We now have all the details for the nerfs that are coming next week! This is the second balance patch we're getting during Ashes of Outland and the second time Demon Hunters are getting hit with the nerf bat. In addition to the nerfs, here are things of note.
- Only three of these cards will be eligible for dust refunds - none of which are Outland cards.
- An update has added that Golden Altruis the Outcast and Battlefiend will be both be eligible for dust refunds.
- Bad Luck Albatross, Bloodbloom, and Open the Waygate.
- Millhouse is being changed in Battlegrounds to increase the cost of his Tavern Tiers by 1.
- The Lurker Below is now properly tagged as a Beast.
- Zephrys the Great received a bug fix and change (details below).
Quote From Kerfluffle In our recent Reddit AMA, we spoke on a few balance updates we intend to make soon. We’re now ready to share the full details of these updates, which will be included in the 17.0.2 patch planned for early next week.
Balance Updates*
Neutral –
- Old: Cost 6 mana → New: Cost 7 mana.
- Old: Cost 3 mana → New: Cost 4 mana.
- Old: 3 Attack / 3 Health → New: 3 Attack / 2 Health.
Demon Hunter –
- Old: Cost 3 mana, 3 Attack / 2 Health → New: Cost 4 mana. 4 Attack / 2 Health.
- Old: 2 Attack / 2 Health → New: 1 Attack / 2 Health.
- Old: 7 Attack / 4 Health → New: 6 Attack / 4 Health.
Warlock –
- Old: Destroy a Demon. Restore 5 Health to your hero. → New: Destroy a friendly Demon. Restore 5 Health to your hero.
- Old: Cost 2 mana → New: Cost 4 mana.
Paladin –
- Old: Cost 6 mana → New: Cost 5 mana.
Mage –
- Old: Cast 6 spells that didn’t start in your deck. Reward: Time Warp. → New: Cast 8 spells that didn’t start in your deck. Reward: Time Warp.
*The following cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after the 17.0.2 patch has been released:
- Golden Altruis the Outcast
- Golden Battlefiend
- Golden/Normal Bad Luck Albatross
- Golden/Normal Frenzied Felwing
- Golden/Normal Open the Waygate
- Golden/Normal Bloodbloom
Battlegrounds
Millhouse Manastorm
- Old: Minions cost 2 Gold. Refresh costs 2 Gold. Start with 3 Gold. → New: Minions cost 2 Gold. Refresh costs 2 Gold. Tavern Tiers cost (1) more. Start with 3 Gold.
Bug Fixes
The Lurker Below is now properly tagged as a Beast.
Fixed a tracking issue that prevented 500 wins with Demon Hunter from being achieved.
Fixed a bug where Zephrys the Great would not offer a lethal option if your hero had a large amount of Attack.
Zephrys the Great has been updated to accommodate the Sacrificial Pact and Glaivebound Adept changes.
Comments
It looks small, but the open the waygate nerfs is enough that they will now struggle to complete the quest on turn 4 without exhausting all of their resources. Waygate decks will now be much more efficently countered by aggro, and will continue to beat durdling control lists.
Happy with the felwing nerfs, even if I wasn't in standard to see the apparently problematic happy ghoul 2.0.
Altruis has been removed from odd demon hunter, which I think it doesn't really care about. Battlefiend is now in line with the squire, as I had expected.
Inexplicable Libram of Justice buff. Maybe Libram paladin was super competitive in their playtesting and they are upset that it's seeing roughly 0 play.
Bloodbloom dies, and darkest hour is no longer able to compete with quest mage. Mecha'thun warlock struggles to pull off the combo now, but it was never super powerful anyway.
Albatross is also removed from odd demon hunter. Maybe these nerfs will force the deck to adopt a different play style, without a proper reno counter.
Kael'thas is now slightly worse, and this probably helps to stop the inner demon combo from being a useful finisher in standard. It now costs more than an auctioneer, so storm druids would probably prefer to go back to the pre kael'thas deck structure, without UI and overflow.
Hey, you could still suicide yourself as Jaraxxus with Sacrificial Pact! A Suicide Pact?
Better question: will Zephrys offer Sac Pact if you are Jaraxxus and the enemy has lethal on board?
I don't think Zephrys understands the art of the suicide and he's only going to offer you cards that appear to deny the enemy's lethal. In fairness, unless you have to remove both a weapon and minions, it always at least delays lethal so far as the board state is concerned.
well... with Sac Pact nerfed we lost the Jaraxxus meme, so we need something in return, and I think Zephrys suicide would be appropriate. I couldn't imagine a better way to go out.
