35 new cards! They've probably got some playtesting that shows these cards may still be problematic.
My exact point: maybe these nerfs don't address just the current meta (we'll have other cards in 15 days, so it wouldn't be a smart choice), but probably even the one we'll have after Galakrond's Awakening adventure.
It does change in another way: until now Toki added a minion to the table (if your current tavern allows you to choose from 4 minions, Toki's hero power will give you 4 other minions plus an additional one), but from now on the higher minion will be counted towards the number of choices you can get based on the tavern you're currently in.
In his Twitter post Iksar stated that the team as a whole hasn't come back from holidays yet, but it will starting from Monday (or Tuesday?). I'm sure we'll receive at least a teaser in a week or so.
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.
Deathrattle Rogue - there's no excuse: Necrium Apothecary at 4 mana is straight up stupid and allows even more stupid stuff when combined with the whole Deathrattle package which is not, let's be honest, the problem. And I'm saying it as a person that has been playing this deck since the late December Patch. I personally feel that the Mechanical Whelp version (the one I currently play) is much more "fair" and nice to play and play against, since you immediately get your benefits and your opponent can somehow interact with Apothecary (Spellbreaker, Hex, Earth Shock,...), whereas the Anubisath Warbringer version is straight up solitaire with a bunch of "God I hope he doesn't have many chargers in hand" and you can do nothing about it. A bump to 5 mana seems to be necessary and, at the same time, it will even solve the Zephrys the Great issue with Deathrattles (Zeph was ok before Apothecary and it's wrong teaching him how to behave with a single card from a rotating expansion). On a side note, the mirror is a joke: the first one that is able to drop Necrium Apothecary usually wins, no matter the other cards in the players' hands. Not gonna lie, it kind of reminds me of Barnes...
Galakrond Shaman - imagine nerfing 4 cards in a deck and still not being able to move it from tier 1. That's how busted Galakrond Shaman was, and is. If I had to change another card, I'd definitely go with Dragon's Pack, and I'd either reduce the buff (from +3/+3 to +2/+2 or +3/+2 in order to get a clear with Kronx Dragonhoof) or add Overload (Electra Stormsurge into Dragon's Pack with no downside at all, since Shaman's Invokes gain tempo instead of losing it and you won't be crippled in the following turns). The card straight up kills most Aggro decks will to play the game and seriously threatens other Midrange archetypes.
Pirate Warrior - I despise Face Hunter a lot more than Pirate Warrior, but I see where the complaints come from. I've read some posts on Reddit and Twitter and other users mostly addressed two cards: Ancharrr and Skybarge, the first one being too much value for an aggro deck (damage + draws, even more with an Upgrade!), the second one showing the same problem of prime EVIL Miscreant (too much health for a really good effect). If these cards were the problem and if I had to change them, I'd either go with Ancharrr being a 4 mana card or a 3 mana 2/2 or Skybarge being a 3 mana 2/4 (I think just one of the two will be enough to keep the deck in check).
Galakrond Warrior - the matchups is generally ok, but it's rather a problem of how it feels to play against the deck: you don't feel safe even if you're at 25 (I'm not saying a random life total: yesterday I got OTKed with that much health lol). I personally don't know how to nerf this deck without making it unplayable (and fortunately I'm not a dev). Some people were talking about changing Scion of Ruin, and to be honest I see why, but that doesn't solve the burst issue. We'll see.
Face Hunter - probably the deck I hate the most since DoD release (only second to prime Galakrond Shaman which, of course, was not a problem only from the point of view of those who played it). 30 cards that deal damage or help you (Phase Stalker and Tracking) to find lethal. Unless you specifically want to play decks like Res Priest that destroy it, the only tech card most decks can run is Zilliax, but I wonder what will happen when it will rotate. It's not super busted, its popularity is declining and there are far worse problems at the moment, so my opinion on this archetype is strongly biased.
Did I miss something? Do you think I got something wrong?
It's a shame November 2019 was a sad month for HS Standard ladder, because of both Battlegrounds and Evolve madness.
I'd really like to see the same distribution post in months like May 2019 or September 2019, in which the meta was much more friendly and more people actually played ladder.
