We've got three card nerfs arriving into Hearthstone this week in a patch on Thursday, July 15. These nerfs are targeting Druids and Priests who have both been a bit of a pain to deal with in recent times. The following cards are being hit:
- Gibberling - Cost is now 2 mana. (Up from 1)
- Apotheosis - Now gives a minion +1/+2. (Down from +2/+3)
- Renew - Cost is now 2 mana. (Up from 1)
Our predictions were almost spot-on - we were a bit too lenient on Apotheosis! Read on for Blizzard's reasoning behind the nerfs.
Quote From Blizzard The 20.8.2 patch, releasing on July 15, includes changes for three cards in Standard and three bug fixes for Battlegrounds.
Standard Balance Updates
Apotheosis
- Old: Give a minion +2/+3 and Lifesteal. → New: Give a minion +1/+2 and Lifesteal.
Dev Comment: We’re doing two Priest changes, targeting the burst healing available in the class and their generation capabilities. Let's start with Apotheosis—we are moving the buff down to +1/+2 to hit the card's general power and combo capabilities. While healing will always be a strength of Priest, we want to reduce the urgency felt when dealing with Priest's minions. Currently, it can feel like you must remove every Priest minion because of the threat Apotheosis poses. A slight reduction in the buff here should lessen that urgency and make the minions post-Apotheosis easier to deal with. The other side of this nerf is the Samuro + Apotheosis combo. The punishment for playing minions into this combo is too much at the moment, so while we'd like to keep some of that tension of resource commitment, we don't want the punishment to be a full heal for the opponent. The reduction in attack here helps get that combo into a healthier push/pull state.
Renew
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Dev Comment: Renew is going to 2 mana. Heading into this patch, we wanted to knock some of Priest's generation potential as one of our main goals in Hearthstone is to have the cards you chose to include in your deck matter. We decided to change Renew specifically because we believe this change makes the largest impact towards curbing the chains of generation in Priest. At 2 mana, Renew has to be more thoughtful inclusion during deckbuilding, won't be generated by Wandmaker, and takes another mana reduction to get to 0. While Priest's identity looks different in future expansions, we wanted to take this opportunity to reign in their card generation and build a better match experience for both players.
Gibberling
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Dev Comment: Gibberling is moving to 2 mana. Currently Gibberling is the cause of many "non-games", matches that are heavily lopsided in the early game and can have their outcome decided far too early. We want to lower the frequency of this occurrence and Gibberling at 2 mana should result in many more games where opponents can respond to an early board of this little menace.
The cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 20.8.2 patch goes live.
Game Improvements & Bug Fixes
- Updated the wording of Kurtrus Ashfallen’s fully upgraded Battlegrounds Hero Power to clarify its one-time completion (no functional change).
- Updated Archdruid Hamuul in Battlegrounds so that when your minion types are tied, he will not refresh Bob’s Tavern with minion types that are not in the pool.
- Adjusted Darkmoon Prizes to offer better Prizes for players on the bottom half of the leaderboard.
Comments
Arbor Up, Trampling Rhino and Efficient Octo-bot still not nerfed? Team 5 are an absolute clowns.
My thoughts on these nerfs:
Gibberling: Long overdue, glad to see this nerfed. Also this probably hits Token druid in Wild pretty hard as well.
Renew: Why was this nerfed? The problem with Renew was that it was played for free thanks to Palm Reading. Actually most of the generation issues were because of Palm Reading so weird that that didnt get nerfed. Also you can't get it from Wandmaker anymore, which is also a HUGE blow to ALL priest archetypes.
Hmm now that i think about it, nerfing cards because of Wandmaker, cards being abused because of a different problem card like Incanter's Flow. They keep nerfing cards that are strong because of problem cards, instead of the actual cards that create the problem.
Apotheosis: Welp rip priest. the ONLY decent control class is DEAD. Blademaster Samuro + Apotheosis was probably one of priests only ways to not die to aggro. Great to see the class, that is SUPPOSED to be all about "healing" nerfed so they can't heal as much. What will priests use now? Devouring Plague? lol.
