Hearthstone’s most recent expansion – Rastakhan’s Rumble – hit the game on December 4, introducing 135 new cards and a number of cool thematic, and mechanical, touches. Now, when a new set drops, players typically have at least a couple of months of play before any adjustments (aka nerfs) are made to cards. This time, however, Team 5 surprised the community with a lightning fast patch only two weeks later, addressing a host of older cards that were proving problematic, including nerfs to Nourish and Wild Growth - two cards that have been included in almost every Druid deck since Hearthstone was in beta.

The changes made a massive difference to the game, drastically reducing the power and popularity of Druid, while also bringing Odd Paladin down a notch and nuking Kingsbane Rogue and Shudderwock Shaman. Now that the dust has settled, and we’ve welcomed our new Hunter overlords, I caught up with Lead Final Designer Dean Ayala to chat about the timing of the changes and the subsequent health of the game.

IGN: Let’s discuss the nerfs. These were the fastest post-set release changes ever. Were you always planning on making the changes early, or was there a tipping point that led to that timing?

Dean Ayala: I think really, we were just sitting around, talking about what was going to be the thing that’s good for the game now and good for the game in the future. Druid had been pretty popular for a really long time, and specifically Nourish and Wild Growth had been on our list of cards to change for quite some time. What it came down to was we had the resources to do it, we could do it at that time, and we thought – we could wait a month or so, and do it normal timing, or we could do it now. And just thinking about – was the game going to be more fun for the next month if we did the changes when we did them, and we thought the answer was yes, so we just decided to do it early.

Nourish and Wild Growth had been on our list of cards to change for quite some time.

So it really wasn’t very different in terms of deciding when to do things than normal. We were just more sure that this was the right timing for it. Usually, in the past, when we make some changes, we do it a couple of months in because we’re giving the meta a long time to breathe and we’re not really sure where things are going to get shaken out, and a lot of decks are changing, but I think specifically for Druid they were on a path that we were pretty sure where they were going to go in the next month, and there wasn’t a tonne of experimentation going on there, so we just felt that doing it early was the right call.

IGN: I think the community was really happy with the timing. Does knowing that the nerfs to Wild Growth and Nourish are coming down the pike impact the cards that you planned for Druid for this set? Could you have nerfed those cards with the set release so then you could take advantage of the change right from the get-go with the cards Druid gets?

Dean Ayala: Certainly it impacts the kind of balance work that we do on the next set. For example, this week and next week are some of the last weeks that we’re working on set balance for the first set of this year. So when we’re looking at what Druid is doing now, we’re definitely looking at them in a post-Nourish and Wild Growth world. It’s definitely impacting the kind of stuff that they can do in the next expansion.

In terms of card design, a lot of that stuff we have locked in pretty early. We’ll certainly change designs – say when Shudderwock is really powerful and we thought that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to make Shudderwock even more powerful, we pulled back a little bit on some of those cards. And we’ll change designs when need be, but a lot of the changes that we’re making now, for the first set of this year are mostly balance related.

It certainly has an impact, and I think that whenever we do nerfs for a class, especially when we nerf more than one card, the reaction right away tends to be a huge dip in popularity, whereas over time I think people get used to what the new world looks like and are building decks without those two cards, and eventually those decks become a little bit better. It’s just like with anything, the first time around when there’s a set of cards and you’re not really sure what to do with them, and the world’s changing, then it’s hard to find exactly what the right version of the deck is, but I think when you take those core pieces out of Druid it just takes players a little bit of time to really figure out – what do you do with this class now that we’ve been so used to doing this one particular thing for a very long time.

IGN: Let’s talk about the bigger picture. I’m curious to know whether the sets released in 2018 were a conscious effort to bring the overall power level down a little bit – to have a true reset when the next Standard rotation happens. The sets in 2018 were really fun, but they didn’t have things on the power level of some of the Death Knights, or Quests, or Legendary weapons. Cards that had a really big impact on the meta game – single cards with crazy power. Was that a strategic decision? Or was it just how things have panned out?

Dean Ayala: On balance in particular, I think the metric that most people look at when they’re talking about what sets made an impact - they’re looking at decks and they’re splitting off percentages, and they’re saying – hey, what percentage of cards from the new set are being used? That’s not necessarily how we look at what changed in Hearthstone. In particular, I would say the single archetypes that have been affecting Hearthstone the most in the last year or so are the odd and even decks, and when you’re looking at, like, Odd Paladin and… the percentage of new cards in these decks, it’s not actually that high, but is the strategy different? Does the strategy feel newer and something a little bit different than what Paladins had been doing previously? I think the answer to that question is yes. So as long as players are experimenting with new things and there’s new archetypes out there that’s really what we’re shooting for.

As long as players are experimenting with new things and there's new archetypes out there that's really what we're shooting for.

