Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Upcoming Nerfs and Buff, Including Garrote and Arcanist Dawngrasp

We're getting some card balance changes in Hearthstone next week! Team 5 looked at the current situation in Standard and decided to intervene with 3 different nerfs and 1 buff.

These are the changes:

• Renew - Cost is now 1 mana (down from 2).
• Razormane Battleguard - Now has 2 Health (down from 3).
• Garrote - Now shuffles 2 Bleeds in your deck (down from 3).
• Arcanist Dawngrasp - Dawngrasp's Battlecry now grants +2 Spell Damage (down from 3). (Questline reward from Sorcerer's Gambit)

As you might see, most of these changes aren't necessarily aimed at curbing certain archetypes' power levels, but their goal is to reduce the amount of non-games you're currently facing on ladder right now, being their relentless aggression or uninteractivene (yet maybe not extremely powerful) combos. If you want to know more about these changes and the impact they may have on the future meta, keep reading, as we'll analyze each of them.

Quote From GnomeSayin

Hello all,

We will be making some card changes in a patch going out early next week that we wanted to let you know about, to give players time to prepare for Masters Tour: Undercity, taking place from November 19-21. These are the cards that will be changing:

Razormane Battleguard

Old: 2 Attack, 3 Health → New: 2 Attack, 2 Health

Arcanist Dawngrasp (Mage Questline final reward)

Old: Battlecry: For the rest of the game, you have Spell Damage +3. → New: For the rest of the game, you have Spell Damage +2.

Garrote

Old: Deal 2 damage to the enemy hero. Shuffle 3 Bleeds into your deck that deal 2 more when drawn. → New: Deal 2 damage to the enemy hero. Shuffle 2 Bleeds into your deck that deal 2 more when drawn.

Renew

Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 1]

The first three cards will be eligible for the normal full-dust refund for two weeks following the patch. Renew, which will go up in power level, will not get a dust refund. Keep an eye out for Patch Notes early next week for dev comments on these balance changes and more.

Card Buffs

Cost is now 1 mana (down from 2).

Priest being the weakest class in Standard right now, Team 5 basically reverted one of the two nerfs that hit Anduin in late July (the other one being Apotheosis).

Now that Renew will cost 1 mana again, we can definitely expect the card to be a lot more manageable, as you'll be able to play it with more ease and it will take just one Palm Reading discount to set its cost to 0 mana, for basically a Regenerate with a Discover effect on top of it.

For what regards the impact on the meta of this change, we see Renew back to 1 mana as a way to help slow Priest decks to start on par with the other front-runners once the new expansion drops, rather than helping Anduin right now.

Card Nerfs

Now has 2 Health (down from 3).

If we were to choose one, this is probably the balance change aimed at toning down an archetype's power level. To be more precise, Token Druid was the best deck in the meta, and most of the times performing poorly against it is what dictated your success or failure. What made this archetype so consistently strong wasn't the Arbor Up finisher we've already seen many times in the past, but the ability to take the board and never leave it unless your opponent was able to provide an immediate and effective answer.

Razormane Battleguard looks like the biggest offender: when it was released back in Forged in the Barrens, most people understood its potential, and we all knew it was just a matter of time (and card pool) before someone would figure out a way to (ab)use it. Especially good if you're going second with The Coin, Battleguard's effect allowed you to immediately defend it by playing one of the many good 2 mana Taunts at Druid's disposal. You cannot remove it? Then prepare for another 0 mana Taunt, maybe paired with Oracle of Elune to set up a back-breaking Arbor Up finisher.

Lowering Razormane Battleguard's Health to 2 mana will make it a lot more susceptible to removal (First Flame, Backstab, Shadowform's Mind Spike, Touch of the Nathrezim) and will definitely decrease Token Druid's dominance. Will the card still see play? As long as the archetype itself will stick around, yes, but we count on Token Druid to be quite less popular from now on (and not just because of the "disenchant" effect).

Now shuffles 2 Bleeds in your deck (down from 3).

We genuinely don't know if the card was conceived as an aggressive tool or as a combo finisher, but the fact is that Rogue's card draw and discount effects allowed for a little too many non-games. Sure, we're talking about a more powerful deck than Questline Mage, but the reasoning is the same: watching your opponent churning through their deck as you're nearing your (almost) inevitable loss.

People brought up the idea of making Bleeds not be affected by Spell Damage, but we think that a change like this would break the overall Cast When Drawn mechanic, which is something we're glad Team 5 decided to avoid.

Now, what's going to happen? Garrote Rogue will probably still be playable, but you'll have to find the third Bleed's damage somewhere else: Wicked Stab (Rank 2)? Sinister Strike? More Spell Damage? While the answer may vary, one thing's certain: executing your combo will be more difficult than it was until now, and therefore we expect the archetype's success and popularity to remarkably decrease until (and if) new solutions will be found. However, with the new expansion being so close, we highly doubt we'll have the time for it.

Dawngrasp's Battlecry now grants +2 Spell Damage (down from 3).

Deck of Lunacy, Refreshing Spring Water, Incanter's Flow and now Arcanist Dawngrasp. Even though we're talking about different strategies, they have one thing in common, as they all go by the name of No Minion Mage. People refer to Warlock as the 'cockroach' class, but this title should be given to Mage as well!

Since the Year of the Gryphon started, this archetype is hands down the one that has raised the most dissatisfaction across the Hearthstone community, not necessarily because it was always broken (although there were times when it was the undisputed best deck in the game), but rather because of players' feelings.

What makes Questline Mage that controversial of an archetype is the fact that, being filled with card draw and removal, it completely dominated the matchups against board-based strategies like Paladin, Questline Rogue and Hand Warlock, while it struggled a lot against the rest of the field (Celestial Druid, Pirate Warrior, Garrote Rogue). We're talking about a matchup spread not worthy of a top-tier deck, but its general game plan allowed you to kill (or be killed by) players that were still at full health or so, making this outcome quite insufferable.

Reducing Arcanist Dawngrasp's Spell Damage bonus from 3 to 2 will definitely make a dent. How? 1 less guaranteed Spell Damage means one less card to draw off Cram Session, as well as one less point of burst from your Fireballs as well as more time for Ignite to escalate out of control. This domino made of little pieces is definitely going to generate a butterfly effect that won't make Questline Mage disappear from the meta (in the end, maybe people play it because, let's admit it, it's fun, and not because it's broken), but it will remove all the doubts on its viability, as well as prepare the field for the next expansion.