An update from the Hearthstone team this afternoon has given us the first-ever banned card in the Wild format - Stealer of Souls.
This is quite unexpected news. Although players have been complaining about the card since its introduction in the Wailing Caverns set since it sees nasty combos with Mal'Ganis and Violet Illusionist, when bad interactions between cards occur, the first step Blizzard has taken in the past is to nerf the card. Seeing as how this card can't be nerfed without an overhaul to how the effect works, removing the flavor, Blizzard has gone the route of Wizards of the Coast and Magic the Gathering and simply removed the card from the format.
The card should be removed from Wild next week with a patch on Wednesday. Dust refunds will be available after the patch goes live and we'll get patch notes for the change on Tuesday, June 15. No other balance changes that will affect the Masters Tour Dalaran event are planned as per the Hearthstone Esports team.
Hearthstone's Alec has confirmed that the current plan for when the card rotates in 2023 is to make a change and remove the ban. If they decide to make adjustments to card before then, we can expect Blizzard to reconsider the ban.
Quote From @PlayHearthstone We’ll be banning Stealer of Souls in Wild in a small update next week. Stealer of Souls will still be playable in other formats, and will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after this change goes live.
The patch note for this change will be shared on Tuesday, and the patch itself is expected to go live on Wednesday.
Current plan is to adjust the card at that point in time and remove the ban. If any adjustments happen to Stealer of Souls before that (ex/ a standard nerf) we'll also re-evaluate its inclusion in Wild. (Alec)
FYI - there will be no balance changes that affect Masters Tour Dalaran before the event, (HSEsports)
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Comments
Nah, immune is the problem.
This is the 2nd time in a short while immunity broke a newly released card.
But they can nerf cards only for WIld IF THEY WANTED.
Classic cleary shows they can have cards be different in different formats.
Banning is IMO not at all the Best solution, just the Laziest one IMO.
And banning is still differnt from nerfing into ground , since now cant ever at all use it wild (for as ban is in place) in any way shappe or form. Not in friendly matches, casual nor get it from rng where evn terrible cards may shine occasionly if pulled from rng.
In what way exactly is nerfing Naga Sea Witch or Barnes into silverback patriarch territory a less „lazy“ approach than banning? The effect is 99,9% the same. No one ever is using these cards anymore.
So why should they go out of their way and nerf a card that might see implication in the sets to come? For the satisfaction of like .. 10 players that want to play against a friend with that one specific card? I assure you, in 2 weeks, no one will miss it.
And creating 2 versions of the card is just silly. It‘s not like wild has a lack of cards so why should they invest dev time into developing an essentially new card for the dumpster format, that probably won’t see play since it’s not broken and on top of that require a bunch of engine work to allow simultaneous existence of 2 versions....... (classic is basically a duplicate of the previous basi collection - that’s a whole different story than specific cards in an otherwise shared collection between modes)
You don't have to use caps lock btw.
It’s probably going to come back as “Battlecry: Draw 3 cards, they cost Health instead of mana”. Or something along those lines
And completely powercreep G'huun the Blood God lmao.
First time it happens.
But i dont persoanly agree a ban, i think evry colelctible card should always be usable in wild thats the pint of the format have acecs to evry single card.
They can make health costs (bloobloom/stealer/chogal) not bypass immune, or make it like once a turn BUT only for wild and keep as it is for standard, classic clealry shows they can do that if they want.
And i personaly should be satndard for balance changes, theyre meant for standard only (like say when galakrond nerfs happend for example) they should be for standard only, and wild doenst have to wait up to 2years or even more to MAYBE get it unnerfed. (they dint unnerf extar arms for example even though would be a complete non issue in wild at all)
and if that where to happens they could easly mention in the patchnotes like for example: Hand of adal changed to +2/+1 from +2/+2 in Standard but unchannged in wild. and others could just say then they effect both, like for example: Far watch Post is now 2/3 down from 2/4 in Standard AND Wild.
(just first 2 cards that where pretty recent changes that i thought of, and are just examples)
I am happy to see this deck leaving Wild (even I had much success with it).
The banning of a card is interesting - but "lazy" in my opinion. I think it should be enough to take away the demon tag so the card can`t be pulled with Sense Demons and can`t be "ramped" with Demonic Studies. I think this way the deck would be weakend enough to don`t be relevant in Wild anymore but the change wouldn`t be relevant for Standard.
I just hope that banning a card will be not a new trend for balancing Wild, so the format gets even less new cards.
It may be lazy but at the same time there's no real way you can nerf this card without obliterating it. Considering that standard will almost never use this card, a nerf will simply beg the question why it even needed to exist in the first place at all.
How is removing the demon tag "obliterating" this card?
The combo would be still possible with 6 mana on turn 6 or 5 with the coin but not earlier and it would be way less consistent to get the combo until then. The deck would be still playable but much weaker.
It will be much weaker, but won't remove the problem. In my opinion it kinda makes it worse since you're literally now losing to what amounts to a highroll draw, which in this category warlock kinda excels in. And its not like warlock cant tutor minions out via Free Admission anyway.
The proper way to deal with this in my opinion is to increase its mana cost or change the card entirely, hence 'obliterate'. But as mentioned, its just been released, not seeing any play in standard so if it gets nerfed now, what's the point of it being created in the first place.
it's time for hearthstone to have a standard, wild, eternal format.
standard: most recent 2 years.
wild: all cards playable, regular balance changes.
eternal: all cards playable, no balance changes, all cards at their most powerful iteration, game breaking turn 1 kills possible.
and maybe eternal is only for friendly challenges with no ranked ladder queue.
Leaving aside the issue of who would want to play Eternal (because "nobody" is the obvious answer), Eternal would be a nightmare to maintain. I am guessing what you want is that the card magically change back and forth when it is the Eternal and Wild collection. And how would you explain to new (or even not new) players that the megabomb card they were using in their Eternal deck turned into a turd, but their other cards are literally just the same? I would expect that most players would consider this a bug, and would expect tons of "bug" reports.
Who would play Eternal format like that? Noone. Maybe 1% of 1%. Waste of dev time and other resources imho.
and who, my good man, would play Eternal?
Basically all the unnerfed cards are ones that enabled uninteractive OTKs, while the rest of the previously nerfed cards are probably already powercrept by that point so you won't play those anyways. It would basically be a shitshow akin to the current Tavern Brawl, which most people just play for the fun of FTKing opponents, and then never touch it again after 5 games. Basically it would be a huge waste of ressources to create a whole new gamemode with accompanying UI that less than 1% of the playerbase will use continuously.
You could even argue Classic is a wasted format because of how boring it gets after a while and at least the community asked for that one.
Man, you really want my least favorite Magic format to be even worse. At least in MtG you have the chance of throwing out a zero cost counterspell to save your ass from a turn 1. Nothing is dumber than starting the game and losing before you even get an opportunity to drop anything. No thank you sir.