In addition to a handful of changes in Battlegrounds (which you can find our thoughts about them here), constructed Hearthstone also got several balance changes. After about half a month of playing with the new cards, there were several outliers in terms of power. Aggro Demon Hunter, Paladin, Hound Hunter, and Excavate Warlock all got hit with some form of nerf to hopefully bring them more in line with the rest of the meta. Without any further delay, lets jump into the new changes!
Blindeye Sharpshooter
Now has 3 health (Down from 5)
One of the breakout stars of the set, Blindeye Sharpshooter has very quickly become the core of both Aggro Demon Hunter as well as Naga Demon Hunter. However, in these decks Blindeye Sharpshooter is almost never a turn 3 play, instead coming down when multiple Naga and spells can be strung together to draw a bunch of cards and deal a load of damage, which makes this nerf somewhat negligible. As someone who had played too much of this card for the first week of the expansion, the only matchup where I felt fine running the sharpshooter out on turn 3 was against Druids, which notably now can snipe the naga with Amber Whelp. Other removal also lines up significantly better with cards like Turn the Tides, Keeper's Strength on a Silver Hand Recruit, and a forged Sanitize.
All of this is to say the card is still ridiculously strong, but now properly punishes players who try to get a game-winning turn early on. The fact the card is more easily cleared by most AoE also results in these pop-off turns being easier to recover from, assuming that the turn doesn’t win on the spot. The meta might shift away to favor decks that have a good matchup against aggressive demon hunters, but this card is almost definitely still on the radar for a more impactful nerf and is something players should keep in mind.
Order in the Court
No longer draws a card
Order in the Court has quietly been one of the strongest cards in the majority of Paladin’s recent decks. This one card allows players to play the best aggro cards in the early game while not letting the quantity weigh down a strong end-game from a few select cards. Being able to guarantee draw The Countess for a decent turn 7 is strong on its own, but what pushes the card over the top is that all flavors of Paladin have some variant of expensive card that can easily cheat its mana costs. Whether it be Lightray, The Garden's Grace, Living Horizon, or Sea Giant (which despite being a neutral class minion, both copies are guaranteed to be drawn so The Countess is still active), Order in the Court almost always comes with a massive threat resulting in the loss of tempo from casting 2 mana "do nothing" non-existent.
This nerf does a great job at making sure that this is the durdle play that it was designed to be. Finding your late game on demand is still a very strong effect, especially considering that it still lets Paladin have a great early game and endgame, but it does make these expensive cards significantly worse. They still do a great job at giving a strong tempo push after giving some up, but the extra breathing room will allow players to better approach this endgame as opposed to immediately staring down a 8/8 or a creature that just got +5/+5 and divine shield. I still expect the card to see play, albeit with less of the expensive cards that come down for free and more cards like The Leviathan, Reno, Lone Ranger or The Countess.
Always a Bigger Jormungar
Now costs 2 mana (Up from 1)
One of the stronger cards Hunter has gotten in recent sets was Hollow Hound, who’s ability to clear multiple threats while padding the player’s life total turned out to be too strong. However, combining this ability to cleave away multiple threats with the bunch of extra face damage proved to be too much, which is what Always a Bigger Jormungar did. What pushed this playstyle over-the-top was both the printing of Messenger Buzzard and Azerite Chain Gang. Messenger Buzzard added both consistency for the deck in terms of finding Hollow Hound or Stonebound Gargon as well as pumping their attack to make getting excess damage easier. As for Azerite Chain Gang, the ability to create two or three bodies that scale off of Hunter’s other hand/deckbuff cards like Bestial Madness or Hope of Quel'Thalas allows the deck to put on considerable more pressure to make the required excess damage to kill the opponent lower.
