Hearthstone Game Designer, Alec Dawson, put out a series of tweets explaining the upcoming September balance changes.
- Secret Passage: Replaces your hand with 4 cards (down from 5).
- Cabal Acolyte: Has 4 Health (down from 6).
- Totem Goliath: Has 5 Attack (up from 4) and Overload: (1) (down from 2).
- Archwitch Willow: Changed to a 8-Mana 5/5 (from 9-Mana 7/7).
- Darkglare: Changed to a 2-Mana 2/3 (from 3-Mana 3/4) and only refreshes one Mana Crystal (down from 2).
You can see what he has to say down below. The balance changes arrive on September 8 with Hearthstone Patch 18.2.
Quote From Alec Dawson Tons of amazing content coming out over the next few weeks. You may have also seen some balance changes. Overall, the meta is very balanced so our approach will be light unless there are greater gameplay concerns.
First up is Secret Passage, one of the top cards across all Rogue archetypes. Going down to 4 cards takes some of the raw power out but still gives you a solid draw option for a more aggressive package. Some future protection in this change, the question was when not if.
Moving on to Cabal Acolyte, going to 4 Health will tone down some of its defensive capabilities on turn 4 and post-Spellburst effect. Acolyte was one of the best performing cards in Priest and we want these sort of effects (mind control-esque) to be a deckbuilding choice.
Then there's Darkglare, this is a change mainly done for Wild. In Wild, Darkglare Warlock is fairly rampant and creates early board states that make for a lot of non-games. The change to 2/3 and 1 mana being refreshed is aimed to retain some of its identity in a smaller form.
Finally, we have two buffs! With the Darkglare change, we wanted to give Warlock a buff. Archwitch Willow going to 8 mana makes for an intriguing late game option for heavier Warlock builds. We played at this mana cost for much of development and thought it was right to go back.
The change to Totem Goliath is more of a correction, the 2 overload was too limiting for a deck that wants to follow up with another strong play for 5 mana (bloodlust, second goliath). We'll continue to monitor how Shaman performs in the meta and see if other buffs are necessary.
Thanks again for the feedback throughout the first month of Scholomance. Excited to see how the meta continues to develop!
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Comments
Happy for Willow, game is much better when legendaries you wait for packs and packs are actually powerful, and you don't have to fear getting cards that are so obviously underpowered, that you wonder did they even test them. Totem change is welcome, too. Most of experienced players recognize these cards instantly after reveal. I have to admit that legendaries we got this expansion are much, much better than before, both in terms of power and uniqueness.
Maybe the most important, Blizz willingness to buff is always making me more optimistic about game's future. I think buffs like these are necessary and refreshing.
Now, it would be great if they would put at least one bigger demon in warlock Classic set, so they don't have to always print new cards to support the Big archetype. I'm not asking for Voidlord-level demon, but, something. Willow may still be playable with Dreadlords and Broodmothers, for now.
a little bit of accidental comedy for you:
Is Warlock making a comeback? Zoo Warlock has seen a surge in play that is completely exclusive to the top legend meta at the end of August. New builds running Pen Flingers have emerged with strong individual results, so it might be an indication that the archetype has found a new level or two.
-from the Vicious Syndicate Data Reaper Repoort that just came out
Apparently Blizzard disagrees
Worst part is darkglare getting batted for being too OP in wild, not standard apparently.
As though there aren't better targets in wild cough* Open the Waygate cough*
Quest mage is easily countered by any aggressive deck. It's unfun to play against, sure, but not a meta tyrant.
Darkglare warlock, on the other hand, was reaching a point where its worst matchup is the mirror, akin to sn1p-sn4p warlock back in the days.
This nerf was absolutely necessary for the wild metagame's health.
I mean I think it's kinda fair to not just forget about Wild, but it sucks for Standard because there really aren't any other competitive Warlock decks around
Darkglare is just dead (probably for the better)
Cabal Acolyte was an annoying turdstain and he deserved it. Priest didn't need a 4-mana 2/6 taunt that comes with a 1-mana Mind Control.
Secret Passage is basically just a power curb, but I guess that's the idea. If they wanted to kill the card they would have increased the mana cost. It's still going to be a staple, but it's not gonna win you the game as much.
Goliath buff seems...a bit over the top. The card wasn't bad at all, it's just that Totem Shaman sucks. Now it curves into bloodlust and is just a good card for Shaman in general. Maybe some sort of token/totem midrange Shaman can exist? Either way, overbuffing the card this much doesn't give me much hope for future Shaman sets
Willow buff is actually pretty pog. I think the most interesting part is the nerf to her stats though. It doesn't really make sense to go from a 9-mana 7/7 to an 8-mana 5/5 (she would have been just fine with the buff alone), which makes me think there's a lot of Big Demon support coming in the future and they're essentially balancing around that.
Darkglare officially dead. Funny how it went from being completely ignored to nerf in less than a month after literally 1 year of being on the sidelines. (Thanks to Knivesout for pointing it out that its only been like 4 months)
Archwitch Willow buff was not only necessary, its basically only fair now at 8 mana. How this ever became 9 mana during dev testing is beyond me.
I think Tour Guide is the card that made Darkglare playable. It was strong before, but missed some support. And sometime only one card can be the missing puzzle piece which makes a decent deck OP.
I actually think its Flesh Giant for making pain warlock playable in the first place. But tour guide undoubtedly helped it along.
[Hearthstone Card (Darkglare) Not Found] has only been a card since April 7, 2020....
lol, I honestly thought it was an uldum card. Oh well.
I'm happy Totem Goliath and Willow got buffed, now Totem Shaman may become more viable.
Willow still won't see play unless they add some stronger demons to Warlock's arsenal.
Cabal Acolyte not having 6 health is NICE for the people playing against priest, he was just as strong as Hidden Infiltrator, actually stronger, since he didn't need to die to activate his effect
Willow is not not buffed, because her stats are complete garbage now.
likely future proofing. We're getting more big demon support for sure
If you played back then, think of it like 8 mana Call of the Wild, compared to 9 mana after the nerf (sorry for not linking the card, don't know how). A card that was played in every Hunter deck, suddenly disappeared from meta.
With power (here, mana cheat) cards, it's all about timing. Getting two big bodies with Willow a turn earlier is a very significant upgrade, 2/2 stat loss on one body is negligable downside for the gain.
Call of the Wild is a bit different since the 2 damage from the hero power also helped out a nice bit on 10.
To get a card to appear you have to click on the button that says "Card" up on the toolbar. Then this will appear: [card.]CardID or Name[/card.]. Write the name of the card inside of that so it looks like this: [card.]Call of the Wild[/card.]. And that should work.
Call of the Wild.
Thank you, not that hard at all! :) I just didn't like failing comments, so I didn't try enough to make it work. 😁
For expensive minions, stats are usually far less important than abilities and cost. I'm not sure that cutting the stats was necessary, but I do think that being able to play her one turn earlier makes her a better card despite the lower stats.
True. I don't get why everyone's pointing out how bad the stats changes are when its obvious that she's going to be pulling out at least 10/14 worth of stats in most cases.
5/5 is still respectable in any case.