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.
Rexxar won't get hit. It rotates out in less than 3 months. They will just wait it out.
Maybe they will limit Hero Cards per deck to 1 for the sake of wild
That's been proven to not be a factor. Remember Patches the Pirate? They can even nerf cards after they rotate, like Naga Sea Witch or Aviana.
Yea but we already had nerfs so I doubt that we will get more before April. Naga Sea Witch and Aviana were completely broken and format morphing so something had to be done. Rexxar is nowhere near that level.
Who said Rexxar is not that level? He is currently in roughly 30% of the decks out there, and that's not because it's a niche card.
Cards can be broken even if they don't provide immediate win: Aviana is a great OTK tool, Naga Sea Witch doesn't OTK but nearly. Rexxar drains your oppontent's deck's answers with a tremendous outvaluing system. You don't die immediately, but feeling that your opponent can generate and answer to whatever you play is horrendous
One-per-deck seems like a sane restriction on Hero Cards. I think I'd be in favor of this in general.
Rexxar can still be get hit even if he will rotate soon. Just think of Patches for example!
Every DK is broken. Rexxar might actually be the most broken. But nerfing one of them and leaving the other eight untouched would be absurd.
No real need for a 1 hero card limit - In wild, Call of the Wild is a much better finisher than Zul'jin. No need to use spell-only build, cheaper, and far more consistent.
Er, no, seriously NO.
Even if you are total noob at the game, the two cards not even comparable.
The thing is, Rexxar isn't much of an issue in wild, because the card pool for make a beast isn't as good there.
Call of the Wild better than Zul'jin?
Where? How? When?
Call of the Wild is basically down to a win-more-card. And at 9 mana it is too expensive compared to other more flexible cards.
Zul'jin on the other hand is a potential finisher, comeback, defense, swingcard or simply value card.
In Wild CotW would make sense at 8 mana while beeing Rexxar-DK after using the heropower without getting something of value. At 8 mana CotW is pretty much pointless at this point.
Okey, this genuinely surprises me.
Feels like they just cannot say that they had to in order to salvage the game.
nerf the resurrect cards instead of Barnes.
What they said about Hunter is the exact same thing they said about Giggling Inventor and it got nerfed the very next time. Rexxar is gonna get hit.
"No current changes planned right now" is Blizzard code for "I've got the beast in my sights."
The problem with Barnesis it's the single greatest "win when played on curve" card EVER. Nowadays you sometimes get hunter turn 4 coin+Greater Emerald Spellstone which is a huge play but you can counter it with certain decks pretty easily, and it requires a specific setup. I don't know the actual statistics of Big Priest in wild, but I'm willing to bet playing Barnes on turn 3/4 compared to not increases your win rate by at the very least 15-20%. When Fiery War Axe did less than that, it was nerfed by 1 mana and vanished into obscurity. Barnes will still be playable if it cost 1 more (only 1 less than Shadow Essence) but will be less "play it and probably win, don't and likely lose".
All that said, if anybody still didn't get that Blizzard cares FAR less about wild than standard (like most players), it's time to wake up.
There's no real incentive to care about wild though. They got their money up front from the packs and from their point they are finished dealing with the customer. Standard is just a way for them to keep selling packs long since expired for new player coming in that want to play in that mode.
So you're saying a company's goal is to maximize profit? How dare they have the goal of each and every company in the world, ever!
Standard or any other name they give a restricted format is what every card game needs after a certain point if it ever hopes to get more players. Magic started doing it a long time ago, costs A LOT more money to keep playing than Hearthstone, and became the most played TCG because of it. You have to have standard if you ever hope to achieve anything and not limit your design space because 4 years ago you created something that combos with what you want to create now in a way that wrecks the game.
I personally wouldn't start playing a game that has 1,000+ cards with not restricted format and you have to sift through hundreds of fillers to find any viable strategy, even if net-decking existed.