Hearthstone devs answer a number of interesting questions on Zephrys, Solo Adventure, Brawls, Arena, and more, in this Community Q&A Roundup!
Regarding Zephrys
- [S] Zephrys doesn't take into consideration that you're drawing two cards out from him (double battlecry effects), each one will be evaluated independently.
- [S] If a lot of your minions died this turn, Zephrys should give you a High Inquisitor Whitemane as an option.
- [S] If you want to get a value card other than Tirion Fordring out of the 3 choices (Ysera, Jarraxus or other 9+ cost cards), you should play Zephrys at the end of your turn.
Regarding new Adventure
- [S] We should see more information about the upcoming solo adventure in about a week or two.
- [S] We should see more quests coming leading into the solo adventure.
Regarding Brawls
- [S] The Webspinners brawl has been soft-retired and we won't get it in the immediate future if ever.
- [S] Raven Idol brawn isn't completely retired and we still might see it in the future, because It isn't completely random and you can control the game a bit.
Regarding Arena
- [S] There is going to be a change regarding arena drawing buckets in the patch 15.4:
Quote fromMicroadjustment balance changes are based on a formula that takes into account the current bucket information, which is why they don't happen until at least a few days after bucket adjustments. I believe we sent over the public bucket information a few days ago to our community team but it's possible it didn't get to the right folks. I'll doublecheck Monday.
For 15.4, we're going to try doing an arena patch without buckets and have all cards be part of one giant pool. This is similar to how the early days of arena worked. Theoretically, buckets made individual arena decisions a little more interesting and put more weight behind how a card works in the deck you are drafting vs its power level in a vacuum. While I think there is some truth to this, I don't think it's been a well received change overall. For players new or inexperienced with Hearthstone, the idea of having 'obvious' choices is a win. For hardcore players, if the change to buckets is not a clear upside (which has been most of the feedback we've received here) then it's probably just not worth doing. One positive part of not doing buckets is that the micro-adjustment patches should happen faster in the future because there does not need to be a preliminary bucket adjustment patch to set the stage.
Miscellaneous answers
- [S] They're working on a bunch of different things, BUT, they just aren't quite ready to share what those things are.
- [S] Elise should be copying cards from left to right, but she is currently copying cards randomly - that should be fixed in the next major update.
- [S] Iksar likes the idea of adding Rush to the base set at some point.
- [S] They have been very happy with the gameplay of the Rush mechanic and there is a lot of design space with it.
- [S] The goals of the classic and basic set have changed over the years:
Quote fromI think our goals now can afford to be a little more narrow. Mechanically, we want to teach players the base level interactions of the game and give each class a core identity and toolkit of stuff to help them realize that identity expansion to expansion. Power level aside, I think Rogue is a good example of a class that does this pretty well. Regardless of what cards exist in an expansion, Rogue gameplay still tends to feel unique on the back of a simple mechanic (combo) and some core toolkit cards that aren't win conditions on their own (Backstab, Evis, SI, Etc). Some of our other classes could do better at having a core toolkit, so it's something we want to address.
Editor's note: These answers were gathered from developer responses to community questions on Reddit/Twitter. We have made formatting and wording tweaks to improve flow. You can find the original source for each answer by clicking on the [S] icon.
Mountain giant was never a problem. Carnivorous cube was. And they decided to reprint it.
As i said, keep pointing new cards instead of the original problems, sorry guys, but i cant do more, cards that reduces it's cost and le you play them for almost free are toxic, those are or too powerful, or to weak depending on the desing, and thats the problem, almost all are bad desinged or are vere restrictive. Conjurers calling is balanced, its a Carnivorous cube kind of card, but random outcomes, the problem comes when you have a 12 mana minion EARLY, and just 2 posible outcomes for it making the card as efective as a cube, even the 10 mana slot has a big poll of minions and a chance to be a bad result, but no, lets keep saying the problem is the new card that just make the original card be broken as hell, the mayor reason to play cube out of combo decks where the existence ob broken minions, Doomguard and and mountain giant where those 2, you can arguee that voidlord was also a thing and its an expansion card, that jumps into the board early with the skull of the manari, and yes, the problem is the fucking mana cheating there, but must of cubelocks played voidlord cause agro was everywhere, if they had the chance they just cubed the doomguard as fast as they can to rush you down., with mountain giant is almos the same, play it on 4 or 5, and is a 8/8 if it does not dai, you basicaly won because of cube, but, it shouldn't be a major problem is you wasn't able to play a fucking 8/8 on turn 4 without other drawback than, have a large hand which is something that your deck is built for from the very start.
Conjurer's Calling is basically a class version of Carnivorous Cube. That said, I think it should see a change to 4 mana, but that may not be enough to 'balance' the current mage decks everyone is complaining about.
Tortollan doesn't care about mana nor does Luna's pocket galaxy. The effect is the problem and a simple mana cost change would delay the problem, not solve it.
