Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Recent Card Changes, Including Wildheart Guff and Defend the Dwarven District

Over three weeks after the first round of Standard & Wild adjustments for the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion, Team 5 finally blessed us with another balance patch, aimed at improving the not-so-ideal situation caused by some card interactions.

While the first patch was focused on buffs rather than nerfs (respectively 22 and 5), this one definitely aims at lowering the power level of certain classes, with a total of 7 nerfs and 2 buffs.

In case you missed them, here are all the 9 new card changes from this patch, which are already live.

• Nerfs
  • Wildheart Guff - Both Guff's Battlecry and Hero Power give empty Mana Crystal (instead of full, immediately spendable ones).
  • Defend the Dwarven District - The first step of the Questline now takes 3 spells to complete (up from 2).
  • Arcane Burst (Magister Dawngrasp's Hero Power) - Honorable Kill now gives +1 damage (down from +2).
  • Nightcloak Sanctum - Now has 2 Durability (down from 3).
  • Edwin, Defias Kingpin - Rebalanced into a 4 mana 4/4 (up from a 3 mana 3/3).
  • Kael'thas Sinstrider - Cost is now 8 mana (up from 6).
  • Smothering Starfish - Cost is now 4 mana (up from 3).
• Buffs
  • Alliance Bannerman - Now has 2 Health (up from 1).
  • School Teacher - Now has 4 Health (up from 3).

Quote From Blizzard

Patch 24.2.2, a hotfix patch scheduled for September 9, includes the following updates and bug fixes. 

Standard Card Updates

The following cards have been adjusted down in power:

Show Spoiler

Wildheart Guff

• Old: Battlecry and Hero Power granted full mana crystals.
• New: Battlecry and Hero Power grant empty mana crystals.

Edwin, Defias Kingpin

• Old: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 3 Health
• New: [Costs 4] 4 Attack, 4 Health

Arcane Burst (Magister Dawngrasp’s Hero Power)

• Old: Deal 2 damage. Honorable Kill: Gain +2 damage.
• New: Deal 2 damage. Honorable Kill: Gain +1 damage.

Nightcloak Sanctum

• Old: 3 Durability
• New: 2 Durability

Defend the Dwarven District (the first stage of the Hunter Questline)

• Old: Deal damage with 2 spells.
• New: Deal damage with 3 spells.

[Hearthstone Card (Kael’thas Sinstrider) Not Found]

• Old: [Costs 6]
• New: [Costs 8]

Smothering Starfish

• Old: [Costs 3]
• New: [Costs 4]

The above cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks following Patch 24.2.2.

The following cards have been adjusted up in power:

Show Spoiler

School Teacher

• Old: 4 Attack, 3 Health
• New: 4 Attack, 4 Health

Alliance Bannerman

• Old: 2 Attack, 1 Health
• New: 2 Attack, 2 Health

As usual, all the nerfed cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks following Patch 24.2.2.

In this article, we're going to discuss the implications of all the aforementioned card changes and what they could mean for Constructed.

Card Nerfs

Both Guff's Battlecry and Hero Power give empty Mana Crystal (instead of full, immediately spendable ones).

Back when Wildheart Guff was revealed for the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion, Team 5 clearly stated that, when they were designing Guff, they were aware that having its Battlecry and Hero Power give full Mana Crystals meant a lot in term of powerlevel; however, they wanted to print a powerful and fun card which could've been nerfed later in case of necessity.

Well, this is the case of necessity: even if we ignore the fact that Wildheart Guff is the cheapest collectible Hero card to be ever printed and that a 20 mana cap is an absurd effect, Guff comes down very early in the game, and many times it's able to carry the entire deck on its shoulders. Now that this Hero card gives empty crystals, it will be as if the Druid will have less mana to work with throughout the game or, we might also say, as if Nurture's Ice Blossom will cost one more mana.

This is a nerf we totally saw coming, but at the same time we wonder whether Team 5 will revert it with next April's rotation. In the meantime, we expect slow Druid strategies to still exist in the new meta.

Arcane Burst's Honorable Kill now grants +1 damage (down from +2).

If you remember well, Magister Dawngrasp started out the Fractured in Alterac Valley meta without much success. Then, a few gears started moving, making it one of the most powerful Hero cards in Standard, at least until this balance patch:

• First, Dawngrasp saw its cost reduced from 8 to 7 mana.
• Secondly, Wildfire got reworked so that it persists even if you change Hero Power throughout the game.
• Thirdly, Voyage to the Sunken City brought us Commander Sivara, for potentially more Wildfire copies.

As if this were not enough, we think that the straw that broke the camel's back was the interaction between Arcane Burst and Reckless Apprentice, which allowed the Hero Power to trigger its Honorable Kill mid-Battlecry over and over again, often times with the result of a board clear plus 6+ damage to the face for 4 mana and still with that turn's Arcane Burst ready to be fired.

Now that Arcane Burst's Honorable Kill grants just +1 damage, the snowball potential is still here, although it will take you a lot more time than before to achieve a 2 mana Pyroblast.

Now has 2 Durability (down from 3).

Fair change: Mage's Volatile Skeleton package proved to be more efficient than people initially thought: all the cards belonging to this archetype (included and especially Deathborne, which many players underestimated during the reveal season) performed pretty well in the first month of the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion.

