Our Thoughts on the Post-Worlds Balance Update - Death Knight, Druid, Mage, Paladin, and Priest

Hello everyone and with another patch comes another analysis of the changes by yours truly! 

Since the last patch leading into worlds, there have been a few interesting developments. Before jumping into the actual changes, let's quickly go over them. Despite Paladin being nerfed 2 weeks ago, the class has continued to rise in both popularity and win rate at pretty much all ranked brackets. Both Highlander Shaman and Dragon Druid also saw a pretty steady incline, partly because Highlander Shaman had a fairly even matchup against Paladin and Dragon Druid preyed on everything else. Lastly, there are still a couple fairly combo-centric decks still in the metagame with Naga Demon Hunter, Rainbow Mage, and newcomer Fire Druid. Because there is a lot of changes (23 in total!), this run-through of the buffs and nerfs is going to be broken up into two articles. This one will cover Death Knight, Druid, Mage, Paladin, and Priest while Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior being covered in one that will come out in the following day or two. With all that said, let's start going through them all!

Maw and Paw

Now has 2 attack (up from 1)

While a very interesting card that can easily snowball the game out of control, Maw and Paw ultimately falls flat in that a 1/8 body, while comically large, has very little actual impact on the board. While the total health is very high the fact that it just cannot contest any other minion means it will pretty much always be killed off without costing the opponent their board. An additional attack suddenly flips this onto its head as a 2 power is able to contest a lot better across the board and help Maw and Paw stick on the board a bit better, in turn making it also better at consuming corpses and not just producing them. Overall I think this is a very solid buff, and so its playability mainly falls into the strength of the other supporting tools blood/unholy/x has access to.

Corpse Bride

The Risen Groom now has taunt.

Another card that corpse outlet that got a bit of a buff this patch is Corpse Bride, who’s groom now has taunt. Not a huge change but it does help make the card a bit less of a “5 mana do nothing” in the face of more aggressive decks. I’m not sure if this buff will translate to it being strong, but it does help with giving Rainbow Death Knight a good corpse outlet as many of the best ones like Corpse Explosion or Vampiric Blood have too many runes. Rainbow Death Knight especially needs more of corpse outlets in order to fuel…

Climatic Necrotic Explosion

Now deals 6 damage, summons 3 2/2s (up from 5 damage, summons 2 1/1s)

Climactic Necrotic Explosion (CNE for short) is the first Rainbow Death Knight payoff in the game, and it is painfully mediocre on several accounts. Ignoring the rune component, the card scales way too slowly, with every corpse spent increasing one number on the card, and more importantly the lack of ways Rainbow Death Knight has to actually spend corpses. This buff to CNE helps remedy both of these somewhat, making the card more reasonable on its own. In my opinion the card still falls flat in many ways and I don’t think any buffs to the card itself is going to make it suddenly good and instead it needs supporting corpse spenders to become better.

Splish-Splash Whelp

Now has 1 attack (down from 2)

In the last balance patch commentary, I mentioned that Dragon Druid might be one of the better performing decks after the nerfs and that it was worth keeping an eye on. Low and behold, despite being a mostly fair deck, Blizzard deemed it as being too powerful. Dragon Druid has a fairly poor early game as it focuses more on setting up powerful turns later on either by ramping via Splish-Splash Whelp or drawing/buffing with Snapdragon and Take to the Skies. The nerf on the Whelp helps make this weakness more prominent so more decks can get under Dragon Druid’s very strong mid-game. Don’t get me wrong, this card is still pretty strong as ramping a mana crystal turn 2 has proven time and time again to be very strong, it just won’t be as good at contesting early game creatures without the help of Druid’s hero power.

Desert Nestmatron

Now has 4 health (down from 5)

Another nerf aimed directly at Dragon Druid, Desert Nestmatron was another card that did a great job at slowing down early game aggression. Being effectively 0 mana most of the time it was played, having a 3/5 taunt on turn 4 that regularly would be a 4/6 or greater helps it fall into the same camp as Splish-Splash Whelp as a card that is too good at its job. One less health isn’t going to hurt the card and deck as a whole too much, but it should help dial it back in line with the rest of the metagame. Overall, Dragon Druid looks like its going to stay more or less in the same spot in the meta as a deck that punishes slower decks but crumples to early game aggression.

Pyrotechnician

Now is Banned

Feels weird to put a neutral card in the section all about Druid, especially Pyrotechnician, a card that maybe about 3 weeks ago was often considered to be an extremely goofy and bad, but here we are. For those of you out of the loop, back in August, Thaddius, Monstrosity was ‘nerfed’, causing his discount to be smaller for big cards, but in turn making it possible to discount smaller cards to 0 mana. Despite being a 10 mana card, turns out that pretty much every class has a way to cheat out a big fat creature for less than 10 mana, and so Druid started running around with Nightshade Bud, Cover Artist, and Pyrotechnician to generate a bunch of fire spells and eventually burn the opponent out. It's a hard deck to pilot and only really saw success in a very small portion of Legend. As stated in the patchnotes, banning Pyrotechnician is only a band-aid fix before they can decide on a proper nerf. As much fun as I have abusing broken cards and making stupid combo decks work, Thaddius, Monstrosity is absolutely the culprit and should be adjusted. Nerfing Pyrotechnician is hitting the reward, not the enabler and it's only a matter of time before some other reward is going to be made or discovered.

