This did not need to happen at all. They can keep the game balanced without bans, all they needed to do is to adhere the very basic logic of card games. Card games are balanced around costs. At certain costs, you can expect certain power levels and certain levels of responses. If you start fucking around with the cost, things start breaking. I would understand if there was some unforseen interaction where, say, 2-3 cards, when put together, allowed you to pay life for cards and then you slap immune on top of it as a 3rd/4th piece and it's broken. But no, they literally created a one-card enabler for mana cheating. It didn't have to be Immune that breaks it, it could be an overabundance of armor gain or healing and you have the same issue. You can avoid all of that if you just don't make cards that say "you now aren't limited by mana". Mana is there for a reason. You take it away and you've suddenly removed the core balancing mechanic you put into the game in the first place. They saw what happened with Bloodbloom and then they printed a better version of it.
There is no reason to affect any other mechanics other then blood magic. CosmX's idea is perfectly logical and in line with something like MtG. Mana is part of the cost. Unless the cost is reduced to 0, you can't just skip it. If you're immune, you can't pay the health required so you can't play the card. I mean the game already prevents you from playing cards for life if you don't have enough life to pay the cost. why should it allow you to play cards for health if your health is completely immovable.
Alternatively, Immune could only affect damage (minion attacks, weapon swings/backswings) not payment of life. In MtG this is differentiated as "damage" and "lose life", damage can be prevented, loss of life cannot. Hard to say whether HS has the systems to implement that.
Glad issue is being resolved. Not played wild ladder in a week. Still have my win 5 quest to do.
Not sure about the idea of just banning the card. Totally get they don't want to weaken it in standard though - why impact standard players negatively due to a wild problem.
I think I liked the idea of immune not protecting against health cost cards or simply health cost cards aren't playable if you are immune.
But hey - at least problem will be fixed for now that's the main thing.
This is something that was going to happen sooner or later. The card pool in Wild is expanding rapidly each year and new mechanics are added to keep the game fresh in Standard. Wild, however, just has too many cards and too many interactions. If they spend time researching every single possible interaction then they will waste a lot of time that could be used for designing new cards, rewards and balancing other modes.
People say that they don't care about Wild but i believe that they just don't have enough people to work on balancing and testing cards for a format that only expands infinitely. And they don't have the final word when it comes to recruiting more people to work on the game. It's something that's out of their control. So, they finally decided that enough is enough. They simply can't afford to spend dev time to test everything that could happen in Wild when a new card is released and they don't want to nuke cards out of existence as soon as they are released because it would be a lot of time and resources wasted. The card isn't seeing play in Standard right now but it still has a lot of time on the format so they don't want to nerf it and destroy any chances of it ever seeing play. Changing specific mechanics or cards just for Wild is also going to cause a lot of confusion for anyone that decides to try the format in the future so they opted to keep things as is for the sake of consistency. It's a very courageous step and i respect them for taking risks.
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)
It is a real shame that a company (even a small indie one) resorts to such belated, sloppy and lazy solutions ... the easiest and most absurd solution that does not fix the problem, but only hides it ("temporarily" at best ). What a lack of balls, it's pathetic.
Wild mode was promised to be that, wild, where everything is allowed and where all cards should be de-nerfed... but now it turns out that there are banned cards? Wild mode no longer has a reason to be nor serves any purpose anymore. This is clearly an insult to those of us who are exclusively wild players.
But worst of all, the most outrageous thing is that a company that does not stop monetizing the game to earn more and more money continually commits atrocities such as publishing cards that were an obvious problem for anyone with some common sense and basic knowledge of the game. Don't they check the possible negative effects of every new card before publishing them? Obviously not, since it is not the first time. For God sake, these people don't deserve to charge a single cent, because they don't do their job at all, they just continually improvise. They should all be fired.
The fact that it sees 0 play right now is no reason to argue that it’s standard implications don’t matter. For once, it still can be generated and for the other, it has 5 expansions ahead to find a deck.
I don’t understand why nerfing it into oblivion is better than banning it. And there definitely is no argument in finding his sweet spot for the wild meta when hundreds of other cards never see play.
This way, they got rid of a broken interaction people complained about since release with almost zero downside
So what about all other self harming mechanics? Life tap, the whole bunch of warlock cards, ... Were do you draw the line and why? Attacking with weapons? Just because the one says „cost“ and the other says deal x damage, doesn’t really change the logic behind paying with health for a benefit. Your idea isn’t bad but I don’t think it would be an elegant solution either. This way, they keep the old things and just scrap a new card - as if it never was printed, no harm done.
