Dean Ayala has been a popular guy on Twitter recently as he has announced the team is putting together a new Hearthstone balance patch.
- More information will be shared next week once changes are solidified.
- No date is solidified. It can take them at least a week to get a patch together though.
- Some Galakrond decks are more powerful than needed.
- Changes may be coming to Pirate Warrior.
- Changes may be coming to Deathrattle Rogue.
- Hero balance tweaks are coming to Battlegrounds.
- Expect more Battlegrounds changes over the next few months for cards, heroes, and balance.
Since no exact card changes have been announced, we can only speculate. What cards do you think may get hit with the nerf bat?
Quote From Dean Ayalan Planning another balance patch. Will share some more information next week as we solidify. Some of the Galakrond decks are just a touch more powerful than they need to be to be successful. Also contemplating light changes to non-Galakrond archetypes like Pirate War and DR Rogue.
Also planning on some small hero balance tweaks for Battlegrounds in the same patch. Battlegrounds has a bunch of plans for cards, heroes, and balance over the next 2-3 months.
Will this patch affect Arlington?
Not sure yet. Don't have a date in place. Most of the team isn't even back in the office until [Monday].
How separate is the Battlegrounds team compared to live balance? Two totally different teams now?
They were two separate teams, but we are merging now. @mike_donais and @conorkou are still the battlegrounds champions but the team I work on is going to be helping produce content starting this year.
Thanks for the insight! Where does Arena fit in?
Also under the card design team with major support from a data scientist named Tian.
Comments
I'd say that in wild(don't know about standard) Galakrond Warlock is a pretty big deal. Drawing 3 cards for 4 mana AND 5/4 on top of it is a bit too much. If it was just 2 cards, it would be alright(since you have to have a payoff, that is bigger than usual, since you must play two cards, to get an effect)(Veiled Worshipper).
I hope that they don't nerf a standard Galakrond package, because it's fair and classes like Priest and Rogue desperately need that 4/5 taunt and 2/2 rush.
I am not avare of how you can OTK someone with a warrior, is it with those 3 mana 3/3, that copy a damaged minion?
Other than that, I agree with you on what needs to be nerfed and your suggested nerfs(I'd say that Dragon's Pack would feel fair with +2/+1).
It really isn't though. Galakrond warlock is decent, nothing more. And Veiled Worshipper is definitely not the reason it's as strong as it is. It's the overload of swarm-synergies that wild offers.
Veiled Worshipper draws you three cards because you'll give up on Life Tap (which is the best basic hero power of all 9) and you need some sort of card generation, right? But I understand why you're pointing it out. In Standard Galakrond Warlock is good but not OP or oppressive at all. Moreover, consider that with Worshipper you'd actually get two cards, since you play one (the same reasoning behind stuff like Arcane Intellect: play one, draw two, 2-1=1). I don't see that minion as a problem right now, but who knows.
If the Galakrond package will be nerfed, it will be the class part and not the neutral ones: Shield of Galakrond is an autoinclude in every Galakron deck, but what breaks the mechanic is stuff like Invocation of Frost and Ritual Chopper, in other words cards that make you gain tempo instead of losing it. In the end, it's all about tempo: Galakrond is strong and rewarding, so you should have some disadvantages from invoking it, disadvantages that are supposed to be diminished by the "if you've Invoked twice" cards (Fate Weaver, Veiled Worshipper, Scion of Ruin, Dragon's Pack and Umbral Skulker).
The point is that only Priest loses tempo (and A LOT of tempo) while invoking, whereas Shaman, Warrior and partially Warlock and Rogue gain it: it's a win win scenario which discourages deck building strategies. Would you run other stuff instead of all the 8 Invokers (+ the 2 reward cards + Galakrond)? No, you wouldn't at all: this way, almost half of your deck is filled with no effort at all and you just have to think about how getting your good stuff the fastest possible (prime Galakrond Shaman had plenty of card draw; today's [Hearthstone Card (Galakrond Shaman) Not Found] has Spirit of the Frog that can literally draw you half of the deck).
