You didn’t list one of the main issues…

The patch did nothing to fix the meta

A balance patch won’t happen for at least 3-4 weeks. They will wait for everyone to spend all their dust to build the deck, then they will nerf a common or rare game in that deck to bring the power level back down. Leaving all those legendaries/epics sitting there.

Welcome to the last 4-5 sets and the new blizzard business model.

Remember the days when Savage Roar + Force of Nature was considered toxic… 14 damage in 1 turn across 2 cards and 8 mana…

Blizzard said the deck wasn’t good for the game because there was nothing you could do about it, it wasn’t interactive and was ruining the game…

Step forward to 2024… decks that do 30+ damage in one turn, that your opponent can’t interact with, is literally in the Hearthstone mission statement going forward.

Sad…

That’s because you aren’t playing the OTK decks.

Blizzard isn’t interested in YOU having fun, they want the people who cash out of expensive decks to have the fun

Those more frequent balance changes are the issue. They are using the player base as beta testers, simply because they can.

It costs the players time and money to keep up with the whiplash like changes they make each and every set.

Can you imagine a physical ccg making changes at this rate? There would be an uproar

They didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to lay out all the ways they will increase the gouging and predatory business practices.

It started with the 70%+ win rate decks each set release. First, they would nerf a legendary, so you would get back 1600 dust. Now, they nerf a common so you only get back 40 dust and just spent all your resources on all the other legendaries and epics needed. Want to keep playing this set cycle? Pony up some dough.

Any now, tourists is just a fancy way to increase the card pool and legendary count of deck, which will make the above problem that much worse.

I get that hearthstone is f2p, but there are ways to do it, and ways not too.

It’s 14/14 on turn six, that can make a 1/1 in your hand summon another 8/8. Oh it’ll see play.

People’s necks are going to snap from the whiplash of how fast this gets nerfed.

Oh sorry, did I say fast? I mean 4 weeks of hell before it gets nerfed

The issue with player agency wasn’t what turn people cast Zarimi or Reno, it was on the effect itself. The other player is powerless to stop a Zarimi, turn 5 or turn 8. And a Reno shuts down any board based deck just as hard on turn 9, as it did on turn 8. The issue with player agency hasn’t been changed at all, just delayed by one turn… which is pointless.

So far, the only thing this patch did is maintain the already top decks and push everything else down further. One mana cost increase isn’t going to help spur a new set of decks that will suddenly become viable lol

Things that can increase player agency:

1. Reno doesn’t lock board down to 1 for a turn
2. Reno doesn’t affect locations (petrified dragon nest is useless because of Reno atm)
3. Sarina give other player an extra turn first, then extra turn for casting player after. Allowing opponent to prepare for potential double strike.
4. Stop nerfing cards from already middling decks…
5. Playtest internally before releasing. It’s a shame that the public pay to beta test Hearthstone on what seems like a constant basis now.

Sorry, so Blizzard just made the “biggest patch ever” and the results are the following:

1. The top three decks prior to the patch, are still the best three decks
2. All the other decks are ruined and now looking for new decks to play?

Oh, and they want to increase player urgency, so they make toxic cards cost one more?… Why in the sweet hell would that increase player urgency? Lol

How does the Hearthstone team still have jobs? This is embarrassing

The DH nerf seems about right.

A previous HSTD article was showing how the effectiveness of Window Shopper drops hard in the later turns. So delaying the mana reduction by a turn makes sense.

Would’ve made more sense to up the Cc of window shopper by one instead, allowing players to get a higher dust refund. But hey, this isn’t the blizzard of old anymore is it.

You’re talking about the 75%+ win rate paladin decks that they rolled into 75%+ win rate DH right?

Meta has been messed up a lot longer than 10 days.

But hey, first, everyone made Pally decks, then they made DH decks. Now after the next round of nerfs, people will make another deck.

I’ve been saying this for years, this is how they make $$$ now. There is no money in a stable meta.

But what about all those bots that arent having as much fun as me? Who will be watching after them? 🙁

Sure its fun for me right now, but I was lucky to have made a paladin deck before rotation, so I had a lot of the cards already.

I cant imagine this being very newbie friendly though. If they want to win, they make Paladin, or they suffer until a patch. Once the patch comes out, the deck they made could be rendered useless…

I just cant understand how such a complete lack of set testing continues to happen to this day on Hearthstone. Players shouldnt be the beta testers for sets

I’ve been spending the day hand buffing my Leeroy till he’s 12/8, then using shroomscavate to basically take my opponent down in one turn.

I’m at mid diamond after playing for 4 hours casually… that’s how hearthstone is suppose to work right?

Most powerful card in the set by far. Lets you clear boards while going to face with frost.

Round one nerf target

Totally agree with this article. Unfortunately the only outrage about this will be coming from this article and nowhere else.

The corridor sleeper was a “let’s see how much they bitch about it” experiment. Nobody will complain, then it’ll slowly get worse and worse. One day the entire set will be 2 weeks exclusive to pre purchasers, mark my words.

Hearthstone died when they started doing things like shaking up the meta constantly to keep people buying packs to get all the cards, mini sets, new game modes that were DOA and now this…

Activision was garbage and Microsoft has a proven track record of taking good franchises and destroying them (gears, halo, Diablo 4, Bethesda etc).

So people spend time/money making cards and decks. Then after they’ve done that, they nerf the cards and make a different set strong, so that they player base feel they need to spend time and money getting those cards, then they nerf the cards and make a different set strong, so the player base feel they need to spend time and money getting those cards, then they nerf the cards and make a different set strong…

Blizzard are a bunch of thieves now. This game is a gacha joke masquerading as a strategy card game.

Welcome your new Druid overlords.

Long game cue from nest? Check
MORE mana ramp? Check
Access to another neutral board clear? Check
Free taunt dragons? Check…

Ugh.

3.2\5 is low. This card curves amazingly for your first two turns. Expect to see this in Druid aggro for a long time

Unfortunately it is Microsoft that is the problem…

The last few years MS has been killing off its best franchises (Ori, Gears of War, etc) and all the other franchises are being turned into F2P/Live Service games.

I honestly think that’s why they made Diablo 4 the way they did, to appease their new future masters… Its roughly around the same time that Hearthstone started nerf/buffing the heck out of everything as well…