We now have details on the upcoming December 19 card nerfs. This will be the fastest balance update in Hearthstone's history, beating Rastakhan's Rumble's nerfs by a week.
- (Discuss Nerf) Corrupt Elementalist cost is now 6 (up from 5).
- (Discuss Nerf) Sludge Slurper attack is now 1 (down from 2).
- (Discuss Nerf) Faceless Corruptor attack is now 4 (down from 5).
- (Discuss Nerf) Mogu Fleshshaper cost is now 9 (up from 7).
Official Patch Notes
Quote From Blizzard Hey everyone!
The 16.0.5 balance update for Hearthstone will be going live tomorrow. Below are the included changes, and as always, we’ll be evaluating the results of these changes over the coming weeks and look forward to your feedback!
Corrupt Elementalist
- Now costs 6 Mana (up from 5).
Sludge Slurper
- Now has 1 Attack (down from 2).
Faceless Corruptor
- Now has 4 Attack (down from 5).
Mogu Fleshshaper
- Now costs 9 Mana (up from 7).
Once these changes are live, players will be able to disenchant the adjusted cards for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks.*
Battlegrounds:
- The Boogeymonster
- Moved from Tavern Tier 5 to Tavern Tier 4.
- Mechano-egg
- Moved from Tavern Tier 5 to Tavern Tier 4.
- The Beast
- Moved from Tavern Tier 4 to Tavern Tier 3.
- Coldlight Seer
- Moved from Tavern Tier 2 to Tavern Tier 3.
- Primalfin Lookout (changed last week)
- Moved from Tavern Tier 4 to Tavern Tier 5.
- Nightmare Amalgam
- Has been removed from the pool of available minions.
- Brann Bronzebeard
- Has been removed from the pool of available heroes.
- Bartendotron
- Has been added to the pool of available heroes.
Comments
If Invoke was not part of a Battlecry Shaman would be fine. For one, Shudderwock and the Quest wouldn’t double the invokes leaving tons of pesky elementals to deal with. Most importantly though. Shaman gets to its final Galakrond the easiest because of how easily it can double invoke with Quest/Shudderwock. That doesn’t even include the minion who invoked twice.
TLDR: Battlecry invoke makes Shaman Galakrond the easiest to buff of all classes. This is what’s broken
Alright. I am going to try and evaluate the nerfs while being as not biased as I can be. Note, I am giving the ratings in relativity to the other nerfs, 5/5 doesn't mean that this is the best nerf ever, it just means this is my favorite of these nerfs.
Shaman Nerfs
Corrupt Elementalist cost is now 6 (up from 5).
I don't think this will break the inconsistency of Galakrond Shaman. It still invokes twice and it can still be played before turn 7 which means you can still get a fully invoked galakrond on turn 7 just as easily. but it does make curving into a Dragon's Pack way more difficult, and I think this was their primary concern. I give the nerf a 3/5.
Sludge Slurper attack is now 1 (down from 2)
Up until this point it was a no brainer putting Sludge Slurper into every deck. Now it is way worse to play this on turn one. Now it is just a combination of Wisp-ers of EVIL with overload (1). I don't think they killed the card, you will still want to play this with the quest, or if you are playing Weaponized Wasp. But now it won't be played in literally every shaman deck ever. I give this nerf a 5/5
Faceless Corruptor attack is now 4 (down from 5).
Really, I don't think this changed much, this is still a very powerful card. I think changing the health would have been a much better nerf. Is this card supposed to turn a small guy into a solid minion? Or is it supposed to use your small minions as removal? If the first, than this was OK, if the second, then making it a 5/3 would have been better because you would smack something and then it would die. Really, I think we will just have to see how this plays out. 1/5
Mogu Fleshshaper cost is now 9 (up from 7).
This is a nice change. Right now it is too easy to play Mogu Fleshshaper in any shaman deck. As long as you are fighting any deck that uses minions, then it is way too easy to make him cost 0. I think a better nerf would be to make him only cound friendlies, but this has a similar effect. Now you want to play this card in a swarm deck, not just any shaman deck. I give this nerf a 4/5, withholding the extra 1 because I think it could have been done slightly better.
Battlegrounds
The Boogeymonster Moved from Tavern Tier 5 to Tavern Tier 4. This is fair, the boogeymonster never saw any play. At tier 5, not having any synergy or tribe is a huge disadvantage.
Mechano-Egg Moved from Tavern Tier 5 to Tavern Tier 4. This is also fair, I have had a hard time in the past seeing the advantages of being a 0/5 and then an 8/8. Really this is just like a delayed 8/8, I just think it isn't impactful enough to warrant being T-5
The Beast Moved from Tavern Tier 4 to Tavern Tier 3. The beast is a bad card. In constructed, in battlegrounds, it is just bad. Moving it down a tier will help a ton.
