Hearthstone Developer Alec Dawson stated that an upcoming balance patch will take place this Thursday and will be aimed to fix problems that are currently haunting the Standard format.
While we don't know what will be changed, we know that three cards will be hit and that they'll regard Priest and Druid.
Quote From Alec Dawson Few balance changes coming next Thursday, three cards in total. Looking at generation/burst healing in Priest and hitting on some of the non-games in Druid.
This is probably going to be a balance patch in view of the upcoming United in Stormwind meta: the developers might have spotted some gameplay patterns that may compromise the next set's new toys, hence the changes. The same thing happened a year ago with the pre-Scholomance Academy patch, which brought nerfs to powerhouses like Galakrond, the Nightmare, Fungal Fortunes and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza to promote new play styles like Weapon Rogue, Beast Druid and various non-highlander builds.
Without further ado, let's to predict what cards will see changes.
Druid
Given Alec's Tweet, it appears that two of the three cards will be Priest ones (one for generation and one for healing ), while only one will concern Druid.
Alec stated they want to hit "some of the non-games in Druid", which is a clear reference to Token Druid, one of the best decks in the game and with fast and explosive turns, which can generate absurd amounts of stats in the very few rounds with little to no answer for most opponents. Here's one of the most common lists played on ladder.
We can easily identity 3 cards which are responsible for the non-games Alec is talking about: obviously Gibberling, but we'd also say Lightning Bloom and Arbor Up.
All these three cards contribute to create enormous amounts of stats with not much (starting) mana at disposal:
- Lightning Bloom is a pre-nerf Innervate and since Scholomance day 1, everyone knew it would be broken in both Druid and Shaman.
- Gibberling creates a large board for little to no cost, since there are spells like Nature Studies, Guidance, Lunar Eclipse and Innervate/Lightning Bloom that most Druid lists already want to run.
- Arbor Up is a 5 mana 8/6 by itself, which is not bad but also not great: the problem comes when it capitalizes on Gibberling and Solar Eclipse shenanigans.
Let's try to break these suggestions to one.
There's little to no way to nerf Lightning Bloom: you either turn it into some sort of worse Innervate or you leave it as it is. Increasing the Overload doesn't do much either, since most of the times you don't really card about your following turn, given all the broken stuff you did in the previous one. Plus it hurts Shaman, a class that's become playable only after the Wailing Caverns mini set and that doesn't deserve (yet) to be addressed.
Arbor Up is a 5 mana card: even with Lightning Bloom, Nature Studies and all the other mana cheat cards you can think of, it still has a certain cost and, most important, it needs an existing board to become really dangerous.
That, of course, leaves us with Gibberling: if you increase this unit's cost while maintaining the Spellburst effect as it is, not only you'll slow down the deck, but you'll also decrease the amount of "non-games" Alec was talking about. We've seen suggestions like turning Gibberling into an Alleycat, but that would just destroy the card, which is not Team 5's current balance philosophy.
So here's our prediction: Gibberling will be the Druid card to be hit and its cost will increase from 1 to 2 mana.
Priest - Card Generation
This is where things get spicier. As we already mentioned, two nerfs: one for card generation, one for "burst healing". Not only these changes might aim to make Darkbishop Benedictus Shadow Priest more successful, but Priest is also one of the best classes (if not the best class) in the meta and many, many pro players have shown their adversity towards the Anduin' current state.
Let's start with the card generation. Here are all the (relevant) Priest cards that generate value: Raise Dead, Draconic Studies, Renew, Sethekk Veilweaver, Palm Reading.
While Palm Reading would be a suitable nerf target, we think we should exclude it and Raise Dead from the pool: not only the latter will be important for The Demon Seed's Blightborn Tamsin, but gutting Shadow spells will hurt Shadow Priest, which is not something we think the devs would want to do.
