Gallon has announced the next round of Hearthstone balance changes that are due to arrive next week on April 26. Read on for all the details!
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Quote From GallonHS Hey everyone, have an update for y’all regarding balance changes. 4/26 (This upcoming Tuesday) changes to both standard and wild will go live.
WILD:
- [Hearthstone Card (Kael'thas) Not Found] is getting a textbox revert to Every third spell you cast each turn costs (1).
- Switcheroo is banned. (Alongside a change in standard.)
Both of these changes are aimed at protecting the long-term health of the format.
STANDARD:
- Pirate Warrior Questline is getting an additional number on its final step. (3/3/2 ->3/3/3) (Secure the Supplies)
- Pufferfist is losing a health, from 3/4 to 3/3.
- Switcheroo now swaps Health only instead of stats.
- Miracle Growth now costs 8 Mana, up from 7.
- Kazakusan’s activation requirement is getting changed. He’ll now read “Battlecry: If you’ve played 4 other Dragons this game, craft a custom deck of Treasures.”
- Kazakusan has been playing a critical role in Druid for the past couple months, fulfilling a similar role to Deathstalker Rexxar as an entire win condition in one card.
- Going into our balance meetings, we knew we wanted to soften Druid across all ranks, and there were multiple angles that could accomplish that.
- While we could have nerfed their survivability, we worry that will lead to a more polarized metagame overall.
- We landed on a Kazakusan effect change as it should lead to healthier play patterns both playing as and against Druid.
- We also wanted to make sure that Dragon-focused decks could still tap into Kazakusan as a powerful top end piece.
- Playing 4 Dragons is a fairly hefty requirement but should be achievable in most Dragon strategies.
Notable omissions from this list – Demon Hunter changes. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the post patch metagame to see how aggressive DH lists fare once slower decks are given a better chance.
Good luck to our Masters Tour competitors on your preparation, and I hope y’all keep enjoying Voyage to the Sunken City!
Comments
It's only pity that we can't play Kazakusan in Neeru Fireblade deck anymore, which was the only way to make the latter playable.
Finaly good nerfs, good job blizzard
Well the switcheroo nerf will put silence priest back to dumpster.. at least I believe it will have too little tools to survive.
The kazakusan nerf feels like a good thing though and maybe it allows me to play Reno dragon priest in standard ..
After farming Pirate Warriors left and right with Beast Druid on my way to Legend I'm pretty sure this change is enough (alongside the Pufferfist nerf) because the Quest Reward is the only thing carrying the deck and now it comes down one turn later which is massive (and basically puts it back to where it was before the expansion outside of RNG shenanigans). Also it now stays in Mutanus' range unless they delieberately play a weak turn 7 just to complete and play the quest on turn 8 which is also a huge downside.
I originally didn't want Pufferfist to get hit just because of Warrior but after seeing how good it is in DH as well the nerf is justified. Sucks for Rogue though, it was actually balanced for them.
Switcheroo change makes sense for Standard and the ban in Wild is reasonable too. too bad for Shellfish Priest though. no more 0-mana 7/7.
Miracle Growth change feels a bit unexpected. I was sure they would target Scale of Onyxia instead but I guess Ancient of Lore on industrial levels of steroids is kind of busted.
Don't see how DH would need a nerf though. From all I've seen from the deck it's a very straightforward aggro deck that can be controlled and even out-tempo'd, but maybe I've just been lucky so far.
Shame pirate warrior got nerfed again because it wasn't even that good in either format. I guess this completely kills the deck at higher levels of play.
Hopefully these nerfs are enough to kill off ramp druid once and for all. The kazakusan change is interesting, but since warrior already played two dragons, if they add two more control warrior will still go its usual ways. Hopefully it'll have some counters now that druid is likely gone because that deck should never become too popular.
Pirate Warrior wasn't good but it was polarizing and extremely unfun to face once Rokara came down because you had to pray every turn that RNG doesn't just kill outright.
I guess it's just not a deck that should be playable.
The Kazakusan change should probably dumpster Ramp Druid. As long as they don't manage to adapt to a dragon package (which dragons lol? Certainly not Azure Drake) that means they now cannot beat Control decks who have answers to their big boards (which includes Paladin, Warrior and even Warlock) meaning they are no longer the best at everything and will likely fade in some capacity unless they manage to adapt their builds in a way that gives them a shot in the Control matchup, which would probably come at a cost that makes them more beatable for other decks as well.
Been giving it some thought.
The funny thing is that there's a real possibility that druids can adapt with the dragon package, with either Faerie Dragon, Twilight Drake or Amalgam of the Deep. If amalgam is the game, then its two copies and you're good because druids already play Scale of Onyxia and Raid Boss Onyxia herself. At very worst the amalgams can fetch more giants or just a simple Dozing Kelpkeeper.
I guess that's why they nerfed miracle growth too. Wish they revert nourish back to 6 along as well.