For what regards Warrior, I used the word "OTK" in order to explain the fact that it has so much burst that you should always be afraid of being dead. Leeroy Jenkins + Inner Rage + Bloodsworn Mercenary is 16 damage by itself. Let's not consider highroll scenarios in which Galakrond, the Unbreakable draws you the nuts, but just a buffed Kor'kron Elite with the combo I just wrote is 20 damage; add Galakrond's Might (which can be triggered multiple times per turn and they stack) and the included Arcanite Reaper and you have an idea of what I'm saying.
I really hate Dragon's Pack as a card, but just +2/+1 is not fair: it's underwhelming.
I hope Ancharr is getting hit so i can collect 3200 dust 😄
I hope Apothecary gets hit so I get 1600 from the golden one AND be able to build Highlander Rogue with Gral
POGGERS
I actually don't think Necrium Apothecary is the main problem, but rather cards like Necrium Blade, as they provide pretty much an instant trigger for the Deathrattle. I'd rather see nerfs to that weapon, maybe switching its Attack and Durability to slow down the deck a bit.
It is always a bit tricky to pin down the bigger problem when a new card comes out and does broken things with a card that has been perfectly fine for ages. In the case of Aviana + Kun the Forgotten King + (anything you like) we had last year, it was deemed to be the fault of Aviana despite her being fine for years.
In this case however, I think it is obvious the Apothecary is the problem. Why? Because even without deathrattle triggers it is above the usual power level, and at an early enough turn that answers are limited. Sure you have to combo it, but a 4 mana 2/5 which draws a specific card and gains a huge deathrattle is way beyond anything similar at the same mana cost. Heck you can even say it is better than Seeping Oozeling since it also draws the card, and that costs 2 more!
Yea, I kinda agree with this, tutoring out specific cards from the deck has been proven to be really powerful in pretty much any TCG.
It's nice to see they are trying to balance the game harder now than in the past. Before we were happy if they balanced the OP, broken, meta-dominant deck 1 month in to the expansion and we weren't even dreaming of getting another balance patch before the next expansion and the next op deck. Now, it seems they are looking to tweak the game all the time and not just from expansion to expansion. A really nice feeling, in my humble opinion, and I hope they continue to pursue this road of balancing this game.
Two balance patches and nary a month's past since DoD. My god do things change. Its a little worrying for me, to be honest.
I was hoping for the masters tour to conclude before seeing another balance patch. Outside of global games, there hasn't been a lot of pro vs pro games so a better picture of how the meta at its best really look like can be seen. I've been seeing some pros giving reno mage a thumbs up , despite mage being at the lowest tier accordingly to hsreplay, so perhaps theres more to it than what we're seeing.
worrisome for f2p standard players too tbh.
Just when I crafted two Necrium Apothecary to try out wild aggro rogue, it'll probably get the axe. Oh well...
These changes do feel really quick though. As others have mentioned, the meta seems pretty healthy at the moment.
I'm a bit surprised, as the meta loos pretty healthy right now compared to several other meta's we had in the past. But if the changes are indeed small tweaks, then I'd hope for
In all honestly, I really hope that this awful Hunter cancer can be resolved. It's ridiculous to the point of what Shaman was pre-nerf
There is nothing to resolve other than your unreasonable hatred towards the class. The deck gets hard countered by paladins, priests and warriors. It's not even tier 1 at this point.
Unfortunately it also hard counters anything that doesn't have many taunts and healing i.e. rogue, mage, warlock, and other hunters
At this point I don't think it needs any nerfs, but nothing spoils my day more than having my consecutive wins deleted by a cheese. I just hope other decks balance it out so face hunter is only a rare annoyance.
I don't think face hunter is a problem you need to either race them, or to have healing.. It's good there's a greed check in the game.
This might be an unpopular Opinion, but I don't think that there's a class that desperately needs a Nerf atm. Pirate-Warrior loses against healing and Deathrattle-Rogue isn't really a threat if you properly take care of Necrium Apothecary.
But if I had to choose one thing... Probably the Weapon from Galakrond. Most of the times I lost against Shaman or Warrior it was because of that additional reach.
What I'd prefer to see though would be some buffs to Galakrond-Priest. I'd like to play Control-Priest without relying on that scummy Resurrect-BS!
My guess:
PS: reasoning behind my Galakrond bets are that nerfing mana on Invoke cards basically delays the whole deck. The suggested cards are those that currently provide more Tempo than non-Galakrond cards of the same cost (eg. Glacial Shard and Heroic Strike), which is an unnecessary spike of powercreep.