The second balance patch within our current Sunken City timeline has made it to the live servers yesterday, possibly putting an end to Drek'Thar's ongoing quest for domination. And anyone out for some (Demon) Hunter's blood had a good reason to feel due satisfaction, with specific hits to Multi-Strike and Dragonbane Shot.

But it's actually the extensive list of buffs - strategically targeting a handful of underperforming classes or cards - piquing even more interest here, as that's where the true potential resides for any aspiring new deck contenders. One persistent question that always comes up in such cases - why these particular cards and why these particular adjustments, out of all potential options to pick from? 

While the 23.2.2 patch notes themselves had no additional context to offer beyond a simple list, Associate Game Designer Edward "Gallon" Goodwin took to Twitter to go over every single card balance change, answer pending questions, and explain the reasoning of the Hearthstone team as a whole. Including why or why not they have decided to go about something in this or that fashion. The detailed thread also provides us with a better understanding as to what else might have made it onto their internal "watchlist". 

Quote From Gallon
Hey everyone! Huge balance patch coming today, with 20 card changes – 3 Nerfs and 17 buffs. We had three overarching goals for this patch – nerf the cards that are making the format less fun than it could be, amp up some of the weaker Colossals, and reinvigorate the underperforming classes with a wide suite of various buffs.
 

We'll go over all relevant segments as they come up, with separate tweets pertaining to the same topic attached together for the purposes of added clarity and consistency:

Card Nerfs

The cards we have more or less suspected as potential targets, but 'only' 3 nerfs is perhaps fewer than what the general community sentiment was settling on. Yet Warrior class tools such as Shield Shatter might not've been far away from making the cut here:

Quote From Gallon
NERFS: Lets talk about the 4 mana elephant in the room – Drek’thar. Since the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City, Drek’thar has been the best card in two of three of the best decks in format, miles away from the next best cards. Alongside this, the experience of going up against a turn 3 or turn 4 Drek’thar made it feel like nothing else mattered. Clear outlier in both data and player sentiment made Drek’thar a slam dunk nerf target for this patch.

Quote From Gallon
Other nerfs: Multi-strike is already an incredibly efficient removal/damage dealing tool, but when combined with cards like Dreadprison Glaive is a clear outlier for what early game removal should be. Looking ahead, Multi-strike will be in the format for the next couple years, so we’re nerfing it both for the health of the current and the health of future metagames.

Finally, while Quest Hunter has an appropriate power level outside of Drek’thar, it can be frustrating to repeatedly play against. Dragonbane Shot is one of the most flexible tools that this deck has, so softening it should improve the play-against experience vs hunter.

 

Quote From Gallon
Worth mentioning: We also looked at some of the options that Warrior has, like Shield Shatter, but we decided that nerfing its best matchup and buffing a ton of non-Warrior classes meant that we could leave its strong set of tools alone for now.

Shield Shatter Card Image

Colossal Minions

It's very much true we have barely seen the Colossals in question making it to the surface level play. 

Quote From Gallon
BUFFS: Colossal minions are clearly the stars of the show for Voyage to the Sunken City, but some of them weren’t shining bright enough. Similar to Hero Cards from Alterac Valley, we had a soft goal this set of giving each class an exciting, playable Colossal minion, so we’re taking another pass on Xhilag, of the Abyss and the Blackwater Behemoth.

Quote From Gallon
Demon hunter has lost a lot so far this patch and their Colossal minion has been clearly underperforming. (Also, Xhilag has OBJECTIVELY the best art in the game.)

Seems like an easy win to make the Colossal Mechanic more exciting! We had a few interesting options for how to buff it, such as increasing the health of its appendages or by making them target the lowest-Health enemies. We decided to increase the initial damage the appendages dealt, as we felt that part of the card was its most exciting aspect.

Quote From Gallon
Blackwater Behemoth was another obvious choice, as it’s an underperforming Colossal in an already weak class. While we considered taking the safe approach of both decreasing its Cost and stats, we felt that this was a place to give a very significant power increase and chose to do Cost only.

Behemoth's Lure Card Image

But wait, isn't there at least one other Colossal minion that has been deemed rather underwhelming? Well yes, but it just happens to belong to a class that can't really complain about its overall power level. 

Quote From Gallon
Druid Colossal was one we were on the fence about— we backed off because they have a solid amount of strong playables this early in the year, where classes like DH and Priest were lacking those, especially in the higher mana costs.

We’ll keep an eye on it as a place where we can give Druid a boost in the future, as I agree that there’s room on the card for a bit more power.

 

Colaque Card Image Colaque's Shell Card Image

Card Buffs for a Handful of Classes

5 classes out of 10 have received this special honor (or is it an act of taking pity upon them?) of seeing some of the cards within their respective arsenals brought up to scratch.  

