Game Director Ben Brode and Principal Game Designer Mike Donais will be answering questions about Journey to Un’Goro and the upcoming The Caverns Below nerf on a livestream on June 30th at 10:30am PDT. I’ll be hosting a liveblog here where I’ll list all of the interesting tidbits and the Q&A portion of the stream!
If you want to watch it live check it out on Hearthstone’s Official Twitch Channel.
Journey to Un’Goro and Balance Change Liveblog
Keep in mind that everything below will be paraphrased and shouldn’t be taken as an exact quote unless actually surrounded by quotation marks.
TLDR
- It looks like the next Expansion will be released sometime in August!
- Arena will see some balance changes and card appearance tweaks to some classes to bring them closer together.
- They are going to reduce the appearance rate of Vicious Fledgling by 50% in Arena!
- Later this year we should see some major changes to the Ranked Ladder (Not in August).
- There will be Missions in the upcoming August expansion which are Adventure like content that introduce the expansion. These will be free to play for all players!
- The new expansion is going to be totally nuts!!!
Q&A Portion
If Blizzard has stated that Quest Rogue is not that oppressive, then why nerf it?
It’s very powerful, and it’s not very fun to play against. It’s changing the meta in a way that’s very significant. It has a very high winrate against Control decks and a low winrate against Aggro decks so it’s hurting Control decks. Quest Rogue is getting played a lot more than its winrates signify.
What are the indicators that Team 5 looks for when nerfing cards?
They have a lot of data that they use, which show how powerful each card in a deck is. If the deck is changing the meta in a weird way, they’ve been watching Jade Druid carefully. They look at when you hit people for 30 damage in one turn it isn’t very fun to play against. They also sometimes nerf because a card has warped the tournament meta. They’ve nerfed for Standard to make things new and fresh.
Jade Druid feels oppressive like Quest Rogue, will Jade Idol receive a nerf?
Jade Idol is a risky card in that it’s very good in the late game. They are watching it, new sets are coming out. Mike also said with the “August set” unintentionally giving us a release date of sorts for the next expansion.
Why don’t you make more frequent changes with buffs or nerfs?
If they buff cards, it could potentially take away ways for them to impact the meta in the future. A card like Purify which was bad in the beginning was allowed to be good later with a couple of card additions. It’s important to let the meta evolve over time.
Are you satisfied with the performance of the Quest mechanic so far?
People have done a lot of experimenting with Quests. They put them at a level where at least a couple would be played, but that they can strengthen them later with other cards.
What was the biggest surprise of the Un’Goro meta?
They were surprised with how balanced the meta was, and how new decks were popping out every week. Even decks with a low winrate were still popular because they were fun to play.
Is Primordial Glyph considered a problem card? Does it limit Mage spell design space?
It’s a card they hear a lot about, but not as much as Quest Rogue. The Discover mechanic is a good example of luck and skill in the game. When you have a game without randomness you’ll find yourself in too many similar situations, as opposed to solving new problems each game. Ben doesn’t think it will really hurt Mage spell design space.
Are you satisfied with the current state of Freeze Mage?
It’s a great deck and has been around for a long time. They have to keep an eye on it because it’s made up of a lot of basic/classic cards which can make it redundant in the meta.
What are your thoughts on the Discard design?
It’s tricky with a very narrow audience that it’s for. It can be a fun mechanic, and they will slowly keep adding cards that support it. It won’t be the main mechanic they focus on for Warlock.
What about Vicious Fledgling in Arena?
They are going to reduce the drop rate of Vicious Fledgling by 50% in Arena!
Have you considered a different rotation schedule for Arena?
They are looking to bring the classes closer together in a future patch by making changes to appearance card rates for classes like Mage and Warrior. They are experimenting with crazier takes on Arena, which is something they might get into that later this year.
How is the process coming along for re-working ranked ladder?
They have a design that they are excited about, and they are discussing with engineers what Patch it would potentially appear in. They are looking to address a couple of areas, there’s a lot of players in the rank 20 area and they want to help them. For high ranked players there’s a lot of grind to the ladder and they want to address that. They also want to fix new player’s introduction to the ladder. Later this year they are hoping to have some major changes to the ladder.
Will there be less pack filler or low impact cards in the next set? What is your design philosophy behind them?
One of the most iconic cards that represents the filler/vanilla card is Pompous Thespian. The feeling people sometimes have is that you are robbed of a card that might have changed the meta when receiving a vanilla card in a pack. Depending on what cards come out in the future, some vanilla cards are worth having in the set.
In the past, combo decks have been looked at as problematic. What does a successful combo deck look like?
Decks with a lot of setup over the match like Quest Mage are more more favorable. Silence Priest is another one they like. Combo decks when you just aren’t doing 30 damage in one turn are what they prefer.
Will adventure like content happen that tells the story of the expansion?
Yes, there will be free Missions in the upcoming August expansion. Every expansion will have Mission content in the future.
Are Hunter and Warlock Struggling?
As new expansions come out they are looking to support these classes.
How often does the standardized starting 30 health restrict card design? Have you considered changing it for another game mode?