You‘re right that immune is a problematic key word in the sense that it‘s an absolut. It‘s similar to 0-cost cards in that regard. These things are bound to brake the game one way or the other.
this card can't be nerfed without an overhaul to how the effect works
Disagree.
To me the problem is that the cards are supposed to cost health, but if you're immune, then they cost nothing. That's what needs to be fixed. It's a cost; you should be required to pay that cost if you want to play the card. The obvious thing to do is this: when you are immune, you are not able to play cards that cost health.
If I could make my wallet immune, it would prevent thieves from stealing from it. It would not get me everything for free.
I really don't like this approach because it's overly heavy-handed. Simply removing problematic cards - sweeping them under the rug - may fix the situation, but at the cost of the card itself. I don't want to see it go. I don't want to wait 2 years for Barrens to rotate out to see the card again. It's an unfun desing philosophy. It violates the core principle of the format:
"Wild is exactly that, WILD! Any cards can be used!"
There is another way. A way that has been proven to be effective: nerfing the card. Think about some "problematic" decks of the past: Naga Sea Witch Warlock, Darkest Hour Warlock, Aviana Kun Druid, Flamewaker Mage. They were all fixed with a simple mana cost increase to their main combo card. They disappeared completely from the meta after that, but the cards still remained. People could still play them in off-meta builds. Why they decided that they do not want to use this method I cannot understand.
Stealer of Souls sees 0 play in Standard anyways. Nerfing it to 6 mana wouldn't make any difference in that format, but it would "save" Wild.
I don't know, I feel like the first thing they would have checked for was "immune", but then they forgot that there's a card that can draw up to 8 cards while also shuffling all your combo pieces back to be readjusted.
Like...I reallly don't think they wouldn't have bothered to just type "immune" in the collection search bar. Not to mention that they certainly would have remembered Mal'ganis and the fact that there are convenient ways to tutor him.
I managed to OTK with Demon Hunter once, when my opponent didn't manage to OTK me and was at 26 health instead of 30 when I got my turn. I think you can get 30 damage in turn 1 if you draw both copies of Inner Demon, but I wasn't that lucky.
The main problem I ran into is the popularity of Druid, which has enough healing and armor to exceed the total amount of damage in my deck.
because in 2 years they have a better understanding of the current situation of the Wild format and can design it around other cards existing at the same time.
Would be pretty silly if they had to rework it twice.
and what for? The only way to change it for Wild is to completely destroy it anyways, rendering it basically unplayable. You cannot "reasonably" nerf a card like this outside of reworking it, at which point you've effectively "banned" it anyways.
They literally said that once it actually rotates to Wild they'll end up changing it, so there is really no point in frontloading that change when the card itself will most likely end up non-existant anyways.
well i dont see point in waiting for 2years when could just do it now.
And its not like would be crazy hard to come up with someway to change stealer
I have had games where I just didn't have enough life left to do crazy things, so Drain Soul makes sense. And for early board control of course.
I've also been playing the Frost Giant version, but the demon version feels more consistent. Tamsin was a bit clumsy in the Giants version: I often spent my whole turn clearing minions, while Hysteria could do that for less mana, so I'm not sure she's worth risking a low roll on Free Admission. Of course Hysteria doesn't heal, but if you can play it earlier it might save you from taking face damage instead.
It's probably similar to the hysteria desaster earlier this year. They knew that such a deck would exist, but weren't sure about how powerfull/consistend it would be.
Probably the other way around. Someone must have blurted "But what if they play some draw option and that will draw another draw option for free, etc." and the dev team must have went "But then they would just kill themselves", while Violet Illusionist rubs her hands eavesdropping on that conversation in some shadowy corner.
and what for? The only way to change it for Wild is to completely destroy it anyways, rendering it basically unplayable. You cannot "reasonably" nerf a card like this outside of reworking it, at which point you've effectively "banned" it anyways.
