Like reported to us yesterday, has the Hearthstone The Blizzard team worked hard to make changes to the "Druid Problem". In the now published game balance changes, warriors and shamans are also hit.
Druid:
Stimulate: Gives only 1 mana instead of 2.
Epidemic: The mana cost for Plague Spot is increased from 5 to 6.
Shaman:
Hex: Instead of 3 mana, the card now costs 4 mana.
Warrior:
Fiery war ax: Mana cost is increased from 2 to 3 mana.
Neutral cards:
Murloc leader: Previously, the Murloc leader gave + 2 / + 1 to all other Murlocs. From now on he only gives +2 attack and no extra life point.
Hearthstone developers' explanations of the changes
The developers also provide explanations about the "nerfs" (weakenings).
3 cards from the basic set: Stimulate, Hex and Fiery War Ax have been changed. These cards were so strong that they could be found in every deck and thus provided less variety.
Often such cards are then moved to the “Timeless Classics” category and can only be played in the “Wild” format. However, this only happens at the beginning of a Hearthstone year and the year of the mammoth runs until the first expansion in 2018. Blizzard did not want to wait that long with the changes.
One candidate that will likely become a timeless classic at Hearthstone's turn of the year is the magician card Ice block.
As mentioned in our report on the druid problem, "epidemic" is one of the main reasons for the current dominance of the druid decks. According to the developers, this card offers too much defense for the price of 5 mana. With the new mana cost of 6 and the weakening of stimuli, the epidemic can only be conjured up later in the game.
The Murloc Leader change makes it a little easier to deal with the Murloc Flood in the early game. Often a game was more or less over after a turn 2 (with a coin) or turn 3 Murlocan leaders. Thanks to the one additional life point, a Murloc tidescaller survived the early spells of mass destruction such as consecration or volcanic potion etc. With the change it should be easier to stop the Murloc hordes without completely ruining Murloc decks at the same time.
Evil contamination remains unchanged
One card that is causing a lot of discussion at the moment is "Evil contamination“Was also discussed by the developers, but is currently not being adapted. According to the statistics from Blizzard, which documents the strengths of the individual cards very precisely, the epidemic was the stronger card and therefore more of the problem. Because of this, evil contamination is not lessened. By changing the suggestions, it is now possible to play the card less often in turn 8 or earlier.
If you are interested, you can read the full explanations from the Hearthstone developers Blizzard's homepage read up.
