Iksar talks about ‘un-fun’ cards in Hearthstone

Below is a summary of what was learned from the interview with Dean “Iksar” Ayala (responsible for designing Hearthstone cards):

• Blizzard needs time to evaluate the problematic cards. If it’s just a “trend of the week”, that card probably doesn’t need to be changed.
• The team constantly evaluates the cards and plays the test every day, not just the days they discuss it publicly with the public.
• The team did not announce the exact changes on their social media accounts because they wanted the information to reach everyone in Hearthstone. Mistranslated information can lead to bad things.

Balance the cards

• The Naga Sea Witch (NSW) style deck is definitely not a “trend of the week”.
• For NSW, the team is looking at the card’s mana cost or overall change.
• Barnes used to be one of the cards on the list above, but not anymore. The vast majority of Wild decks have tools to handle Barnes.
• If the team wants to change the Hero Power of Odd Paladin received from Baku the Mooneater, they will probably need to change the Justicar Trueheart as well.
• The most obvious change Blizzard can make to Odd Paladin’s Hero Power is to change it to Silver Hand Recruit 2/2 instead of two Silverhand 1/1.
• If Odd Paladin needs an extra nerf, they’ll swap Silver Hand Recruit for another minion, either a new 2/2 or two 1/1.

Classes

• The current Paladin decks are weak against Cubelock making Cubelock still worth playing despite being countered by other decks.
• Hunter is fine right now, Blizzard doesn’t plan to change or test anything.

‘Un-fun’ cards (unfortunate to meet)

The following are discussed and included in the “un-fun potential”.

Iksar says not all of them will be changed if changes do happen.

You can read the details of what happened in Iksar’s Twitter Q&A here:

For NSW it’s one of those strategies that is pretty cool to see once in awhile but when it’s a core part of the meta it gets really in-fun to play against. Just like anything else, it takes some time to evaluate whether or not it’s going to be a flavor of the week…..

— August Dean Ayala (@IksarHS) May 6, 2018