Upcoming Hearthstone Balance Changes - Giggling Inventor, Mana Wyrm, Aviana
Three card changes are coming to Hearthstone later this week on October 18th and one of them is purely for Wild!
- [Discuss this Change] Giggling Inventor now costs 7, up from 5.
- [Discuss this Change] Mana Wyrm now costs 2, up from 1.
- [Discuss this Change] Aviana now costs 10, up from 9.
Check out Blizzard's post below for more information on each of the changes.
Quote from BlizzardIn an update that is scheduled to arrive October 18 PDT, the following cards will be changed.
Giggling Inventor – Will cost 7 mana. (Up from 5)
Giggling Inventor is one of the most powerful and popular cards we’ve ever created. There’s virtually no downside to including it in a deck, and because it’s neutral, it’s played in almost every deck. We think it’s important to take risks when making powerful cards, especially when it comes to neutral taunts, given the role they can play in encouraging minion interactions and making games more interesting. However, Giggling Inventor has stepped beyond its intended role, and we don’t feel that it should be as effective as it currently is.
We initially tested this card at (6) mana in both the current Standard format as well as with cards that will be released in the future. Ultimately, we felt that its power level was still higher than is appropriate for a Neutral card with no build-around requirements. At (7) mana, we expect Giggling Inventor will find its way into fewer decks in general—and be much less effective in Quest Rogue—while it might remain situationally playable within specific deck archetypes, such as Evolve Shaman.
Mana Wyrm – Will cost 2 mana. (Up from 1)
Over time, we’ve been moving away from powerful, early-game 1-drops like Mana Wyrm. It can often feel like the outcome of a game is decided by whether Mana Wyrm was played on turn one, and if it could be removed quickly by an opponent. Mana Wyrm has also steered us away from making powerful low-cost Mage spells. We’d like Mana Wyrm to remain an option for decks it synergizes with, while preventing it from being a huge turn one threat.
At (2) mana, it will be easier to deal with Mana Wyrm the turn it’s played, and it will be harder to buff it with cheap spells early in the match. We still expect it to remain an option in decks that have a heavy focus on cheap spells, but it should be a less appealing option in decks that aren’t built with that focus in mind.
Aviana – Will cost 10 mana. (Up from 9)
Changing Aviana to (10) mana means it will no longer be possible to play Aviana and Kun the Forgotten King on the same turn without some additional help from cards like Innervate or The Coin. It also means Juicy Psychmelon will no longer draw both Aviana and Kun. This should make the combos Aviana and Kun produce less consistent, while still allowing decks that use the combos to exist for the players that enjoy playing them.
I agree with Aviana nerf, yes.
Maybe they will let us guide them atleast for 1 time ? "THEY TRIED"... We know how they trying.
Even paladin... Even Warlock...
Mossy horror and 3 mana bubble-eater are still in the game lul. More than 6 decks < 2 even decks < unplayable. YEP
uff, downvotes... Ok, you can continue playing rock-paper-scissors i don't mind. But these "changes" are changing nothing, except killing tempo mage and giggling.
"They found it too strong" yep. Did you know that Duskfallen Aviana is a good card ? Or maybe Harbinger Celestia ? Kappa
look at it from the bright side: now you only paid 80$ for a hero skin :-)
Time to play even mage to utilize the Mana Wyrm buff and to actually have something to do on T1 (hero power), since there r now literally no 1-drops for mage class in Standard other than Fire Fly for ele mage :D
Nearly my sentiments exactly on Mana Wyrm. Yeah, Tempo Mage was/is an annoying deck. But really? It's so degenerate and polarized that it needed to be nerfed? Data doesn't seem to support that, but mmkay. *shrug*
actually Mana Wyrm was by far the strongest card in ANY aggro/tempo mage deck, with an average 3% higher mulligan winrate than any other card, raising the mages overall winrate by 10% when played early. additionally it's always been part of the top 3 "highest wr when drawn" and "highest wr when played" cards in mage. SOURCE: hsreplay.net
Shame they didn't nerf Tank-Up, Odd Warrior is as polarising of a deck as Quest Rogue.. Giggling Inventor.. Didn't expect they would look at the potential even decks and nerfed it to 7 rather than 5. As for Aviana, I think it was needed Aviana-kun makes almost everything combo-able and thus restricted desisgn space. Now for the Mana Wyrm nerf.. I really did not expect that, and it feels like it was more or less done because people kept complaining about it. I also feel like there would have been other targets that would be better to nerf than mana wyrm. Oh well guess priest has a buddy in the garbage bin of HS now.
