We've got a patch confirmed for next week and with it comes two card nerfs headed towards Mages. Hmm, I wonder if we'll be seeing an expansion pre-order and maybe a new game mode then next Thursday...
- Evocation now costs 2. (Up from 1)
- Solarian Prime now costs 9. (Up from 7)
Both cards will disenchantable for their full value for 2 weeks. For Solarian Prime, this means Astromancer Solarian.
Quote From Kerfluffle Hey 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.
Additionally, Alec Dawson had a few words to say about the changes.
Quote From Alec Dawson Very very excited for the news next week (see the teaser if you haven't yet). Balance changes will also be coming next week (before the MT).
While 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/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).
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
Lol the same thing happened with the turtle mage nerf discussion - there’s so much frustration with the state of the game, it’s like we can no longer abide by any differing view however nuanced or well-intentioned it may be.
Solarian prime can win games on its own, never mind that you can usually expect at least 2 of them per game. Whether its 7 mana or 9 mana, the only thing that changes here is that you can no longer just play this on 7 either as a last ditch card, and only have enough mana at 10 to cast one Ray of Frost in case it fails hard.
Needless to say, I don't expect anyone to start ditching Astromancer Solarian anytime soon. Even if all goes completely belly up for mage (an unlikely scenario) solarian will still be respected as one of the strongest cards from AoO, and I don't expect this nerf to change it by much.
(just so you dont spend too much time thinking about it, I didn't downvoted you. Just sharing thoughts)
That's fair, but more often than not it can cast a bunch of useless secrets or sidequests, leaving you just with a 7/7 and not much ability to restabilize, as you can only cast up to 1 ray of frost afterwards. It's more similar to puzzle box now, which you wouldn't usually pick multiple times in a game due to its high cost.
Its a small nerf, probably lower its winrate by a small margin, but hardly deck destroying. Evocation not being able to be generated by Cobalt Spellkin and Wandmaker is probably something that should've been thought out from the start. It can still be discovered from Magic Trick though, but the higher cost means you can't just go turn 4 apprentice into evocation, vomit all those spells into Mana Cyclone.
As for Solarian Prime nerf, well, this really doesn't do anything other than stop turn 7 bs so its more susceptible to face decks, and would probably lower its win rate to midrange decks. It was coming though, and mage mains ought to count themselves lucky that the nerf wasn't to solarian itself, and an unexpected Potion of Illusion will still allow you to play that 1 mana prime on the same turn. I'm not really into this nerf, to be honest. Would've been better for team5 to simply expand the spell-damage minion pool, increase the cost of Primordial Studies, or simply remove spell damage from Astromancer Solarian, so we're not facing a game with 2-3 solarian primes at minimum.
The main winners of this nerf is probably priest and paladin. But rogue may make a comeback, and there might yet be a place for warlock to shine too, since mage bs is probably too backbreaking for any midrange warlock to catch up with.
I'm actually happy that Wandmaker and Cobalt Spellkin won't be producing Evocation. there's been too many times I needed another spell and they just make evocation after evocation.
like c'mon I needed frost bolt or mirror shield or whatever it's called
Frostbolt cost 2 by the way, you're probably looking at Ray of Frost
yeah I haven't played Mage this month so I forgot, thank you
Libram paladin bugs me the most right now but I sure won't say no to that coming Evocation change. It feels like every rogue I play against discovers it when they combo Wand Thief.
well Wand Thief discovers any random mage card, so this Evocation nerf doesn't really affect Wand Thief, except for the fact that it's harder to play both in 1 turn. But that's it.
Can we please nerf Hunter for a change aswell?????????? Like I get that these changes are good, but FFS hunter has been getting the pass for almost 2 years now. This has become stupid.
Or we nerf less and destrory less decks/casses and do more buffs/unnerfs and give more counter/tech cards that are worthwile for stuff but aslo arent you play it and auto win matchup regardless.
Probably better to suggest some changes while you're at it.
I don't like face hunter from DoD, but the one we have right now is what I would call 'fair', since its not all in, and taunts do quite a good job against them.
