FINALLY. Oh, right, we're supposed to remain indifferent.
Blizzard has announced that five card nerfs will be coming next Monday, August 26, including a wild-only nerf!
The Nerfs
Five cards are getting changed with two of those cards (Luna's and Extra Arms) being reverted back to their values before the Rise of Mechs event.
- Conjurer's Calling now costs 4 mana (Up from 3)
- Luna's Pocket Galaxy now costs 7 mana (Up from 5)
- Dr. Boom, Mad Genius now costs 9 mana (Up from 7)
- Extra Arms now costs 3 mana (Up from 2)
- Barnes now costs 5 mana (Up from 4)
Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Nerf
Blog Post
Quote From Blizzard Now that Saviors of Uldum is live, new cards have been introduced and powerful decks have started to surface. To make for a better ladder experience for Hearthstone players in this new expansion, we’ve decided to make the following card adjustments in an update next week:
Mage
While Conjurer’s Calling is a powerful tool that’s found in a number of Mage decks, when used in decks focused around cards like Mountain Giant and Sea Giant, it was creating extremely powerful board states at a point in the game where opponents didn’t have effective answers.
Increasing the mana cost of this card will make using both copies of the Twinspell card in a single turn significantly more difficult, postponing these potentially overwhelming turns until later in the game when the Mage’s opponent has more available resources to react to the board.
Buffing cards with the Rise of the Mech event was a big change in philosophy for us. While we are happy with the overall outcome of the changes, Luna’s Pocket Galaxy has proven to be an exception.
An early Luna's Pocket Galaxy can often leave opponents feeling helpless if late-game minions were drawn in subsequent turns. This has occurred more often than we had intended, therefore we're reverting its mana cost back to its original value of 7, as was the case before the Rise of the Mech event.
Warrior
We’d still like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius to be a great option for control Warrior decks looking to close out games, but right now the card gets played a bit too early. Increasing the mana cost to 9 should make it more difficult to find a good turn to play Dr. Boom, giving opponents time to make powerful plays as well.
Priest
During the Rise of the Mech event, Priest was one of the weaker classes in the game. Buffing Extra Arms gave Priest a powerful spell for the early game to enable some of their board-focused strategies.
With the release of Saviors of Uldum, Priest has access to many more powerful early game minions and has seen a large jump in both popularity and winrate. Between all of Priests buff spells and heal effects, it can be hard to fight for the board against them early in the game. Increasing the mana cost of Extra Arms back to 3 should give room for other decks to challenge them early on, while leaving the powerful Priest minions and combos untouched.
Neutral
Barnes has been a hot topic in Wild format discussions for quite some time now, especially regarding how oppressive this card can feel when facing certain Priest decks.
While we’re okay with Wild having a higher power level in general, Barnes stood out as too consistently powerful early in the game. Increasing his mana cost by 1 will let opponents have an easier time reacting, but still lets Barnes retain its identity as a way to summon specific minions early in the game.
Comments
And you know what, that is a fair assessment of the situation.
Confirmed for monday (august 26th)
Barnes changes will do nothing about Big Priests. While losing to a turn 3/4 Barnes was the most un-fun, this doesn't solve the underlying mechanic problem with the graveyard. Turn 4/5 Barnes will still be un-fun to play against. But I guess progress is better than hearing "We need more data" for the 100th time.
Conjurer's Calling was needed and should help. But doesn't address the problem with discounted giants. It was wishful thinking that Blizz would address a more complex issue instead of just adding mana cost to the card that was only a small part of the issue.
Luna's Pocket Galaxy was a mistake to buff to 5 mana. Glad they have admitted their mistake. First round of buffs was a learning experience. Hopefully they have learned to not buff cards that have the potential to be broken.
Extra Arms change seems unnecessary. Priest has only 1 good deck in standard, and this was the enabler. While I don't think it will kill the archetype, the win rate will take a major hit. Poor standard priest players :(
Dr. Boom, Mad Genius while nice to have 2 extra turns before he comes out, I don't think this nerf is going to do anything. Warrior has too many board clears so this nerf isn't going to effect them. The biggest problem is the "all mechs have Rush" mechanic and armor gain. This does nothing and I'm sorely disappointed that Blizz decided to try and take the easy way out by only nerfing the mana cost.
Solid points! I'm less a fan of the extra arms revert than mage, however. Priest doesn't have another solid deck right now and (at least IMO) didn't find priest that oppressive if you teched against it. Extra Arms gave Priest the early boost it needed for the deck to be viable. The real issue is you can't tech against Priest because War and Mage dominate the meta. The luna buff was a mistake from the start, but (as I've said on other posts on this site) I found giant to be a much bigger issue than CC.
I audibly laughed when I saw the Luna's nerf. Man that is funny.
And I am happy for all the wild players with Barnes getting nerfed. Although I really think the token and minion costs still need a change of some sort.