Bringing Nightcloak Sanctum's Durability down to 2 won't irremediably damage the card, as this nerf's goal is giving Mage a little less stalling potential (which right now consists of Nightcloak Sanctum itself, Blizzard, Flurry (Rank 1), Varden Dawngrasp, and whatever Grey Sage Parrot and Magister Dawngrasp repeat) and making Volatile Skeletons slightly harder to generate.

We see this as a very light change to a new and successful archetype, pretty much like Vile Library's nerf for Imp Warlock.

The first step of the Questline now takes 3 spells to complete (up from 2).

Although Questline Hunter has never really stopped seeing play despite being (sometimes lightly, sometimes harder) nerfed so many times, we think this card change has been adopted to prevent the archetype to become too prevalent in the upcoming meta. In fact, Ramp Druid was Defend the Dwarven District's worst matchup in the pre-patch realm, so nerfing Guff while leaving this Questline untouched might have been quite the risky gamble for Team 5.

Nerfing the first step of the Questline instead of, let's say, the second or the third ones means that the Hunter player will now have to invest more mana and resources in order to gain the first payoff for their gameplay, which seems a clever decision to us.

However, we hate to say that we do not expect Defend the Dwarven District to disappear from the game: it's almost like a Hearthstone cockroach, which just refuses to die, doesn't matter how unplayable it is. If you really like pinging down people, at least do it the old fashioned way.

Rebalanced into a 4 mana 4/4 (up from a 3 mana 3/3) - this is a buff revert.

Hey Blizzard, let's say it together: "buffing Edwin to 3 was a mistake, we're sorry for the inconvenience". Nothing much to say about this, as Edwin was more than fine at 4 mana: buffing it to 3 made a good card even better for no real reason - if you wanted to fix Rogue's lack of card draw, we think there could've been better decisions to make.

At least, Team 5 recognized their mistake in just a matter or weeks and quickly reverted the card as it used to be. 

Cost is now 8 mana (up from 6).

There is something about Kael'thas and breaking Hearthstone that never goes out of fashion: it's probably not the card, but the character who has received more card changes in the entire history of the game.

This nerf is probably the reason why you don't see Sire Denathrius on the list of card changes. Instead of nerfing the new expansion's poster boy, Team 5 preferred to kill off one of its most problematic combos: the infamous Brann Bronzebeard into Kael'thas Sinstrider into Sire Denathrius.

While we do think that Brann is too strong of an effect for modern Standard and we kind of hope it won't be part of next year's Core Set (don't misunderstand us: we love the card, but we just think that we're not in late 2015 anymore), we have to recognize that any other future late game Battlecry would've met the same issue; moreover, Brann currently has more uses than just late game combos, whereas the same cannot be said about Kael'thas. Sad, but just.

Cost is now 4 mana (up from 3).

Unlike other changes, we can't say we saw this one coming. Although Smothering Starfish hasn't been an auto-include in every competitive deck, a mass Silence effect for just 3 mana and not terrible stats was something worth carrying most times.

Now that this unit costs 4 mana, we think there will be two main consequences:

• You won't be able to include it in your deck with no second thoughts anymore: you'll actually have to stop a moment and think whether you'll need such a tech card.
• Secondly, many board based strategies (like the new but not-so-great Enrage Warrior) used to crumble to pieces after a well-times Starfish: decreasing this unit's popularity will allow these decks to have higher chances to see play.

Card Buffs

Now has 2 Health (up from 1) - this is a nerf revert.

It's no mystery that, since the release of Murder at Castle Nathria, Paladin has been in critical conditions: the new cards are yet to make a serious impact on the game and not even the buffs received with the first round of balance changes were able to change the situation.

Back in the day, when Librams were still in Standard, Paladin was able to tank this nerf without even faltering a little bit, because that's how the class was well rounded and synergistic: you couldn't just lightly touch a card or two and expect the whole thing to fall down.

However, things are different right now: Lightforged Cariel (the best Paladin card before and even after its nerf) saw its cost increased to 8 mana, and Paladin has nothing it's the best at - as if the class were in the middle of an identity crisis, a meme that became quite popular during the distant Year of the Dragon.

Now that Alliance Bannerman's nerf got reverted... does that really change anything? Paladin needs all the help it can get, but Bannerman is already seeing play as a 2-of in every Pally list: what does this buff accomplish in the short period? If you ask you, almost nothing by itself.

Now has 4 Health (up from 3) - this is a partial nerf revert (School Teacher was initially a 5/4 unit).

Another unforeseen, but still very welcome change. Back in Voyage to the Sunken City, a 5/4 School Teacher was one of the most popular (if not the most popular) cards in the entire Standard format: even if we ignore this unit's high power level, the card itself was pretty fun and opened up cool Brann Bronzebeard shenanigans.

In order to decrease School Teacher's popularity without killing the card, Team 5 went ahead and reduced its stats, which is a comprehensible decision, but -2 Health was probably too harsh of a change even for this unit.

By partially reverting its nerf, we expect School Teacher to see more play, especially in classes like Demon Hunter, Hunter and Priest, which all care about Naga synergies. Welcome back.