Five card nerfs will hit the meta in next week's update.
Five Hearthstone cards are to be nerfed in a balance patch that’s scheduled to go live on Tuesday 5th February 2019.
In each case, the cards are having their mana cost increased in order to help tame their dominance in the Hearthstone meta.
Here’s how each card will be affected:
- Cold Blood – Mana cost increased to 2 from 1
- Flametongue Totem – Mana cost increased to 3 from 2
- Equality – Mana cost increased to 4 from 2
- Hunter’s Mark – Mana cost increased to 2 from 1
- Lesser Emerald Spellstone – Mana cost increased to 6 from 5
A blog post confirming the changes was published on the game’s official site yesterday evening.
To summarise, while the developers of Hearthstone want to see Classic and Basic cards form a core part of each class’s playstyle, these particular cards are proving highly prevalent within all metas.
This dilutes the diversity of both the deck building choices available to all players, and the broader game experience for the whole playerbase.
As the team notes, Lesser Emerald Spellstone is the only non-Basic or Classic card to be nerfed on this occasion. The developers have stated that this card should have a mid to late-game presence, rather than be used as an aggressive tempo play.
As noted on Twitter, the patch is currently scheduled to go live on Tuesday 5th February 2019.
You will be able to disenchant any of these nerfed cards for a full dust refund for two weeks after that date, although Flametongue Totem and Hunter’s Mark cannot be disenchanted as they are Basic cards.