Oh yeah, it was.
giggling got DESTROYED totally ANNIHILATED
if it was too strong at 6 mana hmmmm I wonder about 5.
Don't get me wrong I'm happy I won't hear "Hello! Hello! Hello!" anymore and I guess Aviana's nerf is okay too but did they really need to kill Mana Wyrm? As much as I hate the card making it 2 mana seems overkill and it's not like Tempo Mage was oppressive.... Also,where the heck are Druid's nerfs for Standard? Are there really people that still think that Spreading Plague and Branching Paths are balanced cards? They killed off GI but the meta is gonna stay the same,that's great.... I really can't wait for the next expansion to come out....
I think the problem with Mana Wyrm is that tempo mage's win-rate would skyrocket if you had it on your starting hand. It was too snowball-y. And yeah, Spreading Plague and Branching Paths are broken AF. There's absolutely nothing Druid is bad at. They can ramp, flood the board, buff their minions, gain a ton of armor, direct damage, cycle faster than any other class, AOE, it's disgusting.
I agree on that but I think making it a 1/2 or a 0/3 for 1 mana would've been better.... At 2 mana (and especially in a world where Arcanologist there's simply no reason to play the card.... The card needed a nerf for sure but I don't see any reason to completely obliterate it especially now that it's used just in one Deck and said Deck it's not even that good...
Aviana:
Sooo they didn't want to nerf Juicy psychmelon because people have been saving copies of it since it is so obviously broken and limiting. Instead they completely destroyed the aviana-kun archetype, which wasn't that broken for wild until juicy pshychmelon was released...
Mana Wyrm:
They nerfed mana wyrm? A deck specifically used to counter quest rogue and looses to pretty much everything else? Have I been playing a different game?
Giggling inventor:
Well, might as well just delete the expansion now.
The nerfs seem quite fair. In my opinion Mana Wyrm will still see play but it won't be that snowball-y at the beggining of the game, which is good, the Aviana-Kun combo has been going on for ages so I like the nerf, it feels like for the first time Blizzard nerfed the problematic card and not a new good (but not the problem) card and Giggling Inventor...well, the nerf was kinda needed! 7 mana is too much for the stats for sure and now we have no (neutral) protection from aggro decks but I can understand the argument that it would make even decks even better if the cost was changed to 6 so I guess making it unplayable was the only way. All in all I like the fact that only 3 cards were changed and the nerfs seem fair. For the ones complaining about druids... learn to play and use tech cards in your favor, spreading plague can be played around or destroyed with Mossy Horror (or many class spells) and Malfurion is far less oppressive than Gul' Dan and Jaina so stop whinning!
Unless they play Spreading Plague and Branching Paths on the same turn (which with Wild Growth and Nourish will probably be around turn 5) making their scarabs 3/5. I think the real problem with Druid is Branching Paths, the card is so versatile and does so many things it's disgusting. But I agree Malfurion is far less oppresive than Gul'Dan, Jaina or Rexxar.
I agree that Branching paths does too much for its cost (especially the armor is too much), but I don't think you see the combo you described at turn 5 every day, at least I do not see it. Having the perfect cards from the beginning of the game would allow that, but having the perfect cards can be oppressive with any class. And for spreading plague+branching paths to have real value at turn 5 it means that the other side of the board is pretty good too, so maybe it's not so much a matter of "too much" power but a matter of perspective! In my opinion a zoolock with a full board of 4/5s or 3/4s by turn 4 is far more oppressive (and "dangerous") and there is actually not much I can do to deal with it no matter the class I play. That's the only reason I am concerned about the Giggling Inventor nerf...