Hearthstone’s next adventure, One Night in Karazhan, begins rolling out this week. New cards are always an exciting time for the game, and this add-on brings 45 total with it. But there’s one card in particular that has a lot of Hearthstone fans talking, and they are not happy with it.
The card in question is Purify. It’s a new spell for priest players that costs two mana and has two effects. First, it silences a friendly minion. Then it draws a card. According to the reaction of the Hearthstone community at large, this isn’t just a bad card; it’s the shining example of how terrible the priest class has become in general.
For a great explanation of the reasons why, watch the video above, where popular Hearthstone streamer Kripparrian explains why he thinks Purify sucks.
What it breaks down to is this: Even the best Hearthstone players in the world have been struggling to make successful priest decks since this spring’s Whispers of the Old Gods expansion hit. In addition to not helping with those problems, Purify is a common card, which means it will show up much more frequently as a choice in Arena runs.
Kripparrian calls Purify a much worse version of the already rarely used priest spell Silence, which silences any minion on the board for zero mana cost. In fact, he believes Purify should cost zero mana as well, at which point it might be playable.
"Priest didn’t really get much help from its other cards," Kripparrian says in his video. "And priests got what I believe is the shittiest card in the game."
Following callouts from fan-favorite streamers, many fans freaking out on Reddit and even a petition to get the card removed, Hearthstone lead designer Ben Brode released a video discussing the controversial card. You can watch that for yourself below.
In the video, Brode says the Hearthstone team knows that Purify isn’t a great card but wants to make cards of different power levels for different reasons. He walks through the reasons the team decided on making the card cost two mana, but also says he believes it will work in some decks for players who want to challenge themselves.
Speaking to the power level of priests in general, Brode says it’s "fair criticism" for players to be upset that the class is so weak right now.
"I think we really misread the community sentiment going into this reveal," Brode says. "There was kind of a spotlight on the priest cards as we were revealing them, and Purify is absolutely the wrong card for that environment."
Brode goes on to say that he still believes Purify is good for the game and the set of new cards, but that perhaps it should have been paired with other much more powerful cards for that class. He says Blizzard will be watching how priest does when the One Night in Karazhan add-on hits and will "continue to push priest in future sets."
Speaking about Arena mode specifically, Brode says Blizzard is working on new tools to change how often cards show up in Arena based on factors other than the card rarity. In the meantime, the studio will be removing Purify from the Arena pool altogether.
For more on how priest works in One Night in Karazhan, you can check out our gameplay footage playing with the adventure’s new cards below. You can also take a look at our full playlist on YouTube for more Hearthstone videos.