Renew on the other hand looks like the most suitable target: while this cheap spell provides both healing and another spell, it can be generated by Wandmaker (a bigger deal that one might think, since Raise Dead can generate an infinite loop), it costs 0 after a Palm Reading discount (with a chance of Discovering another Palm Reading for even more resource generation and discount) and great (both at 0 and 1 mana) with Xyrella for early removal against aggro.
Now that we identified Renew, how could it be changed? The first, and probably most effective, change that went through our mind is increasing the mana cost - bump it to 2 mana, so that it will be out of the Wandmaker pool, it won't cost 0 with that much ease anymore and will make Priest's life more difficult overall.
Priest - Burst Healing
Now, for the second card, the term "burst healing" is king of strange: normally we associate burst with damage output, but this time we associate it with the opposing mechanic, which is resilience. There's no need to stretch out our prediction: Apotheosis is likely to be the name on Team 5's notebook.
Turning any damage into a Greater Healing Potion/Reno Jackson has proven to be too powerful, especially if you give Priest the tools to take and stay on the board (unlike in the past, where Priest was less of a board-centric class). While strapping it onto a chunky minion is pretty decent, the most broken interaction is obviously the one between Apotheosis and Blademaster Samuro: the Frenzy AoE effect is not problematic by itself (many other decks like Clown Druid and Handbuff Warrior run it and nobody has ever complained about it), but when you put a Reno Jackson effect on top of it... well, it becomes a back-breaking swing against many fast-paced decks. You want to stay on the board and keep hitting Anduin in the head, but if you go too wide, the game will end on the spot.
How could Team 5 change Apotheosis in order to make it less good? Increasing its mana cost would be almost useless, since Palm Reading exists and that would basically put change in nothing. We heard some players discussing making Apotheosis similar to Rise of Shadows' Lightforged Blessing: while we don't agree with such a drastic change, we think that might be the right direction - lowering the Attack buff granted would make the card still useful and still playable, but would create less "I have the card, I win" scenarios from which most Aggro and Midrange decks cannot possibly recover. A +1/+3 buff could do the trick.
Final Verdict
After all our babbling, we think the 3 cards Alec was talking about a few days ago are:
- Gibberling, which will see an increase in its mana cost from 1 to 2 mana.
- Renew, which (in the same fashion of Gibberling) will see in increase in its mana cost from 1 to 2 mana.
- Apotheosis, which will grant fewer stats together with the Lifesteal keyword, from +2/+3 to +1/+3.
This way, we'll have fewer Druid's non-games, less card generation and less "burst healing" for Priest and therefore more cracks into the meta for the new upcoming Stormwind archetypes to slip into and leave a mark.
What do you think about these predictions? Do you think we are right or do you have any other suggestions? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
The decks I meet most of the times are aggro elemental shaman, aggro hunter and aggro Gibberling druid.
Not to spoil your fun, but apparently there are leaks that specify the cards (which come from the same source as ones for previous balance changes, which are derived from pro players who get to know about these changes early and said leaks have never been wrong so far)
Gibberling to 2-mana (makes sense)
Renew to 2-mana (also makes sense because it hits both the card itself as well as Wandmaker, which is one of the stronger best card generators and a great early game minion)
Apotheosis still under testing at +1/+2 (which would mainly hit the Samuro combo which is probably the biggest reason why Priest is allowed to be this greedy in the first place)
Pretty much sounds realistic to me.
if those are the real changes i dont like them.
Renew should be bumped up in healing with a mana cost increase (5 to be comparable to flash of light)
and apotheosis at 1/2 for 3 is pretty darn terrible card
That would as i see just be killing/nuking those cards, which is not what nerfs should do. Weaken not destroy
Bumping Renew to restoring 5 Health is a straight up buff and we wouldn't want to see it, really.
It would be basically a Flash Heal with a Discover effect attached to it for just 1 mana, in a world where Palm Reading is a card and can consistently Discover Renew and discount your hand.
No thanks.
it would still be a nerf or at most a sidegrade, costing 2 even with bigger heal means wouldnt get it of wandmaker and doesnt cost 0 after 1 palm reading.
