Since we announced the Rise of the Mech update (and all of the card buffs coming along with it) we’ve seen several questions repeatedly pop up in community discussions. We’ve gathered some answers from the Hearthstone development team here to hopefully clear up some confusion and provide more clarity on the execution and philosophy behind these changes.
Will there be dust refunds for buffed cards?
Philosophically, cards that we feel we’ve improved won’t be eligible for refunds.
Is Extra Arms cost reduced for the additional copy as well?
More Arms will also cost 2 mana.
Will any other sets be buffed in the future?
We will be watching closely how this round of buffs goes. We like the idea of doing this kind of thing in the future, but can’t commit to anything solid quite yet.
It currently feels like most if not all Rogue decks are built around Preparation due to how Rogue spells have synergy with it. What was the thought process behind not nerfing Prep earlier? Doing so now feels like Rogue is effectively gutted.
Prep fits exactly what we think the Rogue kit should be about, just at a power level that makes it feel like it should be included in all possible Rogue archetypes. It’s one of the cards we find ourselves designing around the most because it makes it difficult to make reasonably powerful Rogue spells in the circumstance where they aren’t being used with Prep.
When we have a change in mind to a Basic or Classic card we would rather make that change at a time a whole new suite of cards are coming into the game or when the class we’re changing can withstand a power level decrease and still have powerful archetypes.
Why no Warrior nerfs?
Warrior has enough matchups with classes like Hunter and Mage that we thought would allow the meta to shift on its own if something like Control Warrior became the new most popular archetype. Of course, we will monitor player perception and data on a daily basis and will continue to evaluate if any more changes become necessary.
How did you select the cards from each class to be buffed?
We chose cards based on how fun or interesting we feel they are to play in relation to how much they are currently being utilized. In this case, the cards that were selected are part of the Rise of the Mechs event, which is specific to The Boomsday Project set. There were many cards that were played less than the cards we chose, but these are the ones that we believed led to the most fun experiences without making decks that are already very powerful even better.
How long have you been thinking about / working on these buffs?
We’ve been thinking about them for a while! Generally, the goal with past events and this event are the same. We want to try different ways to make the game feel fresh beyond the first month or two of a new expansion release. Buffing cards is one way to do that. Feedback has been very positive so far so we’re looking forward to seeing how the changes shake out when the patch is live.
Hi,
Thank you for the thread. These communication is very appreciated.
I would like to ask on how to determine criteria for dust refunds.
It has been my understanding that any direct changes to a card is eligible for dust refund, e.g. case of Molten Giant being nerf and reverted back to original design. (If I remember correctly)
This will clear any misunderstanding among the players, and provide a consistency for player to understand the game better.
If you don’t design strong spells because of Prep, the spells are only good with Prep.
If rogues had more strong spells, they would not always feel like they need Prep.
Stop thinking this way. You artificially inflate the value of Prep. Watering down or up costing spells makes rogues more reliant on Prep, and you keep doing this hoping people will stop using it. You think you can’t make good rogue spells because “whatabout Prep, rogues will always use Prep.”
But the opposite is true. Give rogues good spells and they will have choices. They always use Prep because they lack options.
You think you’re designing options for rogues, but you’re subconsciously designing a lack of options.
To paraphrase Celestelon, if every choice feels required, they’re balanced. If more rogue spells felt required, rogues would use Prep less.
Molten giant was NOT eligable for dust refunds when it was reverted and hall of famed.
Instead, you simply got 400 dust per playable copy like every other hall of famed card.
I disagree with your logic. Prep wasnt run because rogue didnt have choices for what spells they could run. Prep was run because it was inordinately strong and synergizes so well with the general rogue class identity (combos, miracles, cheating)
Windfeather does have the right logic, it’s just not complete. If a class has too many required cards, some required cards - such as Prep - will have to be axed. If there are too little required cards, the actual required cards will be grossly overused since there’s nothing to replace them with.
