The Enrage Keyword is Being Removed From Hearthstone
But don't worry, the effect is staying! The goal is to clean up card text since the keyword wasn't being used much. As of today, there are nine collectible cards in the game with Enrage. Peter Whalen explains below.
Update: Mike Donais has confirmed the Enrage quest (Play 10 Minions with Enrage) is being removed too. (Source)
Quote from Peter WhalenFirst things first: we’re removing the Enrage keyword from Hearthstone. All the Enrage cards will keep their effects; we’re just rewording them without the keyword. For example, Angry Chicken will read “Has +5 Attack while damaged.”
Our goal with this change is to clean up the game a little by removing a keyword we weren’t using much, but we also wanted to take the opportunity to share some of our general philosophy on keywords.
Keywords in Hearthstone are the bolded words in the card text – they’re words that have a special meaning in the context of the game. We use them a lot; most of our sets have introduced at least one keyword and the Basic and Classic sets have a bunch. Why are keywords helpful?
- Keywords can make learning cards easier. Once you know a keyword, it can boil down a complex idea and help you understand a new card more quickly.
- Keywords are flavorful. They tell a story – Discover, Recruit, Taunt; these all help the game come alive.
- Keywords condense card text. This leads to more readable cards that fit better in the frame.
- Keywords give us mechanical hooks. So we can make cards like “Give your Taunt minions +2/+2.”
So why not make lots and lots of keywords? In the extreme, we could keyword everything – the “Kel’Thuzading” keyword would mean “At the end of each turn, summon all friendly minions that died this turn” and the Doomsaying keyword would mean “At the start of your turn, destroy ALL minions.” That feels a bit silly – because it is! Keywords aren’t all upside, so it’s worth taking a look at which keywords are worth keeping.
Ultimately, we have keywords to make cards easier to understand. The best keywords appear a lot, are flavorful, and give us useful mechanical hooks. In the last year, we added two examples that we expect to be permanent: Poisonous and Lifesteal. These are great abilities that make minions a bit more interesting – they alter combat math, change which minions you prioritize, and spice up gameplay. The full text for both of these abilities is also fairly long – without a keyword, it’d be hard to pair them with much else.
So let’s take a look at Enrage. Enrage means “While damaged, this minion has a new power.” It’s on nine cards: six from the Basic and Classic sets, two from Whispers of the Old Gods, and one from Goblins vs. Gnomes. Part of the reason we haven’t used it much is that it’s a difficult keyword to design for: minions in Hearthstone don’t survive very long, especially once they’ve been damaged. Instead, we’ve favored cards with triggered abilities that encourage you to damage them multiple times, like Acolyte of Pain and Rotface. These lead to more interesting gameplay as you try to maximize the number of times they get damaged.
How well, then, is Enrage serving us as a keyword? First, it’s not clear that Enrage is actually any easier to understand than “while damaged”. It is certainly flavorful though, and does shrink the card text a little. On the other hand, we haven’t made any cards that key off of Enrage minions and aren’t likely to in the future. Overall, Enrage isn’t doing very much work for us, we haven’t used it in a while, and it isn’t on very many cards, so we’re cleaning up the game a little bit and removing it.
Rip angry chicken...
Will angry chicken be moved to the second pool of Deathstalker Rexxar, or remain in the first despite enrage no longer being a keyword?
Yeah, but Counter keyword make a perfect sence right...
When I started playing Hearthstone before Naxx came out, the first rare card I opened was angry chicken, and I was like: "Whaaaat +5 attack?". I immediately threw it in my deck which didn't have any synergy at all. After I played the minion and I figured out the 'enrage' keyword I was so angry with the card. "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DAMAGE A 1 HEALTH MINION?".
When I had a few more card I tried to build a warrior enrage deck, and it was useless. I lost every game with it.
However, I do like the early memories of when I started playing Hearthstone. So RIP Enrage - you never served me well.
Yeah, you missed the boat there with the real enrage shenanigans.
Raging Worgen + Inner Ragex2 + Faceless Manipulator + Warsong Commander + Emperor Thaurissan
You needed emperor to hit one card in the combo. The old warsong gave a minion with 3 or less attack charge.
So you play warson, then worgen, it gets charge (6 mana)
Then you play inner rage x2, gives your worgen +5 attack, so he has a total of 8 now.
Then you copy with faceless, so you have two of them.
Boom 32 damage with the windfury.
Rest of deck just padded our card draw, as any OTK combo would be. Not the greatest, but worked well if you could pull it off early with a good emperor T hit.
WTF "remove enrage" to shorten text....while new worgen has half a textline more text than the old...
Enrage = 6 signs
While damaged = 13 Signs
Its freaking more than double... Team5 logic xD
They aren't removing it to shorten text. They are removing it because there are barely any cards with the keyword and they don't plan on designing very many new cards with that effect.
it's not to shorten text it's to clean their code or something. Some of their programmers/designers became enraged about the keyword and wanted to get rid of it or something, and just made up an excuse for it.
Maybe it's cause they just don't like keywords that much..
So now if in the future they want to add more minions with the same ability, they will need to add again a new keyword? I dont get this change really
How are people not understanding this, the first line of this article reads:
"But don't worry, the effect is staying!"
Enrage is not going anywhere, just the word describing it is.
I m so confused and no i m not a new player.
Rip enrage. Well on a positive note at least i won't miss the daily quest play 10 enrage minions.
You're confused about the statement at the top of the page, the first line, that says the enrage effect is not going anywhere?
You ARE a new player - even if you've been playing for years, apparently.
This is so fucking stupid. Just print more Enrage cards then, or make some Enrage synergy. Don't just get rid of the keyword.
Why not get rid of the Counter keyword? There's only one card that even uses that pointless keyword.
Honestly, I think they have Counter for like, 50% because the effect is so unique that if any weird interactions come up with it, people dismiss it as part of the keyword (like the fact that a Countered spell still triggers 'Whenever you cast a spell...' and 'After you cast a spell...' effects - that's weird) and 50% just because it's so much simpler than writing out a full text for it.
"Secret: Whenever your opponent casts a spell, prevent its effect from happening." Does that sound better? I can't think of how to word it in a nicer way than just Counter.
No Enrage well fine i want to Disenchant my Enrage cards now please