Ultimately, Always a Bigger Jormungar and the rest of the Hound Hunter deck put opponents into a “damned if you do, damned if you don't” situation. Playing no minions results in you being rolled over by the attack-buffed threats, while playing minions just results in being clobbered by a cleave threat and taking a load of damage upstairs. While the nerf leaves this combo still relatively easy to cast as a 6 or 8 mana for a game-ending play is still pretty strong, it hurts the consistency quite a bit. Now the combo is a fair bit more lopsided, as finding one of the cleave threats is much easier, but finding Always a Bigger Jormungar when it’ll actually be good will be much less common. This nerf feels like it will have the cards more reliant on it to be good like Stonebound Gargon being dropped in favor of cards that better work with the other handbuff cards such as Bovine Skeleton or the newly buffed Defense Attorney Nathanos. Speaking of him…
Defense Attorney Nathanos
Now has 4 attack (Down from 5) and Deathrattle is gained before triggered.
In the midst of 4 nerfs, there is also a minor rework for Defense Attorney Nathanos to work properly with a lot of the newer cards in Showdown in the Badlands and the Fall of Ulduar mini-set. Simply put, Defense Attorney Nathanos did not work with Bovine Skeleton, Twisted Frostwing, and Spurfang while now it will summon a Bovine Skeleton, a 3/3 and a 4 cost beast. Does this make the card better? Sure, Nathanos is going to fit better into any deck that runs them, but I’m not too sold on it while hunter still has other great options for a grindy top-end that is not reliant on playing specific cards earlier like Aggramar, the Avenger or Hydralodon. I would love to see Nathanos see more play, but I just don't see it happening right now.
The Azerite Snake
Now drains 7 health (Down from 10)
So despite the initial hype (and day 1 of endless Snake mirror matches) The Azerite Snake had, the card went on to be more or less fine once more players started to gravitate towards aggressive decks again. However due to such a miserable play experience, nerfing the Snake makes perfect sense. This nerf definitely hurts the counter-racing potential as healing for 7/14 is much more tolerable than healing 10/20 per turn, but beyond that, the excavate cards still feel like they will be playable. Right now slow warlock decks have two main ways of closing out the game, these being Abyssal Curses or the Azerite Snake, and fortunately for the Azerite Snake, curses pale in comparison. Pretty much all of the cards that give curses to the opponent are subpar on their own while the Excavate cards have more of a direct impact and any amount of healing Za'qul can heal you is negligible compared to being able to bounce the Snake.
All of this is to say that I still think The Azerite Snake will still be the go-to win condition for Control Warlocks, but is this nerf enough to make that deck fall off completely? While I've seen people say it takes 5 battlecries to kill with the Snake I feel like this is a bit counterproductive. It's not difficult to get 2 damage over the course of a long game to bring it down to 4 battlecries, and dealing a total of 9 damage is also fairly easy when you have threats like Tram Conductor Gerry, Dar'Khan Drathir, and Sargeras, the Destroyer which all provide a decent amount of chip damage. While the Azerite Snake still is going to do a majority of the work closing out the game, I feel like decks will adapt to not be entirely reliant on it anymore and instead treating it like a Lifedrinker on steroids that buys the Warlock player enough time to string together some other game-winning threats.
Wrapping Up
Overall all of these nerfs seem pretty solid and should hopefully bring in some other decks into the metagame. However, there is one deck that I am worried about going untouched in this balance patch, that being Enrage Warrior. While paladin being less precedent could help bring it more in line, Enrage Warrior was already one of the strongest decks at high legend running 0 cards from the new set and I don't see it falling in win rate much. Am I being a bit of a doomsayer for thinking the meta is going to centralize on this one deck? Maybe, but I think its something to keep an eye on for sure. Anyway, that is our thoughts on the latest constructed balance changes, what are your stance on them? Excited to play with the reworked Defense Attorney Nathanos? Let me know in the comments below!
Comments
At first I thought these changes would do nothing but looking at HSReplay now, DH and Warlock are in the bottom 3 at the time of writing. I'm hoping we see some buffs in the Battlegrounds .2 patch along with some buff reverts for warrior coz it'd be nice to tone down the class now seeing as it's been given so much help.
