Blizzard pushed out a couple of Warlock balance changes live today, as promised by Alec Dawson almost a week ago. These nerfs come alongside the initial reveal of Mercenaries, and a great change to Duels' problematic Meek Mastery card. First though, let's celebrate the fact that this may not be the only Balance patch we're receiving in the next few weeks as we have confirmation that the meta will continue to be evaluated over the next couple of weeks.
Quote From Alec Dawson Balance schedule over next month
- 8/31: 2 Warlock changes (upping mana, feels focused)
8/31 to 9/10: Evaluating meta
9/10: Decide if changes are needed
Later Sept: Decided changes go live (BGs included)
Now, onto the show!
Cost is now 6 mana (Up from 4). Stats increased from 2/6 to 4/6.
This one is definitely the 'feels focused' change. Stealer of Souls represents a mechanic that was previously used with a lot of attention. In fact, not many collectible cards allow you to convert mana cost into Health points, and all of them do it with some restriction in mind, such as the card being a spell (Bloodbloom, which was nerfed last year) or having to wait until the late game in order to obtain the cost conversion (G'huun the Blood God). Well, Stealer of Souls doesn't have any of these restrictions: you just have to pay 4 mana for its effect to be abused multiple times, and it's a Demon on top of it, so you can even exploit tribes synergy cards like Free Admission.
Standing in front of your tablet and watching animations as they resolve without knowing whether you're still alive or not isn't what Hearthstone is about, and cards that do it should be as fringe and as clunky as possible. However, this was not the case of Stealer of Souls: even though we're not talking about an overpowered card in an overpowered deck, the shenanigans it was able to consistently pull off were something that shouldn't have been possible. Giving SoS the Il'gynoth treatment is definitely the right call, and we hope with our hearts that we'll never have to see that card with such a high frequency again.
Cost is now 10 mana (up from 9).
That leaves us with the mana cost increase. Flesh Giant was nerfed not more than 2 weeks ago but, as we mentioned in our commentary of that balance patch, that change was probably meant to be as light as possible, waiting for the meta to absorb it and then declare a verdict.
However, it appears that upping Flesh Giant's cost by just 1 mana wasn't nearly enough to make a relevant dent, hence this second nerf, which is hopefully going to slow down Questline Handlock more than the previous one.
What do you think about these changes? Are there any other cards you would've liked to see nerfed? Let us know in the comments below!
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
Questlines for Hunter, Warlock, and Mage are just too efficient and consistent in Wild. Each of those decks WILL close out the game by turn 9 at the latest Turn 6-8 are on possible quite easily, as well. They are all far to reliable. These nerfs do nothing to stop that, as I rarely see Stealer of Souls and the decks running giants are able to drop Molten Giant alongside the Flesh Giant.
Yeah, with Crystallizer and Rapid Fire the completion of the warlock and hunter questlines is almost insultingly trivial.
I also find the whole philosophy of hunter's to be infuriating. For all their faults, I give the warlock and mage questlines a pass there because they at least looked new and interesting on paper, but hunter's is just a copy and paste of Raza-Priest with the task drawing the right cards removed. Maybe I'd be OK with it if Raza-Priest wasn't one of the most powerful decks in Wild, but it was, so why on Earth are we subjected to a better version in a class that can smorc from turn 1, thereby making the effect even stronger?
As a wild player, this patch really lowered my expectations of the balance team for the future. I hate to be the guy that complains every time something is not perfect, but goddammit I just wanna play wild without 80% of my opponents to be questline warlock.
I just wanna see all of the wild stats that they have so at least I have a sense on what makes them so reluctant to nerf the deck.
I personally think Flesh Giant should go to 12... That will leave it harder to play on priest, but I think it is a good spot.
When you shoot your 1 damage lifesteal missiles, each hit counts as a reduction, so it is not that bad
If anything these nerfs have shown me how many people care about wild. I thought it was a dead format.