The A.I. has been known to bm from time to time, so maybe you can coax Zephrys into a suicide. Leaving yourself with 0 mana and being dead on the board seems the most likely avenue.
YOU FACE JARAXXUS!!!!
Open the Waygate - Are you fucking kidding me? Upping this to 10 spells still wouldn't have been enough. This MIGHT slow down the deck by only 1 turn. This nerf really shows they have no idea about Wild.
Bloodbloom - RIP Mecha'thun Warlock. To anyone saying "Just use Drakkari Enchanter", you don't know what you're talking about. That is not a replacement that will just slip in and not effect the win rate of the deck. Mecha'thunlock has been murdered for the sins of Darkest Hour.
The rest are "fine"
The Libram of Justice buff really just feels like "see, we're still doing buffs" and really is going to do nothing for the state of Paladin.
I'm totally with you. Instead of nerfing secret mage decks (with up to insane 75% WR!), they decided to nerf a set of warlock decks which currently has only up to 65% WR on average, additionally killing well-balanced Mecha'thun decks with average 60% WR.
As a warlock-main player with full-golden Mecha'thun deck, I hereby claim that Blizzard is totally incompetent and indeed have no idea about Wild.
The Wild meta is already 30% DH and 30% secret mages (telling by the deck tracker stats), and it's going to be only worse.
I don't know what you mean by "Mecha'thunlock has been murdered for the sins of Darkest Hour". It was my impression that the devs meant to nerf Mecha'thun Warlock alongside Darkest Hour, and this was their way of killing two birds with one stone.
Isn't Mecha'thun still possible with what they used to do: Galvanizer and one Emperor Thaurissan tick?
It should help with the Darkest Hour slightly, though.
Yeaaaaah, Paladin was in a trash dumpster for a long time, without any good control deck, mostly hyper aggro or memes.
I don't know why these people downvoted you, you are right. Blizzard just doesn't understand wild that well.
Open the Waygate’s something that, if it got nerfed just a tiny bit too much, would probably become completely unplayable.
I think that is what people were wanting, just look at Quest Rogue as an example. It's like playing against a person playing Solitaire, meaning you're just there to watch them play it out and win against you with you putting little to no impact on their state of play.
To everyone saying -1 attack for a DH card here, minus one there, isn't enough, bare in mind that multiple nerfs are happening to the class at once, which does add up in reducing both their speed and damage output in standard (DH in wild is just epic lul compared to the defensive tools we have).
So if you look at just one of the nerfs in a vacuum it may not seem like a lot remember that their early game, mid game, and even late game have all been nerfed in one batch.
I’m assuming that, as Demon Hunter gets more cards over time, they’ll continually reduce the power level of these original cards
Hm. Well...let's take it from the top. The below only applies to Wild.
Kael'thas Sunstrider is pretty much a non-factor already at 6. Few experimental builds use it, there are some nifty shenanigans to be done in Druid but that's about it and even those can generally just switch to a Psychmelon Aviana Kun plan to achieve the same thing faster as is. DH has better decks than the OTK in Wild. The only reason it bore considering was that DH had very little to offer outside of straight aggro, and Inner Demon was the only thing that showed promise. Since the OTK is too slow and unreliable for wild at 6, it's outright useless on 7, when most decks are slinging big meaty taunts or cheating the mana curve to victory by then. So essentially, this does not really impact Wild much.
Bad Luck Albatross now feels right where it should be. Odd decks won't be slamming it down just for the body and tempo with additional screwage on top, now it's a conscious decision to include the card to counter the meta or simply slow opponents down with some dead draw. While it's sad that it might now be too slow for some control Deathrattle builds like Quest Priest, it's better for everyone if this isn't as efficient. I would have preferred a nerf in stats over the nerf in mana though just for Awaken the Makers completion, potential Grave Rune shenanigans for those who like copying the bastard, etc. The important part is that it's getting nerfed at least, though.
