Fresh off the presses comes a tweet from Aleco (Final Designer on Hearthstone's Team 5), promising that the team is planning on making some balance changes to the current Standard meta. As you might know, the initial Castle Nathria balance patch from 2 weeks ago has proven to be insufficient and even controversial in some circles.
Quote From Aleco We're going to be making some Standard balance adjustments soon. Next patch will likely be more nerf focused than the previous one and might include some neutral cards. We'll be locking in our changes this Friday, and the patch will go live ~1 week after that.
The current power decks in Standard right now are Ramp Druid, Edwin Rogue, Aggro Druid, and Boner Spooky Mage. All of these could attract some nerfs from the devs. Additionally, omnipresent Neutral cards like Smothering Starfish and Theotar, the Mad Duke could also be getting the hammer. No buffs were promised (it seems the team has their focus more on down-tuning powerful strategies this time around), but it's not something to completely rule out.
While the timing seems a bit up in the air, our guess is that we'll see this balance patch in two weeks on September 13 - but it could be sooner.
What cards would you like to see nerfed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Comments
Here are my suggested fixes (not predictions).
Aquatic Form - Nerf to 1 mana. Why does it cost less than Tracking?
Jerry Rig Carpenter - Nerf to 3 mana. That's the fair cost for draw 2, plus you still get the 2/1.
Wildheart Guff - Set maximum mana to 12. 20 is ludicrous. It would also help blunt the power of having so many ramp cards in the deck. They should be much weaker in the late game instead of continuing to give an enormous advantage.
Defend the Dwarven District - well actually, I want to nerf Take the High Ground. Nerf it the way they did Raza the Chained back in the day, and have it "Set the cost of your Hero Power to (1). It still might be a good deck! If not, good riddance.
Nightcloak Sanctum - Reduce the durability to 2. It's a subtle change that will nicely lower the power of the deck.
Magister Dawngrasp - Revert Arcane Burst to 1 damage. Same as above.
Edwin, Defias Kingpin - Revert. Revert. Revert.
Wildpaw Gnoll - Fix the card's interaction with Maestra of the Masquerade. That, or nerf the stats into oblivion accordingly.
Theotar, the Mad Duke - Increase stats to be a 6 mana 5/4.
Kael'thas Sinstrider - Not sure how to phrase/implement it, but exclude itself from its effect. Add a trigger to it that counts up when you play a minion, but it starts at 0 when it comes into play rather than passively track your actions from that turn. That'll kill it in most instances it's currently being used with Brann Bronzebeard and Sire Denathrius, but could still make for some interesting interactions down the line rather than simply nerfing it to 4 minions.
I know that the plan is to nerf standard cards, but I wish they would nerf Grey Sage Parrot in wild. Changing it to spells that cost 6 or more. The endless extra turn in wild quest mage is almost impossible to beat once they have the pieces. They can have 5 extra turns.
Or at least make the quest only count progression for unique cards played. This should tone it's power down by a level or 2.
Quest Mage, much like Neptulon, is an evergreen problem in Wild and should be dealt with directly instead of resetting the time bomb by crushing some other card that happens to trigger its ascendancy once more.
I just played Wild for the first time all season, and my opponent played FOUR Ice Blocks by turn 9 with Commander Sivara. That was enough for me
the main problem of the whole game is Renathal. Remove him and it will be a good game again
Denathrius because no dust refund. EZ
My comments on possible nerfs;
- Would be surprised if Edwin, Defias Kingpin doesn't get a revert, making it the first card in hearthstone history to get buffed and then reverted in less than a month. If team5 do not wish to create history, then they'll likely hit two other cards, Sinstone Graveyard (for virtually creating impossible to counter giants before turn 6) or Necrolord Draka (wouldn't surprise me too much if the durability is reduced to 2, or cost goes up to 5)
Rogue has been dominating the meta in a very unhealthy fashion. Forget your implocks and aggro druid, this deck can finish up by turn 6.
- Im not sure what team5 will do to mage. Not introducing Living Dragonbreath into standard is just one of those boneheaded moves given that they're trying to push out one of the most obnoxious elements in hearthstone. At this point, its very likely Nightcloak Sanctum or Flurry (Rank 1) would be targets, but I think team5 would just nerf Wildfire and mordresh back to what it was and call it a day. Basically, team5's idea here would be to tone mage back to midtier and pray no one gets their board frozen 6 turns in a row too many times.
- Wildheart Guff? No. Someone in their design team evidently can't sleep without jerking off to this card, so it'll stay. What else then? Nourish back to 6 perhaps, because the Jerry Rig Carpenter into nourish is simply too good, so much so that every other choose one spell are barely considered.
Perhaps druids wont be nerfed at all. Basically ramp druid is living off the fact that it has a good matchup towards both mage and rogues, so removing that may solve much of the issues in of itself.
- Hunter will get another nerf somewhere. Probably Wild Spirits to 4. Or perhaps we'll finally see the quest get nerfed. Third condition from 2 spells to 3 likely.
- And of course, I think its fairly obvious both Kael'thas Sinstrider and mad duke are going to be nerfed. Sinstrider because they're never going to nerf brann or denathrius, and theotar because this one card is simply too good. This card is extraordinarily consistent. Too consistent.