The stupid thing is that the HS team WANTS the game to go in this direction, they WANT the game to end by turns 6-7. In fact, the most insulting part of all of this is that they probably consider Quest Warlock to be a CONTRO deck and want to uphold this new standard of “having a win condition”. Remember when a win condition used to just be dropping 2 Rattlegores and hitting your opponent with them? Well good luck getting to turn 9.
The problem is - what next? Now game ends turn 7-9, either you play hyper agro and win by turn 5-6 or you play quests and kill your opponent from hand turn 7-9. Mage may lose to agro but together with Warlock completely dtops any slower strategies. Why they will print any minions for mage when spell mage is so efficient? How broken these minions should be to be viable?
Really intent on not making wild playable it seems, the entire format is two slightly different variations on seedlock and the handful of decks that don't immediately fold to it, probably just going to leave the game until they do something about Wild, because Seedlock is getting to be almost as bad as day 1 DH, and it's been like this for almost a full month
Handlock is one of the few counters to quest shaman so weakening it too drastically will almost certainly result in shamanstone yet again, not that it isn't everywhere in diamond 5 and above anyway.
Speaking of shamanstone, its actually strange to me how no one is talking about quest shaman and how powerful the deck actually is, both in early game highrolls and late game value. In fact, you can reliably get it done by turn 7. Aggro cant beat it, and control sure as hell cant neither. Even decks that counter it takes it all the way to the end. And yet there's not even a hint of discussion or outrage anywhere.
Because shaman was giga trash for a long time .
also there are enough counters to it
-shadow priest
-Token druid
-Cntrl priest
-quest warrior
-Seed lock/seed handlock
-Miracle rogue
shadow priest loses this match-up hard. its 30:70 in favor of shaman. Perpetual flame and slogger push you off the board and are game losing every time with little to no counter play.
Token druid loses this matchup hard 25:75 in favor of shaman. same stats for quest warrior.
The only decks with favorable matchups against shaman are warlock, quest mage. quest hunter and secret pally can go 50/50.
Where did you even get these numbers from?
-shadow priest - Perpetual Flame wrecks this deck
-Token druid - Perpetual Flame wrecks this deck
-Cntrl priest - watch game 2 bankyugi vs shaxy (https://youtu.be/m2765caPeFg?t=880), and this is the deck he chose to counter quest shaman after losing game 1. I dont think I need elaborate any further. Basically if you think control priest can outvalue quest shaman youre not doing yourself any favors.
-quest warrior - Quest warrior suck in standard. Nuff said.
-Seed lock/seed handlock - Correct, as I pointed out.
-Miracle rogue - Miracle rogue has a chance. But there's so much that can go wrong in that game.
How bout some real stats: https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-205/
On D4-legend. Quest shaman has three bad matchups. All of them warlock. I've been doing well against it with fel dhunter, but like miracle rogue so many things can go wrong its not even a joke.
As for shaman being 'giga trash' for a long time, that's correct. But that should never be a reason for any deck to get a free pass.
Kinda made me chuckle. "Hearthstone community! Please be more outraged!"
another one of the category "this wont change anything"
kudos to the balance team for not doing their job
Honestly, this is an embarrassing nerf given the state of wild.
I'm just happy that Flesh Giant can go back into my EvenLock deck.
Starting at 10 mana, you're not going to get enough discounts from just tapping to make it worthwhile to play Flesh Giant. If you play healing and self-damage as well (in particular, Spellstone and ways to charge it), you can get meaningful discounts. However, I encountered a lot of Demon Seed Warlock and Mozaki Mage on ladder last month and I don't think you can out-heal those decks.
Recently I've been playing EvenLock with Battleground Battlemaster instead, also thanks to a nerf. I cut all the 8+ mana cards (except the mana cheating ones) and instead try to put some big minions on the board on turn 3-5 and if anything sticks, the windfury closes out the game.
But only for two weeks, before they nerf it again.
12 mana, problem solved
Didn't even nerf my wild deck at all... haha. Well I suppose more nerfs in 2 weeks, hopefully they will actually nerf questlines next time