Frenzied Felwing isn't really getting hit where it hurts IMO. The problem isn't the difficulty to remove. The problem is the ability to pile this thing up along with other threats early, so that you can't focus on just killing this, you have other problems to deal with alongside it. The proper way to hit it would be through mana, not stats, and least of all health. Nerf its attack, the pressure isn't as high. Nerf its cost, it's harder to pile on the pressure in the first place. Nerf its health and...what? If someone cheated this thing out anyway, it means they had the pressure and the damage output to do so. There are other problems on the board other than what is now a 3/2. And while yes, Consecration and Holy Nova type board clears do kill it now, chances are those weren't good enough to kill the associated problems in the first place so they're about as unattractive of a solution as they were previously. About the only thing the health nerf helps I'd say is Rogue's backstab and unupgraded Druid Spellstone. Not exactly the in-vogue classes at the moment and Felwing isn't the reason.
Altruis the Outcast nerf I'm ok with. If they want to make DH the new Rogue and forget that Rogue was supposed to be one with all the tempo, fine, it's stupid but that's their prerogative. I'd just prefer them not to create a better Odd Rogue. Taking Altruis out of the Odd slot definitely helps in reducing the amount of shit you have to play around against that deck, which is welcome. And while Altruis isn't really as powerful in Odd decks as it is in normal DH decks that can make use of 0 cost cards, the slowdown in speed does make the damage the card can cause just a little bit less threatening, as it makes it harder to play it along with other cards. That might be 1 less damage your board and face have to take and that might be all that's needed to decide the game.
The Battlefiend change is big. Like really big. It's not the fact that it ends up doing 1 less face damage every turn it sticks on the board. It's all about the trades. Previously, a DH going first could drop this down and if you coin a 2/3, they can easily just ignore and go face the turn after because they know you'll do the trade yourself. Now, they have to slam their face and the fiend into the 2/3 just so they aren't forced to hero power your remaining 2/1 the turn after, or worse yet, so you can't heal it if you're priest and seize control of the board for yourself. And if they do just Eye Beam whatever 2/3 you played, well, you've saved yourself some face damage and forced out an outcasted removal for your trouble. Previously, they'd likely save the Eye Beam for something more problematic later, go face and pile the pressure on with another Battlefiend or 1 drop.
Glaivebound Adept....not so much. The cost and the battlecry stayed the same, meaning the reach is there, the tempo is there, the Odd requirement is there and whether it fucks up your face for 6 or 7 the next turn is hardly relevant. If it's minions it's hitting, these die to 6 or 7 damage at that point either way. If it's your face, well, the game is pretty much done regardless because their massive aggressive 5 drop stuck around and got to attack you with impunity. Now if that was a 6 drop, I bet you'd be able to prevent that from occurring. Not as easy to do on 5 mana. The attack here, while painful, isn't as decisive as the timing of the battlecry. A 4 damage battlecry kills most 4 drops or some 5 drops with help from hero power. But a 4 damage battlecry will not nearly as reliably kill 5 or 6 drops. Delaying Glaivebound Adept by a turn would be the decider in whether there's something on the board after the battlecry to kill the Adept before it swings in. And with Adept at 5, there just won't be. So the problem remains and the card will continue to overperform.
Sacrificial Pact is good riddance IMO. There was no reason for that card to hold back Jaraxxus in the first place, but that hasn't been particularly relevant in Wild one way or another. Sitting at a cap of 15 is asking for death since around GvG. But the ability to counter opposing Demons for exactly no mana, get a heal from it to add insult to the injury, on a card that implies a pact with the demon that wasn't even yours...pretty much every part of that card being able to target enemies was a violation. In flavour, in design, in balance. And the fact Zephrys gave access to it to non-Warlock classes just exacerbated the issue. Now the card will be played as intended...in Demon decks, where it will do just fine popping Voidcallers and preventing transformations on Voidlords.
Bloodbloom killing Darkest Hour is a beauty to behold and as mentioned by others, Drakkari Enchanter will just take its place in Mechathun to achieve the same effect. Plus, it will no longer cost Warlocks health to pull their combo off, so in some sense, the deck got better because it's less sensitive to pressure than it was before. An excellent nerf on all accounts. It is sad though, that any use Bloodbloom ever saw was specifically in these two combo decks. It was such a neat trick to do on Kazakus potions, Twisting Nethers, Rin rituals, but it never seemed to catch on with anyone but me from what I've seen. We had some good times together Bloodbloom. You'll be missed. Darkest Hour won't though.
