I get that expansions are designed 2 in advance meaning there may be some disconnect between the devs’ vision for HS and what the playerbase is accepting of, but at this point it’s like:
“We don’t want all classes to be curvestone samesy classes, so we’ll use RNG, card generation and uber crazy game-swinging powerplays that require you draw properly to win outright, and likely proclaim your loss if you don’t, to give alternate playstyles to other classes. Yay!!”
‐‐ 2 months later
“We find [all of the above] to be a bit too much, soo… NERF!”
It just feels so much like design philosophy whiplash. I suppose I can see it in a positive light IF we actually see a return to more metered-out play across the classes, but the recent nerf patches make me wonder just how many expansions we’ll have to endure in which cards get released en mass that apparently run against the design/balance philosophy of the people releasing them.
Evolving their design philosophy to nullify cards/interactions/entire packages for classes within months of releasing said cards makes for a crappy experience for the players, IMO.
Why bother really getting into anything in the game at all, if you have to fear it being removed for being too popular amongst upper legend players?
I understand it too. But I agree with Drum. You mean to tell me that they could not have foreseen this with playtesting and realized it was a bad idea?
They printed the cards, and lo’ and behold mage players used them because that’s what they had.
Now? they have nothing. This is a design failure if you ask me.
To reference someone else, it also seems like a bit of a ripoff as the crafting cost of the mage decks that have been rendered obsolete is way higher than what the dust they are offering as compensation is.
I think it really boils down to marketing, these recent changes actually haven’t been that aggressive in terms of nerfs comparatively to that of the past. They want you to think they are watching the game, making good little changes all the time, but it hasn’t gone too far from the pattern which is traditionally they release a set too powerful on purpose, so you’ll buy into it. I mean you only have to look at a wild legendary tier list to see that like 1 legendary in goblins vs gnomes is any chance playable compared to like 10 legendaries in each of the newer sets. I’m sure by the time they have been in for a little longer they’ll even nerf these sets into the ground too when they are getting older.
Except that the deck wasn’t too powerful. It was declared “unfun” and “uninteractive” which is what players always cry about when they have no evidence to prove a deck is OP.
100% agreed.
I’m sure blizzard recognised combos like Ramp + Guardian Animals and Wandmaker + Evocation generation. I mean these things are the first things that come to my mind, when I am thinking about these cards - why shouldn’t a dev team with a multi mullion Dollar Budget recognise them.
I think Blizzard was just listening to a part of the community which was crying very loudly at reddit etc.
That crying, together with an active player count that is getting lower (why else would you gift free packs at a huge announcement) probably made Blizzard withdraw their initial design ideas.
Now there are many losers, like everybody who crafted these decks. Lets see if that satisfies the community.
At least I am very dissatisfied… I never faced something comparable in card games like mtg.
The announcement in the first post explicitly says that they will go live toward the end of this week.
The VS podcast this past weekend mentioned Thursday as the day that these changes will be going live.
Likely, they’re waiting until then because these changes are part of a patch that also includes assets for the material — such as the next expansion pre-order, assets for the new game mode, etc. — that they’re going to announce on Thursday. So, they wouldn’t want to release that early and have data-mining from game news sites spoil the reveal. At least, that’s my best guess.
There are a lot people that are saying “blizzard release some cards to combo with each other and then nerf them to make new archetypes weak”.
But I didn’t see (sorry if I missed it) anyone pointing out the scammiest scam: Kaeltas, the free legendary, was nerfed 2 times, because classes like druid and DH could abuse it.
That’s right! Who could have guessed that he would have been good in classes with 0 mana spells and a lot of draw/damage spell as well?
It is kinda sad to see it unplayable: who would play a 7 mana 4/7 + two 1 mana spells just to play a “free” 10 mana spell? Isn’t it easier to just play the spell alone on turn 10?
6 mana was fine, with the current text obviously.
Now they are nerfing mage just by mana cost, to induce people to stop playing those, even if their effect are unchanged and still good; if I were you, I would still play them (I’m actually looking forward crafting solarian prime because it’s a cool card; I’m just waiting the monthly reward before using 1600 dust).
Once again, they are fixing a problem without fixing it: a fair ones could have been “target enemy minions if possible”, so 2x Pyroblast to the face would be unlikely; or cast 5 different spells, with the exception of yogg’s box and any other huge spell (not by mana cost, but by power. it is probably the only one, but, just to be sure, I want to precise what my intention was)
Solarian Prime was under valued at 7 mana. It was originally designed to cost less because of the theory that random may not always help you; however, the target enemies if possible makes the card much more reliable. The card was too big of a swing, too consistently for 7 mana. The card is more powerful than puzzle box by far imo, and only costing 7 vs. the 10 for puzzle box was broken.
I don’t have that much of a problem with the solarian nerf.
I do have an issue with the evocation nerf as it kills decks that weren’t even competitive.
I pretty much said way before these nerfs were announced in one of those Nerf Mage thread that maybe Evocation probably shouldn’t be 1 mana so those 5 Evocation games happen very rarely instead of being pretty common. Still possible with Magic Trick and Cyclone to discover them but much less likely when you don’t just get them from Wand Makers and Cobalt Dragonkin. Prime is whatever 7 mana probably was too cheap and they probably erred on the side of overnerf making it 9 instead of 8 because of the blowback of overtuned DH release. Seems their dials are only set for 11 or -1.
I don’t think the multiple evocation pulls was fair at all, but now the card is going to be meh in every deck, not just cyclone. This ruins the only tempo that mage had and it wasn’t even that good.