That leaves highlander and dragon hunter, both not really that big on ranked right now. So what is there to nerf? Eaglehorn Bow, Dwarven Sharpshooter, Phase Stalker, Dragonbane? none of those are in my opinion remotely unfair compared to what other classes can do.
Besides which, hunters have been nerfed before. Scavenger's Ingenuity from the previous expansion, and leeroy getting HoF which practically destroyed quest hunter in standard.
In terms of toxicity, an honorable mention definitely deserves to go to Toxic Reinforcements. I don't know if it has the highest win-rate, but I still wonder what the hell they were thinking with this card. If your opponent's a hunter, and they play this on turn one whilst going first you may as well concede. It basically locks out any opponent without a shit ton of healing or taunts from winning the game. It's a horrible card to play against, and accentuates the feeling that you aren't really interacting with a hunter opponent; they just go face, and you just hope to have enough healing or not go second.
The issue with Hunter is indeed that it simply has to many good cards, I would suggest nerfing a few of its cards slightly. And yes I would suggest a slight nerf to those last 3 cards preferably removing 1 health from them. As for another card I would nerf the 2 mana 1/3 draw engine to a 3 mana card
The problem with Hunter isn't that there's any egregious card that is to "blame" but the simple fact that they have had hardly any nerfs. They aren't a top dog in terms of their meta viability, but at the same time they are never bottom rung either.
What this ends up doing is making face hunter the quintessential 'fall back' option for people climbing ladder. (along with any other flavor of the month decks).
The problem there is that while the deck is counterable, it's fast game times coupled with it's smorc mentality creates a high meta presence that warps the ability for other decks to flourish.
On top of that, Hearthstone ends up being too favorable towards aggro decks due to the way the game is inherently designed (only specific taunt units can act as blockers, but the opponent gets to choose).
In a nutshell I've never been a huge fan of "vomit decks". Zoolock, Face hunter, even Demon Hunter either prey on the low statistical variance that you'll get the cards you need: (In the case of zoolock it's always been...did you draw aoe? Congrats you win. If not, you lose. Same thing with face hunter and demon hunter....Did you draw healing and/or aoe? congrats you win, if not. You lose)
Those aforementioned scenarios occur because hearthstone has very few tutor cards, and don't allow more control over how you survive games. Overall for me personally it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth whenever I have attempted to play aggro decks. (like, this is cheap...why am I playing this?)
Fundamentally the big problem is the class hero powers that force archetypes. But that's a topic for another time.
Whether a class is bad, cancerous, or problematic isn't and shouldn't be defined by whether they have had nerfs within any time frame. That they haven't really been viable on the top end is the reason why their cards have stayed unnerfed.
Face hunter isn't truly a fall back option for climbing, since soul dhunter is a better deck overall, and plays more or less the same game as face hunter does, at the same speed. Its only popular at the moment because its a cheap and easy deck. The further up the rankings go, the less popular hunter becomes, because higher ranked players are more skilled and the price is no longer a factor.
Aggro gets a bad press since it has a reputation to be as you would call it, 'vomit' decks, but its actually more complex than it seems. In most cases they actually need to understand their matches since they are inherently playing low curve cards, and you don't need AoE to beat them, just enough tempo to outlast their low, but consistent, value.
I would agree that hp in hearthstone has some problems, but a bigger problem in my opinion is how team5 is framing each class to archetypes, so hunter's propensity towards smorc is enforced by the kind of cards it gets. But that is, as you say, a topic for another time.
Sorry but I disagree, aggro decks are not complex. I've played them, I've even sucumbbed to using them to hit legend a few times. It's never a complex situation. Either my opponent ends up drawing, healing, or clearing enough that the aggro deck I pilot runs out of gas. Or they don't, and I win. It's never been complex. Maybe to some it is, and in the aggro vs aggro matchup it's slightly more nuanced, but overall it's not a complex situation. Never has been, never will. That's why aggro is gravitated towards.
Aggro is gravitated towards because its fast, not because its easy. It can be braindead, but so are some control decks.
People also like it because it's easy.
I've been sitting on a hardly played golden Evocation since day 1 of Ashes. I'm going to miss you, big boy!