But of course, the missing part of that logic, even if Rogue was given better Spells it could turn out Prep’s just so great that you can’t give Prep-level Spells or Rogue would be overpowered, making it so Prep would still have to be nerfed. But it doesn’t change the fact that by making weak Spells, Blizzard artificially kept Prep’s playrate astronomically high: maybe it would still be incredibly high otherwise, but it’d be lower nonetheless as people would have more trouble making space for it.
Incredibly well put. Saying cards like prep, innervate, wild growth, and nourish limit design space creates a flawed foundation that impairs the classes’ ability to evolve beyond over budgeted spells or minions.
A fair costed minion or spell should be on its face reasonably budgeted based on principles of HS card design and comparable analogs. It shouldn’t turn on whether the rogue has prep in hand or Druid has innervate or druid has nourished and/or played wild growth. We need you to disentangle the logical fallacy in saying one must beget the other. Otherwise no card from druid and no spell from rogue would have an honest cost.
Nerf to prep would have been fine had rogue spells be able to stand on their own. The fact they usually carry higher cost in the form of mana or combo requirement is what makes prep so attractive. Because these cards take into account that the rogue has prep in her arsenal, rogue suffers from a tax, not unlike druid. Fast forward to present day, both druid and rogue need to live and continue to do so under this misplaced tax.
If mana cheating spells are so disruptive, I’d rather Blizzard remove them entirely so that their side effects don’t contaminate the rest of the classes’ card pools.
Zerfinity brings up a good point. What if prep still remains king despite the fact that other spells legitimately compete with its slots? If that’s the case, then nerf it further. At least we rest knowing that the design of the rogue’s toolkit isn’t hamstrung by prep. Unfortunately, the insight we have today is the exact opposite. The nerf to prep hurts terribly because the flawed foundation in the design of rogue’s spells relies on over budgeting for prep.
Therefore other decks that would have been fun to experiment with in the new meta, such as miracle and burgle, can’t compete. They are collateral damage. They would have been just fine with the original prep. The fallout from lackey rogue has now cause those decks to experience the same loss in tempo and efficiency when they didn’t need to.
In the case of druid, the effect was even more severe. Ramp is gone. We just have one viable archetype—token druid. Yet, just last quarter we had what 4 to 5 different druid archetypes. None of which survived because Blizzard gutted the ramp shell. Again, had Blizzard made druid’s card cost independent from ramp considerations, druid wouldn’t be in such a terrible state because their prior decision failed to account for the fact that by nerfing ramp, every druid card becomes noneconomic.
A bit tardy to the party, but I really appreciate the communication that we’ve been given here, as someone who plays Hearthstone regularly, it’s great to hear developer feedback and overall insights on game balance/philosophies. Thank you.
exactly. Prep is useless on it’s own. It is a force multiplayer (the force here being “tempo” usually, being able to do more in 1 turn than normal)
Printing really strong cards along side a pre-nerfed prep doesn’t make prep less useful. It makes it more useful. The stronger the spell the better prep will be no matter what. If rogue had 30x overpowered spells to choose from, 2 of them would be replaced with 2x prep. Always. Because now you have 26x overpowered spells and 2x really -overpowered spells.
The best way to fix this is to nerf perp to be less of a force multiplier. And that is exactly what they did.
If the card is made worse in any way (i.e. it’s “nerfed”), you can disenchant the card for a full refund. So if a card goes from 5 mana to 6, or from 3 health to 2, or changes from “Deathrattle minions cost 3 less” to “Deathrattle minions cost three less, but not less than 1”–then for two weeks, they’ll let you disenchant the card for the amount of dust it takes to craft it.
If they make the card unambiguously better (lower mana cost, higher health, add a new keyword), they don’t let you disenchant it for full cost. (If you thought Mountain Giant was worth 400 dust when it had no minion type, why wouldn’t you think it’s worth 400 dust now that it has the “Elemental” minion type? So, no refund.)
If they move a minion to the Hall of Fame, they give you a full dust refund and you get to keep the card. (That’s what happened with Molten Giant.) It doesn’t matter if the card was buffed or nerfed at the time.
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