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.
I'd actually agree with this statement. The card is so insane with bounce effects that I think it should only give a single Lackey.
Lol this actually makes hunters mages and token druid better.
saddest day in my entire hearthstone expirience. 4800 rogue wins most of which on different miracle builds. RiP my favorite class, they did the same thing with druid: printed OP cards and nerfed basic/classic now druid sucks dicks and rogue will too.
You can still play Odd-Rogue in Wild no problem. No cards were nerfed for this deck and it is not T1 there, but still very viable. (I climbed from rank 7 to 1 with Odd-Rogue with a 66% winrate.)
Let me play the world's smallest violin to provide musical ambience for this drama.
no one plays wild.
same here I have 800 Rogue wins with only Miricle and Malygos. Now i guess Miricle will try shiv instead of Fan, tho worse card... Oh and Heistbaron Togwaggle's treasure can't be preped too.
this is the most funny and sad joke, what i heard today
PepeHands
This is the first time im not upset about any other the nerfs. No card nerfed to death, or at least so it seems now
It's all good nerfs. Rogue is really hard to beat even with warrior and his armor, not saying about other less bulky classes. And warrior still isn't OP, because he loses to mech hunter almost every time, as well as lucky khadgar mage.
9 mana Archivist is so stupid. Now whoever has the coin wins the game. I think it should either cost 10 or have stayed at 8.
You really think it's worth a card slot for banker or brewmaster for just in case you have the coin in a mirror match? That is a complete waste.
Bomb Warrior will be at the top of tier 1 now as it didn't run Baleful Banker or Youthful Brewmaster . Baleful Banker or Youthful Brewmaster isn't going to be run anymore as most control decks can deal with Archivist Elysiana. To be honest I was supersized they let this combo exist in the game. Now this makes room for control Shaman and control priest to possibly have a chance. I have beat control warrior many times with Bomb Warrior and not running. You gain so much armor and are the aggressor. With using your bombs at the right time all that damage breaks their armor. It don't matter taking damage with fatigue as they die before they get to draw much of their Archivist Elysiana cards.
Brewmaster is excellent in Warrior overall. Lots of things to bounce.
LOL coin wins XD surrrrreee let's lose all the tempo and save this coin just to bounce it XD
I wish they nerfed prepation for cards that cost under a certain amount of mana.
All great nerfs, I'd argue Miscreant isn't enough though... 1 Health makes virtually no difference to its function.
Agreed that's what I was thinking. I'm just happy it's still playable. In the past Blizzard would nerf cards into the ground and ruin the meta. I give them credit for actually balancing it.
way easier to kill tho before they are able to bounce it which was a huge issue
well, have fun with Mages and Hunters running amok while Warrior is still the best control class by a long shot because SHaman can't actually deal with anything that comes out of Khadgar