Fuck Kibler. Conjurer's Calling has been a problem since launch. I wrote a write-up on why it was a problem week 1 of Rise of Shadows! https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/90625-conjurers-calling?page=2#c17
Mountain Giant has never been oppressive until now. Handlock has used it for literal years and it's been fine. You want to Hall of Fame Mountain Giant now because it is the problem? Fine. Hall of Fame Mountain Giant, as well as Sea Giant while you're at it. Getting huge 10 mana taunts from CC'ing Sea Giant is obviously a problem with it and not CC. Better get rid of Rabble Bouncer as well!
Oh and let's get rid of the worst mana cheating offender right now: Luna's Pocket Galaxy. You want to Hall of Fame Mountain Giant? Fine, but Luna's Fucking Pocket Fucking Galaxy goes too. It takes a lot of work to make a card more of an "I WIN" than Dr. Boom, Mad Genius but LPG is that card. I think it actually has a higher mulligan winrate than Barnes did at his peak. Team 5 should feel proud, and then very ashamed. LPG was a terrible choice to buff. It was a bad card, but at least at 7 mana it didn't shit all over the meta.
mmh nope...im talking about classic cards,they nerfed doomguard beacause it was the problem and not the warlock's dk.
SO the problem is not the giant,the problem is CONJURERS CALLING
"they nerfed doomguard" you're so dumb mate you don't even know what you're talking, cool that you're still talking tho
He obviously meant rotated, lol.
But yes, Conjurer's Calling is the largest part of the problem.
I mean, I do agree. Conj Calling was completely broken in arena as well (Even when you just conj a 5 mana minion). That shows how broken mana cheat is. I think the sad truth is that since recruit/resurrect the dev team seems to rely heavily on mana cheat as one of the main archeatypes to design cards in. It's not very innovative and by now is way too repetitive. They don't seem to want to come up with cool, interesting, and innovative interactions that don't mana cheat. The game is about playing cards that cost mana.
When a whole deck is made up of stuff to avoid that "play cards with mana" system (mage with conj and lunas and so much free-ish card generation with the elemental guy) you know there is a design issue.
Doomguard was not nerfed but hall of famed. Trust me, they liked cubelock.
yh i meant rotated damn
Wait.. are they going to nerf cards soon, or are people just hoping for nerfs? I have 3000 dust I'm planning on using, but I don't want to have it go to waste if they end up nerfing synergistic cards.
I would wait. Many people think this week or next might be changes (since the tournament is now over)
So they went from “We don’t like core cards being used in every single deck, and that’s why were nerfing (insert classic card here)” to “We like that rogues have a strong core kit and we’d like the other classes to have one.” WHAT! That goes against everything you’ve said up until this point. I could be wrong but it feels like most of their justification for nerfing or removing classic cards was because they were to strong and they didn’t like how druid for example were running wild growth in every single deck. I’m aware they saw wild growth and nourish as too good but in my eyes they were just strong cards that established class identity in druid gaining mana. If not for the quest giving a reason to run nourish druid would literally have no mana growth, despite that being what druid class identity or strength it what ever they said it was in that article. Again, I could be very wrong about this information and am just going off of memory, if I am please inform me, but to me it just feels like they keep changing their views on balance. And I realize they said they’ve changed their views on balance (in this article) for the classic set, but this is a very drastic 180.
They do not change their views on balance, they adjust their statements so that they fit their actions. Blizzard is saying a lot of crap lately which worries me.
Dude don't push them, they are still collecting data.
Kripp is going to be so mad.
Error, conjurers calling its fine, cheat out a 12 mana minin on turn 3 or 4 and then cheath 2 the following turn is bad, conjurers calling is a good card, it's not the core problem. the core problem is the mana cheating
the mana cheating wouldn't be the problem if there wasn't the follow up
Mountain Giant has never been a problem before. It's a strong asset for a very specific type of deck that requires deckbuilding. CC just makes it so every deck is forced to be able to kill a turn 4 mountain giant immediately or outright lose.
CC would still be played even if Mountain giant was gone, because it's still absolutely broken with Khadgar and Sea Giant.
Yes, but you need to do more than just have cards in your hand, your opponent can mess with your minions or play against Sea Giant, but he can't do nothing to reduce the number of cards in your hand early enought,
And i do not agree with Mountain giant never being a problem, every time a deck with heave draw and slow mechanics becomes a thing, mountain giant is on it, mostly for warlock, and recently for mage, and as i remember, almost every deck where this card was in, was completely hated for people. Handlock, evenlock, cubelock, now conjurers mage. And its because when you see the giant slam into the board, you know that you have to kill it, or you are done, the other cards helps to improve its power, yes, but they wouldn't if the player wasn't able to have a really high cost minion that early in the game, Not for nothing molten giant was hall of famed.
The giant is not like the Flamewreathed Faceless, where you get smited the following turn, + still a 4 mana minion, when you play a mountain giant, yuo pay 3 to 6 mana, but you are playing a 12 mana minion on the board. The fact that you have a 12 mana minion early is the problem, if mages hasn't either a mountin giant because its nerfed or hall of famed, and you play around its sea giant, what happen?, they can't abuse it.
Nerf conjurers calling if you want, but we'll have exactly the same problem in the future with another card that helps giants be even more broken, and people will still targeting the new cards instead of the real problem.