Originally announced as being a thing last Tuesday, the Hearthstone nerfs have officially been detailed! We were promised nerfs that targeted Mage, Paladin, Rogue, and Neutral Cards and we were not disappointed.
- Deck of Lunacy now costs 4 mana (Up from 2).
- Sword of the Fallen now has 2 durability (Down from 3).
- Jandice Barov now costs 6 mana (Up from 5).
- Pen Flinger can now only attack minions.
- Far Watch Post now has 3 health (Down from 4)
- Mor'shan Watch Post now has 4 health (Down from 5)
All these changes arrive in Patch 20.0.2 which hits Hearthstone tomorrow, April 13.
Quote From Blizzard Deck of Lunacy
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 4]
Dev Comment: Deck of Lunacy moves up to 4 mana, removing its ability to provide a game-warping effect on turn 1 or 2. When we create cards like Deck of Lunacy, we're aiming for an experience that lets you do wacky, over-the-top things at the cost of power. There's a large audience for that (Spell Mage's play-rate shows!), but Deck of Lunacy very clearly crosses the power threshold we set for these types of cards.
Sword of the Fallen
- Old: 1 Attack, 3 Durability → New: 1 Attack, 2 Durability
Dev Comment: Sword of the Fallen is not only powerful, but also creates early-game situations with too many Secrets in play. We're moving Sword of the Fallen down to 2 durability to reduce the overall value of the card and make those turns against 3-4 Secrets less common.
Jandice Barov
- Old: [Costs 5] → New: [Costs 6]
Dev Comment: Jandice Barov benefitted greatly from the Core Set refresh and the rotation of weaker 5-Cost minions. Looking ahead, we don't intend to dilute Jandice's pool of summoned minions and that's not something we'd want to rely on for her balance. With that in mind, we are nerfing Jandice Barov to 6 mana where her total stat output is much more appropriate.
Pen Flinger
- Old: Battlecry: Deal 1 damage. Spellburst: Return this to your hand. → New: Battlecry: Deal 1 damage to a minion. Spellburst: Return this to your hand.
Dev Comment: Pen Flinger equips some classes with large amounts of chip damage, whether it be to minions or to the opposing hero. This flexibility makes Pen Flinger an attractive option for many decks, but when that utility is combined with repetition it takes over the story of a match. Pen Flinger takes out your minions, might deal 10 damage to your face over multiple turns, and even had the gall to call you names throughout all of it. We're nerfing Pen Flinger to now only target minions, positioning it as a removal option rather than a dual-threat card.
Far Watch Post
- Old: 2 Attack, 4 Health → New: 2 Attack, 3 Health
Mor’shan Watch Post
- Old: 3 Attack, 5 Health → New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Dev Comment: Watch Posts are meant to act as an interesting tech-package when dealing with certain gameplans. Currently though, they act as go-to options in many classes, sporting quite high winrates for disruption-based cards. In order to cut into their power, we're reducing the Health of both Far Watch Post and Mor'shan Watch Post. This change will make them easier to deal with on turns 2 + 3, lowering the investment barrier for removal to better match the options available on those early turns.
Comments
I dont see them ever removing the taunt from the libram IF anythign theyd nerf its stats or the divin shield. Its meant to be defensive card which is why the summon has taunt. Removing that would change the purpose of the card
No minion mage is still very strong without lunacy with all the burn and the draw, and lunacy wasn't even hit that hard to change anything in that deck.
I knew I better hold onto Pen Flingers. It's not that much, but damn 9 Pen Flingers full refund feels nice.
I'd settle for them fixing the obnoxious bug with Oh My Yogg! that forces me to either relog or turn the sound off. Agreed that it feels like a 1 mana counterspell at least 60% of the time.
Animated Broomstick is weird because it isn't being played much right now. Unclear if that is a result of the meta or it just isn't as powerful as it seems. It needs worthy targets.
Welcome nerfs, and not out of line with the general sentiment of what they'd be. I hope it's the end of pen Flinger. Would have like to see First Day of School hit too, and not just because of my golden copy.
Awful nerfs, only sword nerf is good. No nerf for 0 mana draw 2?! Even wild is unplayble coz of it, also, they could nerf freaking flamewakers, it s not ok. 3 mana card who kills you from 30 hp under free mage spells.
Posts still op, now you can remove them, but in wild pala still will be too op with 4 mana win a game.
Worst meta ever, aggro, aggro everywhere.
They don't balance cards for wild, and they shouldn't balance standard cards for wild. These nerfs are fine.
