by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

We reported yesterday that there was some weirdness happening with Starving Buzzard and Leeroy Jenkins. It appears it was indeed a bug and ALSO an incoming nerf. It looks like players were experiencing something that wasn’t supposed to hit production servers in Hearthstone until Sept. 22.

Starting on that date Starving Buzzard will now be a 3/2 creature which will cost 5 mana (instead of a 2/1 for 2 mana) and Leeroy Jenkins will now cost 5 mana instead of 4. Both of these cards have been complained about in the community for quite a while now with the popularity and power of hunter decks and miracle rogues. With hunter decks being able to draw a bunch of cards by turn 5 was quite the issue (and hence why in most people’s opinions Starving Buzzard was the culprit with hunters, not Unleash the Hounds which went over several different changes) and with the added mana of Leeroy he’s a bit more expensive now to Shadow Step multiple times in one turn with Miracle Rogue.

With that said, Blizzard will not be making any more balance changes to the game between now and BlizzCon for the World Championship.

You can read the full update of the changes in Community Manager Zeriyah’s forum post.

Both before and after the release of Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure, we have been monitoring card balance as more Hearthstone games are played along with the new cards that have been added. After careful consideration we have decided to make balance changes to Leeroy Jenkins (Neutral) and Starving Buzzard (Hunter).

The following balance changes will be made in an upcoming patch:

• Leeroy Jenkins now costs 5 (up from 4)
• Starving Buzzard now costs 5 (up from 2) and now has 3 Attack and 2 Health (up from 2 Attack and 1 Health)

Leeroy Jenkins created a strategy that revolved around trying to defeat your opponent in one turn without requiring any cards on the board. Fighting for board control and battles between minions make an overall game of Hearthstone more fun and compelling, but taking 20+ damage in one turn is not particularly fun or interactive. This was occurring when Leeroy was used in combination with other cards like Power Overwhelming, Faceless Manipulator, Cold Blood, Shadowstep, and Unleash the Hounds, among others.

The amount of cards Starving Buzzard allowed Hunter players to draw ultimately ended up being too excessive for its low cost. This change will allow the Hunter’s opponent more time to react to both the Starving Buzzard and the cards drawn by its power.

Expert cards that are being changed can be disenchanted for their full cost for a limited time once this balance change goes live. The currently targeted date of this balance change is September 22nd.

After these balance changes go live on September 22nd, we will not be making additional card changes between September 22nd and the Hearthstone World Championship at BlizzCon.

We will continue to make balance changes to Hearthstone only when we feel they are completely necessary in order to increase the variety of cards seen at all levels of play and make Hearthstone a more fun and interactive game for everyone.