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.
It's not a Raiding Party without raid leader synergy =\
You know what is busted? wild big priest and it is still not nerfed.
So, everyone ready to ask for nerfs to mage now?
Come on, we still have cards in our collection that are good. no more nerf whining?
Yes, being sarcastic!
"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" And because prep is allways been there all rogue spells is make to assumption they are used with prep so now rogue have lots of overcosted spells so nerfing a prep is just nerf a one card, it's nerf in most rogue spells. It seems that Conjurer Mage is gonna be next big think, well im not gonna play until next expansion then.
I don't think nerfing both Party and Prep was necessary. But hey, I can still smack you for a billion with Pick, so it's all good.
When will the nerfs go live?
Don't cry rogue plebs you find the next T1 deck once the meta settles again.
Fairly god changes. Maybe prep is here and there since it has effect on most of the rogue archetypes.
We will see.
"Preparation is regularly used to reduce the cost of cards like Sap or Eviscerate" - a story of Prep-Coin-Concede [team]
And there was no warrior cards in this nerf patch. In general warrior is a hard match for every class.
With the Rogue nerf, there can be a lot more anti-Warrior decks/ builds on the ladder.
If current meta has problem with prep so send it to hall of fame. By doing this nerf, you also ruin all kind of rogues not only pirates.
DONT KILL MILL ROGUES :((
exactly. the prep nerf really hurts my Nzoth Mill. It's like Blizzard has no clue what's going on in Wild Mode.
They don't care for wild unless someone pays an advertisement for 6 months.
Let me think of a joke...
prep bloodlust
The nerf of Preparation is long overdue, imo, since every kind of manacheating is very powerful.
however, i would have prefered, if it would still be 3 mana less and Preparation would have become a legendary card, so it could only be used once
Everything is sweet and peachy, besides the preparation nerf.
Yeah... when mage play to 8/8 shaman lose.
Prep + Raiding Party was so busted. Good change.
blizzard dev become stupidite mental by nerfing a class who has alot of counter too its this what u call balance RIP PREP idk for other cards
Yeah sure, Rogue has a lot of counters but at the same time represents 1/3 of the current meta