As a Wild main player I don`t care much about Standard.
It is my "side mode" if I want to have a break from Wild now and then.
I was hoping they would change Order in the Court to order based on what the card would cost to play at the moment OitC was cast, so the cost-reducing effects of paladin's cards would see them shuffled closer to the bottom of the deck. I thought this would make it a far more interesting card to play because when you play it would affect the ordering. Play it early and put Lightray on top perhaps. Play it with an empty board to ensure Sea Giant and Prismatic Beam are close to the top.
It would be hard to play OitC and the drawn card on the same turn so the tempo loss would still be a factor.
That would definitely be a decent change for the card, though I feel like there will be a lot of other changes that'll be hit in the crossfire. Having cards in deck change their cost hits Holy Wrath, Taelan Fordring, and Aquatic Form in weird ways. Personally I feel like reworking how the mechanic has worked since the start of the game because 1 card is a bit strong seems a bit over-the-top.
We'll be getting a (presumably) bigger balance change in just 4 days on December 5th so this is just to tone things down right now. Anyway, I agree with the comment below me. The meta constantly evolves and changes with frequent nerfs and buffs. I do think they were clueless on some recent ones with Jailer and Tony for example where they had no idea what to do with them other than completely kill them, but for the most part they keep the meta in a (imo) healthy state.
Big issue with Tony and Jailer was also that both cards are so unique that they can either do a numbers change or just change the effect. With the main offenders in stuff like Enrage Warrior being stuff like Imbued Axe and Battleworn Faceless, I can definitely see them just going with a minor numbers change to knock them down a peg.
Also I could be wrong but have we gotten constructed nerfs/buffs on the same days as new Battleground seasons? Given that and the fact its like only a week of data I'd be surprised if there was any more changes, atleast for a little bit. None of these cards got the same treatment The Azerite Snake had earlier this month so I feel like these changes are going to stick for a bit.
I'm sure I read about a big patch next week where they want to fix Jace, Xymox and Hero Varden and also dish out final balance adjustments before the World Championship. Maybe I misremember but I've logged it toward the end of the week.
Nice analysis!! My thought is that the doomed part of the game is the community (I don't know about any other games communities) but I think we all need to complain a little less and try to enjoy other aspects of the game, as we know nerfs will come, the meta will evolve and a new op deck will take everyone's anger.
But... how many negative feedback loops does it take for these "designers" to stop printing overpowered bullshit? And rehashing old ideas into new keywords, etc.
OP things keep the players hyped, it's fun sometimes to play a deck that you feel absolutely confident about. What I think is good is that lately the nerfs and buffs come faster and problems are solved sooner.
Yeah the state at which they balance things has been pretty great for the most part. It kinda sucks for F2P players, especially when the nerfs that kill the deck are to some common, but in terms of gameplay its easily the best its probably ever been.
i think the rate at which they balance things is fine, its how they balance things. i actually really like the most recent set of nerfs, but stuff like completely ruining jailer and tony have been disappointing to say the least. personally, im really enjoying all three formats right now!
THIS
Thanks for saying it, and I completely agree. It's a game. Have fun. That's what I always try to do, anyway.
Yeah I definitely think the community is on a bit of a negative feedback loop, and I realize the irony of saying that on an article I wrote talking about how the metagame is doomed. My biggest gripe mainly comes with the fact that Enrage Warrior was a top deck after Fall of Ulduar and continued to be one of the highest performing archetypes in the new set running 0 of the new cards. The fact that 4 decks built around/utilizing new cards got nerfed before it just feels a bit wrong to me.
But yeah ultimately the meta will evolve and hopefully adapt in a way where Enrage Warrior falls a bit out of favor but we'll have to see. I do definitely agree though with the whole idea of the 'rotating deck that everybody hates'. Its a whole lot easier to say "wow that deck is busted why are they abusing it" then adapting your own playstyle to better tackle it.