Evocation & Solarian Prime Nerf!
Blizzard just announced 2 huge Mage nerfs, both changes will be live in a patch towards the end of next week.
Quote from BlizzardHey everyone,
We’ll be making the following balance changes in a patch to be released towards the end of next week:
Evocation
- Old: [Cost 1] → New: [Cost 2]
Astromancer Solarian
- Old: Solarian Prime [Cost 7] → New: Solarian Prime [Cost 9]
Both cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the patch has gone live.
Quote from AlecWhile looking at the current environment and future metas, Evocation helped enable a lot of early game swings that could feel insurmountable. We want to smooth that out. At 2 mana, it's not as fluid with Sorcerer's Apprentice and won't be generated from Wandmaker/Cobalt Spellkin.
For Solarian Prime, we stepped back and evaluated where it stacked up compared to the other Primes. With that and some of the power spikes it can generate, moving it to 9 mana felt appropriate.
On our side, we are continuing to discuss opportunities to bring up some of the weaker classes and/or touch up other play patterns in the near future. Thank again for your feedback, we read all of it (no matter how long that twitlonger is).
Dumb.
Alright. Time to disenchant Solarian then...
The nerfs to Turtle and this really suggests something oppressive is coming
evocation okay but solarian very high mana
c'mon, solarian is so super broken, This Cards is just ultra nuts fo 7 Mana and most of the time it completely changes the outcome of the whole game.
Wtf is this compare to other primes, expecially Priest Rogue and Shaman.
Only viable options are Warrior & Mage.
my Last Match vs Mage, 3 Solarian Primes, about 30 random generated Cards thx to 4 x evocation, 12 x Discover a Card or Dragon or Mage Minion or Spell or Spell Damage Minion.
I think Mage atm is be able to "play" over 100 cards in a single Match, its a ridicilous rng fiesta.
'member when you used to be able to run players out of resources?
I 'member.
Hopefully this will limit the amount of RNG in the game.
Gosh aren’t you tired from these Blizzard profit strategies of nerfing? You build deck around some card that gets nerfed, get dust refund for that one and leave with plenty of now useless cards which you crafted around deck that now doesn’t exist or doesn’t work as it worked before. And we see more nerfs then ever these days. What do you think about that guys?
Shouldn't the mage class have a card like sorcerer's apprentice? something to make spells cheaper seems logical when it's the specialty of the class. yeah it's powerful when used right, shouldn't each class have powerful cards that shape it's identity? Every class has some I'd say and the apprentice gives mage a chance to be relevant (and the class is often barely relevant). Let em keep SOMEThing.
I think the problems with SA are less about the card's power level and more about the restriction of design space and heathstone's inherent limitation as a CCG without an interrupt phase causing the card to be a recurrent problem even while Mage as a class isn't seeing particularly high winrates or metashare.
Cards like SA and Evocation would be no issue in MTG but with Hearthstone the devs gotta ask themselves of every mage card they print - will this break the game with Sorcerer's Apprentice in play? What about in a more complex combo with SA and something else?
Will it make for the kind of funish but gimmicky and class-defining deck like Exodia mage or something mind-numbingly degenerate like Casino mage?
Clearly, they don't always get it right but have so far chosen to nerf other cards instead of SA and since it remains evergreen, it stands to reason it will continue to be a problem that limits the class and leads to card nerfs elsewhere.
i.e. I think SA is probably the reason mage has not had many low-cost spells printed or seen any real cantrip decks without restrictions like 'no minions' to avoid the kind of problems Evocation has caused in conjunction with SA while unfortunately excluding interesting cards like Chenvalla from play.
Personally, as a Mage main who loves low-cost spells and cantrip decks, I would happily trade away Sorcerer's Apprentice (a card I use in every deck) as it is now for a different version and expanded card and archetype possibilities for the class in the future.
Sorcerer's Apprentice escapes again.
How many copies of Iceblock does she have? SMH
maybe they will hall of fame sorcerer apprentice next year
Nice buff to Evocation in wild format, as for the prime it's still good so i won't de them
Buff? You playing even mage champ or what?
They may be referencing the fact it will now avoid Skulking Geist effect but I don't see the change as a buff even in that case since Evocation was only occasionally problematic in Wild when played early to complete gate quest or pull some bullshit flamewalker combo on turn 3/4 with Apprentice out and Geist didn't stop those plays anyway at its cost.
This nerf won't really change Evo's usefulness as a late-game value play for control mage one way or another even if it will avoid being burned by that particular tech card (which is anyway kinda rare now that jade druid has fallen out of popular favor replaced by embiggen pirates or w/e weenie spam).
Just my thoughts, cheers.
Never lucky with the "full dust refund".
Kinda happy I will not get two Evocations from Cobalt Spellkin again.
The game is all about rng and mana cheating to win. Why does everyone keep complaining about how the game is meant to be played?
Standard has become more and more like Wild in the last few expansions. I don't mind some mana cheating and RNG but when some decks have swing turns so ridiculous your only option after is to concede then it's not fun.
I feel like having Libram of Wisdom be added back to your hand "At the end of the turn" would've been a nice thing to nerf as well. It's annoying having infinite stats to deal with and hearing Pen Flingers voice line 10 times a turn. Upping the cost on Phase Stalker by (1) and having Blade Dance hit 2 minions would've also been good to see.
I agree that the infinite pen flinger is annoying and too time consuming. Need another way around it though as the Librams are something unique and help make paladin strong and thought go into handling them. The pen flinger I think should be limited. Even a one time bounce back is good enough.