It doesn’t happen very often, but Blizzard have announced some balance changes, nerfs, (buffs), coming in October. Probably to try and add some balance before the Last Call Championship matches and Blizzcon Finals.
There has been a lot of backlash from the community for some blatantly overpowered cards for some time. Yogg, Call of the Wild, Tuskarr Totemic are three of the worst offenders and they are all being hit by the nerf hammer.
This is the Yogg-Saron nerf/card balance change for Shaman coming in October.
As you can see, the card looks the same but the changes are huge. Yogg will now stop casting spells as soon as it dies, returns to your hand, transforms, or is silenced.
Seeing as Yogg has a high chance of killing itself this is a pretty big deal. Also, you will stack up all the Overload from the cards it casts now too.
So potentially you can spend 10 mana and have a turn that doesn’t do much. As well as being overloaded on your next turn. Interesting changes, but I think a lot of testing is needed to really see how these effects work out.
How Will This Change Affect the META?
It’s Tempo Mage and Druid that will affected mostly by this change. It definitely weakens these decks, but it also adds more stability to the game and less random crazy RNG.
It’s a change for the better and I think most people are looking forward to it, certainly the competitive scene and Pro’s are. We are entering a more competitive and skillful META, maybe!
Hearthstone Developers Comments
Here are comments directly from the developers about this change to Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End:
This is the most controversial card we’ve ever made. Some people LOVE Yogg, and others hate it. We felt like seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up. Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments. Yogg is relatively weak in power level for nearly every class at every level, but is slightly above average in 2 decks – Tempo Mage and Token Druid. We didn’t want to nerf it so much that it couldn’t still be a fun card for players who currently love Yogg. Yogg-Saron will now stop casting spells if, during Yogg-Saron’s battlecry, it is destroyed, silenced, transformed, or returned to its owner’s hand. We tried a bunch of things and we think this is a significant enough nerf that it could reduce the amount it gets seen (especially in tournaments), while still maintaining the dream for people who love the card.
In addition to the above changes, we will be addressing the bug where cards with Overload cast by Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End will not cause Overload to the player in a future update.