nice comment. Link me your older posts, curious to read about it. And what do u mean by tamp?
mean't ramp, thanks for alerting me to that typo. also not sure how to link past posts so if anyone can tell me how i'd appreciate it!
Just go to your profile and look at the lastest posts!
Couldn't agree more, specially on the Innervate and Spreading Plague ones, ramp had always been fairly balanced, if not sort of weak since it relied a lot in drawing good cards, but Ultimate Infestation completely ruined it since the issue before with ramp druid was that you ramped, your hand got mostly empty and you generally had limited draw options, which certainly limited how much you could do, specially since most of the time Nourish was just used for draw. But now you can play as greedy as you want with your ramping since you'll not only reload your hand but impact the board state right away. How many other cards can do anything remotely close to that? None, the closest you could get to making such a decisive and strong play on 10 mana was Deathwing or maybe C'Thun (without counting stuff like Malygos/Avianacombo since that's very different playstyle).
Jade will still run rampant and after the rotation Druid will have nothing, losing it's ramp power and having weaker aggro.
Not sure how to link so just copy pasted the post, here you are :)
IMO, I think that there are currently 3 big problem cards in Druid that make Jade Druid so Broken. First is Jade Idol, which allows you to generate infinite value unless your opponent is desperate enough to run Skulking Geist. My suggested nerf is to change it to this: 1 cost spell, summon a Jade Golem, or shuffle two Jade (shards or something) into your deck. These jade shards would be 1 mana summon a Jade Golem. this prevent Druid from going infinite without Completely destroying Jade Druid I think.
Second problem is that Jade Druid cannot just get blasted to hell by pirates anymore because of, you guessed it, Spreading Plague. Spreading Plague simply provides too much protection and value against aggressive decks. seeing as Druid ramp a lot, I think the solution here is not to make Spreading Plague cost more but to instead nerf the health of the scarabs to 3. this allows most aggro decks to push have a chance against Spreading Plague without completely removing all of Druids anti-aggro tools. (their best board clear is Starfall, after all.)
The third problem with Jade Druid is our beloved Ultimate Infestation. Gadgetzan Auctioneer had some pretty insane synergy with Jade Idol but it was generally hard removed by your opponent the next turn, probably drawing a MAXIMUM of 5 cards. Ultimate Infestation GUARANTEES that you draw 5 cards, with the added bonus of a 5/5 body, removing a minion or killing your opponent, and gaining 5 life. The value of this card is broken, but it is even more broken with the infinite value provided with Jade Idol. Ultimate Infestation would probably not be as amazing as everyone thinks without Jade Idol Because 2 copies alone will draw out a third of your deck, which will send you into mill faster. I think if they nerf Jade Idol, this is an appropriate adjustment: 10 mana, draw 5 cards, deal 5 damage to a minion, summon a 4/4 ghoul, and gain 4 armor.
This is my opinion on how to nerf Druid without making it unplayable, tell me what you think and if you agree. :)
EDIT: Fixed a few spelling errors :)
Wow, really did not expect quite so many changes...! Seems like a decent set of balances though - the one that I was most unsure about at first was FWA, as per other comments it is now weaker than weapons like rallying blade and eaglehorn bow. But actually I think that's ok - it's a basic card and those are collectible cards so it's fair for there to be a power gap.
On another note, these changes make me VERY glad I unlocked Arthas today... Never would have got the shaman win without hex at 3 mana!
And thus the meta becomes even more Druid infested. Was this Blizzard's ultimate goal?
Queue the interview with hearthstone developer meme video where he laughs uncontrollably over the game.
Community almost unanimous against aggro nerfs, some of them claimed for very long time , ... What has this game become!?!?
Always considered the option to return to this game, but it's not this time.
Can't someone at Blizzard realize that the place of a pizza boy is delivering pizzas?
I sure hope Team 5 knows what they're doing. Can't believe they didn't touch Jade Idol. Maybe they're thinking that printing Skulking Geist was really enough. Well, let's see after the patch hits.
Let's see... the community thinks jade druid are a problem. Let's nerf other cards, make other classes totally unplayable. THAT will get them to love jade druid. Well done Team... break for lunch
Goodbye Innervate.... til ever...
It's better than a legendary actually, if it were legendary, you could only put one in your deck.