Quote From Gallon
As for the rest of the buffs, we set our sights on the weaker classes and archetypes from the latest set that didn’t quite land. The four classes we looked at were Rogue, Priest, Warlock, and Hunter (which is getting its best deck hit pretty hard.)

Rogue

You might recall that two of the buff picks here - Wildpaw Gnoll and SI:7 Smuggler, respectively - were actually a subject of deserved nerfs in the fairly recent past. Of course that was before the current Year of the Hydra and the set rotation, when the Standard metagame was in a vastly different place. It's actually good to see that Hearthstone team is willing to remain flexible and ready to re-examine the existing power dynamics as they naturally shift with time and new card additions. 

Quote From Gallon
ROGUE: One of the archetypes that’s gotten quite a bit of support over the last couple sets is Burgle/Thief Rogue, but after the Wildpaw Gnoll nerf the deck ceased to exist. A lot of Gnoll’s power was due to the interaction it had with Secret Passage, and since Passage has rotated to Wild, we decided to fully revert the nerf, giving Thief Rogue its strongest payoff back. Alongside that, we decided to widespread moderate buffs to some of the weaker support cards for the archetype.

Tess fans, time to unite once again! 

Hunter

Could it be, a Hunter archetype not reliant on chasing swift Face damage or being busy with Quest shenanigans? 

We have actually seen single copy Harpoon Gun inclusions in some of the Defend the Dwarven District Questline builds, but it's a somewhat different context now, with both nerfed Dragonbane Shot and Drek'Thar having been an integral part of that deck before.

Quote From Gallon
HUNTER: We wanted to make sure that Hunter had a viable archetype, and with the nerfs to Quest Hunter and a relatively weak meta for Face Hunter, we thought Big Beast Hunter was an interesting candidate to receive a power increase. 

Of these changes, Harpoon Gun is the largest power increase, as the game-changing play patterns it creates can now happen a whole turn earlier. This is one of the buffs that we will be most closely monitoring on live.

Priest

Just can't escape the Naga. Shadow Priest has definitely been more than a little forgotten as of late. 

Quote From Gallon
PRIEST: Priest is weak across the board right now, so alongside the large buff to its Colossal minion, we are putting some power into various tools it has for different archetypes.

Serpent Wig should now be an impressive piece in Naga Priest, and Shadowcloth Needle should open up a wide variety of experimentation with Shadow/Control Priest archetypes.

 

Warlock

Beware the Murlocks! It looks like another small step towards making Curse Warlock a relevant presence in the meta. That one has always demonstrated dangerous potential. The new 3-mana cost for Dragged Below now also makes it a potential Discover option from the likes of School Teacher.

Although if Questline Hunter doesn't quite go away, it'll remain forever grateful for your Abyssal Curses triggering the progress towards Tavish, Master Marksman. 

Abyssal Curse Card Image

Quote From Gallon
WARLOCK: Both of Warlock’s archetypes from this set haven’t seen much representation in the meta. This is partially due to Curse Warlock receiving nerfs pre-release. After several weeks since launch, it looks like we overcorrected, so we’re giving some of the curse generators a bit of power back to make this a more viable option. While nerfing Demon Hunter should give Murloc Warlock a better chance competitively, we also decided to give it a moderate power increase by buffing its Dredge/Sunken combo.

Conclusion and Other Comments

Quote From Gallon
Whew, lots to talk about this time. TL;DR, Drek’thar has been rekt hard. Hope y’all enjoy the buff patch and continue to have fun in the Sunken City overall, thanks for reading!

Wondering about anything else? Gallon also took the time to clarify a few other points and answer questions.

Although if you are a fan of Priest's Seek Guidance Questline, we don't have the best of news for you:

Quote From Gallon
Doubt any changes to the functionality of the Priest Questline will be made.

Another impending Crabrider buff - all but confirmed! (No, not really) 

Quote From Gallon
Gallon, you never miss Glad to have people like you speaking to the community !

I did miss. Missed the opportunity to buff crabrider 😎

 

Concerned about the potential return of Ramp Druid dominance? You are not alone.

Quote From Gallon
Is Druid on your radar to see how it pans out in the way DH was with the previous changes? Little concerned nerfing DH while leaving Warrior will leave it a little too prominent in the meta, but hopefully some other aggro decks being playable proves me wrong

Yeah, it is. Main focus this patch was buffs and to shave off the roughest edges. No outliers in druid compared to the cards we hit in DH/Hunter, so we want to monitor the impact of buffs before doing any fine-tuning nerfs, which means no changes to Druid this time.

 

That about wraps it up, hopefully we're going to see more of this kind of thing in the future. It's always good to know where the developers' minds are at when it's presented in such a satisfyingly elaborate manner.

Is there anything else you would've personally liked to know? Have all of Gallon's points made perfect sense? Let us know how you feel after having a chance to play with the newly changed cards!