Releasing new content can be tough. With all of the new variables being added into regular play, balancing becomes a real nightmare, and it isn’t a nightmare that can be dealt with swiftly. More and more issues come out daily, normally in the form of angry players shouting at devs.
Blizzard recently took a huge jump forward by adding the Demon Hunter class to Hearthstone. This addition marked the first time that Blizzard added an entirely new playable class to the game, and as you can imagine, it’s created a good deal of balancing issues.
The class is a bit overpowered, as new additions almost always are. That said, it isn’t incredibly overpowered, so the balance changes aren’t too extensive. In fact, as far as changes go, there’s only four.
- Skull of Gul’dan’s mana cost has been increased from 5 to 6.
- Imprisoned Antaen’s mana cost has been increased from 5 to 6.
- Eye Beam’s mana cost when Outcast is triggered has been increased from 0 to 1.
- Aldrachi Warblades has the same mana cost, but the durability has been decreased from 3 to 2.
And that’s all the changes! Definitely nothing major, but it might throw the mana curve of one of your decks out of whack, so make sure you make whatever alterations you need before you get into your next match.
“We wanted to get these changes out the door today, and in doing so, you will only see the new stats for these cards – displayed in both red and green – in matches, not in your collection,” Blizzard wrote in their blog for the update. “The red and green numbers will return to white and the cards will be updated in your collection with a data-only patch that we’re expecting to deploy before the end of the day tomorrow.”
With such minor changes, can you really expect to see a major change in gameplay? Well, yes, you absolutely can. a 5-cost card is already pretty dominant, but increasing it to 6 pushes it even further back into the mid-game point. These cards will take a whole extra turn to become available now, and even when they do become available, using them immediately will cost all of your mana for the turn.
Aldrachi Warblades having their durability decreased is undoubtedly the biggest of these changes, though even that is decidedly minor. Being only able to take two hits instead of three might make plenty of players decide to just remove it from their decks completely.
