With Hearthstone’s latest expansion — Savior’s of Uldum — live and all-new cards have been introduced to the meta, powerful new decks have begun to develop. In order to ensure as enjoyable an experience as possible and for the Hearthstone ladder to remain competitive, Blizzard has implemented an update to a number of cards.
The update was released yesterday, so changes will already be live. The changes affect two Mage cards, one Warrior card, one Priest card and one Neutral card.
These cards are; Conjurer’s Calling, Luna’s Pocket Galaxy, Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, Extra Arms and Barnes.
Hearthstone Card Changes
Blizzard has given detailed reasoning on each change as follows;
Conjurer’s Calling
While Conjurer’s Calling is a powerful tool that’s found in a number of Mage decks, when used in decks focused around cards like Mountain Giant and Sea Giant, it was creating extremely powerful board states at a point in the game where opponents didn’t have effective answers. Increasing the mana cost of this card to four (up from three) will make using both copies of the Twinspell card in a single turn significantly more difficult, postponing these potentially overwhelming turns until later in the game when the Mage’s opponent has more available resources to react to the board.
Luna’s Pocket Galaxy
Buffing cards during the Rise of the Mech event was a big change in philosophy for us. While we are happy with the overall outcome of the changes, Luna’s Pocket Galaxy has proven to be an exception.
An early Luna’s Pocket Galaxy can often leave opponents feeling helpless as late-game minions are drawn in subsequent turns. This has occurred more often than we had intended, therefore we’re reverting its mana cost back to its original value of 7, as it was before the Rise of the Mech event.Dr. Boom, Mad Genius
We’d still like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius to be a great option for control Warrior decks looking to close out games, but right now the card gets played a bit too early. Increasing the mana cost to 9 should make it more difficult to find a good turn to play Dr. Boom, giving opponents time to make powerful plays as well.
Extra Arms
During the Rise of the Mech event, Priest was one of the weaker classes in the game. Buffing Extra Arms gave Priest a powerful spell for the early game to enable some of their board-focused strategies.
With the release of Saviors of Uldum, Priest has access to many more powerful early game minions and has seen a large jump in popularity and winrate. Between all of Priests’ buff spells and heal effects, it can be hard to fight for the board against them early in the game. Reverting the mana cost of Extra Arms to 3 should give other decks room to challenge Priests early on, while leaving their powerful minions and combos untouched.Barnes
Barnes has been a hot topic in Wild format discussions for quite some time now, especially regarding how oppressive this card can feel when facing certain Priest decks. While we’re okay with Wild having a higher power level in general, Barnes stood out as too consistently powerful early in the game. Increasing his mana cost by 1 will let opponents have an easier time reacting, but still maintains Barnes’ identity as a way to summon specific minions early in the game.
We’ve all come up against the Mountain Mage Deck type and, let’s be honest, it sucks to play against. You can do your very best to get rid of minions and try to control the board but once those minions only cost 1 mana, you’re screwed.
The increase in cost to both Conjurer’s Calling and Luna’s Pocket Galaxy will certainly make those Mountain Mage Decks a bit less prevalent.
The same can be said of the Mech Warrior Deck with the increase in mana for Dr. Boom. Hopefully, with a mana cost of 9, playing against a Mech Warrior Deck won’t be as imposing as it has been.
These changes appear to be the least controversial to Hearthstone in a while, although that may be because I like the potential of what the changes may do.
If you play Mountain Mage or Mech Warrior, you might be pretty miffed right about now. In any case, Blizzard is clearly devoted to keeping Hearthstone balanced and as fair as possible and it should be applauded for the effort.
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