In a thread on Twitter this afternoon, Hearthstone Game Designer, Alec Dawson, talked about the upcoming changes. Here is what he had to say.
Quote From Alec Dawson Balance changes are coming early next week! For this balance patch, we were looking at three main categories: Demon Hunter, mana reduction, and setting up classes for the remainder of the year.
Demon Hunter is still the number one force in the meta and has a great role in determining whether or not a deck is competitive on the ladder. The changes to Kayn Sunfury and [Hearthstone Card (Metamorphasis) Not Found] are slight adjustments focused on Demon Hunter's reach and ability to control the board.
Warglaives of Azzinoth was one of the best cards in the class, especially in aggressive decks. In the future, we want to be able to push Demon Hunter into archetypes other than aggro/tempo.
As for mana reduction, we want to lessen some of the giant swings currently in the game.
Swing turns will still be present in Hearthstone, there's a healthy medium there, but not to the extent of Dragonqueen Alexstrasza or Galakrond Rogue. Dragoncaster moved to 7 mana to make that turn a bit more appropriate as to when it's occurring in the match.
Fungal Fortunes and Corsair Cache were both strong performing cards that limit some of our ability to extend those classes into different spaces later in the year. These changes should make it easier for future archetypes to take shape and be competitive.
Finally, thank you all for the feedback throughout the last few months. We're always listening so keep it coming.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
Many of these were long over due. My true hope is that they start doing more in depth R&D to prevent situations like the past 3 months where there have been so many nerfs and change ups that the meta is completely destroyed.
These nerfs can't come soon enough.
As well as next expansion announcement and reveals!
I am only afraid that they introduced these nerfs now because they want us to buy packs from next expansion, where they print new broken mechanics/cards.
people still pay for packs?
Dawson was very clear that they do in fact have upcoming expansions in mind, but not because they want to milk us for $ with power-creeped cards - because they want the new cards to be able to bring out new archetypes and fun and unique playstyles, without what already exists overshadowing them or making them broken. It's quite obvious how Corsair Cache could make any strong Warrior weapon problematic, and how Fungal Fortunes looses its only downside if all-spell druid is at all viable.
Either they change these cards now, or the same people complaining they've made them too underpowered end up screaming about unbalanced metas when the new expansion makes them too good.
Or you know...they want us all to have fun in a meta with a variety of viable decks.
If all blizz wanted was to boost expansion pack sales, all they'd have to do is just powercreep every expansion until we eventually get minions with 100 attack and 500 health.
Maybe not quite that ridiculous, but I did see a (joking) suggestion that the next expansion would have an 8/10/10 deal 30 damage if you're holding a dragon.
Hi guys, thank you for your replies.
I understand why the nerfs are healthy for the game/meta. Also - I totally agree it is good if new expansion brings new decks for us. I think we all remember year of the Raven, especially the RR, which was awful experience.
What I meant was the timing of these nerfs. It is not like these cards have suddenly become problematic. It is one thing to introduce new/funny cards, which makes us want to but new packs and another thing to nerf so many cards just before new expansion, so the power level of the "older decks" drops and we are forced to play more new cards to keep up with meta.
I am not a Blizz hater or anything, I am really wondering what the motives are to introduce these nerfs now.
Cheers,
I think part of the timing is simply the result of their approach to Demon Hunter. As that class has been slowly brought in line, problematic cards elsewhere have become easier to identify. I have no doubt some of these would have been hit months ago if DH didn't exist to redirect all the attention.
On a much wider note, there is an inherent conflict between wanting the meta to change to keep things fresh and interesting, and keeping existing decks strong to not force players into opening more packs. The standard/wild split embodies these two stances, with standard built entirely on the need to buy new packs sooner or later and wild letting you keep going with old cards and fewer packs.
Of course Blizz wants us to spend money on the game (that's how it keeps going after all!), but they do that by keeping us interested, and it is a moot point what the motives behind that are. Thought experiment: does it actually matter how greedy and devious someone is if all their money is earned by doing things that make people happy?
Also, the nerfs are gradual because they don't want to outright kill the deck a la Galakrond Shaman.
Of course it matters. Hearthstone, much like blizz itself, isn't just a commodity maintained by continued influx of cash. It thrives in a community who may have spent much of their lives around. It belongs to its corporate board members as much it belongs to its community, that's what make it more than just a number on the cash register.
Unfortunately, its corporate members are largely unelected and therefore unaccountable to its community. They can jack up prices as easily as they can put it down, no matter how it affects the livelihood of its community. The key is to balance it so corporate makes a decent profit, and the community stays happy. Corporate greed, however, is rarely happy just to make a profit. So you'd have shady practices designed to either make all the money in the world, or to tip that balance ever so slowly in their favor. Its up to its community to call them out on it and rebalance it whenever possible.