Arcane Wyrm

Now has 1 health (down from 2)

Even with the nerf to Inquisitive Creation last patch, Rainbow Mage has still been performing very well. Similar to the Dragon Druid nerf this patch (and the Inquisitive Creation nerf last patch), the nerf to Arcane Wyrm is meant to weaken the deck’s aggressive matchups. I find it a bit weird that they are doing this type of nerf to the deck once again since it already has a lot of middling and poor matchups against faster decks, but since they want to keep the decks inevitability with Sif untouched, I suppose hitting Arcane Wyrm is one of the ways to go about it. The card still seems fine, for most matchups the difference between one health and two health isn’t going to mean much so it pretty much only benefits Hunters and Paladins who both tend to have a lot of lower power cards.

Keeper’s Strength

Now costs 5 mana (up from 4)

As mentioned earlier in the introduction, Paladin has been easily the strongest class in the game this patch week or two. Most paladin decks have just dropped Order in the Court for some other Paladin card and off the strength of its old cards, it has been able to perform just as well, large in part because for such an aggressive deck, Paladin is also able to back up their early aggression with some fairly potent board clears. Combine this with the fact that last patch leading into Worlds hit two of Paladin’s worst matchups, Mage and Warrior (which both are either neutral or positive matchups for Paladin), resulted in a class that is able to fight for board early, snowball into the late game, and clear the board if things go sour. Keeper's Strength being nerfed to 5 mana leaves the card in a fairly good place balance wise. It's still able to keep the board clear, but now requires more of a resource investment, making it harder to build up your own board presence in the same turn. 

Prismatic Beam

Now costs 8 mana (up from 7)

Speaking of building a board presence and clearing the board in the same turn, Prismatic Beam is also being bumped up a bit more. Due to Paladin decks having a bunch of tools to create sticky board states with divine shields, playing minions to contest them should be one of the best ways to buy more time. Prismatic Beam (and the help of Showdown!) flipped this idea on its head completely, putting opponents in situations where they are either damned if they do commit to the board or damned if they don’t as Prismatic Beam would very regularly cost 2-3 mana. Bumping Beam’s mana cost tackles a bit of this, but removing its damage face also helps make playing into Prismatic Beam not as punishing. It should also be mentioned that now Prismatic Beam is much more reliant on Showdown! to be an effective clear, making it much more of a two card combo instead of having two cards that are decent on their own. I still think the card is very strong and that it’ll still see play, but tuning it back a bit should help put Paladin back in line from its current monstrous lead it has over the rest of the meta.

Elise, Badlands Savior

Now summons 4 5/5s (up from 4 4/4s)

My vote for the most negligible buff in this patch goes to Elise, Badlands Savior. While it is overall an additional 4/4 worth of stats, taking a look at most of the minions ran in Highlander Priest shows how meaningless this is for almost every single target. Cards like Aman'Thul, Rivendare, Warrider, and Yogg-Saron, Unleashed are all more or less just as strong as 4/4s, resulting in the only minion that really benefits off of this buff is Blackwater Behemoth, which to be fair is much better as a 5/5. In my experience of playing Highlander Priest back when the expansion was coming out, the payoff being weak is definitely not one of the issues the deck had. Since nothing major changed about it, I don't see this buff suddenly increasing the win rate much.

Ra-den

Now has taunt

Ra-den is the latest Polymorph bait legendary for Priest. When he works, it can lead to some very good board states but more often not, Ra-den is ignored or removed in some way that doesn't trigger his deathrattle. Now that he has taunt, ignoring him is significantly harder. With this buff, there are still two issues that Ra-den might face when it comes to being viable. The first is that its a lot of effort to make the deathrattle impactful, most commonly done via Astral Automaton, but more importantly is that in decks that are slower where you can get a large Ra-den, decks either have AoEs to deal with it, or have ways to eliminate Ra-den. Reno, Lone Ranger, Bladestorm, Whirlpool, etc all deal with the boardstate he creates fairly easily. I want to believe in Ra-den being playable, but I don't think this buff is enough to make it viable.

Invasive Shadeleaf

Now deals 10 damage (up from 8)

With this buff, Invasive Shadeleaf becomes quite a bit more flexible. Priest has access to some very strong single target in the form of The Light! It Burns! and Invasive Shadeleaf dealing 2 more damage allows its second half to be more of a catch-all removal spell to better compete with it. Shadeleaf being a single target removal spell that lets you 2 for 1 the opponent is very nice, especially considering that Priest decks that care about running removal are going to want this type of flexibility. Before the buff, you would have to take into account the health of the thing you're targeting to get a useful bottle, but with 2 more damage it's going to be much more easy to snap off the initial version.

Pip the Potent

Now costs 3 mana and has 3 health (Down from 4 mana and 5 health)

Pip the Potent is a bit of a goofy card. Right now, Priest has pretty much every type of 1 drop you could want. Astral Automaton is a huge threat, Fan Club helps pad your life total, The Light! It Burns! is great removal, and Shard of the Naaru being tradable lets you dig for non-1 cost cards you could want. Combine this with the bottle mechanic Priest got during Showdown in the Badlands and you have 3 more decent options for 1 cost cards to copy. The issue with Pip has always been less what to copy and more how to get yourself into a position where you can play her and not fall behind. A four mana 3/5 body is pretty bad at contesting the board and so having a smaller, cheaper body that can be tossed out more easily is much better. All this said, I don't see a dedicated deck popping up around Pip, but I would be surprised to not see her pop up in decks now and again as just a 3 mana 3/3 that gives you a card or two.

With all that said, there's the first 13 cards affected by this most recent balance update. I'm a bit unsure if the Paladin nerfs are enough to tone the class back enough, especially since there are variants running around with Showdown! and Prismatic Beam, but we'll have to see as this post-nerf meta develops. I have a couple more thoughts about the changes but I'll save it for when we wrap up the rest of the nerfs and buffs in the follow up article, so make sure to check in then! Until then, what are your stances on the changes we've seen? I know that some of the changes this patch like the banning of Pyrotechnician sit wrong with me, but I'm curious as to what all y'all think!