We've got a ton of nerfs hitting Hearthstone's constructed play this week on August 17, let's check them all out!
Card Nerfs
- Incanter's Flow - Cost is now 3 mana (Up from 2).
- Battleground Battlemaster - Cost is now 6 mana (Up from 5).
- Granite Forgeborn - Health is now 4 (Down from 5).
- Conviction (Rank 1) - All ranks now cost 2 mana (Up from 1).
- Flesh Giant - Cost is now 9 mana (Up from 8).
Card Adjustments
These cards have received cost increases but have also had stats increased to somewhat compensate. Seeing these later in the game should help.
- Il'gynoth - Cost is now 6 mana (Up from 4). Stats increased from 2/6 to 4/8.
- Darkglare - Cost is now 3 mana (Up from 2). Stats increased from 2/3 to 3/4.
- Kolkar Pack Runner - Cost is now 3 mana (Up from 2). Stats increased from 2/3 to 3/4.
Quote From Blizzard Dev Comments: After two weeks of monitoring the rapidly evolving United in Stormwind launch metagame, we’re making a few balance changes to slow down the speed of the game by a turn or two. Overall, this translates to two things: limiting the efficiency at which combo decks can assemble the pieces they need to win, and reducing the burst damage that board-based decks have access to from hand. We hope that these changes will give a bit more room for slower strategies to find success in this meta, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on the live game to see if any further changes are needed.
Cards that have been nerfed should be disenchantable for two weeks after the patch hits tomorrow, August 17. That gives us until August 31 to get a full dust refund for the cards.
What do you think of the changes? Are there any cards on this list you're surprised to see or any that you're surprised that they didn't make it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
More Patch Notes
Quote From Blizzard Arena Balance Update
We’ve updated the appearance rate of cards to ensure class balance remains close to the ideal 50% win-rate. Specifically, the win-rate of Druid, Warrior, and Demon Hunter should now be decreased. The win-rate of Mage, Priest, Rogue, and Shaman should now be increased. The win-rate of the other classes should be roughly the same as before.
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- Updated the Stealer of Souls animation to now only trigger if the card ends up in your hand (it does not trigger for cards that are Cast When Drawn, such as Soul Shards). The animation will also no longer trigger if the drawn card already costs Health instead of Mana (such as when you have two Stealer of Souls in play).
- Fixed card text errors for Psyfiend and Florist (no functional change to either).
- Fixed a bug where Prismatic Jewel Kit would trigger when effects returned a Divine Shield minion to the owner’s hand or moved a Divine Shield minion from the owner’s hand to the owner’s deck.
- Fixed a bug where Seek Guidance (the Priest questline) would sometimes count the original Cost of cards, instead of the Cost actually paid for the card.
- Fixed a bug where the Initiate Set version of Eye Beam did not properly display card art in the Collection Manager.
- Fixed a bug where Reborn Rites, The Lich King’s Battlegrounds hero power, caused players to disconnect from the game server.
- Added interactions between Pave the Way (part of the Paladin Questline) and Duels-specific hero powers.
- Fixed various bugs in Book of Heroes Gul’dan and Book of Heroes Illidan.
- Fixed a bug where Duels achievements were not tracking properly.
- Fixed a bug where Witchwood collection achievements triggered even though the requirements were not yet met.
- Fixed a bug where completing all Book of Heroes installments would not display the proper achievement or give the proper award. All players who have already completed all 10 Book of Heroes will automatically receive the proper award of a Golden Standard pack.
Comments
I understand they don't want to kill the cards/associated decks outright and want nerfs to be just that, nerfed---not dead. But I feel like these won't do much to curb the quests/solo play.
Flow will be slower, and MAYBE it will be enough, but honestly they just need to print on it: cannot reduce the cost of cards below (1) mana.
Battlemaster a 6 mana 5/5 doesn't do much. It still makes it so you have to constantly clear the board. Battlemaster is a win condition, as such it should be costed like a win condition (7 mana at least IMO).
Out of all the nerfs, the forgeborn nerf is the most compelling because it does make it so curvestone elemental shaman can now be hit with some aoe/removal more effectively.
Pretty sure conviction DID need to be nerfed, but this is going to kill a TON of decks, including the quest paladin deck. I think the only way Paladin was staying relevant as a minion based deck in a solitare meta, was through conviction alone...
Flesh Giant nerf is gonna do nothing...there's too many self-damage spells/minions. And it hurts Priest! Good job Blizz. You managed to make the card WORSE for priest, while effectively doing nothing for Warlock.
Side note: I loved the idea of dual class cards when they were released in Scholo, and hoped it might be an ever-green thing. However, after seeing the cards in play for almost a year now, I can honestly say that the fact that it can hurt the accessability of a card in one class, while doing nothing in another makes me think that dual class is a great idea in theory, but horrible in practice: especially for balancing purposes.
