Our Thoughts on the Balance Changes Leading into the Hearthstone World Championship

With the 2023 World Championships coming up, Blizzard has decided to do a last little bit of balance changes leading into it. With a total of 3 nerfs and 8 buffs in addition to some other minor changes, there is quite a bit of room for possible shakeups. Due to the amount of changes, let us just jump straight into what these changes are and how they’ll impact their respective decks.

Inquisitive Creation

Now costs 5 mana (up from 4)

A core piece of Rainbow Mage, Inquisitive Creation has been one of the strongest cards in the deck. For those unaware of how Rainbow Mage plays, it is basically a long checklist of spell schools to play before being able to play Sif and dome the opponent for their entire life total. While already a strong deck before Showdown in the Badlands, the introduction of Miracle Salesman and their definitely-not-worthless Snake Oil and to a lesser extent Tram Mechanic have helped jack up the deck's win rate. Inquisitive Creation being a relatively easy-to-activate 4 mana AoE that can stop any aggro deck dead in their tracks resulted in Rainbow Mage being able to perform solidly against aggressive matchups while also still having a great control matchup given the deck’s inevitability. I don’t think this nerf is going to take the deck out of the metagame at all, but it should help worsen a good chunk of its matchups now that it doesn’t have a 4 mana 1 sided board wipe.

Thori’belore

Now has 3 health (down from 4)

Warrior received two different nerfs this expansion aiming for Enrage Warrior. Thori'belore is without a doubt one of the strongest cards in the deck. For a deck all based around assembling a few 2 card combos, being able to resummon a 4/4 rush with relative ease not only overwhelmed a lot of aggro decks, but also could out grind many slower decks not running Reno, Lone Ranger. The nerf down to 3 health notably makes Thori’belore not stick around against most unbuffed Dragon Druid cards, as well as now being removed by plenty of other forms of removal. This puts evaluating the card in a rough spot since in scenarios where the opponent plays an unbuffed Dragon Golem, being able to clear numerous minions in a turn without having to ping the phoenix does make it better. However, these cases are still few and far between and given the deck’s reliance on 1 damage AoEs, having 1 less health on Thori’belore could lead to some awkward scenarios. All this is to say the card is still really good and the health nerf shouldn’t affect it too much, unlike the other nerf that Enrage Warrior received.

Battleworn Faceless

Now costs 3 mana (up from 2)

When Battleworn Faceless was revealed, there were immediately parallels drawn to another strong card that is very similar to it, Bloodsworn Mercenary. Back when Mercenary was in standard, it was one of the defining parts of a different enrage variant, often used as a part of a combo with cards like Kor'kron Elite. Turns out the 3/3 (eventually 2/2) body was irrelevant if the card cost 1 less mana, as combo lines can now be played faster and things like Grommash Hellscream are now suitable win conditions. The most notable of these is with Crazed Wretch, which with the help of Sanguine Depths, provide 10-15 burst damage for 6 mana. Throw in other cards to further buff this combo like Anima Extractor, Imbued Axe, and Jam Session and suddenly 20-30 damage burst turns become a lot more reasonable. Nerfing Battlesworn Faceless to 3 mana makes the base 15 damage burst cost 8 mana, doing a great job suffocating mana on combo turns to slow this finisher by quite a bit. While this is a fairly big nerf, Enrage Warrior should still be able to perform fairly well as the largest strength of the deck is not its combo finisher, but rather its ability to turn an underwhelming board into a scary one while still having a good chunk of face damage when need be.

Sludge on Wheels

Now has 2 attack (up from 1)

As someone who spent probably too much time trying to make Sludge Warlock archetype work day 1 to very little success, I can say that Sludge on Wheels was one of the stronger cards in the archetype. A rush threat that can dink a shield off of something and provide a removal spell (sometimes 2 if you have a way of burning the bottom cards of your library) is fairly decent against more aggressive decks such as paladin, even more so when it is able to stick around afterwards to do it again. The increase from 1 attack to 2 attack turns this into an even greater threat as it can properly trade into more reasonable threats instead of needing to rely on either its own Barrel of Sludge or Smokestack. I’m not sure if this will make Sludge warlock a serious deck, but it certainly helps make Sludge on Wheels a lot more enticing for Control Warlock, where the excess Barrels of Sludge can be destroyed via stuff like Steamcleaner. That is probably more of a pipe dream, but with Plague Death Knight being somewhat prevalent, it doesn't seem like the worst.

Detonation Juggernaut

Now costs 4 mana and has 4 health (down from 5 mana and 6 health)

While Warrior is having its more successful archetype nerfed, the taunt package it received this expansion is getting a bit of a buff. Right now there are two big cards that make dedicated taunt warrior worth running. An early Unlucky Powderman turns most of your taunts into overstatted threats, while Battlepickaxe lets you usually cash in 4 damage anywhere you would like, assuming you continue playing taunts. That last part is a reason why this buff to Detonation Juggernaut is huge for the archetype, as now there are now more tools to curve out easily with the pickaxe. If any of you remember Stormhammer from back during Descent of Dragons, Battlepickaxe plays very similarly, so if this buff is enough for taunt warrior to exist, prepare to take a lot of 4 damage face.

Snake Eyes

Now has 4 health (up from 3)

Snake Eyes is an interesting card to say the least. It's a weird value card in a class that usually never gets them as it usually just draws a majority of its deck instead. The issue with Snake Eyes is less that its stats are subpar, which albeit is one of the issues, but more that its too large of a discover pool and so finding a card that benefits you the best is going to be unlikely. We have seen cards in the past like Vulpera Scoundrel and School Teacher be strong in the class, but this is mainly because their specific pool was small enough that you could grab a specific card more often than not. All that said, a 3 mana 2/4 that gives you two cards is still pretty decent all things considered, even if the two cards are painfully average. Not enough for Snake Eyes to be seen outside of Highlander Demon Hunter, but at least it will be better in the lists that decide to run it.