Dont get me wrong, i HATE priest. Priest is my most hated class in hearthstone. BUT this just seems like they nerfed it WAY too hard. They didnt solve the generation problem, but rather nerfed healing so hard that priest dies to aggro before they can generate stuff. Also these changed nerf EVERY priest achetype, not just the generation priest decks... I just find it weird that their fine with letting aggro deal 20+ dmg in a single turn, but when a class that has a class identity of "healing" heals 20+ health in a single turn it's not fine..? I guess this is what happens when they listen to aggro players complaining about control decks..... Yet again i want to stress that i HATE priest, but i'm not okay with this being nerfed THIS hard combined with the fact that priest is the only decent control deck. What will control players do now? Play control warrior that can't generate enough armor to survive against aggro, or control warlock which also dies to aggro?
"Back in my day" deck types follow a "rock paper scissor" format. Control beats aggro, aggro beats OTK, OTK beats Control. But nowadays it's rather Aggro beats everything... Man i miss those times where metas had varied amount of decks consisting of aggro, control and OTK, rather than different version of aggro decks....
Good nerfs, priest will be less annoying to play against.
Alright, we’re one step closer to getting Priest deleted at this rate
If you think it's not already deleted you're crazy. I literally only won the games where I drew Apotheosis AND I didn't kept it on my opening hand. With this Priest is more dead than the Lych King.
Before we start crying to the stars about how yet another control deck have been gutted because a one mana card have been nerfed to 2 mana while a card that up until Blademaster Samuro was printed was pretty much just an average card, let's have a short view of what this nerf actually means.
- Priest must now build its deck less greedily because the apotheosis + samuro combo is less powerful without further buffs. That means they need to choose between making themselves less vulnerable against aggro but more against other control decks. You know, like what most other decks have to do. That means cthun is no longer a mandatory option.
- Most decks are currently built to handle priest (Felsteel Executioner in dhunters, nzoth in rush warrior, the very existence of warlock/control warrior). With this change, they might switch to lighter builds to handle face hunter and paladin (which Im predicting will be rising further upwards from this set of nerfs). So in other words, priest is hopefully no longer getting hard targeted in the meta. Which will come as a small consolation if nothing else.
- The true losers of this set of changes is not priest. Its actually mage and warlock, because they prey on priest more so than anything else. Winners are obviously hunters, shaman and paladin. Its not 100% certain that priest will suffer big from this, because if everyone techs against hunter, shaman and paladin, they might not be as effective against a control deck as they are now.
Bottom line: Will priest suffer from this? Absolutely yes. Will that mean we won't be seeing priest until the next expansion? No. Because there are other archetypes that will still work even with these nerfs. Corrupt priest for example is a fairly good deck that does actually win games by relying on cards it puts in its own deck. Miracle builds can still manage insurmountable turns even against face hunter. Further refining of nzoth priest will hopefully reveal that the deck is actually good on its own, and need not rely on bs to win its games.
During the scholomance meta, priest had to rely on 1 drops to ensure they don't get cheesed out of aggro games. They didn't have a bs reset option with samuro, and the 1 mana pool for wandmaker was wider. They didn't have Venomous Scorpid into Raise Dead. Double soul mirror was less common then. Pros didn't instinctively chose priest in their lineup. And yet it was still a good class that you can climb up to legend with (I did it, in case anyone needs to know). What I'm trying to say is that this change will not mean that priest is now literally unplayable (unlike say, warlock).
The next expansion is about 3 weeks away. Maybe team5 could've made this adjustment a week later, but I'm honestly okay if they decide to shake the meta up a bit. It has admitably gone a little stale for me.
lol, you're crazy if you think Priest can survive this and win against aggro. If anything Priest will become more greedy and only win against other control decks. The reason Priest doesn't try to win against aggro with other tempo options is because aggro can put 5-4 stats on board on turn 1 with the coin and you can't counter that with anything Priest plays except accept at least 5 damage and try to survive.
