UPDATE
See Blizzard's new update here.
Quote from @PlayHearthstoneThank you for your feedback regarding our recent update. We saw a lot of feedback regarding the recent change to Tess Greymane and are currently discussing this change further. We will provide an update once we have more information to share.
Tess Greymane is Not Disenchantable for Full Value, Clearly a Mistake, Right?
Sigh. We had an amazing Hearthstone patch earlier today which gave us new Arena cards, plenty of bug fixes, and a new upcoming event that's going to give us a ton of dust and gold, but Blizzard really dropped the ball on Tess Greymane.
As you may be aware by now, Tess Greymane was changed in today's patch with the following adjustments.
- Tess will now replay hero cards with her Battlecry.
- Tess’s Battlecry is now limited to 30 cards, and will stop if she is silenced, killed, transformed, leaves the battlefield, or if any hero dies.
Do these changes ring a bell? It sure sounds like the nerfs we saw back in late 2016 to our favourite cuddly old god, Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.
- Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End now stops casting spells when it leaves the battlefield or is silenced.
The Change is the Same!
It should be painfully obvious at this point that these two changes are the same only we ended up getting a nice refund for Yogg if you wanted to partake in the disenchantment of our tentacled friend. Why is this different this time around? So far, Blizzard has not made a statement on the, very clear, nerf to the card and we're not sure if they are even going to.
One thing we can say for certain though is Mike Donais admitted Tess would work like pre-nerf Yogg when she was originally revealed. That right there admits their original intentions and they're now backing down on them.
Quote from Mike DonaisDoes Tess Greymane work like pre-nerf Yogg or post-nerf ?
Pre-nerf Yogg currently.
More Bologna
I wasn't letting them off that easy though. It still makes me, and plenty of you, sad that Blizzard refused to give us a dust refund for changing how Shudderwock worked. Although it was without a doubt a necessary change to preserve some sanity, many players crafted the legendary with the assumption it would go on forever. If people are wasting their expensive dust on a card, they should expect it to behave the original way. This is the whole reason why Blizzard does dust refunds in the first place - you can do cool stuff like that in a digital game.
We also need to bring up Lynessa Sunsorrow who received a major change in the patch which also is a total nerf. Previously, the buffs she received would come in the order you played them in, allowing skilled players to get crazy amounts of value out of her. Now everything is going to come down in a random order which could very easily turn out not at all in your favour. Oops. Another huge change to a card that wasn't properly handled.
While we're here, let's also go back to early 2016 when Mekgineer Thermaplugg's token, Leper Gnome, received a hit from the nerf bat. When a card calls out another exact minion or spell, and they change that card, it is a fundamental change which should have also qualified the card which spawns it a dust refund. This is different from random effects though, those pools should not move down the card chain.
But don't worry, they're giving us discounts on a pack bundle so we don't need that dust, just toss 'em some dollars!
Moving On
If they want to make this a thing going forward, that's fine, but cards need to have these same rules in place before they get released to the masses. Limit "stupid" combos to 30 maximum card plays, make things random if you're afraid of an effect. Most importantly though, give people refunds if you screwed up. Changing the card already admits you made a mistake with the original design of the card, now players need to be reimbursed for that.
Sincerely, one frustrated Hearthstone player to another.
Should Tess Greymane be Disenchantable for Full Dust Value?
Tell us what you think. Answer our poll below and leave a comment if you want to tell us more.
The 30 card limit will.affect <0.1% of all times she is used
The ability to replay death cards is a buff
The ability to turn off her battlecry when she does is about even.. I remember psychic scream because she was in opponents deck she would start kitting them out with minions..
I can see why no refund
Honestly, the reason I'm upset is because the team tried do it all sneaky, like we wouldn't notice. We already know they think they player base is pretty dumb - just listen to them justify nerfs and card design choices - and apparently, they think the majority of the player base is too dumb to understand complex chains of thought like "If you advertised it as pre-nerf Yogg and change it to post-nerf Yogg, it deserves a refund". They slipped it into the patch notes, assuming most players will just assume it's a bug fix.
Don't delete this post, as a member of the community you have every right to air your opinions.
BUT I don't think personal opinion posts like this should be forced onto the front page using admin privilege. If it was simply a news post about community outrage (without bias) it wouldn't be an issue.
