Nerfs ahoy! It looks like that balance meeting that took place yesterday was a success because Hearthstone's Alec Dawson is teasing an upcoming patch.
Hearthstone's 20.0.2 patch will go out early next week and include six card changes. We have not yet been given a breakdown on the exact changes, Alec says those details are coming "soon", but he does mention that they'd like to create more space for experimentation in this early Forged in the Barrens meta.
With that in mind, what do you think is going to be targeted?
Mage and Paladin are clearly outperforming everyone else right now, and Rogue has some nastiness to them as well - the three classes dominating the meta - so it isn't much of a surprise they are being hit. Although not confirmed, Pen Flinger seems like an appropriate choice given its popularity since its addition to Hearthstone. It also would not be surprising to see the crazy value generator, Deck of Lunacy, receive a hit alongside that dominant Far Watch Post which caused players to just leave games early on the Barrens.
The launch of Forged in the Barrens has been rough so far but with a quick reaction from Blizzard, and some potentially lethal nerfs, it could leave plenty of room for new strategies to takeover, reshaping the meta quite a bit.
Stay tuned to find out what the changes will be, whenever Blizzard makes the big announcement.
Quote From Alec Dawson Balance changes to go out early next week with 20.0.2. We'll be targeting some cards in Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral. Hoping to create more space for experimentation in the early Barrens meta and have a more diverse field of classes. 6 changes in total, details coming soon.
Comments
We are still stuck with the annoying watch posts though. Although I doubt they will do something about though, because it's the flavour of the expansion.
Don’t think First Day of School will get nerfed. Atleast I hope it won’t. Changing it to 1 mana kills it.
For Paladin:
Sword of the Fallen is just too good. Deck thinning and secret synergy is really awesome. It will most certainly lose a durability. Increasing the cost by (1) comes in at a close second, but the fact that it will nab 3 secrets is really soild
Hand of A'dal is a perfect tempo piece and usable at pretty much any point in the game. To blend with Paladin's theme, I can see this being brought down to +1/+1 or removing the bonus to health as a whole. Priest is like Pixar, is all about having the dump truck butt. So reducing the bonus to +1/+2 would be more in that realm.
Aldor Attendant is not only a solid T1 drop, but it makes a follow up turn with a buff just ridiculous. I can see this being pulled back to a 1/2 to keep it from getting too out of hand so quickly.
For Mage:
Deck of Lunacy gives way too much of a discount for the cards. Adding in the extra cards you get from C'Thun, the Shattered and you're staring down the barrel at a really efficient gattling gun of spells. I can see this being dropped to a (2) mana cost reduction to keep it viable, but not abused too much
Refreshing Spring Water is pretty much an autoinclude at this point in the meta. Given it's prominence in Mage decks, having the cost go up from (4) to (5) seems logical since it can be reduced with cards like Incanter's Flow and mana games with Mana Biscuit, the potential to draw through a number of cards with minimal cost is ridiculous. Reducing the mana on the back end rom (2) to (1) would also help nullify a lot of the abuse on this card.
For Neutral:
Pen Flinger is just so wonderfully good that it is hard to nerf it without totally killing it. There is little that can be done to it without outright turning it into Elven Archer. My thoughts would be that it will only target minions. Personally, I'd like to see it go along with the random target theme because I think that would be hilarious AND reduce it's prominence in decks but not outright kill the card.
I made a partial prediction somewhere else, but I guess I'll do the full thing here since we now know how many and which classes.
Efficient Octo-bot --> 3 health (down from 4)
Deck of Lunacy --> ... into random spells that cost (1) more (down from (3) more, still hoping they clean up the wording)
Refreshing Spring Water --> 5 mana (up from 4) -- On par with Arcane Intellect when you draw one minion
Sword of the Fallen --> 4 mana (up from 2) -- That's how much 3 secrets and a 1/3 weapon should cost.
Pen Flinger --> 2 mana (up from 1) -- Does this kill the card completely? I doubt it, but I also don't care.
Jandice Barov --> 6 mana (up from 5) -- Still quite playable, but not universally so.
There is nothing wrong with the watch posts. Leave the watch posts alone.
Sure, they can be frustrating to play against in the same way Annoy-o-Tron was frustrating back in the day (less so now), but that's not a reason to nerf them. The whole point of them is to slow the game down, and that's all they do. There's no clearly oppressive archetype that absolutely depends on watch posts. Any oppressive deck that uses them will find a way to be oppressive without them.
I dunno man, Far Watch Post on 2 feels like it wins the game against a deck that cares about early tempo.
Vulgar Homonculus was awesome and it was a 2/4 that you had to clear with a downside. Post is a 2/4 that you have to clear with an upside.
Predicting changes -
Deck of Lunacy - Spells that cost 2 more
Penflinger - Spellburst: Return this minion to your hand at the end of your turn.
Sword of the Fallen - Durability reduced to 2.
Refreshing Spring Water - 4 mana draw 2. If you draw a spell, refresh two mana.
