An update from the Hearthstone team this afternoon has given us the first-ever banned card in the Wild format - Stealer of Souls.
This is quite unexpected news. Although players have been complaining about the card since its introduction in the Wailing Caverns set since it sees nasty combos with Mal'Ganis and Violet Illusionist, when bad interactions between cards occur, the first step Blizzard has taken in the past is to nerf the card. Seeing as how this card can't be nerfed without an overhaul to how the effect works, removing the flavor, Blizzard has gone the route of Wizards of the Coast and Magic the Gathering and simply removed the card from the format.
The card should be removed from Wild next week with a patch on Wednesday. Dust refunds will be available after the patch goes live and we'll get patch notes for the change on Tuesday, June 15. No other balance changes that will affect the Masters Tour Dalaran event are planned as per the Hearthstone Esports team.
Hearthstone's Alec has confirmed that the current plan for when the card rotates in 2023 is to make a change and remove the ban. If they decide to make adjustments to card before then, we can expect Blizzard to reconsider the ban.
Quote From @PlayHearthstone We’ll be banning Stealer of Souls in Wild in a small update next week. Stealer of Souls will still be playable in other formats, and will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after this change goes live.
The patch note for this change will be shared on Tuesday, and the patch itself is expected to go live on Wednesday.
Current plan is to adjust the card at that point in time and remove the ban. If any adjustments happen to Stealer of Souls before that (ex/ a standard nerf) we'll also re-evaluate its inclusion in Wild. (Alec)
FYI - there will be no balance changes that affect Masters Tour Dalaran before the event, (HSEsports)
Comments
1. Dude just read his comment. He said Wild ladder.
I think you're the one whos not reading his reply thoroughly. He's spesifically talking about Wild.
This is something that was going to happen sooner or later. The card pool in Wild is expanding rapidly each year and new mechanics are added to keep the game fresh in Standard. Wild, however, just has too many cards and too many interactions. If they spend time researching every single possible interaction then they will waste a lot of time that could be used for designing new cards, rewards and balancing other modes.
People say that they don't care about Wild but i believe that they just don't have enough people to work on balancing and testing cards for a format that only expands infinitely. And they don't have the final word when it comes to recruiting more people to work on the game. It's something that's out of their control. So, they finally decided that enough is enough. They simply can't afford to spend dev time to test everything that could happen in Wild when a new card is released and they don't want to nuke cards out of existence as soon as they are released because it would be a lot of time and resources wasted. The card isn't seeing play in Standard right now but it still has a lot of time on the format so they don't want to nerf it and destroy any chances of it ever seeing play. Changing specific mechanics or cards just for Wild is also going to cause a lot of confusion for anyone that decides to try the format in the future so they opted to keep things as is for the sake of consistency. It's a very courageous step and i respect them for taking risks.
This did not need to happen at all. They can keep the game balanced without bans, all they needed to do is to adhere the very basic logic of card games. Card games are balanced around costs. At certain costs, you can expect certain power levels and certain levels of responses. If you start fucking around with the cost, things start breaking. I would understand if there was some unforseen interaction where, say, 2-3 cards, when put together, allowed you to pay life for cards and then you slap immune on top of it as a 3rd/4th piece and it's broken. But no, they literally created a one-card enabler for mana cheating. It didn't have to be Immune that breaks it, it could be an overabundance of armor gain or healing and you have the same issue. You can avoid all of that if you just don't make cards that say "you now aren't limited by mana". Mana is there for a reason. You take it away and you've suddenly removed the core balancing mechanic you put into the game in the first place. They saw what happened with Bloodbloom and then they printed a better version of it.
The cards still have a cost associated to them when the effect of the card triggers. It's not free (not without immune). Warlock doesn't have access to armor gain and healing is also limited. The class is all about self-sacrifice so this mechanic works perfectly for the class. The card can't really break anything in Standard because immunity cards aren't available. It's pretty clear that the card wasn't designed with Wild in mind. They are probably not taking Wild in consideration for new cards anymore because, as i said in my other post, it's just not possible to balance a mode that expands so rapidly and infinitely. It requires too much time and manpower to evaluate all possible interactions and that slows down development progression for other modes. At this point, they just accepted that they have to get rid of problematic cards in Wild to keep things working without hurting deck building possibilities in Standard through nerfs.