Our best hope is that druids are forced to cut off their early game to support the two additional amalgams so their win rate tanks downwards (along with their play rate) enough that it would only be an occasional problem for slower decks. Otherwise, I think there's still much for Mutanus to be doing until the next nerf patch.
This will do almost nothing to pirate warrior. Certainly does nothing about Mr. Smite. I'm sick to death of playing against that deck and it's still gonna bullying standard so time for me step back from the game for a while.
Dude this does everything against Pirate Warrior. Rokara now basically neever comes down at 7, meaning she's probably in hand at turn 7 meaning she becomes a Mutanus target.
And against early aggro (which the deck already loses to) you now have even less of a chance because your win condition just doesn't come online fast enough.
Give it a week and it's gonna disappear because the winrate tanks. And if that doesn'T happen they'll just nerf it again.
Honestly, I do not think Kael needed a nerf. Just like everyother deck in the format it can only be countered by hand disruption. No clue why those decks can exist but Kael has to be nerfed.
My guy, you have to be joking. In it's current state the deck had the chance to literally FTK the opponent.
I forgot about the FTK tbh LOL
Though, I think that is a issue with the design of lightening bloom instead of Kael. I would understand if it was standard but every good deck in wild just stops your opponent from playing so I don't see why this one was different...
Edit: Thinking about it more, I just a little salty because I like miracle decks. All the good ones get nerfed...
Nah, the issue is definitely Kael'thas. No card should allow you to play 2 Ultimate infestations and a Miracle Growth in turn 4.
They should have removed Raid Boss Onyxia from Arena for good...
My opinion on changes:
Switcheroo: Deserved nerf. This isn't a change because of power level, but because of how it feels to play against a deck that abuses this card. In standard it felt bad facing 12/12 Twin-fin Fin Twins on turn 4, and in Wild it was miserable to get OTKd on turn 3-4. Also good thing it got banned in wild, because wild still has plenty of ways to abuse the new version of Switcheroo. (R.I.P. everyone that crafted The Darkness for that deck, but tbh they should have seen it coming.)
Raid the Docks: Might actually make a slight impact in standard. Maybe we can finally get a better chance of Mutanus the Devourer their questline reward? Would be awesome. But this change doesn't "solve" any of the problems with The Juggernaut so i guess this can be compared to the Flesh Giant "nerf", as a nerf that makes almost no difference. In wild, this 100% wont make any difference because 1 more cheap pirate is so easy to complete.
Pufferfist: With 1 less health it will be a lot more susceptable to removal which is a good thing. This minion was absolutely insane, and with it being a 3/3 it will become a bit more balanced. 1 dmg board clear on top of premium stats is just very strong. This change will actually have a big impact on Pirate warrior, Pirate rogue and Token DH.
Miracle Growth: Good change, on one side this makes the turn 7 play less.... varied. But on the other side this simply means you cannot Guff into Miracle Growth. The fact that Guff and Scales remain untouched tells me that they probably dont want to nerf those 2 cards because those 2 keep the ramp druid archetype alive. And i'm guessing they want to keep Ramp druid as a main druid archetype for the rest of the year.
Kazakusan: Amazing change, now you actually can't just slot it in AND now you have to put in some effort in order to get the effect. Also now you can actually run non-dragon minions in your Kazakusan decks and still proc the effect if there is a non-dragon minion in your deck! So this change is a nerf to Kazakusan druid, but also a BUFF to Dragon Priest and control warrior!
Kael'thas Sunstrider: No clue why they unnerfed this card in the first place, thank yogg they fixed their mistake.
All around good changes i.m.o. But i'm still a bit concerned. Mr. Smite dodges another nerf, and i'm kinda scared of DH right now. Token DH is really strong and ALMOST unchanged. But hey maybe with Kazakusan druid getting nerfed maybe some control decks might become a bit more viable, which in turn will counter Token DH. I hope so at least. Also the fact that they don't change The Juggernaut tells me that they REALLY want to keep pirate warrior alive for probably a long time.
Eh... i think i'll craft back quest warrior for 2 weeks then
I'm a little sad about kazakusan, I've played it without abuse his power, now seems tough play it properly...
Also didn't seen the switcheroo combo til now, and i have the darkness lol (but I'm waiting to open sunken packs 'cause the golden epic is not copy protected)
Finally, the suffering can end.
But at what cost? Switcheroo getting banned in wild. This means Darkglare Priest will be noticeably weaker, but I'm sure we'll find a replacement for it even if it's not as good as Draw 2 minions. Funny that I predicted the nerf, but it ended up getting banned anyway. I guess they hate that deck more than I do.
Also the Pirate QL nerf and Kazakusan rework are pretty significant for wild.
Honestly i love the Kazakusan change, as he fits much better now thematically. And you can put him in a dragon deck that isn't completely exclusive dragons, opening up a ton of options.
Does Switcheroo nerf changes anything except additional combo piece (Topsy Turvy Inner Fire)?
The Switcheroo nerf is for standard, whereas in Wild the card is going to be flat-out banned it seems.