Hearthstone's Alec Dawson has provided the community with a schedule of what we can can expect for card balance over the next month.
We're going to be guaranteed two changes next week to Warlocks, exact changes are not yet announced though will include mana increases, which should help out with community sentiment when there was quite a bit of outrage about Warlocks not getting hit in the last balance patch. This patch will release on Tuesday, August 31.
After that patch, the balance team will be looking to evaluate the meta over the next week and a half and if any changes are needed, we'll see them arrive later in September alongside planned Battlegrounds balance changes which will be coming AFTER the big update. With that in mind, it looks like we'll be seeing that big Battlegrounds shakeup within the next few weeks. If I were to take a gamble, I'd say we can expect to hear information next week alongside the Mercenaries Deep Dive stream. It was announced that said stream "might include a surprise or two" so using this as an opportunity to pump up the Battlegrounds update makes plenty of sense. The only question that remains is will they also be dropping that in next week's patch - it would make one hell of a follow-up to the stream.
Here's Alec's tweet announcing the schedule.
Quote From Alec Dawson Balance schedule over next month -
8/31: 2 Warlock changes (upping mana, feels focused)
8/31 to 9/10: Evaluating meta
9/10: Decide if changes are needed
Later Sept: Decided changes go live (BGs included)
Are those BG changes a balance pass on the big update or is that the big update / re-work?
Balance after the big update. More info on that update quite soon!
Comments
So lets lock in my predictions:
Raise Dead to 2 mana
Stealer of Souls to 7 mana 4/7
Just add a mutanus to your deck; I have rubbed out many quest rewards when I got it just right.
except they play quest reward the same turn they get it... Mutanus can never hit it... also they play it on turn 5 maybe 6... mutanus is too expensive
Doesn't seem fair. Before this new set, warlock was one pretty difficult deck to play with. Despite that, I loved to play with Tickatus. Quite now there's a lot of different types on Meta doing fine, such as no minion mage, Big paladin, ANNOYING Priest and Elemental Shaman. Let the warlock alone please.
Tickatus deck players ... please. Good riddance to lame card burn strategy. Warlock needs some adjustments and I have no doubt it will not be adjusted enough.
Honestly I fear that Blizz will just get the symptoms instead of the cause for Warlock. I love playing Warlock. It was my first golden hero. Lord Jaraxxus was my first golden legendary. It was my primary class in Wow. That being said, the plague that has come about from The Demon Seed is evident that self harm is once again En Vogue and has become problematic. So much that people will just concede outright when they see Warlock on the field.
The best thing that can be done is make the life requirements bound to a turn? Do "X" damage to your hero in one turn to get the next stage of the quest. Doing that pretty much forces the player to be A LOT more strategic about going nuts. If this seems too much, why not do something such as up the life requirements for each stage of the questline. Since it is so incredibly easy to satisfy 6 health on the first few turns, changing the mana cost of things isn't going to be as impactful as people think.
As for Flesh Giant, since I love my Even Warlock, Go ahead and put it to 10 mana. That puts it at the same power level for the other giants.
Finally, Stealer of Souls just needs to be made a battlecry instead of a static ability or restrict it to the next "X" draws. At 4 mana, it would require the player to be more conservative about the cards played previously in the game AND not allow something like Plot Twist to completely manipulate the game.
With all the changes you suggest, the Battlecry variant of Stealer of Souls, seems too much. While I agree with all of your suggestions if your change to The Demon Seed were to go through, the Stealer of Souls, should not, and visa versa.
The one most obvious change would be to Flesh Giant, up to 10 mana. It may seem small, but flesh giants are dropping on turn 5 now, and that means quite a lot.
The second is less obvious. Don't really think d6 warlock are really doing much, haven't really seem many of them up in legend. Stealer of Souls may actually get away with this, though with so much hate surrounding it it wouldn't really surprise me if it does get upped to 5 mana.
Other candidates for speculation:
- Blood Shard Bristleback: Its so powerful in stabilization that aggro decks just can't beat handlock. Upping the mana cost from 3 to 4 might make it less likely to come out immediately after its activated with Soul Rend or Backfire
- Runed Mithril Rod: Its a thaurissan that activates twice. Im skeptical because its a weapon so it can easily be oozed, but since games dont tend to last very long a lot of players aren't playing much weapon tech at the moment. Team5 might actually nerf this to 4 mana though I really don't think it'll happen.
- Crystallizer: A bane to everything in wild right now apparently. Up to 2 or 3 mana? Don't hold your breath
- Soul Rend: Its funny how this one card does so much for 4 mana. Trim down the deck and activate both bristleback and scavenger, deals 5 damage AoE, and since warlock doesn't really suffer from fatigue anymore its just basically pushing you further to your quest win condition. Maybe nerf to 5 mana?
- Raise Dead: 0 mana play another big minion, move further up your quest completion, reduce your giant's cost by 1. This card has been on the nerf waiting list for a long time. Might be time to pull the trigger, up to 1 mana. Wandmakers aren't good in warlock, so this is hardly a silent buff.
Raise Dead effects more than just Warlock, so nerfing that would nerf Priest. Priest would need a compensation Buff to counter it. Do you think... right now... that Priest could get a buff that doesn't push them into "OP" status?
When they nerfed Guardian Animals they clearly didn't compensate hunter for it. Dual class cards power level are always unequal between the two classes, can't just ignore them simply because its OP on one end and not the other.
As far as buffing priest cards? Im not exactly sure priest needs a buff. They're doing fine with shadow priest.
Don't recall any Hunter Meta Decks, at the time of the Guardian Animals card nerf, that ran it, but I know a lot, if not the majority of Priest decks do run run Raise Dead.
Raise Dead at 1 is a massive Tamsin buff. Now instead of rezzing 2 Giants, they get 4.
Lol, yeah. Kinda blanked on that. Literally corner themselves on that one. Unless of course that they're brave enough to assume that no one will play tamsin just to raise dead twice.
COuld always reduce it to only give back 1 minion. That way it's value drastically decreases while still being a staple in Questlock because they want the self-damage
What a mess, at this point I'm hoping they are hard tuning the mini set to bring balance to Combo, Aggro and Control again.
I think Backfire could go up to 4 mana.
3 mana draw 3 "with no drawbacks" is just too strong. The "Deal 3 damage to your hero" is an upside in Quest Warlock.
I hope they add at least 1 more mana to Flesh Giant.
We will see if they adress Warlock in Wild this time...
Rarely is Backfire used to deal damage to the opponent. Most often, it's paired with Runed Mithril Rod, to gain cards, deal damage to self, and reduce their mana cost. All Nerfing that card will do it force Locks to save it for Dealing damage to you, and since there is no hardships for Warlock to draw... you're doing more harm then good.
It's gonna be a mana up on Stealer and Touch, and Wild will be doomed for another month at the very least.
I hope that Stealer of Souls becomes something like “your lifesteal minions have +1 attack”.
Also I hope they do more for Mage as well, because Ignite single-handedly wins any control matchupsif their 300 damage to face doesn’t.
Well, Quest MAge is an anti control deck, but it has weaknesses. It's not even close to being as good as it was before and folds easily to any kind of aggressive deck.
Control decks don't need to be able to just beat every single deck, especially when their gameplan is to just do nothing until their opponent runs out of options.