Morshan Watchpost - Summons reduced to 2/1
Let's try to predict what is going to happen!
Paladin: Sword of the Fallen might be going down to 2 durability
Mage: Deck of Lunacy might cost 4
Rogue: (Dual class?) Jandice Barov going to 6 mana
Neutral: [Hearthstone Card (Pen Fingler) Not Found] could get or not a cost reduction to 0 (don't panic, have an idea) or stay at 1 mana and make it's spellburst effect "Return this to your hand, this costs 1 more until next turn". This could stack up to 10 cost. So you could use it but in a more limited way without killing it.
The 2 cost watchpost could become a 3 cost card or a 2/3. Hope it does not get 1 more mana for it's cost or I will have to remove it from my even mage.
Last minute thought. Do not think Refreshing springwater is going to get nerfed. At 5 mana (except with no minion mage) it becomes horrible with 1 minion drawn... Better to play the classic 3 mana draw 2 card
At 5 mana, Refreshing Spring Water is exactly the same as Arcane Intellect with one minion drawn. That's not horrible, especially considering no-minion decks run both cards anyway -- and you're always going to get full discount in that deck unless you choose to shuffle a Solarian. Draw two for 1 mana is still insanely good value.
The card is supposed to be a bit of a gamble for decks with minions. It makes sense that it would "break even" with Arcane Intellect when you draw one and one. It does not make sense that they made it cost 4 in the first place.
Ok, but the problem is with it in no minion mage...
Alright, I'm gonna just throw out a few predictions.
Deck of Lunacy will be nerfed back into absolute meme status (either by nerfing the cost reduction or upping the cost to the point of redundancy)
Refreshing Spring Water might get hit even if it's hardly the biggest issue given that Spell Mage performs well almost exclusively because the much improved card generation pool.
Font of Power and Apexis Blast may or may not be on the radar too, but I doubt they'll nerf them right away before having seen how the deck performs with any of the above mentioned nerfs.
Sword of the Fallen probably goes up in cost or down in durability (the latter seems to be favoured these days)
Aldor Attendant might be reduced down to a 1/2. Either that or Hand of A'dal gets shafted completely, because holy fuck that combo just autowins the tempo matchup if you go first.
Similarly, First Day of School might also be on the list because not only is it a great way to make sure you can always play for tempo early on, but it also gives Paladin access to 1-drops that are even better than what they already have.
Not entirely sure what Rogue has done to warrant a class card nerf already, but I suspect it has something to with [Hearthstone Card (Self Sharpening Sword) Not Found] or Efficient Octo-bot. I can't actually guess which one it is because I HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING OTHER THAN PALADIN AND MAGE FOR THE LAST 3 DAYS.
Neutrals are pretty easy to guess. Both the popular Watchposts are clearly way more common than they want them to be. Pen Flinger is most certainly getting the boot now.
Hopefully they also realise that [Hearthstone Card (Murloc Crabrider) Not Found] is completely broken and finally gut that thing
Regarding Watch Posts, I don’t think play rate is a good enough reason alone for a nerf. Especially considering that they are neutral, so they will obviously be more common. Just look at Zilliax, Khartut Defender, among other popular defensive neutrals.
At this point, they feel balanced to me, both playing with them and against them. I also like the concept and creativity, so I’d like them to live freely for awhile.
it's not so much about playrate, but about how they very easily shut down certain archetypes completely and without reasonable counterplay.
I have no problem with them being playable or even popular, but I think they should require more overall support other than just being the best play for their mana cost in most situations.
It's pretty weird to see something that can't even attack and has no flexible usage being included in just about any deck archetype that doesn't already have 30 other cards that are much better by comparison.
I mean, for fuck's sake, even Deathrattle Demon Hunter runs them and that's supposed to be a tempo deck.#
I don't think it's good design if you can win the tempo game by just preventing your opponent from playing the game properly.
They aren't just defensive Neutrals, they're jack of all trades in almost all matchups (except a select few)
At the very least make them more easily removable. It's not fair that Zoolock literally auto-loses the moment someone tosses out Mor'shan....or that a tempo deck can completely shut down druid with a Far Watch Post because they no longer have the means to efficiently get rid of it.
A card this powerful shouuld not have vanilla stats, especially when "can't attack" isn't a drawback. It's like if Ragnaros was a 12/12.
they are unfu
I could also see Refreshing Spring Water being nerfed, it's a completely free cast for No minion mages
Very serious proposed nerf to Pen Flinger:
The watch posts are one of the better things to come out of FitB imo. In before they nerf the 2 mana card making the whole package kinda redundant (let's face it, its tower on turn one/two thats the "problem") and therefore not giving the dust refund for Kargal as per usual...
Its a tough one. I can see what kind of purpose they fulfil and it helps slow down the game a bit. But to me personaly they just feel so bad to play against
Watch Posts I honestly do not feel bad about facing. First time in a *long* time did I have fun playing with or against them. Yeah, there is that Death and Taxes Pally in Wild, now(I faced it once, but forget if I won or lost). But, nope. Still don't really see a problem with them.