5hp would be comparable to flash of light but draw is usally better then discover (are ofc cases like a fatigue matcup^where discover is better) so it can heal 1more and priest is susposed too be better at healing.
Also flash heal only saw use for auchenei effect to be turned into 1 mana deal 5.
I still disagree with you: 2 mana restore 5 and Discover a spell is at worst a side grade, but nowhere near a nerf.
Take Flash of Light and pre-nerf Holy Light: basically the same healing effect, but that card advantage is what pushes the former over the edge.
Even an overcosted Flash Heal would see play with a Discover effect attached to it, and given the remarkable amount of heal you'd get from it (5, 10 if you consider both copies) you don't really need more copies off Wandmaker.
I may agree on 4, but 5 is definitely too much.
Dude, the core problem of Renew is not that it heals and it discovers. The big problem is that you can generate it an oppressive amount of times with Wandmaker + Raise Dead, while also discounting it to 0 mana allows it to save it for insane turns with Sethekk or Xyrella. Adding +2 health seems fine. 2 mana for an effect like +3 health and a discover is just too expensive.
The issue IS NOT with the amount of healing, is with the amount of card generation that's possible to get and the insane combo potential. I don't know why you're suggesting that the problem is the healing.
The issue with the current version of Renew isn't healing: we are totally on the same page.
On the other hand, a 2 mana restore 5 and Discover a spell Renew would be another case.
Let's do math at how much the average priest player heals right now with current version and with a 5 health version.
Seems fair.
Now let's do the mana math:
Discover = 1 mana
Heal = 0.5 mana (flashlight is 1 mana so this is half the effect)
Total mana value = 1.5 mana
Discover = 1 mana
Heal = 1 mana (Flashlight)
Total mana value = 2 mana
The card right now IS broken since it does do more than it should for it's mana. If you add up in the mix LOTS of combo potentials (enhanced with Palm Reading) the card is just disgusting.
Current priest relies on three things for winning:
1) Controling and developing board constantly: This aspect will be hit since the combo potential is reduced A LOT
2) Healing: Not so much to talk about here, obviously reduced
3) Value: Since you removed the Wandmaker + Renew loop, OF COURSE the deck loses most of it's value generators.
Attacking 2 out of the 3 aspects of the class is A BiG hit. Attacking THE THREE would utterly kill the class and send it to bottom tier 3 or 4. Increasing a little bit the heal of Renew at least will keep the survivability and the class will probably be tier 2 or high/mid 3 at most.
Do you understand now my point?
^
Renew at 5 would be a straight up buff. At best it could be increased to 4 and even that won't be necessary. Nerfs are supposed to make a card worse, not just shift it around.
Apo is broken and needs to be gutted. Unconditional lifesteal + an attack buff pretty much means unchecked healing potential for priest. at +1/+2 you can still use it with big minions like Mutanus, but you might not want to run more than one in your deck and instead actually have to rely on more predictable heal cards.
NErfs aren't meant to weaken cards, they are meant to weaken decks. If a card needs to be killed for the deck to be more balanced then that's the way it has to be.
yeah make worse, not destroy it. which a straight up mana cost increase does
APO is good but not broken on its own (only broken thing in samuro ) and No card should ever be gutted.
Nerfs should weaken the cards, not warsong/starving buzzard them
I totally agree with you. 2 mana Heal 3, discover a spell is awful. Paladin had a 2 mana spell, heal 4 and draw a card, and Priest should be better at healing than Paladin.
If they nerf the cost of Renew to 2, they have to make it heal 4/5. Otherwise, the card would never see play again, it would be omega awful, and lately they've been nerfing cards by little adjustments, they have been so cautious about it, not just: OK, LET'S DOUBLE THE COST OF RENEW AND LET'S DIVIDE THE STATS BUFF OF APO BY TWO.
You cannot really compare Renew and Flash of Light: while both Priest and Paladin have healing as identity trait, Priest is obviously better at doing it and therefore has more ways to restore health. That is way Uther gets less (but rather powerful) healing cards.
