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.
This kind of mentality is what encourages greed.
It costed them nothing to make all changed cards dustable but they don't cause greed is good for them and people don't even care.
Much better, thank you Blizzard.
Tess was never so OP that it deserved the same nerf given to Yogg-Saron. It is certainly a strong card, because you get copies of the off-class minions, but that is hardly broken compared with the other interactions that repeatedly provide full boards (especially Hadronox, which is much more OP with Cube in the standard rotation). Tess's effect is also almost completely random, given that the off-class cards you get are heavily influenced by RNG.
???
I'm not sure how anything in the blue post can be construed as "catering to e-sports." Reverting Tess had nothing to do with e-sports. They apologize three times in their post for having made a number of changes to Quest Druid which will apparently impact 15 players at the upcoming HCT event - they also explain that they aren't reverting any of those changes, and the folks who brought Quest Druid will have to submit new decks.
While the community apparently enjoys casting everything Blizzard does as some sort of thinly-veiled conspiracy, it seems more likely that the blue-post isn't simply a bunch of bull-shit - in which case, they simply wanted all the Yogg-ish cards to have the same sort of functionality, and they wanted "comes into play" effects, and "transform" effects which change Attack values to function more intuitively. And they admit they screwed up - they didn't announce the changes in advance, and those changes impacted HCT Seoul.
FWIW - the folks who brought Quest Druid should be allowed to resubmit their entire line-up, rather than a single deck. Tournament players bring a set of decks in order to target specific match-ups. If QD was a lynch-pin in their line-up, then their entire game-plan for the tournament will be screwed up. Indeed, having to submit a different deck at the last minute seems to be the exact opposite of "catering to e-sports."
This reminds me of when Bethesda said that mods PURCHASED through the Creation Club "aren't paid mods". Blizzard is going to bullshit us with this line about how it isn't a nerf to Tess because they believe a nerf deals with "changes to cards that decrease their overall power level for balance purposes". THE CHANGE DID DECREASE TESS' POWER LEVEL. THE CHANGE TO YOGG DECREASED HIS POWER LEVEL. THERE'S LITERALLY NO DIFFERENCE BECAUSE THE CHANGE IS EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME. STOP BULLSHITTING PEOPLE.
You were called out on your shit, Blizzard, and now you're changing Tess back so people can't argue for dust in return. We're glad that we have Tess back, but now? Because Tess is allowed to be in the game in her current state, why not Yogg as well? We got dust for that, but why not bring Yogg back anyway? Bringing back Yogg would seriously shake things up, but a lot of people would be quite happy. I could go either way, honestly, but I would love it, even if it feels cheap. Use my change to Yogg instead. Bring Yogg back to its former glory, BUT let Yogg cast spells for the opponent as well. That would make the card perfect, because Yogg should've been this insane in the first place, having no allegiance to anything but chaos. It'd be perfect.
Yogg should definitely be reverted in my opinion, since wild has always been the WILD format. People play crazy combo's, so why not yogg? :(
I believe keywords from their explanation "for balance purposes". So if they accidently nerf card again for bullshit "consistency" reasons or whatever idea they come up next time, they now have excuse to not give a dust. It wasn't a balance change aka nerf, it is a whole game mechanic change which just happened to nerf this specific card. I wish they changed Yogg instead, was my favorite card in hearthstone.
You would be interested to learn about statistics.
You cannot do logic this way. You need a way higher sample size in order to conclude any of the two above statements.
Everybody needs to read this at least one more time. Including Blizzard. Most ‘yelling’ writings ars stupid but not yours.
Just imagine you're at university working at a project. You declared that it will follow specific rules. You hand it in and it turns out it doesn't quite look as intended. And then you say "Okay but I wanted it to work in a different way... Please wait few months and I will give it updated. But as for now please give me 5 for this."
This is just a childish excuse.
What is the difference between Tess and Yogg?
Tess didn't dominate the meta. If she did she would've kept the Yogg effect.
If Yogg hadn't become Tier 1 enabling and meta defining and remained the meme-master he was meant to be he would've never been changed.
Personally would've rather had consistency but that's purely greed talking: I opened a Tess and can't really get her to work so the dust would be lovely. But "Blizzard change it back and make it dustable because I want more dust!" isn't exactly an honest argument
1. Yogg is neutral, Tess is rogue card.
2. Yogg works with spells, Tess with class cards outside your class (so she could works in priest too)
3. Tess doesn't work in mirror matches.
4. Yogg outcome is random (which can win you losing game), Tess not (she recasts cards you already played)
5. Yogg stops casting after his death, Tess not.
Then don’t play her?
Or play her a tons more so you will get over that ‘It is hard to play her’
I’m so happy about this change, and how blizz actually listened us. TuT
"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."
Ekhm... WHO GIVES a SHIET? For a long time, the buff order wasn't random. What a silly stupid explanation. "WE FUCKED UP, let you play a card, and now we're reverting it to the state we originally wanted it to be. Yee... You're not getting the refund".
I DON'T CARE. I'm not the one earning good amount of money for sitting on my ass, having a good time working at Hearthstone. The fact that it's your fault the buff random wasn't random should only make more to an argument "WE ARE SORRY, IT WAS A MISTAKE, IT'S OUR FAULT, YES YOU'RE GETTING DUST REFUND BECAUSE MAYBE NOW YOU DON'T WANT TO PLAY THIS CARD ANYMORE".
I can read. I see they made other changes in favor of the player. But I won't accept that using Lynessa buff order was more of an exploit than a correct card mechanic. It's your fault. Not players. And it's not like a game-ending exploit where a game suddenly crashes and each player ends up with a lost battle.
what happened to tess shouldn't have been done in the first place but I am glad it was undone I can continue to play slightly higher powerlevel bad meme decks C:
Well ok, for now.
But they still call the (temporary) nerf to Tess as a change, while it is a damn nerf: not on Yogg scale, but with the very same principle!
I do understand their stance, not all changes are real nerfs, but a subtle nerf is still a nerf!
Nice. :)
What about Darkness + Crowskin combo?
Bring the old Yogg back