Hearthstone's Warlock Nerf Announced - Stealer of Souls & Flesh Giant Both Receiving Cost Increases

Published 4 years, 6 months ago by (Updated 4 years, 6 months ago)

We've got cost increases coming for a couple of cards in today's Hearthstone patch which aims to knock down Warlocks a bit on the ladder. 

Even with these changes, Stealer of Souls will remain banned in wild. Stay tuned for our discussion on the nerfs.

Quote From Blizzard

Stealer of Souls

  • Old: [Costs 4] 2 Attack, 6 Health → New: [Costs 6] 4 Attack, 6 Health

Old Stealer of Soulscardchanges_arrow.pngNew Stealer of Soul

Dev Comment: While the winrate of decks including Stealer of Souls isn’t particularly high, the games where these decks win are often won in an extreme way. This change, like our philosophy in the first Stormwind balance patch, is aimed at slowing the down the speed of Stealer of Souls and softening those extremes. Note: Stealer of Souls will remain banned in Wild alongside this change.

Flesh Giant

  • Old: [Costs 9] → New: [Costs 10]

Old Flesh Giantcardchanges_arrow.pngNew Flesh Giant

Dev Comment: We’re moving Flesh Giant up another mana to further reduce the speed at which comes down in the average game. After monitoring the initial balance to change here, we believe it was a bit too soft and are adjusting Flesh Giant accordingly.

The cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 21.2 patch goes live.

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Comments

  • What the heck. They know Wild is completely warped, they're doing a second round of nerfs, why not even SLIGHTLY touch the strongest deck in Wild? It doesn't even play either.

    • Uhm, the strongest wild deck absolutely runs flesh giant?

      • It doesn't - the most powerful list right now relies on cataclysm + hand of guldan to kill the opponent with your own fatigue damage.

        • False. Prior to the latest nerfs giants seedlock was the better deck as it beat ruixiang warlock, plus everything else.

          Since the nerfs it's kind of up in the air which version's the better one.

  • I gotta agree with the general consensus that these nerfs aren't enough, but personally i'm glad Flesh Giant can be played in Even Warlock again.

  • I think they are realizing they simply never should have released Stealer. It has the sort of effect that is either way too strong or way too weak (because the setup is too expensive). It's already banned from one play mode, and is being nerfed _hard_ in Standard. Way to go, guys.

     

    RE: Flesh giant. This should have been the change last patch, so whatever. Slightly slows it down, but it's still going to be a good card.

     

    Hopefully these help.

     

    For all you Wild players, though.... I'm pressing F hard to pay my respects.

  • Warlock just got a little slap in the hand. D6 Warlock is a lot slower now but its play pattern remains the same. If it doesn't die from this then the nerfs didn't really accomplish anything when it comes to gameplay feel. The giant nerf is just a small touch as well. Meanwhile, Mages continue to draw through their whole deck and burn you down, Shamans get to double their spells pretty quickly and games still can't go past turn 8. I'm talking about standard here.

    Mage did suffer from the nerf to Incanter's Flow but that's not the only issue with that deck. Ignite providing a source of infinite damage and immunity to fatigue is bad enough already but their card draw is way too efficient. I was playing Quest Hunter which is a deck that is highly favored into Quest Mage. Yet, they can race very well because of their extremely cheap and efficient draws. A well timed Imprisoned Phoenix or Guild Trader can help them set up lethal without much problem and they don't even need to complete the quest to kill you. I won more than i lost against them but the games are always close when the mages shift their gears toward a more direct burn plan. And they still have Sanctum Chandler in case their precious spell only deck gets butchered with another nerf. 

    Shaman controls the board insanely efficiently early in the game because of Perpetual Flame and they aren't punished by the overload because of the first quest reward. Canal Slogger also ensures their survivability into the mid game. Then they complete the quest, play the reward and get their double spells which makes Charged Call and burn spells devastating. And Instructor Fireheart can end the game on her own at that point as well. Even if Warlock gets nerfed more this will not bring slower strategies back into viability. This whole expansion is a complete broken mess. 

  • Umm... my two cents.

