Blizzard Addresses Problems - Tess Greymane, Shudderwock, Quest Druid at HCT Seoul
- An update on June 8th, PDT, will change some cards.
- Tess Greymane's Battlecry will once again continue even if she is destroyed, silenced, or removed.
- Shudderwock's Battlecry limit will be increased to 30, from 20.
- Players with Quest Druid decks at HCT Seoul are allowed to submit a new list if they wish due to changes.
- Ultimately, they only want to give out dust refunds if a card has a "decrease [in] their overall power level for balance purposes".
Quote from Jesse HillGreetings,
Thank you for your feedback regarding the recent Update 11.2. We apologize for not offering notice in advance of these changes before they went live. We understand that this wasn’t a good experience and that it also had an impact on some of our esports competitors as well. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, and we’ll do better in the future.
Update 11.2 brought with it some changes as part of our ongoing, overall goal to make card interactions more intuitive across the board. The intention of some of those changes was to align four similar cards (Tess Greymane, Lynessa, Shudderwock, and Yogg-Saron). If you’re familiar with the way that one of these minions works, you should be able to guess how the others work. We added a cap to the maximum number of effects that can be generated by these Battlecries, and made Tess’ Battlecry end if she was destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed, just like Yogg-Saron.
After hearing your feedback to that change, we initially considered offering a full Arcane Dust refund for Tess. We also read feedback from players who use Tess in their decks asking for her to be reverted to her old functionality. In this case, we agree that it’s worthwhile to sacrifice some consistency so Tess is more fun to play, especially since our priority wasn’t to decrease Tess’ power level. With that in mind, instead of offering an Arcane Dust refund and encouraging players to disenchant the card, we’re reverting one of the changes to Tess Greymane so that her Battlecry will continue even if she’s destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed from the board.
This situation has also raised discussions regarding the definition of a card fix versus a dust-refunding nerf, so we thought this would be a good time to talk about our stance on the subject.
We will continue to provide full Arcane Dust refunds for changes to cards that decrease their overall power level for balance purposes — in other words, card nerfs.
We’re working to improve Hearthstone and make the underlying mechanics more intuitive. Bug fixes or system-wide mechanics changes to improve the game will not be grounds for a full Arcane Dust refund on a card. System-wide mechanical updates affect many different cards in ways that could make some more or less powerful, such as the interaction between Jungle Giants and Faceless Manipulator.
Lynessa Sunsorrow was never intended to apply her buffs in the order they were cast, so the update to her functionality in 11.2 was a bug fix for that card. The cap of 30 effects is a system-wide change intended to protect the service and players from potentially bad play experiences that have minimal player value. We’re planning to raise the cap of Shudderwock’s Battlecry from 20 to 30 when we implement the fix that reverts Tess, as well.
We’re currently planning to revert the change that caused Tess Greymane to stop casting her Battlecry when destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed on June 8th PDT.
HCT Seoul and Quest Druid
We also would like to take this moment to apologize to our player community for this update’s impact on the HCT Tour Stop taking place in Seoul this weekend, specifically the 15 players who brought Quest Druid decks.
After considering recent feedback and significant discussion, we felt that Quest Druid decks were most directly affected in terms of viability as a result of the changes that were introduced with Update 11.2. As such, we allowed players that brought Quest Druid an opportunity to resubmit their deck.
Balancing the health of the game with the needs and calendar of a global esport like the Hearthstone Championship Tour is always challenging. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, for us, our players, and competitors, and we’ll do better in the future.
Thanks again for your feedback and your understanding, and we'll see you in the Tavern.
So...buff brigitte? I feel that she's a little too hard to play right now.
whats up with quest druid. iseem to have missed something
Faceless Manipulator no longer counts towards the quest when he copies a minion with 5 or more attack. As a result, the power level of the deck has weakened a lot.
So the HCT players will be allowed to resubmit the Quest Druid deck as a different deck if they want to.
So only those who brought Quest Druid can resubmit? Doesn't that now give them an edge since they already know what others are bringing, or am I missing something?
Kinda, but tournament meta is pretty much copy paste between everyone anyway. If some people bring something that super counters lineups, that deck will likely be banned.
Great write up, thanks Blizz.
So Lynessa is still fucked? Great, thanks for nothing Blizzard.
Yeah, their stance on it is disappointing to say the least. They addressed her as being a bug over 6 months ago. After that amount of time, people expect it to continue working that way. They should have had that fixed with the very next patch if they didn't want to offer refunds.
That's ActiBlizz for ya!
I'm almost certian that in the next expansion there will be a buff card, which could have been broken with players having a control over buffs order.
Wait so they announced that it was a bug long ago?
Well, that kills my support for full-dust Lynessa.
The idea that a bug has a statue of limitations before it's considered canon doesn't make sense and doesn't fit in with past behavior. If it's a bug it'll get fixed. Could be right away. Could be a year. Bug once you know it's unintended then you should KNOW it's going to change up on you someday.
I could see an argument that they should've did better announcing the issue, but unintended issue means buyer beware.
Yeah. Back in november Peter Whalen said that the intended function of Lynessa was random order
https://mobile.twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/935184309857681408
There is an argument to be made that it should have been fixed sooner, but this isn't an obscure tweet - hearthpwn themselves have the tweet linked as the first rule clarification on the lynessa card page.