Take Lightning Breath for example: straight up a broken AoE in any historical Dragon class, but less than decent in Shaman.
Could you provide the source please?
literally just something I picked up from comments on reddit. Might be complete BS but I saw pretty much noone challenging it so I thought I'd share it anyways.
I guess we'll see in a few days anyways.
I have pondered whether changing Renew to discover a minion instead of a spell would be better. Changing its cost to 2 wouldn't be that big a deal in long games where priest feels horrible to play against, but changing it to a minion messes up a lot of things: you are much less likely to discover one of the obnoxious minions than get the umpteenth copy of the usual bunch of spells, and it will interfere with Raise Dead too.
It would still be a solid card at face value, but it would no longer play its part in the infinite chain of generated cards.
Renew at 2 is actually huge because Wandmaker now becomes almost pointless (it was previously really great at giving you basically 3 unconditionally good and 3 situational outcomes). This means that, should they ditch it completely, Raise Dead becomes a lot less good at just pumping out cheap value. Additionally it makes it harder to combo with Xyrella (previously you would be able to Palm reading at 3 and then Renew into Xyrella if necessary. This delays that by at least a turn.)
Basically this one nerf actually hits 3 other cards in relevant ways and all of that alongisde the Apo nerf which will severely hit Priest's ability to just swing the game around completely.
That's not even accounting for the RNG pool being diluted with the new cards from the coming expansion which will make most of the discover cards worse in the process (and Sethekk and possibly Wandmaker even more)
I don't think you're wrong, but I also think this is hitting a class that is barely keeping pace with aggro decks as is. I still don't understand the justifcation/hate towards priest when the only reason they are able to succeed is through the aforementioned combos (Sam+Apo). If priest is unable to make combos like Renew+Xyrella on turn 4 or Sam+Apo on turn 7, they generally die to any aggro deck. Admittedly wandmaker maybe made them a bit too good, but wandmaker is also good in other classes with good 1 cost spells (mage, druid, shaman, and even to a lesser extent DH).
It just seems like they are targeting a class that is barely able to maintain an edge in the meta. It's only over-represented in the highest levels of meta play. All in all, maybe they are making those changes proactively to prevent degenerate gameplay with the next expansions tools, but honestly this feels like a kick in the teeth to all the priest/control players. As someone who's been enjoying priest these last few months, there are games I still get blown out.
The only thing that I think is a problem is how some priest players are galvanizing their matchups to edge out a few % chance to win against other priests, including cards like Cthun and Southsea Scoundrel PURELY just to avoid the fatigue game seems bad. Honestly if they nerfed the neutrals in this case, they could have specifically targeted the greedy priest decks without hurting the archetype entirely (make wandmaker a 1/2, therefore it's a value generator, and not just a decent tempo card for example).
But see, the thing is that Priest absolutely has no issue in dealing with aggro early, it'S that they choose not to put early removal (like Holy Smite and Devouring Plague) into their decks because Samuro (and an easy Xyrella) is just enough (as you can generally generate any extra healing or boardclears you need anyways).
It's absolutely absurd that Priest has to run Southsea Deckhand as a staple just to have a chance in the mirror when it is a terrible card in most other matchups (especially since your plan against aggro is usually to just run them out of stuff).
By hitting their most reliable recovery options Priest will be forced to actually commit to the control build instead of running 20 value cards. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Flesh Giant build makes a return after this because N'zoth is just too greedy and requires too many slow cards.
Samuro + Apo is always going to be a problem because it just instawins the aggro matchup if you get to turn 7 every single time and Renew at 1 will also be a problem unless there's more bad 1-mana spell in the next expansion (which there might not be) or at leas tmore bad dragons (which there also might not be, meaning Wandmaker remains exactly as powerful as it is now).
Apotheosis in general is disgustingly OP because it forces your opponent to commit to removing a big minion because they can't ignore it and having it give that much stats for just 3-mana would have gotten it nerfed at some point down the line, especially if Priest ever gets an actual win condition.