I don't think Ilgynoth being costed more is going to do much. Sure it slows down the combo, but now Ilgynoth with that much in stats (4/8) can just be plopped down on the board a turn prior. There's very few damage spells that can remove a 4/8, and very little direct removal that can just instantly kill a 4/8 (priest can't even death it). Like the insane stats now make it viable for Demon Hunters to just throw it down and essentially challenge removal: and if you don't, you ....still get killed next turn by 8 damage (4 direct + 4 "un-lifesteal") and then whatever else combo spells they have.
Lastly Darkglare and Kolkar may slow down their respective decks, but there's no way in hell the decks drop either card.
I agree with your take on Battleground Battlemaster. The thing needs a bigger nerf.
You do realize that the Il'gynoth change means that you can't actually do a reasonable combo without getting discounts...which are pretty much random (unless you run Felscreamer, which is clunky as fuck)
Well seems like we will have more nerfs... I don't think it will be enough to fully change the meta... But pretty good
Weeeell that's probably not gonna do much overall.
Battlemaster at 6 is still way too op and I won't be surprised if it has to be nerfed a 2ndd time later down the line (aka 2 weeks from now).
Flesh Giant also seems like more of a slap than an actual nerf. It needs to be at 10-mana to actually curb those early double Giant turns.
As far as I see the Deck burn Control Questlock will remain a tier one deck with this because it almost exclusively benefits from all the other nerfs.
The Demon Seed is a super flexible questline (as evidenced by the number of different archetypes it showed up in), so I wouldn't be surprised to see that some version of it remains Tier 1. But I think you might be underestimating the impact of Darkglare going from a 2 mana 2/3 to a 3 mana 3/4. I know it only impacts the deck at the margins, but slowing down a Control Questlock just a bit can leave room for slower, midrange decks to win, which may in turn decrease the popularity of the deck.
At the end of the day, I think that's really what these nerfs are trying to do - disincentivize these combos decks just enough to drive their frequency down without nerfing them out of existence, which should in turn make room for slower decks to be successful.
But the Control build doesn't run Darkglare. The Control build runs Soul Rend and tries to scam with Flesh Giants + Battlemaster while not giving a shit about the actual quest reward unless everything else fails.
Okay, that's not the deck I was thinking of when you said deck burn, I imagined one more focused on getting the quest online in order to fatigue the enemy to death. That deck tends to use Darkglare, and doesn't run the Flesh Giant scam.
that one's the D6 version (6 demons, alathough there are also hybrid version with the Zoo build, but those are even worse).
Basically you have 3 main archetypes:
-Zoo with Flesh Giants and the Imps (runs Darkglare)
-D6 Stealer of Turns with the triple demon package to reliably discount them with Free admissions (also runs Darkglare but no Giants)
-Soul Rend "Control" (which runs Giants and Battlemaster. Also has the potential to be less aggressive and just go for full control which I'm currently doing with quite a lot of success)
The first two builds are probably going to disappear now that Darkglare is much weaker and Flesh Giant is slightly delayed (Zoo really only cared about early giants). The Soul Rend build is more adaptable and bassically loses nothing because it doesn't rely on rushing out the Giants and only cares about eventually being iin a situation where they can stick them to the board and win the next turn (while also having the best chance at just stalling until the Quest reward wins by itself).
I am not sure if this is enough to fix Wild.
I don`t understand why Flesh Giant get only +1 mana. Why not push him to 10 mana? Whould this kill it in Standard?
I am very surprised the quests got no nerfs.
But overall I like the changes. I am not a fan of "killing" cards. I like more little nerfs than destroying cards in one patch. If the nerfs are not strong enough there is a change to nerf the cards again.
"limiting the efficiency at which combo decks can assemble the pieces they need to win"
Sorry, but I can`t see how the nerfs will do this at all. Do I miss something?
Never is, never will be. That is the reality ;-)
"Efficiency" is a bit weird to make sense of here. I guess they mean the whole process becomes slower because some key cards are more expensive. Not the card draw itself, true, but the increased mana costs can only have a negative (albeit indirect) impact on it.
They no longer give much thought to Wild, but all these changes will have somewhat of an impact on it, as Darkglare will be down a small peg. Also, I suppose the Quest is not AS overbearing as in Wild, because wild has Crystallizer and can finish game faster thanks to Unlicensed Apothecary. I do wish Blightborn Tamsin was at (7) Mana to slow down the deck in Wild massively, as the nerf won't make AS much of an impact in Standard due to slower quest completion.
What are you talking about? They never did
It was always a negligible care, but changes were still more frequent, like nerfs to Open the Waygate and Barnes. Now? Nothing.