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
Lol they actually think making a 9 mana 7/7 into an 8 mana 5/5 is a buff
"Buff" means no dust refund.
For cards where the effect is clearly powerful, mana buffs mean more than stats. If I could play willow out on turn 4, even as a 0/1, its still going to be objectively better than as a 7/7 on 9 in a vast majority of cases.
The thing with Willow is that her effect is to make a lot of stats so her own stats do matter. Personally I think the Mana Reduction and Stat Change is a buff when we get more big Demons but right now it's already super rare to play Willow on curve that this weakens the card more than anything.
The change makes her highroll better, Willow on curve with a big Demon in hand and deck. But it makes the most common play worse, Willow on turn 12 or 13. This will change if we get a chunky Demon next expansion.
If there weren't already better ways to cheat out demons, for far cheaper, already you would be correct. But as it is its not.
All right pack it up gentlemen, Darkglare counterfeiting operations have officially been shut down.
1 mana draw 5 is now 1 mana draw 4... not much difference, your opponent always finds both Sinister Strikes and Eviscerates anyway.
I’ll take any nerf to Priest, but the problem is that the Mind Control mechanic is just inherently unfun to play against, its a Priest problem in general. Although now this finally has reasonable stats for effect
"Darkglare is a buff, Totem Goliath isn't" is quite a hot take
No way Darkglare is a buff, refreshing only 1 mana crystal makes it way worse
I may be biased since I'd love the dust from the Archwitch, but is it really a buff? It gets -2/-2 for 1-mana cost reduction with the same meh effect; maybe we are far from the vanilla days where 1-mana was 1/1 stats but still...
Well, consider whether making it a 3 mana 1/1 with the same effect would be a buff or a nerf. That would make it the most broken card in the game's history by a huge margin, but I only equated 1 mana for 1/1 in stats right?
Moving something from 9 to 8 mana has more implications than just costing 1 less. It lets you fit in 2 mana cards or a hero power alongside it, and in Willow's case removes the somewhat awkward part where you wanted to just play the 8 mana demon on turn 8 anyway, which would often leave you without a demon in hand for turn 9.
Also her effect isn't 'meh': the pool of big demons in Standard is, and that is subject to change as expansions come out.
But card effects are always evaluated as they are, right now, with the current pool. That's Standard. We may say after a expansion launches that we were wrong about a new card, but we don't go back to previous expansion cards to say 'hey, we were wrong about that one'. Maybe big demons warlock will see support in this year or the next, but it will need way more help than meh-Archwitch.
I agree you need to take the surrounding pool of cards into consideration when deciding whether a deck is good, but I think you can still treat the card's effect and the card pool independently for the purposes of saying whether an effect is strong or not.
Essentially I judge an effect by its potential in a hypothetical environment where it can reliably achieve what it is designed to do, even though any deck it is used in must of course be judged with the actual card pool in mind. So by my approach, all the cards that are fundamentally strong in Wild but barely used in Standard are truly strong cards that are limited by the card pool in Standard.
Really it's all just a difference in how we define things, but I do like that my approach lets me maintain 1 evaluation of each card across game modes, which feels right since the card itself doesn't change. I admit it leads to me insisting a lot of cards are good even if they have never had a meta presence, but I stand by that being the deck's fault, not the card's.
It took them forever to nerf Barnes (and I still don't know how necessary that truly was).
They do nothing to Secret Mage but give it more good cards.
But Darkglare has to die already? Really?
Dunno how much Wild do you play, but the last time Secret Mage got a lethal on me on turn 3 was... Never, i think.
And yeah, Barnes nerf was necessary.
It's harsh but I like the fact that they recognized that it was a serious problem in Wild even if the Standard counterpart will suffer.
is [Hearthstone Card (dark glare) Not Found] really dead? it's still a decent card.. you can chain Flame Imps with him and also he still triggers Flesh Giant
also he doesn't require coin anymore to play on turn 2.. so that's something and having 2 on board is like nothing happened.. with the nerf to rogue it's probably a little bit better?
Archwitch Willow at 9 was weird.. really I thought the card was alright but it was indeed quite weak.. at 8 it's much more viable the difference between 8 mana and 9 is HUGE.. it means it comes up much faster.. her stats don't matter much she could've been a 1/1 for what's it's worth..
Totem Goliath is a cool card but it was really overcosted and as a 4/5 with no immediate threat he was often ignored at 5 attack he is more likely to be targeted for being removed from the board and 1 overload leas is quite huge for a tempo deck.
Secret Passage is still busted, even at 3 cards it's still would be meta defining... dunno why they think Rogue needs such a powerful card.
Cabal Acolyte is a card I underrated, I mean.. probably not on the reveal but I didn't play with him.. mainly cause I am missing cards for priest though :/ even at -2 hp I think it's still worth.
Secret Passage is still busted. Although limiting it to 3 cards could make the card utterly useless. My suggestion would be to up the cost to (2) because that would require a little more finessing to get it out in the earlier stages of the game, but still not make it less likely to play.
As for Darkglare the utility has gone substantially down. It will probably still be seen in play but not nearly as abusive as it is currently. Regardless of the stats, having it out there to reset 2 mana each time you take damage in a class that is known for really pushing hard on the cards that hurt you but bring pain as well... it was kinda powered for that ONE build. NOW players will need to find a way to explode on 1-2 turns with 2 of them on deck, but the days of getting out 2+ giants by T4 are going away.
Because otherwise there's no reason to play any rogue deck without galakrond being in it.
Without any decent finisher like leeroy in the mix, rogue decks can't really do much outside of galakrond honestly.
And darkglare is dead. The only reason in standard to play him is because you can strategically dump your hand on turn 3 and play a flesh giant. Now its only application is to dump 2 cards or rely on a turn 5 play with 2 of em'
Dunno, zoolock can have quite a lot of draw, the card was already good just as a cheap unit.. Sure you can't do those crazy combos but the card should still be good in a zoo deck.. It'd a decent 2 drop the deck doesn't have many anyway I wouldn't underestimate it.
I sense Stockholm syndrome.. Just like with deny and will of ionia in LoR the card is kinda busted I don't think it's a remotely fair card.. It's something that used to cost around 5 mana (myra's unstable element) but w/e at least it' s a bit less tilting to play against post nerf.
Thanks you for pointing this out. I never really liked Galakrond Rogue, feels so out of class identity. I understand that some enjoyed it,but not me. A classic cheaty, stealth decks feel much better, and aggro really needed a push (in Wild, too).