However, it gives some useful insights nonetheless (Legend rank still extremely hard to achieve, Rank 10-1 population more than doubled,...).
Not only: I've also seen Zentimo + Hex multiple times, which was cool when it was a meme, but now that it's meta it's really gross lol.
To be honest, most of Galakrond Shaman's problems will go away once Shudderwock rotates (once you clear the two 8/8s you won't have to play around the second wave), but I'd still like to see some changes to Dragon's Pack: I really hate that spell, even more now that Shaman has Electra Stormsurge. Not being able to kill the wolves with Kronx Dragonhoof is tragic and 10/12 worth of stats for 5 mana with taunt and no overload doesn't make much sense (we can argue that Scion of Ruin is on the same page though) but, to be honest, nerfing Pack may be excessive now. It really depends on how much love Shaman will receive with the upcoming adventure and with the new expansion in April.
For what concerns class popularity and winrate, I prefer to rely on Vicious Syndicate more than on HS Replay, since the former's Meta Reports are pure gold if you want to know about the meta.
I am aware of that, but I haven't checked how the nerfed cards have been performing in the last two week.
For example, I heard someone has cut Sludge Slurper from their list, and I've seen very few Mogu Fleshshaper since December 19th. But again, I haven't seen the stats so that's what I was wondering about.
I'd gladly give away the whole package (together with useless stuff like Lightwell, Mindgames, Temple Enforcer and Lightspawn) in order to have a viable evergreen set and a different win condition.
It's been a long time and most of the community agrees that Priest needs some kind of rework.
I think no one can agree as much as I do. The most triggering part about HoFing Mind Blast is not that they chopped away a super cool combo card that saw a decent amount of play through the years and represented Priest's shadow spells really well (second only to Penance and Shadowreaper Anduin in my opinion), but that they replaced it with a totally useless card that can't even be run for Auchenai OTKs since you can only heal your face. It was a straight up "fuck you".
It's been almost half a year and I still miss Mind Blast in Standard.
Coming from a former Priest main (I'm refusing to touch the class since SoU), just healing is lame, unless you attach something cool to it (see Light of the Naaru for example).
Healing by itself is quite useless, since you can't stack it up unlike Armor (unless you print a minion with an effect like "excess healing to your face counts like Armor", but I don't know) and, since right now you can't make proactive moves, you're just hoping that your opponent will end up his gas and concede. Which is fair, give that this is the goal of any Control deck, but man it is a really miserable way to achieve it.
Region: EU Usual Play Times: Don't really have a specific play time: I log in whenever I feel like. Mostly after 21:00 CEST Level of Experience: Between intermediate and advanced (advanced is a big word, but I'm quite good at the game) Preferred Heroes: Priest (first golden hero, I love both Control and Combo sides of the class; rip Mind Blast), Rogue (I'm mostly a Control player but I've come to like the class' style) and Hunter (big fan of Midrange Hunter) in that order I’m Looking For: kind people, possibly rank 10 or higher, to talk with and spectate Tell us something about you: 22 years old, I'm 2 years into the game and I like building decks around wacky cards that don't see play at all (Electrowright upon all). Mostly a Standard players since I don't have a large collection, I'm available for coaching if someone would need it.
Like the guy below me said, you don't really need a fully upgraded Galakrond to win the game: in the end, it's not your only win condition.
Moreover, there are not just 2 Invoke cards, but 3, which makes the difference if you consider what I wrote above: drawing 1 card is good, drawing 2 cards is great, but since you want to close the games around turn 11 you can't really pretend to wait for all the right cards to come up from your deck. Sometimes I even played Galakrond in its base form just because I had a turn 7 with no pression at all.
Finally, in the mid-late game Lackey are generally much better than a 1/2 dagger and they have synergy with Heistbaron Togwaggle too, which means more 0 cost cards drawn or all the memes you want.
My exact point: maybe these nerfs don't address just the current meta (we'll have other cards in 15 days, so it wouldn't be a smart choice), but probably even the one we'll have after Galakrond's Awakening adventure.
