by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Surprise, cards changes are coming! Both Nat Pagle and Tinkmaster Overspark will be receiving a visit from the nerf bat in the immediate future, according to Community Manager Aratil. While Nat Pagle’s value should largely remain the same, Tinkmaster Overspark should disappear altogether from top tier Midrange and Control decks. Specific details of the coming changes can be read about below.

Somewhat obscured in the wake of the balance changes, Ranked Mode is also receiving some tweaks. Players will be awarded bonus stars at the end of Ranked Mode seasons. These additional stars will grant them a higher rank at the start of the new season, hopefully making the grind less tedious.

Crazy stuff with Hearthstone’s official release looming on the horizon.

 

Thank you for playing, testing and offering your feedback on Hearthstone as we’ve transitioned from closed beta to open beta. The release of Hearthstone is on the horizon, and we have a couple of additional changes to certain cards we feel it is necessary to implement before the game goes live. As we’ve stated, we plan to make very few card changes when the game goes live, and we will only make changes to cards if they are absolutely necessary. Making these changes now will ensure a more balanced state of the overall game into release.

We will be making changes to the following cards: Tinkmaster Overspark and Nat Pagle.

Tinkmaster Overspark is now a 3/3 (up from 2/2) and now reads: Battlecry: Transform another random minion into a 5/5 Devilsaur or a 1/1 Squirrel. 

• Tinkmaster is a neutral card that silences and often shrinks big creatures. This reduces the amount of big, fun creatures in the environment. We think this change will increase the amount fun creatures in the environment, and bring him more in-line with his cost and overall power. Tinkmaster should still show up in certain types of decks, but will no longer be appearing in every high level deck.

Nat Pagle now reads: At the start of your turn, you have a 50% chance to draw an extra card. 

• Nat Pagle will now draw a card at the start of your turn rather than at the end. Nat had too much draw power for a card that is fairly hard to counter so early in the game, making it almost an auto-include for many decks. This change reduces the power of the card and gives players more time to counter the card before it starts.

In addition to these balance changes, we have been monitoring your feedback on our Ranked Play system that we implemented with Closed Beta Patch 1.0.0.4217. Many players have felt that the start of each Ranked Play season was particularly difficult due to the fact that rankings are reset for all players, regardless of how far they progressed in rankings during that season.

After the next patch, you will receive bonus stars at the start of each season based on your performance from the previous season. This way, players that have progressed far into any given Ranked Play season will not be challenging those potentially new to the game or jumping into Ranked Play for the first time.

For example, if you attained Legend, Innkeeper (Rank 1), or Black Knight (Rank 2) rank in any given season, at the start of next season you will start off at Questing Adventurer (Rank 17) rather than Angry Chicken (Rank 25).

Expert cards that are being changed can be disenchanted for their full cost for a limited time when the patch goes live. We hope these changes will increase the variety of cards you will see at all levels of play, and make playing Hearthstone a more fun and interactive game for everyone.
We’ll see you in game!