ROGUES ARE GETTING NERFED! 4 Card Changes Coming May 22
In a blog post from Blizzard this afternoon, they have announced changes to Rogue cards and Archivist Elysiana. The patch comes out May 22.
- EVIL Miscreant - Now has 4 Health (Down from 5)
- Raiding Party - Now costs 4 Mana (Up from 3)
- Preparation - Next spell cast cost is now reduced by 2 (Down from 3)
- Archivist Elysiana - Now costs 9 Mana (Up from 8)
Quote from BlizzardAfter evaluating game data and working through internal and external feedback on the most popular decks currently in the meta, we’re looking to address the power level and overall pervasiveness of Rogue decks, alongside a specific interaction with Archivist Elysiana. Look for these changes in an update slated for May 22.
We chose to focus primarily on Rogue in this update due to seeing the meta stabilize around the class’s most popular decks. Currently, if you want to build a deck that is strong against Rogue, you have just one reasonable option: Warrior. If you compare Rogue to Warrior, however, you’ll find that the latter class has a wide variety of good and bad matchups, which makes it unlikely that it’ll overtake Rogue in popularity in the current meta.
While we recognize that there are other powerful and popular decks (like Token Druid, Conjurer Mage, and Mech Hunter), we decided to not address them in this update because they all have varied matchups. If any of these decks were to emerge as the new prominent strategy, there are plenty of decks available to combat them, which would allow the meta to continue shifting.
As always, we’ll be evaluating the results of these changes over the coming weeks and look forward to your feedback. Read on for details on these changes, our thought process around them, and our goals for each of the cards we adjusted.
- EVIL Miscreant - Now has 4 Health. (Down from 5)
- EVIL Miscreant is meant to be a value-generating card that creates future swing turns, but having 5 Health on this minion means Rogue players sacrifice very little to set up those turns. We expect that EVIL Miscreant will continue to be a great option for Rogue decks, just at a power level that is more in line with other available cards.
- Raiding Party – Now costs 4 mana. (Up from 3)
- Rogue already excels at drawing cards, so having another powerful option that offers consistent results has resulted in Rogue games that play out a little too similarly than we think is fun. We’re making this change to better represent the power level of drawing from a very specific subset of cards.
- Preparation – Now reads: The next spell you cast this turn costs (2) less.
- All changes we make to the Basic and Classic sets are aimed at ensuring Hearthstone’s long-term health. Preparation is currently seen as such a powerful card that it appears in nearly all Rogue deck archetypes. That said, the change we’ve landed on is a small one. While we do want the card’s power to decrease, we also think it’s important for Preparation to remain a reasonable option, since it fits the Rogue class fantasy so well.
- Preparation is regularly used to reduce the cost of cards like Sap or Eviscerate, and those interactions will remain unchanged. Reducing the cost of your next spell by 2 as opposed to 3 opens our design options up a little more to create higher cost Rogue spells without having to balance so closely around the assumption that they’ll be cast alongside Preparation.
- Archivist Elysiana – Now costs 9 mana. (Up from 8)
- Our goal here was to preserve the feeling and power level of Archivist Elysiana when it comes to general use, while making much more difficult to play her multiple times in the same game. Shaman will still be able to replay Elysiana through Shudderwock, but this is not as common or problematic as what we’ve seen in control Warrior decks. Now, playing Elysiana alongside cards like Baleful Banker or Youthful Brewmaster should be a less consistent strategy.
I've been playing since April 2015, and my main class was rogue (85%). The previous week I had a small wish that I was sure would becer be fullfilled. You see, my all time favourite deck is a Miracle rogue. I'm playing wild and was hoping that some cards like Blade Flurry or Patches will be buffed. Also I was sure, that the obvious problem of Big Priest would be adressed. I was refreshing the page every now and and then, untill I saw the title "ROGUES ARE GETTING NERFED! 4 Card Changes Coming May 22" and the picture of Preparation. And when I saw the nerf list, I was absolutely devasteted. I dont want to express my feelings too much, so let's get straight to why I will not play untill the next DLC comes out.
- KB rogue is nerfed into oblivion
- KB rogue is the reason why priest is half as rare as it will be from now on
- Big priest not getting nerfed and it's biggest counter destroyed means that it will be tier 1 - maybe the only tier 1 deck as from my experience Odd pally has a bad winrate against good BP player
- The only viable rogue deck will be the odd version. All the other classes have at least 2 meta decks, rogue will have just this one.
:(
Wild is really not much of a consideration when balance is addressed. I wouldn't expect any changes to come in which specifically target non Standard cards.
