Hearthstone Designer Iksar was out on reddit talking to the community when he confirmed that once the Christmas holidays are over, he and the rest of the team will be getting back to work and one of the first things they are going to talk about is game balance.
The answer comes from a request for Blizzard to deal with Evolve Shaman, one of the strongest decks, if not the strongest, in Standard right now. Although we don't have an exact timing or details of changes, it looks like there's a patch planned for 3 weeks from now focusing on duels content which would be a great time to push in some card balance as well.
If you were in charge of balance changes, what cards would you change and how would you change them? Let us know in the comments below!
Quote From Iksar Can you fix evolve shaman which is ruining your primarily game mode before putting work into a minor achievement bug plsthx
We'll look at game balance when we get back in the office on Monday.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
I commend you for unintentionally getting more dislikes than me just by proposing different changes to the biggest tempo card
He got that many dislikes likly cause of the edit.
All I have to do is commend another community member or quote OP to polarize the the group.
Evolve shenanigans must have killed your family and burned your house down. I can't see any other explanation for this proposed 'nerf'. Might as well just ask team5 to remove it altogether
This is one of the worst takes ive ever seen .
You cannot just delete cards from the game completely, there must be a way/mode to play them. Moreover, if you look at the current cards in Hall of Fame, most of them had become obsolete since they went there. I play Wild a lot and haven't seen 90% of them for a long time.
Azure Drake is really tearing the meta apart Kappa
This isnt Magic. Hall of Fame isnt the same as being banned
Please.
Just nerf Highlander Priest in wild already.
Id Rather Not.
Just unnerf /buff alot(again). And give more/better tech in general and just more ways to deal with anything in general.
Reno Priest is just 1among multiple tier 1decks,its not tier 0 at all.
They just need to let other decks/classes have their simelair/higher lvl stuff again and unnerfs could bring alot of decks back or be a major help to others (like Bonemare at 7 would be a great help for spitefull decks)
+ is the classic rework coming and mini expac.
They just need to lean in Wild being Wild. Fight Fire with Fire kinda thiing.
And a nerf depending on what is could easly kill of the deck (is a reason it got unnerfed as deck was super populair and loved by many)
and killing deck certainly a non tier 0 one realy shouldnt happen espcially in wild which is speceficly for old decks and cards and putting craziest stuff of all time against each Other Being a Legacy format. And lastly nerfing it doesnt guarante/mean the meta will be better at all,it easly could be alot worse and just likly be same decks still good just now renopriest is killed and for what?
It is funny that a 5-cost Evolve seems to be as problematic as a 1-cost Evolve. Something to be said about that.
That's a bit simplistic. The year up to DMF demonstrated that a 5-cost 2x Evolve attached to a decent weapon that makes Dread Corsair cost 0 and can be played 4 times in a game is fine, AND that was even with a 9 mana minion that can be played for almost nothing. It needed a tutor and another board flood in Pit Master before it became a problem.
Doom in the Tomb showed us Evolve is OP at 1 mana when cards like Desert Hare exist (it is no coincidence Evolve Shaman was only strong back in the day thanks to Doppelgangster, which is basically just a bigger version for evolve purposes), but it took a perfect storm of synergies for it to draw much attention at 5 mana.
If I had to guess, I'd say the bare effect (i.e. the Evolve card itself) should probably cost 3 to be completely fair, and 2 if you want to make clear it is a one of Shaman's strengths.
Evolve shaman back in the day can actually function without Evolve or Doppelgangster. The archetype back then was alot about maintaining board and chipping face, hence cards like Bloodlust, Maelstrom Portal, and Thing from Below, which back then was a monster of a card.
Even that doom in the tomb evolve shaman was respectable to a degree. The one we got now relies entirely on the weapon so much that its entire deck is built for evolve shit and every other deck is now playing Kobold Stickyfinger, an otherwise useless card.
Yeah, a lot of shaman's problems in recent years have been down to a lack of win conditions. I have lost count of the number of times I have started building a shaman deck and stopped because there's no real pay-off. E.g. I can easily make a deck that will survive for ages, but I have no plan to win the game once I get there. I'm not sure where exactly the problem lies, but it means whenever a win condition does turn up the entire deck has be be built around it and there are no alternative routes to victory.
It's a shame, because I love the class on paper: overload makes for interesting mana management, and the hero power is really interesting (if not that powerful most of the time). And as a Jack-of-all-trades class it ought to let you build a deck for any broad archetype, but in practice the "master of none" part has become a bit too apt.
Boggspine Knuckles needs to be a 6 cost weapon, with 3/2 statistics.
as far rogue is concerned the issue is due to the several low cost cards that allow board presence and easy recycling, Nerf is complicated: Foxy Fraud should increase cost, but this is not enough. Then I hope that finally Edwin will leave standard in next rotation.
Boggspine Knuckles is really the only problematic card in Evolve Shaman. Nerfing Cagematch Custodian to 3 won't really help, so the weapon has to be the one that's hit. Either up its mana to 6, or reduce it to a 2/2 weapon. I'm more partial to the second one: a 5-mana 2/2 seems fair given how strong its effect is.
Rogue will (should!) probably be hit with nerfs too as a pre-emptive measure, similar to what they did with Dinotamer Brann. I don't know what they can target though, maybe Foxy Fraud?
The problem with nerfing Rogue and Shaman is that it'll give rise to DH again. Aggro and Soul DH are still lurking, albeit in weaker forms.
Boggspine reduced attack at least. if they reduce its endurance its gone, increasing the cost might slow it a bit but with mana cheating with bloom it may not take that much of a hit. boggspine is a weapon without a downside. its downside should be u get a subpar attack. 2 attack should be fair. cause even if u can deal with their board u are just gonna get knocked in the egg with 8 damage with just one weapon. they have a tutor card and a revive with the pillager. thats a lot of dmg just with the weapon
I think moving the Knuckles to 6 mana will have a bigger effect than you expect. That's 1 extra turn when they aren't doing anything significant and you can either draw answers or develop the board, as well as giving you 1 extra mana to spend when responding to their first few waves. That helps out all decks, even if it won't make the difference every game.
Reducing its attack would certainly help too, though it isn't very helpful for decks that usually lose to the sudden massive board rather than the chip damage from the weapon. Then again, as Pezman said, not reducing the pirate to 0 mana is a big deal.
Thankfully Desert Hare, Mogu Fleshshaper and Hoard Pillager all rotate in a few months, so they only need to hit the deck hard enough to make it tolerable for a while.
Reducing the attack even just to 3 would be a really solid fix: less damage from the weapon itself, and you can't play a Dread Corsair for free at the same time, but the card is still really good.
Personal predictions
Boggspine Knuckles's cost increased to 6 mana.
Something will be touched for Rogue (Foxy Fraud?) and Warrior too.
I am expecting some Wild changes too, but you never know about that format.