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.
Thanks for the reply. Your comment makes sense and I'm glad you use the power of your platform intelligently. You make a great point that hearthpwn weighing in on the issue is important and I'm glad you did. My problem was in no way with you exercising that power.
To be clear, my problems with it are 1) cluttering the news feed with non-news related content and more importantly 2) making more clear what's news and what isn't. Personally I'd suggest a separate section, maybe even one that only shows up when necessary, for when the power of hearthpwn needs to be mobilized, but even something as simple as putting "Opinion:" or "Editorial:" before the headline would help take care of 2.
Again thanks for the reply. Engaging constructively with criticism is often hard to do. With that response you've definitely salvaged a good portion of the respect I said I lost earlier. The kind of idea in your last part would certainly gain back the rest and more. Great work
Flash. I get that this is your opinion, and I agree with most of this, especially the tess needing dust refunds part.
But the Lynessa change is ABSOLUTELY not a nerf.
It is a bugfix.
https://mobile.twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/935184309857681408
Lynessa was NEVER meant to cast spells in order on herself. I don't care if it makes the card "worse from where it was". Where it was was bugged and not working as intended.
It would be like if they went from "Yogg counts fireballs twice for the number of spells" to "only counts fireballs once". Yeah, that's worse than it used to be, but the change is fixing a card that isn't functioning correctly.
Thank you for your input. I think there is a distinct difference between news section and forum/comment section. You can still report these hidden changes in a professional and neutral way, instead of bring in your own name and frustration. You can leave those to comments here. Remember, with greater power comes greater responsibility :)
Personally I appreciate the editorial, and its presence in the news section, and not just because I am on of the majority who feel it should have been refunded. For one, I had no idea about the Lynessa change OR the Tess change before reading it here in this article. So those are definitely news components to the piece for me. Given that this makes Shudderwock less of a one-off, and more of a trend, that trend, too, is news. The tangential bit about Mechgineer Thermaplugg (and later commenters similar comparisons with other nerf impacts) was something I had also never considered before, so, I like that it educated me about picking up on butterfly effects.
Regardless of which side a reader takes (if they take one), it created an opportunity for Blizzard to see how users feel, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This is something they might have missed if it were a forum piece only (I certainly would have, as I rarely use the forums unless searching for something in particular). Given they appear to have responded, given the update to the article, I would say that the news/editorial combination was value added for both the site and the community as a whole, regardless of their eventual decision(s). That's 'ink' well spent.
I certainly disagree with reactions that this 'clogged' news section space, especially when considering that its a rare occurrence, and not 'just' an op-ed piece, but contains both news and education, as well. I can see some people's points about the tone, but, FF has always had a pretty consistent tone, which is part of the site's flavor. As such, that is certainly a valid decision point for whether to alter your viewing habits, etc. but as one who already appreciated what FF brings to the site and community, it actually strengthens my loyalty. I'd say that's more likely to be the case than not, given the #s in the poll. That cost/benefit decision likely didn't factor into his choice of words, but bonus, though.
Anyway, thanks for giving voice to what many felt about SW, and enlightening me about recent changes that show this trend, and especially, for increasing Blizz awareness of the community perceptions/voices, something they need to do a better job of themselves.
If you take 6 months to fix a "bug" with a card, at that point it should be considered a feature. The least they could have done is given everyone a heads-up that a change was going to be coming to fix the issue.
Flash, that isn't realistic in the slightest.
Can you verify the exact moment the devs became aware of the buggrd interaction?
Maybe the fix literally only took a minute but it was never caught because its a card with such a low play percentage.
Maybe nobody reported it in the bug logs so the devs never got keyed into its incorrect functionality.
"It took too long to fix, so now its a feature" is not justifiable when it comes to bugs. Dozens of bugs all the way back from beta have been fixed as recently as Kharazan. That doesn't make those "bugs" features just by virtue of how long they are in the game.
As for why they didn't give a heads up. Maybe to discourage people from exploiting a still bugged card? Imagine if in Overwatch they explained "oh, yeah, if you hook mercy mid flight, no clip mode becomes engaged". If they didnt just straight up BAN mercy from the ladder, it would be CATASTROPHIC because everybody would start exploiting an unintended bug
Blizzard utterly unconcerned with consistency, terrible at communicating, and unwilling to fix their mistakes.
In other news water is wet.
"plenty of bug fixes", you forget adding a couple of game breaking bugs in the process. I just lost a game where I played Grumble, which was then hexed, and my Kalimos did not proc the next turn.
Edit: oh, and if your enemy silences a battlecry minion after it's played, it removes it from the Shudderwock stack.
It's a damn joke.
So first shudderwock and now tess and no dust for us. Pricks
Activision is taking over.
Dont want to give us dust for changing legendaries then make them right the first time round.
I really like the concept of Tess, but for some reason she's just not good. I tried so many times to make her work, but shes good in very few occasions, and now she is even worst.
The problem with Tess, as compared to Yogg and Shudderwock, is that you first have to play cards that generate the cards you want her to play. That means you have to play two cards and spend mana on two occassions for Tess to do what she does. For Yogg you simply had to play the spells you already had in your deck anyway and Shudderwock simply copies the Battlecries that you play.
Man, Blizzard is lost without Brode. Anyone notice that? As soon as Brode left, we stopped getting refunds 100% of the time. Now it's like, 50% of the nerfs we got a full dust refund so far. I have a bad feeling that this percentage will continue to decline.
"Changing the card already admits you made a mistake with the original design of the card, now players need to be reimbursed for that".
AMEN
Let's nerf Tess and Lynessa, they were ruining ranked, totally broken BrokeBack
My two favorite decks are Burgle Rogue in wild and Quest Paladin in standard. Thanks Blizzard.
So glad I quit this game. Blizzard has just been getting worse and worse. This shadowban to Tess, a card that never even needed it is just another example of ActiBlizz showing they have no idea what they’re doing.
So you're still visiting HearthPwn because...?
to let us know he quit the game obv :D
let him, is just a masochist dude
Blizzard can't get few consistency in the wording of its own card games, less than ever on their "refound" policy. So what was the treatment for similar scenario in the past, is not assured that will be applied in the same way in the future.
So much disrespect for their costumers...
Most obvious poll result in the history of polls lol