Less than a year ago: "Hmm Patches and Raza have been played consistently in most meta decks for over a year now... better nerf them before they rotate to Wild, just to be safe. The playerbase will surely appreciate us staying on top of things and not letting cards like these run out of control."
……...
Now: "Hmm Lynessa has started to see play in Quest Paladin... I think Paladin players would really appreciate some added RNG to that particular deck!"
"Hmm Tess Greymane is seeing play? Better shut that shit down, Odd Rogue is what the people should be playing more of!"
I'm really surprised by this change for Tess. I mean I understand that back in the time Yogg was the end game table turner crazy shit that pissed off lots of players but I mean Tess ? Her decks were just for memes and with really low winrate so I don't see why change it...
I don't follow on the Lynessa thing. Randomizing her casts doesn't change anything in Paladin, unless your deck relies on playing Dinosize before playing any other spells to maximize value. Other than that, there is no way for Lynessa to give you a worse result than before (unless you deliberately played damaging effeects on your own minions, which Paladin has like....one of?)
Tess is a different story, mainly because they clarified how it would work and are now going back on their word, which leaves the card in a weaaker state then before, which is a nerf by any definition.
Playing Blessed Champion on a 2 attack minion is very different from playing it on a 20 attack minion.
Dark Conviction can ruin it all.
I don't want a dust refund, I just want the changes to be reverted.
They capped the number of Battlecry effects he could replicate. Before the change, he'd keep going for however many you had played. It was mostly done to speed it up, but in doing so, they weakened the card a bit.
Hmm but in the normal you never play more than 10-20 battlecrys so it’s not really important. But thanks for the answer dude.
I agree that it probably didn't come up often, but I didn't play Shudderwock before they changed it, so I can't say with any authority. Even before the change it wasn't a high winrate deck - it was just frustrating because they'd "go off" and you'd just sit there for a couple minutes waiting for animations to finish. Speeding it up has helped this while leaving it at about the same power level, I think.
Regarding the answer: You're welcome. :-D
Whether it should be refunded or not, I’m going to call out Hearthpwn for posting a clear salt thread that only is going to enrage the community against blizzard. As the leading community site on Hearthstone, you would hope it would be a level headed example to try to keep the community positive and engaged in Hearthstone.
Should we get a refund? Maybe. Do we need a post like this that is clearly an admin salty about something that is purely trying to create a riot? No. It’s a bad precedent and could be handled in a much more professional manner. We get enough salt threads, ragequit threads, blizzard is out to get us threads, etc on a daily basis, we don’t need one from the site admins to promote that type of attitude in the community.
The site is awesome. The admins don’t get nearly enough credit. But I would hope posts like this don’t appear in the future.
to be fair, the site has a history of posting poorly thought out articles. remember the time they were ranking the worst Un'Goro cards and trashed Primalfin Totem as being too expensive at 3 mana....when it's actually a 2-mana card.
You mistake ciriticism with "salt". Or you think they are one and the same, which you should seriously reconsider. Maybe stop using the term "salt" entirely. It's just strange using it in one paragraph in which you demand a professional demeanor.
I agree, the writing style in this one is... debatable. However, this site is run by actual people, actual fans of the game, and it is as natural to them as anybody else to be upset about changes that deserve criticism. Even if Hearhtpwn is one of the bigger community sites, it isn't run by Blizzard community managers. They are not responsible to relativise and negotiate flaws, nor can they be expected to play devil's advocate. They are certainly not obligated to maintain a flowers and sunshine attitude no matter what.
They are allowed to have and state an opinion, just as newspapers have editorials.
When there is a problem in the game, this site and its staff is free to address it as anybody else. And when controversial stuff is happening, I actually expect community sites to call it out.
When there's an issue it should be pointed out and that's not saltiness or trying to enrage the people. Especially in a system that doesn't give all people a chance for directly influencing things, protesting and rebelling against the authorities is vital for the system staying fair or even being sustainable in long term.
WTF are you talking about, this is not biased, this is what the whole community has been saying since this patch came out.
Give tour arguments about why complaining about this move is wrong.
What was the shudderwock nerf?
it just limited the number of battlecries to 20 or something, which really didn't change much since you would rarely get over 20 battlecries
yeah, and, actually the part of "limit of 30 cards" on tess doesn't really matter, even the pre-nerf yogg had a limit on te number of spells he cast and it was particulary dificult to reach.