Gallon has announced the next round of Hearthstone balance changes that are due to arrive next week on April 26. Read on for all the details!
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Quote From GallonHS Hey everyone, have an update for y’all regarding balance changes. 4/26 (This upcoming Tuesday) changes to both standard and wild will go live.
WILD:
- [Hearthstone Card (Kael'thas) Not Found] is getting a textbox revert to Every third spell you cast each turn costs (1).
- Switcheroo is banned. (Alongside a change in standard.)
Both of these changes are aimed at protecting the long-term health of the format.
STANDARD:
- Pirate Warrior Questline is getting an additional number on its final step. (3/3/2 ->3/3/3) (Secure the Supplies)
- Pufferfist is losing a health, from 3/4 to 3/3.
- Switcheroo now swaps Health only instead of stats.
- Miracle Growth now costs 8 Mana, up from 7.
- Kazakusan’s activation requirement is getting changed. He’ll now read “Battlecry: If you’ve played 4 other Dragons this game, craft a custom deck of Treasures.”
- Kazakusan has been playing a critical role in Druid for the past couple months, fulfilling a similar role to Deathstalker Rexxar as an entire win condition in one card.
- Going into our balance meetings, we knew we wanted to soften Druid across all ranks, and there were multiple angles that could accomplish that.
- While we could have nerfed their survivability, we worry that will lead to a more polarized metagame overall.
- We landed on a Kazakusan effect change as it should lead to healthier play patterns both playing as and against Druid.
- We also wanted to make sure that Dragon-focused decks could still tap into Kazakusan as a powerful top end piece.
- Playing 4 Dragons is a fairly hefty requirement but should be achievable in most Dragon strategies.
Notable omissions from this list – Demon Hunter changes. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the post patch metagame to see how aggressive DH lists fare once slower decks are given a better chance.
Good luck to our Masters Tour competitors on your preparation, and I hope y’all keep enjoying Voyage to the Sunken City!
Comments
Ok, but in standard you still have Bless, it will be little slower but it still will find a way.
Glad to see nerfs to Kazakusan and quest warrior, although Im sure quest warrior will still be somewhere lurking in our nightmares.
The Switcheroo nerf is funny, because it essentially only means priest needs only one additional card to do whats its been doing, which will explain why it got banned from wild despite a nerf. So...what are you going to be doing in two years time when it moves to wild proper, team5? Or are we going where a turn 4 lethal is essentially too slow then?
Im not too worried about dhunter. Ive played it to some success, but its clear that its only there because it has a good matchup against druid (one of the few decks that does) and quest warrior. It only really has two power cards, Battleworn Vanguard on 2 and Drek'Thar on 4. Miss either of these and the deck functions like a wet noodle unless your opponent literally doesn't know how to play the game and Wrathscale Naga rng is in your favor. But admitably, if druids do drop to tier 3 again then there's a possibility of it evolving to a more midrange deck with Illidari Inquisitors
The change will surely bolster both shaman and paladin decks, particularly rainbow shaman and control pally. Face and quest hunter also losses its worst matchup as well, so it'll likely slot in but its terribly weak against token dhunter so we'll see.
Next on the complain list following this change? Miracle naga mage probably.
Isn't the plan for all banned cards to change them drastically when they rotate out of Standard? So at that point they can give it the Warsong Commander treatment. "Draw 2 minions. Give them +1 attack if they have Charge" sounds like a pretty good fix to me, especially as homage to the fact it is currently being abused by a charge minion :P
There is unfortunately no precedent for this because the first card that got banned, demon seed, is still in standard. Im not sure if they would give them the old warsong commander treatment, but Switcheroo definitely be worthy of it. Turn 4 OTK is about as fast as it gets, even in wild.
Not that it changes the timeline at all, but the Demon Seed wasn't the first card banned. Stealer of Souls will need a major rework too. Anyway, there might be no precedent, but there are comments made by the devs when Stealer of Souls was banned (see https://outof.cards/hearthstone/3251-hearthstone-bans-its-first-card-in-wild-next-week-stealer-of-souls).
