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.
But Warrior can't really deal with Mage either. Whatever can deal with Mage is going to be strong. Supposedly that's Secret Hunter and maybe Murloc Shaman.
With many mages and maybe shamans in the mix heavy tech weapon maybe don't be a thing anymore.
The lifesteal weapon rogue can return in full force, giving the class healing and Espionage can win the value battle, rogue just take another and less obvious route to the victory.
Good point! This could be very good for Thief Rogue!
9 mana. So they are basically saying, if you have a coin, win the game. HAHA GOOD ONE BLIZZARD
Is this an out of season april fools joke?
Barnes ?
Blizz still needs more data about Big Priest... x_X
That prep nerf is kinda annoying because, since dawn of time rogues have had extra mana cost in their spells, just because of prep.
Hopefully in future rogue's don't have to pay that 3 mana tax, maybe instead instead rogue spells always costing 5 or 3 mana, they will be 2 or 4.
Also, why not just hall of fame that Leroy already?
no dr boom nerf? AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH so we ll see warriors and hunters only here... prep nerf is bullshit and riding party too considering the prep nerf , only 2 that are ok are elysiana and evil miscreant , i think that they just should have nerf leeroy to decrese rogue winrate , those nerfs especially for prep are killin' all funny rogues ever made.Im ok with that ok prep ok all but no warrior nerf? REALLY? no omega devastator or dr boom dk nerf? blizz go away
What are going to do all the monkeys now they can't play aggro rogue?
They play Warrior.
Fair nerfs. We'll survive.
Sure. ^^
Ok, ill take it.
Wow, nerfs that are actually very ok and dont destroy any of the cards completely? Im impressed. I guess there is first time for everything.
This is the most stupid nerfs i have ever seen. Yes the rogue nerfs was well deserved and will bring down the dominate class BUT there are 2 things that bother me a lot. They didn't nerf other classes like conjurer mage where the only counter to this deck was rogue that now is nerfed. DR BOOM not getting nerf is just outstanding. Second the elysiana nerf is RETARDED. It should be at 10 mana. When you play mirrors (especially at tours) if you have the coin you just auto-win. Thats just so unhealthy for a game to auto-win a matchup at coinflip cause the one with coin can bounce her back.
Agree with conjurer's calling. But the 9 or 10 mana for Elysiana won't make a difference as no one will run baleful banker and HOPE they get the coin.
If the meta has a lot of warriors , believe it will have because they dint nerf the best card in the game DR.Boom , still i would totally run bunker for the 50/50 auto win tough especially at tours this will be a HUGE problem
If recent tournament play has taught us anything its that the bouncers aren't actually that effective, almost all the mirror warrior games where decided by tech like 'thun or cairne/alex/gromm or simply decided by rng value on the first Elysianas... If you get better cards out of the first elysiana usually you just pull too far ahead for the 2nd elysiana cards to catch up.
100% agree about conjurer's though
That's your call. If you were running baleful banker and knew he'd be useful in the mirror match it would be reasonable. But you'll only have a 50% chance of him being useful if you que a mirror match. That's too much dead card action for me. You might win the mirror match in any case without the autowin condition.