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.
Well now that rogue won't prey on Warrior counters Mountain Giants and Goblin Bombs will keep Dr. Boom in check
Seems fairly certain, but I assume that we get the dust for these if we own. Same for being safe to craft for the dust refund if not already owned, right?
You do not get the dust for owning, only for desinchanting and the full dust.
Ahh, thanks for reminding me :) Completely forgot how they treated nerfs for some reason
Shameless greed does that to a person. :D
Undoubtably shameless, but I was just hoping for a consequence free craft of Elysiana on the chance I'd ever play her. So yeah, greed too I suppose :D
Good. Maybe a 3rd nerf to Quest Rogue was all it needed!
4th (giggling inventor), even 5th if you count patches
hahaha and barnes again dodge the nerf hammer XD
but further good nerfs this are making tempo roge not dead as they do usual when they nerf
No nerf calling?
I have golden Archivist Elysiana , so 3200 dust is good .
Ok, back o hunterstone...
See ya'all crybabies in a week shall we say to cry about hunters?
The legend legendary minion aka Leeroy - we love you - Jenkins should move to the hall of fame... We will always love you since your epic moment in WOW "Leeeeeeeeeeeeeerroyyyyyyy Jenkinssss" (https://youtu.be/mLyOj_QD4a4)
And the value of EVIL Miscreant is in its combo result in combination with the 3 mana cost and not in his health (lol with the nerf).
But nerfing only rogue when Dr. Boom is actually Dr.Doom for the opponent, is just a joke.
Some love to Wild when? Some cards power levels and synergies are too hard to handle even for a restrictionless format. I hope that's only a matter of time to figure how you want to assess the problematic and not a lack of care for Wild. It's not like Nagas and Giants but there are autowins if the decks happen to draw their combo pieces in the first turns (Big Warlock) or busted and neverending resummon effects that rarely miss (Big Priest) and the list goes on. Barnes is still an issue most of the time and, even though I mostly had a good record against Big Priest, it comes through a great struggle while they shit out cards and get carried by them and their powerlevel. Heck, Even Shaman it's not even a big issue in comparison haha Odd Paladin it's bearable as well and these are good aggro decks.
Hoping to see other balance changes for the other format in the upcoming future.
They should have done something about Warrior too tho. And conjure calling, I'm sure will be touched at some point. Rogue will be fine, prep hurts the most, but Rogue is a class that always land in his feets
Sure the coin keeps the combo alive, but would you really want to sacrifice a card slot for a brewmaster or banker to hit 50% of the time?
I think these are all pretty fair nerfs. I'd be lying if I were to say I'm happy about the Preparation nerf since I still love janky rogue decks (the ones that rely heavily on Preparationto function) but it still is playable. Most the playable rogue spells are 2 mana or less, with one of the only exceptions being Myra's Unstable Element, which does not change the whole prep, myra, Chef Nomi line of play.
I never got the chance to play around with Evil Miscreant and Raiding Party so not sure if the nerfs make it unplayable or not, but the Archivist Elysiana is a great nerf in my opinion. Shaman does have some control tools but lacks the sheer amount of removal that warriors do and so even though Shamans can regularly play several Elysiana triggers, it will not make it immediately better than its warrior counterpart.
God even after the best round of nerfs they've ever done people still cry like hell.
There are a lot of Rogue players...
I suppose if you have some sort of side decking scenario then I could see that. I was assuming ladder.