Yes, they considered changing it in Alpha when they realized the starting player had a significant advantage. They considered giving the second player +3 Health. The addition of Health and adding The Coin both evened out winrates. It made the second player feel like they were on the defense, where the coin felt like things went back and forth.
When you designed Stonehill Defender did you expect it to be as strong in Paladin and Shaman?
They didn’t know how strong it was initially, but they found it was very strong in Paladin when you got Tirion from it. It played out sort of like they expected it.
Are there any cards from Un’Goro that you are surprised do or don’t see play?
Humongous Razorleaf is seeing more play than they expected. Ben was surprised Pyros didn’t initially see more play, but it has started to get more popular later in the meta.
Will we ever see 2v2 or something similar? Potentially in a Tavern Brawl?
They’d like to see it eventually, but they have some big dreams for Fireside Gatherings. They’ve added a bunch of new changes for Fireside Gatherings.
How do they decide the rarity of cards?
There’s a lot of factors. Commons tend to be easy to read, and it depends on the set design. Rare and Epic are more complicated. Legendary they want to blow people away and do things that usually isn’t done on Hearthstone cards.
Ok… and you think that is fair to nerf the card after couple of months? What about someone like me who crafted it and after a month the card is useless? You should offer full dust for this card for sure!
Umm… they DO.
So…no plans to nerf Ice Block? They talk about cards that are unfun to play against and don’t mention Ice Block at all??????
I like HS, but dont tell me Rogue is over powered….
Or if you say so, okay …
Then murloc paladin … is over over overpowered, you actualy dont even need to draw 1/3 of your deck to win a game tell me how is it fair.. i dont see
Yes you read me right just draw 7-8 cards of your deck and your opponent is dead, okay now let’s nerf a poor deck like Rogue quest, anyway its a cheap deck and people dont need to buy a lots of pack to make it ..
My 2 cts now :
If you guy got a brain, and want actualy balance this game, then you have to make a constructed deck with more than 30 cards, and upgrade the mulligan thing, cause atm, its not based on skills at all
we have 3 cases,
First : you draw your best hand, you get luck on your draw cards you cant play your game with skilled only because everything coming well
Second : you draw a pretty bad hand, you can surrender directly if you see that your opponent found his cards in early game
third : a bit of both, some time you draw some cards, but u still need some and sometime u found it sometime u dont .. Its mean one guys can draw by exemple all his damage dealing in 10-15 cards, and u still looking for some when u only have 10 cards in your decks..
The situation is quite simple, the metagame is actualy hilarious, we can get fun in this game but there no hope on balanced games..
So please dont say one deck is unbalanced or shit like this cause this is the entiere games whos isnt balanced at all
It’s not about being overpowered. Nobody says Quest rogue is overpowered. The issue with Quest rogue is that it kills the fun. And this really hurts the game overall. Because when you face Quest rogue on ladder you already know what exactly will happen and that you will either easily win the game (if you play aggro deck) or you will lose and cannot do anything about it (if you play control deck). There is almost no interaction in those games. You have no real way to slow down the quest progression or do anything that can change the flow of the game. Yes you sometimes win even with control deck but that’s statistically insignificant.
Also you people should stop crying about this nerf for two reasons:
1) Quest rogue really hurts the meta and this is one of those times when blizzard actually do what they should
2) It makes you admit yourself to playing Quest rogue which is a nobrain deck… so you look dumb.
I play quest Rogue. You say I look dumb? No, 90% of this post makes you look like you have no clue what you’re talking about. (The other 10% you just read on this site about why the change was happening.)
Yes, you look dumb, for multiple reasons actually…
No, Advocaat, YOU look like an idiot. QR takes no more or no less skill than any other deck in the current meta. Crying that it kills your fun is a lame cop-out you can use against ANY deck you don’t like.
Omg a deck killed my deck, its definitly killing the fun !!
…..
Realy bro.
…..
stop cry ffs
They way they answered the Stonehill Defender question makes me believe even more that Tirion might be going to the hall of fame. Looking at the paly deck lists in the world championships, there are 4 different types including both aggro and control and every single one of them have Tirion.
Hard enough dealing with one of those guys. And I don’t think they will change Stonehill.
Whether people like it or hate it, I don’t think that they would remove such a big class specific legendary. Tirion is definitely a powerful legendary but it is not that big of a problem that Blizzard would remove it from the meta game.
I was thinking they might because of the reason they moved Azure Drake. It was an auto include on so many decks. But I didn’t think about that. It is a big class specific legendary.
Also, you have to remember that all of the powerful legendaries that were removed were ‘neutral’ and were put in literally almost every single deck. The only class cards they took out have a bit of a theme to them. They took them out because they created very powerful combos which ended the game when they got them. (E.g Power Overwhelming, Leroy, and faceless Manipulator in renolock.)
Sorry to disagree, Sylvannas and Ragnaros were on a very few decks during Gadgetzan meta.
Every class has an iconic Legendary from the Classic set. Would Paladin lose it? I don’t think so.
Maybe Tirion should be 9 mana, or the weapon should be 5/2.