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Wow, if these are the real changes, I like them very much!

It is a "hard nerf" to Quest Hunter, but doesn`t "kill" the deck (maybe T2 or T3 after the nerf). I have to farm the rest 50 wins for my 1.000 wins at the weekend. ^^

The nerf to PW is ok, I think. PW is very strong in Wild but at last for me didn`t feel "op broken". This nerf slows down the deck a bit and we have to see, if this is enough.

The Mage nerf would kill some combo decks - and I would love it! Maybe Secret Mage can step back in the meta? Yeah, it is no beloved deck but no where near "too strong" in the current Wild meta.

Yes, this is great news!

Alextrasza players will love that change.

There is also a turn threshold, not sure about the exact value.

Accoarding to Kripp you level your buddy bar by:

• Dealing Damage
• popping Divine Shields
• entering combat
• Winning a combat
• Tieing a combat

I think it's worth challenging the premise that Demacia is only used as a support region. If you trust the Mobalytics tier list, then there are two competitive decks that feature Demacian Champs: Pantheon Dragons at S Tier with Shyvana and Laser Gate at A Tier with Lux. While it's certainly true that other meta decks use Demacia as pure support, and it's true that you could build a Pantheon deck and a Jayce deck without those champs, it's not fair to say that Demacia is strictly support.

I said that Demacia is "mostly" used as a support region not "only".

This is sort of the double-edged sword of Champ design in LoR - many of Demacia's Champs are well-designed from a traditional CCG standpoint, but that often renders them less compelling because of how synergy focused LoR is. They fit the regional identity very well, and offer powerful effects that exceed follower cards (persistent bonus Rally's, persistent free Barriers or challenger units to make for high value trades, etc), but the high-synergy champs end up being more relevant precisely because they'll find a home when any part of their synergistic deck is strong. When synergy is the primary driver for deck building, you end up with more narrow deck-building options and linear game plans, so there's just no room for a generically strong midrange Champ like Garen because he doesn't do enough to progress your main strategy. For what it's worth, I don't think this is strictly a problem for Demacia, but it may be true that it's a bigger problem for Demacia than other regions because the region is built for board-based, midrange playstyles.

This is not the issue with Demacia or the issue that I was trying to highlight. Champion requiring specific synergies to function is not Demacia's problem. 

To illustrate my point let's compare some follower, for an 8 drop finisher Demacia has Tianna Crownguard she has tough which makes her good at trading but she can't finish the opponent by herself for Tianna to be useful you need to already have a board of unit, attack clear the your opponent's board with trades then play Tianna to rally and win. that a lot set up and Tianna just end up being a win more card but the worst part is that your opponent can counter you easily with just a chump blocker like Spiderling 

Compare that to Noxus 8 drop finisher Captain Farron, he doesn't care about you having or no having a board with 8 overwhelm damage and another 8 burn damage he is more than capable of finishing the opponent all by himself and the opponent can't just survive with a mere Spiderling.

Rally is supposed to be Demacia way of finishing the game but because Demacia has no may to deal damage directly to the nexus the mechanic end up being just decent in Demacia and completely broken in any region that has Elusive or overwhelm, even scouts one the only few "real" Demacian deck use Miss Fortune to compensate for that weakness.

wait arent we still missing like 4-5 streamers to reveal the new content or did i miss something?

Really excited for these mercs. Especially for Lokholar since it punishes fast mercs like Valeera. Wrathion and Sinestra might also make Dragons viable and Belinda should fit niceley into a fire comp and maybe also a frost one (I doubt that she's better than Jaina there). The only one that doesn't seem to a have a place is Galvangar. Well, outside of being the best tech option against healing heavy comps.

Quote From iWatchUSleep

You're extremely naive if you think these nerfs only help aggro decks. Given your tone I assume you're a control player. Do you know what happens when aggro can punish rogues harder? More of them will show up.

Do you know what happens when more aggro decks show up? Control decks can start preying on them and gain more breathing room because rogues are kept in check by the aggro decks.

 

These balance changes seem perfect for the current meta.

Eventually Kurthrus, Cariel, Tamsin and Guff will most likely get touched too, as they're only slightly less busted than scabbs. But that's probably for another time.

When I said the nerfs help aggro I was specifically talking about the match-up, not the overall meta. I explicitly said "I hope it [aggro] would subdue rogue and mage enough to let other decks be playable."

Also, there is no need to talk down to me.

Man some of these seem crazily broken while others are just mediocre and kinda useless

As long as you're at 15 health or below, conceding will advance your quest to play x games. 