Ironically priest cant actually beat other control decks. Out of the four control decks that are currently in the tiers 1-3 (priest obviously included here), only control shaman can be confidently beaten. The reason why they currently play that extra heavy load is - unsurprisingly - to be better against other priest, which is more or less everywhere in legend.
Also, its premature to suggest that priest cant deal with aggro easily. There are cards that can deal with early boards like Holy Smite, Condemn (Rank 1), even Wave of Apathy isn't way off the charts since it does combo well with Cabal Acolyte, and does indeed slow the game down. There are also 1 drops that can help out the early game like Reliquary of Souls, Cleric of An'she, or cards like Death's Head Cultist which incidentally is still an okay inclusion because nzoth can raise it back later.
Do you really think that just because Renew is now 2 mana and samuro does roughly 5-7 less healing suddenly face hunters are going to start rolling past the deck like its nobody's business? If the aggro deck high rolls with a strong early board that also means they have less reload and let's be honest here, even the current priest build will still struggle against a wonderful 1-2-3 turns from the opponent, more so if they are deathrattles. Hell, if Im seeing half my games are against aggro, all I'll do is slot in Armor Vendor.
Really, really appreciate your thoughtful analysis here! I think the issue for me (and therefore a small section of players at least and a majority at most) is primarily what you touched on in your third point: the real winners are Hunters, Shamans, and Paladins. While we definitely will have to wait for the meta to shake out before we declare gloom and doom to be a foregone conclusion, I (read: some players) was already at a point before the nerfs where I was considering quitting till next expansion because of the prevalence of Shaman. The mere thought that it's possible I'll face even more Elemental Shaman, Deathrattle Inquisitor, and ME GO FACE--even if it's just for a little while--actually makes my stomach churn. That's not even hyperbole--I have a real, physical reaction to the thought of playing even more Shamans than I already do... hence why I actually took the plunge and decided to quit till Stormwind. I might be alone in wanting to hurl because of Elemental Shaman, but I'm pretty sure I speak for a lot of players when I say I don't want to live in a Hearthstone world where almost all of what you face... well, goes face.
How dare you thoughtfully weigh the results of these changes?!?!!? I'd rather go into the comments and raaaaaaaage!
I'm not surprised by the changes but I am upset by them. They could have least made Renew 2 mana: heal 4. Instead they just doubled the cost purely to get it out of the wandmaker pool and flipped the middle finger to priests.
Their meta presence at legend is higher than the rest of ladder, but that doesn't imply a broken winrate. As others have said both here and on reddit. Many games were already close calls with Illidari Inquisitor, Doomhammer, or Stampeding coming down and winning close games. Nerfing both cards kills the classes ability to stabilize (LITERALLY IT'S ONLY ARCHETYPE).
I don't even care if these are pre-emptive nerfs for the next expansion. This is a slap in the face to control players, and I'm sure every mouth breathing face hunter, aggro shaman, or netdecking deathrattle demon hunter is cheering hard right now. Go ahead downvote me. I'm so pissed at the developers for this stupid excuse of a balance patch.
Since they fucked up with First day at school they are terrified to keep Priest playable.
I'm just kinda sad but I get you. Time to try Warrior control I guess.
I agree, if Apo is too big burst heal they should make it 2 mana +1/+2 lifesteal. And just doubling the Renew cost is too much, it should have heal upped.
If it's any consolation, I'm currently testing the old Fleshgiant build while taking out the nerfed cards (aka Samuro and Apo, still running Wandmaker and Renew as of now because I feel like the card generation is needed). It doesn't feel too bad and I could easily see it become the new build while the overly greedy N'zoth builds die off as they should (who the fuck allowed Southsea Scoundrel to be a staple?).
If you're playing Priest purely to shit all over aggro you can still do so without needing to scam with Samuro.