They literally said that once it actually rotates to Wild they'll end up changing it, so there is really no point in frontloading that change when the card itself will most likely end up non-existant anyways.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
This did not need to happen at all. They can keep the game balanced without bans, all they needed to do is to adhere the very basic logic of card games. Card games are balanced around costs. At certain costs, you can expect certain power levels and certain levels of responses. If you start fucking around with the cost, things start breaking. I would understand if there was some unforseen interaction where, say, 2-3 cards, when put together, allowed you to pay life for cards and then you slap immune on top of it as a 3rd/4th piece and it's broken. But no, they literally created a one-card enabler for mana cheating. It didn't have to be Immune that breaks it, it could be an overabundance of armor gain or healing and you have the same issue. You can avoid all of that if you just don't make cards that say "you now aren't limited by mana". Mana is there for a reason. You take it away and you've suddenly removed the core balancing mechanic you put into the game in the first place. They saw what happened with Bloodbloom and then they printed a better version of it.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
There is no reason to affect any other mechanics other then blood magic. CosmX's idea is perfectly logical and in line with something like MtG. Mana is part of the cost. Unless the cost is reduced to 0, you can't just skip it. If you're immune, you can't pay the health required so you can't play the card. I mean the game already prevents you from playing cards for life if you don't have enough life to pay the cost. why should it allow you to play cards for health if your health is completely immovable.
Alternatively, Immune could only affect damage (minion attacks, weapon swings/backswings) not payment of life. In MtG this is differentiated as "damage" and "lose life", damage can be prevented, loss of life cannot. Hard to say whether HS has the systems to implement that.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Glad issue is being resolved. Not played wild ladder in a week. Still have my win 5 quest to do.
Not sure about the idea of just banning the card. Totally get they don't want to weaken it in standard though - why impact standard players negatively due to a wild problem.
I think I liked the idea of immune not protecting against health cost cards or simply health cost cards aren't playable if you are immune.
But hey - at least problem will be fixed for now that's the main thing.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
This is something that was going to happen sooner or later. The card pool in Wild is expanding rapidly each year and new mechanics are added to keep the game fresh in Standard. Wild, however, just has too many cards and too many interactions. If they spend time researching every single possible interaction then they will waste a lot of time that could be used for designing new cards, rewards and balancing other modes.
People say that they don't care about Wild but i believe that they just don't have enough people to work on balancing and testing cards for a format that only expands infinitely. And they don't have the final word when it comes to recruiting more people to work on the game. It's something that's out of their control. So, they finally decided that enough is enough. They simply can't afford to spend dev time to test everything that could happen in Wild when a new card is released and they don't want to nuke cards out of existence as soon as they are released because it would be a lot of time and resources wasted. The card isn't seeing play in Standard right now but it still has a lot of time on the format so they don't want to nerf it and destroy any chances of it ever seeing play. Changing specific mechanics or cards just for Wild is also going to cause a lot of confusion for anyone that decides to try the format in the future so they opted to keep things as is for the sake of consistency. It's a very courageous step and i respect them for taking risks.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
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)
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Amen.
Mana cheating to the extreme we have it now in Hearthstone is absolute bullshit.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Really? This is already embarrassing...
It is a real shame that a company (even a small indie one) resorts to such belated, sloppy and lazy solutions ... the easiest and most absurd solution that does not fix the problem, but only hides it ("temporarily" at best ). What a lack of balls, it's pathetic.
Wild mode was promised to be that, wild, where everything is allowed and where all cards should be de-nerfed... but now it turns out that there are banned cards? Wild mode no longer has a reason to be nor serves any purpose anymore. This is clearly an insult to those of us who are exclusively wild players.
But worst of all, the most outrageous thing is that a company that does not stop monetizing the game to earn more and more money continually commits atrocities such as publishing cards that were an obvious problem for anyone with some common sense and basic knowledge of the game. Don't they check the possible negative effects of every new card before publishing them? Obviously not, since it is not the first time. For God sake, these people don't deserve to charge a single cent, because they don't do their job at all, they just continually improvise. They should all be fired.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
The fact that it sees 0 play right now is no reason to argue that it’s standard implications don’t matter.
For once, it still can be generated and for the other, it has 5 expansions ahead to find a deck.
I don’t understand why nerfing it into oblivion is better than banning it. And there definitely is no argument in finding his sweet spot for the wild meta when hundreds of other cards never see play.
This way, they got rid of a broken interaction people complained about since release with almost zero downside
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
They should ban all of the cheat cards and stop making them.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
So what about all other self harming mechanics? Life tap, the whole bunch of warlock cards, ... Were do you draw the line and why? Attacking with weapons? Just because the one says „cost“ and the other says deal x damage, doesn’t really change the logic behind paying with health for a benefit.
