We've got a round of balance changes coming in a patch this week and Blizzard has given us all the details!
Card Nerfs
We've got five cards receiving nerfs in the upcoming patch.
- Refreshing Spring Water now costs 5 mana (Up from 4).
- First Day of School now costs 1 mana (Up from 0) but also gives you 3 1-cost minions (up from 2).
- Hysteria now costs 4 mana (Up from 3).
- Crabrider now only gains Windfury on its first turn on the field.
- Olgra, Mankrik's Wife now summons a 7 Health Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred (Down from 10).
We're including First Day of School as an overall nerf due to how important its 0-cost was to Paladin's early game.
Card Buffs
Ten cards will be receiving buffs (?!) in the patch.
- Razorboar now has 3 Attack (Up from 2).
- Dark Inquisitor Xanesh now reduces the cost of Corrupt and Corrupted cards by 2.
- Unbound Elemental now has 3 Attack (Up from 2).
- Tidal Surge now costs 3 mana (Down from 4).
- Lilypad Lurker now has 5 Attack and 6 Health (Up from 4/5).
- Fiendish Circle now costs 3 (Down from 4).
- Deck of Chaos now costs 5 (Down from 6).
- Whirling Combatant now has 3 Attack (Up from 2).
- Shieldmaiden now costs 5 mana (Down from 6).
- N'Zoth, God of the Deep now costs 9 mana (Down from 10).
What do you think about all the upcoming balance changes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Full Patch Notes + Dev Commentary
Quote From Blizzard Refreshing Spring Water
- Old: [Costs 4] → New: [Costs 5]
Dev Comment: Spell Mage currently exhibits many explosive turns, with Refreshing Spring Water playing a significant role. By nerfing Refreshing Spring Water to 5 mana, we're aiming to lower the frequency of extreme turns where Refreshing Spring Water draws cards and gains you mana in the process. By lowering the frequency of those gameplay sequences, we believe the deck's range of possibilities will be more in line with other current options.
First Day of School
- Old: [Costs 0] Add 2 random 1-Cost minions to your hand → New: [Costs 1] Add 3 random 1-Cost minions to your hand.
Dev Comment: As we look at Paladin's continued strong performance across multiple archetypes, we're nerfing First Day of School in order to hit Paladin's early-game strength. By bumping up First Day of School's mana cost and the amount of 1-Cost minions generated, we are moving the card to fit a value role rather than its initial position as an efficient curve enabler.
Hysteria
- Old: [Costs 3] → New: [Costs 4]
Dev Comment: At 3 mana, Hysteria becomes an option before opponents really have the opportunity to consider how to best interact with it. Pushing Hysteria to 4 mana gives more space for those board-committal decisions to occur and also allows cheaper removal in Priest/Warlock to have a more distinct purpose.
Crabrider
- Old: Rush Windfury → New: Rush Battlecry: Gain Windfury this turn only.
Dev Comment: Crabrider is too efficient in some of our board-based decks, clearing minions and dishing out a lot of Windfury damage. By changing Crabrider's Windfury to only last until end of turn, we're pulling back on the lethality it poses if left alone for a few turns. We aim for Crabrider to still remain a solid option for decks looking to swing back the board, especially when combined with buffs.
Olgra, Mankrik’s Wife
- Old: Casts When Drawn Summon a 3/10 Mankrik, who immediately attacks the enemy hero. → New: Casts When Drawn Summon a 3/7 Mankrik, who immediately attacks the enemy hero.
Dev Comment: We are lowering the Health on Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred to soften the effect of an early Olgra draw. At 7 Health, the token will be more in reach of the mid-game removal that's available throughout turns 4-6.
Refreshing Spring Water, First Day of School, Hysteria, Crabrider, and Golden Mankrik will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after Patch 20.2.2 goes live.
Dev Comment: We're issuing a number of buffs in 20.2.2, mainly focused on bringing up struggling classes and archetypes. One of our goals for a meta is to provide deck diversity: not only different class options, but also attractive deck options that play markedly different from one another. These buffs follow that goal, as each one is targeted at helping out an underrepresented archetype or play pattern.
Razorboar
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health → New: 3 Attack, 2 Health
Dark Inquisitor Xanesh
- Old: Reduce the Cost of all Corrupt cards in your hand and deck by (2). → New: Reduce the Cost of all Corrupt and Corrupted cards in your hand and deck by (2).