The Libram buff is pretty nice, actually, and makes the card a fairly attractive option for Paladins even without the Libram synergy cards. At this point, you're paying one extra mana over Equality to only kill your opponent's side of the board (which is massive) and you get a 1/4 weapon to help poke down some targets yourself, making it, essentially, a kill spell too if you're really desperate for one. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Now with Open the Waygate, I'd say the nerf is actually a bigger deal than it seems. Judging from the opposing side, it seems like the Mage can do 6, 8, 10 of these spells easily and it doesn't make a difference. But the grass is always greener on the other side. It takes personal experience playing the deck to find out how close the quest completion timings can actually get. I'll admit, the Quest Mage build I run is far from the norm, I don't run Flamewakers, Questing Explorers, Banana Buffoons or Licensed Adventurers, so I don't have data for the more typical examples of Quest Mage. Mine is built more to account for a broader portion of the meta. But from my experience laddering with my version this season, if I win, about 4 times out of 6 I complete the quest just one turn before they're either about to kill me or get out of my damage range. Which means about every 4 wins out of 6 that I got would now be losses instead. And while it often seems that the Mage could easily pound out two more spells with that Apprentice they got on the board, it is quite often that you run out of cheap generated spells right around the time the quest reaches 6. Quite frequently you just crest the magical 6 and the other stuff left in your hand are Flamestrikes and Pyroblasts and Cabalist's Tomes and other shit that's way too expensive to use. So delaying the quest by these two cards can quite drastically impact the winrate of that deck even if it may not look like it. That does not, unfortunately, change the fact that Quest Mage will still bully slow, value-oriented control decks, because those don't apply enough pressure for the 2 extra spells to make a difference. Unless the control deck can just wall up hard against the onslaught of giants, nothing is going to save it from Quest Mage whether it takes them two extra turns or not. The difference is though, that with Quest Mage's matchup against aggro getting worse now, Quest Mage is likely to drop in popularity. Which means those enjoying value games, your DMH Warriors, Deathrattle Rogues, Taunt Druids etc. Those will now have much more space to breathe because the SMOrc players will be making Quest Mage's lives miserable. I guess we'll all, for once, be grateful for the existence of mindless face decks, if I'm right.
Oh, and RIP Millhouse. The main reason he was miserable to play in BGs before the buff was that all of his gold totals were extremely awkward. Tavern-ups cost the wrong amounts at wrong turns, his coins just never lined up right, he was always floating gold left and right and getting his ass kicked in the process because of these inefficiencies. Them giving him the normal amount of gold fixed all that. Everything lined up, he could always buy the right amount of minions to keep up and could tavern at the right times to fill out odd gold amounts (cause rolling and buying costs an even amount of gold, odd gold turns were always inefficient). Now, with all taverns costing one more, he gets to buy in the same way he did until now, which means his early boards can be just as sizeable as they are now but now the tavern-ups don't line up anymore, in fact they line up just as badly as they did when he had less gold than everyone else. Like before, they now interfere with his ability to spend his odd gold amounts, it is once again an issue for him to find a convenient and efficient time to tavern up And unlike his previous shortage of gold, the additional tavern costs continue to be a problem even when he reaches 10 gold. So my guess is he's going right back to being the worst hero in the battlegrounds or at last will rank along heroes like Jaraxxus and Galakrond as one of those you just can't expect to do well with most of the time.
If the deck got "better" by now having to use Drakkari Enchanter, then why wasn't that the standard list in the first place? Mecha'Thun is dead, stop believing otherwise. They nerfed a good, balanced and fair deck all because of Darkest Hour. Darkest Hour should have received the nerf, Bloodbloom was never the problem.
Bloodbloom is the problem. Unless that made darkest hour 15 mana it just wouldn’t matter, and the ability to cast any spell with bloodbloom for just 2 mana is an insanely broken effect that happened to be truly abused by darkest hour. It’s a card they would have to build around for the future, similar to avianna, meaning that they will nerf the card causing the problems.
admittedly drakarri is definitely worse, since you have to play the same turn as thaurissan instead of life gain or removal. That being said most people wouldn’t be too sad to see mecha’thun warlock fade away as well, considering how uninteractive it was
I disagree on that. Bloodbloom nerf was inevitable from the moment it was released back in Un'Goro. I knew it was very powerful when I first saw it. For 2 mana, you can use your life to cast any spell? That's powerful! You are given free 30 "mana" to play with which equates to the spell being 0 cost in a way. And then you still have your 8 mana remaining to do other stuff. Powerful! Many people didn't think much of this card back then but I knew that this card will get nerfed as more cards get released. Honestly, its nothing to be surprised at. Mechathun warlock was a collateral damage to its powerful effect.