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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

After 2 expansions and a set rotation with Cubelock and Spiteful decks dominating the ladder, Blizzard finally speaks up!!

"I think it's still too early to make an informed enough decision on a balance patch."

https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/993052097435222016

Still too early, wait another half year.

  • Iksar
    Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    For NSW it's one of those strategies that is pretty cool to see once in awhile but when it's a core part of the meta it gets really in-fun to play against. Just like anything else, it takes some time to evaluate whether or not it's going to be a flavor of the week.....

    Or more long-term. At this point it feels like it's going to be a higher than we would like population unless a change happens, so we've been discussing how best to go forward with that if it becomes necessary.

    As far as standard goes, every day we are playing on the ladder and evaluating player data. Every expansion we prep balance changes for high population or unfun community decks/cards, but I think it's still too early to make an informed enough decision on a balance patch.

    We don't think it's a flavor of the week deck, that's what I said.

    Read the whole thread guys, don't just cherry pick one sentence out.

    [I made this reply in the other thread, which I think is basically the same thread.]

    This was a tweet reply to someone asking, but I'll try to give more context here.

    When we say we’re evaluating and playtesting every day, it’s actually happening. Not every time we speak on reddit or twitter (almost never, actually) is going to be an announcement of some grand change we’ve made. What we can do is be open about what our current thoughts are and the kinds of things we’ve been thinking about changing. When a decision does get made, community and dev will work together on drafting an official message, localization will translate that message into many different languages, then we’ll simultaneously release that message to every region.

    So, what have we been thinking about? For NSW, I think the original tweet was taken out of context, but that’s probably my fault for splitting the message up. What I intended to say is that it takes time to understand whether a strategy is a flavor of the week, but in the case of NSW decks, that time has passed. We’ve been discussing a variety of changes for either just the cost or design. We haven’t 100% landed on one yet, but will continue this discussion when we do.

    For Standard, what we generally do is look at all the high population, high win-rate, or potentially unfun cards and discuss changes to them so we’re ready when the time comes. We would not change all of these cards, but these are the cards we’ve discussed. Sunkeeper, Call to Arms, Baku Paladin Hero Power, Spiteful, Lackey, Gul’dan, Dark Pact, Librarian, Quest Rogue, and Doomguard. Again, we wouldn’t change every single one of those, but in the spirit of being open about what card changes we’ve been discussing/playtesting, those are it. I know a lot of you want to know the exact timeline for when a decision will be made, but reddit/twitter isn’t going to be the place where that is discussed, at least from individual developers. We'll continue having these discussions at work this week and the next time you hear more about a potential balance/design patch will likely be from an official channel.

  • Iksar
    Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    What changes should we expect for Hunter cards? I think we all remember undertaker and agree it's far past time Hunter gets nerfed into the ground. I think Deathstalker Rexxar should cost 9 Mana, for instance, and it's hero power should cost 4.

    We don't currently have any changes in testing or planned for current Hunter cards. People are playing Spell-hunter, Mid-Range Hunter, and Odd-Hunter on ladder right now and they all feel like they are in a good place to us.

  • Iksar
    Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    You took the bait, Iksar. That is nothing but a troll account.

    Damn....

  • Iksar
    Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    They must have access to hundreds of thousands of match results. How can 5hey not have a precisely clear picture of the meta game breakdown?

    We do have access to all the data, but the meta-game shifts pretty drastically every couple of days. The missing piece from data is whether something is fun to play with and against, how much different it feels from previous metas, and where the meta will eventually stabilize.

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