Going Down Swinging

Now costs 4 mana (down from 5)

Going Down Swinging is in many ways a fixed Blade Dance. The latter had way too many issues of being a cheap board clear and what better way to fix that then by making it cost 2/3 more mana. The only issue with this is that Going Down Swinging is in a significantly different card pool than Blade Dance was and (when it was played), more than half the cost. These two factors resulted in Going Down Swinging being significantly more clunky than you usually want for board clears. Going down to 4 mana makes clearing with Chaos Strike or Parched Desperado much more easily. All this is to say that this buff is fairly relevant for the card, but I don’t think it is addressing the biggest issue with Demon Hunter right now, but I’ll talk more about that in the wrap up. 

Flint Firearm

Now costs 2 and has 2 attack (down from 3 mana and 3 attack)

Flint Firearm is the most recent rendition of the tried and true “play a bunch of this type of card in one turn” archetype, much like Whirlkick Master and the lesser successful Wretched Exile. Flint has a fairly small pool consisting of some fairly strong cards, but even with some of them cycling for very cheap (such as Rehydrate and Dehydrate), the large pool and the fact there are a couple expensive cards makes Flint overall not great. That being said, if there was a buff that would make it much better, reducing its cost so it can be more easily abused with stuff like Shadowstep would be a step in the right direction. That being said, unless some highlander deck suddenly feels the need to include another mid-to-late game value card, I don’t see this buff impacting Flint in a meaningful way even though it is stronger now.

Blast Charge

Now costs 2 mana (down from 3)

Overall despite the initial dominance of The Azerite Snake and some action in Mage, a lot of the excavate cards have had rather lackluster performances, thus a good chunk of the cards have received buffs. Starting with Blast Charge, the drop from 3 mana to 2 mana is a pretty minor change, but one that will help smooth out the early turns. It’s hard to talk more in detail since I only ever saw Excavate Warrior day 1 of the meta before any lists got refined, and while a 1 mana buff on a cheap card is usually pretty big, I just know so little about how the archetype plays to know whether this could make the deck viable.

Antique Flinger

Now costs 3 and is a 4/3 (down from 4 mana 5/4)

Another 1 mana buff to a card that says “destroy a minion”, Antique Flinger’s buff is a bit more impactful given that Rogue can abuse the body more. Cards like Shadowstep and Breakdance love the 1 less mana it needs to replay the flinger, and given that Excavate Rogue already uses those cards very well with stuff like Drilly the Kid and The Azerite Scorpion needing to be excavated 8 times to be at its strongest, this is a pretty solid buff to the deck. Like with Blast Charge, it's hard to determine how strong of a buff this will be since I’m not familiar with Excavate Rogue, but between this buff, and a couple other ones, it wouldn’t surprise me if the deck were to start seeing more play.

Burrow Buster

Now has 5 health (up from 4)

Burrow Buster has been a mainstay in every excavate deck I’ve seen and played against it. However this is less off the strength of the card and more just that these decks need to run every version to be able to hit the payoff treasures. One more health is a pretty big deal on a rush minion since it turns it more into a creature that can stick on the board and less of a 5 mana Fireball that excavates. Pretty much every excavate deck is going to benefit from this, but like the other two excavate cards it's hard for me to say how much in specific just due to how obscure most of the decks are. That being said, it does do a lot better of a job lining up against other decks, such as being able to survive trading into most Dragon Druid minions after a buff as well as Paladin decks, but beyond that there doesn’t seem to be a ton of decks this 1 extra health is going to help much.

Treasures

Now has 3 health (up from 2)        Now has 2 health (up from 1)     Now has 3 attack (up from 2)

Obviously there's not much to talk about the buffs to the treasure given the fact you cannot put them in the deck, but I thought it would be important to just touch up on them. Escaping Trogg’s buff is fairly big, extra health on rush minions to let them stay around is pretty big and given that the trogg is going to be crashing into 1 drops most likely, it will be able to often be a 2 for 1. Canary’s buff is the most negligible of the three, the body is not important when its greatest strength is the battlecry. Finally, Steelhide Mole being a 3/7 is pretty big. The Mole’s main purpose of swallowing up whatever random garbage minions are on the field, and the extra attack is going to help accomplish this.

Wrap Up

Overall another solid set of buffs and nerfs. It feels to me like there are some outliers, like Dragon Druid, that still feel like it might be a bit overtuned, but there's nothing wrong with having a top deck exist in the game. With the frequent balance updates it's not something to worry about much. I do think there is more to talk about the frequency of changes and how it impacts the new player experience and the rest of the meta, but I’ll save it for another day since there's a bit of unpacking to do for that topic.

Two last things to mention, and I could be wrong on this, but right now I think there might be the highest disparity between high legend and mid-ladder win rates for a class. Despite Aggro Naga Demon Hunter being one of the strongest decks in high legend, the class is sitting at a jaw-dropping 37.7%. While pretty funny to laugh at how low the number is, a class that is below 40% win rate should always raise a bit of concern. Another thing to keep an eye on is with highlander decks, where pretty much all the payoffs are near 60% win rate (Rheastrasza and Priest aren’t, but with Priest that's mainly because highlander as an archetype isn’t quite worth it right now). While this is fairly standard for payoffs with big deck building requirements, these numbers might be pushing it a bit much. All that said, that's just my breakdown of the most recent patch. Have more experience playing Excavate Warrior or Rogue? Let me know how the buffs have been playing out.

Hearthstone's 2023 World Championship starts Saturday, December 16.