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.
Well I guess Kolento agrees with me. Go watch his video on how Druid won't have a top tier deck. Innervates nerf will hurt a lot.
River Crocolisk and Chillwind Yeti don't have abilities, they're just the blueprints for other cards. I don't mind War Axe going to 3 mana, but Blizzard really MUST make a new one in the next set. The kind of 2-mana 2/2 weapon with a mild ability no one would have ever played because the old FWA was busted-powerful, but will be a fun new card to play with in the class. Heck, make it weak enough so that folks don't know whether to run it or the 3-FWA.
I like it when cards change, and the fact that the old Fiery War Axe was pretty much the best weapon in the entire game made it really difficult for Warriors to ever get cheap, interesting weapons. Nothing they got would ever be as good as War Axe, so why bother? Warriors have gotten always interesting and sometimes good 4 and 5 mana weapons, but never their own Jade Claws or such. That's a little sad to me, and I'm excited to live in a post-nerf world where warriors might actually see different cards played.
Missing the most important and critical, UI.
Nerf hit much more pirate warrior and murlock paladin and only scratch jade druid.
Aggro druid a least don't kill you in turn 3 anymore...
Why nerf hex? They should nerf the entire mage class to begin and then nerf jade idol, after that we can talk about other nerfs
I also hate Jade Druid and agree that the nerfs probably won't be enough.
But can anyone explain me why people are complaining about Highlander Priest? First, the class has been Tier 2 or lower for so long. It absolutely deserves to be one of the best decks for some time. Second, the Highlander Priest has to draw Raza the Chained and Shadowreaper Anduin AND have enough cards to do the machine gun thing. Third, the deck is playing many bad situational cards, like Pint-Size Potion or Shadow Word: Horror. Fourth, the deck needs some skill because of the question whether to play cards earlier to improve board state or play them later to support Anduin Hero Power.
I am absolutely confused. What deck do people even want to be good?
Team 5 is simply covering their asses and jobs at this point. If you look beyond the hysteria, which works to their advantage, the nerf of these unrelated cards to the current meta is an imposed distraction to the real issue at hand: THIS EXPANSION WAS A FAILURE, AND A BIG ONE AT THAT. The game is broken at this point and virtually unplayable for most. Created by Team 5 is basically a brawl environment to card gaming were players constantly face unwinnable situations BEFORE the game begins. The cards and hero powers introduced by Team 5 with this expansion COMBINED with already existing cards were not fully researched or tested and has led to a broken gaming experience. So how do we save our collective asses? Blame Hex, Fiery War Axe, Warleader, and ONE yes just ONE card from this expansion (none from the previous three expansions) to make it look good. We see through this BS and it is not an Epic fail but a Legendary one.
Would you mind if I quoted this and an earlier post you made on a Tumblr post I am making about these changes?
Sure, have at it.
Thanks! If you want, I'll link you my page after the post goes live, so you can make sure I'm not changing the meaning or taking anything out of context, even though I agree with the two posts I've seen you've made on here. Also, they are paraphrased, and little bits did get cut out, fyi.
If they nerf Ultimate Infestation, they need to refund a lot of dust. I think this is a main reason that they nerf spreading plague and innervate instead. To be honest, The nerf to spreading plague is reasonable but I think nerfing innervate is just nonsense. Innervate is overpowered because of Ultimate Infestation and insane aggro play like dr3 or 5 mana 8/8. The main problem is not innervate. Now it become a coin which is basically useless or unplayable. I think the best method is to change it to refresh 2 mana crystal, which means you can play and spend your mana, then play a card with 2 mana but not jump to +2 mana this turn if innervate must be nerfed.The axe nerf is also nonsense as now it is worse than weapons from other class. I think if the axe must be nerfed, bz can consider adding a battlecry: can't attack hero to reduce the impact of it on pirate warrior as this nerf affect other warrior like taunt or giant warrior.
The hex nerf is not necessary as not much shaman bring this spell now. I think it is 3 cost instead of 4 cost like polymorph is because of the taunt of the frog. I think hex costing 3 mana is reasonable.
I think the +1 health of murloc leader is very important compare to the attack. I think nerfing the attack is more reasonable. I think change it to +1/+1 is better just like the south sea captain which is the pirate version of it.
when does the patch come ?
For those who are not proficient in Brode-speak:
ORIGINAL:
TRANSLATION:
I'm a F2P player which made it to legend and here is my opinion hence what I have been observing over the releases of new expansions.
-Making basic cards worse than craftable cards is just wrong. But OK so be it, I will move on on that.
Decks seem to be a lot more expensive than back in the days of Naxxramas or BRM. When you unlocked an adventure, just a handful of them were required to craft from e.g. Gnomes and Goblins or The Grand Tournament to make consistent decks. In mind comes Dr Boom, Justicar or even Gormok. More or less the same applied during the year of the Kraken. This is by far not the case anymore.
Will there still be any good basic or classic cards left next year? To address this issue Blizzard should add more of them, but I do not see this happening.
Nerfs in the nutshell
So blizzard is trying to nerf druid and druid counter ( pirate warrior, murloc paladin) at the same time. For me it's seem like they are trying to avoid we going back to aggro meta at all cost ...
are you guys Serious? You dont nerf Jade Idol?!? thats what most Druid is right now.
Think before you flame.
Jade Idol existed before the latest expansion and yet Jade Druid wasn't OP. The reason why it is so good right now are the new cards Jade druid got. And one of them is Spreading Plague so Jade druid gets nerfed.
Also Innervate is part of Jade druid so 4/30 cards got nerfed which is quite alot
Skulking Geist is not a perfect answer to Jade Idol for a few reasons: Druids can create many other Jades by the time you actually get around to playing Skulking Geist, Skulking Geist is bad in literally every other match-up, and it is seriously understatted and has a relatively weak effect for it's cost, if you actually think about it.
YES I destroyed his idols, now he can only get to 8/8, 9/9, 10/10 Golems, EZ win!