If you were unaware, there was some drama behind the recent changes to Tess Greymane. Her battlecry would continue to function even after she died or was silenced on board (like pre-nerf Yogg- Saron). In the recent patch, she was changed to function like post-nerf Yogg-Saron (her Battlecry would stop after she was removed or silenced). This made some players pretty upset, because it was essentially a nerf and yet people did not receive a full dust refund. Blizzard has now decided to revert the changes made to the card.
In other news, there were changes to how the Druid quest Jungle Giants functioned. Prior to the patch, if you played Faceless Manipulator on a card with 5 or more attack it would count towards the quest. It was announced in the patch notes that this would no longer be the case. This was a big deal to some players who submitted Quest Druid as one of their decks in the upcoming HCT Seoul Tour Stop. It looked like those players were going to be stuck with their Quest Druid decks, but now it looks like any player that brought Quest Druid will be allowed to change their deck.
Update: The hotfix that reverts Tess Greymane’s change is now live. Keep in mind that it is still limited to 30 cards!
June 8th, 2018
• Tess Greymane will continue casting even if she’s destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed from the board.
Official Post
Greetings,
Thank you for your feedback regarding the recent Update 11.2. We apologize for not offering notice in advance of these changes before they went live. We understand that this wasn’t a good experience and that it also had an impact on some of our esports competitors as well. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, and we’ll do better in the future.
Update 11.2 brought with it some changes as part of our ongoing, overall goal to make card interactions more intuitive across the board. The intention of some of those changes was to align four similar cards (Tess Greymane, Lynessa, Shudderwock, and Yogg-Saron). If you’re familiar with the way that one of these minions works, you should be able to guess how the others work. We added a cap to the maximum number of effects that can be generated by these Battlecries, and made Tess’ Battlecry end if she was destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed, just like Yogg-Saron.
After hearing your feedback to that change, we initially considered offering a full Arcane Dust refund for Tess. We also read feedback from players who use Tess in their decks asking for her to be reverted to her old functionality. In this case, we agree that it’s worthwhile to sacrifice some consistency so Tess is more fun to play, especially since our priority wasn’t to decrease Tess’ power level. With that in mind, instead of offering an Arcane Dust refund and encouraging players to disenchant the card, we’re reverting one of the changes to Tess Greymane so that her Battlecry will continue even if she’s destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed from the board.
This situation has also raised discussions regarding the definition of a card fix versus a dust-refunding nerf, so we thought this would be a good time to talk about our stance on the subject.
We will continue to provide full Arcane Dust refunds for changes to cards that decrease their overall power level for balance purposes — in other words, card nerfs.
We’re working to improve Hearthstone and make the underlying mechanics more intuitive. Bug fixes or system-wide mechanics changes to improve the game will not be grounds for a full Arcane Dust refund on a card. System-wide mechanical updates affect many different cards in ways that could make some more or less powerful, such as the interaction between Jungle Giants and Faceless Manipulator.
Lynessa Sunsorrow was never intended to apply her buffs in the order they were cast, so the update to her functionality in 11.2 was a bug fix for that card. The cap of 30 effects is a system-wide change intended to protect the service and players from potentially bad play experiences that have minimal player value. We’re planning to raise the cap of Shudderwock’s Battlecry from 20 to 30 when we implement the fix that reverts Tess, as well.
We’re currently planning to revert the change that caused Tess Greymane to stop casting her Battlecry when destroyed, silenced, or otherwise removed on June 8th PDT.
HCT Seoul and Quest Druid
We also would like to take this moment to apologize to our player community for this update’s impact on the HCT Tour Stop taking place in Seoul this weekend, specifically the 15 players who brought Quest Druid decks.
After considering recent feedback and significant discussion, we felt that Quest Druid decks were most directly affected in terms of viability as a result of the changes that were introduced with Update 11.2. As such, we allowed players that brought Quest Druid an opportunity to resubmit their deck.
Balancing the health of the game with the needs and calendar of a global esport like the Hearthstone Championship Tour is always challenging. This wasn’t an acceptable situation all around, for us, our players, and competitors, and we’ll do better in the future.
Thanks again for your feedback and your understanding, and we’ll see you in the Tavern.
Pretty F’d that Blizzard now does nerfs silently and expects nobody to notice so they can slide thru without offering refunds.
I don’t see any problem with Tess ‘aligning’ with the other mentioned cards. They just needed this to do as they did with Yogg – call it a nerf and give full dust refund.
There is inconsistency only in how they executed the change.
To be fair, she was marketed as a “pre-nerf Yogg”. The change is incisistent to their marketing by default.
I m not playing her, i ve played propably about 300-500 games since her release, i ve seen her at a maximum of 10 times since then. she s obviously not good, unlike yogg, plus she s not entirely randomly winning you games that you d usually loose, unlike yogg. there is nothing wrong with tess.
Tess being a bad card does not mean her effect can subvert HS logic. Also, many poor legendaries became good after a new expansion was released (e.g. King Togwaggle, Grumble, King Krush), so the current value of a card is not a good measure.
continuing the entire chain is not subverting HS logic. there are tons of itneractions that do this, for example:
if you have sword of justice equipt and play a minion that dies to the enemy explosive runes it will get the +1/+1 buff afterwards and will be on the board as a minion with 1 hp.
if you and your enemy die in the same animation it doesn t matter which oen of you dies first (enemy has 3 hp and you mill yourself to death with Ultimate infestation)
there are many more of this. in fact yogg is the only card that doesn’t work like this.
I see your point. But the interaction between sword of justice and explosive runes is a matter of two effects that are triggered “simultaneously”, but that’s impossible in HS, so they happen one after the other and can result in a minion surviving the runes because of the buff received. That should count as a “single interaction”. Tess and Yog’s battlecries on the other hand replay several cards, and their “triggers” happen one after the other, not in a single interaction. I understand this is my opinion on the game’s mechanics thou.
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with Tess.
Just saying that if Blizzard thinks it should align I’m fine with that. But they should execute that ‘alignment’ in a consistent manner (= official nerf, full dust). 😉
I for one think it’s strange that Tess can repeat cards when she is removed from the board. I did have an awesome game against a tempo rogue who played her. He removed my board with a doom pact from Lich King and after I uncubed my last hadronox he played one more doom pact. After that he played Tess; first doom pact killed her and my two hadronox – unleashing my taunts on the board. Second doom pact still went off even tho she was dead and took out all of my taunts. Didn’t expect that. For that one game I don’t care, but it’s just strange that something can repeat stuff when they are dead/removed from board.
This is a reasonable and swift reaction, no matter how your opinion about the actual change may look like.
I must be the only person who was happy about the original Tess nerf. Yogg, Tess, Shudderwock, all these cards that reproduce long chains of effects are great fun for whoever is playing them or watching the stream/replay and just annoying for whoever is on the receiving end. I sincerely hope we don’t get more of these kind of cards in the future.
Wow. great news! I remember that in one game I really hated Tess for dying in the first replay. It was almost a joke.