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Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Hey everyone! Huge balance patch coming today, with 20 card changes – 3 Nerfs and 17 buffs. We had three overarching goals for this patch – nerf the cards that are making the format less fun than it could be, amp up some of the weaker Colossals, and reinvigorate the 1/X

Hey everyone! Huge balance patch coming today, with 20 card changes – 3 Nerfs and 17 buffs. We had three overarching goals for this patch – nerf the cards that are making the format less fun than it could be, amp up some of the weaker Colossals, and reinvigorate the 1/X

  • GallonHS
    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
    Hey everyone! Huge balance patch coming today, with 20 card changes – 3 Nerfs and 17 buffs. We had three overarching goals for this patch – nerf the cards that are making the format less fun than it could be, amp up some of the weaker Colossals, and reinvigorate the 1/X

    • GallonHS
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      underperforming classes with a wide suite of various buffs. NERFS: Lets talk about the 4 mana elephant in the room – Drek’thar. Since the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City, Drek’thar has been the best card in two of three of the best decks in format, miles away from 2/x

      • GallonHS
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        the next best cards. Alongside this, the experience of going up against a turn 3 or turn 4 Drek’thar made it feel like nothing else mattered. Clear outlier in both data and player sentiment made Drek’thar a slam dunk nerf target for this patch. 3/x

        • GallonHS
          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
          Other nerfs: Multi-strike is already an incredibly efficient removal/damage dealing tool, but when combined with cards like Dreadprison Glaive is a clear outlier for what early game removal should be. 4/X

          • GallonHS
            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
            Looking ahead, Multi-strike will be in the format for the next couple years, so we’re nerfing it both for the health of the current and the health of future metagames. 5/X

            • GallonHS
              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
              Finally, while Quest Hunter has an appropriate power level outside of Drek’thar, it can be frustrating to repeatedly play against. Dragonbane Shot is one of the most flexible tools that this deck has, so softening it should improve the play-against experience vs hunter. 6/x

              • GallonHS
                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                Worth mentioning: We also looked at some of the options that Warrior has, like Shield Shatter, but we decided that nerfing its best matchup and buffing a ton of non-Warrior classes meant that we could leave its strong set of tools alone for now. 7/x

                • GallonHS
                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                  BUFFS: Colossal minions are clearly the stars of the show for Voyage to the Sunken City, but some of them weren’t shining bright enough. Similar to Hero Cards from Alterac Valley, we had a soft goal this set of giving each class an exciting, playable Colossal minion, 8/X

                  • GallonHS
                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                    so we’re taking another pass on Xhilag, of the Abyss and the Blackwater Behemoth. Demon hunter has lost a lot so far this patch and their Colossal minion has been clearly underperforming. (Also, Xhilag has OBJECTIVELY the best art in the game.) 9/X

                    • GallonHS
                      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                      Seems like an easy win to make the Colossal Mechanic more exciting! We had a few interesting options for how to buff it, such as increasing the health of its appendages or by making them target the lowest-Health enemies. 10/X

                      • GallonHS
                        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                        We decided to increase the initial damage the appendages dealt, as we felt that part of the card was its most exciting aspect. Blackwater Behemoth was another obvious choice, as it’s an underperforming Colossal in an already weak class. 11/X

                        • GallonHS
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          While we considered taking the safe approach of both decreasing its Cost and stats, we felt that this was a place to give a very significant power increase and chose to do Cost only. 12/X

                          • GallonHS
                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                            As for the rest of the buffs, we set our sights on the weaker classes and archetypes from the latest set that didn’t quite land. The four classes we looked at were Rogue, Priest, Warlock, and Hunter (which is getting its best deck hit pretty hard.) 13/X

                            • GallonHS
                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                              ROGUE: One of the archetypes that’s gotten quite a bit of support over the last couple sets is Burgle/Thief Rogue, but after the Wildpaw Gnoll nerf the deck ceased to exist. A lot of Gnoll’s power was due to the interaction it had with Secret Passage, 14/X

