Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

I don't understand why Molten was nerfed to 25 mana but Arcane Giant was printed.

The only difference between the cards is that one was good against anti-aggro and the other is good if you can spam spells.

Molten had counterplay, which was leaving your opponent at usually around 15 health so they couldn't double Molten and taunt, but there's not really counterplay to someone playing Arcane Giant, except I guess Lotheb kinda stalls it, sorta, for one turn, in wild...

It really just feels like Blizzard didn't want an anti-aggro card despite aggro being prevalent already.

Ben Brode

Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

The Hearthstone dev team is made up of a bunch of people who loved playing card games, but had zero experience in actually balancing an ongoing card game. Which is why we see such inconsistent design and balance choices from them with each expansion and adventure.

Because they are currently developing what we'll see 12 months from now, they are not able to adequately respond to the mistakes they make in balance. And we already know that they are really averse to admitting balancing mistakes.

We have a huge team of people, but the team primarily responsible for balance does have folks with many years of experience balancing card games.

We've definitely made balancing mistakes in the past, and have had to nerf cards to fix them. We'd prefer to let the meta shift through a combination of new cards and players discovering new decks, but we carefully monitor the power level and prevalence of decks and have nerfed when things have gotten really out of whack.
Ben Brode

Posted 9 years, 3 months ago (Source)

Molten Giant was part of the nerfs to prepare for Standard. Certain archetypes would just be evergreen if we didn't hit them, and the meta would be the same each year. If Molten Giant had been in an expansion it probably would have been fine to let rotate into Wild. It's an argument perhaps for rotating a couple cards from Classic instead of nerfing them if Standard is at risk of being stale because of the evergreen sets in future rotations.

<blockquote class="quoted">
    <div class="md"><p>The Hearthstone dev team is made up of a bunch of people who loved playing card games, but had zero experience in actually balancing an ongoing card game. Which is why we see such inconsistent design and balance choices from them with each expansion and adventure.</p>

<p>Because they are currently developing what we'll see 12 months from now, they are not able to adequately respond to the mistakes they make in balance. And we already know that they are really averse to admitting balancing mistakes.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="md"><p>We have a huge team of people, but the team primarily responsible for balance does have folks with many years of experience balancing card games.</p>

<p>We've definitely made balancing mistakes in the past, and have had to nerf cards to fix them. We'd prefer to let the meta shift through a combination of new cards and players discovering new decks, but we carefully monitor the power level and prevalence of decks and have nerfed when things have gotten really out of whack.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51p08k/i_dont_understand_why_molten_was_nerfed_to_25/d7dymil">Ben Brode</a>)
<hr/>

<blockquote class="quoted">
    
</blockquote>
<div class="md"><p>Molten Giant was part of the nerfs to prepare for Standard. Certain archetypes would just be evergreen if we didn't hit them, and the meta would be the same each year. If Molten Giant had been in an expansion it probably would have been fine to let rotate into Wild. It's an argument perhaps for rotating a couple cards from Classic instead of nerfing them if Standard is at risk of being stale because of the evergreen sets in future rotations.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51p08k/i_dont_understand_why_molten_was_nerfed_to_25/d7dyfve">Ben Brode</a>)
<hr/>

Tweet

<p><div class="md"><p>We have a huge team of people, but the team primarily responsible for balance does have folks with many years of experience balancing card games.</p>

<p>We've definitely made balancing mistakes in the past, and have had to nerf cards to fix them. We'd prefer to let the meta shift through a combination of new cards and players discovering new decks, but we carefully monitor the power level and prevalence of decks and have nerfed when things have gotten really out of whack.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51p08k/i_dont_understand_why_molten_was_nerfed_to_25/d7dymil">Source</a>)</p>

<p><div class="md"><p>Molten Giant was part of the nerfs to prepare for Standard. Certain archetypes would just be evergreen if we didn't hit them, and the meta would be the same each year. If Molten Giant had been in an expansion it probably would have been fine to let rotate into Wild. It's an argument perhaps for rotating a couple cards from Classic instead of nerfing them if Standard is at risk of being stale because of the evergreen sets in future rotations.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/51p08k/i_dont_understand_why_molten_was_nerfed_to_25/d7dyfve">Source</a>)</p>
    
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