Details have arrived on this week's Hearthstone balance changes. We do not have a date confirmed yet.
- Seven cards are getting nerfed in constructed.
- Patches and Pyramad are both returning to the Battlegrounds hero pool.
- Shudderwock, Queen Togwaggle, and Infinite Toki have all had their hero powers adjusted.
- Golden Soul Juggler now deals 3 damage to a minion twice instead of 6 damage once.
- Arena received some card appearance adjustments.
- Druid, Hunter, and Paladin winrates in Arena should be decreased.
- Priest, Rogue, Shaman and Warlock winrates in Arena should now be increased.
The Card Nerfs
All will become disenchantable for full value when the nerfs hit for 2 weeks.
- (Discuss Nerf) Fiendish Rites cost is now 4 (up from 3).
- (Discuss Nerf) Scion of Ruin cost is now 4 (up from 3).
- (Discuss Nerf) Ancharrr durability is now 2 (down from 3).
- (Discuss Nerf) Dragon's Pack now gives +2/+2 (down from +3/+3).
- (Discuss Nerf) Invocation of Frost cost is now 2 (up from 1).
- (Discuss Nerf) Necrium Apothecary cost is now 5 (up from 4).
- (Discuss Nerf) Dragonqueen Alexstrasza can no longer generate herself.
Quote From Kaeyoh Welcome to a new year in the tavern, everyone! We have a balance update in the works that will go live later this week which includes the following changes, primarily for Standard and Battlegrounds:
Warlock
- Fiendish Rites: Mana cost increased from (3) to (4).
Warrior
- Scion of Ruin: Mana cost increased from (3) to (4).
- Ancharrr: Durability reduced from (3) to (2).
Shaman
- Dragon’s Pack: Now reads, “…If you’ve Invoked twice, give them +2/+2.” (reduced from +3/+3).
- Invocation of Frost: Mana cost increased from (1) to (2).
Rogue
- Necrium Apothecary: Mana cost increased from (4) to (5).
Neutral
- Dragonqueen Alexstrasza: Battlecry effect can no longer generate Dragonqueen Alexstrasza.
Once the update is live, adjusted cards will be eligible for a full Arcane Dust refund for two weeks.*
Battlegrounds
This update includes several adjustments and gets more Heroes brawling in Bob’s Tavern than ever before! Further Battlegrounds balance changes are coming very soon, in addition to the exciting new content we have in the pipeline… we’ll have more to share in the near future!
Heroes
- Shudderwock
- Burbling: Cost reduced from (2) to (1).
- Queen Wagtoggle
- Wax Warband: Give a random friendly Mech, Demon, Murloc and Beast +2 Attack. (instead of +1 Health)
- Infinite Toki
- Temporal Tavern: Cost reduced from (2) to (1). Now reads, “Refresh Bob’s Tavern. Include a Minion from a higher Tavern Tier.”
- Patches the Pirate
- Has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
- Fire the Cannons!: At the start of next combat, deal 4 damage to two random enemy minions. (increased from 3 damage)
- Pyramad
- Has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
- Brick by Brick: Give a random friendly minion +3 Health. (increased from +2 Health)
Minions
- Golden Soul Juggler
- After a friendly Demon dies, deal 3 damage to a random enemy minion twice. (instead of 6 damage once)
Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
- Battlegrounds: Selfless Hero’s Deathrattle will now only affect minions that do not already have Divine Shield.
- Arena: The appearance rate of cards in the draft has been updated to ensure class balance remains close to the ideal 50% win-rate. Specifically, the win-rate of Druid, Hunter, and Paladin should now be decreased. The win-rate of Priest, Rogue, Shaman and Warlock should now be increased. Card appearance rates for Mage and Warrior remain untouched.
Comments
Zentimo + Invocation of Frost invokes three times and puts three 2/1s into the board with rush. Its not going away anytime soon assuming Galakrond shaman remains on tier 1-2. The nerf may have ruined the frog draws but in a way this was an intended weakness of Galakrond shaman.
Zentimo was kind of a rushed craft, don't you think? In the end, it would have stayed in Standard for just 3 months and it's a meme in Wild.
But yeah, it's easy talking afterwards.
I mean, I'm not short on dust and I really like Spirit of the Frog and I figured there'S no way they'd gut Shaman again now that it's just one of many tier 1 decks. I'm not upset about the dust used, but rather that I feel like I won't be able to use him in anything.
I understand that feeling: I unpacked him one year ago and until now I haven't really been able to use it efficiently.
It's a shame since it's such a cool card, but we can do nothing about it.
ironically enough, I actually just played 3 games in a row where Zentimo just completely blew out the opponent, so maybe he's not going to be as dead as I thought. Maybe the Frog plan is strong enough to warrant running a random 1-mana spell like Blazing Invocation just to justify the build.
Now that the nerfs are announced, I'd like to express my opinion on the upcoming balance changes.
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza - when I first saw the article, I got really scared by seeing Alex in the thumbnail. Fortunately for us, this is technically a nerf, but actually no: Dragonqueen into Dragonqueen shouldn't have been possible from the beginning.