                              • GallonHS
                                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                and since Passage has rotated to Wild, we decided to fully revert the nerf, giving Thief Rogue its strongest payoff back. Alongside that, we decided to widespread moderate buffs to some of the weaker support cards for the archetype. 15/X

                                • GallonHS
                                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                  HUNTER: We wanted to make sure that Hunter had a viable archetype, and with the nerfs to Quest Hunter and a relatively weak meta for Face Hunter, we thought Big Beast Hunter was an interesting candidate to receive a power increase. 16/X

                                  • GallonHS
                                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                    Of these changes, Harpoon Gun is the largest power increase, as the game-changing play patterns it creates can now happen a whole turn earlier. This is one of the buffs that we will be most closely monitoring on live. 17/X

                                    • GallonHS
                                      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                      PRIEST: Priest is weak across the board right now, so alongside the large buff to its Colossal minion, we are putting some power into various tools it has for different archetypes. 18/X

                                      • GallonHS
                                        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                        Serpent Wig should now be an impressive piece in Naga Priest, and Shadowcloth Needle should open up a wide variety of experimentation with Shadow/Control Priest archetypes. 19/X

                                        • GallonHS
                                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                          WARLOCK: Both of Warlock’s archetypes from this set haven’t seen much representation in the meta. This is partially due to Curse Warlock receiving nerfs pre-release. After several weeks since launch, it looks like we overcorrected, 20/X

                                          • GallonHS
                                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                            so we’re giving some of the curse generators a bit of power back to make this a more viable option. While nerfing Demon Hunter should give Murloc Warlock a better chance competitively, we also decided to give it a moderate power increase by buffing its Dredge/Sunken combo. 21/22

                                            • GallonHS
                                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                                              Whew, lots to talk about this time. TL;DR, Drek’thar has been rekt hard. Hope y’all enjoy the buff patch and continue to have fun in the Sunken City overall, thanks for reading!

                        • ZombiesGoNomNom
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          @GallonHS Any reason for not touching the Druid colossal? It’s right there with priest and DH imo in terms on not getting much time in the sun. Druid is already a pretty good class and I could see it being a hard card to buff but I’m curious if it was considered at all

                          • GallonHS
                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                            @ZombiesGoNomNom Druid Colossal was one we were on the fence about— we backed off because they have a solid amount of strong playables this early in the year, where classes like DH and Priest were lacking those, especially in the higher mana costs.

                            • GallonHS
                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                              @ZombiesGoNomNom We’ll keep an eye on it as a place where we can give Druid a boost in the future, as I agree that there’s room on the card for a bit more power.

                        • JNytemarePierce
                          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                          @GallonHS Great read. Blackwater going to 7 really help quest priest have another good 7, and pool to 8 can fill that slot. Speaking of seek guidance Quest any plans to change it. Sometimes it's just so hard to complete a step (like never getting that 2 drop etc) 1/x

                          • JNytemarePierce
                            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                            @GallonHS Than if you manage to finish the quest you still need to rely on drawing The Shard. It feels bad to do all that work and still lose because you never could draw The Shard. Like I would love to see the shard be instantly added to your hand or something else. 2/x

                            • GallonHS
                              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                              @JNytemarePierce Doubt any changes to the functionality of the Priest Questline will be made.

                • rebobblehead
                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                  @GallonHS Is Druid on your radar to see how it pans out in the way DH was with the previous changes? Little concerned nerfing DH while leaving Warrior will leave it a little too prominent in the meta, but hopefully some other aggro decks being playable proves me wrong

                  • GallonHS
                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                    @rebobblehead Yeah, it is. Main focus this patch was buffs and to shave off the roughest edges. No outliers in druid compared to the cards we hit in DH/Hunter, so we want to monitor the impact of buffs before doing any fine-tuning nerfs, which means no changes to Druid this time.

    • ramanujoke
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      @GallonHS Gallon, you never miss Glad to have people like you speaking to the community !

      • GallonHS
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        @ramanujoke I did miss. Missed the opportunity to buff crabrider 😎
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