With all this going on, maybe a refreshed Classic set is a real possibility?
It’s all happening in the world of Hearthstone right now. Yesterday, Blizzard’s Team 5 announced a number of nerfs designed to address the power level of Rogue, hitting Preparation, Raiding Party and EVIL Miscreant; three of the core cards in the current build of Tempo Rogue. These changes are a reflection of how many powerful cards the class has right now – changing a single card just wouldn’t cut it. While the adjustments are relatively minor on their own, cumulatively they should reduce the power level of the archetype, and promote more diversity within the class.
Warrior was also addressed, with a tweak to the mana cost of Archivist Elysiana to make it harder to play her over and over again. This is also a good change, as the card itself has a really fun design, but along with cards like Baleful Banker led to some excruciatingly long mirror matches – particularly problematic in the new Specialist competitive format.
You can see the changes below, along with commentary from Team 5. They’ll be live in the game on May 22 (NA time).
But wait, there’s more! Today the team unveiled “Rise of the Mech” – a landmark new event, kicking off on June 3 (NA time). Why landmark? Because when it launches, the game will see two Boomsday Project cards for every class get buffed. Forever!
This simply isn’t something the team has done before, so it sets an exciting new precedent, allowing Blizzard to keep the game fresh in a whole new way. I.e. instead of just addressing problems, changes like this give the entire player base opportunities. Check out the full set of changes in the slideshow below.
It’s exciting see build-around cards like Luna’s Pocket Galaxy and Dr. Morrigan given another chance to find a home, not to mention the many other cards that now find themselves potentially viable. (Some of which are already being played.)
Whether this will mean regular buffs remains to be seen, but I can’t help but think that a Team 5 that’s prepared to do this may also be prepared to make sweeping changes to the Basic and Classic sets to better balance the classes, given that these sets are the foundation of the Standard format. (And right now some classes have far better tools than others.) Either that or they may decide to simply change the cards that are part of the Classic set regularly, to – again – keep things fresh.
Bada-climp, bada-clamp!
There’s one other hugely compelling reason to log in to Hearthstone during the Rise of the Mech event, and that is that anyone logs in between June 3 and July 1 will be given a golden copy of a BRAND NEW LEGENDARY – SN1P-SN4P! It’s a mech, unsurprisingly, and looks really strong – particularly for classes like Hunter and Paladin that are already playing mech builds and taking advantage of Magnetic.
Oh, and one final – no less important – piece of information. The new Arena format has been announced! As of the Rise of the Mech update, the following sets of cards will be included in Arena drafts: Classic, Basic, Goblins vs. Gnomes, The Grand Tournament, One Night in Karakhan, The Boomsday Project, Rise of Shadows.
So there you have it. Hearthstone’s meta is going to change markedly as of the nerfs on May 22, then things are going to shift again from June 3 when a whole host of cards get buffed. It’s going to be a blast!
Cam Shea is the Editor in Chief of IGN’s Australian content team and tries to spend as much time as possible watching Hearthstone tournaments. He’s on Twitter.
