Blizzard may remove Hearthstone’s Divine Spirit

For many Hearthstone fans, Priest has become one of the game’s most problematic classes thanks to one specific combo: Divine Spirit followed by Inner Fire. And after caster Simon “Sottle” Welch tweeted out an image showcasing his 100-percent win rate with the class, senior game designer August Dean “Iksar” Ayala revealed that Blizzard is working on a fix for these hard-hitting spells.

“We have some plans to remove DS, but it comes with some other sweeping changes,” Iksar said. “If we end up doing that (a big maybe) it will probably be around set rotation timeline because we don’t feel like it’s as much an issue for current Hearthstone as it is for future Hearthstone.”

Divine Spirit is a two-cost Priest spell that doubles a minion’s health. The card’s strength lies in its ability to be combined with Inner Fire, a one-cost Priest spell that changes a minion’s attack to be equal to its health.

Players often must neutralize an enemy minion before their Priest opponent can cast the two spells together and snowball the game. But because both cards are low in cost, Priest users can often use them in one turn to beef up a minion that’s been left on the board, creating a difficult situation for their opponent if they don’t have access to any Silences.

Removing Divine Spirit will prevent players from being able to snowball a game off the back of this combo. Priest decks still have access to spells that increase minions’ health without going as far as to double them, so Inner Fire will still be usable in combination with other spells.

As Iksar said, however, the removal of Divine Spirit from the game is still a “big maybe,” which means fans shouldn’t get their hopes up that this will be the plan of action Blizzard chooses to take.