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.
meanwhile at the warrior lair......................................... *rolls eyes*
Warriors have no been touched at all!!!! What is this?!??!
Rogue nerf is whatever saw something coming but let’s address the real issue here is where is the warrior nerf with Dr. boom?! Prep nerf was too much also should of moved pick up to 5 mana imo. I still feel that Dr. Boom needs a nerf control warrior is to strong still.
While I always appreciate card changes to shake up a meta. At least some acknowledgement that they examined the possibility of changing shit overcosted rogue spells because of the prep nerf would have been nice. Would make me think they do actually care about balancing the game better and giving new archetypes a chance rather than just destroying one class per expansion when it becomes too dominant to let other classes prosper.
At least the games against rogue are fun to play, I just bothered Raiding Party, but play against Control Warrior with all those removals cards is terrible and boring. I was expected the dr boom (hero) nerf...
RIP
Hilarious how the people demanding nerfs for other classes are complaining.
Not this time dude. That was because the other cards were sended to the hall of fame. This time you will be able to disenchant them and get full dust refund, so at most you can craft them, play with them for a while and when the nerf happens you can disenchant them without a loss. The good thing is that if you have extra copies of those cards you can disenchant them all and get the full cost, so if you get another miscreant for example and wait for the nerf to disenchant them, you will be able to get 40 dust for each of those, or if you have one of them golden it will be quite the amont of dust.
how is warrior not mentioned at all
Check warrior's win rate against anything except tempo rogue and you'll see.
And another counter to Big Priest nerfed and none for the Big Priest... typical standard only based nerfs
Big Priest out here dodging all the nerf bullets like its the Matrix or something.
Meanwhile, all those bullets happened to hit Rogue. Goodbye Prep, you will be missed.
It doesn't seem like it'll ever be nerfed. I hope the Wild Meta turns into 99,99999% Big Priest so that Blizzard decides to do something about it. But again, doubt it.
I'm honestly fine about Conjerer's Calling. In terms of card advantage it is really only a +1 (saccing a minion & the first spell to get 2 minions & the second spell). Plus, I think it is a bit of fresh air that something other than warlock, priest, or hunter gets to cheese out big stuff for once.
Same. Honestly, Conjurer's Calling is one of the main reasons why mage is healthy right now.
While I agree, having 2 8/8's and 2 7/8 taunts on turn 6 can't be healthy in the long term. I myself think changing Khadgar's effect to a battlecry might help, since while you can (sometimes) hack through most of the creatures, having to waste extra resources to kill Khadgar as well so next turn won't be a repeat is problematic.
Even with the prep nerf I'm still betting rogue won't be given many good spells in the near future.
Wait. I now heard echo of mech hunter win on 5 against turn big priest.
I was hoping for a Conjurer's Calling nerf
Meanwhile in Wild, Barnes is still 4 mana.