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.
when yogg got nerfed,we got full dust .why not tess???
Because no one plays Tess,and her set up is too hard..Like seriously,do you play ever a game where you play more than 30 non class cards before Tess?
The point is they don't have a separate section for it and that's fine.
nerfin a card without Disenchantable for Full Value whats goin on here ???????? hello blizzard
Personally, I would push back on the idea that the Tess change is a nerf. Seriously, if you have played Tess, how many times have more than 30 non-class cards gone off after playing Tess AND the cards after 30 made an appreciable impact on the game? Were you not about to win anyway given that you just got 30 cards worth of value for free? If you aren't about to win after Tess, would those extra cards have brought you over the edge? I find that hard to believe.
This change seems to be aimed at limiting griefing caused in edge cases. Cards that can go on forever can be abused by clever folk with an intention to cause annoyance. If it doesn't change your WR, I don't see why that change should entitle you to dust.
The 30 card limit isn't the reason people are upset. It's the fact that her battlecry won't continue after she leaves the battlefield anymore. If Tess was destroyed with say a Siphon Soul, she would continue to play the rest of her cards, like pre-nerf Yogg. Now if [card]Siphon Soul destroys Tess as the first card, she won't play anything else, like post-nerf Yogg. It's the exact same nerf that happened to Yogg, but players aren't getting a dust refund for that, when they did for Yogg.
Except that isn't the nerf. The nerf is that Tess stops after she is removed from the board or silenced. To make a simple example of why this matters, lets say a rogue steals only 2 mana wyrms and a fireball and they decide to play them all. Now, before this nerf, the Rogue would at least have 2 minions on the board no matter what, but now if Tess decides to hit herself with the fireball first, it's an eight mana do literally nothing.
Another example, you want to play twisting nether from a warlock, but that would make Tess literally just a twisting nether with no chance of anything else, different from pre-nerf. And there are many other examples due to the fact that there are plenty of of removal cards.
You could argue this is a small change, but a nerf is a nerf and does impact WR. Tess is already not competitive and the winrate is already low enough, so this nerf is just unnecessary. Personally, I'd rather not have a refund, and would rather have the change reverted because I would rather not make Tess weaker than she already is, although I wouldn't care if it still had a limit of 30 cards.
Yes and I hope to disenchant that garbage card fast. I hate her. She is horrible.
Most interesting thing about that part of the nerf is that you can switch back and forth between rogue based Tess, and whatever other DK you have, if you've played both, and manage to get a tess copy.
I'm fine with criticism, and maybe Blizzard deserves it here. But having an admin post a comment like "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!", and a title "More Bologna", that's not criticism, that's salt. That's embarrassing, and not in the best interests of this website. Bring up the issue and promote a intellectual conversation about it. Don't throw gas on a fire that'll only cause people to get unhappy and quit the game, and thus, the website.
The post should have covered the matter more professionally. It never discussed the fundamental difference between Yogg and Tess (that you entirely control what cards Tess will play, and isn't all RNG). It never discussed how often in a typical game would Tess silence or kill herself. I don't own Tess, so I don't know, but it has to be a small subset. And it was posted a DAY after the announcement, not giving Blizzard any time to put out any statement on the matter. It wasn't yet time to be out in pitchforks.
It was a salt thread, and it's fine to throw criticism at Blizzard, but we can get "criticism" like that from 100 forum posts. Posts like that from the admins only promote the community to act like that, and the less of that type of posts, the better.
You are not affected by the change cause you didn't craft her, but you run your mouth like you know everything. Well allow me to tell you that all your points are invalid.
The cards you get from the other class are 100% random, she just uses again that card. About 20% of the matches you'll get a board clear that kills your minions too (i.e. brawl) or a powerful spell will kills her (silence or polymorf), after nerf it's a bigger chance that you'll lose that 20% of the matches. That's a nerf, no question about that.
Activision already started to make changes to other games they publish without announcing the players (see Destiny 2 problems in the past year). Some players crafted the card with the dust they got for dezenchanting the cards they got with money, so I'd say the editors were nice enough, they could have said: blizzard steals from you. What do you want, for them to congratulate the team for doing such things.
I hope that you see you are wrong and hear my humble message: STFU BLIZZ FANBOY!
Tess shouldn't be nerfed. Idgaf about the dust tbh... put your efforts on cancer cards, please.
tess should be disenchantable for full dust value like Yogg in the past..
it's an editorial
Right. It's an editorial. Thats pretty much what I said when I said it was an opinion. Thats the definition of an editorial: an opinion piece written by the editors. Aka, not news.
Editorials in papers commonly have their own page for a reason. If the site wants to have an editorial, blog, etc type section on the front page for this kind of content then that's great, they should do that. But you want clear delineations between opinions and news if you're going to be useful as a news outlet. Mixing editorials into the news feed doesn't seem like a way to create clear delineations between the two.
My point is that the news section has not been bogged down with editorials such as this in the past and if it is in the future then I will no longer be a frequent user.
The fact that community drama like this is in "news" makes me lose a lot of respect for this site. This is not news. This is an opinion that should have been posted in the forums. I agree with the points made and think this is one of the stupidest mis-steps that Blizzard has ever made but if garbage like this will be showing up in the news section then I will stop using this site for my hearthstone news. An admin having an opinion on community drama is not news.
True, but I don't mind a bit of editorializing with my news. Especially when it clearly lays out what was officially said and what their take-away was like most things Fluxflashor posts. This site really is a good aggregator of Hearthstone community news. There's posts on podcasts, communication from Blizzard, esports updates, delving into the lore of Warcraft, notable deck write-ups from prominent players, community events being hosted on hearthpwn... There are plenty of non-blue post articles that are not simply manufacturing an opinion. I keep clicking "older articles" on the front page and can't find any other posts that are just commentary on drama. I see a valiant attempt at delivering information to create a community.
I have respect for hearthpwn for that reason. I have respect for Fluxflashor for that reason. Thats why I'm dissapointed and trying to voice my concern. If the news section becomes an extension of the whining we see on reddit then I will remove this site from my list of websites that I frequent. I'm hoping either A) This was Flux simply posting in frustration and not a new direction for hearthpwn or B) he sees these kinds of discussions and realizes that taking hearthpwn in that direction will chase off a portion of the userbase.
Exactly, I guess journalists neutrality doesn't exists in game industry.
TBH, I dont even care about neutrality here. He has an opinion and is sharing it and thats fine. It's just not news. He shouldnt be mixing his editorial in to a news feed. There's a reason papers commonly have editorials on their own page instead of simply mixing it in with the actual news.
This is largely why opinions are kept out of news articles, I think that's better for the site. Occasionally, once or twice a year, we end up with some stupid decision Blizzard makes which gets the community in a valid uproar and I feel it's necessary that we voice that concern as well.
By using the voice of HearthPwn when it matters, it makes things feel much more serious.
The amount of things I've wanted to bring up over the years is too damn high. The blocker has always been that the front page really should be more news than anything. We could always break out a special look for posts that are opinion based, and that might be something to do going forward since Hearthstone sucks for content.