hearthstone Hearthstone Blue Post Round-Up: September 6

[Zadina 923]

Ben Brode answered some questions on Reddit regarding the recently announced balance changes.

The Fiery War Axe nerf was probably the most discussed and disputed one among the other upcoming card nerfs. It was only natural that people questioned the change to one of Warrior's most iconic cards. While Ben Brode didn't address the nerf specifically, he explained that they found the rate of Basic/Classic and Standard cards worrisome. Ideally, a deck should have around 10 "evergreen" cards.

bbrode

when reading the justification for the change to Fiery War Axe (and, by extension, the Murloc Warleader change).

I just want to make it clear that those are meant to cover some of the thinking behind why we went with option A over option B - not why we decided to make a change to begin with.

In a world where we are looking at making a change, we felt like these changes are slightly less disruptive and that isupside, in a vacuum.

It's not a vacuum, obviously, but the goal here was to reduce power level because the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).

Commonly, when we mention that we think about a wide variety of players, it can come off like we are focusing on new players at the expense of currently engaged players. That isn't the way we think about it. Usually we look for win-win solutions, where a change is good for the ongoing fun of playing Hearthstone and is also not disruptive to loosely engaged players. We've definitely made changes that are quite disruptive because it's very important to keep Hearthstone fun for engaged players. Just because we prefer non-disruptive changes doesn't mean we are trying to do that at the expense of other types of players.

Specifically, we made these changes for engaged players who are most affected by imbalance (deck diversity goes down the higher rank you are), and who are most likely to want to see the meta change when new sets come out or during the yearly set rotation. (source)

 

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isn't that the whole point why classic set is evergreen? not only that, basic cards solidify class identity. not a big fan of war axe, innervate, and warleader changes mr brode.

What do you think the right percentage of evergreen cards in decks should be?

I tend to think 10-ish cards might be right. We're way above that right now, and I think it would be better if it were closer to 10. (source)

On the topic of an "evergreen" set, Ben Brode answered that it was never Team 5's plan to leave Basic and Classic cards unchanged. 

bbrode

Keeping Basic and Classic around with no changes was never the plan. We launched rotation with twelve nerfs, specifically because we knew we couldn't just have evergreen sets as-is. There is value in having evergreen sets, but there is a balance to it. Our Hall of Fame system is similar in some ways to a rotating core set. (source)

In more exciting news, the Hearthstone team plans to announce in the beginning of 2018 something relevant to meta decks being more easily accessed by new players!

bbrode

bbrode how will you make the game accessible for new players if they cant build matadecks for even longer than now?

Hoping to have something to announce that will help with these problems early next year. We have a lot of work to do on the new player experience, but some of these problems can be mitigated by matchmaking, to some extent. (source)

Lastly, Mike Donais had some clarifications on Hearthstone's copy mechanics.

mdonais

The rough rule for copying is:

If you copy something that is in play and the copy is in play it keeps stats. (Faceless Manipulator)

If you copy something from other zones it is the base card. (Thoughsteal)

If you copy something in play to another zone it is a base card. (Echoes of Medivh)

If you move something from deck or hand then it is still that exact card so it keeps stats. (Death Grip, Deathlord.)

If something leaves play it loses buffs. (Sap)

We are trying to make this the consistent rule and reviewing existing and future cards with this in mind. (source)

[Laragon 269]

10 evergreens feels really low. I don't know if I can keep up with the meta at all if that's the case. It's hard enough as it is.

[Caldyrvan 377]

There are so many different decks and every player (or most I guess) likes to more than one good deck. So when I have 2 priest decks and they have more than 10 basic/classic cards in it they still have different cards from the new expansions. Do they really worry that much about ppl buying to less new expansion packs? 

btw, still no date for the nerf patch? 

Edited September 6, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Hanz39 53]

10 seems about right honestly

I make priest example evergreens:

Shadow Word Death

Shadow Word Pain

Northshire Cleric

Power Word Shield

putting them in 2x is only 8 cards other cards like Velen or Holy Nova are always good but they are included only if required and not by default

[HenrySteinway 20]

why do they use the word "nerf", when they have to use "kill"? farewell, Innervate, you're just too good to be

farewell, HS. your daddy didn't love you

[Laragon 269]

12 hours ago, Hanz39 said:

10 seems about right honestly

I make priest example evergreens:

Shadow Word Death

Shadow Word Pain

Northshire Cleric

Power Word Shield

putting them in 2x is only 8 cards other cards like Velen or Holy Nova are always good but they are included only if required and not by default

That's just priest specific ever greens. What about tech cards from neutral, or all the powerful legendaries there. Ysera, bloodmage Thalnos, blademaster, doomsayer, deathwing.... etc. There are a LOT of ever green cards that make up decks beyond just class cards. Priest is also one of them that has benefited the most from the latest expansions.

What about mage, (mana wyrm, sorcerers apprentice, arcane missiles, frost bolt, ice block, arcane intellect, counterspell, ice barrier, frost nova, mirror entity, water elemental, fire ball, polymorf, (maybe) blizzard or flame strike, and archmage) Most mage decks can easily make it up to 15-20 ever greens.

[Caldyrvan 377]

2 hours ago, Laragon said:

Most mage decks can easily make it up to 15-20 ever greens.

So what? You still need get cards from the new expansions to create the viable tier 1 decks. This is not done by just buying a handful of card packs. And even with a lot of the basic/classic cards the theme and mechanic of a deck can be totally different.

[Yridaa 490]

I'm okay with nerfing more basic and classic cards as long as they make it more accessible for us to get the other sets. More ways to earn gold, or crafting cost nerfs perhaps.

 

But as it stands, I think it's a bit much to both plan on having much less classic/basic cards and not do anything to make new cards more accessible.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I think even if it's major purpose is the promotion, giving out free packs before a new set goes live, a guaranteed legend in the first 10 packs of a new expansion or getting additional packs for choosing a tournaments champion are things making it a bit easier. But in fact it's not much when you look at the speed of how fast they release new sets now and including more and more expensive cards required for top decks.

Not getting duplicate legends (unless you have all of set) is a good thing as well but with the randomness of cards packs it's not rare that player open 50-100 packs and still miss many crucial cards. I know the concept behind this is ppl pay more and if the game would bring no money they would no longer support it. But that's pretty bad for new players and/or those with limited time and money.

A slight increase in gold gain and/or dust cost for cards reduced and/or increase dust gain for disenchanting would help a lot.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Valks 2,375]

On 9/7/2017 at 4:40 PM, Caldyrvan said:

Not getting duplicate legends (unless you have all of set) is a good thing as well but with the randomness of cards packs it's not rare that player open 50-100 packs and still miss many crucial cards. I know the concept behind this is ppl pay more and if the game would bring no money they would no longer support it. But that's pretty bad for new players and/or those with limited time and money.

I generally find epics are the biggest issue on my F2P account. They are expensive enough that they are hard to get, but there are enough of them in decks to struggle to get what you need.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I see the same problem. You can avoid decks which require a legend (well, lately less and less)but epics are essential for many types of decks. And I often get "lucky" instead of getting an epic I want/need I keep getting things like Mindgames.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Valks 2,375]

16 hours ago, Caldyrvan said:

I see the same problem. You can avoid decks which require a legend (well, lately less and less)but epics are essential for many types of decks. And I often get "lucky" instead of getting an epic I want/need I keep getting things like Mindgames.

Exactly. Especially with the fact that you can put 2 of each epic into a deck.