They also nerfed Burgle rogue not long ago.
Kingsbane rogue is my main deck in wild. But I think the changes are good long term, even though it is a bit sad. The deck is a counter to big priest, but it is not a "healthy" counter - the wild metagame is full of very polarized matchups, and kingsbane is (was) part of that.
That said, they really like to kill it when they nerf cards, don't they...
@ Crazeh
Well, the devs have nerfed wild cards before. I don't know if you are doubting this would happen again, but in the previous Q&A the devs mentioned nerfing Barnes and Bloodbloom at some point (they still need more data to pick the right moment).
In the past they have nerfed cards like Aviana, Dreadsteed and Shadowboxer. Other cards like Raza the Chained and Patches the Pirate were nerfed while being in standard (literally in the last expansion before the rotation), but they were more oppressive in wild back then.
You clearly have never encointered Big Priest. It's one thing to have a handfull of very efficient decks, and the other to have a deck, that can win every matchup with moderate luck, and is the sole reason why Wild doesn't have any control.
When you build a deck in wild, you should ask yourself 2 questions:
- can it beat Big Priest by turn 6?
- can survive Odd Pally by turn 6?
Only if the conditions are met the deck is somewhat decent
Btw it is a reply to Crazeh
nerfing 3 rogue cards and not nerfing conjurers,that is all i am gonna say
wait for round 2
Hoping that it will come soon
By the time the second round of nerfs come nobody will really care. The tournament format is essentially flawed and any changes just push players to play the absolute best deck in the format which will from this point forward be dictated by nerfs. They really didn't plan this all out very well.
The only real difference that separated HS from MTG and other such e-sport card games is that you had to play multiple decks in order to be successful. Now its just as boring to watch as all those other games are to watch. For all the "faults" of the old format it had variety and that is what kept people interested. Watching the same mirror matches is horrible and it's not going to change.
I got Golden Archivist Elysiana for my pre-order.
Thanks Blizz!
Nice, good time to nerf because the meta was settled for about a week now.
Magestone incoming in 3.....2....1
How on earth could they leave Boom and Mage alone.
Maybe we'll see big shaman come back since rogue was its only really bad match up.
Tbh the rogue nerfs are pretty fair - especially Raiding Party. EVIL Miscreant will be a bit more vulnerable to minion attacks, but the health reduction won't affect its popularity nor its usefulness. I know I might get a lot of hate for this, but Preparation's nerf was inevitable. Maybe nerfing 3 rogue cards is a bit too much and I totally understand people's frustration, but this spell was limiting design space and sooner or later the devs would have touched it. Either with a nerf or by HoFing it to wild.
Archivist Elysiana - well, I don't have any opinion about her change. I'm a person, that likes long games that go into fatigue and some users know me for my Steal Priest decks that run Archbishop Benedictus. So I personally don't have any problem with games that reach the turn limit, but I guess the majority of people doesn't feel this way. So, ok, I can understand this change as well.
The one thing I can't understand is why the devs left Omega Devastator untouched. I'm sorry, but playing against this card (and its copies from Omega Assembly and Delivery Drone) is really frustrating as a control/mid-range player. I have lost many games just because the warriors generated extra copies of it to answer to my minions, that cost 8 + mana. If the devs removed its mech tag, I would have been happier with the nerfs.
Well that and some wild balance changes would have been appreciated. On 22.05. Kingsbane rogue is going to get a huge nerf, which will most likely make Big Priest more common on the ladder.
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I don't understand how Preparation limits design space. Pre-nerf it lowers spell cost by 3, post nerf by 2. If I were a dev and wanted to create an 8 cost spell, but was afraid would be overpowered when played on turn 5 with Preparation, I could instead budget the spell at 9 cost. Wouldn't this address the same design space issue as the nerf? Am I missing something in my analysis?
This is the problem with Prep. You have overcosted spells like WANTED! and you can't design powerful cheap spells, because they would feel oppressive, when they are cast for cheap (like Raiding Party or the quest reward).
Kibler made a really good video, where he talked about the problems with rogue (and more specifically Preparation).
The problem Maverick is that they already chopped cheap mana from Druid(which destroyed the class). Leaving prep untouched was poor form because it is doing exactly the same thing those druid cards did. They should have ALL been changed at the same time. This is more of a fix in general that should have happened when those druid nerfs happened.
Thanks for the good Kibler video. The Preparation issue makes more sense now. I still wish they would have left it alone, but perhaps we'll get some new Rogue archetypes down the road as a result.