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.
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Comments
I guess you are right, but if there is really a drop in the play-rate, I want to see it with my eyes. I have played against a handful of Big Priests, which didn't include Barnes in their decks, in order to score better results from Shadow Essence and Catrina Muerte. So I'm kinda sceptical how things will turn out to be after the balance patch. I really want to see various control decks popping up more often in wild.
And I'm not complaining about myself, I play greedy thief priest decks, which counter them hard. But I feel like normal control decks (such as Reno Mage, Warlock, Control Warrior, Shaman etc) can't see the light of day only because they can't deal with so many waves of big minions.
I'm very confident, that a bump to 6 mana would have mattered a lot. This would allow some slow decks to draw and play their late-game AoEs more easily.
I love the nerf to Barnes. It's pretty fair. I was just thinking that if they nerf it to 6 Mana, it will kill the card as it is a Neutral card and it's usage is not just in Big Priest. Even the idea of an Actor token won't work cos it is still turn 4/3 big minion cos it is too early and too fast for the opponent to handle. Hence, the only logical way to nerf it is a 1 Mana increase to 5 Mana. I glad Blizzard did not kill the card like how they killed Naga Seawitch and kept the design of the card. Well done!
On another hand, I'm very disappointed with the nerf to Luna's Pocket Galaxy. The card is basically dead. It was never played originally and only became playable after the buff. I really hoped that they would just nerf it to 6 Mana. Now, nobody will play this on turn 7 cos it's to expensive and too risky to use it.
Finally, the nerf to Dr. Boom is a tempo change to the game. I see that alot of people are pointing out Omega Devastator is the one should be needed. However, Mechs now will only have Rush, aka board control, on Turn 10 onwards. That's a huge tempo change. This can only be seen and felt once the nerfs are live and Omega Devastator will become a fair card.
Overall, the nerfs are pretty good and well thought out but I feel Luna Galaxy is dead. Barnes will still see play and Big Priest now should feel less of a gamble, more of a greedy deck.
Edit: Fixed a mistake on the part regarding Omega Devastator. Thank you @Shagwagon for pointing that out! 🤗
Omega Devastator can't do it's effect until Turn 10 now. Your logic doesn't work on that one.
Thank you for pointing it out! I just fixed my mistake. 🤗
Omega's 10 damage isn't active until turn 10.
Oops! A mistake on my part! Thank you for pointing that out. 🤗
Ok ....
Conjurers nerf is decent - will still see play but this makes it at least slower!
Pocket Galaxy back to 7 - sure, not as good as it was with 5 mana and sure before the buffed it up to 5 almost nobody played it but with the control tools mage has this could still work but i guess the tempo loss is huge and therefor will defenitely see much less play
Extra Arms - i personaly am did not have a problem with that card and therefor think this nerf is a little much but i guess it´s still ok and reasonable
Dr.Boom, Mad Genius - finally they decided to do something about him - sure i wished for a much bigger Nerf to this card with all the control warriors out there but i guess it's a start :) - but not sure that this nerf will potentially stop warrior because the class still has lots of removal and survival tools ....
Can't realy talk much about Barnes because i only play Standard - but i rememeber the Big Priest Time in standard and Barnes was bonkers - so i guess this is alright!
Nice to see the nerfs coming this early after a set release! Well done blizzard.
I like the nerfs, except the warrior nerf. It messes up the flavor of dr. 7 and i think the permanent rush and the hero powers is more problematic.
I would like to see another round of nerfs before the next set. If so I hope the SaVeD ThE BeSt (nerf) FoR lAsT...
RIP Luna...back to unplayable, only played it after the buff since I opened it.
Oh well, at least thanks to the buff-nerf I can craft something useful with the dust now.
I agree RIP Luna. It was never played before the buff, only memes. Now it's dead. I hoped they would nerfed it to 6 instead of 7 honestly.
Extra Arms did not need a nerf. Being 2 mana made it a good card. Sound the Bells has full Echo and only gives one attack less.
Luna should have been put to 6 to see how that goes. Yeah it was painful to see a coin + Luna but it was barely playable before.
Boom nerf doesn't do much. All Mechs getting permanent rush + discover effects getting stuff like Omega Devastator is the problem and that stays untouched. It just happens a little later. At least it can't be played with a Hero Power on the same turn.
Conjurer is only delayed now. Not sure if that's enough.
My humble opinion:
Luna's - back to uselessness (should be 6, not 7)
Extra Arms - One of the few useful buffs for priest. I think it was unfair. Just because SOMETIMES they get a 3/5 cleric at turn 2... As above, back to uselessness...
Barnes - Really? Now? Only after 2 years? After BP players stopped using it and playing that insane secret/Aluneth mage??? It won't affect resurrect priest at all.
The other 2 (conjurer's and Boom), I think these were fair changes
I reiterate: reverting buffs is a HUGE fail, independently of how needed the nerfs are.
I appreciate the nerf to Barnes, although i doubt it will be enough to push Big Priest back to the meme population, where it belongs...
Changing up the meta isn't a huge fail. It keeps the game interesting. It's good to have the meta shaken up in various ways. That can be nerfs, buffs, or reverting the buffs. This is good they are being more active in changing up the meta, and aren't just making the buffs they make permanent.
It is a huge fail but only because the buff to Pocket Galaxy was a huge fail. The nerf itself is not a fail, because it was needed, you can't just ignore a card because it was buffed and nerfing it would show we buff cards at random
Why is reverting buffs a huge fail?
Because it means buffs were a huge fail.
And buffs are a daring action that is performed against the verdict of the final testing team.
Which means, why do they test cards at all?
See the point?
Nerf itself is ok. The whole process is a big failure.
Design new cards to shake up the meta.
Design cards better, if you want to shake up the meta.
Buff wisely if you want to shake up the meta.
Designing bad cards, buffing, and then reverting, that's kinda lame, when you have all the above options available.
I don't know man. That's all easy to say when we are not the ones designing the cards. Hearthstone has been going on for years now, and the pool of strong but unusable cards just keeps getting bigger. I for one don't mind a buff here and there. If a buff is too strong well we get a broken deck for a while then they nerf it again.
If we were equal to devs, we'd have their jobs and their salary. I am not saying it is easy, but it is their responsibility. ;)
As i said, it's ok to buff. But if it is a daring one, and you are forced to revert it, the devs give the idea to be clueless about their job.
Or careless towards their customers.
Neither option sounds good to me.