But certainly, a lot of the Death Knights were extremely powerful. A lot of the stuff from Kobolds & Catacombs, and Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Un’goro were very powerful. And I think just by nature of those sets going away – just by going from six sets to four sets when the new rotation set comes out – you’re going to see a spike downward for power level. But the goal is always – we want there to be new archetypes. We want there to be new strategies for players to do. We want you to be able to log in and for the game to feel different.

And whether that means that there’s a few cards that make all these new archetypes – that’s okay for us, or whether that means there’s 15 new cards in every deck – that would be really awesome too. But ultimately the goal is just – does the game feel different and exciting when you log in on the [new] expansion? However we can accomplish that is good.

IGN: In a broad sense, how happy are you guys with the post-nerf meta?

Dean Ayala: Pretty happy, I would say. The popularity and power level of Hunter is pretty high right now, so that’s something that we’re keeping a pretty close eye on. It’s been stabilising a little bit, but we’re still looking at it pretty closely. We have meta reports that come in every single day and we monitor not only where stuff is, but where is it trending; where do we think things are going to be in a month or two months, or where do we think things are going to be in the month leading into the next expansion. And if we feel like that’s going to be a really positive environment, we won’t make any changes, but if we feel like there’s some things we can do to make a major impact, then we will.

The popularity and power level of Hunter is pretty high right now, so that's something that we're keeping a pretty close eye on.

IGN: Right. I guess the good thing about Hunter is that there’s at least four viable archetypes, and they’re quite different from each other. I mean, Spell Hunter is obviously really different to Midrange Hunter.

Dean Ayala: Yeah... And the Midrange Hunter that plays a lot of low cost beasts is very different to the Cube Hunter that’s trying to play more of a late game/combo thing. So the stuff that’s out there for Hunter is actually really exciting. It’s just like with any class – even if the decks are really fun, if they reach a popularity where all you’re playing against is one class, and even though the decks are quite different, if you’re losing to Kill Command over and over again, or you’re seeing Animal Companion in every game, those experiences can start to feel like – well, it would be nice if I started playing against something else.

I think the Hunter decks are actually pretty fun, but just like at any time – the most popular thing, the most powerful thing, we’re keeping a close eye on it to see if it’s something that’s still going to be really fun for the next three months, or if it’s something that we should change.

IGN: Cool. Last question on card balance. I thought I’d check in and get your current feeling about Big Priest in Wild, because it’s a perennial thing that the community is always talking about.

Dean Ayala: Wild’s interesting right now. Big Priest isn’t actually something that’s being played at a super high rate. I was actually looking at the meta report pretty recently. It’s something that is just so polarising, you have people who are like – this is my least favourite thing to play against ever, then you have a whole number of people who are probably down-voted on places like Reddit, but it’s their favourite deck, right?

Any time you have a deck with a win rate that doesn’t really correlate at all with its play rate, to some degree you have to believe – hey, this deck isn’t that good. People are playing it at a higher rate than they should if they’re just playing to win. So, for a lot of people, this is their favourite deck, and the strategy is kind of cool on a base level – you’re just trying to summon these giant minions. You have this group of six or seven minions that you’re trying to pull out and resurrect over time, so conceptually it’s a pretty cool deck. It’s just… when these turns happen on turn four… it can feel like – well, what could I possibly have done, in order to counteract that?

Any time you have a deck with a win rate that doesn't really correlate at all with its play rate, to some degree you have to believe â hey, this deck isn't that good.

We still consider making changes to any environment as a pretty big deal. We don’t like to make change just for the sake of change, we like to make it with a goal in mind where we’re sure that we’re changing things for the better. And I think in Wild, we’ve actually talked a lot about Barnes, so we don’t exactly have a final answer on this, but it’s one of those things where you can definitely see the good on both sides. It’s a lot of people’s favourite deck. It can be really polarising. It definitely falls in line with a lot of the things that we say when we change early game cards, even going back to stuff like Undertaker. It does fill that role of – it’s the really powerful early game thing that’s hard to deal with. So… [those are] some of the reasons we still talk about it – every week, really, or every couple of weeks, we’re thinking about – hey, do we make a change to this card or not? But it’s not something we’re looking to do right now.

IGN: The deck could still survive even if you made a change to Barnes. So you could maybe keep everybody happy. Or happy-ish.

Dean Ayala: Yeah. I think that’s a good point because even Resurrect Priest – right now – exists in Standard, totally without Barnes in it, and it fills some of those same fantasies that Big Priest fills, which is something that, also, we talk about – okay, do we make a change to Barnes and will the players that have that taken away from them, will they still have something that’s really fun for them? I’m not really sure of the answer to that right now, but it’s something that we talk a lot about.

Cam Shea is Editor in Chief for IGN's Australian content team and spends too much time playing Hearthstone. He's on Twitter.