Hearthstone Developer Alec Dawson Discusses Upcoming Changes
Hearthstone developer Alec Dawson just posted a bunch of tweets about the upcoming changes and his reasoning as to why they got changed.
Quote from Alec DawsonTons of amazing content coming out over the next few weeks. You may have also seen some balance changes. Overall, the meta is very balanced so our approach will be light unless there are greater gameplay concerns.
Quote from Alec DawsonFirst up is Secret Passage, one of the top cards across all Rogue archetypes. Going down to 4 cards takes some of the raw power out but still gives you a solid draw option for a more aggressive package. Some future protection in this change, the question was when not if.
Quote from Alec DawsonMoving on to Cabal Acolyte, going to 4 Health will tone down some of its defensive capabilities on turn 4 and post-Spellburst effect. Acolyte was one of the best performing cards in Priest and we want these sort of effects (mind control-esque) to be a deckbuilding choice.
Quote from Alec DawsonThen there's Darkglare, this is a change mainly done for Wild. In Wild, Darkglare Warlock is fairly rampant and creates early board states that make for a lot of non-games. The change to 2/3 and 1 mana being refreshed is aimed to retain some of its identity in a smaller form.
Quote from Alec DawsonFinally, we have two buffs! With the Darkglare change, we wanted to give Warlock a buff. Willow going to 8 mana makes for an intriguing late game option for heavier Warlock builds. We played at this mana cost for much of development and thought it was right to go back.
Quote from Alec DawsonThe change to Totem Goliath is more of a correction, the 2 overload was too limiting for a deck that wants to follow up with another strong play for 5 mana (bloodlust, second goliath). We'll continue to monitor how Shaman performs in the meta and see if other buffs are necessary.
Quote from Alec DawsonThanks again for the feedback throughout the first month of Scholomance. Excited to see how the meta continues to develop!
These are the nerfs Alec is talking about
(you can click on the image for the full image version)
So they make a 1-Mana card that can theoretically go +4, and the best nerf they can get us "toning it down" to a +3?
Secret Passage is easily in the top five most powerful cards made. Just say you need OP cards to sell sets and save us some time.
"We'll continue to monitor how Shaman performs in the meta and see if other buffs are necessary."
so they really believe this will make Shaman even playable? :/
when do they arrive?
The fact that Tortollan Pilgrim didn't get changed from "cast a copy" to "cast it" is absurd. The Infinite Copy/Stall deck is completely uninteractive and cheats mana at the same rate that got Kael'thas (rightly) nerfed.
Yeah shaman is in really bad place, i mean.... its really really really unfun and unmotivating to do any decks anymore.
Just 10 pro players will do. Give them a month with the new set prior to release and they'll probably figure out all the potentially broken stuff till patch day
Sad for the Cabal Acolyte nerf, it was a really cool card and priest didn't seem OP to me on ladder. Appreciate the change has been done for higher levels of play.
The fuck do you expect them to do, hire 5000 people to playtest?
They obviously test before release, but a few thousand games played is nothing compared to the million games played a day by actual players, who come up with plenty of shit the devs didn't think of.
You think this game requires 5000 people to test it in order to test basic card balance? What the hell? If this kind of thinking is driving Activision no wonder balance has been so slapdash lately.
Idk why you're talking to him like he said something incredibly stupid; Letting thousands of people playtest is actually exactly what many other companies do all the time, Riot would be a good example.
Thanatos, there are 1,119 cards in Hearthstone standard right now.
Just to test every single card with every other card one time, that is 625,521 interactions to test.
To test all 3 card combinations, that is 233 MILLION combinations.
It is literally physically impossible to test all card interactions before the set comes out. It's entirely possible for them to test for weeks and by pure chance just never stumble upon a broken combination.
We're not talking about "interactions" - we're talking about BASIC card balance.
If they can't test the cards and decks they're about to release with their next expansion then they may as well just shut the game down since it's too much for them.
By the way, it's not literally physically impossible to test all card interactions. You could easily rig it up for AIs to play against each other to collect data. That's just good computer science.
"the question was when not if"
How about the "when" is "during our testing"? Because again it seems like there is no testing done whatsoever on these expansions when anyone can see a blatantly overpowered card before the set is released. The last FOUR expansions have had this issue where Activision seems to have intentionally released cards they knew to be broken and then nerfed them later.
Hidden passage with their "the question was when not if." lol.
Why print this card in the first palce then, if they already knew that "the question was when not if.". Everybody clearly saw that this card was OP, including them, so there must've been some reason they've printed it this way? And? What changed? Rogue sudddenly became too powerful? Rly?
You can get away with printing "broken cards" if the class can't figure out how to leverage it into a tier one deck. If they didn't need to nerf some stuff after an expansion, that would be a pretty weak set and people would bitch the cards were unplayable. This was a pretty good expansion.
Moving on to Cabal Acolyte, going to 4 Health will tone down some of its defensive capabilities on turn 4 and post-Spellburst effect. Acolyte was one of the best performing cards in Priest and we want these sort of effects (mind control-esque) to be a deckbuilding choice.
::Priest was working, we nerfed it::
Priest is still powerful with or without Cabal, they have way too many options, from contiunous rebirth with Physco pump, to a consistent life gain that beats out just about any deck.
Please nerf a few more cards to make it more balanced.
Priest is 9th out of 10 classes in regards to standard winrates and only has one competitive archetype in wild.
It can be a pretty unfun class to play against for sure, I'm definitely sick of 20-minute games against their recursive bullshit in wild but that doesn't mean the class is unbalanced.
@Colbault: Take away or nerf - Rez and Healing, what should they get in return? What is their archetype
@BlackGoatPC: and even with they are on the lower end of the classes in win rates people complain and call for nerfs. One of the reasons they do is because of 20-min games. But if the class were to get some tools to do anything BUT gimmick/survival deck the games wouldn't last that long.
But the last time blizzard tried that the community went all up in arms and called for nerfs because priest went aggro.
Then there's Darkglare, this is a change mainly done for Wild. In Wild, Darkglare Warlock is fairly rampant and creates early board states that make for a lot of non-games. The change to 2/3 and 1 mana being refreshed is aimed to retain some of its identity in a smaller form.
Does it mean that darkglare is going to be nerfed only for wild format and for standard it will be unchanged??