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.
Nobody cares about wild
I am happy with all the nerfs except to Preparation. A nerf to Preparation may very well mean the end to Rogue viability.
No: a nerf to Preparation means that in the future we won't receive overcosted spells like WANTED! or Cannon Barrage anymore. Seems a really good deal to me.
i really hope this is true.
How the hell does Barnes keep dodging all these nerfs?
because the problem is Eternal Servitude duuuh
No Legendary card from an adventure has ever been nerfed, I believe that they want to keep it that way.
At a High Cost, Barnes is quite strong in Wild and they even were a little further by addin Catrina Muerte and Mass Resurrection.
Just when you though your wild tess rogue could be a very fun deck
But it already is a fun deck... I recommend trying it with Heistbaron Togwaggle and all the shuffle cards and Lakeys.
I built mine around raiding party, sadly
I'm really happy with Raiding Party nerf. It was a nightmare to play against, and in wild it was even worse because of Kingsbane. EVIL Miscreant at 5 health was very good, so at 4 health it will be at least good.
Although I will miss Preparation, it will be a good card but not as impactful as it used to be. Blizz said that usual targets for prep are Sap and Eviscerate?! I don't see that, almost never... who is preping those spells? Idk, seems suspicious but fits the narrative of "not such a big nerf"... It is a BIG nerf.
I hope HS replay releases another of their statistics things. "Most prepped cards."
I am glad blizz finally decided to nerf rogues !!!
Wait, a couple of days ago you said you enjoyed bustaJ's tempo rogue deck and it was very enjoyable. You are more fake than WWE wrestling.
no more 2 mana Necrium Vial, 0 mana Fan of Knives, 1 mana Walk the Plank, 3 mana Vanish, 4 mana Sprint, 1 mana Academic Espionage .... and that's all because a stupid Raiding Party + Waggle Pick combo ... FeelsBadMan :'(
i never liked tempo rogue, always played miracle and thief, and those decks already struggle. Imagine now with the prep nerf, i feel ur pain bro.
It's because Prep has been a problem since... forever. Whether it's The Caverns Below or Myra's Unstable Element or enabling Miracle Rogue in general, Preparation has been a massive balance problem since the game was in Alpha. It's honestly about time it got hit with the nerfstick, and it's still a stupidly good tempo card even after the nerf.
I hope the damn thing just gets Hall of Famed next rotation and Rogue gets balanced around not being able to drop eleven cards and a 22/22 VanCleef in a single turn.
Fuck me, man. I dont even wanna play hs now, my tess rogue is now mich worse
now that prep is nerfed they could revert the last nerfs to the caverns below, honestly the card was fun and interesting, the one thing that made it bad was blizzard's weird decision to print Haste ina game where you can't declare blockers
@therealflyingtoastr
I don't see a problem with "enabling Miracle Rogue in general" ? Miracle Rogue has always been one of the very few decks that requires some skill and calculation to play well.