If you’ve played Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft since December, you’re probably very familiar with one of its most overplayed cards. Well, Blizzard wants to fix that.
The publisher’s Hearthstone team announced that it is making a “balance change” to the Undertaker in its card battling game. Previously, this neutral card would get a boost of 1 point to both its attack and its health every time you played a minion with Deathrattle — and with the addition of even more units with that death condition thanks to the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion, it’s easy to pump up the 1-mana Undertaker quickly and overwhelm your opponent. In the upcoming patch for Hearthstone, Undertaker will only get a boost to its attack.
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This isn’t the first time Blizzard has “nerfed” a card, which is a term that gamers use to describe a developer dumbing down an overpowered item. The studio has regularly chopped down cards that it (and fans) have felt were overplayed, like the Hunter’s Unleash the Hounds or Starving Buzzard (making both cost more mana to play).
Sims says that you can expect more changes like this in the future.
“We will continue to make balance changes to Hearthstone when we feel they are necessary in order to increase the variety of cards seen at all levels of play, with the goal of making Hearthstone a more fun and interactive game for everyone,” she wrote.
Nerfing cards is likely the easiest and fastest way to shake up the balance of a game, but this will still leave many rarely used cards on the sideline.