Unbound Elemental
- Old: 2 Attack, 4 Health → New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Tidal Surge
- Old: [Costs 4] → New: [Costs 3]
Lilypad Lurker
- Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health → New: 5 Attack, 6 Health
Fiendish Circle
- Old: [Costs 4] → New: [Costs 3]
Deck of Chaos
- Old: [Costs 6] → New: [Costs 5]
Whirling Combatant
- Old: 2 Attack, 6 Health → New: 3 Attack, 6 Health
Shieldmaiden
- Old: [Costs 6] → New: [Costs 5]
N’Zoth, God of the Deep
- Old: [Costs 10] → New: [Costs 9]
Comments
Just want to point out, holistically they don't nerf cards for the state of Wild, so while you may be upset that "APM mage" didn't get touched, it's because unless something is EXTREMELY broken (like tiller/hysteria combo) they don't make those nerfs for wild.
Super cool, Crabrider is completely dead now! But where's the Conviction nerf?
I don't know if its completely dead, but its a lot weaker now
Is Crabrider dead, though? I think it has pretty clear utility in Rush Warrior still at the very least.
I think that the most important thing is that it won't be able to deal massive face damage anymore.
I agree that this is the most important aspect of the change, I was merely suggesting that there's a difference between "won't be able to deal massive face damage anymore" and "completely dead".
Well done to Avalon who predicted those Tidal Surge and Deck of Chaos buffs
Thanks! While some buffs targets like N'Zoth, God of the Deep and Lilypad Lurker were not something I could predict, I think I should've seen Deathrattle DH and Control Warrior coming.
Well, this means that next time I will do better.
I would dust my extra copies of hysteria, but I already dusted them when it was changed the first time.
The commons on the other hand - I knew I was keeping extras for a reason! #gimmedust!
Hah, I did dust Hysterias too. Then recrafted them again because it was still way too powerful of a clear. Probably still will be. And mmm, dust.
Well, this is all sorts of disappointing.
Nerfing Spring Water is pointless because Incanter's Flow is ten times as busted and will break any future Mage spells until it finally gets destroyed.
All this nerf does is make the Mage deck even more polarizing because now they just lose if they don't find flow on 2, but still autowin if they have it.
Making Hysteria 4-mana kills Kazakus Priest, which is disappointing but necessary I guess, because that card is all sorts of busted (even if it was the only thing able to keep Paladin in check)
Crabrider nerf is good enough I guess. Keeps the intended effect for Rush Warrior while nerfing it for Paladin which is the best outcome.
No idea why they thought First Day of School needed a compensation buff. It would still be run at 1 and now it's probably even better outside of the specific "I need a 1-drop and have nothing else" scenario.
Mankrik nerf is perfectly fine and expected.
All the buffs are just wet farts though.
Shaman will remain unplayable until they actually get some card draw. Lilypad was already a good card. The problem is not actually having a way to consistently activate it because you can'T draw cards. Unbound Elemental will remain unplayable as long as Overload is as pointless of a gimmick as it is.
The core card buffs are literally just what they should have been in the first place and only turn them into baseline vanilla cards that will still not see play.
How the Razorboar buff is supposed to make Demon Hunter any better at all is just confusing to me. They could have just unnerfed Priestess of Fury and give DH an actual gameplan outside of hoping for Green Rag to carry.
Only Whirling Combatant seems like an actually impactful change because it's actually a good control minion and the difference between 2 and 3 attack on a high health minion is usually significant.
[Hearthstone Card (Oh my Yogg) Not Found] remains untouched. I don't think I'm interested in playing a game where I can lose because a 1-mana card just ruins my entire gameplan at random.
Incanter's Flow is still a Dungeon Run treasure that decides games on turn 2.
Hunter is still only allowed to go full aggro, Hero power Mage is genuinely unplayable and Warlock now relies on Tickatus even more because after the Hysteria nerf the only thing they can ever reliable deal with is Priest (who is now also much worse against Paladin).
I think I'm just gonna take a break until the minii-set arrives and by then they'll hopefully figure out which cards actually need to be adressed instead of these band aids.
I....actually agree for the most part. I don't think this really hits Paladin that hard at all. Shaman still lacks the card draw or any cohesive gameplan outside of doomhammer/aggro to win.
I'm extremely dissapointed in the hysteria nerf. I know that it indirectly nerfs warlock, but it hits priests way harder with that nerf. For one, Kazakus priest is dead with a 4 cost Hysteria (priest can't really afford to drop hysteria, which means priests are now back to running Xyrella/Samuro.)
And to top things the Dark Inquisitor buff is neat, but corrupt priest wasn't exactly "top tier" in the meta. Nzoth seems like it's meant to help slam it down a turn earlier in order to close out games but honestly some of the best synergy with Nzoth are the 10 cost cards it "revives" making the 1 cost reduction pointless in a lot of scenarios.