If a Control deck isn't allowed to be greedy then what is the point of playing them? I like (or rather, used to like as i already stopped playing months ago) playing with big cards that do flashy plays and N'Zoth is one of them. Why print big 10 mana cards if the game is always going to be skewed towards aggro and why whenever a Control deck starts to show signs of dominance it must be stopped at all costs? The nerfs to aggro are never meant to make them unplayable but to make them more fair against the other aggro decks. But nerfs to Control and Combo are pretty much always a killing blow.
Sorry what? Control decks are supposed to control the board and avoid dying. The greed part is only applicable in a control meta where the point is to outressource their opponents. Meanwhile Priest just walks into a full on aggro meta and gets to just pack half their deck with late-game value because a single two card combo takes care of all their aggro worries.
It's complete horseshit to believe that just because aggressive decks are allowed to have a fightning chance that control is just dead in its entirety.
Control decks are supposed to control the board and avoid dying in order to achieve whatever late game win condition the deck was built-around. Control decks need something to beat other types of decks. Controlling the board and not dying is only viable as a win condition against aggro but there will always be other decks that you must take into account even during an aggro meta. N'Zoth can be considered a win condition since the deck is built to get the most value from its battlecry. I always hear people complaining that Priest has no win conditions other than stalling/card generation but this particular deck seemed different. Also, aggro can deal 20+ damage in only a few turns with good draw and some even have instant burst win conditions (Like Doomhammer) but a Control deck from a healing class isn't allowed to regenerate that amount despite the fact that Control should have an edge against aggro?
OH they are allowed to regenerate. They're also allowed to clear the board. They aren't allowed to do both for 7-mana while running a deck that is 50% made of cards that generate other card that generate other cards and then have lategame bombs like N'zoth, Ysera and whatever the fuck they magically manifest as well..
My man, I have been playing mostly Priest for this expansion. I have played the Kazakus build, the Flesh Giant build and the current abomination and it is 100% not balanced and needed to be nerfed this hard.
The only case you can make is that Renew should heal for 4 now at 2-mana but that's about it.
And before you bring in MMR or some dumb shit: I used Priest, almost exclusively, to get to around 1200k Legend without even tryharding. I literally ended up at the top end of Legend purely by playing the class for fun (two months ago, just to be clear) and I ended up steamrolling any deck that wasn't Warlock. The actual competitive bracket and tournament players do not need to suffer from a Priest meta just because some casuals get upset that their favourite new RNG fiesta deck got nerfed. There's a reason why Priest is almost always banned in just about any tournament format, and it'S not because pro players got frustrated playing against it.
Also, if Doomhammer is a problem then just fucking run Ooze, it's not that hard. And if that doesn't work, then wait for next expansion where Rustrot Viper will obliterate any weapons from the meta. And if you need more heal, run Dungar, he's awesome.
I already stopped playing months ago, i said that in my first comment. The only reason why i still pay attention to anything that's going on and regularly visit this site for information is because i spent too much time and money to completely let go of the game. It feels terrible and it's my own fault. It's a learning experience. Never gonna make the same mistake again.
I completely forgot what Dungar was. I had to look it up. It's the new legendary from the next expansion that was released early. Cool. Seems like a good tradition they will maintain. The card does a few neat things and one of them is 10 healing... after three turns of him sitting dead on the board doing nothing. Great. If you live long enough to see that healing then you probably don't need it by the time it activates. Three turns is an eternity against any sort of aggression and burst damage can finish you off in a single turn. Ooze (and the Viper thing) can prevent repeated damage but can't stop instant burst from Doomhammer.
Priest has too much generation, that is the absolute truth. But guess what? That's the only thing they have when it comes to obtaining resources. Priest has no card draw, only basic cycling. That is not enough for the insanely fast pace of the game. Shaman was saved recently because of a single decent card draw option from the mini-set. Until Priest gets some of that love, they will remain the class that has no choice but to rely on RNG clown fiesta generation to be able to compete. And no other archetype will flourish other than slow "kill the opponent out of boredom" Control until that happens. If they gut the resource generation too much without adding real card draw the class will become unplayable.