It does change in another way: until now Toki added a minion to the table (if your current tavern allows you to choose from 4 minions, Toki's hero power will give you 4 other minions plus an additional one), but from now on the higher minion will be counted towards the number of choices you can get based on the tavern you're currently in.
Imagine getting Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk as a Hunter or, even more hilarious, as a Warlock.
Please make this happen.
Battletag: beppe946#2807
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes
done
In his Twitter post Iksar stated that the team as a whole hasn't come back from holidays yet, but it will starting from Monday (or Tuesday?).
I'm sure we'll receive at least a teaser in a week or so.
"Green mix red, me no dead"
Yeah about that...
POGGERS
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.
My humble two cents on the future Balance Changes
Deathrattle Rogue - there's no excuse: Necrium Apothecary at 4 mana is straight up stupid and allows even more stupid stuff when combined with the whole Deathrattle package which is not, let's be honest, the problem. And I'm saying it as a person that has been playing this deck since the late December Patch. I personally feel that the Mechanical Whelp version (the one I currently play) is much more "fair" and nice to play and play against, since you immediately get your benefits and your opponent can somehow interact with Apothecary (Spellbreaker, Hex, Earth Shock,...), whereas the Anubisath Warbringer version is straight up solitaire with a bunch of "God I hope he doesn't have many chargers in hand" and you can do nothing about it. A bump to 5 mana seems to be necessary and, at the same time, it will even solve the Zephrys the Great issue with Deathrattles (Zeph was ok before Apothecary and it's wrong teaching him how to behave with a single card from a rotating expansion).
On a side note, the mirror is a joke: the first one that is able to drop Necrium Apothecary usually wins, no matter the other cards in the players' hands. Not gonna lie, it kind of reminds me of Barnes...
Galakrond Shaman - imagine nerfing 4 cards in a deck and still not being able to move it from tier 1. That's how busted Galakrond Shaman was, and is.
If I had to change another card, I'd definitely go with Dragon's Pack, and I'd either reduce the buff (from +3/+3 to +2/+2 or +3/+2 in order to get a clear with Kronx Dragonhoof) or add Overload (Electra Stormsurge into Dragon's Pack with no downside at all, since Shaman's Invokes gain tempo instead of losing it and you won't be crippled in the following turns). The card straight up kills most Aggro decks will to play the game and seriously threatens other Midrange archetypes.
Pirate Warrior - I despise Face Hunter a lot more than Pirate Warrior, but I see where the complaints come from. I've read some posts on Reddit and Twitter and other users mostly addressed two cards: Ancharrr and Skybarge, the first one being too much value for an aggro deck (damage + draws, even more with an Upgrade!), the second one showing the same problem of prime EVIL Miscreant (too much health for a really good effect). If these cards were the problem and if I had to change them, I'd either go with Ancharrr being a 4 mana card or a 3 mana 2/2 or Skybarge being a 3 mana 2/4 (I think just one of the two will be enough to keep the deck in check).
Galakrond Warrior - the matchups is generally ok, but it's rather a problem of how it feels to play against the deck: you don't feel safe even if you're at 25 (I'm not saying a random life total: yesterday I got OTKed with that much health lol). I personally don't know how to nerf this deck without making it unplayable (and fortunately I'm not a dev). Some people were talking about changing Scion of Ruin, and to be honest I see why, but that doesn't solve the burst issue. We'll see.
Face Hunter - probably the deck I hate the most since DoD release (only second to prime Galakrond Shaman which, of course, was not a problem only from the point of view of those who played it). 30 cards that deal damage or help you (Phase Stalker and Tracking) to find lethal. Unless you specifically want to play decks like Res Priest that destroy it, the only tech card most decks can run is Zilliax, but I wonder what will happen when it will rotate. It's not super busted, its popularity is declining and there are far worse problems at the moment, so my opinion on this archetype is strongly biased.
Did I miss something? Do you think I got something wrong?
It's a shame November 2019 was a sad month for HS Standard ladder, because of both Battlegrounds and Evolve madness.
I'd really like to see the same distribution post in months like May 2019 or September 2019, in which the meta was much more friendly and more people actually played ladder.