Removing specific mechanics like mana discounts (or mana cheating as people now like to call it) will hurt deck building possibilities. Most combo decks relies on mana discounts to function and this type of deck has a dedicated playerbase. If they stop giving people the ability to make combos out of a big combination of cards, they will lose a lot of players and that's something they want to avoid at all costs. Combo decks must be allowed to exist.
Really? This is already embarrassing...
It is a real shame that a company (even a small indie one) resorts to such belated, sloppy and lazy solutions ... the easiest and most absurd solution that does not fix the problem, but only hides it ("temporarily" at best ). What a lack of balls, it's pathetic.
Wild mode was promised to be that, wild, where everything is allowed and where all cards should be de-nerfed... but now it turns out that there are banned cards? Wild mode no longer has a reason to be nor serves any purpose anymore. This is clearly an insult to those of us who are exclusively wild players.
But worst of all, the most outrageous thing is that a company that does not stop monetizing the game to earn more and more money continually commits atrocities such as publishing cards that were an obvious problem for anyone with some common sense and basic knowledge of the game. Don't they check the possible negative effects of every new card before publishing them? Obviously not, since it is not the first time. For God sake, these people don't deserve to charge a single cent, because they don't do their job at all, they just continually improvise. They should all be fired.
Holy fuck dude, eat some snickers or something. It's literally just a single card, you're just trying to find a reason to be angry.
It's true, you're right, I may have overstep being too "vehement", but it cannot be denied that I have only told the truth, it hurts whoever hurts.
What I love is how my comment has been voted negatively to death, but nevertheless nobody has dared to answer me trying to refute me, perhaps because refuting the reality would be impossible? It is obvious that people do not like to hear the truth...
Maybe that's because this post is lacking any constructivity and is nothing but the whining of a little boy whose favourite toy has been taken.
Your most recent post however, contains a preferable solution which I for one could totally get behind.
Yep, you are right, my apologies... I suppose that when I learned about the option chosen by Blizzard, I went mad and I just expressed all my anger and rage without contributing anything positive.
Brofist, my man.
Personally, I much prefer this over nerfing the card into unrecognizability. I wish they'd print an unnerfed but banned version of Warsong Commander so I could play OG Patron Warrior in a duel against a friend, for example.
I don't think personal attacks and rage will solve anything for anyone.
They should ban all of the cheat cards and stop making them.
That's the point here. There's so much cost cheating in this game that it stopped being fun long ago.
I wonder why they keep doing this instead of something actually healthy and balanced. I mean, they could even increase mana to 15 points and hero health to 50 or so. Hopefully it would mean not dying by turn 6 as well as combo decks having to do something else than draw the whole deck in 2 turns then killing you...
I disagree to an extent. Yes it's overdone but I don't think it shouldn't exist. Some cheating is okay. I love cards like Bloodbloom. Cards that give access to some form of cheating, at a cost is cool. Stealer of Souls is over the top. It needs to either be "Demons you draw" or "the first card you draw a turn" or even just have it's damage go past imunities.
Emperor Thaurissan I think is fine. Takes some time and drawing the right cards to get discounts. While Incanter's Flow just hits too much at once. Easily reducing 20+ mana in a spell heavy deck on turn 2.
Aldor Attendant is too much as well. I'd want it was more like Dragon Consort where you use it to plan future turns. Instead it combos a spell that returns to your hand cost 0 for a game making it too much.
I am sure there is more but I think you get my point. Reducing cost is fun and makes some fun combos an interactions. However it being unrestricted or bringing things to zero can be overpowering and unfun.
Edit: Also with h0lysatan and Sorcerer's Apprentice either shouldn't bring stuff to zero or be more like Pint-Sized Summoner where the longer it's alive it gets value.
LOL. Have to agree. If one card can get banned, I can't wait for the other card as well.
Next priority, Sorcerer Apprentice.
Amen.
Mana cheating to the extreme we have it now in Hearthstone is absolute bullshit.
Disagree.
To me the problem is that the cards are supposed to cost health, but if you're immune, then they cost nothing. That's what needs to be fixed. It's a cost; you should be required to pay that cost if you want to play the card. The obvious thing to do is this: when you are immune, you are not able to play cards that cost health.
If I could make my wallet immune, it would prevent thieves from stealing from it. It would not get me everything for free.