Hearthstone’s latest and possibly final update to be launched soon; mage decks beware!

So Hearthstone’s beta seems to be drawing to a close and all that’s left for Blizzard to do is tweak its cards to find that perfect balance. Community manager Zeriya posted that the update which will go live shorly will tweak the following cards: Unleash the Hounds, Sylvanas Windrunner, Blood Imp, Defender of Argus, Pyroblast, Dark Iron Dwarf, Abusive Sergeant, Warsong Commander, Charge and Novice Engineer.

Pyroblast is my nemesis

A basic summary is that mage decks are getting balanced to bring them in line with other characters. Most of the changes are to the mana costs or creature cards in order to make them more or less useable. A few other’s abilities are being altered to make them slightly less powerful.

Below are the three alterations I find particularly interesting along with Blizzard’s explanations;

Pyroblast’s mana cost is now 10 (up from 8)

The 8-cost Pyroblast made for an un-interactive experience where the Mage only needed to do 10 damage during the course of a game and then double Pyroblast you for the win. We want Mages to be more interactive with the opponent to achieve victory, rather than delay the game until they can Pyroblast.

Novice Engineer is now a 1/1 (down from 1/2)

The Novice Engineer was played in most non-rush decks (and even some rush decks) due to its cost and power. Similar in reasoning to our Defender of Argus change, we want players to have an option of what cards they put in their decks.

Sylvanas Windrunner’s mana cost is now 6 (up from 5)

Sylvanas had power and stats that made it a bit too powerful compared to other 5-cost cards, which made it automatically included in many decks. We want players to have an option of what cards they put in their decks, so cards that feel like they must be in all decks (especially Neutral ones) are not ideal.”

The biggest change (which I see as an improvement but many may not) is that Pyroblast has had its cost raised from 8 mana to 10. Pyroblast is a spell card which does 10 damage and can be directed at the player or a minion. Unfortunately because of its incredibly high damage mages often play for time, stalling the player and doing minimal damage and then wiping them out in two turns.

Making Pyroblast the only card in the game which requires full mana was a very smart move and will go a long way to balancing out mage decks and prevent a play style which was frustrating and tempting at the same time. Unfortunately this doesn’t fix the problem in the video below.

Novice Engineer is probably the card I see most often because of its ability to allow you to draw another card and its cheap 2 mana price. However with 1 / 2 stats its makes I can see why it might be considered slightly overpowered for its cost. Not a massive change but will definitely affect my deck.