Since the chance to highroll is so little, we can say that this change won't make her worse. We're gonna miss (or not) some insane highlights, but that's it: that's the capacity of this nerf. Still insane, still metadefining. Won't disenchant her.
Necrium Apothecary - deserved, nothing to discuss here (and I'm saying it as someone who's played like 350ish games with Rogue since DoD). I don't actually know if this nerf will kill the card but at least now you won't always keep it in your mulligan. And that's a start.
Dragon's Pack - Still very good, but not as clearly broken as before; I completely agree with this change. Indirect buff to Kronx Dragonhoof: now Annihilation will clear the board.
Invocation of Frost - fifth nerf (sixth if we consider Faceless Corruptor, but that card was run in every deck, so...) to Galakrond Shaman: will it be enough this time? God I really hope so. 1 mana was not enough, but maybe 2 will be too much. We'll see. I'm just glad that my face won't be frozen on turn 1 anymore and that I'll be able to make my 1 drops live for more than 1 turn.
Scion of Ruin: another deserved nerf. I'm confident that this card will still see play (4 mana 9/6 is still pretty damn good right?).
Ancharrr - reasonable nerf. This change will leave behind a more playable card than an hypothetical bump to 4 mana (consider that it's played in an aggro deck, and you can't afford spending 4 mana in such archetypes for just 2 damage and a couple draws).
Fiendish Rites - The one I'm feeling the less comfortable with, but I guess they playtested (OMEGALUL) the future meta and saw Galakrond Warlock being too dominant.
In the end, a good round of changes, which will solve most (if not all) the problems on ladder. It's just sad that all the seven cards (and two out of four in the December patch) are from the latest expansion. How haven't they seen it coming?
I am absolutely disenchanting her. Now I get to craft her golden for the low low (effective) price of 1600 dust rather than 2800. That or I'm trading in a golden anchor for her. Either way she will finally be the resplendent dragon she is meant to be :)
Well if you care about the aesthetics then you're absolutely right. Enjoy your golden randomly generated Dragons!
Holy crap, never thought any warlock cards would get nerfed, but I guess warlock is pretty strong right now, The nerf made me a little sad, but I will definitely stick with it.
Galakrond Warlock is a t1 deck and the new deck that uses sac pact seems a bit over the top. Hopefully this will tone everything back a bit
Wait that deck is t1 and here i thought the guy was original when i played against them at rank 20 after not playing for a while.
Y'all talking about nerfs, but I'm syced to see the Selfless Hero change. I love that card in Battlegrounds, but it always makes me super annoyed when my Divine Shield minions get hit by its Deathrattle, especially when it's golden.
I wanted to come here and say this. I am excited about the battleground changes. Really changes the power level of some of the heroes and definitely awesome to see the change to Selfless Hero. It just felt bad when a creature with divine shield would "get it" a second time
The only nerf here that seems off to me is Alexstrasza, were any highlander decks at all dominant?
this isn't exactly a nerf to make highlander decks less OP, this is just a hotfix to make the card more reasonable.
In one of my last games we both played Alexstraza. My opponent (went first) got Emeriss doubling everythingsvattack/defense in his hand and the 4/8 (8/16 after Emeriss) taunt discover a dragon druid dragon.
I got two 3/4 Amalgams. So I just conceded.
not a question of being dominant. some nerfs are done cause the cards can do unfair stuff. Alex is an amazing card, i love it and was scared that the nerf would be something like the dragons she generates cost 1. this way u can play her to do her broken stuff but not super highroll. the unfair feelings comes from a mirror play which is already skewed cause u get the amalgam and the feary while ur opponent gets ysera etc. imagine getting a super medium roll while ur opponent gets to play DragonQueen Alex 2 times in the same turn
glad the nerf didnt kill the card just made it fair and u can still do her broken stuff
Two thoughts:
1. I'm glad Blizz is addressing the meta more frequently - looking back at that "class usage" graph that was posted last week and you just see how quickly a meta can become stale if not outright oppressive (looking at you, Shamanstone). HOWEVER, I agree with the other posters here that the new adventure is out in 2 weeks with 35 new cards - it would have made more sense to see how/if those impacted the meta before another round of nerfs imo.
2. Scion of Ruin should have gone to 5 mana OR had stats reduced, maybe Dragon's Pack go up 1 mana as well. I get why it didn't and obviously Blizz has data I don't but honestly of all these recent cards with conditional requirements, how many are EVER played WITHOUT hitting those requirements? I play pure Dragon Galakrond Warrior (gotta get SOME use out of my War Master Voone...) and Galakrond Shaman a lot so definitely benefits me that those cars are OP, but I can say I have never played either of them without the double invoke condition met. Ditto with the Boomsday Omega cards, etc. So I get wanting the card to be - at least theoretically - playable without those conditions met, but lets all be real here that simply does not happen virtually at all, so why act like it does?
The conditions aren't there so that there will be times during the game where you want to play them but can't, or because sometimes you will be playing them without fulfilling the requirement, but it is so that you can only play those cards in specific decks.