Coldlight Seer Moved from Tavern Tier 2 to Tavern Tier 3. I guess the buff to murlocs was too much. This is fair, coldlight seer is just too good. If you get this on turn 3-4, you will win. a lot.
Primalfin Lookout (changed last week) Moved from Tavern Tier 4 to Tavern Tier 5. This change has been in effect for a week, and I must say this is a fair change. Getting this guy with a Brann Bronzebeard on the field is incredible. You are paying 3 mana so that you can sell 3 minions plus trigger their battlecries. I bought this guy whenever he came up even when I am not playing murlocs.
Nightmare Amalgam Has been removed from the pool of available minions. This is fair, this guy was way to central to every strategy. Hopefully with the nightmare being over we can see some more interesting strategies that isn't just 'I have a big guy'
Brann Bronzebeard Has been removed from the pool of available heroes. This is fair. Brann is almost always picked, I will be glad to see him gone.
Bartendotron Has been added to the pool of available heroes. Yay! bartendotron is a very fun and interesting hero to play. I will be glad to see him back.
Honestly pretty amused at the cluelessness in this thread. Not much point re-hashing old points, though, so may as well just leave the posts to ripen, so I can pull them out in two months' time and shine a spotlight on how aggressively foolish they are.
On the topic of HSBG, though, there's actually some interesting stuff happening there. The blanket Murloc nerfs seem a little bit overkill, but we'll see. Amalgam being removed should shake up the meta pretty significantly... in theory. The problem is, HSBG really doesn't have much depth to it right now. Even if you nerfed Murloc into non-viability, there's then what, two viable comps? Three if you count the typically underperforming Demon. That's really not enough for 8 players, in my view, and hasn't been for some time now (since people learning how to play has trickled down the rankings some).
Right now, the game feels like 6 people flailing for Murlocs, and whoever lucks out and gets the most picks up the win (while the two people who didn't go for them get stomped). But really, I feel like that's always going to be the case - just changing Murloc for whatever comp is strong at that time. Compare to TFT, where there's dozens of -potential- comps, even if a handful are generally on the stronger side, and you can see my concern at oversimplification.
I think they wanted to make the cards worse in general, but good in certain decks. Now sludge slurper and mogu fleshshaper aren't necessarily autoinclude cards in any shaman build. Running quest in galakrond shaman makes it slower, and if you don't run quest you don't really need sludge slurper anymore. Mogu now requires more minions on board to be effective, which should be harder to achieve in galakrond shaman, especially with the corrupt elementalist nerf. Without mogu, you don't need mutate in the deck as well, leaving space for different cards in the deck. I think the nerf will be effective in distributing the power level of shaman across different deck archetypes, making it less opressive and easier to counter. The only things I'm concerned with are faceless corruptor still being too good not to see play in any deck that can easily generate small tokens and that necrium apothecary wasn't touched at all.
Should have nerfed Dragon's Pack to +1/+1 or +1/+2.
ye sure nabs, if its still not enough the nerf, why not asking to just remove shaman from the game ?? wtf do u want from it anymore ? make it useless? all classes has strengts and weaknesses, u remove the strenghts and u are left with weaknesess, can u stop? what about that druid unleashed dreames? i faced one and could not response thanks to his summoning, summoned 2-3 high stats dragons per round, could not beat him not even with shaman, what about necrium, Can u stop crying and just play the game?
Welcome to warriorstone.
I don't see a reason to hate these changes. They don't need to slaughter a class just because they had a op deck for a while. These nerfs won't kill shaman but still will drop its winrate. It can still be the strongest deck in the game but one deck always has to be the best, right? It will feel a lot more fair to play against and this is what matters.
Mogu nerf is a big one. The chances they play it for 0 mana with other bunch of other stuff is really low in the early game now.
Sludge Slurper was one of the best 1 drops in the game and helped shaman trade pretty well against aggro decks. Now it can't take down 2 health minions which is a big deal.
The only change I don't like is Corrupt Elementalist it still curves into galakrond. It should be 7 I beleive, but they don't want to kill the cards from new expansion so fast.
Seriously, it annoys me to read the comments of this thread. So much negativity.
People are like "omg blizz has no clue", when time has told they usually know better than the community. Remember the overhype of cards like Troggzor the Earthinator?
I believe that touching THREE cards in a deck will obviously drop its winrate by a lot, even if those changes aren't big.
Plus, Faceless Corruptor trades way worse now, even if it's still a good card.
