Alec Dawson Explains the Reasoning Behind the Upcoming Hearthstone Balance Changes

Published 4 years, 11 months ago by

Hearthstone Game Designer, Alec Dawson, put out a series of tweets explaining the upcoming December balance changes.

He even mentions the lack of nerfs towards Warrior, so if you're upset about this you may want to take a read!

You can see what he has to say down below. The balance changes will be live in a few hours with Hearthstone Patch 19.2.

Quote From Alec Dawson

Hello, hello! The nerfs tomorrow are mainly focused on lowering the overall power level of Demon Hunter. Demon Hunter's population in higher levels of play was growing week over week, hitting nearly 35% last week.

Our approach was to look at the two decks (Aggro and Soul Fragment DH) separately as their power cards differed between them. The nerfs to cards like Dreadlord's Bite, Voracious Reader, and Lorekeeper Polkelt are aimed at reducing the refill and reach Aggro DH currently has.

For Soul Fragment DH, our changes to Blade Dance and Shardshatter Mystic are focused on the efficiency of their board-clearing ability. Blade Dance was a card that got significantly more powerful as DH accumulated more ways to gain attack (Twin Slice change, new weapons, etc.) and didn't agree with one of the outlined class weaknesses Demon Hunter is supposed to have: killing big minions.

Our last change is a nerf to Dinotamer Brann. This was a preemptive change as we saw a potentially dominant matchup spread for Hunter after these changes.

Finally, what about warrior? Warrior was the class benefitting the most from a meta centered around Demon Hunter. The current matchup spread for Warrior is quite wide (strong mix of good/bad matchups) and we want to evaluate how it performs with a lower Demon Hunter population.

Looking forward to seeing how these changes play out and thank you again for your feedback!

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Comments

  • Quote From Aenarion

    The reasoning is fine but I think Blade Dance is still too strong, they didn't even address the contradiction with the class identity, they just delayed the card for one turn and that does nothing when paired with Skull.

    I think blade dance is fine now 100% and are cards that are more much more deserving aof a nerf (bladed lady/skull of guldan)

  • well, in many cases, one turn is too much, it's the difference between been dead or not.

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