Pretty sure I have never seen Jandice summon herself at 5 mana
She might have been caught up in the change that came during Scholomance where cards cannot generate themselves anymore unless they specifically state it (e.g. Dreadsteed). Normally that affects discover cards, but it might be general enough to affect Jandice too.
I'm gonna be honest. I didn't actually know that update would also affect cards like Jandice since it doesn't seem to be that big of a problem in this situation. I always thought it just applied to adding cards to the hand, and it's not entirely obvious that Jandice and other similar cards would also work this way.
Hey, you learn something new every day.
I didn't think it would affect Jandice either, but you'd expect to have seen her summon herself quite a few times if she could, and probably remember the low-roll too, yet I have no memory of it recent enough that I couldn't dismiss as being from early Scholomance. This is all just circumstantial evidence and could be wrong of course.
Oh wow I didn't think they'd actually nerf the Watch Posts already. They made it sound like they were only watching them for now, but I'm happy to not have to see them in every single deck.
Pen flinger nerf will kill it in Rogue (thank god), but I fear it will leave Paladin unchanged. They mostly just play them for the insane tempo swings anyways (although I suppose it's neat that you no longer have to eat 8 damage every turn while they keep spamming giant recruits.
Sword of the Fallen nerf is pretty significant, but I doubt it will be enough to slow down Libram Paladin, that deck doesn't rely on draw as much as it just steamrolls you from turn 1 on.
Pretty sure Deck of Lunacy nerf does nothing overall. Sure, it's slower and you can't win games starting form turn 2....but the deck itself is still incredibly powerful and Lunacy is now enough to just outvalue slower decks.
Jandice Nerf seems good enough. Making her summon 4-drops would make her unplayable because many of those are just hot garbage. At this point she can't just lock down the game when coined so that's good.
Honestly I'm not all that happy with the nerfs because I feel like the top meta decks will keep being top meta decks, even if they are weaker, while everyone else still has to come to terms with the fact that they can'T beat both Mage and Paladin at the same time.
Probably gonna have another set of nerfs in two weeks...or at least I hope so.
Meta decks beign still the top after nerfs is Fine, aslogn arent tier 0 its fine. a deck shoukdnt be nerfed/gutted JUST because its tier 1(cause else may as well keep nerfing evrything that sees play forever). and goal of nerfs is to bring ti in line NOT destroy it forever(ala warsong or buzzard style nerfs)
the problem I see is that the current meta is very limited overall. You have the two best classes and then everyone else hoping to queue into something else.
This essentially will still happen, the only thing that changes is that Paladin and MAge are weaker to their intended counters (Control and Aggro respectively), which doesn't account for the fact that those counters are diametrically opposed and there is no deck that can take on both of them.
Essentially you either pick a deck to beat Mage or to beat Paladin and then you hope that the 50/50 is in your favour,
I'm fearing that the best way to play ladder will still be to just pick Mage or Paladin because it's better odds than gambling on the matchup (or playing some tier 3 deck that gets steamrolled by both of them).
In order for the meta to be acceptable we'd need a third deck that beats both Mage and Paladin consistently but has other bad matchups.
Although I share your worries a bit, I think these nerfs will Slow the tier S decks down to at least tier 1 or even 2. But ofc they're still very strong
I just don't think it'll be enough to really fix the meta in such a way that other classes will be equally viable.
Like...what reason is there to stop playing Paladin or Mage? Libram Paladin still craps on just about every other deck in the game with the only downside being that it can no longer use Pen Flinger for reach. The Sword nerf is almost an indirect buff because it means you can run a smaller secret package (6 total) and still get full value from both swords most of the time.
Meanwhile Mage can easily just run Lunacy as backup because the regular gameplan of Spell Mage is so strong that it only loses to aggro which will get held at bay by the Paladins.
The "only" downside of pen flinger being used for reach in libram paladin is a huge thing, since it removes any burst damage and a win condition for paladin. Also, your logic on the sword nerf being a buff makes no sense.
well, it's not really a "buff" as much as it's a "won't really matter" nerf for Libram Paladin.
It basically only targets Secret Paladin and their ability to snowball whereas Libram only used it for draw anyways and usually wouldn't get full value out of both Swords.
Which is a good thing. Decks shouldn't be nerfed to get them out of the meta. But to make them fall in line with the rest.
Glad that Pen Flinger can't hit face anymore, but I was hoping it would also become like a 2 mana 2/1 or something.
The nerf might be enough for it to not see play anymore, but if Paladins continue to use it for board control with 0-cost Librams, the lengthy animations and annoying voice lines will make me grit my teeth.