Hearthstone dev answers questions about balancing Pirates, Hunter, and Priest

Hearthstone players could debate the game’s balancing issues until the cows come home.

Whenever a new expansion is released, players are quick to vent their frustrations on the forums. Though any message board can play host to rude people unwilling to contribute to the discussion, things on the Hearthstone forums are civil for the most part. One huge benefit to Blizzard’s official forums is the possibility that a game dev can join the discussion at any moment.

That’s exactly what happened recently when Hearthstone developer August Dean Ayala chimed in on a few posts to give his thoughts on balancing Warrior, Priest, and Hunter. On one of the posts that Ayala chimed in on, players were discussing the necessity of the nerf to Ancharrr. The card is a Warrior Weapon that’s a mainstay in Pirate decks for the class and it recently had its durability reduced from three to two.

Some players felt Ancharrr didn’t need a nerf because Pirate Warrior is much less common than Galakrond Warrior. Other players argued that the nerf was deserved due to the deck’s stellar win rate early in the expansion.

Ayala said that Ancharrr may not have been nerfed under normal circumstances in Hearthstone history. The dev said the influx of card changes in this expansion has little to do with those cards being quite powerful and more to do with the fact that the team wanted to try a different approach to the cadence in which they make card changes.

Ayala expanded on the advantages and disadvantages of making changes as opposed to waiting. The dev pointed out that fewer changes might motivate more players to deck build and create new solutions as opposed to relying on the team to fix things that appear to be slightly out of line. You can read Ayala’s full comments with regard to Pirate Warrior here.

Pirate Warrior fans and haters weren’t the only ones graced by Ayala’s presence, though. The dev also chimed in on a post discussing the need for balance changes for Hunter and Priest. The post was full of players airing their grievances about Blizzard’s decision to not nerf Priest or Hunter despite their stellar win rates at certain ranks.

Ayala claimed that the reason the team has chosen not to make changes to Priest or Hunter in this patch was because of a trickle-down effect on the meta that starts in Legend and moves down to ranks 17 and 18. Ayala said the team expects the population of decks like Face Hunter to decrease as players experiment with new decks as they climb.

Ayala said that if Face Hunter continues to have a high population after 16.2 has been out for a bit, the team will likely change the deck in some way to create a more varied experience. You can see Ayala’s full comments on Face Hunter here.