    First, I think there is not an inherent problem with the Quest's design itself. It's sort of a new Jade Druid, and when balanced properly, it can keep the anti-control niche. The problem is that it's not balanced right now, but also because I think people need more theorycrafters like Dane who can showcase creative counters in high Legend.

    Like I feel like The Darkness can be legit good in this meta. While a 4 Mana play, because of how often Warlock draws, you can quite reliably dig for the Candles to summon a 20/20 minion that can easily take 3 Giants by itself or smack your opponent's face, and the Four Giants Questline variant runs no hard removal; too bad Combo ones does, but cards like Charge exist.

    Dane has already shown the power of Miracle Priest against Warlock, and imo Mill Rogue has potential to do the same. They have cards like Evasion and Vanish, and can run either Vanessa VanCleef or Plagiarize to steal Blightborn Tamsin.

    Bulwark of Azzinoth can also tank both Giant hits and Tamsin's Fatigue damage, provided you can create a win condition.

    But otherwise the deck is meta warping. Either nerf Tamsin herself to 7 Mana, nerf some of the support cards or exclude Fatigue from triggering Tamsin, but the last option is probably something Blizz wants to avoid I assume. I'd bet on nerfing cards like Crystallizer, but I can't deny how cheap their cards can also become, though Azalina Soulthief/Mindrender Illucia let you get the taste of their cheap weed.

    • Ah yes, 'Miracle priest' the deck made to counter warlocks that ended up not even being favored into them.

  • laughable, I can still play the flesh giants for (0) mana by mid game, even if it's 10 mana. 

  • Ooh, on tomorrow’s episode of “shit that should never have been in the game” what will we nerf next? Another hit to Shaman? Maybe shoot Hunter in the knee,you know, just to slow him down a bit. Maybe a bit of Mage? Who knows! 

  • A fucking joke. The Demon Seed turned a previously healthy Wild meta upside down and made ALL control decks go completely extinct. Look! 0. No Reno decks anywhere, archetypes that were staples since LoE but a singular, uninteractive card made them obsolete. The Wild meta will be fucked until the Warlock quest is redesigned.

  • That's not a nerf that is a joke. I get it that Wild is second class but they could have at least tried.

  • Still no love for Wild :( ...

  • I wish they would shed some light on how sets are actually play-tested. We hear a lot about initial design team and final design team, but there are obvious issues on Day 1/Week 1 that would be noticed through even limited play-testing.

    • My main line of thought with this is that they purposely release broken stuff for hyping you into spending money on packs haha. Otherwise it seems hard to believe to me that they can be THAT dumb.

  • Well, a slight nerf for the better, but not enough. At least this disables the "I do all quest steps in one turn, play the quest reward, kill your board and heal for a ton" plays on turn <6. (which I can't do because I'm on mobile) 

  • Well, at least the OTK build should be sufficiently dead.

    Giant nerf is literally just an apology since they should have done it like that the first place. Should definitely make it easier to outpace the Handlock version now.

    I guess they'll just have to ban the Warlock Quest from Wild entirely, I doubt it can ever be balanced for that mode (at least not while also being at least somewhat playable in Standard).

    Friendly

    • It can be balanced in Wild. It wouldn't even be that difficult to make it decent, maybe a bit niche, without touching the quest itself. They would just have to actually be trying though, which they're not. There are so many easy nerf targest there. Broom, Raise Dead, Mithril Rod, Plague of Flames, Spirit Bomb, Touch of the Nathrezim. It's pretty telling that with just a single tick from the Mithril Rod Warlocks can play an entire hand out, cause most of their hyper-efficient shit costs 0-1 mana.

      • But that's the thing though...you'd have to nerf a whole bunch of other cards that are individually unproblematic but when you combine them with the win condition of the quest you suddenly end up with an S-Tier meta rapist.

        In Standard however, it's absolutely everything except the Quest itself that's the problem, most of which has been sufficiently addressed at this point. Quest Handlock is strong, but has a couple of very efficient counters which are only getting stronger now that Flesh Giant has become less spamable.

         

        Friendly