Wow, they FINALLY did something for Barnes. I don't know if the nerf is right or not but at least Big Priest will be slowed down by a bit.
2 mana Extra Arms wasn't why Combo Priest rocks; it was the reason Priest had become viable. I would have much preferred 2 mana Inner Fire. Sigh.
I think the reverting Luna's to 7 is a mistake. It was unplayable at 7, and, while it has gotten more support, I think 7 mana is still too slow. I would have liked to see at 6 mana first.
As for Conjurer's Calling... That is a whole new topic. I don't think the card itself is the issue. It only gets broken when cheating out big minions. If they could change the way cheapened minions interacted with the spell, I think that would be healthier for the game in the long run.
Other than those two, I think the adjustments are good. Kinda surprised to not see anything done with Divine Spirit though...
Yeah but you can still play [Hearthstone Card (Luna's Pocket Galaxy) Not Found] with Tortollan Pilgrim's battlecry.
Did rogue dodged nerf this time around? O.o
Extra arms? So northshires is ok?
Mage nerfs expected. But galaxy all the way to 7 is conservative, but I suppose mage is just too good...
So Dr 7 is no 7 no more...
And Barnes is 1600 dust for me, so nice... I do play wild, but I stopped playing Barnes decks half a year ago anyway (and even then it was spell Hunter not priest)
No, Northshire Cleric is really strong (I dare to say it's one of the few good 1 drops remained in the evergreen set, if not the best).
However, I have two arguments for you:
1) Healing and drawing cards rarely win games since you can't kill your opponent. Yeah, this new midrange style may change the situation, but still
2) Cleric is one of the few good cards that Priest has in his evergreen set, alongside with Inner Fire, Divine Spirit, Power Word: Shield and arguably Shadow Word: Death (rip Mind Blast). The rest is meme/trash stuff. Now, Priest can be considered a class for like 4 months per year, and this is in part possible because of Northshire Cleric. You can't just erase it with a nerf or replace it with a random Radiance.
Team 5 doesn't want Cleric to be the way it is now? Fine: rework Priest's Basic and Classic set to be playable (not broken or meta defining, just playable) and we have a deal, but as long as the situation remains unchanged it would be unreasonable to touch Northshire Cleric
Truthfully, I think they could have gone after some of these cards harder. Boom in particular basically needed to be completely reworked.
For once I actually agree with you.
That Barnes's nerf and its motivation are totally no-sense: the issue was not his mana cost and only partially his battlecry. The issue is still the resurrect mechanic itself, that allows to bring on board high cost minion (with full stats) from just a copy of them. People don't have problem about "dealing with him" but facing an endless army of resurrected minion over the whole match and increasing his cost solve absolutly nothing. On top of that the whole graveyard's function, that can be "exploited" to bring back the same minion over and over again.
This pointless change only highlight how poorly they understand about what is the real issue of Big Priest and why people are calling out for a nerf since years by now (not its win rate, but how polarizing its matchup is).
I mean... I'm happy?
There's something about "simply" increasing Dr. Boom's mana cost that leaves me somewhat dissatisfied... I mean, I'm glad, because when Control Warrior doesn't draw its Dr.Boom on turn 7 it's a totally different game, so increasing its cost by 2 is really effective. Still... I don't know what, but something doesn't feel right. Maybe it's the flavor. Oh well.
Conjurer's Calling on 4 won't change how much the card is played. The problem was never its cost, especially since to be even playable it needs decent minions on the board, and by the time you have them, 3 or 4 makes little difference - sure, now it's harder to play the whole twinspell in one turn, but cry me a river.
Luna's Pocket Galaxy got what it deserved. Enough said.
Extra Arms is a bit sad. I was expecting something along the lines of +1/+2 as a nerf, and not straight up bringing it back to 3 mana. Maybe a bit too exaggerated, especially since the problem cards in priest have nothing to do with Extra Arms, and are still untouched
Barnes. Finally. Finally. Is the mana increase enough? I'd say it's fair, Barnes is now a fair card that has the possibility to be powerful in the right decks. Let's hope this changes things, I think it will
Finally
at least they actually did something though I’d like them to do more than just change mana cost with nerfs
boom for instance losing mech rush would be more balanced imo
but hey at least they FINALLY did something
did they list a date at all?
Next week, no day confirmed yet
I think all of these are good for the current standard meta. It’ll allow for other cards and decks to shine.
As for the Barnes nerf, only time will tell how effective it is
I'm pretty ok with all these nerfs, especially pocket galaxy. That being said, if they truly view CC as the problem card for mage, increasing it to 4 mana IMO won't change very much. Potentially this change with the nerf to pocket galaxy will beat mage back a bit, but mage was top tier before the pocket galaxy buff and changing CC to cost one additional mana isn't enough. Mage will still be king, and its chief rival in Priest seems to have taken a step back.