Hearthstone's Dean Ayala Talks About Rastakhan's Early Nerfs, Barnes, and Power Level
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to speak with Dean "Iksar" Ayala on the nerfs introduced during early Rastakhan's Rumble, balance, and Barnes.
See our recap below and the full transcript here.
Rastakhan's Early Nerfs
- The early nerfs happened because they knew the changes they wanted to make.
- They didn't need to give the meta time to "breathe" this time, it was certain the nerfs would bring "more fun for the next month".
- Pretty happy. That's how the team feels about the post-nerf meta.
- Hunter power level is pretty high and is being watched closely.
Expansions
- This week and next week are some of the final weeks where they are working on 2019 Set 1's balance.
- There wasn't an effort last year to create expansions with less power than Un'Goro, KFT, and Kobolds.
- Introducing new archetypes was a goal, it doesn't matter how many of the older cards get brought along for that ride.
Changes
- Making changes for the sake of changes isn't what they want to do, they have to make them to make things better.
- Talk about Barnes still takes place. No current changes planned right now.
Quote from Dean AyalaIn a broad sense, how happy are you guys with the post-nerf meta?
Pretty happy, I would say. The popularity and power level of Hunter is pretty high right now, so that’s something that we’re keeping a pretty close eye on. It’s been stabilising a little bit, but we’re still looking at it pretty closely. We have meta reports that come in every single day and we monitor not only where stuff is, but where is it trending; where do we think things are going to be in a month or two months, or where do we think things are going to be in the month leading into the next expansion. And if we feel like that’s going to be a really positive environment, we won’t make any changes, but if we feel like there’s some things we can do to make a major impact, then we will.
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Posted Jan 31, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)He will also be on ValueTown next week, I believe on 6th February. People can ask him questions at the end of the show.
I will ask why Chakki wasn’t part of a reveal stream yet. Peter Whalen is nice , but sometimes his constant smile seems a bit too much for me a d over the top.
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Posted Jan 28, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)If they already knew the nerfs they wanted why did they give Druid such a shit expansion set?
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Posted Jan 28, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Druid got Gonk!!! What else you want?
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Posted Jan 28, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Aren't you bored of the same old recipes? They did well to propose new ones...
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Posted Jan 28, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)control wild players' still asking for Barnes' nerf. Let us look for answers at least till turn 6.. please Blizzy
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Posted Jan 29, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Like others have stated, Resurrect is a problem, so is Eternal Servitude. Having Barnes summon a 1/1 turn 3/4 is nothing you wouldn't be able to deal with. Dealing with two Ragnaros, the Firelord on turn 4/5 is a problem.
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Posted Jan 27, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Lets hope we'll get that Barnes nerf some day lol
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Just let everything rotate out. There's very little point in nerfing cards that aren't going to see play in standard in a few months.
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)-
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I don't think you understand what quality testing is. We've been requesting beta testing of card sets for years and they even acknowledged they should at one point but they never implemented it. Their inability to adequately test the impact of new cards with their in-house resources coupled with their glacial pace to accept they need to make changes in live play mandate a beta testing of new card sets.
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Fuck me, I spent 5k dust on a wild Big Priest deck two weeks ago.
F
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)"Baaahhhh!"
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)"The french... champagne"
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I think increasing the cost of Barnes by 1 would be good enough to not overkill the card into oblivion, or the “actor thingy” aswell without the mana cost increase but I’m not sure about that.
As for Deathstalker Rexxar I like a lot the idea of the 3 different pools, very nice but probably too much “hard” to code.. so I believe they will simply increase its mana cost.
Maybe decrease the stats (like 2/2s) on the wolves summoned by the Emerald Spellstone would be a great fix (or decrease the number of wolves summoned 1 3/3 wolf for 0 secret played, 2 3/3s for 1 secret played, 3 3/3s for 2 secrets played and 4 3/3s for 3 secrets played), but I doubt they will hit that card.
“Pretty happy” worries me. A lot.
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Posted Jan 29, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I agree with the Hunter spellstone. It is the only Spellstone that is slightly OP baseline compared to other not-upgraded Spellstones.
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I call it "Raza-Patches effect". When there is 2 months before rotation they "watch closely" on some cards and nerf them.
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Posted Jan 27, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I get what you're trying to say, but they nerfed raza because raza priest was too dominant in wild after rotation
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)No effort to slow down the power level? I hope, that doesn't mean the next expansions will have these powercreeps again... year of the raven was honestly in my opinion the most frustrating year, although i haven't forgotten raza, pirate, who am i, 4 Mana 7/7, etc.
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Had to laugh at that part. In 2018 they rebalanced 19 cards. That means they couldn't predict sufficiently how the new cards they were adding to the game would impact the meta sufficiently to tweak the new cards in testing before they were ever added to the game. In 2017, they rebalanced 10 cards. In 2016, they rebalanced 25 cards.
The dev team has shown very little ability to know what the meta will be next week much less a month or two from now.
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Posted Jan 26, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)I don't think you really understand what a meta is.
They won't be able to fully test internally, there are too many variables and until the cards are in the players hands a meta won't be formed. They can predict and plan for predictions but until the decks form and the meta is created they won't know what to adjust.