However, it gives some useful insights nonetheless (Legend rank still extremely hard to achieve, Rank 10-1 population more than doubled,...).
Not only: I've also seen Zentimo + Hex multiple times, which was cool when it was a meme, but now that it's meta it's really gross lol.
To be honest, most of Galakrond Shaman's problems will go away once Shudderwock rotates (once you clear the two 8/8s you won't have to play around the second wave), but I'd still like to see some changes to Dragon's Pack: I really hate that spell, even more now that Shaman has Electra Stormsurge.
Not being able to kill the wolves with Kronx Dragonhoof is tragic and 10/12 worth of stats for 5 mana with taunt and no overload doesn't make much sense (we can argue that Scion of Ruin is on the same page though) but, to be honest, nerfing Pack may be excessive now. It really depends on how much love Shaman will receive with the upcoming adventure and with the new expansion in April.
For what concerns class popularity and winrate, I prefer to rely on Vicious Syndicate more than on HS Replay, since the former's Meta Reports are pure gold if you want to know about the meta.
Sam
We'll probably get a teaser in a week or so
I am aware of that, but I haven't checked how the nerfed cards have been performing in the last two week.
For example, I heard someone has cut Sludge Slurper from their list, and I've seen very few Mogu Fleshshaper since December 19th. But again, I haven't seen the stats so that's what I was wondering about.
Faceless Corruptor is good even with 4 attack instead of 5, so I ended up recrafting it 3 days or so after the patch.
Can't say anything about the other 3, given that it's been a while since the last time I touched Shaman.
I'd gladly give away the whole package (together with useless stuff like Lightwell, Mindgames, Temple Enforcer and Lightspawn) in order to have a viable evergreen set and a different win condition.
It's been a long time and most of the community agrees that Priest needs some kind of rework.
I think no one can agree as much as I do.
The most triggering part about HoFing Mind Blast is not that they chopped away a super cool combo card that saw a decent amount of play through the years and represented Priest's shadow spells really well (second only to Penance and Shadowreaper Anduin in my opinion), but that they replaced it with a totally useless card that can't even be run for Auchenai OTKs since you can only heal your face. It was a straight up "fuck you".
It's been almost half a year and I still miss Mind Blast in Standard.
"You can't lose the game if they can't kill you".
Coming from a former Priest main (I'm refusing to touch the class since SoU), just healing is lame, unless you attach something cool to it (see Light of the Naaru for example).
Healing by itself is quite useless, since you can't stack it up unlike Armor (unless you print a minion with an effect like "excess healing to your face counts like Armor", but I don't know) and, since right now you can't make proactive moves, you're just hoping that your opponent will end up his gas and concede.
Which is fair, give that this is the goal of any Control deck, but man it is a really miserable way to achieve it.
Battletag: beppe946#2807
Region: EU
Usual Play Times: Don't really have a specific play time: I log in whenever I feel like. Mostly after 21:00 CEST
Level of Experience: Between intermediate and advanced (advanced is a big word, but I'm quite good at the game)
Preferred Heroes: Priest (first golden hero, I love both Control and Combo sides of the class; rip Mind Blast), Rogue (I'm mostly a Control player but I've come to like the class' style) and Hunter (big fan of Midrange Hunter) in that order
I’m Looking For: kind people, possibly rank 10 or higher, to talk with and spectate
Tell us something about you: 22 years old, I'm 2 years into the game and I like building decks around wacky cards that don't see play at all (Electrowright upon all). Mostly a Standard players since I don't have a large collection, I'm available for coaching if someone would need it.
Like the guy below me said, you don't really need a fully upgraded Galakrond to win the game: in the end, it's not your only win condition.
Moreover, there are not just 2 Invoke cards, but 3, which makes the difference if you consider what I wrote above: drawing 1 card is good, drawing 2 cards is great, but since you want to close the games around turn 11 you can't really pretend to wait for all the right cards to come up from your deck. Sometimes I even played Galakrond in its base form just because I had a turn 7 with no pression at all.
Finally, in the mid-late game Lackey are generally much better than a 1/2 dagger and they have synergy with Heistbaron Togwaggle too, which means more 0 cost cards drawn or all the memes you want.