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
if it's any consolation, there's no way that Paladin won't get hit with a second set of nerfs. They've barely scratched the surface of what makes that class almost unbeatable
I agree. Librams will probably be hit if I had to guess. They nerfed the secrets portion, but the other portion is just that librams are too damn good.
I honestly believe it's going to be the Libram discounters much more than the Librams (also Hand of A'dal, you can't give a ramping midrange/value deck the absolute best 1-2-3 curve in the entire game)
Yea but the big problem is the 1 drop discounter. I don't care about the 5 cost one. Aldor Attendant just provides too good of an opening curve and stats. They honestly just need to stop printing 1/3 1-drops for ALL classes. 1 Drops used to indicate you were aggro/midrange decks, as control couldn't afford to run 1 drops due to deck space. Not to mention Paladin's First Day of School...
If I had to target 2 cards it would be paladin's early game. Make Hand of Adal cost 3. Make Aldor Attendant be a 1/2.
Well, we'll see in about two weeks whether they agree with you.
I guess I will keep playing No-Minion Mage, I almost never got Deck of Lunacy before turn 6 as it was.
there's one thing to play it for 2 or 1 mana on turn 6, another thing to pass the whole turn to play it.
Generally speaking, it is probably stronger for mages to play it on 4, then 2. Turn 2 is when aggro develops their board so most mages had to choose between lunacy (and pray for good RNG results) or removing early chip damage. Also with incanters flow, if you draw into lunacy it's gonna have a reduced cost, so it may end up being a situation where you end up playing lunacy for it's "original" 2 cost anyways.
Overall, it just slows the deck down, but isn't going to largely affect it. Wanna know why?
The deck has HIGH swings and LOW swings. It's countered by Tickatus lock, and it's countered by hyper aggro. People just like to complain when they get killed by a nagrand slam, but don't count the situations where they killed the lunacy mage that had 4 (useless) Idol of Y'shaarj in their hand, 2 Sprints, and 0 cards left in deck (fatigue).
Interesting conjecture, but I dont believe the data supports it. The winrates for a turn 1/2 DoL were very high, and moving it to a later turn (and requiring all or part of that turn) helps tone it down.
Winrates were also for people who mulliganed for it, and then jammed it down on two because the options were "hero power" or play lunacy.
Let me put it another way. The deck functions just fine without lunacy. Lunacy just allows the deck to highroll and win certain unwinnable matchups. Turn 4 will slow it down which makes it more vulnerable to hyper aggro decks, which means the deck can't just mulligan for incanters/deck of lunacy any more, it'll have to mulligan for early game removal which means the deck functionally plays out differently.
Nerfs are as expected and im excited for them in both standard and wild, RIP darkglare?