Your idea isn’t bad but I don’t think it would be an elegant solution either.
This way, they keep the old things and just scrap a new card - as if it never was printed, no harm done.
You‘re right that immune is a problematic key word in the sense that it‘s an absolut. It‘s similar to 0-cost cards in that regard. These things are bound to brake the game one way or the other.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
And completely powercreep G'huun the Blood God lmao.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Disagree.
To me the problem is that the cards are supposed to cost health, but if you're immune, then they cost nothing. That's what needs to be fixed. It's a cost; you should be required to pay that cost if you want to play the card. The obvious thing to do is this: when you are immune, you are not able to play cards that cost health.
If I could make my wallet immune, it would prevent thieves from stealing from it. It would not get me everything for free.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
I really don't like this approach because it's overly heavy-handed. Simply removing problematic cards - sweeping them under the rug - may fix the situation, but at the cost of the card itself. I don't want to see it go. I don't want to wait 2 years for Barrens to rotate out to see the card again. It's an unfun desing philosophy. It violates the core principle of the format:
"Wild is exactly that, WILD! Any cards can be used!"
There is another way. A way that has been proven to be effective: nerfing the card. Think about some "problematic" decks of the past: Naga Sea Witch Warlock, Darkest Hour Warlock, Aviana Kun Druid, Flamewaker Mage. They were all fixed with a simple mana cost increase to their main combo card. They disappeared completely from the meta after that, but the cards still remained. People could still play them in off-meta builds. Why they decided that they do not want to use this method I cannot understand.
Stealer of Souls sees 0 play in Standard anyways. Nerfing it to 6 mana wouldn't make any difference in that format, but it would "save" Wild.
I could support Wild-only nerfs as well.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Who would play Eternal format like that? Noone. Maybe 1% of 1%. Waste of dev time and other resources imho.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
I don't know, I feel like the first thing they would have checked for was "immune", but then they forgot that there's a card that can draw up to 8 cards while also shuffling all your combo pieces back to be readjusted.
Like...I reallly don't think they wouldn't have bothered to just type "immune" in the collection search bar. Not to mention that they certainly would have remembered Mal'ganis and the fact that there are convenient ways to tutor him.
Blood Magic
I managed to OTK with Demon Hunter once, when my opponent didn't manage to OTK me and was at 26 health instead of 30 when I got my turn. I think you can get 30 damage in turn 1 if you draw both copies of Inner Demon, but I wasn't that lucky.
The main problem I ran into is the popularity of Druid, which has enough healing and armor to exceed the total amount of damage in my deck.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
because in 2 years they have a better understanding of the current situation of the Wild format and can design it around other cards existing at the same time.
Would be pretty silly if they had to rework it twice.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
well i dont see point in waiting for 2years when could just do it now.
And its not like would be crazy hard to come up with someway to change stealer
Demons? Demons!
I have had games where I just didn't have enough life left to do crazy things, so Drain Soul makes sense. And for early board control of course.
I've also been playing the Frost Giant version, but the demon version feels more consistent. Tamsin was a bit clumsy in the Giants version: I often spent my whole turn clearing minions, while Hysteria could do that for less mana, so I'm not sure she's worth risking a low roll on Free Admission. Of course Hysteria doesn't heal, but if you can play it earlier it might save you from taking face damage instead.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
It's probably similar to the hysteria desaster earlier this year. They knew that such a deck would exist, but weren't sure about how powerfull/consistend it would be.
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Probably the other way around. Someone must have blurted "But what if they play some draw option and that will draw another draw option for free, etc." and the dev team must have went "But then they would just kill themselves", while Violet Illusionist rubs her hands eavesdropping on that conversation in some shadowy corner.
Blood Magic
30 cards LUL
Paladin and Hunter can do lethal with single spell, Priest needs only 2 spells =)
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
Oooooh... interesting
Hearthstone Bans Its First Card in Wild Next Week - Stealer of Souls
and what for? The only way to change it for Wild is to completely destroy it anyways, rendering it basically unplayable. You cannot "reasonably" nerf a card like this outside of reworking it, at which point you've effectively "banned" it anyways.
They literally said that once it actually rotates to Wild they'll end up changing it, so there is really no point in frontloading that change when the card itself will most likely end up non-existant anyways.