I wish they would revert the nerf to Command the Elements, it's practically unplayable in standard since the rotation
Sorry, but the less stormwind quests sees play, the more healthier it would be for all of us.
It makes more sense to unnerf The Demon Seed right now to be honest, but for the same reason it should stay where it is, in standard obscurity.
Great changes! Good job Blizz! :)
Wild is playable again and more balance for Standard. Overall very good changes. I am happy that the Blizz of today is more active about balancing Standard and Wild. The balancing is not perfect, but this attitude is a big improvement compared to the balancing philosophy years ago.
Pirate Warrior wins all too often without even completing the questline, but at least they hit Pufferfist as well.
Switcheroo change is perfect -- it's still a usable card, but now the nightmare can finally end.
And, of course, LOVE the Kazakusan change. This is what it should have been in the first place. Did they really think the empty-deck strategy wouldn't be abused, especially by a class like Druid that has 20 mana and tons of card draw effects to spend it on?
Switcheroo ban in wild feels bad, just print a 3 mana draw 2 minions for priest, we dont need gimmicks, thats just such a nice draw for priest which has been lacking forever. Kael nerf is good and I can see it still being played for cheating UIs and not just insta wins anymore. Pirate warrior nerf wasnt needed in wild but I cant complain. Miracle growth nerf didnt matter for wild as it was always being cheated with kael anyways but if kael is cut then it probably goes with it. Seems good overall but rip priest.
The Warrior QL nerf is likely going to matter in the new Wild meta after the hit to Kael and the ban of Switcheroo. It was previously one of, if not the strongest decks in Wild. Now nerfing or removing two of the decks that would beat it means it would likely jump back up to the top. So while it may not seem needed right now, it should help create a better Wild after these other nerfs.
Kael revert to the nerf likely means the deck still sees play but is slowed down. Personally I think the long term problem for Blizzard when it comes to Druid is going to be Druid's ability to get 20 max mana, and as long as this is the case Team 5 will continuously find themselves having to nerf cards to limit Druid.
Also, because of how many "draw three" cards Druid has I wouldn't be opposed to Miracle Growth being either "draw two" or even "draw a card".
And lastly, Priest will be just fine! They are losing a shenanigans high roll deck, but they can go right back to playing Aggro Shadow Priest, Big Priest, or just regular old Inner Fire Priest. It's a shame that Switcheroo has to be hit like this because overall it's a cool concept, that had a lot of potential. I actually wanted to use it in a Mind Blast OTK Priest simply as a 3 mana draw two minions like you mentioned Priest needing above. But obviously the Switcheroo Boar deck was a bit too consistent on it's high rolling or they wouldn't have had to ban it in Wild or alter it to stop the abuse of the card in Standard.
RIP Darkglare Priest, my latest favorite Wild deck :(
I think the Standard nerf would be sufficient for Wild as well. Boar Priest would need to run Inner Fire or Bless to do the combo, but the extra combo piece and more mana needed would push the deck out of the meta. And Darkglare Priest would stay playable.
Edit: I just remembered Topsy Turvy exists, that would also be playable, but the deck is already quite inconsistent.
What's darkglare priest? I need to play It before the nerfs!
https://hearthstone-decks.net/spell-priest-6-legend-corbettgames/ Here’s a link, it’s really fun, definitely play it while you can. I was going to feature it on OutofCards but was waiting for nerfs and the deck won’t be nearly as good without Switcheroo.
based and giantpilled
Something needs to be done about Mr. Smite as well
Is the Secure the Supplies nerf enough guys? I feel like one of those 3s should be a 4.
I don't think it is, 3/4/3 sounds much better. If the Questline was an infinite value option for a midrange deck, it would be fine. The issue is it fits into aggro and comes out at around the time the deck slowly starts running out of steam. If it just came way too late for Aggro to even be a consideration, the effect would be perfectly fine. An Odd Warrior could use it as an inevitable finisher (similar to DMH), for instance, with doubled effect from Brann or Zola. There's no threat of that deck aggroing anybody down, hence it can have infinite value.
They could always nerf it again later.
It's the new The Caverns Below, getting hit with incremental nerfs until they finally feel like it's under control.