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On this day in Hearthstone (27 January 2015) - Undertaker nerf announced! "Oh, goody!"
Undertaker was a common neutral card obtained from the Construct Quarter of Naxx, unleashed upon the game on 12 August 2014.
For five and a half long months, it reigned over the Hearthstone meta and snowballed games out of control in 30 seconds. It wasn't uncommon to see 4/5 or even 5/6 Undertakers on turn 3, and early removal and defensive options were much more limited back then.
By Blizzard's own stats, Undertaker Hunter was about 25% of the meta at one point ("at all ranks over a time range of a week to a month"), with a win-rate of 55-57%.
4 years ago today, the hammer was brought down gloriously in a forum post titled "Upcoming Balance Change to Undertaker".
Its card text was changed from:
Whenever you summon a minion with Deathrattle, gain +1/+1.
to:
Whenever you summon a minion with Deathrattle, gain +1 Attack.
The announcement post was purged when the forums moved over to Discourse late last year, but here was the text CM Zeriyah wrote about the nerf:
Undertaker was frustrating to play against. It often gained both attack and health stats significantly above those of other inexpensive minions very early in the game. With this change, we expect Undertaker will still be better than other 1-mana minions when played in a deck with a Deathrattle theme, but more likely to die from combat with other minions.
Undertaker had seen its last bringing out of the dead.
The king was dead,
long live the kinggood riddance.
Were you around when the nerf was announced? Feel free to share your memories and screenshots from back in the days, PTSD allowing.
Even simple 2/3s can wreck you back in the days when you didn't have removal. Here was Xixo tweeting about Ostkaka trying to qualify for Blizzcon 2014.
A thread on this sub calling for nerfs (one of the 500 or so), 10 days before the announcement - "Why Ben Brode is wrong about Undertaker".
For its time, the thread discussing the nerf announcement (linked above) received unprecedented upvotes, settling at ~5,600. I believe it's the only thread from the first year of Hearthstone in the top 500 most upvoted threads on this sub.
Iksar
Undertaker still makes me laugh. Naxxramas was an interesting small set to balance. Personally, Naxx was the first set I ever worked on so I look back on it fondly. Some design anecdotes....
Undertaker: Was just a miss in terms of balance. I remember doing most of the playtesting with Undertaker in Warlock because that was traditionally where snowballing board control decks were most successful. It was still extremely powerful in that deck but Undertaker in combination with Scientist in Hunter made it way over the top. We did play that version but just not enough to realize. The whole content design team was four people back then, so we had a lot less time to playtest due to the fact we also were responsible for designing the next set and building the Naxxramas single player. Today, our whole content design team is much bigger.
Deathlord: Was originally weaker because we hadn't done anything with an effect like this before. Was 2/6, then eventually up to 2/8. As a balance person, this is one of the cards I was most happy with. It's difficult to get weird effects like this to a level that ends up being played, but not in a way that people just put in all their decks. Ended up being both a moderate disruption card and an option in aggro heavy metas, but faded out when neither of those things were very relevant.
Mad Scientist: Definitely one of the strongest cards we ever made, but that was something we knew going in. It drove a few new decks and got players to think about putting interesting secrets in their deck like Spellbender or Snake Trap when those cards hadn't really seen much play. I don't think Scientist is a good example of a classic or basic card, but as an adventure card that eventually leaves standard I think it did a great job.
Sludge Belcher: Aggressive decks were very powerful in both pre and post-naxx playtesting, so we knew we wanted some solid options to combat that. Druid of the Claw was kind off the gold standard for premium taunt minions back in those days, so we made something that was just a little bit better than that. We liked the gameplay of having a powerful neutral Taunt option so much we went on to create many more like it. Some cards that can thank Sludge Belcher's example for their power level: Annoy-o-Tron, Stonehill Defender, Tar Creeper, Corpsetaker, Twilight Guardian, Saronite Chain Gang, Rotten Applebaum, Witchwood Grizzly, Zilliax, Bog Creeper, Chillmaw, Primordial Drake, and uh.... Giggling Inventor! Some of those were less powerful than we had planned, some more :).
Voidcaller: A good example of a card I'm glad exists, wouldn't change, but not a card we would make in present day Hearthstone. I love the bluffing situations it creates where your opponent has to assess the risk of what might be behind the Deathrattle vs the potential reward of destroying the minion before you have a chance to summon your demon. Also love that it drove a more big-demon centric deck. The part of the card that makes it something we probably wouldn't do today is the huge early-game swings it created and the the ridiculous upside potential of something like Voidcaller -> Voidcaller -> Mal'Ganis. Even though the average outcome was ok, the range of outcomes is just so wide that playing against the best outcomes can feel unfair.
Iksar
Kel'Thuzad as a character is probably my favorite Hearthstoneified character we've ever done. Still my favorite line...
"There's no achievement for losing to Gluth!!! HAHAHAHAAHAA"