The motives matter. Blizz used to live up to a standard unequaled in the gaming industry. After its merger, those standards are slowly but surely being corroded as activition-blizz comes out with new ways to earn money irrespective of the high standards it set itself, as it hopes its community adapts to the so called new normal. Galakrond's awakening, for example, is one such attempt at creating a new normal where an additional $20 (or 2800 gold) is required in order for anyone to keep up with the game (you can't just craft those cards with dust). I'm sure it makes the community very happy to have an additional set of cards to play with, but are we going to accept 3 expansions a year + an additional $20 every expansion? Lets not even discuss the implications this will have on game design if we let them get away with it.
Right, but your point revolves around matters where they are making decisions that make people less happy. Those should absolutely be called out, but they were not part of the thought experiment. That was intended to be more abstract and point out it is actions rather than internal (and hidden) beliefs/motives that matter: you could be on a quest for world domination and doing a huge list is benevolent things to trick people into admiring you first, but if you never get around to the nefarious deeds planned for when you gain power then it doesn't really matter why you did the good stuff. The fact remains you did good stuff.
As soon as people learn it was all part of a dastardly plan they tend to treat the benevolent actions as though they were entirely malevolent, as though they wish it never happened at all, but that's irrational and wasteful.
The saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" is the succinct way of phrasing all of this. I would also extend "actions speak louder than words" to "actions speak louder than words, which themselves speak louder than motives".
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Returning to the original discussion, you can rightly complain about the initial power level of DH and the decision making behind it, but once we are in that position complaints should not be levied at the appropriate nerfs. And when the nerfs arrive 3 months into an expansion the discussion should still be on the initial power level of DH and how it was so preposterous that we still need nerfs on it so late on, and and how it delayed changes to other classes that ought to have happened at a more reasonable time had DH not been so powerful.
I think these set of nerfs are a result of internal game testing with the next set of cards. I predict we will get a new set of Hearthstone cards in August!
Looks like Skull dodged another nerf.
I will dust Dragonqueen Alexstrasza
only 9 monthws more in standrad and if a really good deck appears I can still craft her back at same price ...
Honestly the Alex nerf and consistent high-rolling is yet again more of a symptom and problem of the standard format. Due to the significantly smaller pool of cards in standard at any given time, Alex could realistically roll into good dragons a fair amount of the time. However, this is not the problem in wild. We have many more low and midrange dragons so the high-roll is more exactly that, a pipe dream high roll when compared to consistent high rolling in standard. It would've been so easy to print poorer quality dragons in standard to alleviate this problem so much.
It's unfortunate the amount of cards that get axed solely for a flaw in on of the game's formats and not the other.
I looked into the numbers and it is true that big dragons (16+ total stats, e.g. 8/8 or 4/12 or 12/12) make up a higher fraction of them in standard (32.6%) than in wild (24.7%). These numbers give:
So yes it is more likely in standard, but not by some crazy margin, and the standard dragon pool of 43 cards is not actually that small (being more than half the wild pool of 77).
Interestingly if you instead look at low rolls, which I arbitrarily set as dragons with less than 10 total stats, then you have 30.2% of standard and 29.9% of wild. So to odds of low rolls are pretty much identical. (Note I excluded Twilight Drake and Midnight Drake because these will often be larger than 10 total in slow decks.)
In any case, I wouldn't be a big fan of them printing a bunch of small dragons just to weaken Alex. They'd need to print so many to make a meaningful difference in a pool of 43 that you detract greatly from what dragons are meant to be: some of the biggest creatures out there. And even then the high rolls will still happen and people will still feel cheated out of games.
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I would argue the bigger difference for Alex in wild is that she is compared to other huge instant board (re)fills, which are mostly resurrection effects (e.g. N'Zoth, Bloodreaver Gul'dan and Greater Diamond Spellstone/Mass Resurrection). So in wild she's neither the biggest nor most common of the late game board fills, so she's not on many people's radar there.
Damn ... nerfing DH - yet again - already ...
Smells like they rallied to everyone else ladder experience.
...They might also want to check their balancing before making it live
These changes kind of hit Wild as well. I believe some Pirate Warrior lists in Wild ran two Corsair Cache to pull their only weapon in Ancharrr. It’s a soft nerf there and won’t really have much impact there.
But Warglaives seems like a big deal for Odd DH.
Actually I think it's a big change.
Less damage, so less board control potentially allowing opponent to challenge your pirates.
But more than that the lower attack means Dread Corsair (s) are slower in hitting board rather than perhaps coming out all at once. Opponent I just played in last 10 minutes was playing Bloodsail Raider also though I think that less standard.
That said I don't really play this deck and am much more used to playing against it.