People want galakrond shaman to be dead. But blizzard went with a slight nerf, which will knock down shaman a peg and it will not be as oppressive anymore but they didn't kill it... People just want nerfs to destroy their enemy not just knock down a peg or two... It is indeed stupid, but that is how people are.
Blizzard made sensible nerfs but community just underestimates how big of an impact a couple of small nerfs can have on a deck.
dude these guys are retarded i swear, why dont just remove the shaman if u cry like that?, they cry about dragon's pack, let me tell u smthing when i play dragon's pack, the enemy most of the time does not struggle taking them out, take rogue for example, they take them out without playing a minion...
So, they left Dragon's Pack alone and Faceless Corruptor is still busted. Oh, and they completely missed Necrium Apothecary.
All I see here is that we're going to see another round of nerfs next month. It's good they acted quickly, but they need to be bolder with both nerfing and buffing. Just do it regularly instead of this once, maybe twice if we're lucky, per expansion.
alright....so I'm torn.
all the nerfs are good, but I'm not sure they hit the right spots.
Corrupt Elementalist was more than needed, but it still doesn't beat the real problem in the Galakrond deck which is Dragon's Pack and because of how Shaman includes all INvokers that thing will still come down at 5 most of the time and win the game by itself.
Sludge Slurper was kind of surprising and I wish I had had the foresight to keep my extra copies. That being said this nerf was well deserved (and needed). If Shaman dropped this on turn one it was basically impossible to develop any relevant 1-drop...and even if you got a 1/3 there's still a 3/7 chance they just got a lacky that either kills that or at least turn Slurper into a 2/3.
I wish they made Faceless Corruptor a 5/3 (or 5/2) instead to maintain its status as pseudo removal for token decks
Mogu Fleshshaper is probably the best of the bunch. It completely eliminates the Mutate package for two reasons: It delays it to at least turn 5 and also really limits the pool of available outs in a pinch (only 1 taunt and most of the results are just vanillas except for Colossus)
Overall it should put Shaman down a little, but I feel like it's not going to be enough. Dragon's Pack will need to be adressed sooner or later.
The Battlegrounds stuff is pretty neat. No more Amalgam radically changes how synergies are approached, makes Ligthfang builds much more complicated....but it does mean that Demons and mechs will probably be the top tier contenders. Murlocs are basically done now that you can't rely on Amalgam for a big stat stick and with Seer at 3 we can't even snowball ahead fast enough.
At the same time only Murlocs can now get poisonous (outside of Maexxna) meaning that whoever can build a big beefy boi the fastest will most likely win (aka Demons and/or Mechs)
Nerfing Corrupt Elementalist in indirectly nerfing Dragon's Pack since it can't be coin-to-curve back to back and that makes the 5 mana slot a little trickier and slower for Galakrond shaman. Only time will tell if Dragon's Pack maintains its high winrate post nerf.
I think lowering the health for Faceless Corruptor even to 3 just simply weakens the card too much. Team5's philosophy with the card might be as a value-trader to come back on board, similar to Oasis Surger. If this gets out of hand post nerf we can expect it to be the first card since [Hearthstone Card (caverns below) Not Found] to get the stick more than once.
The amalgam removal from battlegrounds is spot on. The number of times I just lose to massive amalgam with divine shield, taunt, and poisonous is just too much to bear. Removing bran might just make murlocs more manageable late game. Given that coldlight seer has been moved up a tier, maybe demons can make a comeback.
Would love to see battlegrounds shift power from tribe synergy to giving those poor guys with no tag a chance to shine.
No Amalgam? Holy shit. BG will get interesting... and probably even more contested in terms of murlocs.
The Curator will be the only class that has an Amalgam from now on. Brann is also out, no double buffs. My bad, it's Brann the hero, not minion. Brann sometimes snowballs the early game so fast, it's nice to see him out, for now at least.
I like those constant updates on BG. It definitely feels like an alive mode they keep ironing out.
It's as if blizzard intentionally give shaman the best cards, so they could nerve them later. Giving shaman the most OP rush theme galakron, when 'rush' is usually the keyword for hunter and warrior. Just look at warlock galakron, summon 2 imps and that almost doesn't do anything. And because the demon pool now is so bad, the galakron battlecry to summon random demons is arguably the worst. I once get a 0,1 demon and a flame imp from it. Warlock need so much help right now.
The "nerf" to Fleshshaper is actually a buff if you think about it. Now you can mutate him into a 10 cost dude.
Literally just ban him from standard, there's not really much you can do to actually balance him.
At least theres no charge and rush minions in the 10 mana pool.
Problem wasn't the 8 drop, problem was 8 drop on turn 3-4. It's harder now.