It will be interesting to see if Deck of Chaos spawns a new warlock archetype that is viable, but I doubt it. Warlock is enjoying the Trifecta of Tickatus/Jarraxus/Y'shaarj too much for them to expand their minds outside that pure control archetype.
I was honestly expecting Paladin to take a much stronger direct hit. Perhaps blizz thinks that the miniset will shake the power level of the classes up enough and didn't want to go overboard with Paladin nerfs, that's my only real guess on why they weren't hit harder.
Hysteria nerf would have had to happen at some point anyways. Priest and Warlock usually get a lot of small and big boardclears as time goes on and the only way to play around those is by keeping about 2 or 3 medium sized minions around, which is exactly what Hysteria punishes, so this way it allows tempo decks to at least get a foothold. The issue is that they nerfed it way too early because now both classses have extremely limited early game removal and Paladin isn't getting any weaker.
Inquisitor buff is literally just an apology because they f*cked up the initial design. We're not getting any new Corrupt cards and the current pool is dogshit, so there's no way Corrupt Priest will ever be viable anyways (because there is no deck that loses the Clowns that they don't already beat anyways, outside of the mirror).
I didn't even bother to mention the N'zoth buff because it's just so inconsequential. If you ever need to play N'zoth at turn 9 you're probably losing and at 9-mana you still can't combo it with anything relevant.
Deck of Chaos could be interesting if Warlock gets a way to tutor Shadow Spells, but until that happens you can't reliably run a deck full of giant minions that relies on drawing and playing 5-mana do nothing on turn 5.
The funny thing about Paladin is that they are actually very close to being balanced enough (while still being one of the best decks ofc), but Blizzard just keeps failing at addressing the very few specific spells that actually matter.
First Day should just have had the mana increase to gut it completely because it's not a healthy card in any way, at least not in a world where the core set removed just about every terrible 1-drop in existence. Oh My Yogg! needs to be reworked into unplayabilty because it is literally a better version of Counterspell in 9/10 cases and nothing is more frustrating than just losing the game to a 1-mana card that you cannot possibly play around in any capacity. Finally, only Conviction needed to be dealt with and that would easily be fixed by setting it to 2-mana so it's not so goddamn easy to just throw in regularly without losing any steam.
Only 3 cards and the class would be fine for the forseeable future, but they picked just one of them and even managed to fuck that one up.
I don't care about power level, get NZoth back to 10 please. Looks super weird now.
It'd be really funny if people actually got mad enough that Blizzard would listen and just nerf a card not because it's overpowered or easily abused but just because it's not aesthetically pleasing lmao.
Yeah, my love of symmetry really doesn't like the fact that only one of the eight Old God cards is not a 10-mana card now. It is super weird.
In all the discussion of how to fix Crabrider, I didn't see people suggest this particular change... and I dig it. It's no longer nearly as powerful as something to throw out on-curve regardless of situation to serve as a landing spot for buffs; nor is it something that forces panic-removal. Instead, it's something that can serve as a mini-swing to clean up early boards, and still derive more-than-typical value from buffs without becoming a potential game-ender in the process.
Spring Water, First Day, and Mankrik were all more-or-less expected as targets, and the changes for all three seem reasonable to me. Hysteria getting hit was unexpected, but I don't hate it. Especially with how passively some Warlock and Priest decks can be, sitting with empty boards for prolonged periods, the notional downside of Hysteria doesn't really exist in practice.
The shaman changes are all nice, but I'm not sure they really address the fundamental problem shaman decks are facing. We'll see.
Yeah the point of the card is that you can rush twice with it. Not to buff it to 5-8 and use it as mini Al'akir.
I agree, the Crabrider change feels like an elegant way to fix the issues with the card while it retains some utility. I could see it staying in Rush Warrior as it still works well with Parade Leader and Playmaker. Other nerfs seems fine. Incanter's Flow feels far more problematic than Refreshing Spring Water, but we'll see. It has an absurd winrate when played on turn 2 / coined on 2, and most cards like that with low cost (Keleseth, 2 mana DoL) have felt that way.
Buffs feel conservative, which is probably a good way to approach it but less exciting. The Boomsday buffs were probably too much as the had to nerf a bunch of them after the fact. Iksar has talked about how hard buffs are, because if the buffs are too strong they made new problems, but if they aren't enough then why did they bother. The Lilypad Lurker is the only one that jumps out, but that needs a deck to go in. If they commit to Elemental support in future content, that feels like one that gets reverted. Premium stats and a plus effect (albeit with condition) seems scary.
Your take on the buffs is fair. I'm trying to will Elemental Shaman into existence because I dig the feel of it, so perhaps my longing for more is unreasonable.