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.
its not consistent but its oppressive.
quest rouge suffered the same problem
You have to stop evaluate decks only by their W/L ratios and statistics. Winning and losing is obviously important part of the whole experience, but it's not everything and you can't simply tell, that deck is OK, because it has win ratio around 50% or below.
Look at Big Priest, Kingsbane Rogue (not in standard anymore), Conjurer Mage or Nomi Rogue (with Myra's Unstable Element). Judging only by win rates, those decks seems to be fine (or even weaker than some meta decks), but don't let that fool you. Those decks are not always highrolling (because they lacks consistency), but when they do, almost nothing can stop them, since only few decks can answer their "cheats"... if they are lucky enough.
Those situations are oppressive, unfair and makes you feel helpless (often you truly are), so that's why Blizzard shouldn't allow them to happen. It's like coin toss that makes you lose the game.
Rogue already excels at drawing cards...sure like a 7 mana sprint that kills your tempo. Only Myra`s is awesome. What other cards that excel am I missing? How about Arcane Intellect, book of specter`s, master`s call, Omega assembly, crystalsong portal. All draw three cars and are conditional.
Rogue was already down to T2 due to all the teching. People prefer to complain instead of adding oozes and zilliax. Other decks like mage and hunter are much harder to tech against.
-I agree with miscreant. That card is maybe the best card in the expansion. Nerfing prep will hurt rogue class identity, just like they did with druid where now only token druid is viable, killing the entire ramping mechanism.
I am not denying rogues aren`t the best class in the game, but hardly overpowered. People just rather complain than adapt to it.
how do you adapt to a turn 4: Prep, raiding party, wagglepick, double dread corsair?
It's too consistent and needed to be adressed.
I don't know…. do stuff on turn 1,2,3? Rogues have no significant plays on those turns, except when you can get out Miscreant. Also, it' is not like you have prep+raiding party on turn 4 consistently and then get out the 2 corsairs.
They don't have things to do? They play southsea deckhand, dagger, hench-clan thug, backstab, miscreant, edwin.
And there are more ways than just prep + raiding party to have this on turn 4. They can play coin raiding party on turn 2, backstab + raiding turn 3.
I don't know how many rogues you faced last month, but I had more rogues having this exact play on turn 4/5 than I've had poops in my life. And i'm 29 years old, so that's a lot of damn poops.
That Prep Nerf is really significant. This won't just nerf Tempo Rogue, but ALL Rogue archetypes.
R.I.P turn 4 sprint, The tak Nozwisker into Prep espionage Combo now costs 9 mana. (Also i think the Prep->Myra's->Nomi is delayed now by 1 turn) R.I.P Turn 2/3 (Coin->) Prep-> Espionage + Augmented Elekk Combo, its turn 3/4 now. Wait, Prep + Vanish is now 4 Mana as well. Welp Rogue is gonna have A LOT of trouble against aggro decks like Token Druid, Beast & Mech Hunter & Murloc/Aggro Overload Shaman.
The Raiding Party/Miscreant Nerfs Are Fine i.m.o: It wont Affect Miscreant that much, And Raiding Party was WAY too good of a draw card for only 3 mana. (Conidering you can essentially "Control" which cards get pulled)
Elysiana nerf is completely fine. A card with such a powerfull effect should be hard to bounce. (Just look at Shudderwock)
Bad sarcasm.
And if it was not then you dont know what you are talking about.
mage player are grinning hihihi...
What a dumb nerf for Prep! Killing so many potential in the future. Why dont just nerf Raiding party? Shame on you, Blizz.
- Preparation the most criticized nerf of the lot but it was necessary. No, Waggle Pick was not the problem. Will still be a must in a Rogue deck.
- Raiding Party that nerf was probably not necessary..will still see play.
- EVIL Miscreant easier to remove now but the nerf does not kill the card..will see play..
- Archivist Elysiana this was only for warrior...so I'm ok with the nerf.
Preparation was necessary for what?
The nerf didn't reduce the possible burst 2 mana spells, but it more limits the cards like Academic Espionage or Sprint to be played a turn earlier (and it was slow anyway). So mainly lower tempo decks are affected by this nerf. Tempo rogue will be still playable but other rarely played archetypes can completely dissapear from competitive play.
Cause now you can make 3 cost spells that doesn't break the entire game with preparation, the idea is not to kill the card, is have more space to desing interesting spells for rogue that doesn't become absolutly broken, Almost every 3-5 cost spell saw play because of preparation, and most of the time it was being an absolute madness, and if you want less WANTED! in the game and more playable cards, you need to make prep less powerful, cause is the main reason for rogue to play cards that otherways wouldn't see play like Mimic Pod, Fan of Knives (decent card but if you can cut it you'll do it) or shiv for example on miracle rogue.
Preparation nerf is WRONG!
Honestly this is so bad and so short-sighted.
At first, 3 Rogue cards nerfed, it means Rogue now will not be Tier 1, at least Tier 2. But at the same time Mage and Warrior remain untouched. Conjuer's Calling, Dr. Boom Hero, Omega Devastator are all ridiciously OP and Blizz just don't care. Also Hunter is pretty solid, has like 3 playable archetypes maybe more. Nomi Priest is fine.
At second, now in CW mirror the one with coin from start will auto win, because of 9 mana cost Archivist + coin + 2 mana bounce. This is so dumb, rework Archivist fully or make it 10 mana at least. The full concept is broken, leading into 40+ turns games, even longer than chess!
At third, no buffs as usual, warlock and druid are still Tier 3 classes with crappy decks, compared to Rogue/Warrior/Mage. Shaman and Paladin also see some play but still barely making it to Tier 3. Nothing to make about that?
What is Blizzard even doing last years, just lazy nerfs and HoF'ing good cards, keep up "good" work LOL
If any control warrior will add an otherwise useless card for the occasional mirror +coin, he deserves all the losses he gets in any other match.
Control warrior would stop being a top played deck because it's not a very good one, except vs rogues which will obviously be less prominent now. I personally enjoyed preying on them with mech hunter and I'll be sad to watch them go. As for mage, while it did have some success in Grand-masters, it remains to be seen if ladder that has a much wider variety of decks will be the same. It's much too soon to say it's a problem, and if anything, Conjurer's calling is not the card to nerf.
Yes sure not even broken card. Especially on arena (they can just ban it on arena though)
Anyway, welcome to Hunterstone
Yeah mages can spend their first few turns doing nothing and then turn 6 play a Mountain Giant and make 2 of them! Madness! Somebody call the cops...
And they can also do the super combo! Mountain Giant + Khadgar + Conjurer's Calling and then get board cleared... Umm.... I meant... then they have a super big board and they are super OP... Oooh scary stuff.
Shitstone player being sarcastic oh wow
The only way it's actually "broken" is when Khadgar is on the board.
I'm also going to imagine you did not just state arena as a reason to ban a card from standard.
This nerf just returned quite a few classes to the meta besides hunter (control/murlock shaman, Zoo that were overshadowed, token Druid) without killing Rogue outright (tempo can pretty easily shift to more value, like the secondary and tertiary decks of practically all the rogues in Grand-masters, just add Chef Nomi or Heistbaron Togwaggle), so it's more like "welcome to varietystone"