I may have missed this somewhere, but how do you actually fill your buddy meter?

6400 dust, extra nice!

Edit: Got Ilgynoth, Jayce, Priest's Quest and Polkelt "from thin air"

Thx Blizz!

Can’t believe they’re not going to change Maestra’s interaction with gnolls and undercover agent. I mean, they’re generally good at nerfing what needs to be nerfed, so I foresee a much better meta than the current roguestone, but as long as Maestra still finds a place in rogue decks I’m gonna be pissed. For me, it’s simply not fun when I’m facing an opponent and they turn out to be a rogue. All in all, even though the changes will likely be sufficient, I’m not satisfied with them.

Quote From Marega

nerfs odd hunter quest by nerfing a common, sneaky bastards  Microsoft will be proud

 

I can see you don't play Odd Hunter, or don't know how it works.

The nerf to rapid fire is a pretty big nerf, now you don't have acces to 4 damage spells (or more, if you get rapid fire from tracking), meaning more time to complete the quest, and, if you complete the quest, i'ts 16 less damage (4 from the spell, and 12 from the zero mana hero power)

Now many players can have a liittle breath to stabilize before getting killed.

I don't think I could ever play Yu-Gi-Oh again. I quit playing the day I taught my aunt how to play: she was fine, but I was playing like a total A-hole. We got into a fight about the rules, I argued semantics and she didn't want to play anymore. I realized how much of a dick I was and put everything away.

Still have the cards tucked away in my room, but...no. The lesson I learned is more valuable than the cards, I guess...except maybe my foil Thousand-Eyes Restrict lol

You're extremely naive if you think these nerfs only help aggro decks. Given your tone I assume you're a control player. Do you know what happens when aggro can punish rogues harder? More of them will show up.

Do you know what happens when more aggro decks show up? Control decks can start preying on them and gain more breathing room because rogues are kept in check by the aggro decks.

These balance changes seem perfect for the current meta.

Eventually Kurthrus, Cariel, Tamsin and Guff will most likely get touched too, as they're only slightly less busted than scabbs. But that's probably for another time.

Do we know the tavern tiers of these buddies yet?

Is Rogue really so damaged? The old Poison rogue was just delayed one turn in my view ...

Nerfing a common is actually the best possible thing for your dust reserves, you usually have a ton of them you can disenchant for 8 times the value (40 dust instead of 5), while its 4 times the value for other rarities. Also doesn't hurt as much to still keep 2 playable copies while netting a nice amount of dust for all your other copies.

Honestly expected a bit of a bigger hit to Pirate Warrior but even this might be enough to give decks some breathing space. The hit to Odd Hunter is nice, not only do they lose a spell from their arsenal, which is already kinda having to make do with some suboptimal cards, but they just so happen to lose the best spell they had. That said, there are plenty of games where Odd Hunter doesn't get Rapid Fire and they still do quite fine. I'm hoping this might make the non-Odd version of the deck a lot more competitive, as that one feels a lot more midrangy and fair.

Also happy with the Incanter's Flow nerf, even though that only sees fringe play in Wild. It's almost as if effects like Incanter's Flow, Stealer of Souls, Darkglare or Runed Mithril Rod shouldn't be printed, given the thorough nerfing all of these cards received (and Runed Mithril Rod is still insane at 5).

The nerf to Sorcerer's Apprentice I'm torn on. On one hand, I'm happy that they didn't just nerf it by 1, which would have done almost nothing, on the other I wish they just changed the general discounting mechanics the same way they did with Echo. Just no reducing to 0 by static effects. That would nix Anacondra too which I'd be perfectly happy with. This is a pretty clear signal to me that they're just fine with Mechwarper, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Anacondra, Radiant Elemental etc. all enabling busted shit, they'll just slow down the outliers (after 2+ years of complaints). But these types of cards will continue creating problems in the future because the nerf simply doesn't future-proof the game. I am a little sad about losing Apprentice in Parrot Waygate Mage though. That deck was fun.

The nerfs to Rogue are sad for Wild though. It's not like Burgle Rogue or Tempo Rogue really have much going for them in the format, but chances are these will get unnerfed once they rotate and we can have them back. That said, what all this says to me is, with the top decks slowing down and Mage OTKs becoming a lot worse, we're about to see a lot of Pillager Rogues blowing people up by turn 5-6. Maybe they should have touched the other Scabbs as well. Curious what sort of innovation Mage will be forced to push now that they have to play a bit more fair.

Love that Mage skin; might have to retire Kel'Thuzad!