Any chance of them looking at Prince Renathal at all? I still think its fairly evident team5 cant balance cards around 40-30 health. Best to address this now, before its too late. Its very likely there's a new class next expansion, so that's one extra tightrope you dont need baggage for.
They won't look at Renathal for the same reason they won't look at Guff: they like what they've done and are indifferent to the implications until the latter becomes intolerable for their own future design. Recall how long it took for Celestial Alignment to be fixed.
Theotar, the Mad Duke will, I agree, get nerfed, but it will likely only be a mana hit. Reducing its stats is meaningless and changing its effect would be considered a nuclear option. Do recall how many steps it took to bring Mindrender Illucia to heel. If they go straight for the jungular and hit the effect, not only would I be wrong, but it would be a good sign that the devs are finally not overvaling their designs.
Why would they nerf Hunter and more importantly why Wild Spirits of all things? The class is already close to dead and only Quest Hunter is a thing and Wild Spirits is certainly not what breaks that deck
I just felt that if we're going to nerf all three good classes then the natural winner would be hunter, as evident before the last nerf. Wild Spirits has such a crazy winrate then, and I cant see why it wouldn't be the case if both rogue and druid gets nerfed. That card is one of the best card in quest hunter of all things, kinda shows us alot.
This time, I think team5 would scale everything down to give the bad classes a chance, and outside of buffs, I think rogue, druid, mage and hunter needs some toning down to accomplish that. Maybe warlock as well, but I wouldn't push it.
Yeah but Wild Spirits is just a good card to play. It doesn't win you the game by itself, it's just gives you the tempo you need to compete with other decks.
Wildseeds already got a pretty brutal nerf with the Stag (which carried you against Mage and Druid harder than anything else in the deck).
We don't nerf good cards for being good, we nerf them for being too good or somehow warping the meta around them. Wild Spirits does neither.
We can say that now, because the good classes can either match or stall enough that wild spirits seems just fine. It all depends on what team5 is nerfing and whether the nerf is going to diversify the current meta. Maybe hunter would just be good, so there's no need for a nerf, but I can definitely see some arguments hitting this card, given that allegedly in development the card was originally 4 mana.
Looking at the meta before the nerfs though, Im not 100% sure that wild spirits will be just good. Seems like the sort of card you'll slot in and mulligan keep in every hunter deck regardless of whether the other wildseed cards sees play.
Theotar gives me vibes from Illucia, in a meta with slow decks getting your wincon stollen is pretty frustrating, and a disruption card with over 50% presence in decks goes against they idea from disruption cards being overly played.
If you depend on one card (Denarius) then the issue is not Theotar, but your one card strategy.
I think Theotar is quite a bit different from Illucia. There was really nothing you could do about the latter, since your whole hand got taken. Theotar can absolutely be played around in the deck stage - either have multiple win conditions, or have your sole win condition be malleable enough that taking out one card doesn't destroy it.
That type of disruption is healthy for the game IMO. It prevents so-called "solitaire" decks forming, where the opponent can't really interact with you because it's all about gathering the perfect combo in your hand.
I mean, we have mutanus that IMO is best example of a good and balanced disruption card, is random, depends on the opponent have the good minion in hand and cost 7 mana, we can put vol'jin here too. Theo looks like a priest card disguised as a neutral, you have the option to choose what card you will stole and is pretty cheap, you can play him on 7 with Brann and fk with you opponent strategy. I'm not saying here that he is too strong like Ilucia, but is for me so frustrating seeing played like her was back on the day.
It's still too strong.
Take a look at the other distruption cards in this set in rogue (you gotta have secrets and you dont get to delete a card, but rather shuffle it back) and in priest (you actually have to invest the mana playing the copy to steal the original while Harvester of envy is on the board). The only thing these cards have over Theo is that they are 3/4/3, but when so many start at 40hp and some have abundant stalling, the tempo loss efeect is reduced.
Take a look at another disruption lego - Mutanus. It costs 7, it can't target spells (you can tailor more easily against this narrower ability) and most importantly, you don't get to discover the best of 3 options. Granted, Mutanus may sometimes be a good tempo play, gaining stats of a huge minion, but again with 40hp and so much freeze or freeze-like (solid alibi) effects tempo is not as dominant as it used to be.
I agree that Illucia generates a worse feeling (not by much), but at least it was limited to one class. As an aside - with all her power, even pre first nerf, at 2 mana, she wouldn't have been able to disrupt Denathrius by herself
Theotar is just too cheap. You don't make a sacrifice by playing him, you just toss him out whenever you think you can get value out of him and you're not just dead on board.
It's not even just a anti-win condition, he can just straight up ruin your curve and tempo just by being played on curve.
For what he is able to do he should probably cost 5-mana. Right now there just isn't any downside to playing him, even if your opponent isn't playing a lategame strategy.
@YourPrivateNightmare: I think you missed the word(s) opponent's in the second paragraph ^_^
On-topic again, this time I do not think a mana cost nerf is sufficient. The card is too overpowered even at a higher mana cost. It straight up needs to be redesigned to become something completely different or at the very least become random, ditching the discover ability. Depending on how strong the design nerf might be, it could even keep it's current mana cost if it's balanced.